Pokémon Detective Case Files.

Watching the robe recede into the distance, he and Electabuzz exchanged a puzzled look.

Despite his confusion, he didn't stop. The guard casually picked up the walkie-talkie clipped to his waist, intending to recall the patrol members who had been dispatched, as instructed by the Sage. But when he tried to contact the most recently dispatched squad, he only heard a hollow static on the receiver.

No one answered.

"What's going on here?"

The guard and the two new recruits were originally subordinates of the purple-robed sage Vio, so he had taken extra care of them. The sudden loss of contact immediately made him feel that something ominous had happened.

He instinctively turned to look at the security monitor beside the door. The screen was scrolling through recent access records, and in the latest entry, a name he had never expected appeared—

"Vio!?"

What does Vio, my former boss, look like? Would he possibly mistake me for someone else?

Behind him, the "wise man" who had been walking steadily and dignifiedly suddenly started running.

"Oh no! Someone has broken in..."

While on guard duty, his gaze was completely drawn to the person in front of him. Just as he was about to press the alarm on his body, he discovered that his arm had gone numb without him even realizing it!

He turned his head in horror and saw that the electric beast that had been jumping around just moments before was now lying on the ground, its yellow face shrouded in a strange pale purple aura, its eyes closed, clearly unconscious.

"Who...is it..."

The guard stared resentfully at his immobile fingertips. Just as his vision began to blur, the heavy alloy door slid open silently once more.

"Oh? Is it progressing so smoothly?"

Another tall figure stood against the light at the doorway, his voice tinged with helplessness.

Ahead, the "wise sage" who had already walked far away also turned back, and as he passed by the guard, he casually tied the guard's hands together.

"So you came along too, Captain Lila."

The man ripped off his fake beard and tossed it behind him. His partner, the rascal frog, nimbly leaped onto his shoulder, and together they faced the purple-haired woman standing by the door.

"I'm here to arrest one of my subordinates who interrupted his treatment without authorization and acted on his own."

The Interpol expeditionary captain, upon entering the room, showed no smile at the "whistle" signaling the successful infiltration of the enemy.

"You just survived the explosion in the Giant's Cave, your injuries haven't even healed, and you're already running off to die in a place like this? Don't you want to die? Even if you don't think about yourself, shouldn't you think about the bad frogs who went through thick and thin with you?"

"Actually, it has already recovered to..."

Before the handsome guy could answer, the delinquent frog on his shoulder puffed out its cheeks and made a standard "provocative" face at Lila.

"Sigh, I guess this guy and I are the same kind of people who can't sit still... After all, we saw those reports in the hospital room."

Faced with Lila's increasingly unfriendly expression, the handsome detective could only scratch his head and smile wryly.

"As for the Bad Frog, it is sometimes like a detective who is better than me. I can't hide anything from it."

Chapter 460 Every Door is a Multiple Choice Question

"By the way, how did you get in here?"

Standing in front of the open iron gate, the handsome man asked in a low voice.

The badge he used to open the iron gate was actually "borrowed" from the evidence storage room; it originally belonged to Sage Vio, who was captured by them in the Giant's Cave. Similar passes are quite common in illegal organizations in other regions; Hugo had reminded him of this back in Sinnoh.

"Lei Gong and I just ransacked the area outside, so we collected quite a few similar items."

Lila unfolded her black-gloved hand, revealing a large pile of name tags and badges looted from Team Plasma soldiers—

"Thanks to your risky guidance, Interpol's follow-up forces should be arriving soon. Since you insist on staying, we'll meet them here. In any case, we absolutely cannot make the same rash mistake we did in the Giant's Cave."

Strictly speaking, their strategy in the Giant's Cave wasn't flawed. If it weren't for the two expedition leaders taking the lead, Vio and his group would have already escaped with the sealed Pokémon in the ice.

However, at this moment, the handsome guy, who was already in the wrong for acting without permission, did not argue and obediently accepted the team communicator that Lila handed him, which he had left in the medical center earlier.

"The signal doesn't seem to be working. How's the situation over there?" The handsome guy pressed a couple of buttons on his device and casually asked Lila. He hadn't heard anything from the outside world since he slipped out of the hospital.

"Team Plasma still has the advantage in numbers. Hugo and his team intend to minimize the impact of this incident, so they don't plan to deploy Alliance resources on a war scale to deal with this castle. But the good news is that Team Plasma hasn't shown any power exceeding that of the Elite Four yet. If all goes well, the Unova Elite Four should be able to use assault tactics to retake headquarters from the front."

“This is only a temporary situation.” The handsome detective confirmed that there were no people or surveillance equipment behind the passage before turning to Lila and saying, “Group Plasma couldn’t have made such a big move without any support, especially with their Elite Four-level combat power. That ‘Foolish Carnival’ must have made some preparations.”

He paused, then said seriously, "More importantly—time is not on the Alliance's side. It wouldn't be difficult for Team Plasma to raise emergency supplies to keep them holed up in the castle for a few months, but every day Team Plasma occupies the Alliance headquarters, the Alliance will face more public pressure. This is a game that the Alliance cannot afford to lose. Even I can think of this, so there's no reason why the Seven Sages wouldn't have foreseen it."

“I know that, but Hugo and the others have done the best they can right now.” A hint of weariness flashed across Lila’s eyes. “You know, we just sent two sages and an entire fleet of naval expeditionary forces into the United States’ prisons. Can you imagine what it would be like if we hadn’t caught them, and these guys started causing trouble all over the United States again in the current situation?”

"This isn't the time for ghost stories." The handsome man fiddled with his communicator, trying to re-establish contact with his subordinates, but his expression suddenly changed—

"Captain Lila, did you contact your subordinates before you came here?"

"What do you mean it's not there? It was there just before I came in..."

Lila's expression changed instantly when she opened the device.

"Could it be that they've already discovered us?" the handsome man asked warily.

"It's hard to say. It could be 'electromagnetic waves' or a superpower blockade... Thunder God!"

A flash of red light appeared on the Poké Ball, and Raikou's agile figure created tiny arcs of electricity in the confined space. Without the trainer needing to give another command, pale blue electricity crackled in its mane, while pink psychic ripples spread across its forehead.

"How is it?" The handsome man couldn't help but ask when he saw his boss frown.

"Both types of interference are present. But the good news is that the team members should not be in danger yet. This blockade is not specifically targeting us; it's just temporarily blocking all signals inside the building."

Lila pulled out another Poké Ball and decisively issued the command—

"Hudi, go outside and contact the reinforcements. The situation here is a bit unusual. Ascertain the situation and have them advance cautiously in small groups."

However, Alakazam did not immediately activate "Instant Teleport," but instead, together with Raikou, cautiously turned their gaze toward the end of the passageway.

Immediately afterwards—

Snapped.

All the lighting systems went out completely at the same instant. Absolute darkness, like a massive tide, crashed and filled the entire space.

No new figures appeared at the other end of the passage, but there was no doubt that something strange and distorted was happening there—

The ear-piercing metallic scraping sound was like thousands of blunt saws cutting steel simultaneously, echoing, overlapping, and resonating repeatedly in the endless, enclosed passage, forming a tooth-grinding sonic wave.

A tremor from the ground traveled from the soles of my feet to the tips of my hair, as if the entire building was painfully contracting and deforming, or as if an unseen, enormous creature was moving inside the walls, about to unstoppably emerge from every crack in the walls and every gap between every brick with its cold steel limbs.

"It must be some kind of mechanism; the other side has started taking countermeasures. Perhaps Jero detected the anomaly in the access records in the control room."

The handsome man quickened his pace, switched on his tactical flashlight, and tossed Vio's Sage Badge into the corner—

"Next up is the 'City Defense Division's' home turf, so we can't bring these things that might carry plasma cluster beacons anymore!"

Lila also abandoned her loot and spoke quickly to Alakazam, "We're fine here. Pass the orders through, and teleport back immediately if anything goes wrong!"

This time, Hudi didn't hesitate and vanished in a flash.

Almost at the same moment that Hudi disappeared, a dizzying shaking suddenly occurred at this entrance.

"It's not this building that's shaking!"

The handsome guy shouted the instant the feeling of weightlessness hit him, his back slamming hard against the cold metal wall. The rascal reacted even faster, its sharp claws glowing with the white light of Fighting-type energy, and a "Brick Break" slammed deep into the wall, becoming the only anchor point for the two in the raging torrent.

"The entire room—like the blocks of a Rubik's Cube—is being moved as a whole!"

Before the words were even finished, an even more intense multidimensional rotation followed.

The concepts of up and down, left and right, front and back were completely shattered in this frantic displacement. They were like being thrown into a washing machine running at full speed, helplessly tumbling under the torment of centrifugal force.

The handsome man gripped the arm of the scoundrel that was embedded in the wall tightly. His internal organs seemed to have shifted from place by the vibration. If he hadn't gritted his teeth and forced himself to suppress his nausea, the contents of his stomach would probably have already spilled out in an unsightly manner.

This violent spatial reconstruction lasted for at least five minutes before coming to a sudden halt, just as abruptly as it had begun.

Everything returned to deathly silence.

The handsome man, panting heavily, released his numb fingers. The wicked frog pulled its claws out of the deformed wall and shook its hand.

The tactical flashlight pierced through the billowing metallic dust, shining a beam of light behind them. The ground had transformed into a vertical wall, and what was once the "ceiling" was now beneath their feet.

As for Captain Lila, she was in a better position—Raygos was using static electricity to firmly attach himself to the now upside-down "floor," while Lila was hanging upside down on his broad back, one hand tightly gripping Raygos's fur, and the other hand pulling the unconscious guard along.

"So it wasn't you I caught just now..." The female detective flipped over, jumped off Raikou after the static electricity was removed, and tossed the lucky Plasma Team member aside with a face full of guilt.

"Don't treat me like an injured person, I'm still quite resilient." The handsome man tried to sound relaxed, brushing the thick layer of dust off his coat, but his slightly unsteady steps betrayed him as soon as he took a step. He asked, trying to hide his embarrassment, "Where are we now?"

"It feels like we've gone up a distance, about three stories high." Lila knocked on the now completely upside-down iron gate, and a dull echo came from inside. "It's solid in the back. It seems we can't go back the way we came unless we find the switch to control the castle. But this change is too extravagant... Can buildings really be moved and rearranged like building blocks?"

“A facility of this scale couldn’t possibly be designed specifically for the two of us. It must be a contingency plan by Team Plasma to seal off the underground entrance,” the handsome man calmly analyzed. “We may have misunderstood the purpose of Team Plasma’s patrol team. Those people may not be there to monitor the underground, but rather to activate some kind of switch that’s been designed and hidden in the Alliance’s sewers for Zero.”

"We can't contact the outside world right now, so there's no point in analyzing the enemy's motives." Lila decisively shoved a Poké Ball into the handsome guy's hand—it was her Espeon.

"You can take this Pokémon with you for now. Even if it gets alone, it can use its psychic powers to sense my Alakazam and Metagross."

The expedition leader's gaze turned towards the front of the passage.

It was no longer the cold, minimalist industrial style of the Alliance's underground; it had completely transformed into a different scene altogether.

Soaring vaulted ceilings, stone walls carved with intricate and somber patterns, and stained-glass windows embedded in the walls, though only darkness lies beyond those windows. The immense wealth accumulated by the Plasma Group over the years is revealed in this single side of the castle.

However, within this solemn Gothic style, a large number of exposed mechanical structures are incongruously embedded—huge gear sets, slowly creeping transmission belts, and energy conduits flowing with a ghostly blue light. They are like steel blood vessels and nerves parasitizing the ancient castle, barbarically grafting two completely different aesthetics together.

"It seems we have to change our plans; staying put will only lead to our demise."

Lila's voice was resolute, and fine golden lightning began to crackle around Lei Gong's body—

"The target is the control room where Geralt is. All we have to do now is... fight our way out from here."

As soon as the words were spoken, it was as if some mechanism had been triggered. The giant gears embedded in the Gothic corridor ahead suddenly began to turn in unison, emitting a synchronized and unsettling clicking sound.

Immediately afterwards, dense rustling sounds came again from every crack in the wall and every fold of shadow.

It's Pokémon!

Countless gears and tiny fish surged forth like a tide, orderly blocking every path and occupying every inch of space.

Their small, cold, metallic bodies reflected a ghostly light. Unlike the scattered gathering of wild elves, they were like the immune cells of this revitalized castle, silently and meticulously forming an interlocking array according to some predetermined defense program. They surged toward the two "unauthorized" intruders at a terrifying speed relative to their size.

"Heh... The nickname 'City Defense Division' is truly well-deserved."

The handsome guy and the delinquent frog stood side by side, looking at the seemingly endless army and letting out a dry laugh—

"I finally understand... where the energy that keeps this behemoth running comes from."

Chapter 461 Ally Switch

Just as two outstanding detectives from Hoenn and Sinnoh were giving it their all to fight the wave of Pokémon that appeared in the Metal Corridor, their target—the "City Defender" Zero—was sitting cross-legged on a soft chair in the control room, holding a cup of steaming hot cocoa.

His precious attention was not spared for the two undercover police officers who had been accidentally caught in the cracks of the system. Before the "fortifications" meticulously constructed by this sage, those accidental intruders of such a level were merely insignificant errors in the system. The castle had its own perfectly pre-programmed cleaning procedures, and the tragic fate of those outsiders had already been marked on the castle's blueprints.

What he was really watching were the four figures that were tearing apart the castle's outer defenses from the front.

The Four Heavenly Kings of Unova.

The cold light from the monitor screen reflected in Jero's slightly narrowed eyes. The sweet aroma of hot cocoa mingled with the metallic smell of machine oil and circuit boards in the enclosed room, creating a harsh environment where the engineer could only focus on thinking.

"To think that the solution to the most troublesome problem has been found so quickly..." he muttered to himself, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the warm rim of the cup. "That champion, who has no power of his own, is indeed an unpleasant opponent on the chessboard."

The sage's tone revealed no anger, but rather a certain eagerness, as if he were seeing a predator.

After all, how can the indestructibility of a city's defenses be demonstrated without a battering ram of sufficient weight?

The engineer, who once personally sketched the steel arc of the Fanba Suspension Bridge and the deep blue outline of the Boshi Tunnel in Qinghai, felt like a chess player who had been on a winning streak, finally meeting a truly skilled opponent today.

From the police cordon at the exit of Champions Road to the main gate of the castle, there is a 200-meter open area.

This area was originally the front courtyard of the Alliance headquarters. The reason it is now empty is that within the first hour after the castle was raised, it was transformed into a labyrinth of death by the Plasma Group's assault engineering team.

The automated defense system stolen from Team Magma, combined with the weapons and equipment purchased from Team Aqua, creates a landscape where the ground is covered with sensor-activated roadblocks and high-voltage electric grids, while the air is interwoven with silent, sweeping crimson laser grids—even the smallest Beandove will be locked onto and shot down by at least three intersecting beams of light the moment it tries to fly over this area.

However, the Four Heavenly Kings easily overcame this obstacle.

They didn't even use Pokémon—Gadrilia simply raised a hand, and an invisible psychic barrier unfolded like an absolute territory, deflecting and annihilating all the incoming lasers. Amidst the continuous explosions of the roadblocks, the Elite Four traversed the death zone as if walking on flat ground, arriving at the towering metal gates of the castle.

The door, of course, did not open. So the four of them stepped onto the transparent staircase—a foothold where superpowers condensed in the void and rose step by step—and began their ascent towards the heavens.

"At least the police behind us have been stopped," Jero sipped his cocoa, comforting himself in a low voice. The Plasma Group's biggest asset at this moment was their local numerical advantage, and having been planning in the underground lair of the Alliance headquarters for many years, he was certainly not unprepared for the surprise attack by the Alliance's high-end combat forces.

No dramatic red button was needed from the evil sage of the Plasma Cluster. The entire castle automatically came to life as the Four Heavenly Kings ascended to the predetermined height.

The earth trembled, and a deep rumble traveled from the ground to every brick and stone.

The long, gently sloping staircases that once connected the ruins of the old headquarters were simultaneously lifted upwards by giant hydraulic struts underground. The roar of the metal hinges was like the panting of a beast awakening. The exposed exterior wall panels slid and reassembled like scales, connecting with the mortise and tenon joints extending from the sides of the Gothic spires. In just a few seconds, the raised steps unfolded into fishbone-shaped temporary combat platforms on both sides, forming a huge, hollow inverted pyramid structure. Together with the main body of the castle, from a distance it looked like an umbrella that had been opened and stuck upside down in the ground.

At the same time, countless well-prepared Team Plasma members poured out of the internal passages in an orderly fashion, quickly deploying their defenses along the steeper steps inside the inverted pyramid. While controlling their own stunned expressions at the spectacle before them, they followed their training, relaying commands to their companions and directing their Pokémon to launch a barrage of attacks on the Elite Four members below, taking advantage of their height.