Even as Robyn looked between the quaint square building in front of the parking lot and the sign that read “Osage Pokémon Research Lab" she wasn't entirely sure if it was the right place. Yes, she had followed the directions Koa gave her as she remembered them, but that was just it. Did she remember it exactly? Koa had drilled it into her head the entire day before, making Robyn recite it back to her over and over. Robyn took notes. With a pencil in one hand and a sticky note in the other she scratched down everything Koa told her, although she did require Koa to slow down several times.

That's how it was for Robyn. Instructions had to be repeated, simple things had to be explained, and the most recent memories had to be reminded by others. Robyn was a sweet and simple woman whose biggest interest was Pokémon. Other than that, however, her mind simply could not summon the curiosity to focus on other things. A wandering mind like hers simply lacked the capacity for a reliable memory or thoughts deeper than “that Pokémon is cute."

She wasn't stupid, at least that's what everyone insisted to her on a nigh daily basis. She was simply “differently abled", or “uniquely wired". Robyn wasn't convinced, but who was she to argue? Just about everyone was smarter than her, especially Koa, her girlfriend with whom she lived and shared a passion for Pokémon. Koa's undying drive to learn more about such whimsical creatures fascinated Robyn. But while Koa was able to learn and collect knowledge, Robyn could only admire them at a more surface level. Her envy towards Koa for her ability  was more mutual than she realized. Robyn's childish knack for seeing how cute they are and nothing else was a luxury Koa couldn't afford on account of her innate need to learn more about them.

But none of that got in the way of how they felt about each other. Whatever their differences in intellect, there remained a great many shared passions between them, not including Pokémon. There were so many things Koa could teach her, and no matter if she could grasp them or not, Robyn always listened. Koa was always there for Robyn, taking care of her and making sure she stayed safe. Robyn, likewise, was there for Koa in that she gave her a purpose in life. With someone to take care of and show love, it became her priority to do the right thing and teach Robyn to do the same.

So when Robyn stood in the parking lot of the Research Center with her bike, alone without Koa by her side, she couldn't help but worry if somehow she had made a mistake. The name “Osage" echoed through her mind. It was printed on the front of the building. But was it the same Osage? She could see herself walking in there, asking if this was the right place, then getting told politely that it wasn't. She often did stupid stuff like that, needing Koa to correct her. If she was back home at Galar then this wouldn't have been a problem. She knew that place like the back of her hand.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the sticky note she had written on. On it was her chicken scratch listing the directions from her house to the lab. At the bottom of the note was the name of the place; the font was extra thick from the pressure she had applied when writing it. OSAGE POKÉMON RESEARCH LAB. Her eyes looked up at the sign, then down at the note. She went through letter by letter, making sure it matched perfectly. Yes, it was the exact same. She walked her bike up to the rack next to the entrance with a daunted look on her face. Please be the right place.

The front doors slid open upon her stepping on the mat, a small bit of magic she always got a kick out of. Inside was a sprawling studio lab complete with shiny white tile floors and enormous pieces of research equipment. Robyn's eyes went round and began darting between each object, be it a huge canister or a simple doohicky on the counter. The doors slid shut behind her as she gawked at the scientific landscape before her.

Then came a big pink Blissy waddling through a door, cradling the egg pouch on its tummy. It came to a halt when it saw Robyn. “Blissy!"

Robyn thought it looked adorable. She felt her belly fill with butterfrees. Robyn waved at it like she would anyone else. “Hello. Is Professor Osage here?"

“Blissy!" The blissy bowed its head and waddle-sprinted back through the door it just came through. A few moments later Professor Osage appeared. She was a short spindly woman in her 60's, home to a frizzy beehive of gray hair that bloomed out of her scalp like a corona. Her eyes widened behind a thick pair of glasses when she saw Robyn. She split a toothy grin. “Hello, there!"

Robyn waved again. “Hello. I'm looking for Professor Osage." She braced herself. “Is this her lab?"

“Well, you've found her! And this is my lab."

“Oh! I did?" Robyn looked around, expecting someone else to be there.

Osage laughed to herself. I forgot. This is a slow one I'm dealing with. “I'm Professor Osage. Yes, you're at the right place."

That was a tremendous relief to hear. “Oh! Good."

Osage waved her over. “Come in, come in. Let's have a seat somewhere. I'll tell you everything you need to know."

Robyn followed her into the room she came out of. It was a small office cluttered with papers. Blissy stood among the detritus, smiling to itself. Every second Robyn looked at it she couldn't help but smile and feel all gooey inside. Robyn sat in a chair in front of Osage's desk, across from her. “Excuse the mess. I'm not very organized," said the professor.

Robyn was just impressed by how many papers there were. They must have had some very important things to say. “It's OK! Your Pokémon is very cute. What is it?"

“This is Blissy. She's my assistant."

“OK." She waved at the egg-shaped Pokémon. “Hi, Blissy!"

The Blissy waved its little flipper-arm back at her. “Blissy!"

Osage smiled to herself. Too cute. “So, did your girlfriend tell you what you'll be doing today?"

“Yes. A lot. She said you're gonna look at my head and help me get smart about Pokémon."

“Well, that's definitely a simplified version of it. Do you know exactly how it's going to work?"

Robyn shook her head, flinging her long black hair. “No ma'am."

“I see. Well, it's protocol that you have to know everything I'll be doing to you so that you can consent to it. Lawsuits, and all that." She picked up a laminated paper depicting a basic run through of the procedure. There were two profiles of a bald person's head, one with their skull intact, the other with the skull surgically removed like a cap, exposing the wrinkly pink cerebrum. Besides the diagram was what looked like a silver chip with little metal pegs coming out the bottom of it. The chip was circled to zoom in on its location on the very apex of the brain, in the crack of its hemispheres.

Robyn was already entranced. The sight of a person's crown being gone made her wonder if she could remove hers that easily. She brought her hand up to the side of her head and ran around her scalp to see if there were any creases she'd never found before. Disappointingly, there weren't any. “Are you going to open my head?"

Osage nodded. “Yes, but you'll be sound asleep for it. You won't feel a thing."

“Oh! But it's not nighttime yet. I don't think I can go to sleep."

Osage held back a chuckle. “Don't worry! I have some silly gas in a tube you can breathe that'll make you go right to sleep, no problem! Blissy will put a mask on you and you'll be off to dreamland before you can say 'goodnight'."

“Oh. OK. How are you gonna open my head? Are you gonna crack it like an egg?"

This time Osage did laugh. “Oh no no no. We have some very neat lasers that will go through your skull but not a millimeter deeper. They're really special in that they cut bone and skin but nothing else, least of all your brain."

“That sounds cool! Can I watch?"

“No, I'm afraid you'll be asleep."

“Oh. Yeah." She felt stupid for asking. Osage's insistence that she'd be asleep during the ordeal did not assuage any of her fears. Indeed, they only worsened them. How was she supposed to know if everything was OK if she was asleep? With Koa away at work, there was nobody else to watch her and make sure she was safe. The Blissy was cute and Osage was a nice lady, but for some reason Robyn couldn't put her finger on, she didn't fully trust them yet. “I don't know why, professor, but I'm kinda… I don't know." She fidgeted her thumbs in her lap.

“Are you nervous?"

That was the word. “Yes ma'am," she said with a nod.

“I understand. Surgery can be scary. That's why your girlfriend signed all those big papers. Did you see her do that?"

Robyn nodded. “Yes. She said that was so you couldn't get in trouble if something bad happened."

Osage chuckled. I can't say she isn't blunt. “That's right, but that doesn't mean Blissy and I won't be extra, extra, extra careful with you."

Osage may have been a smart lady, but the way she spoke made it sound like Robyn was being misled. “OK, but I'm still nervous."

Osage sighed. “And that's OK but try to remember why you're doing this. Koa said you and her are having some financial troubles, like with money."

        Robyn nodded sadly. “Yeah."

“Well, the 10,000 Pokedollars are going to help a lot with that. Koa mentioned that, didn't she?"

Indeed she had. While the number 10,000 was well out of Robyn's numerical grasp, she knew it was big. “Yes ma'am." Now that she thought about it, if the Pokedollars were what her and Koa needed, then perhaps the surgery was necessary. However scared she was, it would make Koa happy. Robyn summoned a brave face. “OK. I'll do it."

That decision had already been made for her, but Osage kept that to herself. She gave Robyn a smile. “Good to hear. First, I want to ask you some questions. You like Pokémon, right?"

Robyn's face lit up. “I do! I think they're very cute." She flashed a smile at Blissy.

“Good! So do I. How many can you name?"

Robyn's smile faded. “Well… Not a lot. Koa usually tells me their names when I see a pretty one. She's a lot smarter than I am. She knows a lot more about Pokémon than I ever will."

Osage pursed her lips. “We'll see." She rustled around her papers before drawing another laminated sheet. On it were 6 Pokémon. “Robyn, can you name any of these six Pokémon?"

Robyn's smile returned. “I'll try!" Her eyes squinted as she brought her face closer to the paper. The six Pokémon presented to her all rang a bell, but only a fuzzy assortment of syllables and sounds came to her. Osage's wrinkled index finger sat on the top left one. It was a small, white and blue Pokémon with a long, bushy tail. Tail. Fluffy. Blue. Squirrel. “Fluffmunk" Robyn said.

On the other side of the sheet the answers were printed directly behind the corresponding Pokémon. Written was the word Pachurisu. Without correcting Robyn she moved to the next one, a cream colored dog with a long paint brush for a tail. “This one?"

“Uhhhh, Picasso-dog."

Smeargle. She pointed to the next one, a cat with a gold coin on its forehead. “This one?"

“Uhhhhhh, Goldicat"

Meowth. She moved her finger to the next one, the first on the second row. It was an orange primate with a burning tail tip.

Robyn puckered her lips. Pressure built up behind it to release the consonant “M". “Master Monkey."

Monferno. Osage's finger moved onto a catfish Pokémon.

“Catfish."

Dondozo. Osage made it to the last one, a lumbering Pokémon plated in armor.

“Rrrrrrrrrex!" Robyn said, pointing her finger out proudly.

Aggron. 0 for 6. “Very good!" Osage put the paper away. “Next time you'll know them for sure! You'll know them better than Koa does."

Robyn's eyes went wide with wonder. “Really?"

Osage nodded. “Really."

Robyn was on the operating table, a surface of starchy cushion that felt uncomfortable to sit down on. It was bent so that she sat in the semi-upright position with head at a diagonal angle to the floor. She was in a blue gown that came down just above her knees. Above her was a halo of white fluorescent light, blinding her from the rest of the room. She could hear Professor Osage rummaging around with Blissy getting everything ready. Before she lied down, she had seen a bubbling vat of blue liquid inside of a giant beaker. Next to the operating table was a large stainless-steel tray lined with sharp surgical tools and an empty one next to it. Finally, there was the laser on its stand above her. It was a huge arm on a swivel mount, resembling an X-Ray camera. The muzzle resembled a laser pointer Robyn liked to play with sometimes, though she was dimly aware that this was not something to be toyed with.

Osage's face appeared beneath the halo of light. A mask was covering her face and a tie had contained her explosive gray afro. Blissy appeared on the other side, wearing a mask too. “Are you ready, Robyn?"

The answer was 'no', but Robyn had to be brave. “Yes ma'am."

“Good girl. Blissy?"

“Blissy!" Blissy pulled an oxygen mask over Robyn's face, gently lifted her head, then strapped it on over her mouth and nose.

“Just breath like you normally do. Count down from 100."

Robyn barely knew how to count to 100 forwards. OK. 100. Um… 9. No, 90. No, 99. That's right. 100. 99… 98? Yeah. 98. 98… 98… … … … Robyn's perception seeped away with the flicker of an eye. Her pupils uncoupled in their sockets, losing all focus and thought. She would not remember it but falling down on her was a great blanket of fuzz, one that drowned out her senses and landed her in a state of deep sleep.

Once Osage saw that Robyn was down, she went to work. Osage grabbed the laser arm and pulled it towards Robyn's head. The elbow joints extended out to meet her like the neck of a crane. Once it was in place Osage maneuvered Robyn's long black hair so that she could see the scalp beneath. They would have to burn through some follicles to achieve the cut, but fortunately she had long and thick enough hair to cover it up. Osage grabbed the laser, positioned it over Robyn's face, then made some minute adjustments so that it aimed directly at her forehead, about an inch above the brow.

Here we go. “Blissy, fire when ready."

“Blissy." Blissy was behind the laser mount at the trigger button. She pressed it with her flipper. The machine powered up with a terrific rumble.

Bzzzzzzzt.

Out shot a bright red beam that landed on the right quadrant of Robyn's forehead. The skin sizzled apart and melted like foam under a jet of water. A thin whisker of steam rose into the air. Osage waited a few seconds, waiting for the laser to penetrate the cranium beneath. The laser drilled into her bone, scraping away at the calcified armor until it finally breached her forehead. Zip! As designed, the laser killed itself the moment it detected brain matter. That was good. Poor Robyn didn't need to lose what little she had. Osage scooted the laser over to the left. “Fire when ready."

Bzzzzzzzt.

And so, they repeated across the entire circumference of Robyn's skull, drilling small holes until it made a complete perimeter. When Osage was done there was a thin black trail and the smell of singed flesh and hair. Osage moved the laser out of the way. She brought her latex-gloved hands to Robyn's head, landing her thumbs on her forehead and her middle fingers on the sides. She applied a gentle amount of pressure, then started to lift. The marrow sandwiched inside of her skull made a wet splilch sound as the halves of her crown parted. With it came the sound of air siphoning into the vacuum that was Robyn's inner head.

Schhhhhuuulk

Off came her cap, bringing with it a curtain of silky black hair. Osage lifted it carefully so as not to let a hair fall into the mush below. She looked underneath the crown to see a glistening bowl of white and red. She carried it over to the empty stainless-steel tray next to her like an offering plate and placed it scalp-down.

In its wake was a fissured mound of pinkish-red cerebrum, pulsing and throbbing with the measured beat of Robyn's heart. Thin veins wound among the folds like a roadmap. A topography of wormy crevices twisted and swirled in a sort of orderly chaos. The material was like a gooey sponge, covered only by the red-orange caul of protective membrane.

She grabbed a scalpel and drew the blade to the center of the membrane and just barely nicked it. The thin brain skin slit open like torn nylon, then continued to fall apart as Osage dragged the scalpel down eeeeeeever so slowly. At last she was given an uncensored look at Robyn's brain. Through the great many veins winding through she saw cherry-red life juice racing upon the pulse of Robyn's heart. The dull pink neural matter beneath it would briefly come to life with a flash of color each time, then fade back to normalcy until the next throb.

It was hypnotizing to watch, but there was a job to do, and every second counted. Osage placed the reddened scalpel aside and took a deep breath behind her mask. Next came the most crucial part. Fouling this up had no comeback. Robyn's life would quite literally be in her hands. Standing over Robyn above her head, Osage slid her hands down into the crater below. Her latex-wrapped fingers squelched into the gaps flanking Robyn's cerebrum, squishing the brain and rubbing against the inner cranium. Luckily for the both of them, Robyn was lacking a severe amount of gray matter. The space between her mind and her skull was enough that getting Osage's twiny fingers inside didn't risk any damage to the integrity.

Her fingers slid down far enough so that she could feel the bottom curve of the brain. She closed her grip. It felt like holding onto the insides of an overly ripe cantaloupe, only much, much, much more delicate. The need to take a few more breaths was strong, but Osage couldn't waste any more time. She started pulling. That fatty mass of pink elevated from its cistern, then came to a stop once the brain stem went taut. Osage did not stop pulling. She kept her pressure even without escalating or easing. She just kept pulling, and pulling, and pulling, until…

Puhp!

That rubbery tendon snapped apart like dry leather, yanking the brain out of its casing for an inch before Osage stopped it. Just like that, Robyn's body was dead, but she wasn't gone. They needed to act fast. “Blissy, life support."

“Blissy." Blissy went to work stuffing Robyn's slack jaw with a breathing tube. As Osage lifted her mind the rest of the way out Blissy wired a medical cable down to where the stem had been severed. The two cords connected and began powering Robyn's Central Nervous System, permitting her heart to beat and her lungs to breathe. Though her mind was quite literally gone, her body resumed living.

Osage carried the precious cargo over to the empty tray and laid it down next to Robyn's severed cap. Even as it sat there, Osage couldn't bring herself to remove her hands. Beneath her fingertips was Robyn. No, not the empty shell of flesh and bone wallowing on the table behind her, but the wrinkly football of glistening sponge in front of her. Even after decades of studying neuroscience, holding brains never lost its wonder. In her grasp was the entirety of what made Robyn human, her memories, her personality, her intellect (however lacking), her very being. A miracle of evolution packed with such biological and philosophical potential that not even the galaxy and its many billions of stars was as complex. To Osage what she held was not a lump of fat and neurons, but the very foundation of humanity and its understanding of the universe.

Only when Blissy peeped behind her did she snap out of her trance. “Right. Sorry." The main part of the procedure was ironically the easiest and safest part. On the tool tray was a small plastic box Osage casually flicked open. In it was a brain chip sitting on a bed of gray foam. She plucked it out with her thumb and index finger and brought it over to Robyn's brain. After spotting the very top portion of her cerebrum she stuck the chip into where the two hemispheres met to form a shallow meridian. The chip did the rest of the work. Unseen to the naked eye was an armada of nanoscopic tendrils latching onto Robyn's neurons. The chip would map out the entirety of her brain, find where her memories were stored, then reorient their structure so that they would harbor all known Pokémon and their data.

And that was it! Now all Osage had to do was plop the brain in its incubation beaker, wait an hour, then come back and stitch things back up. She hoisted the brain and slid it down into the blue liquid inside of the beaker. The surface rose to accommodate the volume of her brain which, in all honesty, wasn't a lot, certainly below average. Poor girl, Osage thought once again as she watched the tiny bubbles rising from the bottom of the beaker slide across the surface of Robyn's gray matter. She picked the beaker up off the tray and carried it over to a nearby shelf where she thought it would be safer. “Well! Now we wait." She peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the biowaste bin. “I'm starving. How does a grilled cheese sound?"

“Blissy!"

“Yeah, me too."

Robyn's current pause on consciousness went smoothly. Though absent of any real thought or lucidity, Robyn felt as though her body was floating in a void of warmth and comfort. That was, of course, only her brain that felt any of that. Her body was several feet away, unfeeling and without input. While Osage and Blissy munched on sizzled their sandwiches in a pan, the chip was doing its job filling Robyn with all Pokémon data known to man. The operating room was silent other than the ­­beep beep ­of the ECG reader. Everything was calm and silent otherwise. Robyn's brain sat in the beaker like it was a jacuzzi, dully feeling its bubbly warmth.

That was until Osage got a call.

Inside the operating room was an intercom system so that the professor could answer calls hands free. The machine was attached to the shelf where Robyn's mind was. It had two main settings for getting Osage's attention: ring and vibrate. The person calling Osage put in the wrong extension and rang the operating room instead of her office. The intercom was on vibrate.

Bzzzzhhhhhh!

The entire shelf shook hard. While it didn't jostle hard enough to knock the beaker off, thank God, it slid around some objects that were sitting on the shelf. At the very top was a thunder stone and a metal spoon that had been bent into a right angle by an Alakazam some years ago. The thunder stone began rolling towards the edge of the vibrating shelf. It pushed the bent spoon along with it, getting closer and closer with each burst of vibrations until finally they both came plummeting off.

Ker-plunk!

There was a fountain of blue water shooting up from the beaker as both objects landed in it and fell to the bottom aside Robyn's brain. The reaction was instantaneous. The electrolytes infused with the liquid grew excited, igniting both the stone and the spoon. The bubbling intensified into an audible gurgle. Soon individual streams turned into a white froth. From the glassy thunder rock came an intense white glow whose heat washed across Robyn's brain. The spoon started to bend again, forming a complete swirl.

Blue liquid began boiling over the lip of the beaker. Soon the brain inside could not be seen through the curtain of blinding white light. Robyn's lifeless body was cast in a great whiteness which blanketed the entire operating room. Within the cylindrical confines of the beaker was the rapid absorption of power and potential. What had been poorly woven neurons began linking themselves into an impossibly dense clot of intelligence. The chip was just along for the ride, becoming a sideshow next to the swelling miracle of science it was attached to.

Then, just like that, the bubbling stopped. In the wake of such chaos the light faded back into the beaker to reveal a fatter, heavier, healthier brain than what had been put in it. The stone and the spoon were gone, their matter now belonging to Robyn.

*      *      *

Osage came back after her break, casually putting her gloves back on and whistling alongside Blissy. She came to a stop when she saw the brain in its beaker. The brain itself looked fine but the beaker looked… smaller? She speed-walked closer. She noticed that the sides of the brain were flattened against the glass, something it wasn't doing before. The surface of the liquid should've risen given the inexplicable increase in brain volume, but it was lower somehow. That's when she noticed the blue liquid splashed over the shelf and puddled on the floor below.

“Oh no." She reached into the beaker and yanked the brain free. So heavy! What happened? Tests on other brains using the chip never produced such growth. Granted, those had been on corpse brains. Perhaps living brains grew like this. There was no time to think about it. Osage hustled over to Robyn's body and stood over her head. She lowered the cerebrum into the bowl stem-first. The severed cord met the stump and began to fuse thanks to the cord Blissy had attached. Once the brain was fully in place and the stem was healed, Blissy carefully pulled the cord free.

Robyn's heartbeat attained its own rhythm. Her breathing deepened. She was alive, and on her own power. Osage sighed with relief. “Oh, thank heavens."

They removed the breathing tube and replaced Robyn's skull cap. They wrapped it with some heavy white bandaging which would ensure a proper healing process. Now they just had to wait for her to wake up!

She did an hour later, fluttering out of the mental dark with a few twitches of her eyes. Her senses came back to her slowly: first a pour of white light, then the press of the operating table beneath her. There was a weird metallic taste in the back of her mouth and the smell of chemicals. Lastly, she heard the professor's voice.

“Robyn? Are you OK?"

Robyn's eyes looked to meet the professor's. She was standing over her with a worried look on her face. “Y-Yeah…" Robyn said weakly. “I think so." She tried sitting up, but Osage held her back with a firm touch on her shoulder.

“Easy now. You need rest, plus I need to ask you some questions."

Robyn had many of her own to ask but was too frail to ask them. “Oh… Ok."

Osage left and then returned with the same paper with the 6 Pokémon on them. She held them for Robyn to see. “Can you name this Pokémon?" Her finger was over the Picharisu.

It took Robyn a moment to focus. When she did, the word fell on her like a pouncing lion. She spoke without hesitation or doubt. “Pachurisu." She frowned. How did I know that?

Osage smiled. “That's right!" Her finger slid over. “Now this one."

It came just as easy. “Smeargle. Wait, I know the others too." She rattled them off like her ABC's. In fact, it felt like all 1008- a number she was 100% certain of -discovered Pokémon were branded into her memory with infinitely more clarity than the alphabet was. The following Pokémon on the paper rolled out of her crisply and cleanly like the marching step of soldiers. “Meowth. Monferno. Dondozo. Aggron." But it didn't stop there. Zipping across her mind was a tickertape of Pokémon names, images, and various facts, all passing at once with the efficiency of a well-conducted train station. While Osage celebrated the operation's success, Robyn stayed where she was, staring into the ceiling with a ponderous look on her face. There was not just the encyclopedia of poke data on her mind. Flashing behind, around, and through it was the flourishing of a million other facets within her mind. She remembered her countdown prior to passing out. 100? She could count to a million. Two million. Ten million. 100 million. What came after that? She didn't know the word, but it formed a concept that she could not only grasp but also bend, warp, and meld according to the needs of her imagination.

Spreading through her psyche was the formation of infinite ideas, unshapen but malleable. Words concocted themselves out of thin air, based not on her memory of hearing them but on what her mind thought such alien concepts would sound like. She looked around the operating room. No longer a room with shiny looking objects, it was a warehouse of technologies and mechanisms begging for her inspection and dissection. Already her mind was birthing three dimensional models of what each object looked like and how it was used. Zooming out from the building itself, a map of the region and the world beyond pieced itself together like a puzzle. It was a world teeming with not only Pokémon, but a plethora of other wonders ready to be discovered, analyzed, and admired.

Osage was oblivious to all of it. She explained to Robyn that she wasn't allowed to touch her head. For the first time since she got there, Robyn noticed a somewhat condescending tone. Robyn nodded along and repeatedly insisted that she understood everything and that it didn't need repeating. When she spoke, her words did not waver or hesitate. Every syllable came out with the authority of absolute confidence. Meanwhile, she was still busy with the onrush of newfound philosophies and impossible geometry. She battled the flood in silence, barely listening to whatever Osage had to say.

Osage wired the money to Koa. Robyn got dressed and said goodbye to the professor and Blissy. As she waved at the Pokémon she did not merely see a cute ovoid critter, but an intricate creature full to the brim with secrets. She stepped out into the parking lot. It was a bright and beautiful day. Birds were singing. Without an ounce of self-input, she recognized it as the song of a Rookidee. With it came its image and an entire page worth of facts. Her bandage burned. She held her forehead as she walked to her bike. As she pulled it off the rack and sat down on it, she started to wonder if she knew the way back home.

But there was no need to worry. She knew the place like the back of her hand.