Crystal awoke the next morning bright-eyed and bushy tailed. She felt surprisingly good, all things considered; her sleep was restful, her injuries weren’t bothering her too bad. She sang along to the radio while she showered (the lyrics mumbled and vaguely sounded out, considering she didn’t speak the language), and the hot water seemed to breathe life back into her legs and arms.
She examined the marks from the injury in the mirror. They didn’t hurt, per se, not like they had, but she was always aware of them. She traced her finger featherlight across her stomach, following the most noticable on from just past her bellybutton, along to her ribs and almost to her back. With a sigh, she rubbed her temples and got dressed, putting on just a little makeup before she made her way down to the lobby.
It was barely ten in the morning, and she moved down the stairs with a skip in her step. She found Mige sitting in the lobby, and greeted him with a chipper, sing-songy voice. Mige seemed a little surprised to see her in such a good mood.
“A girl’s gotta have a reason to wake up on the right side of the bed?” she chuckled and sat beside him. He brought up having spoken to Alexa, who suggested that she and Kai go to see a doctor at a local clinic. Crystal agreed; that was actually on her to-do list for the day. They went upstairs to fetch Kai, who chewing on his pipe in a silk bath robe (she was acutally kind of jealous; it was a really nice robe. She had to fight her initial instinct to ask where he’d gotten it) and they convinced him to go to the clinic with them. It was probably for the best, considering Kai seemed a bit light-headed and spacey. Mige and Crystal waited in the hallway until he was done getting ready, then they made their way to the nearest human-medicine clinic. Luckily, it wasn’t that far; just a quick fifteen minute walk from the Pokemon Center.
It was inside of an office park in the more “professional” part of town, on the east side. They checked in, and Crystal noted an issue of Ultra Homes and Gardens with her on the cover. It was an old issue; it was from last November, so she was wrapped up in a big sweater and a plaid blanket with a mug of cider. Would have been a nice shoot if it hadn’t been taken on the hottest day of August.
She casually placed an issue of National Academia on top of it; she didn’t feel like dealing with people maybe recognizing her in the doctor’s office, of all places. Not that they would; it was presumptuous but she’d learned a long time ago that it paid to think ahead. Mige seemed to have noticed her reaction and, just as casually as she’d moved it, grabbed it, rolled it into a tube, and slipped it into his bag to make sure nobody happened to see it. She gave him an appreciative nod.
Crystal idled the time by flipping through an issue of Monthly Rock Magazine. She wasn’t a huge rock-type trainer by any means, but there were always some interesting articles in them. Notable was the cover story on Roark, Sinnoh’s newest rock-type gym leader. He was pretty cute, she had to admit.
Kai was called in first, and she was called in about ten minutes after. The nurse brought her to a tiny little office. She felt a twinge of nervousness; she never liked the doctor’s office, whether it be in Kanto or Kalos or anywhere else. It took more than an hour to speak with both the nurse and the doctor. The actual time it took for the doctor to hear what happened and assign her antibiotics was surprisingly quick, actually, but she had a lot of questions.
She expressed her concerns about the possibility of scarring given the impact it could have on her career. The doctor flaty told her that her injuries were significant; the fact that she can walk at all right now was nothing less than a miracle. Yes, there will be scarring. He couldn’t predict how noticeable it would be.
“But, Madame Leer, I think you might be more grateful for having survived that experience rather than fret over whether you will look good at the beach.” he said, a bit condescending. She grunted.
“Looking good at the beach is what I do for a living.” she said but the doctor didn’t seem too worried. Great. Thanks, doc.
Antibiotics and ibuprofen on hand she met the boys back in the waiting room. Boy was she ready to get shit-faced tonight. Unfortunately, Mige and Kai revealed a complication (because there always had to be something). A group of Crystals’ fans had gathered outside. Crystal groaned. Great, stalkers; that was the last thing she needed.
“I told them we were your bodyguards,” Mige said, “But I’m not sure what to do about it. Bill would just have Ron shoot sparks at them, but—”
“Yeah, actually, that was pretty much my plan, too.” Crystal said, and she stormed outside. She let Heracross out of his Poke Ball and made her way across the street, to the cafe where the group was currently bickering of which them of was her biggest fan.
Crystal vented some frustration; she shamed them for not listening to her in the past.
“How many times have I told you, this is not okay! I told you in Cerulean City, I told you in Fuchsia City, I told you on Cinnabar Island—what you’re doing isn’t cool, at all, and bothering my friends and I at the hospital is completely unacceptable!”
She told them that if they just left, she wouldn’t do anything else. But if she saw any of them again, she’d introduce them to Heracross. The group seemed to get the hint (at least for now) and hurried away. Kai remarked that she was scary when she wanted to be.
Mige, for his part, was just pleased that the Fan Club didn’t seem to know who he was.
They made their way back through town, catching a carriage to the Santalune Gym. The sprawling estate was just as beautiful in the gleaming sun as it had been on the grey and drizzly day Mige had earned his badge. They walked into the crowded room, standing in line behind a handful of other trainers. She got a few looks from passers-by. It’s wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to at this point, but after the encounter with the Fan Club it’d left a sour taste in her mouth. She ignored it and checked her phone. Mige wandered away at one point, apparently to talk to a group of young trainers who were staring at him. Kai stayed with her, but he kept looking over at the group. Crystal suggested that he give them privacy; they might be friends of his from Kanto or something.
Upon finally speaking to the attendent at the front desk, Crystal was pleased to find the next open slot to be 8:30 am, the day after tomorrow. The attendent explained the process—be here early, you’ll wait in the green room, etc—and gave her a slip of paper with the details. Crystal was amused at the idea of a gym match receipt, though the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She could be awful about remembering appointments.
Crystal and Kai met up with Mige, the girls he’d been talking to heading away. Crystal asked who they were and Mige seemed somewhere between confused and exasperated. He didn’t know them, but they knew a lot about him, apparently. The girls were friends or apprentices of Lysandre’s. Crystal commented that they seemed nice. Mige also explained that Mabel, the oldest of the four with short, blue hair, had invited them to watch one of the other girls fight Beckett. Crystal thought that could be fun, and they meandered their way past the gift shop and out toward the spectator area.
The gym match was interesting enough. Bryony, the challenger in question, was a good fighter; her fighting style was clearly thought-out and intuitive. Things started a little rough but once she got going, she got a clean win. After Bryony won her badge, they said their good-byes to Lysandre’s apprentices and made their way back in to town.
Crystal was excited to drink! Kai reminded her that it wasn’t even four in the afternoon.
While killing time before it was “socially acceptable” to start dribking, Mige brought up a weird, abandoned building he’d come across before they’d gone into the forest. He had been thinking about checking it out again, and invited them along. Grateful for the distraction, Crystal and Kai both accepted.
Curiously, when they got there they all realized that their phones had zero signal. While Mige stepped away to call an old friend, she and Kai took a few minutes to walk a wide circle around the building, checking the various doors and windows that they came across. They were sealed shut, apparently; there were planks of wood and bars in most of the windows, but they wouldn’t budge. Kai remarked that it was like they’d been welded shut. Examining the doors, Crystal wasn’t so sure why they wouldn’t move.
Eventually, Mige caught up with them again (things were okay with his friend, which was nice), she explained what she and Kai had found. Kai suggested that they try to climb to the roof and sneak in through a narrow window that, from the ground, didn’t look to have any boards of bars in the windows. Crystal and Mige figured they’d give it a shot.
Kai went first, and when he didn’t come back after a few minutes, Crystal followed suit. It took her two tries to climb up the drain pipe (her injury started stinging so bad that it was all she could do not to yelp), but she made it to the roof. She carefully made her way up and over the crest of the roof, to the narrow window Kai had pointed out. She saw him waiting there for her. She reached for his hand when she got close enough. It took a little shimmying and wiggling, but shot through without too much trouble. Now they just wait for Mige.
The room they were in was dark, illuminated only by the afternoon light coming in through the window. It was a mostly empty room, with bare white walls, and a single folding table in the middle of the room. Kai tried to lights and they didn’t work. When Mige didn’t come around, Crystal started to get worried. Kai did is best to assure her, but suddenly went pale when he pointed out that the window they used to get into the building was closed. He got even more scared when he realized that neither of them were able to open it again.
Crystal helped Kai calm down, and the two agreed that they needed to either find Mige or a way outside.They stuck together, with Kai using his phone for a flashlight (they agreed to alternate whose phone was a flashlight, switching between each other on short “shifts”, so best to preserve battery life.
The hallway was nondescript and bare. It reminded Crytsal of an office building, but the various rooms they visited had material in cardboard boxes stacked along the far walls that suggested the building was a church. However, each room they checked, they couldn’t find Mige—and the doors to rooms they already checked refused to open anymore. Before long, they had tried every door in that hallways and neither of the doors opened.
Kai started to panic again and Crystal did her best to keep him calm and collected. She asked him to list off his five favorite green foods, or his favorite restaurants that start with the letter ‘B’. It kept his mind occupied but it didn’t do anything to help them find Mige—or any open doors. That would all sort itself out, however, when Mige wandered into the hall from a set of big, double-doors.
He startled them both at first but they quickly exchanged what information they had. They were definitely in some kind of abandoned church or maybe a church converted to office space. Mige and Kai both seemed to think the place was in good condition for being abandoned.
Entering the darkened sanctuary, they stood on a balcony covered in chairs, all facing the stage. There didn’t seem to be any other spaces on the balcony; no sound booth or storage areas. Mige and Kai walked over to a space around the middle of the rows of chairs, and Crystal walked to the balcony’s edge; she leaned against the railing and looked out over the darkened room, lit only by the soft, sickly green glow of the Exit lights.
She wasn’t sure why but she thought of Grandma Castillo. She was a very religious woman; she was spiritual and superstitious. Crystal hadn’t grown up the same way, and wasn’t sure what she believed. But something about the space, about the air in the room, made her wonder. Maybe the universe did come from an egg.
She was snapped out of her train of thought when she heard Kai yelp. She made her way over to the guys, and Mige told her that he’d found a picture of him and Bill on the balcony. He didn’t carry this particular picture with him.
Kai wanted to leave, but Crystal and Mige convinced him to stay a little longer with him. They walked down the stairs, leading from the balcony to the main sanctuary floor, and then out a pair of double doors just past the base of the stairs. It led to another empty, non-descript hallway. A few doors like the ones upstairs and another set of double doors across the hall. They checked those out first, finding themselves in a large social area; it was a wide hall filled with long rows of tables, each of which had at least a dozen chairs hung from them.
Crystal got a weird vibe about this room. They split up, and Crystal found an odd patch on the carpet. It was a perfect circle, about three feet wide, covered in a weird, mostly congealed slime. It looked as though it had oozed up from below. About that time, Mige began hearing a voice—a more sinister voice than the one he had apparently heard earlier—and the group decided they should leave. Crystal didn’t like it—she hated leaving puzzles unsolved and so much about this place didn’t add up. But for Kai’s sake at least, she agreed to leave with them. However, upon leaving the fellowship hall, Crystal noticed that one of the doors in the hall was open now—and there was light coming from it.
They investigated, the door shutting itself behind them. The room itself was a daycare of some kind; bright colors on the wall, the furniture clearly geared toward toddlers, and a few old toys scattered around. Mige and Crystal began looking around, while Kai curled up on a ball on top of the table and pretended that it wasn’t happening. Crystal felt a little irritated by Kai, but reminded herself that he was scared—and probably the smartest of them for it. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing and he needed patience.
Crystal looked around a sink, but it didn’t turn on. There were no pipes; it wasn’t connected to anything. Mige had seemingly been drawn to a specific spot in the room; the carpet in the room was essentially large tiles of carpet, as opposed to something rolled out, and Mige was standing on one tile ringed on each side by purple carpet tile. She helped him remove the tile, revealing a metal hatch. Mige was able to open it, revealing a series of metal rungs leading down a narrow shaft to a concrete floor.
Propeled by a growing curiosity, Crystal volunteered to go down first. She made her way down the shaft, rung by run, twenty feet to the small entryway at the bottom. She took out her phone for light; it was a space only about ten square feet. It was unadorned and unmarked, except for faded lettering along one wall, and a large metal door with a wheel one spun to open it. There was lettering on it, as well; a series of numbers and letters that didn’t mean anything to her. She called out that it was just a small room with a big metal door.
Kai climbed down next, with Mige & Riolu coming down last. It took Mige and Crystal working together to turn the wheel enough that the door would open—and effort that took her, Mige, and Heracross to manage. Beyond the door was another entryway; rusted pipes ran along the walls, the floor beneath them alternating between weathered concrete and metal grating. There were several areas of faded lettering on the walls, illegible even by Kai. There seemed to be some empty metal lockers, many of which were dented or unable to close. Three passages ran off from this main area, one to the north, one the west, and one to the south (with the door leading in along the east wall).
They were unsure where to start, but Riolu seemed drawn toward the south hallway. It has a high, curved ceiling. It was probably the shortest hall; only about ten feet long, and led to a large room that semed to have been a classroom at one point. The walls had once been covered in tile, now almost completely bare. Many tiles could be found stacked neatly along one wall, along with a series of shoes. Only ever one shoe; they never had a mate. Mige mentioned having encountered something similar up in the church.
Most curious were the three chalkboards, set alongside each other one after the other on one wall. The board on the left had remnants of an old math lesson, it looked like, while the board in the middle was teaching cursive. On the right, whatever had been there had been wiped away long ago, replaced with a single phrase written over and over and over and over again: “Quel Est Mon Nom”.
Kai translated the phrase into “What is my name”. Crystal felt a chill run through her, accompanied by a sense of profound sadness. What kind of a school was this? A part of her knew the answer before Mige said it out loud: whatever this bunker was, the people in charge were doing tests on little kids. Crystal leaned against a wall, needing a second to process this. Kai wasn’t doing too well; she and Mige were constantly trying to comfort him and help him calm down, and it seemed like with every step, that was getting harder to do.
They left the classroom and investigated the other passage now. It was longer, with another hall snaking off from the main one (it looked partially collapsed, though) and ended in a large, circular room. The ceilings were high and lined with lights, something that Mige and Kai recognized as a procedure room at a hospital. Crystal frowned. A procedure room, right in the middle of the bunker? Less than a dozen yards from the entryway, with no doors? Something about the space, the geography, wasn’t adding up to her.
The room was flooded, the floor littered with knocked over gurneys and lighting fixtures; the glint of metal from medical instruments occasionally catching the light under the dirty water. A walkway of wooden planks stretched about halfway across the room, to where they could just make out another hallway that was also flooded.
For a moment, the three of them thought that they could see the flash of another light coming from that far hall. Kai pointed out that if they could see THAT light, then whoever it was could probably see their own lights too. As Kai and Mige debated whether they should run—anybody living down here was not their friend, Kai insisted—Crystl crouched down by the water’s edge. It was dirty and slimy, but not that deep; it was probably only about calf deep; maybe knee-deep at the most.
Suddenly, from within the water, Crystal saw a face. A girl’s face, lifeless and white. She let out a scream, dropped her phone, and fell backward. She scrambled away from the water’s edge, and told the guys what she’d seen. Kai moved behind her, while Mige crouched down to investigate. He didn’t see anything, but he was feeling compelled to cross the room and see what was back there. He helped Crystal up, and she insisted she’d be going to. Kai tried to talk them both out of it, but they wouldn’t be moved. Kai reluctantly joined them.
They walked to the end of the wooden plank bridge, each gingerly stepping into the fetid, still water. The ground was just as slimy at it looked. The ground was slippery and uneven; there was a ton of stuff in the water, hidden by the buildup of sediment and who knew what else. When they reached the hall, Crystal grabbed Mige and Kai’s hands. They should make sure they keep together; something was off about the bunker and she didn’t want them to be separated.
Slowly, they waded through the flooded hall. One end was completely collapsed, but the other stretched on about 60 feet to a set of push-doors, like you’d find as a diner or a hospital. Along the way, they passed ten small rooms. Crystal wasn’t even sure if they could be called rooms; they were more like cells. Each had a small cot, a molded-over table, and faded paint on the wall suggesting they’d once been painted with bright colors; rainbows, happy Pokemon, and similar motifs. It was where they’d kept the children. She felt like she was going to be sick.
Beyond the swinging doors was what looked like an interrogation room. Cracked and dented tile covered the walls. A metal table had been partially rent and laid on its side across the room. A single, giant mirror covered one wall. There was an observation room beyond that, without a doubt; the mirror was a two-way mirror, like you’d see in cop movies.
An almost sickening chill spread across the room. Kai muttered something about leaving again, and to Crystal’s surprise she just might agree with him. That’s when she noticed her reflection. She and Mige and Kai all seemed to notice it at about the same time. Their reflections were smiling. Just big, dopey, ear-to-ear smiles that didn’t quite reach their eyes. Their reflections did everything else they were supposed to do, just…their faces were wrong.
Her reflection took a step toward them. Neither of them said a word, though Mige and Kai both seemed to instinctually glance at her feet to see if she’d moved, before looking back to the mirror. They all watched, rapt in breathless horror, as mirror-Crystal waved as she reached the mirror’s edge. It was like looking through a window at an identical room, an identical Crystal.
Crystal met her doppleganger’s eyes and she squeezed Mige’s hand tighter. She wanted to leave, to run, but her legs wouldn’t move. Her eyes couldn’t look away. Abruptly, mirror-Crystal slammed her head into the glass. It shuddered, and when she did it a second time, the glass seemed to buckle slightly and crack. Kai screamed and Mige seemed to shift into a “ready to do something” action stance. Crystal just watched helplessly as mirror-her just repeatedly slammed her head into the mirror, over and over. Her long, blonde hair stained with crimson streaks, her perfect, white smile stained with the blood that flowed from her nose and her burst lips.
That’s when it happened. Mige made a grunt, like he was hurt. Her instinct was to move, to check on him, but she couldn’t. She suddenly felt a pressure, an intense heat. Her eyes stung and watered, her lungs seemingly forgetting what to do. She was hit with a wave of vertigo, and when she did finally draw in a breath it felt like she’d swallowed a hot, slimy coal.
When she started to move, it wasn’t her moving. There was something else inside of her: something, whatever it was that was down here, had forced its way inside of her and now it was in control. Her thoughts suddenly became clouded and muddled; horrible noises and screeching, biting words. She had a vague sense of what was happening around her, but all she could do is watch helplessly as some evil thing tried using her body to…what, hurt her friends?
No, dearest. I don’t want to hurt your friends. I need them for the time being. You, not so much.
A wave of fear hit her, as words that were not her own spilled from her lips. Something was possessing her, wearing her body like a suit. This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare. Maybe this was a fever dream and she was still in the tent, being treated for injuries from the Excadrill. This had to be a dream. This had to be a dream.
Suddenly, blinding, white-hot pain seared through her body. The passenger seemed to scream in agony. Yes, Crystal thought, hurt it! Mige hurt it somehow! He knew what to do, she thought; Mige would save her.
She felt a sudden urge to hurt him. To reach out and attack. She was strong with the passenger inside of her, almost superhumanly so. She wanted to hurt him, to bite him, to feel the heat of his insides against her hands as she tore them out. NO. No, that wasn’t hurt. She didn’t want to hurt Mige—that monster inside of her did. She fought against the urge with everything she had. Ultimately, she could sense her body turning and running away from them. She did it. Somehow…
It’s a temporary victory, girl. Don’t count on doing that again. This body is new to me. Once I get used to the ins and outs, this vessel will be mine to control. Forever.
No. No no no no no….Crystal wanted to scream, to cry. She wanted to wake up. Why wouldn’t she just wake up? Because it wasn’t a dream. Something was possessing her body and there was nothing she could do. But Mige could save her. She couldn’t say how she knew, exactly, but she did. Mige could beat this thing, and he’d save her. She knew that he would, and she tried to focus on that hope over the terrible, awful things the passenger was trying to tell her.
Mige would save her. Mige would save her. She had to trust in him.
By the time Mige and Kai had found them, she was somehow inside of that observation room. How they had gotten in was beyond her. She didn’t remember coming in here. Then again, she wasn’t entirely lucid. She was only vaguely aware of the conversation that the being possessing her—which called itself The Stranger—was having with Mige. She knew it wanted out of the bunker. If Mige wanted Crystal to survive, the only way would be to bring the Stranger out with her until it could find a new host.
No, that…that couldn’t happen. This thing, whatever it was, she could sense a deep malevolence. It was evil, pure and simple, and the thought of it escaping and spreading its evil elsewhere…that terrified her more than the prospect of living here with it forever.
And that thought did terrify her. She’d never see her family again. She’d never see her Pokemon. She’d never feel the sun against her skin, or smell the fresh mountain air, or drink a glass of wine ever again. And that thing, it would hurt her. Torment her. She would be in Hell while she was still alive. But even with all of that, she knew that it couldn’t ever be allowed to leave. She wanted to cry. Unknown to her and the Stranger, her cheeks really were wet with tears.
When Mige seemed not to play ball, she could feel the Stranger growing desperate. It offered to leave Crystal and instead possess Mige, where it would remain dormant until it could either find a new host, or otherwise find a way to safely leave. Again, Crystal wanted to scream for Mige to run. The thought of Mige going through this, being unable to move or control your words or actions; helpless as you were used by something evil…no, please, Mige, just run.
Maybe he’d find another way. Maybe he’d stop it. Maybe he’d still be able to save her.
How cute. You think he can save you. That’s a lot of faith in someone you barely know…
Crystal did her best to ignore it. She had to trust that whatever Mige did, he’d make the right decision. A few long minutes passed—long enough that they felt like hours to Crystal—before Mige announced he was coming in. The door opened and then…Chespin wrapped her in vines! He and Chespin struggled against the Stranger. Even now, he refused to give in. She let herself hope.
There was someone else there, too…a little girl. Crystal couldn’t see her but the Stranger could sense her, and it grew furious and desperate. It couldn’t go back! A world without light, without heat, without life. A world with only The Darkness waiting for it…
It clung to Crystal, resisting. Crystal used whatever strength she still had, aided by Mige and the little girl, to finally eject the Stranger from her. She began to collapse, but Mige caught her. She was breathing. She hurt. She saw Mige looking down at her, and she moved her hand to his cheek and weakly smile. She was in control of her own body again.
“Mige…I…I knew it…I knew that you’d…that…” she trailed off, passing out.
What happened after that was kind of a blur. She remembered sitting in a lime green chair while Mige rifled around. She remembered Chespin’s vines pulling her up the shaft back into the church. She remembered tasting the fresh air outside of the church and feeling so happy that she almost cried.
She vaguely remembered sittin on the edge of her bed in the Pokemon Center, filthy and shivering. She rememebred smiling at Mige and thanking him for everything. She remembered thinking that she should shower. She did, at some point, and then collpased onto the bed. She had intense nightmares the entire night.
