The trailhead looked the same as it had twenty minutes ago. Same bent signpost. Same gravel crunching under boots. Same mountainside stretching up into gray sky. Nothing about the place said eight heroes were about to make a decision that would either save a legendary Pokémon or get them all captured.
Ivy sat with her back against a pine tree, Roselia in her lap. The roses were open, petals pulsing soft green, then gold, then green again. Her green skin looked dull, like a leaf past its season. She hadn't spoken in ten minutes.
Valeria crouched on a flat rock, gauntlet propped on her knee. Metang hovered beside her, holding a circuit board in place with a magnetic grip while Valeria soldered a connection with a tool no bigger than a needle. Lunatone's Premier Ball sat on the ground between them. Neither of them had touched it.
Batgirl ran Frogadier through a lateral dodge, then a crouch, then a quick jab with one arm. She watched every movement. Catalogued every hesitation. When Frogadier flinched on the third jab, she made a note and called the Pokémon back. The ball clicked shut.
May sat on a fallen log five feet from everyone else. Joltik was on her belt, and every few seconds its body would spark bright yellow, then go dim. Spark. Dim. Spark. Dim. A heartbeat that couldn't find its rhythm.
Nobody said anything.
Harley broke the silence first.
"So we just sit here?"
Valeria didn't look up from the gauntlet. "We regroup."
"Regroup." Harley said the word like it tasted bad. "The bird is right there. The bad guys are right there. And we're sitting in the woods playing with circuits."
"I need the gauntlet functional," Valeria said. "Half the team is injured. Metang needs to recover. We go in like this, we don't rescue anyone."
Harley stood up. Houndour lifted its head from where it had been resting near her boots.
"So what, we wait? We let Hydra build a bigger cage?"
Ivy opened her eyes. Her voice was quiet but it cut through the air clean.
"They're not building a bigger cage. They're trying to build a leash." She looked down at Roselia. "I can feel the wound in the land. They've poisoned the soil around that structure. Severed the root networks. Whatever they're doing down there, it's hurting the mountain."
May watched Joltik spark and dim. Spark and dim.
Batgirl pulled up a holographic map from her gauntlet. "I've got a partial scan of the area. Electromagnetic interference is heavy. Whatever they're using to contain Zapdos, it's putting out enough energy to scramble my sensors at this range."
"So we get closer," Harley said.
"So we get closer with a plan," Batgirl said.
Valeria set down the soldering tool. She looked at the group — really looked. Ivy, pale and leaning on a tree. May, watching a Pokémon that couldn't stop sparking. Batgirl, running on discipline because her body had nothing left to give. Metang hovering with a crack running down its central mass.
She looked at Franklin. At Kamala. At Doreen.
"Franklin, Kamala, Doreen — you four scout. Follow the static trail. Don't engage. Don't get seen. Find the structure, map the exterior, and come back."
Franklin's hands were already flickering. "I can feel it. It's close."
"That's why you're going." Valeria turned to Harley. "You go with them. Keep Franklin from doing something stupid."
"Nobody tells me to keep someone from doing something stupid. That's my whole thing."
"Then keep him from getting caught."
Harley grinned. "Now that I can do."
Kamala stood, Eevee at her heels. Doreen was already stretching, Emolga zipping in a lazy circle above her head.
"We'll be back in an hour," Kamala said.
"Forty minutes," Franklin said. "The trail is strong. I can follow it fast."
Batgirl looked at him. "Forty minutes. If you're not back, we come looking."
Franklin nodded. He looked at Valeria. She looked back. Neither of them said anything. Then he turned and started up the mountain, Ralts floating beside him. Kamala and Doreen fell in behind. Harley brought up the rear, mallet on her shoulder, Houndour loping at her side.
The four of them disappeared into the tree line.
The trailhead got quieter.
Valeria went back to the gauntlet. Metang adjusted its grip on the circuit board, tilting it a fraction of a degree to give her better access. She rerouted a power line through an undamaged channel, bypassing the fried projector array. The scanner display flickered. Static. Then a faint grid.
"Basic function," she said. "Short range. But it's something."
Batgirl ran Frogadier through another set of drills. The Pokémon was moving better — the limp was gone, replaced by caution. She called it back and secured the ball. Then she pulled up her own scanner and began a passive sweep of the electromagnetic environment. The data came back fragmented. Heavy interference. Industrial source.
Ivy sat with her eyes closed and Roselia in her lap. The roses pulsed faster now. Green, gold, green, gold. She was reaching for the Green — pushing through the wound HYDRA had left in the land. Every time she got close, she felt poisoned soil and severed roots and the electrical burn of heavy machinery. The bunker's location kept slipping past the edge of her perception like a word on the tip of her tongue.
May watched Joltik spark and dim.
Valeria glanced over. "Your Joltik pushed too hard in the power plant."
May didn't look up. "I know."
"You need to know when a Pokémon has given everything. Pushing past that point—"
"Joltik didn't stop."
Valeria's hands paused on the gauntlet. "What?"
May held Joltik gently. The tiny Pokémon sparked bright, then dim. Bright, then dim.
"It didn't stop when it should have. I told it to fall back and it kept fighting." She looked at Valeria. "That's what partners do."
Valeria stared at her for a moment. Then she went back to the gauntlet.
The silence that followed wasn't resolved. It was just two people who saw the same problem differently, sitting in the same space, carrying the same weight.
***
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Advance chapters in P@T0n Najicablitz.