Growler runs off to the side, as you follow after Glade. A triple squawk from behind you reveals that Phoebe is catching up, but as you glance back, you see her suddenly break, before turning back to take a smaller corridor. Glade is right ahead of you, climbing a wide set of stairs to the roof.

---

Fetcher and Fairy follow you into the newly arrived elevator, and you're soon on your way to the roof. You see some Wingull still lingering around the tower, but they don't seem to notice you behind the glass. Hopefully, they'll have scattered before you reach the top.

Seymour hummed along to the elevator music as he waited for it to reach the top. He looked with awe out at the city as the elevator got higher and higher. He had already seen it from above, but it just hit differently when you were looking at the city from within the city itself.

Jake had two tricks left. Well, one trick and one resource. For the first he bet on his cunning,
"Yo! Glade, you missed the checkpoint! Pheobe will tell you where growler hit it."
The resource was his final pokeball, the one with Bandy. Bandy was too big to be on a bird, and too awkward to ride, but it was fast, and could even be faster if he gave it a boost by chucking their pokeball up the staircase as far as it could go,
"Bandy! To the roof!"

At your call, Glade pauses for a moment, looking a little confused. Until Bandy appears, and jumps over her. The two of them vanish from sight, but as you get ready to follow, you hear the ding of an arriving elevator behind you.

---

The elevator reaches the top floor. As the door opens, you see a wide set of stairs to reach the roof. And you see Jake about to run up this final obstacle.

Jake hoots as he hears the elevator ding,
"Too slow! Too slow!"
And hoofs it up the stairs in pursuit of the leading pokemons.

When the elevator stopped and Seymour saw that the race hadn't quite ended yet, his first instinct was to bolt toward the finish line. Which surprised Seymour, because he was not very competitive or athletic when it came to games of physical prowess. Regardless, he suppressed that first instinct and allowed Jakey's pokemon to exit the elevator first, as promised. Seymour instead settled on cheering for Glade. "Go Glade go! You can do it! Don't give up!"

Jake runs after Glade, only to be passed by Fetcher and Fairy. Seymour follows as fast as he can, and you finally reach the roof, trying to sort out who arrived when.

Bandy has climbed an antenna, waving her hammer above her head as Glade paces on the roof just below her. Fetcher climbs to fly around Bandy, but it's pretty clear he arrived after the other two pokemon. As you watch your companions sort themselves up, Phoebe turns the corner on Trio, grinning. "What took you so long?"

---

Level up!

Bandy's Speed increases to Super
Fairy's SpA increases to Average
Fetcher's SpD increases to High
Growler's SpA increases to Awesome

Glade's Speed increases to Exceptional
Marigold's Def increases to High, and SpD increases to Below Average
Malley learns the move Copycat
Copycat Normal * Copies the last move that was used in battle

Seymour went over to Glade and gave the Gogoat some relaxing scratches behind the horns and showered her with praises. She may not have won, but she had come real close to doing so. And Seymour was impressed.

"We would have been here sooner, but somebody," he gave Phoebe a knowing look, "just happened to start the race right when the elevator closed. Plus, a bunch of Wingulls thought my Magikarp looked tasty. So I had to deal with that. Your pokemon were a big help with that whole situation too, Falkner. You've got a couple of superheroes there," he said, smiling at the two pokemon who had helped rescue his own. Then he added, "How did the stairway race go?"

Now that he had a moment to catch his breath, Seymour also took a few seconds to more carefully take a look at his surroundings at the top of the tower.

Jake let out a celebratory whoop, but had better things to do than gloat,
"WOOOH! Awesome work everyone and... that includes growler too... who is still downstairs... I'll go get her. I'll be right back! I still want to see the view from the top!"

Jake looked almost a bit mareepish as he descended the stairs again to find what growler had stopped the race for.

It doesn't take long to find the large canine. She's holding a Poochyena by the back of it's neck, offering it to a young boy who looks very happy. "You found my Poochy! Thank you!" Growler pants happily, until she hears Jake calling to her.

Heading back up, you get the chance to fully admire the city view from above. The city is quite clean, with well ordered streets and buildings, a sign of well planned development. "Wow! This place is pretty impressive! Too bad someone went and tagged that tower."

"Way to be the hero, Growler. By the way, we won the race!" Jake then offered a high five to growler and the random kid with the lost poochy. Making it back up the stairs, he admired the view. And grinned when he saw the tagging,
"You think there is a bunch of wild kids running around these streets. Wonder what they are like? Some can be real nasty, but others can be loads of fun."

"Any idea what the tag means?" Seymour asked, looking for the tagged tower in question. Overall, Seymour was quite impressed with the organization and forethought of the city's design. He found it almost soothing.

---

What does the tagged building look like?

The tag is on the tower you're currently on, and Pheobe shows you how it's hidden if your head is not higher than most people. "I don't think I would have seen it if I hadn't been on Trio's back."

With a bit of climbing, you see the... rather weird tag. It's a yellow drawing of a dancing Gholdengo, twisting way. For a tag, it looks pretty basic... but for some reason, it feels... disturbing... wrong.

Seymour craned his neck and looked at the graffiti with curiosity. Why did it feel so... off? Seymour took a picture of it with his pokedex for future reference. Then as he was about to turn away, he paused. On a whim he released Malley. "Hey Malley... Can you transform into that Gholdengo on the wall over there? Is that a thing you can do?" If Malley could, he would either learn that Malley could turn into pictures of pokemon, or he would learn that it wasn't actually a picture at all. Which could help explain why the image disturbed him so much.

Jake blinked a few times after finally catching sight of the tag.
"Too clean. Heck, looks stenciled or huh, I don't think they even used spray paint. Too rich to be a proper tag. I mean, gholdengo is a heckin rich thing anyway, but whoever made this had resources and stuff."

Jake craned his neck to keep looking at it,
"I heard sometimes rich kids do pranks like this, but it could be a corp doing advertisement or another organized group. Doesn't strike me as something team gaia would fuss with."

Jake then called over Fetcher,
"Hey, can you go up and get some of the paint on your stick? I want to get a closer look. Maybe it is a giant sticker...?"

Malley looks at the image, then back at you, confused. It doesn't look like they can change into that drawing.

Fetcher tries scratching the paint, getting a bit of it on his leek. Squinting, he points at the part he scratched, showing a small difference between the outer part of the drawing, and the central core. Looking at the leek, it seems the outer part is just normal paint.

Phoebe climbs up with Trio's help to get a closer look. "Hey... aren't graffiti supposed to be made with spray paint? This looks like it was made with a brush..."

"Huh, either someone covered up a tag with paint OR there is a secret message that is hidden underneath the main image. If it is covered... hmm, I don't know what kind of paint they used, but sometimes one type of paint can get washed away, but the other part sticks on. So long as one goes, we can see what the inner tag is. It just won't have color if only the outside sticks."
Jake's critical thinking was working hard now that he had a problem more in his wheelhouse. He looked to the others,
"Any other ideas? Maybe the inner paint will glow when warm or something funky like that. Would be heckin' expensive paint to do that though."

"I don't think I have any other ideas," Seymour admitted after giving it some thought. "I mean, if I were a detective, I would analyze the paint. Then, if it was as expensive as you think it might be, then I would figure out where you might buy such expensive paints and work backward from there. Of course I would also try to figure out what secret messages might be hidden here too. Maybe with black lights? Or spray water on the image? Fire? Not sure. But I'm not a detective, so..." Seymour wasn't sure if the graffiti was worth more of their time or not. After all, it could just be graffiti and nothing more. He would let Jakey and Phoebe dictate whether or not it was worth more investigation or not.

Phoebe tilts her head. "Gholdengo aren't really common around here... Do you think it could be linked to the King?"

"If Gholdengo are associated with the king, then yeah, I could see that being a likely possibility," admitted Seymour. "But would that mean the message being conveyed is pro-king, or anti-king?" He would guess anti, but didn't want to assume.

Jake gave a shrug. Pro-king, anti-king, slowking, didn't make a difference to him so much. Well, actually they may get in trouble for defacing a pro-king mural.

With no other clues about the drawing, you turn back to admiring the city. It's not as grand a view as when you were on the helicopter, but it lasts longer. Long enough for your stomach to growl, reminding you that despite all the excitement, you haven't had your dinner.

With all the excitement you've gone through, you decide to turn in early after your meal.

You wake up bright and early the next day, and after scarfing down a nice breakfast, you head out to the Vinmur gym. You briefly crossed it when the helicopter landed, but now you can get a better look at it. The first building to greet you looks more like a nice and clean police station. It seems so simple and friendly, that you wonder if it's really a military base.

It's only when you get closer that you see beyond what you first thought was the beach side. With a bit of architectural trickery, the base is hidden away from the rest of the city, giving a nice view of the ocean. But up close, you can see the angled concrete walls turning the beachfront into a long and solid bunker, with a collection of piers for mid-to-low sizes military vessels.

After having a fun evening with both his human friends and his pokemon friends, Seymour was still eager to start the day and try their next gym challenge. He swapped around some of his active team of pokemon, made sure they were all in terrific shape at the pokemon center, then made his way to the gym with the others. He was impressed by the subtlety of the structure.

"You guys ready for this? The urban combat gym?" he asked Jakey and Phoebe. "Were you going to attempt the gym challenge as well?" he asked Phoebe. He knew Jakey would be. Seymour himself was already working on getting his brain into the correct state of mind for what he thought an "urban combat" gym challenge might be like.

"Urban combat gym? Looks more like another water gym to me. Hopefully if it comes to water, Skipper will be enough" Jake considered going back to switch out his team, but it was too much work and he felt confident in the current group.

"Yeah, but I'm ready. Lets rock this town!"