Chương 62: 62-Miko

Standing at the bottom of the stairs with a still irritated looking Ninetails at the top, Amelia hesitates at obeying her aunt's instruction as she walks away, calling for the patient to follow. But as the 'mon's attention is directed back to the interior of whatever is at the top of the stairs she can do nothing other than firm her grip on the jug of dialysis fluid and take the first step up the stairs.

The ancient wood creeks, the sound causing Ninetails's ear to flick back and her to hesitate, then Aunt Lilly's voice calls out again and the 'mon disappears from view. But even with Ninetails leaving her sight, the memorylingers with the weight of its… intensity.

Amelia feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as she takes another creaking step up the stairs.

The trainer has been around pokemon all her life, every age and walk of life, she thought she'd seen every shade of temperament a 'mon can have.

She was wrong.

Those eyes… any attempt at describing the emotion she saw in them would fall short, a kind of simmering hate combined and filtered through a thousand different layers of suspicion for a start, but it goes deeper.

She's seen anger, and suspicion, even something resembling that hate in stuff like movies, but every other time there's always been an element she didn't realize could be missing until it was gone.

Because every time before, she was always sure that whoever was looking at her considers her a person.

That recognition only appeared again after a glance at Chansey then back at the Joy's hair, but only slightly.

It reminds her of how Chansey looks at people who she's decided don't make sense, but a million times stronger.

The minor anxiety of the memory is assuaged by the deep groaning of wood indicating her partner is right behind her on the stairs. Quickly replaced by the worry that Chansey's… mass might be too much on the old wood.

Thankfully it holds as they both creak up the stairs and Amelia steps across the threshold into the room at the top of the stairs and blinks as she tries to parse what she sees inside.

Because it's a strange combination.

For starters, there's an age-worn statue of a ninetails, made of stone, sitting in the center of the room. Despite its age and the minor wear the detail and quality of the stonework is on clear display. It's also abundantly clear it's supposed to be the only thing inside this space, making the scattered medical supplies seem only more out of place.

On one wall there's a folding table with an unpacked duffel bag with everything from nail trimmers to a complete dental kit. Bio-waste baggies with used cup noodle containers sit in one corner while a large battery bank plugs into a floodlight hanging from the rafters cast everything in a harsh white.

On the other side of the room, in the center of where the floodlight is pointed, sits a microwave sized dialysis machine, an agitated Ninetails, and an impatient Aunt holding pressure on the 'mon's leg while quickly glancing between the patient at her side and the top of the stairs.

"Trainee!" The nurse snaps, bringing Amelia to full awareness only to realize Lilly is looking past her to Chansey, who for some reason is hesitating to step into the statue room.

"Get in here and heal this, the last thing I need is clotting in the fistula."

The order has Chansey move past whatever was stopping her, crossing the room and raising a green sparking limb on the 'mon, as the limb approaches, ninetails looks at her with mild suspicion but does not move as the limb makes contact.

But as she begins to emit healing sparks Chansey's arm is hastily yanked away.

"Enough! Are you trying to close the AV?" She hisses, looking back at the blood-soaked forelimb and placing two fingers on the limb.

"... Good, it's still open. Now, she can't understand me at all, so ask her if she feels anything strange with her heart or forelimb."

Chansey nods, relaying the question, then squinting in confusion as the 'mon says something back and shakes her head.

With the confirmation the elder nurse rises and points across the room to the table.

"Trainee!" She says, glancing at Amelia with the corner of her eye.

"Table, grab two cannulae and a prep kit for the fistula puncture site."

There's a moment where Amelia is both surprised and confused by the sudden flurry of orders, but then hours and hours of study come to the fore.

"Yes nurse." She nods, powerwalks to the table and scans across the thing until she finds sealed plastic baggies of sterile medical supplies, grabs the cannulae, then a site prep kit.

Heading back across the room, the elder Joy has moved away from Ninetails and to the inactive dialysis machine, removing an empty jug and setting it next to a full jug of lightly brown used fluid.

Hearing Amelia's approach, she holds out a hand for the cannulae, grunting when they're deposited.

"Good. Leave the fresh dialysate here and help with prep." She orders, to which the trainee nurse complies and turns to where Ninetails is still sitting, carefully studying Chansey as if she's some kind of fascinating puzzle.

But as soon as Amelia's eyes land on the 'mon and she looks back, those slitted eyes glance down to her waist, and narrow.

It takes a second for the trainer to realize. Her belt, lacking any pokeballs and normally hidden beneath her apron, but a belt all the same, is poking out from her slightly askew ribbon.

A sense of tense stillness comes over the 'mon, growing ever-more intense with every step Amelia gets closer, so powerful that it's almost like a repulsive force pushing her away.

She powers through, walking without hesitation to the foreleg and kneeling down, thankful to see that the healing didn't regrow the fur over the work site. Ninetails are exceedingly rare to work on and it's a coin flip to whether healing regrows hair of a particular line of 'mon.

"Alright Ninetails, I'm going to clean off some of the blood so we can continue treatment." She says with professional neutrality.

But as she reaches out the 'mon snarls.

Tails writhing, she snaps out an incomprehensible chatter of pokespeak, and whatever it is has Chansey tense as if she's getting ready for a fight even as she says something back that appears to go ignored by the patient.

Amelia freezes, not moving her hand closer or further from the patient, from behind she hears her aunt giving a sharp inhale as time seems to slow.

And looking firmly into those vibrant orange eyes, she sees fire.

Alien and all consuming, it's something borne of a rage and desperation so potent that time seems to have not softened it in the slightest. So powerful it could consume this entire island in an instant, only restrained by the limits of the body it's held within.

That thing burning within those eyes stares into the Joy's soul.

But she's seen this before, in quiet nights where her partner stares silently at the fire and when they reach the top of a hill and her other half scans the horizon, as if expecting something to be there. The expression Chansey is making right now at the back of Ninetails's head, eyes already emitting wisps of psychic energy.

Amelia Joy does not flinch, fear overpowered by a singular conviction.

"I am here to help."

Ninetails's eyes don't move from where they're locked into hers, no external change occurs in her at all, but something – barely– eases, and when Amelia reaches across the final distance and makes contact the 'mon does nothing other than stare.

She knows getting blood out of anything is more difficult after it's had time to dry and clot, so she's thankful that it's only gotten to that half dried gooey stage by the time she's gotten the work area ready again. Moving outward to the surrounding fur to make sure no contaminate can get in, she gets about a quarter of the fur clean of blood before her aunt's voice comes from behind.

"Move, and check the battery bank, if it's below twenty percent charge, turn off the flood light. After that, start packing." She says, but despite the abrasiveness of her words not changing, the tone has become… different.

"Yes nurse." She complies, walking to the battery bank and sees it at just below forty percent just as she hears the machine hum to life from the other side of the room.

Turning her attention to the folding table and the endless assortment of disorganized medical supplies, she gets to work, sorting everything by type and slotting it into a series of marked and divided plastic trays. As she works, her aunt walks up beside her and starts to assist, her movements twice as quick and three times as efficient.

They work side by side for a few moments until the elder Joy breaks the silence.

"... I assume you have… questions." She states without a hitch in her movements.

"I will try to answer them."

Amelia nods, trying to keep her own work just as consistent as she thinks.

"I do." She pauses.

"... How did she get here?"

Her aunt shrugs.

"No one knows, and I checked, even the clan records back at Jubili start with 'members of our purpose-bound kin continuing to honor the spirit of the valley of living waters.'" She sighs.

"That also means she's a lot older than a thousand, but that maximum age was always just a guess."

Amelia blinks at the information, her first thought shocked that no scientists have gone out to study her, but then the thought of the 'mon interacting with…

anyone quickly replaces that shock with relief.

"Is she like that with…

everyone new? And how old isshe, biologically?"

Aunt Lilly shakes her head.

"Just past middle age, human analog I'd say about sixty five. And no, normally she's worse." She says emphatically.

"She doesn't intentionally reveal herself to anyone but the family, and when I first came here it took five years for her to even let me touch her."

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She roughly snaps the clasps for one of the plastic trays closed and shoves it into the duffel bag before continuing.

"If she hadn't ripped a vein I would have made both of you leave the dialysate at the bottom of the stairs and leave, but I'd assumed she wouldn't let you close and your partner would have had to do it. Still, I didn't expect her to be so…

aggressive toward a member of the family, or for you to manage it anyway."

Amelia pauses at the reveal that this was the 'mon at least somewhat playing nice, then tries to figure out what else she can ask, fully aware of the fact that the table is almost cleaned and that her opportunity to ask questions will likely end when that happens. But as it always is with a time limit, she finds herself struggling to think of anything.

But as she looks around she sees an obvious mystery in the building and the strange statue room she's in.

The entire construction is… odd, from the ceiling bell to the empty stone basins and the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything to dohere makes everything feel like it's been built to some incredibly specific purpose she can't see.

"... What is this place?" She asks, indicating her surroundings with a wave of the wrist.

"The statue? Was it built forNinetails?"

There's a long pause at the question, her aunt pausing in her work to look fully at her with an unreadable expression on her face, before getting back to shoving the last of the supplies into the duffel.

"It's a shrine." She says finally.

"In the ancient past, our family took care of these things, why they were built is too complicated to explain right now, but one of the reasons was so we could keep powerful pokemon happy and because of a superstition we could stop… bad things from happening, both caused by the 'mon and not."

Considering the idea, Amelia looks around again, taking in the painstakingly detailed, regal gaze of the statue, then thinking back to how much effort must have been put into the entire place for it to have stood this long.

She knows there are certain superstitions about some pokemon, she even has a… vague idea that people used to believe in them more strongly in the past. The thought that touching a ninetails's tail causes the person to be 'cursed' with some vague misfortune is one that comes to mind.

But she struggles to believe any kind of superstition, no matter how powerful, would cause people to– The world shudders, the hanging floodlight causing the room to almost flash as it swings wildly above and every surface gives long heaving groans, like some great old tree being blown in the wind.

Both nurses, trained by their upbringing, immediately duck underneath the folding table almost without thinking, steadying themselves with a hand to the wall and watching the structure for signs of failure.

The quake is longer than the last by a few seconds, and as Amelia waits for it to abate she realizes Ninetails doesn't look alarmed, instead she's looking steadily at the blank wall in the direction of the volcano.

Once the quake settles and there's no sign of an aftershock, both nurses rise up from under the table.

"Everyone alright?" Amelia asks, hurriedly following behind as her aunt speeds across the room to check up on Ninetales and the machine she's hooked to.

"Get moving. Make sure the cannula didn't shift or rip the vein in the quake and be ready to remove, heal, and reset again."

—-- –_– —--

"Dont mess with anything in the regulator until we've discharged the capacitors!" Jack shouts, spraying another burst of his fire extinguisher into the half melted, half burning interior of the machine before pointing at the two people manning the computer.

"Freeze telemetry, send it to the lab, then help with disassembly."

The two low level members of Team Magma the engineer has trained in the basics of operating the computers salute and get to work as others start the careful process of pulling the machine apart again.

Another failure.

The engineer sighs, coughing as the smoke, with nowhere to go in this underground bunker dug into the volcano, slowly disperses out and fills the room. Thankfully the overhead fans kicks on, slowly pulling the smoke away as he and the technicians he's trained start to pull the machine apart.

By volume, ninety percent of everything that's broken in this thing would be cheaper and easier to replace with how damaged it is, but for the last ten percent that's where his work really begins.

Pointing out one of those valuable components, it's retrieved by his subordinates and delivered to his work table on the other side of the room where he gets started, pulling out his multimeter to find out how bad it is.

But as he works a sudden twitch in the contact probe nearly scratches the extremely delicate and wafer thin components contained within the housing, which would have turned a probably salvageable and extremely valuable component into a complete writeoff Jack puts down his multimeter to not mess up the scrambled electronics of the emitter even more and takes a deep breath to steady his nerves before picking the tool back up and getting back to work finding whatever broke this time.

This is the second full power test with the small fragment the lab had chosen as a good test bed, and the second explosive failure.

…His hands are still trembling.

The engineer breathes a laugh at the reaction, and the insanity of how it's even possible.

When he told his boss that this was impossible he thought this madness was over, because he and the person he'd only ever known as 'scientist' gave the man impossible requirements.

They'd said that for this to work they'd need something that could only be created in the heart of a collapsing star large enough to contain their entire solar system with room to spare.

They'd need so much of it, that even a tenth of the required amount would bend and warp reality itself.

Two weeks later, ever larger shards started coming in. None bigger than a fingernail, much too small for the madness that is this plan, but more than large enough for calibration tests with the assurance that a large enough chunk will be coming soon.

The engineer takes another breath as he looks up from where he's been working at a component to see the other members of this organization slowly disassembling the blackened machine to be repaired after yet another miscalibration caused the emitters to lose cohesion and the backlash burned out half the electronics.

The earthquake didn't help either.

Even the smallest fraction of the projected catalyst was enough to do that.

They're lucky it didn't explode.

…

Getting back to work, a few minutes later he hears the door to the large workroom open and the familiar thud of precise approaching footsteps.

Putting down his multimeter again, the engineer turns around to see the familiarly stoic face of one of the 'enforcers' carrying an incredibly advanced laptop, barely larger than a three ring binder, and opens it against his chest.

A second after that, the dark screen is illuminated with the face of his boss.

"Engineer." He says in his normal, calm voice.

"The first time this happened I was assured your calibration tests would not cause more delays. And yet…"

The engineer dips his head.

"I'm sorry sir. We increased the attenuation by our projected margins, but the hardware simply isn't built for a Type Energy Value this high. Even with perfect attenuation I'm estimating a thirty percent chance of hardware failure."

"That can only be your fault." The boss counters.

"You said what you needed to succeed, I gave it. Must I instruct you on how to do your job as well? Send a request for higher quality components."

The engineer winces, then gives a shallow shake of the head.

"Sir, there is nothing better than what we requested. Every time a calibration test happens it's almost guaranteed that there will be equipment damage until attenuation gets above ninety three percent."

There's a long silence following that proclamation, where the boss slowly removes his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose before putting them back on.

"... How long."

"Another two tests. At most three, then we'll be ready to begin once the full sized catalyst is delivered." He says, the question of when and how such a catalyst could be delivered is clear through implication.

"Fine.

No delays.

Get a list of replacement components for my local administrator within the hour." He says before the screen goes dark again and the enforcer closes the lid, turning on his heel and marching away.

With that Jack takes a slightly shaking breath and gets back to work, finally finding one of the many fried components and pulling it out to see if it can be salvaged.

—-- It's a few hours later that he's eating his packaged meal bag in the small lunch area with the rest of the uniformed gang and one of the only other sane people walks over and sits down next to him.

The man Jack only knows as 'Scientist' takes a bite of mushy pasta and leans over.

"Heard the old taskmaster talked to you. What is it this time?" He mutters.

Jack takes a bite of his own meal and mutters back.

"We're not working fast enough and he's mad about the emitter blowouts."

Scientist gives a commiserating hiss.

"I don't know how he's getting these things but he has no idea what he's dealing with here if that's his complaint. Does he have any idea how much energyis actually in these things? It could–"

"I'm trying not to think about it." Jack interrupts."

You don't have to stand next to it during the calibration tests."

"Yea…" His coworker nods slightly, eating in silence for a few minutes.

"... Where do you think the other teams are?"

The engineer blinks.

"What?"

"The other teams." He clarifies.

"The ones who're surveying the old magma channel and doing… whatever it is they're doing to make the pressure go through it instead of out the top. You know. Where we are. I'd at least like to talk to the people we're putting our lives in the hands of."

The comment has Jack flinch, glancing across the lunch hall to where two enforcers are standing at the door, looking across at everyone with roving eyes that seem to linger on him.

…

He's thought about it, had repeated nightmares about what would happen if even a single aspect of this goes wrong. Nightmares that have grown only stronger after the first test and the earthquake it brought with even the weakest possible configuration of this device.

He knows they'll be even stronger tonight.

The enforcer's eyes are lingering on him, watching with careful suspicion hidden beneath false neutrality and backed by an air of barely restrained violence.

…No.

"No." The engineer shakes his head.

"I've not met them. But the boss says they're still on schedule, so they'll be done before us. If we're still behind we'll probably meet them when they're reassigned to help us get back on track.

They exist, they must exist, and they must be working just as hard as him. Because anyone who understands even the basics of what they're doing here understands how dangerous it is. How if even a single variable goes wrong it would kill– He feels the burn of the enforcer's eyes on the side of his head, judging as if they can hear their quiet conversation from across the room, hear his thoughts.

The other teams exist, they must.

Because the alternative is so unthinkable that no one could even consider it. Even if he's seen no evidence of the geological teams he's assured they're right on schedule. That's the point of all this secrecy, so he never meets them, which means because he's never met them things are going just as planned, and this will work.

This will work because no one could live with themselves if it didn't.

If they survived.

"Well…" Scientist mutters, glancing up at the enforcers as well before ducking back down and taking another bite of his food.

"Alright."

The Engineer just has to hope that if he keeps his head down, does everything right, and makes sure his part goes off perfectly, that the other teams will work just as hard.