I exit the room where I have been so cruelly prevented from using a simple teleporter. I attempt to slide sideways around the event flag, but I only get partway along the house before it triggers anyway.

Lillie has put her hair up and stuff so she’s no longer cosplaying as a jellyfish.

Lillie: I picked these clothes up in Malie… Do you think they suit me?

Sure do/I don’t know…

Wow, game. When it comes to Hau I’m only allowed to pick how I say he’s great, but Lillie can get told to get back in there and dress up like the jellyfish her mom wished she was.

Lillie: Oh, Bonnibel… Thank you! I feel like there’s so much I have to do now…to save Nebby…to save my mother… I…I want to be like you, Bonnibel.

Oh, Lillie. You don’t need to just copy someone else forever! Own your own feelings. It’s okay to be you! It is especially okay to be you in the not being a trainer thing.

Lillie: I want to be strong enough to face any trial.

We know human martial arts exist, as do triathlons and various other sports. You have options.

Lillie: That’s why I’m going to try my hardest! This is my Z-Powered form!

…well, that was intensely stupid, but okay.

Gladion: So this is where you were.

Gladion! Why didn’t you do more for Lillie?! She’s changed the shape of her clothing but not the color. I’m sure you have some black dye on you.

Gladion: I found this downstairs. It’s the Sun Flute.

Well. That was anticlimactic. And somewhat baffling.

Gladion: It’s apparently an artifact from Alola’s past. They say it’s to be played under the sun’s light. The Sun Flute and the Moon Flute. When sounded together, it’s said that they can call the Legendary Pokemon… That is, if you believe in old myths, anyway. Looks to me like that woman was even planning to add the Legendary Pokemon to her little collection here. Here. Take this with you.

And he hands over a masterball. What.

I mean, okay, I guess it’s not that unreasonable a pokemon hoarder would want a catch-anything ball, but we just got beastballs brought up, surely that’s what we should be getting?

Gladion: It’s a Master Ball. It can catch any Pokemon without fail. I’m counting on you to help Lillie. This is the least I can do.

…yeah, it is pretty much “the least” considering you’re carting around a pokemon designed to handle the ultrabeast onslaught. You are going to be doing something about that too, right?

Lillie: But…what are you going to do, Gladion?

Gladion: Deal with this mess. I’ve got to clean up Aether Paradise. I’d wanted to get as far away from this place as I could, together with Null…but in the end, it looks like I ended up right back here again…

I’m not sure why that means you have to do something with this place.

See, it’s still unclear if everything here is terrible or just the secret labs. Some of the employees had dialogue suggesting they were totally sincere about trying to help pokemon, so it’s not like you need to burn it all to the ground. And we saw the secret labs, and nothing much is currently happening there that needs to be dealt with right this second either.

Hau arrives and says hi, to just me by name. Despite the fact I am standing furthest away from him, after running over to me he expresses shock that Lillie is here (yes, she changed her appearance slightly, but how many long-haired blonde girls in white are hanging out here next to Gladion) and does not remark on Gladion at all.

He does say it’s fantastic, which Gladion apparently decides he will take as an insult: What was that?

Hau: I’m going to train even harder! I’ve gotta do more! I keep getting saved by Bonnibel and her Pokemon, don’t I? That’s not enough. I’ve gotta be able to save Pokemon on my own! If I can’t do that, I’ll never be an island kahuna. I’ll never be able to make people really smile!

What.

See, this sort of “oh, wait, you mean the job has…responsibilities??? time to shape up!!!” thing is totally a character type. But it’s not usually one where the character starts off with an inferiority complex and a fear they can’t live up to the responsibilities.

That, or Hau’s grin here is him cracking.

Hau: And I still haven’t even done Acerola’s trial or anything. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Gladion: Sorry for dragging you into our family mess.

That’s…that’s not really what he said. It’s not like he didn’t have time to do the trial because of getting dragged here. It’s that he’s been screwing around.

Hau: Yeah…

NOT YEAH.

Hau: But we got to see things that almost no one would ever get the chance to see!

what is happening it’s like each line of dialogue was written by a separate person who had only a rough idea of what the other lines were

Hau: Maybe if I set out to train harder, I’ll get to see more amazing things like that again!

Yeah, can’t wait to see a pokemon get mutilated to rend holes in reality causing other beings to be dragged screaming here again!!! yay trials it’s the best time of our lives!!!!!

Gladion looks furious and disgusted, but says, Yeah. Our mother does like to do things on an…extravagant scale. He is presumably wondering why the fuck I insisted on bringing Hau.

Lillie: I was really glad you came, too, Hau.

Gladion: I can get you to the next island at least. Poni Island.

Lillie: Come on, Bonnibel! Let’s show the world what we can really do! And off she runs.

Rotom tells me to get a move on and fuck you Rotom you and your red flags aren’t the boss of me.

Hau: Guess I should wish you guys a good trip, huh? I’m gonna train up myself and my team real good before I see you again, Bonnibel. Be ready for the shock of a lifetime!

Well, it’s crappy character development but I’m curious if he’ll actually get a full team of higher level pokemon. Once again, I really can’t make out if battles are easy because everything is or because it’s intentional design.

In the next area, an Aether grunt says they’re shipping off greens that farfetch’d like to eat to other regions, and then gives me one, and it’s a stick, as in the farfetch’d’s held item that they don’t eat.

Apparently the Farfetch’d populations have been dropping in other regions because they can no longer find many of these greens that have traditionally been their food source.

I’m pretty sure it has more to do with them being traditionally a food source. And it’s especially weird that farfetch’d being delicious and hunted to near extinction for it would be retconned out in the game that’s full of people eating pokemon.

I then find a bunch of trainers have suddenly appeared.

We’re here to study how things are done here at the foundation. The goals of this place are pretty much in direct opposition to Fuchsia City’s Safari Zone.

That’s very interesting but how the hell are you here. Who invited you. Where were you when Aether was attacking all trainers on sight. Who invited you when the president is AWOL?

A good Trainer catches Pokemon to raise them with all due care. That’s a kind of refuge, too.

Well, there are animals that remain only because of dedicated human owners. It’s the “raise them all” combined with the whole box system that makes it weird.

The president is such a nice lady. She invites trial-goers like us here to tour the Aether Foundation.

Okay but why.

I mean, letting kids in general see it makes sense, you want them to grow up to support your ideals and maybe work for you. Why trial-goers in particular? Is that being used as a synonym for “trainer” and even still, couldn’t you let future trainers take the tour so they’re already on-board with your ideals before they ever pick up a pokeball? Wouldn’t that be better, even, since there’d be no chance of them being able to do any damage if they found out about your secret lab or whatever, and they’re probably less likely to try to steal your pokemon?

Outside, an Aether grunt explains that injured pokemon tend to hide away to heal but sometimes they’re too badly injured which is why Aether will find them to help them, adding that it’s pretty dangerous work. Next to them, a small child who is definitely not a trial-goer says, If I hadn’t adopted my Meowth, d’you think that the people here at Aether would’ve taken it in? That’s a very good question, small child! You see, your meowth is what is known as an “invasive species”. Conservationists spend a lot of their time dreaming up new ways to murder invasive species. However, other groups are concerned for all animals, even common and invasive ones, and will spend their time and money rehabbing anything. Aether’s mission statement of “conservation” would suggest they’re more the sort of people who object to murdering animals with golf clubs because the survival rate is too high, but we know their actual goal is collection and they happily take nonnative species into the fold. However, we do know they protect some pokemon given they’re trying to keep corsola away from predators. Quite possibly it’s based on what pokemon Lusamine thinks are cute, so cats get in but murderstars don’t.

Team Skull tries to capture Pokemon and then sell them off. That’s what I heard anyway. But if a species of Pokemon goes extinct, you’ll never be able to meet one again. Doesn’t that just seem unimaginable?

In part because I own extinct pokemon, yes, yes it does.

This is a hodgepodge, isn’t it? There’s not really a proper bridge between capture and extinction, and we even just talked to that other kid saying capturing pokemon is basically preserving them. It’d make sense for Team Skull to be selling to Aether, as I said, and the whole island and conservation thing would’ve worked well with a plot about them exploiting rare pokemon if only that had ever come up in any way. (And even then, there’s the issue that the moral issue is always just selling them, because catching a bunch and then distributing them to people interested is way worse than keeping them all in a box yourself.)

The trainer standing next to them tells me to reduce garbage to protect pokemon. Sounds like you don’t really care about pokemon at all, Ms. Genocide-is-okay-if-it’s-grimer-and-trubbish.

To the other side, where a pair of scientists are talking!

The current president’s father was a very, very wealthy man and a great lover of Pokemon. He built the Aether Foundation to protect them.

Oh hey, I wonder if that’s a callback to the Pokemon Fanclub?

Other scientist, what say you?

I’d like to see our research into finding ideal environments for Pokemon to live in be turned into something tangible, you know?

So is that why Aether has one area that’s just some grass and a pond instead of actual environments, because they did the research but Lusamine didn’t care?

Then I go up to the conservation area, which apparently no one expected a player to ever do because the NPCs there still have their OMG A WORMHOLE JUST OPENED FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER dialogue.

So I try the labs, and it’s still accessible but empty of scientists. I wonder if the people designing this were expecting another cutscene railroading me off again? There’s even the direct warning earlier to look at everything now because “maybe” I won’t be back, except apparently I did just fine.

I finally go to the docks, but run around. Gladion and Lillie politely just stand there rather than triggering a cutscene when I approach, allowing me to continue along and talk to new people.

A guy by the boxes in a hardhat says, We’re checking to make sure that no Pokemon have slipped in and come along for the ride. Can’t be too sure, when we’ve got non-native Pokemon like Grimer taking over here in Alola! Invasive species are not to be taken lightly You mean like that pair up in the actual conservation area?

Maybe what it comes down to is the rate these games are coming out. There’s a bunch of people charged with nameless NPC dialogue and they were really excited about the whole environmental thing and did lots of research, and then there’s the people doing the visuals who figured they should show off the Alola forms every chance they got, so have some grimer sprites!

Whenever we try to help some Pokemon or another, that Team Skull gets in our way! I’ve got a real bone to pick with them! Like this, this really feels like no one knew what was going on with how the two groups should be linked.

Another grunt says, I was working in Driftveil for a while, helping Pokemon that got separated from their Trainers. But I left once things settled down there. I feel like this is referencing some particular event but I don’t recall anything much there. It also again brings up the issue of, is this for pokemon or “people and pokemon” – what happens if a pokemon is separated from another pokemon? What happens when a trainer abandons a pokemon?

Finally, another hardhat says, There are some things in life you just can’t do anything about. You’ll be happier if you don’t think about them. Ooooooookay then!

Time to trigger the cutscene! And it’s surprisingly unrailroady, just Gladion asking if I want to go.

Gladion: Poni Island… Almost no one lives on it, but you’ll find a whole lot of nature to explore here. This is a pretty weird statement given that we’re currently looking at houses out on docks and generally, you do that because you’re out of land. I guess maybe this is like Tourist Island and there’s some actual law against building on the island itself.

Gladion: Go. Find the kahuna. The kahuna of Poni Island also protects the shrine where Alola’s people worship the Legendary Pokemon. Maybe they will know something that might help you.

Lillie: Gladion…thank you for this. But…but when you took Null and left Aether Paradise two years ago…you left me alone with Mother! She was so bad after you left! If I hadn’t had Wicke with me…

Still don’t get what the point of Wicke is. She likes the kids, but serves the batshit mom, and doesn’t seem to be actually doing anything storywise either way.

Gladion: I’m sorry… I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. All I could think about back then was finding a way to save Null… That was the battle I was fighting. But now you’ve found your own battle to fight. I know you can handle it.

And then, emotioned out, he walks away before she can respond.

Lillie: Bonnibel. I’m OK. You don’t have to worry. I know what I have to do now. And… I don’t know. Maybe it sounds strange, but… I’m kind of excited.

Cutscene ends and she vanishes. Well! I’m really glad Lillie managed to assert herself enough to say she was upset about getting left behind by Gladion. I’m also sick of typing dialogue, so I’m stopping without much accomplished.