The Aura is With Us

Chapter 29: Break In

"You found him?" Ash said, scrambling out of his bed with a sleepy Pikachu rolling off of him.

"Closest lead I've gotten so far," Amanda said, his cousin's face the picture-perfect image of someone who had way too much coffee and not enough sleep, but the excitement in her usually blank grey eyes was covering up the exhausted look somewhat.

"Did you sleep at all last night?" Ash said.

"yes...no...yes...what time is it?" Amanda said.

Dawn. Lucario grumbled, blinking away the sleep from his eyes.

"Well, the suns up so I am too," Amanda said, "Besides, I can sleep on the plane ride back."

Ash stood up, rubbing his eyes. The floor cold underneath his sock covered feet, as he walked over to see what was on Amanda's laptop. Goh was stirring on his bed, hair almost wild enough to match with Ash's blood relatives. Sir Aaron was standing and joining them, seemingly wide-awake despite being dead to the world not just a few minutes before.

"It's a quarter to six," Goh grumbled, looking at his phone but remaining in his bed, "I got up with you at three...you did not sleep."

"Nope! But I have a good reason!" Amanda said.

"You found your brother," Sir Aaron said.

"Well, I think I did," Amanda said, "Come see this."

Ash took the chair next to his cousin, petting the snoozing Umbreon on the floor with his foot, making sure not to hit her with a chair leg, before looking at laptop screen. Sir Aaron stood behind them looking down with interest. On the screen looked like a weird painting of some type of shape in front of a blackened screen, like a nameless structure of chicken wire stuck in a dark sky. Ash shared a glance with Sir Aaron, clearly communicating that neither of them knew what this had to do with Amanda's finding.

"Whaaaaat are we looking at?" Ash said.

Amanda sighed, "Okay, so looking through the data I mined, I was sorting through things between a 'helpful' 'likely' and 'junk', categories. In Helpful I put all building specs and other things that might lead to Riley. After spending the last night roughly sorting things, I started on 'helpful' when I came across this."

Ash raised a brow, "This is building spec? Where are the walls?"

"Not a building," Amanda said, "An underground tunnel network, naturally formed if the 3D map is anything to go by. Or just made-"

"Without modern day techniques," Sir Aaron suddenly said.

"Yeah," Amanda raised a brow.

"Uhm, is there any way to see the whole network?" Sir Aaron said.

"You mean from like a flying-type's eye view?" Amanda said.

Sir Aaron nodded.

"Ask and ye, shall receive," Amanda said, and the spec swirled in one direction on the screen then zoomed out.

The knight gazed at the screen with intense consideration. Fingers gripping his chin as his teeth gently sank into his lip.

"Do you recognize it?" Ash said.

"I might. Some of it looks familiar. The Guild had many underground labyrinths built, usually to hide relics or to send royalty to for protection," Sir Aaron explained.