Chapter 3 - The bearch begins

As the shadow Lugia laid on the floor, Sora and the others gazed at the new Lugia, frozen in fear. She didn't want to fight another Lugia with Xerneas already exhausted, plus she was still on edge from the shadow Lugia's presentation of power, having another one appear so suddenly only made her legs quiver.

Fortunately, the Lugia that just appeared wasn't hostile, it turned around, ignoring Xerneas and Sora and dove back into the sea, surprising Sora but also giving her some relief that she didn't need to battle again.

Sora took a deep breath and calmed her racing heart before approaching Xerneas to snuggle up to the pokemon's face. It had been a long night, a little skinship for relaxation and warmth was warranted for both of them.

"Xerneas, what's going on?"

"I cannot answer that my dear, for I am just as confused."

Sora then glanced back at the knocked-out Lugia, worry filling her mind.

"What is going on?"

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Back at the lab, Evergreen and her team stared at the map in confusion because the signals that were there suddenly dropped in strength, with two fully erased from the screen.

One of the scientists asked if they should pull back the team, but Evergreen told them to continue with the search as she had a feeling that wasn't going to be the last time those signals would appear.

"What is happening to the world?"

She wondered while biting down on her nail.

A little tune then rang from her pocket, snapping her from her train of thought. Digging through it, she fished out a phone and upon looking at the screen, a small amused smile appeared on her face.

On the screen was the name Sycamore, an old friend of Evergreen's and also a pokemon professor. She already had known he was probably calling to tell her about the signals as he too was helping her with her work.

She answered the call and placed the phone to her ear, then almost immediately she heard the panicked voice of a man.

"Evergreen?! Are you busy right now? There's a couple of powerful signals in Sinnoh, we should send people to check it out."

Evergreen could only give a muffled chuckle as she listened to her old friend.

"Hello Sycamore, I'm afraid you're a bit late on the uptake, the signals are all gone. Plus I already sent Fauna and Sadao to check it out. So you don't have to worry about a thing."

"I see, guess I was worried for nothing then. Have they said anything yet?"

"No they only left recently, they won't get to the till probably a couple of days from now."

"Hmm, well if you ever need extra help, we're always ready."

"Thank you old friend, but you should work on your timing first.

"I know, I know. I just have many things on my plate."

"Speaking of your plate, how are things on your end?"

"We're making some progress but it's rather difficult to look for the cells across Kalos. Not to mention they can camouflage into the surroundings. As for the other two… well, no good either."

"Well good luck to you."

"And to you too."

The call ended and Evergreen ordered her team to stop working for the night as the signals have already subsided.

She too decided to take Fauna's advice and ignore the work that she had yet to complete in favour of getting some rest.

Heading back to her room, the professor dropped to her bed, not even changing out of her clothes or cleaning her body. She buried her face in her pillow, rubbing it to take in the feeling of the soft wool against her face.

"Ah this is life."

She sang, she had gone days with only naps on her desk that the feeling of a bed was truly bliss for the woman.

"If those signals were from them, then Sunyshore could be in danger. Please Fauna, Sadao, get there in time."

Her eyes soon became heavy, her mind began to clear itself of any thoughts, and her muscles relaxed, allowing her body to sink into the bed. Slowly, Evergreen began to drift into a deep, peaceful slumber.

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Several days passed, and the news about the fight that occurred in the beaches of Sunyshore had spread across the city, causing an air of uneasiness to encase the entire city. People were whispering about what it could be and those who lived close to the beaches spoke of the powerful beams of light and towering waters that surged from the beach. However, with little trace of anything, nobody found out that it was the result of powerful pokemon locked in battle.

In his home Sho watched the news intently, listening to the speculations of the reporter while he ate breakfast with his sister Yuna, who was staring at him with a curious look. It was weird for her as her brother was never interested in the news, but ever since he returned home late after meeting with AZKi, he had been acting weird to her eyes.

The reason for his change of behaviour lies in his meeting with Sora. Ever since he encountered her, Sho had been closely involved with her, unwillingly. What happened was that after the fight he and Sora exchanged numbers and the two have been meeting up every day to investigate the shadow Lugia, much to his dismay as Sho had no desire of pursuing answers about the odd pokemon because he had a feeling it would lead to great danger.

However, his sister doesn't notice, he didn't tell her because he knew she would just treat him like a madman, but his silence also caused some of its own problems.

After minutes of just holding up his toast to his mouth without taking a bite, Yuna decided to call her brother out.

"Sho!"

Jolting from the call, the boy snapped his head the front of him where he was met with the glaring Yuna.

"What?"

"What do you mean 'what'? You've been staring at the TV for 10 minutes with toast hanging near your face."

Realising how out of it he was, he quickly bit into his toast and told Yuna it was nothing to worry about. However, Yuna was buying it, she called her brother weird before, but even she found him spacing out to be unnerving.

The two would go on to finish breakfast without any disturbances, though Sho couldn't relax under his sister's watchful gaze. She was like a hawk on her perch, just eyeing him until she could find the optimal time to descend and strike.

After breakfast, Sho went back to his room and checked up on his phone, only to reel back at the sheer amount of missed calls that flooded his front screen, all of which came from a certain retired idol.

While Sho himself didn't want anything to do with the shadow Lugia, he couldn't just ignore Sora, so for days he's been coming up with ways to turn her down easily and get on with his life.

Unfortunately, whenever he tried to turn her down, he got swept up in her desire to dig deeper into the shadow Lugia, leading to him joining her in investigations. But this time it was different, he was going to reject her!

He called Sora back, his heart steeled and ready to tell her what's what… only for him to immediately freeze up the moment she started talking.

"Oh? Sho? Thanks for calling back, I know I called a bunch of times, sorry I was just really excited about investigating and got ahead of myself."

The girl was too sweet for her own good, she was like a child who couldn't sleep the night before due to a field trip. It didn't help that she was an idol, that only made his confidence crumble to dust.

"Um, Sora, you see… I-"

"Oh sorry Sho I need to go, my mom wants help with some groceries, we'll talk later."

"Hey wai-"

She hung up.

Sho stood speechless for a few seconds, only listening to the beeping of the dropped call before immediately dropping to his knees and internally screaming.

"You've got to be kidding!"

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In a hotel in Sunyshore, Fauna was looking through the reports alongside some photos she received from Evergreen which detailed several energy readings from the signals they analysed while the trainer was travelling to Sinnoh.

"Fau-fau, check this out."

A bubbly voice said next to her.

"Hmm?"

Turning around Fauna was handed a photo by one of her teammates, the bubbly Tsukumo Sana.

The photo being handed to the green-haired girl was a satellite picture that detailed several creatures that were present in the area. It was slightly blurry but Fauna could make out some details, such as Lugia's wing shape and Xerneas' antlers, just barely though.

Sliding next to her and peeking, was the other girl in Fauna's party, the cool-headed Ouro Kronii.

She scrutinised the picture but unlike Sana and Fauna, Kronii found little use for it as it wasn't clear enough.

"Isn't this too blurry?"

"But you can still make out stuff."

Sana pointed to the silhouettes.

"Those are clearly pokemon."

"How do you know that? It could be people."

"What human could be in the air like that?!"

"Maybe they're parachuting."

This was a constant thing with Kronii, her scepticism often made her look too deeply into things and contradict her teammates a lot. It wasn't done out of malice, it was just a way for her to play with her friends, but also because she had some slight dislike for not being the one to figure things out.

Fauna cut the two off from their child-like argument by telling them that whatever was in that area was emanating powerful auras and even with a blurry photo, they could at least make out that they were large enough to be caught by a camera that their general shape could be traced. So Fauna, the leader of the team, deemed the photo to be useful.

Hearing that, Sana shot Kronii a smug grin making the blue-haired girl fold her arms and pout. But in truth, Kronii was somewhat proud of her friend, her pride just wouldn't allow her to say such a thing.

The three girls then heard their door open and a tall, young, spectacle-wearing young man entered the room. Behind him, was a much shorter young man who looked like a zombie, pale and completely void of any emotion.

"Hello, ladies."

The taller man greeted, earning a wave from the girls.

But Fauna then glanced over to the other boy with ruffled brows.

"What, not even gonna say hi, Sadao?"

The boy gave her a quick glance before just looking over a pile of papers.

Fauna fumed at being ignored, veins popped out of her forehead and she crumpled the photo in her hand as she thought of striking the shorter boy's head.

"Fau-Fau, calm down."

"Yeah, come on, just ignore Sadao, he always does this anyways."

Her teammates begged, sweating like sprinklers.

Hearing their anxious words luckily made Fauna realise it was only a waste of time to become furious and calmed herself by letting it all out with a sigh. She then looked towards the taller guy and asked why they decided to drop by all of a sudden.

"We just wanted to check if you've found anything new. We pretty much got nothing on our end."

"Well, we've got this photo showing some figures of two large pokemon, but it's too blurry to make it out what pokemon they are."

Fauna handed the tall boy the photo and he stared at it for a bit before turning back to Fauna to share his thoughts.

"I can probably try to make it a clearer image, can I take this with me?"

"Can you Kato? That would be so much help, we need as much information as we can before we arrive."

At this moment, the others were cut off by a scoff. The others turned to the boy at the back who was reading a report.

"This is pointless, it's probably nothing."

"You can't say that for sure, Sadao. Rather, you're only saying that because you don't wanna do any work isn't it?"

"We get false signals all the time, how is this any different? Plus it doesn't benefit my search in any way."

Fauna and Kato sighed at the other boy's lack of energy, but they weren't really surprised by his response. Sadao was quite infamous for being uninterested in any work if it didn't benefit him.

Though one might call this selfish, however, everyone who knew him for long enough was fully aware that despite his attitude, he was one of the few people in the world that could complete any job they were given with ease.

"Well if we're done here, let's go Kato."

"Uh sure. See you ladies."

The two boys left the room, and Fauna let out another massive sigh as she massaged the bridge of her nose.

"This is gonna be a long trip."