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Keiko was desperately trying not to fight Lovrina, or do anything similarly stupid, but the cause of her hybridization acting innocent was REALLY pissing her off. It didn't help that she was acting like Ulla's parents were still alive. "b***h, don't act like you're not the reason I'm a hybrid! I can't breastfeed my kids because of you!" she roared. Too much time had passed since she'd had to get used to her hybrid body, so she couldn't really use that for ammo anymore, but the breastfeeding thing, that was relatively new. She had to feed Yuna and, more recently, Serena, formula during their infancies because she didn't her own body. She couldn't help but think that Lovrina had damptered with her "chest" to make any milk she produced mess up her kids in some way. The whole point of Lovrina turning her into a hybrid was to get an army of hybrids out of her. She wasn't going to not have kids - being a mother had been a dream of hers from a young age - but she damn sure wasn't going to let them turn into what Lovrina wanted, no matter what.

Shaking that train of thought out of her head, she positioned herself between Ulla and Lovrina. She had to focus on protecting the child she still had access to, and she wasn't going to let this evil b***h, put false ideas into Ulla's head.

Monique was baffled. There clearly was a mismatch between what Keiko expected from Lovrina and what Keiko got from Lovrina. But in these quarters, there was no room to unpack anything. It left her feeling unsettled, a bit moreso than she already was. Still, sometimes you had to live with unsettled feelings. If you lived somewhere where the sky had a small chance of literally falling down on you someday, allowing toxic pollution to breach the Dome and killing all life, that was unsettling. But Monique was inured to it by virtue of it being all she knew—of course, that was until the year 2071.

It was a shame, too. Lovrina was actually pretty cute. Whatever the mismatch was, she seemed genuine and sincere. Definitely the sort of lady worth being around in more ways than one. She looked back at Cynthia, the chaperone on this field trip to a house of horrors, waiting for her to give the word on their next destination.

Wren listened to Cynthia's explanation but it did little to quell the unease that had setled upon him for the moment. ""Tradition" wasn't a good enough reason in hiis mind for Sinnoh to suddenly flip the script on them like this. Sure, he'd been absent from the Kricketot Incident but the information that came back with those who had gone was enough to make him wonder. At last check, Unova had been a staunch supporter of the Team despite some wariness of them. He'd been back for all of 15 minutes, not counting the flight here, and was already wondering if Sinnoh was the only region to have made such a sudden change when they were publicly criminalized again.

He followed along, arms crossed, as Cynthia pointed out they had a reason for being here and reminded, in an indirect way, they were only here because she offered to babysit. Climbing into the elevator with the others, he listened as she and the others spoke more. the explanation of the tower's "zones" hadn't told him much but he knew enough from when they'd dealt with Ein that this place was filled with deadly traps at every turn. So much so that now they were here and not actively fighting for their lives, he had to wonder how Ein's victimized workers had managed to get around?

"I'm inclined to agree with you. With what we know of Ein, i'd be willing to bet his records are scattered around the tower. Most likely in those 'black zones'." He responded, stepping off the elevator as the doors opened and looking around. "I'd be willing to test my theory if anyone feels up to finding out what's behind door number three?" He suggested, stopping in front of the massive door with it's keypad. "Granted there are any ideas for getting past that, at least." He noted, pointed to the keypad in question. "I doubt we'll be breaking the door down too easily."

Following Cynthia out of the lift and hearing her explanation, it got a brow raise out of Tristen, and it got my attention for that matter as well. The Sinnoh region wasn’t responsible for SWIPE’s creation? And given the Hoenn region’s reaction, it’s safe to say they didn’t have a hand in it either. Kalos was perhaps suspect considering that SWIPE had their hands on Team Flare model expansion suits, but then it’d probably be a little too easy to accuse them of anything. All the same, is it really another HAZARD situation? It is still too soon to say, never mind that we still have to take anything Cynthia says with a grain of salt or two considering that she doesn’t have any reason to actually spell out the truth to us. Not any more than SWIPE would, anyways. Still though, someone had the bright idea a couple years back in the wake of Ein’s defeat to organize SWIPE and kept it relatively hush-hush until only recently. Especially if a region’s champion truly knew about as much as we did. As much as I hate to admit it, we had to be content with Cynthia’s answer for now.

We ended up finding our way to the end of the line where the bunch would see the blue zones in each of the directions, other than one which was deemed a black zone. Completely unexplored. Something had me feeling a sense of déjà vu. This place looked vaguely familiar. “Uh, this…isn’t where we found Ein that day, is it?” I asked no one in particular, or more specifically those who was here at the end of that day. It also dawned on me about something. I was left to wonder if Cynthia was trying to bait anyone here. If someone actually remembers the password to the door that allowed us in, that could only give Cynthia more evidence to just pin us for collaborating with Ein and Cipher. Conversely, thinking about it, not doing it could only make us look like we’re stalling or deflecting. No matter, stay the course. “If it is, and it has been completely untouched since that day, then you might want to go find gas masks for a few of us…or a factory’s worth of air fresheners.” I said, grimacing. “Ein…uh, didn’t exactly keep functioning water in there, presumably.”

“Wait, wha…?” Tristen spoke up.

“He literally left his waste in whatever container he had on hand, and out in the open no less.” I had to explain further. “For all his genius, he couldn’t think to install a toilet.”

“Ewwwww…” Tristen said.

Sol had kept to himself as everyone went filed into the lift, listening as Cynthia explained the situation. He certainly needed nothing spelled out about how mortal coils could be left by Ein's hand. What left him was a deep sigh, as Cera and Amaranth shared a quiet unease throughout the trip. Hope would be promptly abandoned with further confirmation of revisiting nightmares of the past, and the Mew wouldn't find much ease with the Ebonite making it nigh impossible to see or sense much that wasn't already on the lift.

When they would finally see light again and be introduced to apparently 'Doctor' Lovrina, Sol would flinch. The Lovrina he knew of wasn't any doctor apart from the mad variety. Her hands would've been too tied to pursue a doctorate or be here or call anyone bestie. The same sort of shock he had about Bulder a few days ago hit all over again, albeit another case where most of his information came after the fact. But it still didn't line up and she certainly didn't seem to have the animosity that information would've surely led to. He couldn't deny the info she gave about the rooms were useful, but things still felt off...

Cera would try to observe herself, but having a bit less to go on didn't help her here and the dread of the situation proved to be distracting. She couldn't shake a similar feeling that something wasn't quite right, and she felt like there was something she should've remembered and wasn't. Her arms would be wrapped around the front of her as she eventually watched Lovrina run off, joining the rest on the elevator. Words kept escaping her as she opted to keep listening.

Amaranth, though beside herself still, couldn't say she remembered a Lovrina in the first place. She wasn't some Elektross hybrid sucking her dry like a smoothie. It was plain that she'd done something, what with Keiko's reactions, but it wasn't anything she was familiar with. And, if she was being honest, wasn't anything she wanted to ask about either for fear of opening wounds or instigating awkward topics. "Wait, I think..." She could swear the door they reached was familiar to her, so could the other two. And Blizzard's answer would confirm it immediately.

That door was the end of that whole ordeal. Or what was once thought to be such. "That is the door... but I can't say I recall the password," Sol said. "Sub, do you remember it? You were the one to figure it out the last time we came here."

"Actually..." Cera found herself drawn to the keyboard. A single word came to mind, something in the recesses of everything she saw and learned about Sub. She wasn't sure why that was rushing forth now, or if the word would even be correct. Something just told her it would be, and she'd press a key after a lot of hunting for the right one in sequence. "...m...a...t...e."

Checkmate, her mind continued telling her. But was it correct?

Leslie would pipe as Cynthia began to speak about how things had an actual layout to it instead of simply randomly scattered around. "Hey! We got five seconds to look at that map and most of it was spent staring at the colors to know what the hell they mean. Do we look like we could pick up ANYTHING about the layout having some meaning to it when we're doing that!?!" Staring slightly indignantly up at Cynthia, the Tinkaton hybrid would eventually turn back to looking out the elevator car. This wasn't actual argument she was wanting to have this time, she just genuinely wanted their actual viewpoint heard for once in the past few days.

Staying near Sub, Reno would still be stewing over his confirmation that Lovrina had in fact been honest with all her responses. Which made one line stand out and gave him another point to look towards for figuring what exactly had happened and when. And then there was Cynthia's confirmation that SWIPE was international and also, specifically, not organized by the Sinnoh government. And it wasn't organized by the Hoenn government given they actually supported Snagem staying in their region.

Before he could continue down his theorizing, the doors of the elevator would open and they would quickly be confronted with an oddly familiar door. And before he could even begin to think about it past what Blizz had said, Cera would already be diving towards the command console to enter what had been the password. Without even saying a word, he would already be opening a Pokeball to release his Reuniclus again and already begin positioning himself and his Wynaut for whatever response the system would have to a potentially wrong password.

Amber stayed mostly in the background as things went down between Keiko and Lovrina. She'd never been good at dealing with tears, especially when it came to things she had no knowledge of. She merely followed along as the decision was made as to where they were going. She'd heard of Ein; hell, they dealt with the aftermath of that madman every time they came across Shadow Pokemon. However, she hadn't been around when Snagem had dealt with him, so she had no knowledge of what actually happened between the team and Ein. As such, she really had no opinion on where they should go. Seeing everyone getting Pokemon out, she let Spooky and Arauth out, knowing the two Ghost-types would be very cross if they weren't there to protect her.

The door must be reinforced with the same Ebonite as the rest of the fortress, as Deo's not able to see through the door of the vault either, though continuing to try and see things with his vision was a great idea, because who knew when the ability would come in handy?



Each press of the buttons emit a small beep out of the keypad as Cera manipulates it and enters what she assumes to be the password. There's a couple of daunting seconds before a loud 'beeeep' echoes out of the device, the keypad changing to a bright green color to indicate her success. Whirring cogs move behind the door with pneumatic tubes hissing as mechanisms behind it unlock. It slides aside into the wall with pinpoint crafted precision, revealing the dimly lit room behind it.



Decidedly not, as the Snagems file into the room one at a time, Pokemon at the ready, this was a much larger room than the end of the road burned out bunker that Ein had called home. Also, that was at the top of the tower where they had crashed in with the S.S. Anne II, or at least near it, this was more near the base. However, the password still worked, and as they end up making their way into the room outside of it being rather large with a high ceiling it was fairly unremarkable. There was a set of old-timey computer consoles with keyboards propped up at the far side. There were rows and rows of dozens of old CRT monitors inlaid into the wall above them, each of them blacked out and offline for the moment.

...until the last Snagem was inside, that is. As if on-cue, the monitors begin blinking to life one at a time, 'Apprehension Protocol Initiated' flashes across each of them in sequence. And before any of them can so much as move a muscle, an enormous thick sheet of something clear that also wasn't glass slides up across the doorway they had just come through, evenly sealing directly and air-tight across the opening. The vents in the room start to whir, springing into action as another massive partition of this glass-like substance bisects the room in the shape of a cross, the floor gliding apart smoothly to allow it to rise and impact the high-rise ceiling above them, effectively separating the Snagems into four groupings just by their placement into the room, some of the closer pairs separated by mere inches as the blockade rises:

Group One:

Blizz, Tristen, Cera, Amaranth, Ogerpon

Group Two:

Darts, Crystal, Keiko, Leslie

Group Three:

Sub, Deo, Amber, Wren

Group Four:

Sol, Reno, Monique, Ulla

With time the vents whirring becomes hissing, and anyone energy-sensitive would get a faint presence of Ghost-type and Poison-type energies comingled as some kind of gas begins pouring out of the vents into each of their individual little cells. Clearly the reason for the setup for this room was to condense the gas into smaller areas, making it far more potent faster but to also allow for mass use. The Snagems standing nearest the vents would feel a deep, profound wooziness coming over them as they take their first deep breaths in. This wasn't a gas designed for killing, this was a gas designed to render anyone or anything unconscious post-haste and appeared to be some kind of blasphemous mixture of extracted Gastly or Haunter composition filtered through and synthesized with Koffing and/or Weezing Poison Gas, creating a weapon that was nigh-impossible to be immune to, or even resist, no matter your typing.

Astutely, there was one key person missing from the room, having been taking up the rear as all of them had filed out of the elevator and out into the awaiting vault. Cynthia grins, her face almost pressed to the gas as she considers them manically, all veneers of self-control cast aside as her lips twist upward in triumph. "Finally..." She laughs to herself, her voice echoing from the distortion of being behind the Ebonite and Purite compound glass, watching as the invisible effluvium trickles in. "HE told me what you all did.... Did you all really think I was going to let you get away that easily? After the things you lot have done?" Almost giggling to herself, the Champion presses her hands to the glass, staring down the lot of them. "You're lucky I didn't just set this place up to kill all of you right now and end this madness here and now. But don't worry, justice is going to be served. He knew you'd know the password. And he knew you couldn't help yourselves scurrying back to the scene of the crime like the little rodents you are worth less than." It was a sudden, violent shift in personality that no one, certainly not Darts who had spent an entire mission with her once upon a time, had ever seen. Her eyes are wide, the gray insides of them dilated with excitement as her clothes and necklace sway back and forth with her movements. "Sleep tight, Snagem... your judgment is at hand..."

More and more gas was pouring into the room. In less than ten minutes, all of them would be unconscious unless they found a way out of here.