Lune Town.
At the edge of the dead-end road leading into town, a man named Safest and a handful of his crew lounged on the crumbling ruins by the roadside. They passed around cans of cheap beer from the nearest restaurant and talked about nothing in particular.
Business had been surprisingly good over the past few days. For reasons none of them could explain, the Original Team's sub-base had fallen apart — but the flow of visitors into Lune Town had actually gone up. The work had been steady, and now, with noon approaching and no sign of anyone else coming through, they had spread out along the roadside to take it easy.
The arrangement was simple enough. Anyone wishing to enter Lune Town through this particular dead-end road was required to hire their guide service for three thousand pokédollars per trip. To someone unfamiliar with the town, that price might have sounded steep. But without a local like Safest walking ahead of you, you would wander the approach for hours and find nothing. Lune Town looked, from the outside, like a small settlement that had been left to fall apart years ago. Only someone who knew the place could lead you past that impression, down into the real town that existed beneath those crumbling facades — a layered, lively, and thoroughly illegal sprawl of gambling dens and hidden rooms.
The idle morning had nearly run its course when a swirl of dust kicked up out of nowhere, scattering grit into everyone's faces. Safest opened his mouth to complain, but before the words came out, a massive shadow fell over the group.
He squinted up, shielding his eyes with one hand against the wind.
It was not a rain cloud.
What filled the sky above him was a colossal bird, its feathers gleaming with a deep metallic sheen. Its wings spread wide enough to blot out the light, and its vivid red eyes were fixed directly on him.
"Corviknight—!" Safest let out a sharp yell and spun around to run.
His crew had already vanished. In the time it had taken him to look up, every single one of them had scattered without a word of warning and without a backward glance.
The Corviknight paid them no attention. It folded its wings into a sharp dive, talons extended, and lifted Safest clean off the ground by the back of his collar. In a matter of seconds, he was dangling ten meters in the air, the ruins of the roadside shrinking below his feet.
His mind went blank. The sound that came out of him was less a word than a noise — long, shapeless, and entirely involuntary.
A calm voice reached him from somewhere above.
"Stop screaming. I want to ask you something."
Safest twisted his head upward and made out a figure seated on the Corviknight's back. A pale, lean young man who looked entirely too relaxed for someone riding a giant Steel-type bird twenty metres above the desert floor.
He recognised him immediately.
This was the same person who had torn apart the Original Team's base.
"Hey — hey, hey — alright, alright, let's keep this civil," Safest said, trying to arrange his expression into something cooperative. "We know each other, don't we? What's with the entrance? Just ask whatever you want to ask."
"I will," Nova said. "Put you down first, or ask you up here?"
"Down! Please, down! These clothes aren't exactly reinforced — if your Corviknight lets go, I'm going to be a problem for whoever finds me!"
Nova gave a short, unimpressed sound. "We're only ten metres up. You'd break your legs. You wouldn't die."
Safest thought several things about that statement that he did not say out loud. He was not in a position to say them out loud. The Corviknight's grip on his collar was firm, and the last thing he wanted was for Nova to take offence and give any kind of signal to the bird.
"Have you seen anyone going into the ruins of the Original Team's base recently?" Nova asked, getting straight to it.
Safest answered without hesitation.
"Some of the locals go in to look around — the usual type, people with time and not much else. Especially a few of the regulars from the Casino who've gambled themselves dry. When you've got nothing left, you start looking for ways to make something back."
He paused, then added:
"But there's poison in there now. A few of them went up without asking anyone first, and they got stung by something — thorny, from what I heard. Left them in serious pain, numbness, the works. There's no medical centre in Lune Town, and whatever hit them was strong. Three of them died the same day. After that, nobody went back. The whole ruin's been sitting there untouched. The Casino owner has been talking about sending someone up to clear a path through, but so far, nothing's come of it."
"That's everything?"
"That's everything! I'm not going to lie to you — what would be the point?"
Nova said nothing for a moment. Then he tapped his heel lightly against Corviknight's side.
Nothing happened.
He tapped again, slightly firmer.
Corviknight descended in a slow, indifferent arc and released Safest a short distance above the ground. Safest's legs buckled the moment he landed, and he grabbed at a broken wall to keep himself upright. His knees had turned completely unreliable.
"I'm telling you," he said, once he had found his footing and some portion of his dignity, "we've met before. We've done business together. If you had questions, you only needed to come and find me. There was no need to do all that."
"I was worried you'd charge me another consultation fee," Nova said flatly.
That was when it clicked for Safest. The previous visit — the tour, the 1,000 Coins deposit, and then the chaos that had broken out the moment Nova had gotten what he needed. Safest had run the moment he saw the fight starting, partly out of self-preservation and partly because being associated with someone who picked fights with the Original Team was not a comfortable position to be in. He had not, in the confusion, thought much about the balance of payment.
Apparently, Nova had.
Safest dug through his pockets without being asked and turned out everything he had — a total of 874 coins, coins and notes together. He held it out with both hands.
"Please. This business of mine is not exactly above board, but it's still honest work in its own way. I ran out on you halfway through the job — that's on me. You gave me a thousand up front, and this is all I have left on me right now. Can we call it even?"
Nova looked at the money. Then he took it, sorted through the notes, tucked the larger bills into his pocket, and held the loose change back out to Safest.
"Keep the coins. Get yourself something to eat."
Safest took the coins back with a smile that did not reach anywhere near his eyes. It had taken every one of his professional instincts not to react otherwise. The man had just taken his money and handed him back the smallest part of it as though doing him a favour.
No wonder you're out here picking fights with terrorist organisations, Safest thought. You are actually scarier than they are.
Nova, for his part, was beginning to understand what Corviknight found so satisfying about its hobby of picking on weaker wild Pokémon. There was something uniquely gratifying about a situation where the other person clearly had something to say and equally clearly knew better than to say it.
Business settled, Nova called Growlithe to heel, tucked Sprigatito more securely under his arm, and set off down the dead-end road toward the interior of Lune Town.
Above him, Corviknight wheeled in wide, unhurried circles — the outermost ring of his watch. Anyone who approached the road with intent would find the Steel-type dropping in to greet them well before they reached Nova.
The caution was not just because Lune Town was a poor choice of location for a relaxed stroll. It was also because of what Safest had told him.
The sub-base had been destroyed. Taylor had been captured a week later. By any reasonable logic, the Original Team would have sent someone here to assess the damage by now — that was the only sensible move. Even if they had already combed through the ruins and recovered whatever was in the safe, that alone would be bad news for Nova, though not the kind he couldn't manage.
But if Safest's account was accurate — if the ruins were sitting completely untouched, with no sign that the Original Team had visited at all — then something was not adding up.
That was the part Nova could not stop turning over.