"Darrin!"

Candela threw herself up the final rungs, nearly losing her grip thanks to her sweat-slickened palms. She leaned over the gaping mouth of the funnel and watched streams of pokéballs swirl down into it via various pipes and chutes. Her eyes frantically searched for a sign of the boy, but he must have already been sucked into the depths. Candela swung her leg over the edge, prepared to follow him down.

"Candela, wait!"

Candela halted at the sound of Professor Willow's voice. She leaned back out and found him standing at the base of the machine with Spark on one side and a bespectacled child on the other. Candela struggled to process what she was seeing. The boy couldn't be Darrin; she'd just watched him plummet into the funnel.

"Professor! What's going on?" she shouted down, still baffled by the riddle she'd been presented with.

In case one Darrin doppelganger wasn't enough, a second Darrin stepped out from behind a thick pipe. Something wasn't right about this one, however. His eyes were tiny, beady things, and his mouth was entirely wrong for a human: flat and straight, curving into an unsettling smile on the edges.

The realization felt like a slap in Candela's face. "Ditto?"

The Darrin with the weird face glowed and melted into a gooey pink glob on the floor, still smiling that obnoxious smile. Cayenne bounded from the same hiding place, looking absolutely delighted with herself as she pranced around Spark's feet.

"You little traitor," Candela whispered to herself as the pieces of the puzzle came together in her head.

"Come down, Candela," said the Professor, looking as stern as anyone could while still having a nose as red as a clown's. "We need to talk."

Candela descended the ladder slowly, dreading the conversation. Cayenne must have alerted the professor that something was going on when she ran off earlier. Then Willow must have come up with the plan to have the ditto doppelganger of Darrin climb the resetting machine, appear to fall into it, and transform into something that could escape without Candela seeing, like a gastly. It was a cruel trick, and Candela's heart was still pounding hard enough that she heard the beat in her ears.

Once she reached the ground, Candela braced herself for the worst. She couldn't even meet the gazes of the three starters that stood at the professor's feet.

"First of all, I'd like to know why neither of you considered turning the machine off," Willow said.

Candela winced. The thought hadn't crossed her mind. At least Willow had confirmed that Spark wasn't in on the trick.

"I wasn't thinking clearly," Candela said, still staring at the ground.

"As for everything else… I don't know where to start," Willow said. A heavy disappointment weighted his words. "Putting Starter Day back on behind my back. Leaving a beginning trainer – not to mention a child – alone in a field without human or trained pokémon supervision. Insisting on working while sick and exposing others to-"

Darrin's laughter disrupted Willow's speech. Candela managed to look away from the floor to find Darrin making faces at the ditto, who had taken the boy's shape again and was joyfully making the same faces back at him. Candela wasn't sure she'd seen Darrin smile all morning, but now, he was having the time of his life. He high-fived the ditto and started a goofy dance that the pokémon copied. The young trainer laughed and laughed until he started to hiccup, which the ditto also imitated.

Willow rubbed his chin as he watched the two playing together. Then, he withdrew a pokéball from the pocket of his lab coat and handed it to Darrin. The boy looked at it and shook his head.

"No, Professor, I can't throw good," Darrin said.

"Try one more time," Willow said, his tone infinitely warmer than it had been when addressing Candela and Spark.

The ditto morphed back to its usual shape as Darrin rolled the ball in his hands. Candela couldn't believe what she was seeing. Dittos were a rare species in this region. If she remembered correctly, any that happened to pass through the lab had been exported from other regions on a strictly as-needed basis. She peeked at Spark, knowing how important dittos were to Pokémon breeding and, by extension, his research. The Team Instinct leader watched with an intrigued yet somewhat dazed expression.

Darrin wound up for the pitch and chucked the ball forward a couple feet too short, but the ditto managed to splat itself into a shape that made contact with the ball. In a beam of red light, the pokémon vanished into the pokéball. It rocked once, twice, a third time… and was still.

"Professor! Are you seriously…?" Candela began, but Willow silenced her with a cold gaze.

"Can I keep it?" Darrin asked, saucer-eyes large and pitiful.

"Yes, if you promise to train it with kindness," the professor said with a gentle smile to take the edge off his rough voice. "Now, your mother should be waiting for us in the front. Let's get you home."

§

Candela and Spark stood side by side by the reception desk, wringing their hands like children awaiting parental punishment. When Candela sneezed, Spark offered her the last tissue in the cheerful butterfree box. Ahead of them, they silently watched Willow wave goodbye to Darrin and his mother as they departed the lab. The Professor waited until they were safely down the front slope before turning to his assistants.

"Professor, I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I wanted to do Starter Day so badly, and I knew the everyone was counting on us, and everyone has had such a miserable time fixing up the town that they needed this," Candela blurted.

Spark stepped in before Willow could respond. "I agree with Candela. I think people had been looking forward for today, and that they needed something good to happen after all the bad."

"I'm not arguing that with you. I believe you're right," said the professor. He leaned on the reception desk as he weighed his next words. "Maybe the town needed Starter Day, but you needed a break even more."

Candela laughed sharply. "Professor, there's been no time for breaks. We're behind schedule on just about everything. You were just saying earlier that our budget is looking shaky. I had to do something to reassure the town that we're all OK. Because if we're OK, then they'll be OK. They look up to us. We can't afford to let them down."

Candela didn't understand why the professor's eyes seemed so sad as he looked at her. Was he pitying her? She didn't like it, and was relieved when he looked away.

"You let down that new trainer today, Candela," said the professor. The words struck like needles in Candela's heart. "But it's OK. We are human beings. We're allowed to be weak, and make mistakes, and recover. We're even allowed to take sick days."

Candela didn't know what to say. Willow stood straight again and placed his hands on her shoulders. His hands were warm and firm and familiar. A lump formed in Candela's throat.

"I'm sorry, Professor," she whispered.

"I accept your apology on the condition that you take something for that cold and take the rest of the day off, at the very least," Willow said, letting her go. "You've worked so hard these past weeks getting our lab back on track. You need to rest, so that when your friends need that wild energy of yours, you'll have the strength to provide it."

"Understood," Candela said. She couldn't let him see her cry. She was a grown woman. Why was this happening?

Mercifully, Willow turned to Spark. "I appreciate your efforts to improve your research methods, but you're doing yourself wrong to continue in this condition. Go to bed. Learn to read labels. And stop eating my chips."

Spark chuckled meekly, but Willow's flat expression indicated that he wasn't really joking.

"If you need me in the next 24 hours – which I hope you will not – I'll be in my private quarters marathoning bad television, and I suggest you do the same," Willow said. His smile was tired and strained, but kind.

"I guess we're going home, then," Candela said as Willow disappeared through the door that led to his onsite living quarters. Cayenne rubbed against her calves.

"Or, I could heat up some canned soup to split and we could watch movies in the conference room blanket fort," Spark said.

"Conference room blanket fort?"

Spark yawned. "Like I told you. I've had trouble sleeping, and I had lots of blankets from the hatchery, and it seemed like a good project at three in the morning. Turns out the conference room screen can do more than run quarterly slideshows."

"Sounds like you're inviting me to a movie night," Candela said.

"And it doesn't even have to be a bad movie," Spark said, though he sounded slightly disappointed.

Candela coughed into her elbow. "Even though I'm gross?"

"I might even be grosser," said Spark.

Candela really didn't want to bring up anything from earlier in the day, but she knew she had to. "Even though I was kind of a jerk to you before?"

"Even though you were a super jerk," Spark said with a solemn nod of his head.

"And I'm sorry I called you useless."

Spark shrugged. "Do you want to watch movies in a blanket fort while we succumb to the plague or not?"

Candela laughed and lifted Cayenne from the floor. "Yes, I do. Even if they're awful movies."

Spark shoved her shoulder lightheartedly and made for the lab's half kitchen, Rutabaga bouncing along at his heels. Another spike of quilt punctured Candela's heart as she reflected on the terrible things she'd thought about him earlier. It was by luck alone that she'd managed to hold her tongue. The rage had rampaged through her like a wild pokémon, distorting her thoughts, making it hard to remember who she was, what she stood for. Because she couldn't be the kind of person who thought that way about her friends.

Could she?

Candela's communicator buzzed in her pocket. She opened the new message from Blanche, expecting a reprimand from them, too. It was like they could sense someone screwing up from a mile away. Cayenne reclaimed her seat on Candela's shoulder and watched the screen.

Blanche had attached a weather report in a message addressed to all members of the lab. At first, Candela could make no sense of it. The report called for a winter storm system to sweep through the area, but that was impossible. Summer was only just coming to an end. Was the cold making Candela hallucinate this?

Another message from Blanche: "Checking the authenticity of this report. May be nonsense or computer error, but thought I'd share. Will keep you updated. Feel better."

Candela put away the communicator as Spark came back with a pair of microwaveable soups. She guessed he hadn't seen the message yet. She gratefully took the soup he offered as they walked down a hall toward the conference room.

"Blanche sent us a weather report that's showing a snowstorm on the way," Candela said.

Spark frowned. "Just when I thought the cough syrup high was wearing off…"

"You heard me correctly," Candela said. "It has to be some kind of prank or mix-up, but it's weird that Blanche took it seriously enough to share with us."

"Good thing we have a blanket fort, then," Spark observed.

"Guess so," said Candela.

The report had to be fake. Candela could worry about placating Blanche's paranoia later. For now, it was OK to take a sick day.

§

9/4/2016 AN: As the blatant foreshadowing suggests, I'm working on another, larger story for the team leaders. I've been lucky in the last week to have a lot of time to write, so my updates on this and the previous story have been fairly quick. I probably won't be able to match that pace on the next installment, but I'll damn well try! Poke me with a stick if you haven't seen new content in a while. I hope you'll stay tuned for a bigger, heavier, adventure-ier story in the near future!