Act 2: Searching the Maze
Pikachu is in awe at seeing the ship for the first time, it's intimidating too but he must feel safe enough not to go into distress.
"I like the design." Although he is wondering how exactly they would be getting inside of it. "Is it going to land?"

"No." Eilumi responds. "Josh, Loona, and... whatever your name is. Pick one of us to hang onto. We're beaming up."

"He doesn't have a name." Joshua said before picking up the surprised Pikachu in one hand, so he can hang onto Nine's shoulder with his other one.

Loona hangs onto Eilumi, who flashes a toothy smile up at her "Alight, hold on." 
They're surrounded by purple light, and a second later, they're surrounded by metal walls, and a door. 
"Alright, you can let go now." Eilumi informs everyone, as he travels through the door, and through a small hallway, and then through another one, and sits down in a chair. 
"Ah so this is what it looks like on the inside." Loona comments. "Er, I was in it before, but I wasn't conscious at the time."

"Ah, teleportation." Joshua commented as he followed Eilumi, taking in the sight of metal and technology around him with Pikachu. "So you mentioned that this is not your best ship, right?"

"Oh by the Nexus, no!" Khaun replies. "In fact this thing isn't even FTL capable. This is just something we use for planetary exploration. Our main ship is in orbit." 
"Yeah, before our species was given Teleportation technology in a trade deal with the Hylotl, and in particular, long-range teleportation technology, this used to be the only way to explore a planet and get around." Eilumi adds in. "Some crews don't have these, but we keep ours since it proves handy sometimes. This time, case in point.

"I'm not sure how long the trip from here to there will take, but I would not like to just sit around doing nothing if I can help it?" Joshua places Pikachu down. "Do you have some spare parts lying around? glass? electronics and sensors?"

Khaun points to a barrel in the corner "Knock yourself out. Some parts from a recent scouting run to a wasteland world. Don't worry, we've already checked it for radioactivity."
"Yeah it might be a while, especially since we don't exactly know where to look to find what we're looking for." Eilumi comments. He sits at the controls. Holograms appear in the air by the captain's chair, and the ship begins to move towards Dynamo Sands. The rest of the crew takes a look at the holograms, while Loona looks outside through the windows. "Okay, so our primary objective is to find that Raichu with the sword. Find him, and we'll find Shia. Most likely. Hopefully. Right Loona?" Eilumi asks from behind the controls. 
"Right." She says, not even looking back. 
"Also be on the lookout for a ... uh... Buizel and Quilava. With a sash. Is that right, Loona?" This time, she looks back. 
"Yes, that's right." 
"They're the ones who raped Loona here. If we find them, we beam down, beat the crap out of them, take them prisoner, and beam back up." Loona grins a little at this. 
"But keep in mind that they're a target of opportunity, and therefore a tertiary objective." 
Loona frowns at this.

That barrel hhhmm? Salvage like that can help. "I will work as quick as i can, are there tools i can use too?"
Pikachu is a little bit unsettled by Loona grinning. "Why do you wanna go after these Pokémon so much...?"

Loona looks at him. "They raped me. Or at least, the Quilava did. The other... raped one of my friends. Same as that Raichu. The Raichu.... he took one of my friends with him."
"It's quite true," Khaun adds in. "We... saw her memories when we first took her on board." Loona gives Khaun a look. "And once again I'm-" Khaun begins, but it's cut off. "I've already told you that I've forgiven you guys for that." Loona said.

"But what if they get you again?" He whimpers. "It would be safer if you just...got as far away as possible from them, from this place too even..."
Joshua is crafting...something with the parts from that barrel, it looks like it is something small though. "Can either of you three come here for a moment? There is something important that I think it's worth mentioning since we are in the air.

"Okay." Khaun comes over by Joshua. "What is it?" 
"Because I'm not a coward!!" Loona snaps at the pikachu suddenly. Everyone looks at her, including Eilumi, disapprovingly. 
"Loona that was-" Nine begins to chastise her. 
"I know, NIne." Loona says to him, and then turns back to the now shaking Pikachu. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that."

He stopped for a moment when Loona snapped at Pikachu and looked over just to be sure he wouldn't be in any danger, when it looked like the situation was de-escalating goes back to saying what he wanted. "Have you seen anything in on the ozone layer of this world? A lifeform perhaps?" 
Being yelled at like that, and with the really not wrong implication that he is a coward is enough to make Pikachu start crying.

Khaun, also seeing that the situation with the Chu is deescalating, replies to Josh. "We detected some bird-like things flying about every now and then, but nothing overly noteworthy." 
Loona goes over and tries to comfort the crying chu. "I'm Sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it. There there little guy." She pats his head.

"really? Perhaps it's not in this part of the skies. But let me get to the point, there is a very powerful creature that lives in the ozone layer, and it doubles as something that protects the world from foreign objects such as meteors and... perhaps even this ship. If you see what appears to be a flying green serpent just, make sure it doesn't know you even exist because it will not show any mercy to anything it perceives as an intruder in its territory." He explained. 
Pikachu sounds like he is trying to say something in response but he is sobbing too much, sounds like he is apologizing over and over again though.

Eilumi gulps. "We may have to move the main ship to a much higher orbit. Or move it around the moon for safekeeping."

"that is for the best" Now bringing his attention back to what he is building, it appears to be some sort of monocle, if it can even be called that with the electronics and sensors installed around the circular piece of glass. "I guess I will be done with this before we arrive at our destination."

Khaun, who is still over by them, responds. "Well, it helps in your case that we really don't know what our destination is or where it's located."

"What...?" What does that mean exactly? He was under the assumption that they knew where they are going. "Well, alright. Whatever the case, I will make sure no one gets the drop on us." 
Pikachu has managed to stop crying, but he is still not really at his best. "I'm sorry I'm a coward...I wish I was more like you Loona, t-then I think he would have friends to begin with..."

"Well, that is kind of why we are in the dropship to begin with." Khaun replies flatly. "To avoid unnecessary fights."
"But yeah, we're trying to search for someone, but we don't necessarily know where they are." Eilumi adds in. He looks at the screen, the image of a Raichu flashes on it briefly. "No, wrong eye color, and no weapon." Eilumi says while looking at it, and then waves it away. A picture of an eevee also appears on the screen "wrong eye color again." Eilumi groans. "THis is going to be like trying to find a needle in a snowdrift... if the needle was constantly moving around."
"Umm, Loona." Nine interrupts the comfort session between Loona and Pikachu, "Your people don't change eye colors when they evolve, do they?" 
"No, they don't." Loona replies back. She goes back to soothing the pikachu, but can't find much to say. Comforting was never really her forte, that was always Veera's thing.

"Well i can not think of a better way to find them." Joshua laments. "Even if i could modify what i have to look for just an Eevee we would still be going around for a while. If we are looking for Shia, maybe we could look at the last place you saw him, Loona."

"Considering how often the maze changes, It would be hard to identify. Besides, it's been several days now." Loona sighs sadly in response, while still hugging and patting the pikachu. "Anyway, Josh." Khaun gets Josh's attention again. "You said you wanted me to look at something?"

"Oh, yes. It's this." He presents that device he was working on, which is a circular lens with the sensors and electronics patched around it. "Let me explain. This is an Aura Reader I made from what i could, it is able to display where pokémon are, roughly how capable they are and how far they are. I made it to stop the ones hunting pikachu from getting a drop on us but I figure it can help warn us of just about any hidden threats in general, like this Raichu you talk about."

"That sounds like it might come in useful." Khuan says. 
"I would deploy the onboard drones." Eilumi says from the cockpit. "But I'm getting an usual amount of wavelength interference, so relying on them might not be the best idea. Plus, I'd rather not have anyone knock one out and use it as proof of our existence. I mean, we're already bending like, 20 different rules by doing this already... though then again, most of said rules died out with the Protectorate."

"This place is already as problematic enough as it is with Iron." He responds to Eilumi before returning to Khuan. "I might not know some of the basics of how this world works...or...at least how it is supposed to go in theory. But this iron that is used...there is something not right about it. I'm trying to piece together what could have led to blades being a thing."

"Well, I'm not sure as to what extent IRON causes here, but since you've TECHNICALLY been here planetside longer than we have, I'll just take your word on that." Khaun says. "I doubt they could get a destroyed drone working though, it's more the societal impact knowing there's aliens out there... I mean besides the occasional 'human'."

"Wait, what?" That little detail at the end caught his attention. "'Occasional'?"

"Well according to Loona's memories." Khaun explains. "There have been random humans showing up time to time... as pokemon. And then doing stuff. What stuff? ... I don't know much more than that."

"Oh...that happened here too huh?" For once he looks a bit...displeased. "I'm pretty sure that was now random by any stretch of the imagination, that happens for a reason, for a purpose. Something catastrophic either happened or was going to happen in the past, more than once by the looks of it, humans were introduced as a 'vaccine' against it."

"And it's only humans?" Khaun asks. "It's never Avali, or Hylotl, or Glitch, or... Nexus forbid, Apex? ... Actually, in that latter case, they'd probably be the 'catastrophic thing.' No offense to the Rebels, of course."

"No, I don't think it would be any of those...but if it were the case it wouldn't change much. 'They' wouldn't want any red tape on what they get to fix the problem. So they outsource a human from another realm, transform them into a pokémon, seal off their memories and throw them down into the world."

"Hmmmmmmm" Khaun thinks to himself. 
Loona continues to hug the Pikachu, until he seems to calm down. "So uh... what were things like for you before your... meeting with Josh?" she asks, hoping to change the topic somewhat.

"This does open possible explanations." 
"I used to live in a dungeon for most of my life..." Pikachu says. "I didn't get to meet a lot of other mons, I always ran away from the ones from the guild, but the pokemon in the dungeon that i did met and talked to weren't usually fast enough to run from the pokémon from the guild..."

"Before all of this happened, I'd hang out with my two friends... Shia, and Veera. Known them since I was a scared little zigazoon that came home one day to find her parents missing... Still don't know what happened to them." Loona explains. "Oddly enough, Shia was always the fighter of our little group. Even with my evolution, he was always better at it than I was. We'd play games sometimes, hang out... run or fight other mons that tried to hurt us. Including guildies."
"From what I've seen of them in this world, 'guiltys' would probably be a better term for them.' Eilumi interjects as he eyes the screens
"So what happened to the pokemon that weren't fast enough to run from the pokemon from the guild?" Nine asks

"I never saw them again..." Pikachu sighs. "I was too scared to go back to even check, couldn't even look back as I ran..."

"Did they have Iron?" Loona asks.

"It's obvious I think...?" He sighs. "Yeah, they had iron, at the time I didn't know what it was called, I just knew that it could kill pokemon easily..."

"I guess it should have been." Loona sighs. "I'm sorry. I guess I can understand now why you'd run away all the time."

"Yeah...did you and your friends didn't managed to run away from them too?"

"Yeah, we did. Or just evade them. Thanks in no small part to Veera."

"But...why?" Nine asks, his visor expression growing a bit angrier. "Why do they do this?"
"Meat." Loona finishes. "They come to the dungeons looking for meat for their Noble masters." 
"Nobles. Bah." Eilumi finishes. "There's a good reason why all societies tend to get rid of them sooner or later." 
"Glad we never had that phase to begin with." Khaun agrees. "We just had the Malefactors."

"Meat...?" Pikachu begins to shudder. "No wonder I never saw them again..."

A sudden series of beeps on the dash fills the ship 
"Well, hello, what do we have here?" Eilumi asks. The ship comes to a halt. 
"What? Did you find something?" Khaun asks, as Loona and Nine also turn towards Eliumi as he gets up out of the seat. 
"Loona..." Eilumi says. 
"Yes?" she responds. 
"Remember when I said that the two citizens that hired Rai are a tertiary objective?" 
"Yeah... I remember" Loona grumbles. 
"Well..." Eilumi replies, a wicked, razor-toothed grin appears on his muzzle. "... We just found our tertiary objectives."