Coverup

Leaf, Blue, Red, Ranger Neasman, and cadet Wendy arrive at a ruined mansion on Cinnabar Island. While ostensibly conducting a standard sweep for ditto nests, Leaf suspects the building is the secret laboratory from Dr. Fuji's notes, where the psychic hybrid was created. Red is accompanied by a heavy Hunter escort, and Leaf notes how his interactions have become rigidly professional, efficiently communicating his psychic senses in exact terms rather than his old, casual speculation.

Before exploring the structure, the group executes a highly coordinated maneuver to clear the surrounding grounds of wild pokemon. Using a plastic lumineon lure on a fishing rod, Red draws out a pack of growlithe, vulpix, and raticate, which Leaf knocks out with her wigglytuff's song. When a cloud of poison types including muk, grimer, weezing, and koffing emerge, Blue and Wendy engage them with rhydon and ponyta while Leaf's nidorino guards her with Horn Attack. To flush out burrowing pokemon, Leaf's ivysaur, venomoth, butterfree, and tangela blanket the grass with Sleep Powder before Blue plays digging vibrations through heavy speakers. As sandslash and others emerge and fall asleep, Leaf captures them using newly developed Safari Balls—the fruits of her research project that induce total paralysis, allowing rangers to safely recondition and re-release captured wilds. The rangers are deeply impressed by their seamless teamwork.

Inside, the mansion is luxurious but surprisingly pristine, its decay matching standard abandonment following the Hoenn Incident. The group meticulously explores the bedrooms, dining halls, and music rooms. Blue catches a sleeping magmar and casually passes it to Leaf to round out her team; though she traditionally dislikes fire types for being difficult to use nonlethally, she accepts it as a grim necessity against renegades.

After finding no hidden doors or suspicious technology, Leaf's confidence falters. She realizes that if the lab's creators were intelligent and well-resourced, they wouldn't simply abandon the facility; they would sanitize the upper levels to make it look perfectly ordinary. Frustrated by the seemingly flawless coverup, Leaf performs a reverse premortem. Assuming she successfully pierces the illusion, she asks herself what unique edge could possibly allow her to do so. Realizing her only advantage is Dr. Fuji's outline, she shares the document with the group under the guise of the story she's writing, suggesting they look for discrepancies between the text and the mansion.

As they picnic outside and read, they debate the ethics of uncovering a potentially world-threatening hybrid. Red argues that a sapient being is fundamentally different from mindless elementals like Groudon and Kyogre, but Blue insists the danger is unparalleled. The rangers confirm they would be legally obligated to report such a discovery immediately. Leaf wrestles with guilt over potentially betraying Fuji's trust, suspecting the notes were meant to prepare society rather than expose the lab prematurely.

Reading Fuji's brief descriptions of the narrator's daily routine, Leaf recognizes a reference to walking a "hall of white and gold" to an elevator. Trusting the text as a map blending memory and reality, she navigates the mansion's ruined corridors until she finds a passageway entirely blocked by a collapsed ceiling. Red silently commands his machamp to clear the heavy stones alongside Ranger Neasman's electabuzz, finally revealing a set of hidden elevator doors.