Chương 70: 70-Validation

The following morning, after eating a less than stellar breakfast from the hotel and working though the significantly more crowded streets and roads, pedestrian traffic forced to deal with large amounts of vehicles and heavy machinery driving out of town, presumably to repair the rail network and make Lavaridge accessible by train and road again. The mood is slightly tense, people glancing up at the thick black smoke rising from the top of Mt.

Chimney that has been spewing out since the quake, but then turning their eyes away, ignoring it as if it would cease to exist because it's outside their vision. It's a testament to how chaotic things are that they'd gotten to the center before Ambrette could make it, trading shifts with an exhausted looking Joy who does the night shift, Tammy if memory serves.

Walking in, the duo get to work, Amelia signing them both in as Tanya runs down the basic checklist of what needs doing every morning shift, changing the garbage, cleaning the things assigned on this shift, refilling the complementary candy bowl. In all, all this normality is a stark contrast to the chaos that was the last time they were here. But just as they step inside the sound of a printer breaks the early morning quiet"Wh– Who's faxing us?"

Amelia asks incredulously, completing the final administrative work needed behind the desk as she ducks down to look at the device.

"I know we're not in a state of emergency right now but…" She trails off and pops back into view again with a confused expression, but gets back to work and walks to the back to manage the things in the narrow halls of the back rooms without a word, the normal partition of labor in the more narrow back rooms. Though Tanya is capable of doing those tasks, they'd partitioned the labor like this before she'd gotten a better handle on minimizing, and if it's not broken.

As she works in the front room, the 'mon realizes what's on the ceiling mounted TV and telekinetically grabs the remote to turn up the volume of the news.

"... nd despite the rapid increase in geological activity emanating from Mt. Chimney, the government has still not called for evacuations or made an official statement on the matter despite rising concerns of a volcanic event. With me this morning is volcanologist and published author Professor Robert Clast to explain. Good morning Professor."

"Good morning." The man responds, appearing put together in a well fitting suit and cleanly styled hair that's obviously attempting to hide a receding hairline.

"Now. With the public wondering about the possibility of an eruption but seeing the government not take any obvious steps to prepare for such an event has many concerned. Do they know something the public does not? Should we be worried?" The professor laughs slightly, tapping the table.

"Of course worried is relative. But I assure everyone that what I've been seeing is in no way consistent with a volcanic eruption." He says, gesticulating as two line graphs appear on screen, one a slow sloping rise while the other is just low noise and a few abrupt jumps.

"A volcanic eruption has a very predictable pattern, the most clear example is with type energy readings. A normal eruption has a slow build of power over a period of weeks or months that ends in an eruption. What we're seeing are a series of sharp spikes over a period of just over a week, nothing like what would be needed for an eruption."

"So what is it?" The anchor asks, leaning closer as Igna shrugs.

"We don't precisely know, the current theory is that it's a series of earthquakes that just so happen to be occurring beneath the mountain, and our instruments are picking up an odd interaction between the two geological features." He says, then waves his hand as if dismissing a concern.

"To head off your next question, a shift in plate tectonics could in no way trigger an eruption in Mt. Chimney as it is now. If she was primed for an eruption I would be more concerned about that, but she's not due for another eight hundred years and we see no signs of that changing." At the reassurance the anchor nods before turning back to the camera.

"Thank you Professor, in other news our…" His voice falls off to silence again as Tanya turns down the volume again. At some point Amelia had finished up what she was doing in the back and came back out to the counter, and by the time Tanya's looking away from the TV her partner is also looking up at it with a concerned expression.

"Well that's… good. Shame they're not sure what's actually causing it, but…" She says slowly, looking over at her partner.

"Did Ambrette come in yet?" Tanya shakes her head slightly distractedly, considering their admittedly tenuous position. Even a small eruption has them in a high risk area, sitting almost on the column of a volcano and in the middle of a steep walled valley runs the very real risk of a landslide or a pyroclastic flow. Even a large expulsion of heavy ash could be a hazard.

"I assume this town has a tailored emergency response plan?" She states, walking over to the countertop.

"It should be–""Under the front desk, I know Chansey." Amelia says, already ducking below the desk and rummaging around.

"I'll find it, but I feel like reading it in the main room might give people an… impression." The 'mon grunts in understanding. Even if people should be concerned, having them in a panic helps no one. After a moment the Joy pops back up, holding a sealed waterproof envelope with the words 'ERP-V' in bold black letters on the front. But almost immediately she shoves the book back underneath the desk and clasps her hands at her waist just before the door opens.

"Hello, and welcome to the Poké–" Is all she gets out before a pokeball comes down on the countertop with a thud.

"Yes." The man says, continuing after Amelia picks up the ball and places it in the pokecare machine.

"Say, Nurse Joy, what's been going on with the rail repair?" The Joy hesitates for a moment, just long enough to grab the ball back out of the machine before turning around.

"I'm not sure sir. Here, your Pokém–""Oh come on, you're really telling me you don't know anything? I'm supposed to be getting out of here in an hour." He says with a kind of strained joviality. Amelia simply shakes her head.

"I'm sorry sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?" There's a tense silence where the man's rising tide of emotion is clear on his face, redness climbs up his neck as he opens his mouth. But nothing comes out, and after a long moment he slowly exhales.

"... No Nurse Joy. Thank you Nurse Joy." With that he grabs the ball and walks back out the front, and almost immediately after those doors close Amelia has the book out again, popping it from its protective shell and flipping it open to its first page.

"Hey Chansey could you just… stand between me and the door for a minute?" Tanya exhales in amusement and takes one step to the left, then realizes the sound of printing is over.

"That fax. Could you hand it over?" The 'mon asks in return, curiosity only piquing further as the documents come into view and she floats them over, spreading them out in the air as she does. Whatever it is, it seems random, photos of newspaper articles turn to research papers turn to pages of statistical models marking the likelihood of events and comparing them to reality. Tanya squints and flips back and forth through the pages, trying to piece it together.

She doesn't get it, but she almost can, at first she'd thought this was some kind of error, but the more she looks at it the more she's certain there is a pattern. Then she flips to the next page, and it's full of black and white photos of people in professional business attire. Attached to those photos is a list of assets owned and controlled by them, a list of associations sorted by likelihood and proximity, and on more than one profile there is a second photo.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. A photo of a masked and robed individual with a suspiciously similar build in a photo claimed to have been taken in a police raid of a Team Magma hideout. Or someone in handcuffs with their eyes blacked out in a mugshot.

Any casual levity disappears in a snap as Tanya blinks, flipping back a few pages as this new piece of information links up with everything previous, but as she works her train of thought is interrupted by the phone ringing at the desk. The 'mon starts to ignore it, turning her attention back to the documents, but her eyes snap to the phone as Amelia picks it up and a familiar voice emanates from the speaker, too quietly to be understood at this distance but distress unmistakable.

The Joy blinks at what she hears on the other end of the line and looks up at her partner.

"Chansey, could you transl–" She's cut off as Tanya steps forward and the phone flies out of the girl's hand and up to the side of the 'mon's head.

"I'm here." She says calmly.

"What's–"" Accept the transfer!" Her sister's voice shouts in a panicked rush and the line goes dead, less than five seconds later the transfer machine chimes to signal an incoming transfer request. Tanya does not question why, she simply steps up to the transfer machine as an empty ball flies out from one of the emergency stabilization kits under the front desk and fits into the slot before she accepts the transfer as quickly as possible. Questions can come later.

She stares at the loading bar as it crosses the screen in fits and starts, and almost the instant after the transfer is complete the ball shakes once before popping open on it's own, resolving into the familiar form of–" Big sis!" Her most managerial of sisters shouts, leaping across the small distance between them and burying herself in Tanya's bulk in a hug.

Tanya doesn't return it, instead scanning over what she can see of her sister's body, searching for any physical signs of what caused the distress before her vision of the 'mon is obscured by green sparkles.

"What's the situation?" She asks, and the question has Chansey stepping back, giving the 'mon a clear view of the exhaustion on her face.

"I– They– They're causing the earthquakes!" She shouts, looking up at her sister's eyes with desperate intensity.

"I tried to warn them but I guessed wrong and now the police think I'm crazy but if we don't do something–""Stop." Tanya orders, mind struggling to turn the words into sense.

"Organize your thoughts and begin again."

'They' could only mean Team Magma, but the idea of them using the stolen type energy amplifier plans to do something like this is outright impossible.

"Ok." Her sister breathes.

"I've been trying to figure out how Team Magma sells the things they steal and what they do with the money, and I've figured out a scheme where they create shell companies and defraud insurance companies by staging robberies of empty shipments. With some statistical analysis we've figured out how to predict where to look." She steps toward the papers, still hanging in the air where Tanya had left them, passing by a confused Amelia while she does.

"Chansey? Who is thi–""Of course statistical analysis can't substitute for proof so I used…" Her own eyes flare purple and Tanya feels the peculiar sensation of her sister gently guiding the pages into a new position floating in the air." These association webs to link them together, and through them we started figuring out the shape of the organization. Tanya watches in slightly stunned silence as the pages spread out across the empty air, sorted in a configuration only her sister seems able to see.

But it's clear she's lost the point.

"The earthquakes." Tanya reiterates, prompting the 'mon to wince.

"Right! It's the robberies!" She exclaims, pulling some documents closer.

"I can see the shell companies they set up for the precision electronics, but because I thought the catalyst could only come from one of four laboratories I warned the police that they would rob one of those labs to get the catalyst. But…" She trails off, and a few pages float out of the increasingly convoluted mess. It's a research grant, with one of the benefactors highlighted yellow and a picture attached.

The grant is for one Professor Cozmo to search for the source of an irregularity in the type energy background noise of northwest Hoenn. Skimming the document, the man proposes the origin to be, not a geological feature, but rather the scattered remnants of a highly energetic meteorite. But… these readings…

"You believe they're using this?"

"Yes!" Her sister chirps back, pulling more documents forward, but as she continues Tanya hears her voice as if it's coming from further and further away. She flips through the research proposal, finding a grid of TEV sensor measurements with a more zoomed in view of the proposed work site with a reference to ambient.

Equations flash through her mind, working backwards to estimate the amount of energy contained within this proposed meteorite, even assuming these measurements are off by entire orders of magnitude and there's zero losses through the earth she's looking at a TEV of over 500.

"... nd just a few days ago Professor Cozmo put in a cover letter for the Journal of Geological Estophysics and the day after there was an article about a secure courier service being robbed in the same area!" Her sister's voice cuts through again.

"The timelines and people match way too well for it to be a coincidence, but I think the catalyst is too powerful for a sensor array and they're causing the quakes! But since I kept… informing the police about all this, especially now that I was wrong with my lab prediction, they said if I kept 'wasting police time' I could get in trouble. So they're not going to listen to me! I wasn't sure what to do, but we need to stop them before they accidentally cause… another…"

She trails off as Tanya walks past her without another word, grabbing a few pages from the air and slapping them down on the countertop. A pen floats out of a cup and into her grip and she hastily starts scratching through what she knows, double checking the math she did in her head. She has to be wrong. She's not an expert. She has to be missing something. Amelia's shadow darkens the paper as she looks at the frantic scribbles.

"... Chansey? What's going–""This is Professor Dacite's phone number." Tanya interrupts, scratching out the number she'd memorised.

"Get him on the phone."

"Wh–"" Now!" Tanya pays just enough attention to ensure her order is being obeyed as she yanks more papers back into her control and drags them to the counter, continuing to try to refine her estimations and look for flaws in her logic. She could still be wrong. She's using a child's understanding of type energy interactions to create rough and increasingly dire estimations, this isn't science. They could just be greedy idiots, unaware of the dangers of what they'd stolen.

She could not understand the machine, the earthquakes might be unrelated. But her partner's quiet gasp as she reads what Tanya's writing, forming the same conclusions as her partner, make those thoughts harder and harder to ignore. Dimly, she feels an arm press against her side.

"... Big Sis?" Her sister asks softly, but almost at exactly the same time Tanya can hear the phone call connect and the grumpy voice come from the other side.

"Who is this? I swear if you're another journalist I am going to–""Sir. Your type energy amplification machine, what would happen if–""Wha– who is this? How do you know about that?"" What would happen if someone tried to amplify a volcano to eruption? How strong of a catalyst would they need?" Amelia asks desperately, her emotion answered only by a scoff.

"... It's impossible. More energy than there is on this planet. Now, I do not approve of you publishing anything I say here–""What about the Fallarbor meteor theory?" Amelia interrupts as Tanya shoves the relevant document in front of her.

"What if they found it?"

"What?" The man sounds amused.

"Cozmo's deranged brainchild? It's not real. He's not–""If it were real, could a meteor with a TEV over 500 do what we're seeing right now?" Amelia insists, clutching the phone tighter. There's a few seconds of silence from the other end of the line, but when the man does answer it's more deliberate.

"... I'm not sure where you're getting the 500 number. I'd say a single source emission point would be 750 at least, and you couldn't do it at a distance, my amplifier would have to be on the caldera you're trying to erupt. But…" He trails off, and there's the sound of shuffling papers.

"Even if Cozmo found his rock it wouldn't look like what we're seeing with these sharp spikes, it would be a rapid but linear increase. Or a rising tremor like a volcanic eruption on fast forward." Then he pauses, the phone crackling slightly suggesting the man is shifting again, the sound of more papers, then he continues.

"... Although. Actually now that I'm looking at it… this almost looks like an emitter losing wave cohesion and feedback looping due to low… attenuation…" There's a long and heavy quiet, one that only gets heavier with every second that passes until it's broken by the quiet crackling voice on the other end of the line.

"Oh shi–"