"Nothing you need concern yourself with," the scientist said primly. "If you have enough time to focus on those then you clearly don't need to see your pokemon anymore."

"Before you make me go back," Margaret said quickly, "can you put my pokemon into a bigger room? There's not enough space with all five of them, Metagross is too big to share such a small room."

"I will see if accomodations can be made." The scientist started shooing her back towards her room, even as the blue egg rocked, just a little bit. Not enough to be that close to hatching, but a little.

"Alright," Margaret replied. "Thanks." She let herself be herded back to the room, although she did take one last look at the two eggs behind the glass window.

Aleron looked up when Margaret joined her again, and a minute later two trays and a bowl of pokemon food slid into the room.

"So, what did you go do?" Aleron moved over to the food, starting to feed Ho-oh slowly.

"Checked on Espeon and them," Margaret replied, taking a tray for herself. "They've got all five of mine in this itty bitty room that Metagross himself takes up two-thirds of. But I saw a pair of eggs, too."

"Legendary eggs?" Aleron looked at her before digging into her own meal. She was hungry now damn it all. And Ho-oh was content to let her eat for a while while he dozed.

"I think so," Margaret replied, picking at her own meal. "There were two of them, and they were almost identical, but they were different colors. The color seemed to be the only difference between them."

Aleron nodded, frowning a little. "Okay. So we know they've got at least two eggs here, and I'm pretty sure I saw one or two others when that guy was hurrying me along. So like four maybe, plus Ho-oh."

"And who knows how many more," Margaret added. "There were a lot we didn't find at all."

"I know. And I get the feeling even the ones we did find might be back here." Aleron frowned. "Okay, new plan. We need to get our pokemon out and we need to clear out all the scientists so we can get to the eggs. We need to get all of them this time."

"As soon as we can get out of here," Margaret replied, nodding. "I remember where the pokemon are, I think. I asked them to move mine to a bigger room, but if they did, I bet it isn't far."

Aleron nodded. "Okay. So how do we get all the scientists out? I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to battle every one of them. I've seen at least five."

"I've seen that many, too," Margaret replied. She thought for a moment. "I think Natu knows Hypnosis, think that will work?"

"Yeah, maybe. As long as we can hit them in groups so we don't wear Natu out, that should be okay." Aleron frowned, leaning back a little and absently stroking Ho-oh. "But how are we going to get all the eggs out? And where are we going to go?"

"I don't even know where we are," Margaret said. She knew as well as Aleron did that they couldn't carry more than an egg or two each. "Maybe if we jury-rig a sling and hang it on Metagross?" she asked. It was better than nothing, at the moment.

"Yeah, maybe. I know I can fit one egg in my pack, and I can carry at least one more, maybe more if we figure out how to make slings or if the eggs are small." Aleron sighed. "And we need to get outside somehow, figure out where we are. Then we can figure out somewhere safe to go until the eggs all hatch or get picked up safely by their parent."

"You have the Eevee egg, though," Margaret pointed out. "That puts your carrying capacity down by one." She still figured the sling idea was the best one so far. Regardless, they had to get out.

Aleron nodded. "Well, we'll see what we can come up with after we've gotten out. Maybe we can figure something else out."

"Right," Margaret replied. "We need to get out of here first." Getting up, she went to examine the door. It was steel and rather heavy, and she didn't think either of them could break it open. She rapped on it with her knuckles a bit, and blinked when she got an idea. She looked from the door to the Ho-oh chick and back. "Remember back in Ecruteak?" she asked Aleron after a moment. "When I had the dumb idea to climb Tin Tower?"

"Yeah," Aleron said slowly. "Which part in particular are you thinking?" Because rather a lot had happened that day, if she recalled correctly.

"Metagross nearly got his hide melted through a Light Screen," Margaret replied. "By Ho-oh's Sacred Fire attack."

Aleron blinked and looked down at Ho-oh, talking to him for a few moments. "Yeah. We could work with that, definitely. He says he could melt that. The scientists had been hiding behind blast screens, and I think he had melted part of his other room."

Margaret grinned.

"Sometimes good things eventually come of pissing off gigantic fire-types," she said, moving back and out of the way.

Aleron snorted and set Ho-oh on the floor, moving out of the way as well. Ho-oh fanned his wings before he started blasting the door. It only took half a minute for the door to start glowing, and then it started melting right out of the frame, leaving the edges of the door intact while the important parts were all melted.