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“Well, the Expansion Suit is Flare tech, so if she’s Kalosian in some fashion, especially Flare sympathetic, that wouldn’t surprise me. Might have caught an accent,” Aile would reply, rolling her eyes. “Malva certainly had her charisma on the HoloCaster, though.” There would be a brief moment of a frown as she thought for a second. Maybe that could be explained away like that, but maybe… No, she couldn’t get that insane with the theories just yet. “So, they didn’t know about the previous leader… Granted, I don’t know of them either, other than just a bit about the old group with the name while I was in Orre for six months. But, I didn’t pay much attention to global news until I joined up with you all, so that’s a moot point. Black City, though…” She would look down and put a finger on her lips again, tapping it quickly. Getting no information on Lovrina from these two, though, she shrugged. And she got nothing from Darts on what he was interrogated about. Though, he also seemed to be more preoccupied on trying to calm one very angry not-actually-a-child.

Her left hand would start bringing up fingers as she thought through everyone. Another member asked about when they joined, so that has to be a universal question at this point. She was asked about her last time in Kalos as well as her time in Orre. Blizz was asked about Black City. Odd was asked about Citadark. Amber was asked about Jubilife and Mauville. Ulla, it was just about why she joined Snagem, and Keiko was just about how she became a hybrid. Black City and Aile’s last time in Kalos could be related to Flare events. Citadark was solidly Cipher, and her own time in Orre eventually wound up being the reason for their arrival. Mauville and Jubilife were both Shadow Pokémon related. There was a small thread of Cipher if you played a game of Seven Degrees to Cipher in all of that, with Lysandre and Ein cooperating, and the Shadow Virus was Ein’s design in the first place. She would keep that in mind, but didn’t rank it that high, however.

There was also the issue of conflicting or missing information. The missing information of Snagem’s first leader. The conflicting information of Lovrina. Hearing those made her slightly worry… Though again, she needed access to an outside database. She wasn’t joining to jump just yet on that. As much as the Crystal Pool left her feeling uneasy and awkward. “Right,” she finally said, shaking her head. “Thanks for your help. Any idea where Reno disappeared to,” she’d ask, taking another drink of water finally as she was about ready to run off again. “I thought I might have caught him leaving here.”

—
Inside her own head, Crystal would once again be attempting to escape the confines of her mind, first testing out if she could actually use her abilities, starting with her own light platforms. That seemed to work to bring them forth,and she could even climb on them and stand on them. So, that was something. Maybe it was just that she was finally calmer, or maybe it was that she understood more where she was at, though. Not exactly why she got shunted here, but that was something she could maybe figure out later. When she was awake. Still, she wondered if it could even be as simple as she thought to leave… Looking down to her hand, she focused and thought, remembering what it was like to channel her energy for Sunsteel Strike. It had been over a year, well over a year probably at this point, since she used it, since she kept herself reality locked. And if she didn’t need to leave, well… she wasn’t going to use it in case she accidentally somehow opened an Ultra Wormhole, even if she never had a history of it. She was just paranoid of causing even more Ultra Space havoc for the Snagems. Now, though… Maybe it was as simple as that.

With a deep breath, she began to focus, began to try and sense… Well, at least normally, she’d pull on her own reserve of Ultra Energy, that strange and otherworldly energy that burned within her like a small star. So, maybe see if she could tap into it again in some fashion here. Closing her eyes, she imagined a small but bright golden star, glowing bigger and brighter with each moment, warming her. As it grew, though, little flare ups could be seen, the solar flares spitting out more and more frequently. Was this... something that happened normally? Maybe it was when she was anxious or angry… Which, she certainly could still be considered that right now, anxious at least. Light, is this part of the issue? She needed to calm herself. She wasn’t in a panic like she was before, when everything had just happened and she was confused as all of space, but she could certainly feel an underlying anxiety. About being stuck here, not knowing what was going on again, if she had just been moved somewhere again without any sort of questioning. She needed to calm herself. The first step was to figure out what was going on, and even if she wasn’t successful at leaving, this wasn’t like she was under Ziton attack. Right now, she was safe in her mind, the only visitors being Reno and the memory shard of Rome. Taking more rhythmic breaths now, she’d keep thinking those thoughts as she focused on her little space nuclear power plant, the flare ups slowly becoming less and less common. They weren’t completely gone, but it was a start. It at least felt more stable. Something that was easier to hold onto.

Opening her eyes, Crystal would find her hand glowing white now, outside of her fingernails which were glowing yellow. Checking her braid and tail would show a similar thing, all glowing white outside of any areas that were gold before. And this time… dare she say it, it felt more stable than before? Less like she was trying to pull on the energy, at least. She didn’t put that much thought into how she did it, just used it on instinct before. Did she really use it like that? Thinking back, it really felt more volatile whenever she used it previously, like she needed to use it before it disappeared. This time... It reminded her of a warm summer’s day outside, if she had to compare it to something else. A summer’s day instead of a rearing flame ready to burn her out. Light, maybe she could have benefitted from taking at least a few hundred years somewhere to learn. Shaking the thought out of her head as she began to feel the energy start to flare up again, she would take a few more calming breaths and stare straight ahead. “We have this. We can do this,” she told herself, partially to encourage herself and partially to help keep her nerves. “And even if this doesn’t work, we are not under attack from anything. We will be safe here, at least. But. We need to try.” With one more deep breath, she would break out into a run, barreling straight for the beach before reaching out and slashing the air in front of her. Unlike her other attempts, something would finally happen. A golden line would be slashed into the air, not unlike what happened in reality when she tried rending open the barrier to Ultra Space. However, she wouldn’t need to finish tearing it open herself this time. The line would open on its own, widening into the Ultra Wormhole she would remember from all of her travels. Only this time, it was going back to something she knew, as she ran headfirst into it.


Back in the STR, the blue rectangles that were supposed to be Crystal’s eyes would flicker for a moment, the white iris starting to fill in again. Then they would blink rapidly as a groan would emerge from the hybrid’s mouth. “Light blind me wasn’t supposed to be taken literally,” she muttered, squinting as she realized she was laying on her back, staring up at one of the STR lights. She would continue to blink rapidly as she felt out how her body felt. Stiff would be the first big thing, as it felt like she was having a rather hard time trying to get her limbs to move. The solution to that would be to start with her fingertips and toes, starting to try and flex them, and slowly move parts closer to her torso. The next note would be surprisingly cold, but she was missing her shawl and skirt, and she did come out of a volcano after fighting an Arcanine. Maybe that was part of it. The next notable thing she would notice once she started to move her limbs would be that there felt like a… delay? Not extremely long, but like a second or two after she would think about how she wanted to move, her body would finally respond. Hm… Must have been wearing the collar.

After about a minute of Crystal trying to get her body to actually, you know, not be a statue, the Solgaleo hybrid would finally push herself up into a sitting position, immediately grabbing her head as she was hit with a sharp pain right between the eyes. “Oh Light. Is this what being hungover is like? I don’t remember if I ever did get hungover before…” At least she didn’t have anything to eat before she went on this mission.

"I see, so another hybrid came from Ultra Space to kill Blizzard but in turn you killed them which resulted in you turning into the Galarian variant a month later? I suppose that lines up with what was caught on camera during that entire fiasco. Mister WHITE here tried to seek out the Ultra Energy signature during the tournament himself but our inter-dimensional invader moved faster than he could. Do you know why this hybrid wanted Blizzard dead so desperately?" Looker asked Freth as he took a few notes about what she said. "Sure, he's a strong hybrid but the guy acts like the biggest boy scout in this group, hardly a mark for someone to travel across space and time to kill."

"And speaking of Ultra Space things at your front door, do you have any idea why so many wormholes had been opening up here at Mt. Silver over a year ago? Our intel tells us of at least two wormholes opening up in this area in relatively short order. One wormhole opening in a location is extremely rare, almost unheard of outside of Alola over the span of a century in fact. But two? Back to back and in the same place outside of Alola? That can't be a coincidence, can it? Furthermore we find an Ultra Beast here in your HQ as well, albeit a small and surprisingly tame one but an Ultra Beast all the same. And that's not even considering the Fallers you have on your team. Has Snagem being running any experiments concerning Ultra Space that we may need to know about? Maybe aided by the four hybrids connected to Ultra Space? Because from my point of view a lot of Ultra coincidences have been going on here, or rather wherever Snagem is. This place reeks of Ultra Energy in fact." Looker asked Freth, glancing and gesturing around for emphasis. "No offense to you, you smell fine." The man said with a chuckle as he tried to make a lighthearted joke.

Freth stared, a bit intently at Looker as he started to tip his hand into Ultra Space matters. They apparently at the very least knew that the headquarters had a couple of visits since then, though frankly it was much to everyone’s chagrin in one light or another. Freth was left to wonder that while yes, they knew of STAK, what of the Buzzwole that hangs around with Sol? Perhaps so. Listening to Kess, furthermore, made Freth wonder if she was trying to entice Freth to loosen her beak on more matters than just that, which made her highly dubious about trusting anything she was saying. Though, that last comment made things rather awkward for a second there.

“So, they know of your excursion into Galar to go after Blizzard.”

“I find it hysterical they find Blizzard to be a boy scout of some kind.” Eris replied.

“We’re not getting into that again. Not the time.”

“Just…leaving it out there. This is making me uneasy though. Knowledge into Ultra Space is dangerous, and if they get curious as to getting there…”

“Its not happening. Short of Crystal getting in there herself and whoever else she wants on that joy ride, getting there otherwise is effectively impossible here that I know of.”

“I doubt that. I’d like to remind you about that one world I told you about. The one with the meteor. Never mind what we discovered about those professors in Paldea.” Eris stated.

“Point taken. At the very least, it’s not us, and I’d rather keep it that way.” Freth replied to her mental resident. “We only had a glancing taste of it and I don’t really want any more of it. We got enough problems as is.”

“As an aside, listening to the Zapdos hybrid, I…can’t help but to wonder if we met.” Eris said. “She sounds familiar.”

“Familiar? You’ve been out of this reality for years and she didn’t make herself relevant here until Ein decided to ruin everyone’s day with the Shadow Virus. Well before you showed up here again. I highly doubt it unless you had a run in with her in some other reality.”

“No…I don’t think so…” Eris replied. Freth could almost imagine Eris racking her mind over Kess right about now.

Eris would go silent as Freth took another glance at Kess then back towards Looker. Freth shook her head at Looker’s questioning. “Honestly, no idea as to why she wanted Blizzard’s head.” She said to Looker. “The most I managed to get out of her was that she was part of some sort of faction that resides within Ultra Space, but that was about it. And apparently this faction had the resources to basically infiltrate this headquarters in the hunt for him, then finally managed to track him down in Galar. So, there’s at least one of those entrances to Ultra Space for you.” She said. “As far as the others, I couldn’t tell you. We were still trying to figure out all of that ourselves. We had Monique fall in our lap out of the blue. Then we had Ultra Beasts to show up. Experimentation? Tch…not really sure how to do that, let alone where to start. Not like there’s resources that I know of on that thing other than some old Alolan myths that just talks about this stuff in ancient times. The Tapu and all of that. Which is just maddingly unhelpful. That I know of, the only one that actually outright has the capability of moving in and out of Ultra Space is Crystal, and that hasn’t happened in some time. It’s only a guess, but I’m left to wonder if this world turned into a hot zone for this sort of stuff. Like you said, we had incidents in Alola, then Galar, and now more recently here. And given what I dealt with so far on this? I want nothing to do with it. I’ve already learned my lesson about the proverbial Pandora’s box well before Snagem. I’m just glad we haven’t had anything for a while on that.”

“Really!?” Eris shouted in protest. “You go and tell him THAT!?”

Freth quickly would end up having to cut her off before Eris had a tirade in her consciousness. “I’m guessing they already know about Crystal, let alone the hybrid she is. And I was honest: we haven’t done anything. But frankly, it probably doesn’t matter what I tell him. They got their ‘evidence’ right in front of them. Like their claim of that WHITE guy able to track down the feeling of Ultra Space. And you just confirmed to me that at least the Type:Null can, so they know something is up. They came after us full force like they did and they’re just going through the motions for cleanup. I know how this sort of thing works.” Freth explained back. “It doesn’t help GRAY had STAK roaming around, so as far as all they can imagine, we probably got a bunch of Ultra Beasts stashed away somewhere, where the only other one we got is Sol with Buzzwole, something they’d probably find sooner than later. I don’t know if Sol has Buzzwole on him or not right now. Worse, the fact that we haven’t got Crystal to open the door to get them back out of here is probably not going to make us look good. And really? Probably a bad idea. For as all we know, these visitors from ultra space are what attracting these occurrences. It’s probably why Area Zero in Paldea is the hell hole that it is.”

“You’re possibly not wrong.” Eris replied back. “And I say this as one of those ‘visitors from Ultra Space’”.

Freth would sigh and give a shrug, shaking her head. “So, if your Agent WHITE or whatever have any ideas as to whats going on, then by all means share. You got that bunch that sent that person that attacked Blizzard on speed dial?”

Essentia's concern mirrors Looker's as she takes in the rather rare sight of the Zapdos hybrid blushing. "You okay?" She half murmurs, out of earshot of Freth as the two sidebar in between themselves as they had throughout today. "It's been a horrendously long twelve hours so if you need to lay down and take some shut-eye in..." The concern Emma felt for her squadmate was in her voice plainly even though nobody could see her face through the helmet.

"She's fine... I'm fine..." Kess hastily corrects, waving aside the other woman's concern with an airy wave of her yellow hand. "It has been a long day, but we only have a few more of them to get through so let's... just get through it."

Brushing Essentia off to dive back into the interrogation, Kess capitalizes on Looker's line of questioning as she rounds back on Freth again, determined to get the stupid thoughts she was having out of her brain and focus on work like she always did. "I couldn't even get access to Area Zero just for recon for SWIPE coming into this investigation and trust me, we tried every available avenue. I'm doubly curious for the reason, but I'm also equally as curious as to what you found in there..." She tries not to put too fine a point on it, but the information Freth had now was top-secret ultra classified, and after all six of her attempts to appeal with letters of recommendation of top brass had been rebuffed trying to gain access, damn if she wasn't curious what was down in that crater.

Reno would find himself on a very empty rooftop, staring at the gnarled and damaged remains of their transmission tower. As much as the thought of rigging up the thing to see what information he could try and get from the outside world on the whole SWIPE was tempting, that wasn't the goal at this time. Turning his telepathy back to Darts and Harleen, he would be quick to inform the Giratina hybrid. 'Good news. Rooftop is clear.' Taking a glance over the side of the roof, he would see the penned up Pokemon from Boyleland and the guards for them. 'Just....maybe keep her from looking down over the side of the roof. I don't think she'll look too kindly on the guards down at ground level.'

Kess jumped at the sudden command, used to Agent WHITE taking the prisoners to and from the interrogations. She was half annoyed at Looker's comment, not the order, but the fact that he commented on the fact she had a spouse. NOT THAT IT WAS ANY OF KESS' BUSINESS. But. For some reason just that affirmation really stuck in the mercenary's craw that she was already taken. Not to mention who she was taken by, Blizzard and her having clashed a good many times. He never mentioned he had a wife.

"Come along, you." She grunted, reverting to her job as hired muscle as a way to bury the really odd lack of discipline from herself, hauling Freth to her feet and dragging her off to the main room. Delicately but firmly would describe the grip on her arm, and she leads her out to the main room. "Alright, you have the freedom to wander HQ but for your own safety please refrain from trying to escape. The guards won't hesitate to cut you down. If you need anything, feel free to reach out to me- or Looker." Kess quickly adds at the end of her sentence, unlike her usual cool customer self. What was wrong with her? Maybe Essentia was right and she needed to go to bed.

Ulla looked over Keiko's wounds, it does look like Ter did a pretty good job. He probably learned after having kids. "As long as you are okay. But don't hesitate to ask if you need anything." She said as she looked at Yuna. "What about you Yuna? How are you feeling? Do you have a fever? Any scratches?" She asked as she placed her hand on her forehead but then playfully started messing with her hair.

She looked at Odd and listened to how his questions went. "They actually gave me a warning. A warning to not go down with this ship." She explained as she said calmly. There wasn't much that she could say or do now. It looks like questioning would be ending soon.

From the moment that Aile had been summoned, Sol was quiet and watched as the STR thinned out more and more. Sooner or later they'd come for him, nearly as isolated as Sub was at this point. He doubted this was any sort of conicidence, even if the ones they seemingly wanted the most were Sub and Darts. He perked up when the doors opened, as did Cera and Amaranth, seeing Kess to be the one to wave for him rather than Agent WHITE. Even with the spark of vitirol in her voice, he'd notice something very slightly off but couldn't sort why. Nor did he care in the moment, given the band's tuning up had finished.

"En seguida," he'd remark as he stood up, a deep breath escaping him. As he glanced around at the few others remaining, he could feel a weight on him that he wouldn't- couldn't- ignore. "Let's get this over with, then."

It wasn't long before he'd follow Kess out to Sub's office, leaving Amaranth and Cera to look at each other for a moment, unsure of anything to say or add and keeping quiet themselves.



At least, until it was noticed that Crystal was sitting up for once and speaking.

"Mew! ...mew, mewmew mew." Crystal might be able to make sense of the Mew's words, unable to really answer the question but glad to see her come to.

"Can't say I know the feeling..." Amaranth added. "Are you alright?"