Nimbasa City was overwhelming.
Bright, flashy signs were everywhere, advertising various amusements for even more varying prices. A jovial tune was playing from somewhere, comprising of synthesized trumpets. Pokemon hurried everywhere, loudly talking over everyone else to make themselves heard.
Gideon was already tired, and the constant noise didn’t help. “Where can we find a place to sleep?”
Weavile didn’t hear him, but he seemed to know where he was going. He made his way through the crowds, the rest of the group following him to a slightly quieter part of the city. He passed through a revolving glass door, and after a moment of hesitation, Gideon followed.
The building was blissfully quiet. Gideon slumped a little in relief as Keo and Dexter followed him through. They were in some kind of hotel, the red carpet leading up to a counter where a Dreepy floated, typing at a computer. It glanced at Weavile with an irritated glance before returning to its work. “Welcome to the Cross Wave Hotel. Hope you’ve either got a reservation or lots of cash.”
Weavile unslung his backpack and pulled out a handful of money, slamming it on the counter with a rattle. “This enough?”
The Dreepy blinked at him and then at the pile of money on the counter. “That’s- I was joking. That’s not nearly enough Poke, anyw-“
Weavile reached into the backpack and slammed down another two handfuls on the counter. “I need a room for five. This enough?”
The Dreepy stared at the now quite large pile of golden coins on the counter before turning to its computer and typing something. “Yes, I can get you a room for five Pokemon,” it said, somewhat dazed. “Are you sure…?”
Weavile grinned, “Yeah, that’ll be all, thanks.” He gestured to the tired looking group behind him. “They’ve had a long day.”
The Dreepy glanced from the coins to the group behind him. “What did you do, rob a bank?” it muttered. But it took the coins and deposited them somewhere beneath the counter. “Enjoy your stay,” it said as it slid a room key across the countertop.
Weavile took the key and weaved it through his claws as he walked down the hall to the stairs, whistling. The Dreepy watched all of them go before shrugging and returning to its undoubtedly fascinating endeavors.
Instead of taking the stairs, like the entire group had been dreading, he turned to a pair of metal doors and pressed a button. After a minute or so, the doors slid open, revealing a room inside.
They all walked inside as Weavile checked the room key and pressed a button. After a moment, the doors slid shut and they went up.
Keo stumbled and looked around wildly. “What- what’s happening? What’s going on?”
“Never ridden an elevator before?” Weavile asked, grinning. “Get used to them, they’re everywhere in the larger cities.”
Keo stumbled again as the elevator came to a stop, the doors sliding open to reveal a hallway. He practically leapt from the elevator and shook himself like he was soaked. “I am never never never going in there again!”
“It’s either that or four flights of stairs,” Weavile remarked as he walked past, twirling the key in his claws. “Pick your poison.”
“Stairs,” Keo replied instantly as they walked down the hall. “Stairs always. I can handle stairs.”
They got to their room, Weavile dexterously opening the door. It revealed a comfortable looking room with five beds, a large window overlooking the rest of the city. Keo paled a little, but he avoided looking out the window. “So what’s the plan now?”
Gideon dropped the Treasure Bag to the floor and collected a dozing Valerie from Dexter, putting her gently on a bed. “Rest,” he said simply.
Dexter looked around the room and sighed. “No charging ports.”
“Sleep mode at least helps, right?” Weavile said as he also unequipped his backpack. “We’ll get some kind of adapter soon, don’t worry. What time is it?”
“Local time is 3 PM,” Dexter replied, climbing onto a bed. He didn’t need the comfort, but he felt like it would be impolite to not use it when Weavile had paid so much for the room.
“Great!” Weavile drew the curtains, leaving the ceiling light as the sole glow in the room. He glanced at Gideon, who was already almost asleep with Valerie, and Keo, who was just getting comfortable. “It’s time to rest,” he said, flicking off the light switch.
Valerie woke up in a dark room on a comfortable bed, feeling refreshed.
She sat up and looked around. Everyone else seemed to be sleeping, which was nice. She liked to get up early. A large curtain spanned the entire wall, a bit of light shining around the edges. She yearned to throw it open, shining the daylight across the entire room, but she would’ve felt bad for waking everyone else up.
She turned to Gideon, who was sleeping next to her. She delicately stroked the cowlick that stuck up on his forehead, smiling to herself. The ring on her finger caught her attention again, and her smile grew wider. He really was fluffy.
She slipped out of bed and made her way to the curtain, quickly slipping around it to avoid flashing the room in light.
Valerie gazed out in awe. A bright, sprawling city was beneath the window, the sky just beginning to grow dim with the afterglow of a missed sunset. Bright, colorful lights were everywhere, and she made out an amusement park not too far away, a Ferris wheel and a rollercoaster both rising nearly as high as the window. She pressed her face to the window, aware that she was smudging it, but she didn’t care. This city looked like something out of a postcard, and she thought it was wonderful.
She slipped around the curtain and jumped as she saw everyone else in the room awake, staring at her. “Gosh,” she said after a second, “you all don’t need to stare at me like that.”
They all blinked and exchanged glances before bursting out in laughter, even Keo cracking a smile. “What are the odds we all wake up at the same time?” asked Gideon, grinning.
“Quite low,” Dexter said. “It probably only happened because quite a few of us were not actually asleep.”
“Damn straight,” Weavile said, getting out of bed and turning on the light. The room was flooded with bright light, causing them all to have to blink rapidly to adjust (except Dexter, who simply turned down his light sensitivity).
Valerie climbed back onto the bed with Gideon. “I really, really want to go explore the city. It looks incredible.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Gideon asked hesitantly. “We should probably leave in the morning…”
“Local time is almost 9 PM,” supplied Dexter. “Theoretically, as long as we sleep another six hours at 2 AM, then we can do anything we want.”
“We’ll probably get back sooner than that,” Valerie said. She bounced a little on the bed. “Can we go explore, Sid? Can we?”
Gideon considered the question for a moment. “I don’t see why not?” he said.
Valerie tugged him off the bed and towards the door. “Let’s, let’s!”
“What about us?” Dexter asked from his bed. “The rest of us want to go, too.”
Weavile slung his backpack over his shoulder. “We’ll call it a group outing. We’ll explore Nimbasa for a little while before coming back and crashing here, and then we’ll get going.”
Keo leapt down from his bed. “Well, if everyone else is going, I might as well go too…”
They made their way towards the elevator, Valerie bouncing with excitement. “Big fan of amusement parks?” Weavile asked curiously.
“I really like them,” she admitted sheepishly, “but the entire rest of the city was glowing. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“I’ll bet it’s incredible,” Gideon said.
Keo insisted on taking the stairs instead of the elevator, so they waited for him at the ground floor. After a few minutes, he arrived, panting from exertion.
“Still not gonna take elevators?” Weavile asked, smirking.
Keo shook his head. “No. Absolutely not.”
The city was slightly more intimidating from the ground. The buildings towered over them, the lights still brightly illuminating the entire world. A small smile touched Dexter’s face. “This makes me feel… oddly nostalgic.”
Weavile looked around. The busyness of the city hadn’t calmed down, instead merely shifting audiences. “I can see why. They really did take a lot from the Veil, didn’t they?”
They made their way through the bustling city, Valerie clandestinely looking for stores. There seemed to be more attractions than stores in the city, but there were still a few interspersed in between the neon advertisements and the buildings that promised to entertain for days. She wanted to get Gideon something to repay him for his gift, but she didn’t have any ideas. After a while, she somewhat shamefully admitted this to Dexter and Weavile.
Dexter glanced at Gideon and Keo, who were watching some kind of television screen interestedly. “I cannot say that I have any ideas, either…”
“Music?” Weavile suggested. “I know it’s not quite the same thing as a ring, but a music player of some kind could go a long way.”
Valerie considered this. “I meeaaan… it’s worth a try, I guess. I don’t really remember if he likes music or not…”
“Music has been one of the few staples throughout the entirety of culture,” Weavile said, grinning. “I don’t think it’s a bad gift at all.”
Dexter had been looking around silently the entire time, taking in the entire city. He froze in front of one particular building, the rest of the group nearly losing him.
“What’s the matter?” Valerie asked with concern as they got back to him. “Did something break?” She glanced at what he was looking at.
It was a store that looked oddly out of place. Instead of being constructed with vivid colors in mind, it was a dull concrete building, which ironically made it stand out even more. A sign above the door read, “The Veiled Memory”.
Weavile walked up to the store’s window, which had writing on it. “Ever wanted to visit the Veil but never had the chance?, Step inside for trinkets and various items from the Veil-“
“Can- can we stop here?” Dexter asked breathlessly. “I- it is the closest that we can really get to it at the moment…” His mechanical tail was wagging back and forth, his excitement unable to be contained.
Valerie smiled, unable to say no to that glowing face of eagerness. “Yeah, we can stop here for a little bit. Might find something for- um, I might find something interesting.”
Keo looked up at the building before shaking his head. “I’m not going in there. The Veil is where they make more of the robots, right?”
Gideon sighed. “In that case, I’m staying out here to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”
Valerie grasped his hand amidst Keo’s protests. “Oh, thank you, Gideon. This helps so much.”
He smiled wryly. “Yeah, yeah. Just try to make it quick, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stand him.”
Weavile pushed open the glass door to let Dexter and Valerie inside. Shelves of strange objects were everywhere- futuristic looking devices that Valerie had no hope of understanding what they did. Dexter looked at the objects with such joyful interest that it made her heart swell.
“Hello, anything I can get for you?” a robotic voice asked.
They looked up to see a thing that looked vaguely like a robot Sneasel, but it was much taller and white instead of black. Its purple glowing eyes watched them curiously as it leaned on the counter, the metallic claws it had looking more like syringes. Instead of a feather, it looked like it had a very thin fluid container of some sort, the purple glow of which made Valerie a little uneasy.
Dexter peeked around a shelf and his eyes lit up. “Oh! H-hello! Are you the proprietor of this place…?”
The robot nodded. “Eyup.” It registered that it was talking to another robot and if it had eyebrows, they would’ve shot up its forehead. “An Iron Slate? I thought they discontinued that model.”
Weavile shifted a little uncomfortably. “Few friends found it in someone’s house somewhere and managed to wake it up.”
Dexter nodded rapidly. “I was awoken in a house not too far from Black City. Unfortunately,” he added as he drooped a little, “all of my memories are corrupted.”
“Damn, sorry to hear that.” The robot-Sneasel-thing glanced around the room before gesturing to the items on the store shelves. “If you see anything you’d like, let me know.”
Dexter nodded again and emoted a smile. “Thank you very much, um…?”
“Iron Venom,” it supplied. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to see another android this far out.”
Dexter and Valerie returned to perusing the shelves. Valerie didn’t see anything she wanted immediately, but a black, circular thing with a wire coming out of it caught her eye. “What’s this?” she asked, picking it up. The wire turned out to be a pair of earbuds, similar to Weavile’s.
“Compact disc player,” Iron Venom replied. “Plays CDs. A bit unreliable, but it has a great battery life.”
“Do you have any discs, then?” Valerie asked, studying the player. It had a small screen, presumably to show information about what track you were listening to, and buttons lined the edge of the circle.
“Indeed I do,” Iron Venom replied. It reached under the counter and set down a box. “Entire collection I recovered recently. Has some stuff probably not even archived by the Veil’s servers.”
Valerie scrambled onto the counter and began looking through the box. Almost all of the CDs were unmarked in any way, a few having something vague scrawled across them and even fewer having full on prints. Eventually, she just selected a disc at random— the words scrawled on it were “new cd not borked for rides only!!”— and put both it and the CD player on the counter. “How much will these cost?”
“2,000 Poke,” came the reply.
Valerie looked at Weavile, who shrugged. “Yeah, I can pay that.”
She slid off the counter and made her way back over to Dexter as Iron Venom put away the box of CDs. “Find anything?”
“Not really,” Dexter admitted sadly. His eyes were scanning the shelves, seemingly looking for something.
Valerie stroked the top of his head. “Well, if we don’t find what you’re looking for…”
Dexter smiled at her sheepishly and returned to scanning the shelves. After a few seconds, his eyes locked onto what looked like a light blue floppy disc and he squinted at it. “Um, excuse me, Iron Venom,” he said, “what is that disc thing up there?”
Iron Venom glanced at the floppy disc. “Oh, that. Some kind of data storage that has physical properties, somehow. Anyone I’ve talked to can’t read it, I’d have to take it back to the Veil.”
Dexter rocked back and forth uncertainly. “Um, Miss Valerie, can we get this?”
Valerie blinked, a little surprised. “I mean, sure. Dunno how I’m gonna reach it, though.”
Iron Venom solved the problem by nimbly vaulting over the counter, collecting the floppy disk, and returning behind the counter in one smooth motion, placing the floppy by Valerie’s CD player. “Anything else?” it asked.
Valerie and Dexter stared at it for a few seconds before Valerie shook her head and smiled. “Um, no, I think that’s probably everything.”
Iron Venom surveyed the items on the counter. “2,199 Poke,” it announced.
Weavile walked up to the counter, pulling the money out as he was still moving. He put the money down, which the Iron Venom surveyed critically before sliding back three coins, which Weavile hesitantly took. “Pleasure doing business,” Iron Venom said, putting the money into the cash register.
Valerie collected their items and they left the building, Weavile sighing in relief as they did. Keo looked at him from where he had been loitering by the door. “Uncomfortable in there?”
“Yes,” Weavile replied. “Imagine you were me. Now imagine that you walk into a store, and the person running the store looks like one of your relatives, except they’re a robot instead.”
Keo gestured at him wildly, looking at Gideon to continue some kind of previous argument. “See? See?! He gets it! He understands!”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “May I remind you that this has been an isolated incident so far.”
Weavile shuddered. “Yeesh. Yeah, not usually affected by uncanny valley, but- wow. I kinda see why there was such a debate over it now.”
“I… read a little bit about it,” Dexter admitted. “It made me feel uncomfortable just reading about it.”
Valerie glanced between the two. “What?”
Weavile turned his attention to her as they walked. “Back when humans were still on the planet, there was a massive undertaking to build the Veil. Yadda yadda, long story short, they couldn’t do it and had to resort to building these fellas.” He patted the top of Dexter’s head, causing his display to grow slightly pink. “They weren’t all sentient, at first-“
“Sapient,” Dexter corrected. “Sentient is alive, sapient is thinking.”
Weavile was silent for a second before grinning. “They weren’t all sentient, at first, but as the tech got better, we crossed some kind of event horizon and suddenly a whole lot of them got all thinky all at once. Of course, as with anything that thinks, they think they want things like ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’, so the Veil got real sour real quick.”
“Oh.” Valerie glanced down at Dexter. “But- aren’t they people, too…?”
“’Twas the debate,” Weavile said breathily, putting his arms behind his head in a relaxed way. “But as more robots gained the ability to think, more humans grew afraid of them until- well, they all left. Allegedly. Wayyyy before my time.”
Valerie studied her free hand, flexing the three fingers she had. She’d had more, hadn’t she? After a second, she gently stroked the top of Dexter’s head. “They’re not so bad. Especially once you get to know them.”
Keo shuddered. “I don’t get how you stand to touch him. Doesn’t it feel weird?”
Gideon sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Keo. Were you not just listening to what they were talking about.”
“I-“ Keo looked at the ground for a second. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Dexter smiled half-heartedly. “I get why he would be put off, he is fine.”
“He should still be a little more aware of your feelings,” Gideon said, his paw falling to his side. “Let’s drop that topic. What did you get from the store?”
“Oh!” Valerie stopped and presented the CD player to him proudly. “Music!”
He took the disc and squinted at the handwriting on it before investigating the player. “Wait, you got this for me?”
Valerie nodded. “I’m- I’m not sure you’ll like it,” she admitted humbly, “but there’s a lot more music where that came from, so…”
Gideon hugged her. “You- you really didn’t have to,” he insisted. He opened the player and put the disc in to protect it from too much damage. “You’re all I really need,” he said, smiling at her warmly.
“Oh, shut up,” Valerie said, blushing wildly.
Keo’s face wrinkled. “You two are disgusting, you know that?”
“Let them alone,” Dexter said peaceably. “Um, Miss Valerie, could I have that disk…?”
She stared at him blankly before she remembered she was still holding the floppy disk. “Oh! Right! How are you gonna hold it?”
He opened his mouth before shutting it again, his lights turning pink. “Oh. Um.”
“Just hand it to me,” Weavile said with a grin as he jogged his backpack. “I have more than enough room in here.”
She turned over the disk, Dexter watching the transaction very closely. “What do we do now?” Valerie asked, looking around at the multitudes of Pokemon and neon lights around them.
“The amusement park is a good option,” Weavile said, gesturing towards the Ferris wheel. It was visible from the ground, which was impressive.
Gideon’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “They have a Ferris wheel?!”
Valerie giggled. “Do you want to ride it together?”
Gideon started off at a run, gabbing Valerie’s hand and dragging her behind him. His sudden enthusiasm caught her a little off guard, but she caught up, laughing. They ran through the streets of the city, laughing and talking excitedly, even though they couldn’t hear each other. Their shared joy was enough.
The amusement park had far more attractions than Valerie had first thought. The steel rollercoaster and the Ferris wheel towered over the rest of the smaller coasters and rides. There was lots of yelling, and Valerie heard every time the rollercoaster made a drop. Gideon made a beeline for the Ferris wheel, panting as they arrived. “Can we- ride the- Ferris wheel?” he asked the Floragato behind the ticket booth.
The bipedal green cat looked at them. “Well, usually the fee is 100 Poke per passenger, but tonight is Couple’s Night.”
Valerie displayed the looplet on her finger, grinning proudly. “Just engaged!”
The Floragato’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow! Congratulations! Take the empty line, then, the wheel’s almost done with this revolution.”
They took the line, Valerie bouncing up and down in anticipation. “The view is gonna be so good from up there!”
Gideon grinned at her goofily. “I was thinking we could listen to the music while we were up there.”
Valerie gasped with pleasure. “You’re wonderful!” She wanted to kiss him, but it could wait until they were in the Ferris wheel.
It came to repeated stops, letting a few Pokemon out at a time. They had gotten there just as it was emptying out the last few, and after a moment, the bars in front of the queue opened. Gideon and Valerie excitedly stepped into the cabin and sat down, Valerie looking around excitedly. “I haven’t been in a Ferris wheel before!”
Gideon grinned his goofy grin at her. “They’re slow, but that gives us plenty of time to listen to this.” He waved the CD player.
Valerie gasped. “That’s-“ A grin mirroring his spread across her face. “You’re wonderful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he responded, inserting an earbud. He passed the other earbud to Valerie as the Ferris wheel started, the cabin shaking as they heard the faint hum of machinery. After a few seconds, he pressed play.
The roaring of the ocean filled Valerie’s ear, and she relaxed. A faint guitar faded in as she leaned against Gideon, staring out over the city which seemed to shrink as they rose into the sky.
The song continued, having almost an ethereal sound to it. Gideon smiled as he stroked Valerie’s hair, both of them enjoying the view and the moment. They hadn’t had a proper moment together since they had woken up in that plane crash.
“I’ve been thinking,” Valerie said as the music continued. “What are we going to do about… telling them that we’re human?”
“I don’t know,” Gideon sighed. “Humans leaving the planet is- already strange, but I just- I can’t help but get the feeling there’s more to this, you know?”
“Mhm.” Valerie watched the city drift away below them, the Ferris wheel lifting them higher and higher. “I just hope that we aren’t- immediately ostracized. They’re all such good people, and it would really suck if something like- being humans once was a dealbreaker.”
Gideon snorted. “I could hardly call Keo a ‘good person’ in good conscience.”
Valerie sighed, gazing out the window at the nebula-filled sky. “Keo… has problems, I feel. He just needs someone to talk to.”
“Like a therapist,” Gideon muttered. “But yeah, I’ve kinda… been worrying about that too. I don’t know whether or not Dexter knows already, either. He doesn’t really talk about himself.”
“Yeah…” Valerie’s gaze strayed to the moon, which was… wait. She sat up and looked harder out the window. “Wait, Sid, is that a second moon?”
This caught his attention. He looked as well, finding the second satellite very quickly. There was some kind of second moon- though it wasn’t anything they recognized. It seemed to be moving across the sky of its own accord, black nebulae spilling out from around it and into the sky, where it shimmered and obscured the stars.
“What in the world…?” Gideon mumbled. The moon looked vaguely pinkish, a far cry from the yellowish-white the moon should be. “What is that?”
“It’s kind of pretty,” Valerie said, leaning against Gideon again. It looked unnatural, but it didn’t inspire horror in her. The music playing in her ear swelled, and the combination of that and the moon’s innate beauty made her tear up, for some reason. “It’s- really pretty,” she said, her voice clogged with emotion.
Gideon wrapped an arm around her. “It is,” he said softly. “It is.”
They had reached the top of the Ferris wheel and began slowly descending again, the city that sprawled out beneath them beginning to grow in size. The music faded away just as the cabin shuddered to a stop at the ground, the door sliding open to let them step out of the cabin as the recent discovery weighed on their minds.
“Oh, we- kinda left them standing there,” Valerie realized, laughing nervously. “Um, do we even know where we came from?”
“They probably followed us,” Gideon said, but his voice had a tinge of doubt to it. “If Keo ran off in excitement to somewhere, we’d probably follow him.”
“If he was excited, I think we have more things to be worried about,” Valerie said dryly. She scanned the crowds around them as they walked around, not seeing anyone she recognized. “I mean, we can always wait at the hotel-“ she began.
“Mister Gideon! Miss Valerie!”
Dexter came running up them from out of the crowd, panting a little. Weavile and Keo followed behind, Keo looking a little green.
“Oh, hey guys,” Gideon said with surprise. “How did you find us so quickly?”
Weavile grinned. “You said something about a Ferris wheel before dashing off. It was kind of obvious where you were going.”
Valerie glanced up at the moon again, which seemed to have moved a fair deal. “Um, so, about the moon…”
Dexter looked up and stared blankly, but Keo just rolled his eyes. “That’s Lua. It kinda just appeared one day a few years ago. Weird-looking, isn’t it?”
“A bit,” Gideon admitted, “but it’s pretty.”
Valerie yawned. “Gosh, I’m tired.”
“Still wiped from today, huh?” Gideon asked kindly.
Valerie nodded. “I didn’t actually sleep for that long,” she admitted sheepishly.
“Back to the hotel, then,” Weavile announced. “Keo’s gonna need to sleep that off, anyway.”
“Sleep what off?” Valerie asked curiously.
Keo shook his head, causing him to lose his balance somewhat. “Nope. We’re not talking about it.” He glared at Weavile, who was grinning, and Dexter, who had ceased looking at the moon and just looked confused. “If either of you talk about what happened, I’ll- I’ll kill you.”
Weavile raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright,” he said jovially. “My lips are sealed.”
“Something happened?” Dexter asked in surprise. “I was too busy being whirled around-“ Keo’s death glare shut him up.
Gideon rolled his eyes. “Alright, guys. Settle down. We gotta get some rest for tomorrow.”
Lucy the Weavile sat in a chair, her arms folded as she stared at the folder on her desk.
“He’s been failing debt payments for a long time,” her handler, a Serperior, was saying. “Last one he made was a month and a half ago. Just got the news he skipped town. Sold the building to someone— we’ll get them, too— and was seen leaving through the west gate.”
Lucy closed her bionic eyes. “And you’re asking me to track down my brother.”
“Yes.” Despite the language, this wasn’t a request.
It was an assignment.
She sighed and looked at the Serperior. “He’s not going to come easy. And if he does, it’ll be without the money.”
The Serperior considered this. “We only want the money. Ask for that first. If he doesn’t comply, well…”
Lucy nodded. “I understand.” Completely.
“It would be preferable if you could start this assignment immediately,” Serperior continued. “He isn’t particularly high value, but we need the return-on-investment.”
Lucy nodded. “I will endeavor to start this task as soon as I possibly can.”
Serperior sighed in relief. “Good. In that case, you are dismissed.”
Lucy stood up and left the room, turning over the problem in her mind. She hadn’t seen Weavile since they had moved to Black City. And now here he was, getting into debt with the wrong people. Part of her really didn’t want to do this assignment. Maybe she’d capture some other schmuck and leave it to corporate to figure things out. But she herself was indebted simply by working here. Ironic, that.
She made her way to her locker and pulled it open roughly. Dammit, she needed to stop thinking about this. It was just another assignment. Another debtor that had the moronic idea to run from his own economical failings.
An idiot brother who had the moronic idea to flee into the wider world, instead of somewhere safe like White Forest.
Her claws dug into the metal door she was holding open. “Damn you, Weavile,” she muttered angrily.