Chapter 57 - Die in Town
New
Team_Ion
Junior Trainer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Scout stared at the sudden newcomer, frozen in shock as she approached with deadly confidence. Darkrai was shaking violently as the audino continued her walk, unhesitatingly, her eyes trained on his.
She was lavender, had some sort of necklace on that looked a lot like the one Lucario had been wearing recently, a small travel bag around one arm.
The most obvious thing was the sharp spike she gripped in her right paw, swinging it slightly with each step.
Darkrai raised his hands, pointing them at her as Dark Energy pooled around him. He fired a Dark Pulse with a scream, but it merely splashed against a small Protect shield, the audino's step was undaunted.
"SCOUT!" Darkrai shouted, turning to him with nothing less than begging in his eyes. "Help me!"
"He won't," Soothe said, slowing her step for a moment. She glanced at Scout, the meowth stunned and confused. "Right?"
Scout glanced between them, the audino he had a terrible feeling he knew exactly who she was and the demon casting his empty blue eyes at him. Scout's claws shivered.
"Scout," Darkrai said, voice edged with controlled fear. "I will wake up everyone here! I will do it! I will help you if you help ME! This monster." He threw a hand at Soothe, firing a Dark Void. She sidestepped it with ease. "This is the reason I am like this."
"Not your lust for a world of darkness?" Soothe replied, twirling her spike. "I'm not blind nor deaf. Thanks for prattling on, gave me time to think up some song lyrics to mimic your own creepy humming. Learn some new songs, Nightmare Bringer, or whatever name you decided was 'malevolent' enough for your tastes."
Scout looked to her again, her eyes were exactly as cold as Darkrai's. But… Darkrai had put everyone here to sleep and unleashed ferals, he was working with Cresselia, or maybe controlling her in some way to hurt Rai, Mane, and Sean.
Scout's mind was unfreezing as things began to churn and click into a dangerous place.
His eyes narrowing, Scout turned to Darkrai, and the nightmare bringer recoiled from the meowth's expression. "You… don't know what you are doing," Darkrai hissed. "I am asking you. I am fair. I am BEGGING you. All I ask is that this Shadow ABOMINATION is slain!"
"That's you, though," Soothe pointed out. She then glanced at Scout who had mostly turned to face Darkrai again, bolstered in some degree of confidence at the unlikely backup he seemed to have. "All Shadow Pokemon are abominations."
Soothe turned back to Darkrai, and the shadow devil clammed up. "Frankly, I don't feel like waiting for the night mate to remember you are a liar."
She moved.
Sprinting for Darkrai with a sudden burst of speed, the spike glinted in the light of the sun. He gave a shrieking, desperate, cry and tried to duck back and disappear into a shadow, any shadow.
They were in the dead middle of town. It was entirely flattened here, no buildings or trees to provide shade. Only their own shadows and Darkrai couldn't disappear into his own.
Scout had, unconsciously, led Darkrai away from the crowds in their excuse of a conversation.
Realising he was stripped of his outs, Darkrai fumbled for a decision as Soothe was upon him.
Her fingers sparkled with energy constantly, and she pointed, sending a concentrated blast of Fairy-type energy at him. Their shadows rippled. The Dazzling Gleam impacted Darkrai like a pistol shot, knocking him onto his back and groaning with a glittering wound on his chest.
She didn't pounce, knowing Darkrai was not so fragile. Seeing she wouldn't be fooled, he fired a second Dark Void, which was dodged with ease, and generated power for a much more powerful Dark Pulse.
"HERE!" Darkrai shouted, firing a curling, twisting, blast of thousands of rings.
Scout was knocked off his feet from the dark shockwave that emanated after it hit Soothe's Protect, bouncing off it harmlessly.
"You don't know what you're doing, do you?" Soothe asked, walking forth calmly as he put more and more power into it. Her Protect wasn't surrounding her whole body, it was more like an actual shield in this state. She could put more Power into it at the expense of not protecting every angle at once.
It didn't break, and Darkrai dropped it and backed away before she could get within stabbing range.
She shot him with another Dazzling Gleam, then another when he tried to return the favour. Then a shot to the neck, dropping him gagging. All the while, she stepped forwards without any hesitation, blasting Darkrai over and over.
Scout finally blinked and realised he could help. Terrifying as this audino seemed to be, Soothe was still the lesser of two evils here. They could end this right here. Cresselia was still a menace, but if Darkrai was stopped this dawning nightmare world was cut short.
His claws sharpened into blades, and he went sprinting around.
"Enough!" Darkrai roared, sending a pulse into the ground. This one caused Soothe to stumble, and he formed a ball of darkness in the air. "Begone!" The Dark Void began spilling spheres by the dozen.
She couldn't block those, forcing Soothe to evade. Scout himself needed to edge away, lest he be hit as well. He pricked his paw pad and forced a Shadow Ball, aiming it for Darkrai's unguarded back.
He flung the Shadow Ball with hatred and the blast knocked Darkrai forth, nearly onto his face. Darkrai gasped as he barely caught himself, rocked forwards by the cheap shot. Soothe immediately lanced him through the chest with a focused Dazzling Gleam and came sprinting for him.
Now panicking, Darkrai tried to throw Dark Void's again, but the focus needed for those was slipping, and she avoided what little he could manage with ease.
Soothe was upon him—Darkrai's worst nightmare.
Flipping the spike back tightly into her grip, she stabbed forth. He recoiled back, avoiding the stab to his chest but she swung it out in a sharp arc, slashing his left arm and drawing blood. Darkrai hissed, but before he could use this close range to his advantage, another Dazzling Gleam blasted him back closer to Scout.
She wasn't stupid enough to remain so close to Darkrai unless he had a knife in his heart. The Dark Void came, and she jumped back, right as Scout launched himself onto Darkrai.
Claws shining white at first, he delivered a series of rapid, brutal, slashes to Darkrai's face. The strikes were leaving reddish afterimages of his scratches as Scout's ferocity turned it from his old Scratch to Fury Swipes.
He began to draw Darkrai's blood, and the combined slashes and blows from his attack threw the nightmare bringer far back and against one of the new buildings.
Darkrai's blood was the farthest thing from given to him, but it was still the blood of the divine and its smoked as Scout used it to create a titanic Shadow Ball.
The Shadow Ball was met by a Dark Pulse, but he was in pain and Scout's attack detonated close to Darkrai, stunning him.
With Darkrai dazed, Soothe went for him herself, bringing the spike up and slamming it home. He rolled and just avoided getting it slammed through his neck.
Soothe cursed, tried to pull it out, but she'd stuck the damn thing in quite hard. Darkrai reached for her but was met with a Protect shield around her arm.
Soothe dropped her hand on the spike and formed another Protect shield, two small discs on her arms. She slammed the right one into Darkrai's face, something crunched, and he cried out.
She moved the left one, spinning it on its axis until it was flat and slashed out. Protect was always an extremely thin, brittle, but sturdy curve of energy.
Most pokémon only created a protective barrier around them entirely and left it at that. Soothe had been practising a bit more in her free time.
By turning it on its edge, Soothe had a razor-sharp disc of energy. She nearly slashed his throat open with it, but he recoiled in time, catching and slicing the end of a finger off instead.
Darkrai panicked again as more of his blood was spilled, but before he could try something, Scout was upon him.
The audino and meowth came at him from several angles, sharp claws and sharper shields slashing and cutting through Darkrai, drawing lines of red across his smoky body but failing to hit that lethal mark.
Scout nearly took off another finger and Darkrai tried to grab him with his right arm. Soothe blasted him back and then grabbed Scout by the scruff and tossed him, not letting Darkrai get a moment to think.
With the boost, Scout was tearing Darkrai's face and growth up with his claws, almost burning with the Power used to generate them so large.
Darkrai forced them back from him with a pure blast of force and staggered back for space. He formed a Dark Pulse rippling between his hands and unleashed it with a scream of utter desperation. Soothe, and Scout created a Dazzling Gleam and Shadow Ball and unleashed it upon the nightmare deities attack.
The attacks met like a thunderclap, but for all of Darkrai's strength, he didn't have the time to overpower this. His Dark Pulse failed, being split apart by the Dazzling Gleam and he was blasted into the building by the Shadow Ball.
Scout dropped to all fours, and he and Soothe came sprinting after Darkrai. Soothe formed a Dazzling Gleam bright enough to stop Darkrai from sinking into the shadow of the building he had been knocked into before blasting him right through it.
Wood splintered and shattered into fragments, the cacophonous crash failing to cause even one of the pokémon sleeping to twitch.
Her attack tore Darkrai through the building her spike had been jammed into, and she recovered it from the rubble before running around to where he had ended up.
Scout pursued around the other side, and they ended up in the tents where the guild was set up. The guild-pokémon were thankfully far back in the town, but there were shadows here.
Darkrai's eyes gleamed with blue light as he disappeared into a shadow.
"You have made a mistake," he hissed to the two as they looked around. "Soothe, you should not have faced me again." She avoided a Dark Void. "I now know you still live, for now at least. Scout, you should not have rejected my generous offer."
His right arm burst from a shadow and nearly grabbed Scout. He avoided it just barely, the claws of the hand scraping through his fur.
Where that hand did touch, his fur disappeared in motes of light.
He formed a Shadow Ball just in time for another strike to hit it instead and blast him back while he was visible.
Scout quickly realised Darkrai was literal and honest, as usual, when he said alive with the left and back to oblivion with the right.
If that right hand touched him, he'd melt back into light. His fur was just long enough that he was able to shear it off him before the effect spread.
The blast from his Shadow Ball forced Darkrai out of the shadow and Soothe blasted him back through the building and into the wider area.
She ran around to continue pummelling him as Scout staggered from the dangerously near miss.
He crept around, realising he was infinitely more fragile here, to find Soothe inflicting horror.
She was strolling up to Darkrai, continuously lancing him through the chest with blasts of glittering pink light. He was slamming into and bouncing off, another building, never able to recover but not being struck as to be forced through it.
Soothe had stopped him from trying to run for the areas where pokémon were slumped over to try and use them against them. Well, Scout. But he almost certainly knew Dream Eater, just recovering some energy would be dangerous.
Her spike was raised in preparation as she continued to bounce him back and forth, Darkrai's azure eyes flickering in panic.
He closed his eyes. Took a breath. Then he screamed. "CresSEeLLLiAAA!"
An enormous eruption of something dark and awful exploded out of Darkrai like a thousand writhing tentacles.
They were darker than any Dark Void. There was no tinge of red or grace of colour. They were the absence of light and crawling out of every surface and orifice on Darkrai's body.
The Shadow Tendrils slammed into Soothe in a massive battering of brutality. Smashing through the buildings, the ground, everything and burning it away with something corrosive left behind.
Scout ducked back around the building and ran the back way, getting around Darkrai's mindless attack.
Darkrai himself was panting for breath, hard, as he pulled back that loss of control. The dust had been torn up, and he could barely see.
A green flicker tinged with the same empty darkness faded and Darkrai softly whispered. "No."
Soothe had utterly blocked the attack. All his power and it did nothing to her.
He immediately threw a Dark Void at her, forcing her to dodge to the right. Then another. She continued to dodge, but she was still getting closer, eyes narrowed into a glare of murderous intent.
Soothe was visibly breathing hard. For all her domination, she had to put a great deal of energy into every attack to bat Darkrai around so much. Drops of inky blackness were dripping from her nails, her bared teeth, and like tears from her eyes.
He raised both arms and created another Dark Void sphere, raining down as many of them as he could manage upon Soothe. She began ducking and weaving, but the sheer number was forcing her to go back to avoid being hit.
Scout was behind him. He took his mark, fell to all fours, then began to sprint silent as a cheetah going for its gazelle.
Darkrai began to laugh, raising his right arm to form a Dark Pulse. He was Darkrai. He was a god, and this was just a mere demon.
He laughed with a mounting hysteria as Scout pounced.
Scout, forming his Night Slash, came for that dreaded right arm that risked pitting him back to oblivion. He slashed out, Dark Energy meeting Dark-type before pushing everything angry and horrible he had into it.
Scout's Night Slash flared.
Within Darkrai's wispy body and rippling, the form was still flesh, bone, and blood.
Scout slashed through his flesh and carved through the bone in a single arc, cutting Darkrai's entire right arm off.
Darkrai's maddened laughter continued, reaching a shrieking crescendo before it just morphed into a pure shriek. Not out of fury or fear this time, but agony.
The arm twitched as it landed on the ground, curling like a lizards tail before uncurling and thrashing limply. Darkrai gripped his bleeding stump with his other arm, still screaming before Soothe struck him again.
Her own eyes were burning with that awful darkness, but she was keeping It under control.
It was so hungry. So… hungry. A gnawing, emptiness that could be filled. There are so many around that could fill it.
There are pokémon defenceless here. There is Loudred. There is Chansey. There is Rhythm-
"Heh," Soothe chuckled, the first sound she'd made since she stopped talking, her head rapidly twitching to the left as if she was trying to shake the water out of her ear. A sharp part of her spike had cut her hand due to gripping it so tightly, her blood was red. He breathed and the presence yielded.
She gave Scout just a tiny nod before striding forth for Darkrai, slumped on the ground in shock as his blood as red as anything drenched the ground.
She didn't offer him last words. She sniped him through the growth and knocked him into his back, reaching him to try this again and kill him properly this time.
Her ear twitched, detecting something the other senses would miss.
A rapid shield formed on her left arm, blocking a blast of shimmering Psychic power. Darkrai capitalised on it with his Dark Pulse and Soothe took a hit, being attacked with the might of two legendary pokémon.
Her Protect shattered as her concentration was broken and the double Psychic/Dark blast enveloped her.
Scout looked up to the newcomer as Cresselia loomed over them.
"WHAT HAPPENED!?" she screamed, furious before seeing his arm. "YOUR ARM? HOW DID YOU MESS UP THIS BADLY!?"
Darkrai immediately flew for her as fast as he could, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. "Just get us out of here," he gasped, gripping onto her with his remaining arm.
Scout threw a Shadow Ball, but Cresselia and Darkrai vanished in a rush of energy, gone.
"Dammit!" Scout yelled, he had been so close to fixing things. He spun back on Soothe, ready to start talking and working their next steps out. "S-Soothe?"
She was stepping back from where the guild's throne had been placed, part of it had been damaged in the battle. Probably just then, when she was blasted off her feet.
Soothe glanced to him, her eyes were still as cold as they were before. She held Darkrai's severed arm of all things. "If you want an idea of how to save them, ask Torkoal."
"What?" Scout spluttered, catching his balance as she turned to leave. "Where are you going, I need-?"
Quick as lightning, she spun and shot a Dazzling Gleam right through his chest, sending him flying and knocking the wind out of him. By the time Scout pulled himself up, coughing out glitter, there was no sign of Soothe.
She was gone.
"Oh, COME ON!" Scout fell to all fours and began to run, looking for the rogue audino. "You helped me! Don't disappear! SOOOOTHE!?"
There was no sign, and he couldn't blindly run around looking for her all day. Shelving THAT problem, for now, Scout focused on what was more prevalent.
Three things.
Everyone was asleep, trapped in a nightmare that, if what Darkrai said was true, was not just a nightmare.
Rai, Mane, and Sean were in an unknown condition, across the ocean. He hadn't gotten a lingering look at Cresselia. Still, Scout's mind was replaying everything in the kind of detail reserved for panic attacks. She looked scorched, her wings had been tilted, and that serene, glowing, aura had been burned off.
They had definitely given her a fight, and if Darkrai had indeed called her off to save him….
The third problem was still glaring, Darkrai had spoken of unleashing feral pokémon onto Treasure Town. He wasn't so sure about that one, it was shelved for later.
Scout didn't know what to do.
He knew what he wanted to do – Panic. Panic hard. Scream and pull his fur out and yell about crazy things. But everyone was in danger, and it was down to him.
"I can name a dozen people who would be better in this crisis than me," Scout thought angrily as he ran his way over to where Striker and Saniya were sleeping.
He reached them and hesitated. He glanced at Saniya and then down at his paws. He still had the feather that had fallen off Cresselia. The one he had found and given him the realisation she was deceitful.
It was still a cresselia feather, though. He asked for hope and then pressed it against Saniya's chest.
The feather reacted immediately, glowing a bright pink and growing so bright that Scout had to look away. The feather melted into Saniya's chest and her face, a detached mask of sleep, scrunched up.
"Oooh," Saniya groaned, Scout, turning back. She yawned and rubbed her face with Striker's hand. "A girl could get used to naps like that," she said, smiling at Striker.
Then she noticed Scout was there, looking most frazzled. "Hey! Knock, please."
"Now is NOT the time!" Scout snapped and gave a violent gesture all around them. It would speak better than his ranting would.
Saniya gently set Striker's hand down, floated up into the air and glanced around. First, it was a slow, sweeping look. Then she frowned and looked again, faster. Then faster again. Then up at the sky. Then back to everyone.
"Oh… flippers," Saniya swore. She gasped at her own words, covering her mouth. "Oh… oh fuck that! This is a FLIPPY-DIPPY sweary moment! Oh my gosh, what happened?"
Scout nodded. He just didn't have words. "Yeah."
"They're all asleep!"
"Yeah."
"It's DAY!"
"Yeah."
"I… what happened?" she spun out Scout and picked him up with her hands, shaking him. His head lolled almost bonelessly in her grasp, the weight of the situation hitting him now that someone else was here to share the burden.
"Darkrai," Scout said, letting himself be shaken without resisting. "Darkrai did this. He's working WITH Cresselia. And I don't know if the others are okay. And Soothe was just here and I cut his arm off and I don't know-" He was getting hysterical.
Saniya gently set him back down. "Scout," she said. "Listen to me. Start from the top and tell me exactly what happened."
Scout took a shuddering breath, trying to put words in order. "I went out to take a breath of air and found one of Cresselia's feathers. That made me realise that we shouldn't have had a nightmare with her around. Then a huge ball of darkness appeared around the town, it barely missed me, and when I came running in, everyone was asleep."
Scout shivered, beginning to stutter and tear up. "Darkrai was here a-an-and he tried to convince me to join him. U-using Rai, Mane, and Sean as leverage since they were stuck with, with… with Cresselia and she was going to k-kill them."
Saniya looked ill at the thought.
"Right before I could… do anything… SOOTHE appeared out of nowhere!" Saniya stared at him, uncomprehending. "Yeah! I know! Soothe actually showed up singing that same sandman song that Darkrai did! Darkrai FREAKED out, and we all started fighting. Well, it was more like me and Soothe against Darkrai."
There were marks of the battle all around that Saniya was noticing. "We almost had him, I cut his right arm off, but he called Cresselia, and she saved him, and they disappeared. Soothe just told me to talk to Torkoal if I wanted to save the others and then attacked ME when I tried to ask her to stay."
He took a desperate breath. He was awfully lightheaded. "Then I used the feather I found to wake you up. I'm so relieved it actually worked, with Cresselia…." He trailed off. Saniya was fine, just shocked.
"That's… oh," she managed. Saniya swallowed, cast a desperate look to see if anyone else would wake up and jump up to reveal this was all an elaborate joke. "Okay." She suppressed the internal screaming. "Well… I guess we should talk to Torkoal."
Scout nodded. She fluttered forwards, face blank before she shook her head. "Um… I think I can teleport us that far." She grabbed onto Scout's ear, and then they vanished in a pink blur.
Saniya's teleports were always rather rough. When they appeared, Scout was flung into the hot springs face first. Ponyta jumped from the sudden bang and splash and elder Torkoal looked up from his hot stone.
Saniya groaned and held her temples. "Ugh." She rubbed her head, sinking to the ground, as Scout resurfaced.
"I say!" Ponyta gasped, stamping his hooves. "Do not surprise me like that, thank you very much."
"We do not have TIME for this," Scout snapped. "Treasure Town is under a nightmare spell, Saniya, me, and you two are the ONLY ones awake, Cresselia is evil, and Rai, Mane, and Sean are trapped on Ashen Island and I don't even know if they are okay or not!"
Ponyta blinked at him. "I… what?" That was a little much to take in in five seconds.
Torkoal raised himself up with creaking bones. "The town is in peril?" he gasped.
"Elder Torkoal!" Ponyta called, splashing over to him. "Don't get up so quickly."
"The town is in peril, young one," Torkoal protested, groaning as he took a step. "I must… I must…."
"Don't do anything rash," Saniya said, recovered and flying up again. "Or… as rash as you can, I suppose. We need to ask something first!"
Scout nodded rapidly. "Darkrai is gone now, Soothe and I was able to fight him off. Soothe also appeared, she's an audino who-"
"Is of the shiny colouration," Torkoal said, concluding that point. "Yes, I remember her. Spirited young pokémon, Wigglytuff and Chatot were never the same after… well. So, she is alive?"
"You don't seem very surprised," Saniya said.
"Word of the guild searching for a lavender audino had crossed even my old earholes," Torkoal said. "Wigglytuff would not have begun that if there was not a considerable chance, she still lived. So, she was here?"
"And close enough that she was able to come after Darkrai minutes after he dropped everyone," Scout said, frowning. "That's… well that can wait! What matters is that she said that if I wanted to save the others on Ashen Island, I had to talk to you!"
"Is that so?" Torkoal asked. "Talk to me? Or to Ponyta?" He frowned. "And how would she know of that?"
Ponyta cringed. "Can I never hear the end of my past? Why is it coming up so often now?"
"Ponyta," Torkoal chastised. "This is not the time."
"He's right!" Saniya said, flying into the steam to poke Ponyta's nose. "If you have a way… actually, yeah. How DID you get from Ashen Island to here?"
Ponyta's expression wasn't friendly, but he wasn't going to refuse to answer now. "Well, not that I knew at the time having only recently regained my wits but leaving the Dark Crater dungeon to search for someone, not a slobbering beast led me to fall into a crack. The resulting dungeon was infinitely worse than anything the Dark Crater had presented, but I persevered, and upon reaching the exit I was… over here."
He glanced to his right, far-right at a sharp northeast angle. Eyes lingering on the distant mountain, not so distant from here.
Scout and Saniya's eyes followed him, and Scout whispered. "Noo…?"
"Ponyta was found mulling around near Mt. Bristle," Torkoal said, taking over. "Lost and confused. He was taken here, and I took him in. Eventually, I had him show me how he had come from Ashen Island, where no pokémon often goes, to here without crossing the sea. I had my fears, and they were justified."
"You've heard of the 'treasure' of Mt. Bristle, I assume?" Ponyta snapped, tossing his majestic mane. "Well, there is no treasure. At the top is a collapsed pile of rocks and the only thing you'll find within them is a magnagate."
Scout gasped, and Saniya's eyes widened into saucers of horror.
"Those are illegal," Scout gasped. The Guild had explained that to him ages back, and what Team Sunrise had to say about them had reinforced that.
"I didn't activate it," Ponyta snapped again. "I stumbled into it. Upon Elder Torkoal determining what it was, we collapsed the rocks onto it so nothing… foul could get through it."
"If the magnagate is still active," Torkoal continued where Ponyta left off. "And they always tend to be if not deactivated, then that is your best shot of getting to Ashen Island."
Scout breathed a sigh and nodded. "Alright. Saniya?" He turned to her.
She nodded back, but he absolutely hated the look of fear in her eyes. "I'll warp us there, just… give me a moment. That last one was a bit too quick."
As she focused, Ponyta stood up and out of the hot springs. "I must go as well. If the town is truly asleep, then it is defenceless, and Darkrai, Cresselia, or anything could happen."
"Bring me with you," Torkoal requested, slowly walking off the stone.
Ponyta hesitated. "Elder…."
"Yes," Torkoal said. His voice was aged, but unwavering. "I am your elder. I am the elder of Treasure Town. I founded it. I have seen it through its fragile infancy to this dangerous, uncertain, time. I will not stay here and do nothing as my town, and my people are put at risk." He paused at a lower point of the rock, looking sternly at Ponyta.
The younger yielded and walked over, hooves clopping on the hot stones. He held steady as Torkoal carefully crawled onto his back.
"We'll be back as soon as we can," Scout said. "But… Darkrai said he's unleashed feral pokémon from the surrounding dungeons, there may be a fight before we can get back."
"Thank you for the heads up," Ponyta said. "So, let me give you one in kind. The magnagate is a source of my worst fears and nightmares. Dark Crater was hellish and unreal, but the short trip through that unstable dungeon scared me more than anything has since. What Lucario had to say about them is true, but word alone cannot prepare you." He gave Saniya a significant look and she nodded. "Do not let your guard down within it for a single moment."
With that cheery word, Ponyta trotted off. He couldn't gallop, fearing Torkoal would slip off, but he went at a fast pace regardless. Saniya soon gathered enough focus and warped them to the base of Mt. Bristle.
Upon appearing, Scout was flung again, even more viciously, and he collided with a machop.
"Choooop!" the feral pokémon screeched, and a battle ensued. Machop, starly, wurmple, aron, they were all leaving the dungeon and attacked upon their arrival.
Saniya quickly dispatched most of them with Scout taking out the few she didn't.
"Looks like Darkrai was telling the truth," Scout said, staring at the defeated ferals. They outright knocked them out, not wanting to unleash more threats on the town. Or any of the other settlements close by.
"Looks like it," Saniya agreed. "Let's hurry up then."
Mt. Bristle was not a difficult dungeon.
Despite being a mountain, it took only about two hours to clear when looking for someone. When punching everything into just getting to the end, they made it there within forty minutes.
Scout had been to Mt. Bristle plenty of times. Never for Drowzee, but he'd still checked out the collapsed pile of rocks and wondered what was in there.
There was a gap, but it was too small for him to get through, even being a feline. He'd make a guess that it would have been too small for Azurill as well. No one could fit through there, since it was blocked off further in.
Several tonnes of rock had collapsed onto the hidden secret of the dungeon. The amount of Power Torkoal would have had to use to damage a dungeon that severely was inspiring to imagine.
Saniya raised her hands, eyes glowing a blazing lavender. The rocks began to shiver. She bit her lip and squeezed harder around nothing. The air was rippling from the amount of Power she was putting into it, and slowly the rocks began to rise.
"Go!" Saniya gasped out, pulling the gap wider. Scout didn't have time to hesitate to jump into the most claustrophobic place he could imagine, he just dashed for it.
Saniya groaned as she forced rocks to tumble to the side, opening it up further for their eventual return.
She glowed slightly with a soft light, which was needed as her power slipped and the rocks crashed down, as she slipped up beside him.
They held close together as everything banged and boomed, their surroundings shivering and risking coming down on them at any moment.
"Let's just get this done," Scout suggested, edging forth. With Saniya's light, they were able to see a few feet ahead of them. Which was fine because there were only a few feet in this enclosure.
The rocks covered an opening into a tiny chamber in which the magnagate resided, a tear in space that was darker and more foreboding than any dungeon entrance. It was so dark it was almost purple, like a bruise against reality itself.
The magnagate did not emit light. It was darker than dark and eyes tended to slip off it as if it wasn't there. But Scout could sense it, and Saniya hung onto his arm as they edged forth.
"Ready?" Scout asked.
"No, but yes."
They both took a deep breath and jumped into the magnagate.
Within the laws of the Grass Continent, magnagate's were illegal to activate. That had been a surprise to Scout, he knew they played a part on the Mist Continent.
He had asked why, and the answer had been nice and straightforward. Mystery Dungeons were chaotic places, with endless twisting turns and crazed pokémon. They were dangerous places; indeed, entering one unaware was akin to a death sentence if you were not strong enough.
But they were stable. They were formed out of existing places, drawing in helpless pokémon to become part of their danger. They were rooted in the world, and in the Dark Future, they had, ironically, become bastions of stability. Still dangerous of course, even more so, but they were stable in time and space when everything else wasn't.
Magnagate Dungeons, however, did not have that stability. They were not formed out of any understanding of how normal dungeons worked. They were some of the most powerful means of transportation in the world.
Two people with an attuned entercard could create a dungeon that could take you from one place in the world to one place that was anywhere else, no matter how far. You'd have a path between continents. It was amazing. It was fantastic. It was perfect.
Yet they were illegal here because what was found within a magnagate was terrifying. And what would happen if one side was broken with people still inside them? No one was ever seen again when that happened.
Scout and Saniya immediately became breathless as they stepped into the shivering, blurry, purple walls. Oxygen was not native here, only what little had slipped through in this magnagate's time could be breathed, and there wasn't much of it. There was the stink of sulphur through it all, likely due to the other end of it.
The magnagate's walls were undetermined. They flowed like water, sometimes solid, sometimes not. They looked like they were there, but they weren't always. They moved in, and Scout nearly broke his nose before simply disappearing into a new area.
A vapour-like essence hung around the ground. It was the only thing that seemed relatively stable here, crunching and cracking as Scout stepped. It felt like it could collapse at any minute, so he hung onto Saniya, and she huddled close in return.
It wasn't as bad as Scout feared it would be. Though, Saniya was taking short, rapid, terrified breaths, the darkness wasn't so imposing to him. Maybe he had just gone past terror and had slipped into a manic state of focus? He had to get to Rai, Mane, and Sean. He had to.
There was no sound here, except there was. The beating of their hearts. The vibration of the walls. A distant call sang like the shriek of a siren, inviting them to deviate from their path.
Neither did. Hanging as close as possible, squinting as the vapour stung their eyes, made their noses itch, and caressed the back of their heads.
Grasping hands, paws, fingers, and limbs reached out for them. What they wanted, no one could be sure. Where they reaching a hand for help? Or extending a trick to drag you with them?
They were not there. They never were.
There was no sound except that in your head. It wasn't real. It was all in your head. It is real, it is all in your head.
Scout gave a weak sound as his foot touched something, and it touched back, sliding around its legs and holding on. He tried to jump, kick away, but he couldn't risk jarring Saniya off him. Her arms were trembling, strong and weak at the same time.
It was getting worse, actually, Scout decided.
Something was touching his ear. Something was in his ear. Crawling in, burrowing deeper. He hit his head, smacked his ear. It wriggled deeper. He nearly drew a Night Slash to plunge into his own ear, but Saniya caught him.
There was nothing in his ear.
In his ear.
His ear.
His.
Yours
The two pokémon, a celebi and a meowth walked until they didn't need to walk anymore.
A star blast of light nearly blinded them, and they gasped desperate gulps of air, hiccupping within moments. The scent of sulphur increased but so did an ashy stench, but it was not stale and lifeless as the air in the magnagate.
The reason they were illegal suddenly made more sense. The dungeon itself felt like a dream or a bubble blown by a child. Risking popping at any moment.
Pokémon had been lost to oblivion when one side of a magnagate was destroyed or failed. No one knew what happened to them, creating a new magnagate in the same area could not find them.
Only echoes and siren songs to step off the path and join them.
That was behind them, they were breathing again, desperate inhales of smoky air that stung their lungs and caused them to cough and gag. But that was better than things wriggling deeper in your ears.
They didn't separate as they breathed, but once the reality they had passed through became clear, they looked up and then away.
"L-let's go," Scout said, pulling Saniya forward.
"I'll go up high," she suggested, fluttering up. "Look from above!" she called louder. He nodded and sprinted on all fours after her.
If Ponyta had found it after exiting the Dark Crater, hopefully, that meant it was close by. Scout didn't look forward to the chance that they may have to fight their way through it to find them, but he'd go through hell if that's what it took.
Striker was vindicated in the value of orbs when Saniya gave a sharp cry. "THERE!"
She zoomed off at breakneck speed, and Scout wasn't far behind her. Dark Crater was right on the edge of the island, waves crashed on black-sanded beaches as three pokémon argued furiously.
"BOYS!" Saniya screamed, diving down.
"GUYS!" Scout cried seconds after her.
They reached a stunned group of injured pokémon, previously arguing if they could swim the whole way back to the mainland.
"Saniya?" Sean gasped.
"Scout!" Rai and Mane shouted.
Scout reached them as Saniya picked Sean up and gasped. "Oh, fuck you two are hurt!" Sean had tied the scarves as best as he could, but Cresselia's Slash had cut distressingly deep.
"We're okay," Rai said, but he didn't look okay. "It's Cresselia!"
"I know!" Scout replied, grabbing onto Rai and Mane to look at their wounds. "I figured it out when I found one of her feathers and then Darkrai showed up and put everyone asleep!"
"And so he says SOOTHE showed up!" Saniya shouted, pulling Sean over. "To help him fight off Darkrai."
"We almost had him too," Scout growled, claws coming out. "But that's when Cresselia showed up, and they escaped. I cut his arm off, though."
"You cut Darkrai's arm off?" Mane whistled. "Nice." He gave him an approving up-and-down look.
Scout managed a weak smile. "I got rid of Darkrai for now but Soothe then disappeared on me. After attacking me." He rubbed a glittering spot on his chest. "And I used the feather to wake up Saniya."
"That's how you got here?" Sean asked.
"No, we used illegal means!" Saniya replied. "Ponyta used a magnagate to get from here to the Grass Continent, and it's just over there." She gestured the way they came. "It comes out at the top of Mt. Bristle."
"A magnagate IN a dungeon?" Rai asked, disbelieving. "That's even possible?"
"Apparently."
"Magnagate or not," Mane said. "You got here."
"And we'll use it to get back," Scout said. Although he wasn't thrilled at the idea of going back into that purple hell, he liked the injuries before him even less.
They began to walk, and Scout filled them in on the rest of it while being filled in on Cresselia. Most pointedly, Scout spoke of the feral attacks that Darkrai said.
"There were ferals outside of the Dark Crater," Rai said softly.
"Mt. Bristle as well," Saniya said. She and Scout shared a worried look, the others weren't walking very fast, and they didn't want to push them.
Sean had done what he could, but blood loss was a tricky thing to tackle. They didn't even have any berries to get some energy back. And neither of them had thought to grab some items just in case, being pulled along with the winds of panic too easily.
Saniya was able to offer some help with a Life Dew, but it could only go so far.
Once they reached the magnagate, hidden within a crevice, they realised they should split the party.
"Those dungeons aren't supposed to be very stable," Mane pointed out. "Even with Sean's 'not counting' in them, I don't think we should test our luck. Especially today."
"Take Rai and Mane," Scout said, passing the two to Saniya. "I'll get Sean and I through it."
"You sure?"
"You're stronger, you should take the two."
She entered first, letting Sean and Scout sit in exhausted silence for a moment. Sean looked tiredly horrified of entering the Magnagate but they had no choice.
"Had any idea Cresselia was bad?" Sean asked.
Scout shook his head. "She was supposed to be useless, not malicious. I don't know what Darkrai did to her, or if she really did just snap from that time freeze thing."
"We did see her. I remembered when she started talking about it like it reminded me. Damn, I wish I hadn't forgotten."
"We all forgot. Even me and Saniya."
"I just thought she was being overconfident, getting herself injured that many times. It didn't even occur to me she might be draining our items."
"Didn't even occur to me that considering so many things have been different, that why wouldn't she? At most I thought maybe Darkrai wouldn't be there… which was true in the end."
"We fucked up."
Scout didn't respond to that. He was still getting used to the idea of 'we' when it came to a fault.
Once they had waited long enough, they stepped into the magnagate.
Scout had thought that clinging onto Saniya for a rock was hard enough. The dungeon pulling at his everything, whispering into his ear, tugging his whiskers, and probing his eyes was bad.
Somehow it was so much worse with Sean.
They walked in arms linked, and almost immediately Sean groaned and buckled against him, Scout having to half-carry, half-drag, the heavier riolu as Sean began to whimper and mutter.
Saniya had shared the burden, but Sean needed everything and then some. It was like the purple smog of the nightmare coiled around him like a physical chain, tugging his ankles and causing him to stumble and almost pull Scout down with him. He could hear Sean's heartbeat, pumping away as if it was in his own head.
It wasn't his heart, no.
He knew it was Sean's.
He didn't know how.
He could almost see it.
Could almost t-
The pounding of the beat bored into Scout's skull, churning his brain to jelly, causing him to break out in fits of laughter and Sean's muttering continued.
He began to dream. Sean separating from him and running into the mists. Throwing Sean into it. Taking his claws and driving them into the soft-
Sean was there. Sean was there. Sean was there.
He was heavy. He was real. He was Sean.
Scout began to repeat that as he pulled him along, not releasing him for a moment and bruising Sean when his grip tightened, tightened further, and continued growing tenser until he was nearly crushing Sean's arm with his paws.
Sean was deadweight the entire time, but at least he didn't resist the pull. He only muttered increasingly delirious words under his breath. His eyes seemed far away, like he was having a Scream vision.
"First. Last. Fallen. The. Last. Fall. Shadow. Darkness. Bones. Fire. Fire. Fire. The Fire. Returns. Deep. Woods. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fir. .re. fi. re. Fire. Returns."
Once the mist faded and the walls changed to collapsed rocks, Sean screamed.
Saniya had raised the rocks already in preparation for their arrival, and Sean came sprinting out of it, screaming like a banshee. He ran towards the wall of the room and slammed a devastating Force Palm into it.
A shockwave tinged with dark rippled out, and Sean collapsed to his knees, coughing and retching out a mixture of blood, bile, spit, all tinged with fading lines of oily blackness.
Once it was all out of his system, he got up onto shaking legs.
They didn't speak of it, but the five of them didn't drop a hand or paw or tail from another as they left the dungeon and were teleported back to Treasure Town by Saniya.
The distance they went caused an even harder toss upon appearing and with three of them injured that was not for the best.
Scout, however, pulled himself onto his feet and ran off to find as many oran berries, sitrus berries, and anything else Chimecho had showed him that he could find.
He was no healer, but he had wound up under Chimecho's care often enough that she had taught him a few simple tricks. Sean too, had learned how to care for the injuries of them during the Dark Future, and Saniya knew Life Dew.
Between the three of them, they'd be okay.
They would have to be.
Torkoal had, very helpfully, just been in the middle of sorting some items out for them just in case. At the same time, Ponyta busied himself with moving many pokémon as he could.
With hooves, he had some trouble getting them onto his back. Saniya, once she'd done what she could, moved to help him. Levitating a few pokémon onto his back before carrying a couple herself.
"We've noticed something," Ponyta huffed as Team Ion and Sean began to acclimate to the slumbering situation around them. "No sign of Team Celestial or Vigoroth."
Scout blinked once before gasping, "Vigoroth said he was going to Beach Cave with them to train! Could they still be in there?"
"What if they're asleep too?" Rai asked worried. "Even in that dungeon that'd be dangerous."
"I'll go in," Scout declared. "Get them out if I need to." He took an escape orb with him for good measure.
Beach Cave was a small dungeon, it had never grown particularly problematic even so close to town, and some ferals wandered out of it anyway, the krabby that blew bubbles at dusk were feral.
There were a number of them emerging as Scout crossed the sand. A few Shadow Balls had them down and out and he raced down the slick slide of the dungeon, managing to keep his balance and running into the maze.
It didn't take long for him to find the sounds of battle. Growls and grunts and blasts of flame. He followed eagerly to find Team Celestial having quite a battle with each other.
He had to pause for just a moment. Rai, Mane, and him battled on occasion and he knew Team Sunrise did as well. They always pulled their punches a little, it was for training, not because they wanted to hurt each other.
Vigoroth and Grovyle battled like they hated each other. Strikes from claws and thorny vines drew blood eagerly and without restraint. Vigorth tugged a thorned vine down, cutting his own hand to slam Grovyle into the ground and it was slick with blood as well as slime by this point.
"Woah," Scout gasped. Braixen wasn't as beaten up or fighting as violently, but they were scorch marks everywhere. For a moment he feared the dungeon had gotten to them and turned them feral but then he saw Vigoroth grinning.
"Meowth!" he called cheerfully. "What's up, mon?"
To Scout's surprise, he saw Grovlye flushed and grinning as well, though his was a lot more wild and he was panting heavily as his sister swiftly made her way over to him.
Remembering why he was here, Scout quickly blurted out, "Town is in danger! Everyone is asleep, drove Darkrai off but there are a LOT of feral pokemon coming! They're leaving the dungeons! We gotta get everyone to safety and defend the place! And holy shit are you two okay?"
"We are fine," Grovyle said, stepping forth determindly. "Town is in danger?" Scout nodded. "Let us leave then."
Braixen and Vigoroth nodded and Scout took out the escape orb.
The condition of Team Celestial apparently wasn't much of a surprise to Torkoal or Ponyta. Ponyta shook his head and Torkoal looked almost amused and a touch concerned as well. He saw Scout's hovering anxiety and quietly explained, "It's not unheard for Vigoroth and Grovyle to fight to the point of passing out from bloodloss, this appears relatively controlled for them."
If everyone was sure. They had bigger things to worry about then possible sadomasochism.
Feral pokémon were coming. And even if they weren't, they couldn't simply leave the bulk of Treasure Town's populace out in the open, exposed to the elements.
Torkoal directed Scout and Celestial to gather as many pokemon as they could from all around town, including the homes as they did not know how far Darkrai's sleep spell had gone.
With Treasure Town being so busy in repairs, so many of the townsfolk had been out and about. Scout checked out the housing district further in and found Azumarill along with plenty of other pokémon in their homes, sound asleep.
He also found Bidoof, although he wasn't around the housing, he was slumped over on the track leading to them. He appeared to have fallen asleep on his way back from somewhere.
Bidoof was heavy, but Scout was able to drag at least him into town where Vigoroth came jogging over carrying Charmeleon and Machoke on his shoulders and picked Bidoof up as well.
Marowak's Dojo became their bastion. With the guild destroyed they obviously couldn't use that, but the dojo was quite large as well. A few pokémon were also placed into the tents of the remade guild as well as Sharpedo Bluff.
Pokémon that were already in their homes was a topic of argument.
"If we're going to have a horde of ferals on us, that will be the first place they go!" Scout argued.
"The homes are sturdy," Ponyta fired back. "And pulling everyone into the middle of town is just placing a big welcome sign for an all-you-can-eat buffet!"
Their argument was broken up by Torkoal but not resolved.
On the second day since everyone had been dropped to sleep, they got their first bit of good news.
"Oh. Oh my gosh… what happened here?"
Sunflora returned.
She hadn't stuck around in Evertrail Town for long, itching to get back to Treasure Town sooner rather than later but walked instead of the fast trip she took the first time. Causing her to miss everything that went down that had been broadcasted across the Psychic Network.
Sunflora had left a whole and stable Treasure Town, moving with Team Gazer to save some heroes.
Sunflora returned to her home, the guild itself, shattered and broken. The town blasted to splinters. Dugtrio dead. And a majority of the populace unconscious and not waking up.
She took it remarkably well upon an explanation given by a tired Sean. Saniya had stopped talking much to them, Scout was almost as silent, Grovyle wasn't much of a talker at all, Vigoroth was working the hardest, Braixen had gone pretty silent herself, and Ponyta was in a very poor mood, so he took it upon himself to help where he could.
Sunflora bowed her head upon hearing of Dugtrio's death. She wiped her eyes with her leaves. "I see," she managed. "Well, that's… oh poor Diglett."
Sean let her cry, giving her space.
To her credit, Sunflora only cried for a minute and then she did not cry again.
Once she composed herself, she set herself to bearing some of the load they were suffering. With carefully manipulated moves, Sunflora was able to lay a patchwork of Grassy Terrain over a lot of distance.
Setting as many pokémon on this terrain as they could, they could give them some substance with the energy of the move, working hard just to protect them.
It was hard to give food and water to several hundred sleeping pokémon, with just eleven pokemon. The terrain would only help a little, but it gave them a bit more time.
She went another step further and spread Ingrain vines through terrain spreading across the housing district. Sunflora could control those vines for more than just sucking up nutrients, she covered houses with them to reinforce them a little more, to convince the ferals to turn back or just continue forward without trying to attack.
She couldn't cover it all. She was not nearly so powerful, but she could protect the doors and most of the windows at the very most.
The work took another day, and a half and Sunflora crashed afterwards.
As they worked, pokémon from the Beach Cave had indeed been leaving en-masse as Darkrai warned. Thankfully many of them simply slipped into the waves of the beach. Those who did not were still not much of a threat, at least to awake pokémon.
They found Lapras there, on the beach. Risking being swept out to sea, so they dragged him up.
Rai, Mane, and Sean convinced the ferals to leave under Torkoal's supervision. They were healing, but not fast enough. Not for what they feared was coming.
With as many preparations as they could do, Torkoal ordered everyone to rest for at least one night.
On the fourth day, the horde arrived.
Blossom the sunflora was a Grass-type.
In other words, the Grass-type was widely considered to be the safest type for new training. Avoiding the often-literal fiery attitude of Fire-type's and the overwhelming pressure of many Water-type's.
Easy-going was the norm among Grass-type starters, but there were other reasons. They were the toughest, able to survive off more than just kibble and physical food, safe for a young trainer who may not know how to take care of a pokémon on their own.
They were loyal, or at least pleasant, and would fight for their trainers.
But another reason that wasn't often built upon. Grass-type's could be the master of terrain battling. Difficult to utilise well in the varying battlefields of the Pokémon Journey, but powerful, nonetheless.
Blossom was a Grass-type.
She had been perched where the guild once stood, connected to the vines that had crossed through the town. She couldn't see with her eyes, closed or not. She couldn't feel with her leaves, awake or not. What she could do, however, was see and feel through the network of vines she'd laid.
It was rough, it was minuscule, she could only sense damage to them, she could only see movement through them. It was not real sight or feeling. It left her body entirely vulnerable, guarded by little Shinx. So brave, so strong.
She had seen him grow up.
There was a fact about Blossom that no one really realised.
She was flighty, she was giggly, all gossip reached her soon enough. If a pokémon wanted to know something, approaching Blossom with the right price could likely get them what they wanted.
She was an apprentice of the Wigglytuff Guild and had been for a couple years. Everyone knew she was strong enough to graduate but was waiting for the right moment.
She was best friends with Chimecho, argued with Loudred, and always did her best to help.
One thing that few realised was that Blossom knew everyone in Treasure Town. Everyone.
She knew the Kecleon Brothers. She knew Marill and Azurill. She knew Banette. She knew Machoke and Charmander and Spinda and Delibird.
She knew Lairon and Lapras, Wynaut and Wobbuffet too. She knew the shopkeepers, the shoppers, the exploration teams that came in and out. She knew the pokémon who called Treasure Town their home. She knew everyone.
No one else could claim that. Every pokémon that came in and out, she knew their smiles, their stories, their lives.
She knew that Vigoroth would want nothing more than to be helping protect everyone here. That the rest of the guild would. That the exploration teams would. That the townsfolk would. Everyone was in danger and the entire town that she knew personally.
She knew everyone. And resolved to not let a single person perish.
Something, or someone, touched a vine, and Blossom felt, or even heard, two words with a dire warning. "They're here."
Then the vines began getting trampled she found a way to let little Shinx know. He didn't want to leave her, she could tell that even without being able to see him.
She made sure he did, they had to know it was time. The horde had arrived. Darkrai's threat had come to fruition, and now everyone was at risk.
Little Shinx raced off, fast as a bolt of lightning and Blossom smiled. She dropped the smile and pulled on her Power, tripping the vines, knocking rampaging ferals over. Her smile returned as she fought them from a distance, as she was protecting the town she loved.
As they grew closer, ripping and tearing, she wanted to wrench her roots from the ground and charge down to fight in the thick of it. She could not. Blossom could not. She had to keep the vines stable, she had to keep the Grassy Terrain going, to protect those pokémon left out there who stood no chance of protecting themselves.
She had to.
Things had fallen apart immediately.
To Scout, that was honestly expected, and so he smoothly flipped into Plan B.
Sunflora's vines, as powerful as she had surprisingly turned out to be, were stretched razor-thin. She couldn't do a whole lot besides protecting the pokémon further out and warning them of when the ferals were about to arrive.
Rai had come sprinting down, trading places with Mane in protecting Sunflora, to let them know.
Frankly, Scout had almost expected it to be worse. Yet even then, paradoxically, he had not been mentally prepared for the horde.
It caused him to flashback to when he first arrived. The blank eyes of the anorith, the screeching shellos. They had unnerved him so much, but he'd gotten used to the ferals quickly like they weren't so bad.
After being in the Dark Future, he realised why. They really weren't so bad compared to the creatures there.
These thoughts were fought by the horde, however. It was less of a collection of pokémon as it was a writhing mass of carnage, an unnatural disaster besetting itself upon the town without thought, reason, or mercy. Some glittered.
There was nothing they could do to hold that from reaching the town. Forget trying to stop a flood with your hands, trying to halt this horde was like thinking you could blow a hurricane away with your breath.
The ferals had hit the reinforced area in front of the town, thick vines to trip them, rocks piled, fire behind it, and smashed straight through it.
Many had been caught and crushed under the feet of those who came after. The first had been pushed into the fire by those who were behind them, at least some sense of self-preservation in their broken minds.
This had been fire started by Scout, Saniya, and Vigoroth painstakingly created by rubbing sticks and leaves together. The fire created by Mane, Ponyta, or Torkoal would be magical to some degree.
Ironically, it was a real wildfire that was dangerous here. Anyone could take a Flamethrower to the face and be okay, the magic of pokémon protecting. But actual fire was hazardous, but they had no other option besides try and keep it contained and hope it slowed them down.
The fire was beaten to death under the feet and bodies of feral pokémon before they burst forward, the floodgates opened.
Some had been stopped. Some had been beaten already. But it was only the beginning of it, by no means the end.
Really, the fact they had broken through wasn't even the first plan failing. It was just an unfortunate certainty. So, those that remained to fight fell into action.
Scout used orbs and seeds, claws and blood.
Scout ran from the dojo, creating a big enough scene to set a group of ferals trying to break in to instead chase him. He couldn't fight so well in a brawl, but he was fast and sharp. That was the best he could do. That had to be enough.
His best had to be enough.
Three days was not enough time.
It simply wasn't. It wasn't enough time to be nearly killed, dragged through a hellscape to safety, and start saving a town of sleeping pokémon.
Wounds did not heal that fast. At least, not the kind of injuries Sean had, that Rai and Mane also had. Cresselia had been attacking to kill them. Sean hadn't even five minutes to process that with everything else going on. And the thought stuck unpleasantly in his head at this worst of moments.
They could not have been healed even if they had Chansey to give them magical healing rays. Or had Soothe stuck around, apparently being here. She was an audino, she could have helped.
But there was no Soothe to be seen, only unconscious pokémon they had to drag away to help.
Three days was not enough. Not enough to figure out a plan to place everyone in a safe, comfortable area. It was not enough time to fortify an entire village.
Treasure Town was on the coast, it was the end of a line. They were on edge and had nowhere to run. But at least that also meant there was only one direction the ferals would be coming from.
Three days. Three days, not that they even knew it was three days. Only soon.
Only when stragglers became more common. Only when they had just managed to protect enough that they could set up a watch for the attack.
And to do it, they had to lose one of their strongest fighters. Sunflora was strong, everyone knew that. She was needed in another way, however.
Three days to recover from mortal injuries, drag hundreds of pokémon to safety, and fortify an entire town against a horde of creatures coming for their blood.
Three days was not enough, but it would have to be enough.
Sean felt his injuries stinging from the wear of running, from the needle-pricks of Power Energies washing over his healing body. They had all been given as much energy with sitrus and chesto berries that they could stomach.
Enough to ignore the pain and exhaustion.
Enough to fight.
He mimicked a flash of white around a staravia and flew into the air himself on translucent wings. Punching that bird out of the sky.
It landed, and he landed on something else, slamming a Force Palm through the paw on his foot to knock it out as well.
That was two, but there were so many more. He grabbed an orb to stun a horde of them.
He would fight them all. There was no choice. He hadn't chosen this life at first but he was choosing it now. He would save them. All of them.
He had to.
They were protecting Sunflora. Not only because she was protecting others, but because she couldn't defend herself.
If things were right, a whole squad could be guarding her against any threat. Even a single hit might knock that incredibly fragile sense of control out, and her defensive line would collapse entirely. Already it was clear Sunflora was wilting at the edges from the sheer Power she was exhausting to keep this up, any hit would be dire.
It was Rai, then it was Mane, then it was Rai again, then Sean, then Rai once more, now it was him. It was Mane when they knew the ferals were coming.
Mane hated that. He hated that he was the best pick for this. Rai's sharp aim and Sean's ability to run items alongside Scout meant they were needed down there. Mane's firepower was also needed, dearly needed.
But where Rai could hold many pokémon off with sharp, direct, jolts and Sean could hardly even do that, Mane could set them on fire.
Few things were a better deterrent than fire.
First, it was singular Embers, a nice simple attack that didn't drain him much. Soon it was more Embers. Then scattering in some Fire Blasts to really force them back.
He could dodge their attacks, but so many would then hit Sunflora. He let some hit him, exploded some in mid-air before they could beat him. He was still injured, same as Rai and Mane. That's why they were the protectors. That's why he was.
Torkoal and Ponyta could do this job too, but they weren't injured. Mane had argued that Torkoal was elderly, but he confidently proved he was stronger than either of them.
If they ever needed a truly big ace in the hole, Torkoal could do it. Mane, for everything he had, would probably kill himself if he had to do the same. He still couldn't turn his head all the way without it hurting, but he did so anyway, he had to see everything around him.
So, he was here. Holding off the clambering beasts rising up the broken stairs. Parts of them had been removed for renovations in the town, others had just been damaged when Palkia was here.
Mane continued to fight and blast, even Hyper Voice's to knock them back. The ferals were getting closer, it was taking more and more to hold them back, and they were getting closer and closer.
Mane took a deep breath and slid his eyes closed for just a moment, so damn tired.
Then, he roared.
A shockwave of fire, his Fire Blast melded with his Hyper Voice, set the horde on fire as well as the stairs.
It was awful, really, to be the one to do this. The stairs were the last remnant of the Wigglytuff Guild, the steep final obstacle to the proud coalition.
And Mane was the one to burn it to ash.
It was terrible and yet….
He had to do it.
It was getting worse.
They were eleven pokémon. Eleven extraordinary pokémon indeed, but still only eleven. This was hundreds of ferals. This was more than the number of pokémon that a single dungeon would usually contain! Sheer weight of numbers could overwhelm anything if you had enough.
And even then only a fraction of those enemies would be fought. A smaller number of them would have to be knocked out, most ferals fled once you fought back.
These ones… it took so much more.
Ponyta's hooves smashed down on a yanma, and he felt a crunch. He winced and didn't look at his hooves.
Was it better that way? To be put out of your misery at last?
Or could that yanma have been saved? Like he had. He had been saved, but this yanma would never be.
Ferals that were awoken were not common pokémon, even fewer would ever admit to having been one. It took quite a bit for Ponyta to admit it only earlier, with the world itself perhaps at stake.
He was a formal feral, but that meant he stared upon this horde and didn't only see beasts of ferals, he saw pokémon. Most explorers, most pokémon wild or civilised, learned to not look at ferals as pokémon.
It was easier that way. Ferals were eaten, ferals were stolen from, ferals had their homes intruded upon, attacked, and abandoned to the madness of the twisting corridors of a Mystery Dungeon.
They couldn't be reasoned with or reliably saved. No one even knew how ferals snapped out of it. No formal feral had any idea, besides being knocked out in a battle against a sane pokémon.
Most ferals fled before they could be knocked out. And those that were left unconscious happened to be easy prey for other ferals. Many pokémon had defeated ferals and dragged them out of the dungeon, expecting them to wake up.
They didn't. They just attacked, still maddened.
Without a known way, or if it was anything more than luck or some other factor in play, this was the way things were.
Ponyta was an explorer himself. He had been raised well enough by Torkoal to join the Wigglytuff Guild and graduated. He joined Team Flame afterwards, his two teammates never being guild pokémon. He wasn't the leader, even if he was the most accomplished of them.
He fought ferals for a living, and he did what many pokémon did and didn't think about them. Except he did. There was no time, no dungeon, that he didn't take a look back at least once and wonder why he was lucky enough to be helped.
Ultimately, that was the reason behind his name. As Torkoal had dubbed him, fortunate. Fortune, to be exact, was his name and he always wondered if that was right.
Still, Fortune didn't feel very lucky at the moment. With houndoom and mightyena on his back, biting him even as his flames pulsed. Electrike and herdier biting at his legs, an arcanine barrelling into his side to break his ribs and knock him spinning.
No, being on the other side of a canine pokémon pack hunting him down did not feel very lucky. Fortune breathed fire, but the houndoom drank it. Flame Body.
He stomped his hooves, arcanine smashed into his side again. If ribs weren't broken before, they definitely were now. The other canines attacked him again, sharp claws and sharper teeth digging through his flesh for purchase.
Still, he got back up and reared up, smashing his staggeringly-hard hooves into the arcanine's head. He couldn't fail here. He had to keep fighting.
For everyone here. For Torkoal who raised him and loved this town.
He had to.
Twila the Braixen had not known what a home was like to have until she came back to it. Returned from their exam and realised she knew the people they were coming back to, and could not wait to see them again.
Her earliest memories spoke of a time of warmth and safety, comfort and love, but those memories were like of a different person. In a lot of ways, they were of a different person.
Fissure took care of its own but she had not been their own for a long, long, time. She wondered if Old Delphox was still there and if she survived this, she'd ask Team Ion if she was. She couldn't imagine that old hag could have croaked it, but time made fools of us all.
The road had not been home but it had been safety. Movement, constant movement, never settling, never letting anything get close enough to find out, to risk it all. He had been too young to grow up, but he had to grow up nonetheless. They both had to.
And then, here. Treasure Town. The name did not do it justice. Oh, Twila knew what the pokemon were like here. It was a… it was a small town, and carried the thoughts that small towns often did. The Guild, though, oh the Guild.
She spun her wand, sending a bolting blaze of scorching flame at ferals mobilising around the well that lay on the crossroads. Fire was a great deterrent, she and Mane agreed on that.
In any other battle, any other dungeon fight, this would be easy. Lay enough screens and spells and let Luno and Sol go wild.
And they were. She knew they were, deeper into the town, holding the surging pokemon off from reaching those that were helpless and she was so very proud for that.
This was home, even if it was currently blasted to bits by rampaging gods.
A biting maw loomed from the carnage for her neck but she deflected it with her psychic power. A stream of ice, and lightning, and fire all came at her from different angles.
She could weather a lot. Not as much as her brother, but she was not delicate.
She too had grown up too fast.
She had to.
The ferals would overwhelm her. She knew that. She knew her limits and how far she could go before it would crack her defences and bleed too much out of her to continue. There was no place to go to escape, the only option was to keep fighting, every plan crumbling under the horde.
Nothing left but grit and hope.
A Fire Blast careened over her head and sent a group scattering. She didn't turn back to thank Mane, she couldn't drop her eyes for a second.
She could only hope that they would make it through this. She saw something dark erupting near the town square and her heart dropped.
The only hope left was that it didn't cost them their home in order to save it.
But if it did?
Then. They would survive.
They had to.
It had been three hours. The horde was still coming. They had split them up as best as they could, Scout was stunning with that.
Quick strikes, leaps in and out to draw more of the attackers off to chase him rather than grouping together. He cut a houndoom off Ponyta, drew seven pokémon to follow him to the bridge before blasting a hole in it and sending them into the water. He did his best.
And Rai loved him for it.
And yet there were still so many of them. Bodies littered the ground, some of them not breathing anymore. These ferals were riled to madness, just attacking them rarely worked to drive them away. They had to be defeated outright.
It was Torkoal, Ponyta, and Team Celestial who were actually killing, however. They had the strength to do so without risking themselves. Or perhaps just the grim intent necessary. The amount of Power Rai would need to expend would stagger him for the next wave.
Scout was cutting deadly lines through the ferals, though.
Rai, Sean, and Mane were set to guard rather than fight actively, still being injured. Torkoal was supposed to as well, but he crawled into the fray quickly, seeking out Ponyta, as blasts of fire sent ferals flying.
Rai guarded the dojo. It was where most of the pokémon were positioned. Sean was doing his best to protect the nursery, where the bulk of the rest of them was. Scout did his best to stop the ferals trampling the tents, where more pokémon were held but was struggling.
There were barricades, of course, but only so much could be done in three days and only so much could be done against numbers like this. The ferals sought out the defenceless pokémon.
Ponyta and Torkoal joined Scout there, to light a wall of fire to ward them off.
Rai was guarding the largest number. Probably a hundred or more pokémon were in the dojo, and he was one little shinx. They attacked the sides of the dojo and Rai had to encourage them around to him with electricity or away if they pleased.
They rarely did.
More ferals came in a ceaseless line. It would almost have been polite, but perhaps they were too used to lining up in corridors. Plenty broke rank and charged the doors, and they got battered.
Many even ignored Rai, the tiny shinx being ignored for what could be smelled behind the thick doors.
Rai was just one shinx. His friends were in the dojo. His community was in the dojo. The guild was in the dojo. He put his tail through the twin handles and called on Arashi's teaching.
She had been giving him tips, training, all the while travelling back with Team Gazer. She wanted to give him something to help him, something they both could do that their parents could do as well. Iron Tail.
He didn't have it entirely down yet, but he could do it enough. Enough to hold the doors closed with his tail, even as the doors were smashed back and forth and his control over the Steel-energy flickered in and out. He was sure he was broken bones in his tail, but they couldn't get inside.
He would not allow it.
Rai roared, lightning struck from the ground and the cloudy sky. A reprieve, but only for a few seconds.
He would hold the line.
He had to.
Saniya threw the almost-rebuilt Electivire Link Shop at the ferals charging the back of the dojo. They could rebuild it. They couldn't rebuild anyone killed by the ferals.
She threw a dozen pokémon far into the air, letting them drop to the gravity. Let gravity do its work.
She threw pokémon into the water, into the sea. It was cruel, but they couldn't afford to be kind.
The shop was smashed to smithereens by the weight of the fall, but it crushed a dozen ferals that were going for those asleep. She was so tired.
She almost attacked Sean, charging for her to give her some berries. She didn't, though.
He raced off to help Rai, the ferals were all beginning to congregate on the dojo. Leaving Sunflora and Mane. Leaving the nursery. They were all going for one place.
The ground was thick with pokémon, it was difficult to step without trampling one. Saniya floated, so she didn't care.
She hadn't slept. Not one of these three days of preparation. She was Celebi, she didn't need as much sleep like other pokémon. She could sustain herself on energy, at least for a while. It was how she had survived in the Dark Future with Dialga itself hunting her.
It was not wise to sleep often there if you had no one to help you. It was maddening to go longer and longer without it, however.
She could go weeks without sleep if she truly had to, but she was so much weaker now. And she was so tired.
Saniya tossed more pokémon before racing off to the dojo. She had to protect it. Striker and Guardian were in there. They couldn't be harmed. She couldn't lose them. She had to keep going.
She had to.
Sol the vigoroth was a whirlwind of destruction. Everywhere his feet took him, every slash and swipe of his claws, left blood and bodies in his wake.
Sol was a whirlwind of protection. Everywhere his feet took him, every slash and swipe of his claws, it was to protect the place they could not protect itself any longer.
Once upon a time, Team Razor Wind had contained four members. Zangoose the leader. Sandslash and Scyther. And Slakoth. Even as a slakoth he'd had uncontrolled energy, pushed them onwards to bigger and better things.
Then he evolved and had grown too much and they left him here.
This place, this Treasure Town, had taken him in. Even with his energy. Even with his friendly thoughtlessness. Even with the fragile things he broke and the times he spoke too loudly, which was most of the time.
It became his home, his refuge, the place he belonged. A place he wasn't tolerated, but adored for all his strangeness. And then, then, a braixen and grovyle stumbled into town and he remembered what being happy was like.
Treasure Town was made as a place for those who didn't belong anywhere else. It's why Wigglytuff had felt it was the place to start his Guild, another door open to those who weren't accepted in other places. They had the hard-working bidoof, the former feral ponyta, they had the giggly gossip and the serene and scary chimecho.
They had the fussy old bird who cared too much. They had the wild child raised in civilisation and the son of the Shadow Pokemon.
They had the grovyle with scars that told so many stories and the braixen whose eyes told just as many.
That's what this place was. It was in the Kecleon Brothers who gave freely to struggling families. Motherly Kangaskhan who asked no questions, only opened her arms. Chansey and Banette, so surly, so rough, yet raised all the children thrown away by the world without a hint of resignation or regret.
And Sol would fight to the death to protect it. It wasn't perfect, no place was, but it was perfect to him.
His claws were a whirlwind of elemental attacks for hours and then it was raw energy and then it was just his claws, blunting against scales and chitin, cracking against stone and steel, dulled by blood and viscera.
He didn't feel much pain through his thick fur and powerful muscles. The pain made him feel alive when it did spark through. It sang in his veins and reminded him of what it was like to truly live with every fibre of your being.
He loved that about Luno. He never failed, every minute they got to see each other, to remind him what it was like to be alive.
And as claws and teeth, fire and lightning, ice and steel, psychic blasts and cruelly dark blades, as it all tore through Sol he knew he was alive and fighting.
He also knew that he wouldn't survive this fight.
Dugtrio had died for his son. He chose to.
Chatot had died for Team Ion. He chose to.
Sol would die for the town and its people and he'd have no regrets. His movements began to slow, an exhaustion that was comfortingly familiar making itself home in his muscles. His arms began to feel heavier, his lungs fuller without taking as many breaths, his body lighter.
He looked down at one point, he wasn't sure if it was his blood or the ferals.
He grinned through a bloodied maw. "HERE!" He roared, leading more ferals to charge him. He'd take them all on and he'd win.
His body felt like it was stone but he pushed it anyway. Claws sang through the air, screams and roars mixed into a song of violence. Sol did not like hurting others, but he enjoyed a fight like this.
They tore into him as he tore through them, taking the brunt of multiple legions worth of ferals onto him and away from the others. They couldn't survive this like he could. Not for as long at least
When he stumbled, however, he knew it was drawing to a close.
Sol glanced down, marvelling at a leg that was just stopped in responding to him and he tilted like an old tree. The world was beginning to swim, the haze of red in sides of his vision spreading across his eyes.
He noticed there was a blade of a bisharp in his stomach, ah so that's what it was. The bisharp itself wasn't attached to the blade anymore.
Sol staggered, dropped to his knees, and then dropped to his hands as well. He heard a sound. It was an awful sound. A scream of what he could call nothing less than anguish and he didn't recognise the owner despite its familiarity.
Turning enough he realised what, and who, it was an he reconsidered a previous thought.
He did have one regret as Luno descended upon the ferals around him like a storm. Yeah, one regret and what a time to realise it, but his mouth was filled with blood and so were his lungs so he couldn't say it.
Still, he marvelled at Luno as he hit the horde. Utterly marvelled at the sheer impact of brutality he could put out, he almost chuckled as the thought of Luno holding out on him bubbled through his darkening brain.
He had one regret and so he couldn't die now, no.
He had to get through this.
He had to.
Luno the grovyle had known little more than violence his entire life.
From the scorching maw of that twisted pyroar around his neck to every step on the road by Twila's side.
Violence was life, violence was known, violence was safety. When it got too much he took it out on the ferals, it was the only thing that seemed to help, that pressed that simmering feeling deep in his stomach and deeper still back down.
He would not hurt Twila. No more than he did simply by existing every day in and out. Everything could be hurt if necessary except her.
To have no neck bared to another meant nothing could strike it. He had believed that, he had known that to the core of his bones. It did not matter for him, just for her, but somehow something had slunk in anyway.
They had a place to return to. A place to be welcomed. A place that took in those other places did not. They would reject them in time, they would hurt them if they stayed too long, but then the vigoroth came.
It would be funny to realise that it was his attachment that anchored them here first, not hers. Twila was better than him at remaining distant, it seemed. She had training after all, it was simply woven into him.
And then the vigoroth came. Marowak asked them to help, they agreed because Twila said it was the appropriate thing to do, and Luno had felt alive in the battle that followed.
He forgot, for just a moment, that eyes were on them and let it loose. The vigoroth had shouted not in pain or fury but in jubilation and matched him. He might have wondered if they were the same, but no. The vigoroth brimmed with light and warmth, too much to take, too much to withstand unless you were without it so long that you were greedy for every grasp you could take.
Luno would not deny it was selfishness of the highest order.
He could take and take and Vigoroth, Sol, would have more to give. So much that he couldn't take enough. So much that he couldn't take too much. So much that….
So much.
The battle ongoing right now was exhilarating. It exceeded what tiny limits they put on themselves for the battle in Beach Cave, the ones that fed that Hunger and left him sated for however long he needed to be.
This was a fight that had no limits. Death fell from his claws, vitality of the living rent into nothing, a display of violence that was to protect all things here.
Protect. Protect?
He had to have more. He had to. He had to kill more. Kill. More. Do more. Need more. He had to. He had to. He ha-
Sol's groan of pain cut through the bloodrush like lightning. It was low and weak, he hadn't even realised he was so close. It shouldn't have been heard over the torrent of ferals but he had grown used to the sound over the years, knew that was the point to stop, knew that it would only take a small push to finally take all that warmth for good and so he had to stop.
He was greedy, so greedy that it was as hard as it was every time to pull that urge back. Because the warmth meant something. Luno did not know what it was, could not understand, but he did not need to understand.
He did not have to.
He did not have to hold back.
He chose to.
And when that sound reached his ears and he saw Sol buckle, he stopped seeing anything at all. His vision darkened besides the flash of white and red that was Sol until that too darkened and was lost to his eyes. A buzzing sound overcame the roars around him and he felt himself be lost completely.
A crackling purple aura built around the grovyle's torn body like a rotting smog and the wounds were inked over by something dark and viscous, almost crawling with some directed intention before Sol's eyes as Luno erupted with energy that he recognised deep in the marrow of his bones.
The Shadow Pokemon went mad.
Luno was a Shadow Pokemon.
His eyes lost all life and revealed the undead Hunger that lay within it and he attacked the ferals with a ferocity that made the battle up to this point look like a picnic with friends.
He tore them apart. Tendrils of rotting purple energy melded with his thorny vines to become cruel lassos of deadly proficiency, binding and tearing into pokemon and draining them of more than ever before, causing a feedback loop of energy that left him with near unlimited energy to devastate everything around them, draining the pokemon of their very lives to fuel his rampage.
In mere moments the bloodied battlefield turned to a rest mist around Sol as Luno obliterated everything around them. Everything except Sol himself, though the stinging energies still glanced him and he felt a presence burning his body and knocking on the door to his mind in a way he felt terror in letting in.
He couldn't move, however, could not step back as Luno's lost eyes finally turned towards him with that Hunger within them.
"LUNO!"
To Sol's astonishment, Twila came burning through the retreating ferals, those that recognised the danger and whatever drove them to attack was overridden by the need to survive.
"Don't," Sol croaked, willing something inside him to get up and do something, what? He wasn't sure.
She did not heed and crossed the distance to her brother and slammed the tip of her wand into the crook under his jaw. A Hypnosis attack slammed into him and then she buckled when something slammed back into her mind, her knees bent and she nearly collapsed.
Sol managed to stand and stagger over, hoping to do something but he did not know what.
"He's alive," Twila croaked as Luno's vines had sprouted again, tipped with dripping purple thorns. "Sol is alive."
And then Sol impacted him.
He didn't plan what he was going to do, he never did. Maybe attack, but once he hit Luno he pulled him into a hug. Blood mixed with blood as Luno froze like stone, eyes wide and bulging and flooded with that rotting purple stuff.
Twila's wand pressed harder as Sol managed a weak, "Luno, please."
A frown cracked across the shadow's vacant expression and finally his eyes closed. He began to sag and Sol was going down with him, but Luno's eyes opened again and they were free of the darkness.
He cast an unsure look at Sol, for once not merely quiet but speechless.
Sol kept on hugging him. At that moment, he decided, it didn't matter. It did not matter. It did not matter because it was still Luno.
He had to be.
The battle lasted for hours. The ferals hadn't attacked at daybreak, but partly into it. The sun travelled across the sky, beaming hot rays down. It aided the likes of Fortune, Saniya, Blossom, Luno, and Hearth.
Hearth had started Treasure Town. He was not the only founder, by no means at all, but he was the only one still alive.
He had already been aging when he began it, deciding, at last, to put a life of adventure down and take up an easier time. Help raise the next few generations and build a place of community, excitement, and treasure.
No one actually remembered why it was called Treasure Town. Some pokémon had sniffed around, expecting something hidden like an old shanty pirate and accused Torkoal of concealing it. He was no pirate, bandit, or rogue.
Some believed that the town was Hearth's treasure, and in a sense that was correct. But that wasn't why it was named as such.
There were even pokémon who believed that it was merely a homage to his old life. An explorer and finder of many treasures, and again those guesses were wrong.
This was Treasure Town because this was a promise to his first and last friend, whose name was Treasure. Fortune and the team with no name were the only ones who knew that, however.
It had survived everything that the world could throw at it. Being set on the ocean meant storms were common and dangerous and with a guild taking root here it attracted trouble no matter how well-intentioned.
Torkoal was not a fast pokémon, never had been even in his prime. When he heard Ponyta screaming, however, he ran.
Torkoal had never had children, the only one he would have asked was long gone. Part of him viewed the town itself and those in it as his children, but Ponyta was more literal. He had actually adopted him, after all, taught him how to survive in the world that was and supported him at every endeavour, even when it seemed like they were at odds.
The fiery equine was so very stubborn after all.
They'd never actually spoken in such direct terms, however.
Dugtrio had died to save his son and Hearth knew he'd do the same.
He was old, and Ponyta wasn't. He erupted with fire and left the protection of the far back. Flying with fire, he erupted again and sent ferals flying.
Scout, sharp as ever, took a houndoom off Fortune but Torkoal did the rest. He gasped for breath, not young not anymore, and demanded Fortune run back.
Fortune did not.
Stubborn as a mudbray that one. Just like him.
They fought together, a roiling inferno of firepower. Fortune was once feral, and Torkoal knew a world that was far rougher than what it had become, where people feared the stranger and word of those that were Fallen ran like poison in the water. Together they reduced those that would tear Treasure Town's heart out to ash.
Pokémon were resistant to all kinds of elemental abilities. Even those who were 'weak' to those abilities. Resistance could only go so far, however, against pure plasma.
The final bell of the battle tolled as the sun left the horizon and the world became darker. For a moment the battle became day once more when Hearth unleashed hellfire on the ferals, breaking the last bastion of monsters and sending what few remained finally fleeing.
He collapsed next to Fortune.
He had fought for his town and did his best.
He had.
"We can't survive that again."
Nine pokémon were assembled together; no one was okay, not after that. The only ones missing were Sol and Luno. Scout had come across them standing amid the devastation shortly after the ferals had finally broken running from Hearth's eruption and perhaps something more.
Sol and Luno apparently needed to be alone and staggered off to the beach, Twila had gone with them initially but came back quickly, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"No one here can survive THAT again," Sean corrected, not feeling the twinges of his body anymore. Scout had been the one to say it first, the first one to speak after they had all just fallen silent.
Torkoal was alive, shockingly. He had dropped after a titanic eruption but was still breathing. Scout and Sean were able to carry him back, but no one knew what to do for him.
They were all alive, shockingly. So many feral pokémon at once was almost hard to believe, thinking back to it, they weren't sure if their exhausted, fearful, minds didn't just exaggerate it. The dozens upon dozens of bodies, some breathing some not, spoke otherwise.
Scout worried about Sol in particular but Twila assured him that Luno would keep him safe. He wasn't so sure and slipped off to the beach himself, though he returned quickly, assuring Rai and Mane that it WAS FINE and to not go down there.
Saniya, almost mechanically, got rid of those ferals that remained. She threw them into the sea but let those who regained consciousness flee into the Beach Cave. Some had puncture wounds, slash marks, and fear in their eyes.
"Is that the only time this will happen?" Blossom whispered. Physically she was the healthiest here, Mane had defended her very well, but she was still as drained as anyone else. Maintaining so many vines and terrains at once had curled the edges of her leaves and petals, and she couldn't quite stop an exhausted tremble across her body.
"Or are there going to be more?" Mane finished. His bandages were crusted with dried blood.
No one could answer that. That had to be over a dozen dungeons worth of ferals, but there were hundreds of dungeons across the continent. Was this only happening here, or were other towns being attacked?
Were they asleep, or could they protect themselves?
These were answers no one had. Saniya was trying to tap into the Psychic Network, but something with her was just… not there. Twila would give it a go later, but her head was not in it at the moment. She seemed jumpy, which no one could blame.
The celebi, though, had a blank expression on her face. Not a focused expression of serenity, just blank and glassy-eyed. She blinked, that was the only thing showing she was still even conscious.
"Even if there aren't more coming," Rai said, speaking into the silence. "We have a whole town asleep. They can't eat and drink like that, and we can't keep that many pokémon fed and watered on our own."
It was true. The Grassy Terrain would help keep the unconscious pokémon going, but it could only do so much. Without food and water, and sunlight for some, they would die eventually anyway.
What did Darkrai think? Would they remain trapped in The Dream even if their bodies expired? Such a guess couldn't be ruled out.
"I have an idea," Scout said. They were all past exhausted, just numb now. "Star Cave. Jirachi. If we can get to him, then we can get a wish. If we can wish for the pokémon here awake…?"
"Maybe we could wish for Jirachi to just erase Darkrai," Mane added, but there was a touch of derision to it. "'Jirachi' wishes don't exist."
"Not true," Saniya said, absentmindedly. She was poking at a cut on her body without much thought. She felt eyes on her and glanced up. "Jirachi exists, although I doubt it'll have the power to erase Darkrai like that."
"It does exist," Scout said, forcefully. "And it can do wishes, I'm certain."
"Certainty from you works out so well as well all know," Sean said, also blankly.
Scout managed a small frown, he glanced at Sean but sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Look. Bidoof should have a map. I do know the guild never went, so it didn't happen as it was 'supposed' to, so I'm not sure but what other choice do we have?"
There was no real argument there.
"I'll go look," Scout offered, finding the will to get up.
"What if it was lost when the guild was destroyed?" Sunflora asked. "And are you sure he has this map? I never knew of that, and he tells anyone who will listen to everything."
Sunflora didn't know why he would know, and Scout was all too willing to tell her. Later. "I'm sure," he said, instead, dragging himself out of the tent. There was no time to talk about that, he'd run out of foreknowledge anyway. Dark Crater wasn't the end at all, even if it had nearly been one for them.
He went to the tent Bidoof, Croagunk, Corphish, and Loudred. He found Bidoof's diary and remembered liking to check that in-game, he thumbed through it, but his vision was swimming. He thought about Sunflora's diary, it was likely lost to the sea. Like Dugtrio.
He continued poking through Bidoof's belongings but found nothing. So, he went back to the diary. The start of it was very early on, a couple of years ago before he even reached the guild.
He flicked forward a bit, taking in flashes.
A friendly stranger helped….
The guild is tough.
Chatot scares me and….
Should I quit?
Bell's asking why I don't use the map and I….
He continued on before noticing he had missed something and went back, reading over that day. Bidoof's writing wasn't exactly easy to read, but it confirmed he did have the map.
Had it been lost then? Scout didn't want to think of that. No matter how he wracked his brain, he didn't know where Star Cave was. He was reasonably confident it was relatively close to Treasure Town, but where exactly?
There were precious few references to the map in Bidoof's diary, but Scout's vision was swimming anyway. He ended up fainting, there in the tent, face planting on the book.
He was eventually joined by Rai and Mane, who only had enough strength to call that they had found him before dropping themselves.
Saniya floated slightly around the others. Ponyta had curled up around Torkoal, Rai and Mane had gone off to find Scout. Sunflora had fallen asleep and Sean hadn't been far behind her.
It was just Saniya awake now. She knew that, knew that even though she hadn't seen the kitties. She knew they were asleep, of course they were.
She floated, still conscious. Someone had to watch over the town while they were sleeping, make sure nothing came. If she went to sleep, she was afraid she wouldn't wake up. She was so damn tired.
Sleep.
Saniya blinked her eyes open, having felt them slide closed. That would not do. She had to remain awake.
Sleeeep.
She started again, noticing her head drooping. She slapped her cheeks and stopped trying to tap into the Psychic Network, it was too calm and peaceful.
Sleep... Saniya.
She noticed she was on the ground, having forgotten how to float. She wanted to rise back up, but she also didn't. Saniya remained lying down, it couldn't hurt to rest even if she didn't sleep. She was still watching over everyone.
Everyone sleeping peacefully, with not a nightmare to be seen.
Only the hundreds of pokémon trapped in an endless nightmare elsewhere in the town. But she couldn't see those.
Sleep….
She was so tired. Saniya's eyes slipped shut and she did not wake back up.
If the world was kind, they would sleep until this mess was resolved, but that wasn't the case, and Scout woke up and continued pouring over Bidoof's scribbles.
It was a new day so he roused Saniya, who had been sleeping painfully still, to help him. They took a look at the crumbling cliff that remained of the old guild and into the rooms. There was nothing left that hadn't already been retrieved. She didn't talk much. Or at all, really.
Salvation came as a stroke of luck.
"Is… this actually it?" Scout gasped, after unfolding an old map found under Bidoof's pillow. He was almost certain they'd looked there before, but everyone was so tired that maybe they just hadn't until now. The words were plain if faded. Whoever had drawn this map had been light on the charcoal, it was long poured-over, and a lot of the fragile lines had been smudged.
But the words were unmistakable and Torkoal was able to be roused long enough to confirm the area it pointed to.
The decision of who was to go was easy.
"You three can't go," Saniya said, softly. "You're still injured. Luno and Sol aren't back and should stick around in case the town needs some fighters again. Twila is tapping into the network. Torkoal's too exhausted and the town needs someone strong to keep a watch here, but just one isn't enough. Scout and I can do this, all we have to do is find Jirachi."
"And wake him up," Scout added. "Lucky bastard, getting to sleep as much as he wants."
The only real argument came from Blossom, but she accepted that they had to keep watch of the town in case another attack came. Darkrai and Cresselia could also be anywhere, and Scout just wasn't as powerful as most there.
He could do this, this was something that was for him.
Saniya continued to be quiet when they teleported. It was hardly a jolt at all when they appeared, Scout stumbled, but that was it.
"Good one," Scout complimented. "You're getting a lot better at that."
"Practice makes perfect," Saniya replied softly. "Let's just… get a move on."
He nodded, and they entered Star Cave.
After fighting hundreds of ferals the previous day, a dozen or so in the old, small, dungeon was nothing. It was never the pokémon itself that were the challenge.
They chatted little as they walked. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen past this?" Saniya asked.
"We fight Jirachi asleep, wake him up, ask for something."
"That's not what I meant, Scout."
"I know." Scout was so tired, but he had to push on. He was tired, but he was surprisingly not stupid. An idiot, yes, but not stupid. "I've got some ideas, Darkrai probably thinks he's so far ahead, but... well, with everything changed it's hard to say exactly. Super and Dark Matter may not even happen, and I don't really know exactly when that's going to start going down… hopefully not for ages."
Saniya didn't really have a response to that. She gave him an uncertain nod and that was it.
When they reached the final room, Saniya was puzzled.
"It's a fake room," Scout said, tapping his head. "In the story, Wigglytuff blasted a hole through it. Think you're up to the task?"
Saniya nodded, and Scout aided her with a Shadow Ball, sending several blasts into the wall until it crackled and crumbled away into a perfect entryway.
They walked into a softly lit room with a star symbol taking up the whole floor. Lights glittered in the air like gems.
The true star of the final chamber, however, was a small, floating, figure. Wrapped with its own body like a swaddled baby, an alabaster creature swayed in the air.
Its head was crested and gold with three ribbon-like objects hanging from that large crest.
Jirachi.
"Mmmm, who goes there?" Jirachi murmured, shifting in the air and yawning. He didn't open his eyes.
"It is I, Celebi!" Saniya called loudly. "Awaken!"
"Mmhmm, okay." Jirachi rolled over in mid-air and began to snore. "Sorry, sleeping."
Saniya glowed with energy and Scout began to form a Shadow Ball.
A blast knocked them both back. It was a psychic pulse, but it impacted the air with enough force that it sent even the Psychic-Immune Scout back.
"And I… tend to toss and turn," Jirachi continued sleepily. "I'll probably attack you. Oh, I'm doing it right now. Yawn."
Scout glared, he was almost sure that this was just an act.
They didn't have to beat Jirachi, just… 'wake him up', and so that is what they charged him to do.
Saniya flickered in and out, teleporting rapidly to throw the sleep-attacking Jirachi off. At the same time, Scout came in for a Night Slash.
One. Jirachi stumbled despite floating.
Two. Jirachi nearly hit the ground.
Three. Jirachi was left open for Saniya.
She caught him in a strong Psychic and Scout took aim. A Shadow Ball sent Jirachi crashing into a wall. Something glowed bright enough that he had to look away and when he turned back, Jirachi was rubbing his eyes.
"Hm? Oh. Hello."
"Hi," Scout drawled, whether or not Jirachi actually had been asleep could be shelved for now.
"I get the feeling you are not a happy pokémon. You look terrible," Jirachi said, yawning one more time before perking up entirely. "But that's where things can change! Say the word, and I'll give you any material possession you want!"
"We're here for a different reason," Scout said, noticing Saniya was staring blankly ahead. "We need you to wake up a WHOLE town of pokémon."
Jirachi blinked. "Wake up? Some sort of surprise party?"
"Actually Darkrai is dropping the entire world into an endless nightmare, and I'd rather not let everyone at home die. We've just held off an entire feral invasion force, so we're not doing well. Can you help?"
Jirachi stared at him for a moment. "That's… well. Uh…"
That didn't sound promising to Scout and he asked. "What?"
"What you may have heard about me might be a little grandiose," Jirachi explained, squirming a little. "I can summon you pretty much anything that exists in the wider realities, not even just from this one. But uh…." He tapped one of his tassels. "I'm not finding anything that can wake up that many pokémon at once. I could probably get you a cresselia feather! We could start with this one." He gestured a thumb at Saniya.
Scout paused, he started into action just fast enough to avoid a Magical Leaf through his throat. Saniya instead hit him with a levitated rock and disappeared into the dungeon.
Jirachi stared at him as Scout began to curse some impressively filthy words. "I'm guessing you didn't realise she was asleep?"
"I USED a cresselia feather on her!" Scout shouted. "And Cresselia is WORKING WITH DARKRAI!" Of course, it was just another trap. Oh my FUCKING GOD!"
Jirachi waited for Scout to stop shouting and screaming before raising his hand. "So… what was that about the world in danger?"
Scout faced him with a very unpleasant look. It wasn't directed at Jirachi, just the world in general. "Grrrrr. Uuugh. Alright, okay. Can you summon cresselia feathers that WON'T do what just happened to her?"
"What DID happen to her?" Jirachi asked. "She was like me when I sleep fight. Awake, but not. Kinda…."
"Controlled?" Scout growled.
Jirachi snapped his fingers. "Yeah, that's the word!"
Scout didn't look pleased with that, and Jirachi lowered the enthusiasm.
"Can you take me back to Treasure Town?" Scout asked softly. "Please. Saniya's gone, obviously, and they really need help. The world is in danger, whatever reason you're in here… whether it's protection or just avoiding pokémon nagging you for wishes… please."
Jirachi sighed. "I'm in here for exactly that, plus the unfortunate reality of my Power. All us 'legendary' pokémon had to give up a large portion of our power millennia ago. It's why I can't grant wishes like I used to. We're not supposed to interfere with the world even before that though."
"Darkrai and Cresselia are behind this," Scout argued, and Jirachi nodded.
"Right. If they are bending the rules, why not me? I'll help you."
Scout exhaled a hard sigh of relief, a reasonable legend. What a miracle. "Let's go then."
Jirachi nodded.
It had been the first time Jirachi exited the dungeon in a very long time. He was a little wide-eyed at the bright of the sun but pulled himself into gear and took Scout's paw, using his mind to direct them where they needed to go.
It was perhaps bending the rules of the wish slightly, but Scout didn't directly wish for that. Either way, one thing was clear.
Something had happened to Saniya, and Scout was far too done with everything to freak out about that. They were done Saniya, but they were up one limited-wish-granting Jirachi.
He had to be able to help.
He had to.
Or they were out of options.
This was always one of my favourite chapters of the original story, thus it's mostly the same as it was before, just updated for the new stuff.
Also, yeah, Luno. That's fun :)
She was lavender, had some sort of necklace on that looked a lot like the one Lucario had been wearing recently, a small travel bag around one arm.
The most obvious thing was the sharp spike she gripped in her right paw, swinging it slightly with each step.
Darkrai raised his hands, pointing them at her as Dark Energy pooled around him. He fired a Dark Pulse with a scream, but it merely splashed against a small Protect shield, the audino's step was undaunted.
"SCOUT!" Darkrai shouted, turning to him with nothing less than begging in his eyes. "Help me!"
"He won't," Soothe said, slowing her step for a moment. She glanced at Scout, the meowth stunned and confused. "Right?"
Scout glanced between them, the audino he had a terrible feeling he knew exactly who she was and the demon casting his empty blue eyes at him. Scout's claws shivered.
"Scout," Darkrai said, voice edged with controlled fear. "I will wake up everyone here! I will do it! I will help you if you help ME! This monster." He threw a hand at Soothe, firing a Dark Void. She sidestepped it with ease. "This is the reason I am like this."
"Not your lust for a world of darkness?" Soothe replied, twirling her spike. "I'm not blind nor deaf. Thanks for prattling on, gave me time to think up some song lyrics to mimic your own creepy humming. Learn some new songs, Nightmare Bringer, or whatever name you decided was 'malevolent' enough for your tastes."
Scout looked to her again, her eyes were exactly as cold as Darkrai's. But… Darkrai had put everyone here to sleep and unleashed ferals, he was working with Cresselia, or maybe controlling her in some way to hurt Rai, Mane, and Sean.
Scout's mind was unfreezing as things began to churn and click into a dangerous place.
His eyes narrowing, Scout turned to Darkrai, and the nightmare bringer recoiled from the meowth's expression. "You… don't know what you are doing," Darkrai hissed. "I am asking you. I am fair. I am BEGGING you. All I ask is that this Shadow ABOMINATION is slain!"
"That's you, though," Soothe pointed out. She then glanced at Scout who had mostly turned to face Darkrai again, bolstered in some degree of confidence at the unlikely backup he seemed to have. "All Shadow Pokemon are abominations."
Soothe turned back to Darkrai, and the shadow devil clammed up. "Frankly, I don't feel like waiting for the night mate to remember you are a liar."
She moved.
Sprinting for Darkrai with a sudden burst of speed, the spike glinted in the light of the sun. He gave a shrieking, desperate, cry and tried to duck back and disappear into a shadow, any shadow.
They were in the dead middle of town. It was entirely flattened here, no buildings or trees to provide shade. Only their own shadows and Darkrai couldn't disappear into his own.
Scout had, unconsciously, led Darkrai away from the crowds in their excuse of a conversation.
Realising he was stripped of his outs, Darkrai fumbled for a decision as Soothe was upon him.
Her fingers sparkled with energy constantly, and she pointed, sending a concentrated blast of Fairy-type energy at him. Their shadows rippled. The Dazzling Gleam impacted Darkrai like a pistol shot, knocking him onto his back and groaning with a glittering wound on his chest.
She didn't pounce, knowing Darkrai was not so fragile. Seeing she wouldn't be fooled, he fired a second Dark Void, which was dodged with ease, and generated power for a much more powerful Dark Pulse.
"HERE!" Darkrai shouted, firing a curling, twisting, blast of thousands of rings.
Scout was knocked off his feet from the dark shockwave that emanated after it hit Soothe's Protect, bouncing off it harmlessly.
"You don't know what you're doing, do you?" Soothe asked, walking forth calmly as he put more and more power into it. Her Protect wasn't surrounding her whole body, it was more like an actual shield in this state. She could put more Power into it at the expense of not protecting every angle at once.
It didn't break, and Darkrai dropped it and backed away before she could get within stabbing range.
She shot him with another Dazzling Gleam, then another when he tried to return the favour. Then a shot to the neck, dropping him gagging. All the while, she stepped forwards without any hesitation, blasting Darkrai over and over.
Scout finally blinked and realised he could help. Terrifying as this audino seemed to be, Soothe was still the lesser of two evils here. They could end this right here. Cresselia was still a menace, but if Darkrai was stopped this dawning nightmare world was cut short.
His claws sharpened into blades, and he went sprinting around.
"Enough!" Darkrai roared, sending a pulse into the ground. This one caused Soothe to stumble, and he formed a ball of darkness in the air. "Begone!" The Dark Void began spilling spheres by the dozen.
She couldn't block those, forcing Soothe to evade. Scout himself needed to edge away, lest he be hit as well. He pricked his paw pad and forced a Shadow Ball, aiming it for Darkrai's unguarded back.
He flung the Shadow Ball with hatred and the blast knocked Darkrai forth, nearly onto his face. Darkrai gasped as he barely caught himself, rocked forwards by the cheap shot. Soothe immediately lanced him through the chest with a focused Dazzling Gleam and came sprinting for him.
Now panicking, Darkrai tried to throw Dark Void's again, but the focus needed for those was slipping, and she avoided what little he could manage with ease.
Soothe was upon him—Darkrai's worst nightmare.
Flipping the spike back tightly into her grip, she stabbed forth. He recoiled back, avoiding the stab to his chest but she swung it out in a sharp arc, slashing his left arm and drawing blood. Darkrai hissed, but before he could use this close range to his advantage, another Dazzling Gleam blasted him back closer to Scout.
She wasn't stupid enough to remain so close to Darkrai unless he had a knife in his heart. The Dark Void came, and she jumped back, right as Scout launched himself onto Darkrai.
Claws shining white at first, he delivered a series of rapid, brutal, slashes to Darkrai's face. The strikes were leaving reddish afterimages of his scratches as Scout's ferocity turned it from his old Scratch to Fury Swipes.
He began to draw Darkrai's blood, and the combined slashes and blows from his attack threw the nightmare bringer far back and against one of the new buildings.
Darkrai's blood was the farthest thing from given to him, but it was still the blood of the divine and its smoked as Scout used it to create a titanic Shadow Ball.
The Shadow Ball was met by a Dark Pulse, but he was in pain and Scout's attack detonated close to Darkrai, stunning him.
With Darkrai dazed, Soothe went for him herself, bringing the spike up and slamming it home. He rolled and just avoided getting it slammed through his neck.
Soothe cursed, tried to pull it out, but she'd stuck the damn thing in quite hard. Darkrai reached for her but was met with a Protect shield around her arm.
Soothe dropped her hand on the spike and formed another Protect shield, two small discs on her arms. She slammed the right one into Darkrai's face, something crunched, and he cried out.
She moved the left one, spinning it on its axis until it was flat and slashed out. Protect was always an extremely thin, brittle, but sturdy curve of energy.
Most pokémon only created a protective barrier around them entirely and left it at that. Soothe had been practising a bit more in her free time.
By turning it on its edge, Soothe had a razor-sharp disc of energy. She nearly slashed his throat open with it, but he recoiled in time, catching and slicing the end of a finger off instead.
Darkrai panicked again as more of his blood was spilled, but before he could try something, Scout was upon him.
The audino and meowth came at him from several angles, sharp claws and sharper shields slashing and cutting through Darkrai, drawing lines of red across his smoky body but failing to hit that lethal mark.
Scout nearly took off another finger and Darkrai tried to grab him with his right arm. Soothe blasted him back and then grabbed Scout by the scruff and tossed him, not letting Darkrai get a moment to think.
With the boost, Scout was tearing Darkrai's face and growth up with his claws, almost burning with the Power used to generate them so large.
Darkrai forced them back from him with a pure blast of force and staggered back for space. He formed a Dark Pulse rippling between his hands and unleashed it with a scream of utter desperation. Soothe, and Scout created a Dazzling Gleam and Shadow Ball and unleashed it upon the nightmare deities attack.
The attacks met like a thunderclap, but for all of Darkrai's strength, he didn't have the time to overpower this. His Dark Pulse failed, being split apart by the Dazzling Gleam and he was blasted into the building by the Shadow Ball.
Scout dropped to all fours, and he and Soothe came sprinting after Darkrai. Soothe formed a Dazzling Gleam bright enough to stop Darkrai from sinking into the shadow of the building he had been knocked into before blasting him right through it.
Wood splintered and shattered into fragments, the cacophonous crash failing to cause even one of the pokémon sleeping to twitch.
Her attack tore Darkrai through the building her spike had been jammed into, and she recovered it from the rubble before running around to where he had ended up.
Scout pursued around the other side, and they ended up in the tents where the guild was set up. The guild-pokémon were thankfully far back in the town, but there were shadows here.
Darkrai's eyes gleamed with blue light as he disappeared into a shadow.
"You have made a mistake," he hissed to the two as they looked around. "Soothe, you should not have faced me again." She avoided a Dark Void. "I now know you still live, for now at least. Scout, you should not have rejected my generous offer."
His right arm burst from a shadow and nearly grabbed Scout. He avoided it just barely, the claws of the hand scraping through his fur.
Where that hand did touch, his fur disappeared in motes of light.
He formed a Shadow Ball just in time for another strike to hit it instead and blast him back while he was visible.
Scout quickly realised Darkrai was literal and honest, as usual, when he said alive with the left and back to oblivion with the right.
If that right hand touched him, he'd melt back into light. His fur was just long enough that he was able to shear it off him before the effect spread.
The blast from his Shadow Ball forced Darkrai out of the shadow and Soothe blasted him back through the building and into the wider area.
She ran around to continue pummelling him as Scout staggered from the dangerously near miss.
He crept around, realising he was infinitely more fragile here, to find Soothe inflicting horror.
She was strolling up to Darkrai, continuously lancing him through the chest with blasts of glittering pink light. He was slamming into and bouncing off, another building, never able to recover but not being struck as to be forced through it.
Soothe had stopped him from trying to run for the areas where pokémon were slumped over to try and use them against them. Well, Scout. But he almost certainly knew Dream Eater, just recovering some energy would be dangerous.
Her spike was raised in preparation as she continued to bounce him back and forth, Darkrai's azure eyes flickering in panic.
He closed his eyes. Took a breath. Then he screamed. "CresSEeLLLiAAA!"
An enormous eruption of something dark and awful exploded out of Darkrai like a thousand writhing tentacles.
They were darker than any Dark Void. There was no tinge of red or grace of colour. They were the absence of light and crawling out of every surface and orifice on Darkrai's body.
The Shadow Tendrils slammed into Soothe in a massive battering of brutality. Smashing through the buildings, the ground, everything and burning it away with something corrosive left behind.
Scout ducked back around the building and ran the back way, getting around Darkrai's mindless attack.
Darkrai himself was panting for breath, hard, as he pulled back that loss of control. The dust had been torn up, and he could barely see.
A green flicker tinged with the same empty darkness faded and Darkrai softly whispered. "No."
Soothe had utterly blocked the attack. All his power and it did nothing to her.
He immediately threw a Dark Void at her, forcing her to dodge to the right. Then another. She continued to dodge, but she was still getting closer, eyes narrowed into a glare of murderous intent.
Soothe was visibly breathing hard. For all her domination, she had to put a great deal of energy into every attack to bat Darkrai around so much. Drops of inky blackness were dripping from her nails, her bared teeth, and like tears from her eyes.
He raised both arms and created another Dark Void sphere, raining down as many of them as he could manage upon Soothe. She began ducking and weaving, but the sheer number was forcing her to go back to avoid being hit.
Scout was behind him. He took his mark, fell to all fours, then began to sprint silent as a cheetah going for its gazelle.
Darkrai began to laugh, raising his right arm to form a Dark Pulse. He was Darkrai. He was a god, and this was just a mere demon.
He laughed with a mounting hysteria as Scout pounced.
Scout, forming his Night Slash, came for that dreaded right arm that risked pitting him back to oblivion. He slashed out, Dark Energy meeting Dark-type before pushing everything angry and horrible he had into it.
Scout's Night Slash flared.
Within Darkrai's wispy body and rippling, the form was still flesh, bone, and blood.
Scout slashed through his flesh and carved through the bone in a single arc, cutting Darkrai's entire right arm off.
Darkrai's maddened laughter continued, reaching a shrieking crescendo before it just morphed into a pure shriek. Not out of fury or fear this time, but agony.
The arm twitched as it landed on the ground, curling like a lizards tail before uncurling and thrashing limply. Darkrai gripped his bleeding stump with his other arm, still screaming before Soothe struck him again.
Her own eyes were burning with that awful darkness, but she was keeping It under control.
It was so hungry. So… hungry. A gnawing, emptiness that could be filled. There are so many around that could fill it.
There are pokémon defenceless here. There is Loudred. There is Chansey. There is Rhythm-
"Heh," Soothe chuckled, the first sound she'd made since she stopped talking, her head rapidly twitching to the left as if she was trying to shake the water out of her ear. A sharp part of her spike had cut her hand due to gripping it so tightly, her blood was red. He breathed and the presence yielded.
She gave Scout just a tiny nod before striding forth for Darkrai, slumped on the ground in shock as his blood as red as anything drenched the ground.
She didn't offer him last words. She sniped him through the growth and knocked him into his back, reaching him to try this again and kill him properly this time.
Her ear twitched, detecting something the other senses would miss.
A rapid shield formed on her left arm, blocking a blast of shimmering Psychic power. Darkrai capitalised on it with his Dark Pulse and Soothe took a hit, being attacked with the might of two legendary pokémon.
Her Protect shattered as her concentration was broken and the double Psychic/Dark blast enveloped her.
Scout looked up to the newcomer as Cresselia loomed over them.
"WHAT HAPPENED!?" she screamed, furious before seeing his arm. "YOUR ARM? HOW DID YOU MESS UP THIS BADLY!?"
Darkrai immediately flew for her as fast as he could, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. "Just get us out of here," he gasped, gripping onto her with his remaining arm.
Scout threw a Shadow Ball, but Cresselia and Darkrai vanished in a rush of energy, gone.
"Dammit!" Scout yelled, he had been so close to fixing things. He spun back on Soothe, ready to start talking and working their next steps out. "S-Soothe?"
She was stepping back from where the guild's throne had been placed, part of it had been damaged in the battle. Probably just then, when she was blasted off her feet.
Soothe glanced to him, her eyes were still as cold as they were before. She held Darkrai's severed arm of all things. "If you want an idea of how to save them, ask Torkoal."
"What?" Scout spluttered, catching his balance as she turned to leave. "Where are you going, I need-?"
Quick as lightning, she spun and shot a Dazzling Gleam right through his chest, sending him flying and knocking the wind out of him. By the time Scout pulled himself up, coughing out glitter, there was no sign of Soothe.
She was gone.
"Oh, COME ON!" Scout fell to all fours and began to run, looking for the rogue audino. "You helped me! Don't disappear! SOOOOTHE!?"
There was no sign, and he couldn't blindly run around looking for her all day. Shelving THAT problem, for now, Scout focused on what was more prevalent.
Three things.
Everyone was asleep, trapped in a nightmare that, if what Darkrai said was true, was not just a nightmare.
Rai, Mane, and Sean were in an unknown condition, across the ocean. He hadn't gotten a lingering look at Cresselia. Still, Scout's mind was replaying everything in the kind of detail reserved for panic attacks. She looked scorched, her wings had been tilted, and that serene, glowing, aura had been burned off.
They had definitely given her a fight, and if Darkrai had indeed called her off to save him….
The third problem was still glaring, Darkrai had spoken of unleashing feral pokémon onto Treasure Town. He wasn't so sure about that one, it was shelved for later.
Scout didn't know what to do.
He knew what he wanted to do – Panic. Panic hard. Scream and pull his fur out and yell about crazy things. But everyone was in danger, and it was down to him.
"I can name a dozen people who would be better in this crisis than me," Scout thought angrily as he ran his way over to where Striker and Saniya were sleeping.
He reached them and hesitated. He glanced at Saniya and then down at his paws. He still had the feather that had fallen off Cresselia. The one he had found and given him the realisation she was deceitful.
It was still a cresselia feather, though. He asked for hope and then pressed it against Saniya's chest.
The feather reacted immediately, glowing a bright pink and growing so bright that Scout had to look away. The feather melted into Saniya's chest and her face, a detached mask of sleep, scrunched up.
"Oooh," Saniya groaned, Scout, turning back. She yawned and rubbed her face with Striker's hand. "A girl could get used to naps like that," she said, smiling at Striker.
Then she noticed Scout was there, looking most frazzled. "Hey! Knock, please."
"Now is NOT the time!" Scout snapped and gave a violent gesture all around them. It would speak better than his ranting would.
Saniya gently set Striker's hand down, floated up into the air and glanced around. First, it was a slow, sweeping look. Then she frowned and looked again, faster. Then faster again. Then up at the sky. Then back to everyone.
"Oh… flippers," Saniya swore. She gasped at her own words, covering her mouth. "Oh… oh fuck that! This is a FLIPPY-DIPPY sweary moment! Oh my gosh, what happened?"
Scout nodded. He just didn't have words. "Yeah."
"They're all asleep!"
"Yeah."
"It's DAY!"
"Yeah."
"I… what happened?" she spun out Scout and picked him up with her hands, shaking him. His head lolled almost bonelessly in her grasp, the weight of the situation hitting him now that someone else was here to share the burden.
"Darkrai," Scout said, letting himself be shaken without resisting. "Darkrai did this. He's working WITH Cresselia. And I don't know if the others are okay. And Soothe was just here and I cut his arm off and I don't know-" He was getting hysterical.
Saniya gently set him back down. "Scout," she said. "Listen to me. Start from the top and tell me exactly what happened."
Scout took a shuddering breath, trying to put words in order. "I went out to take a breath of air and found one of Cresselia's feathers. That made me realise that we shouldn't have had a nightmare with her around. Then a huge ball of darkness appeared around the town, it barely missed me, and when I came running in, everyone was asleep."
Scout shivered, beginning to stutter and tear up. "Darkrai was here a-an-and he tried to convince me to join him. U-using Rai, Mane, and Sean as leverage since they were stuck with, with… with Cresselia and she was going to k-kill them."
Saniya looked ill at the thought.
"Right before I could… do anything… SOOTHE appeared out of nowhere!" Saniya stared at him, uncomprehending. "Yeah! I know! Soothe actually showed up singing that same sandman song that Darkrai did! Darkrai FREAKED out, and we all started fighting. Well, it was more like me and Soothe against Darkrai."
There were marks of the battle all around that Saniya was noticing. "We almost had him, I cut his right arm off, but he called Cresselia, and she saved him, and they disappeared. Soothe just told me to talk to Torkoal if I wanted to save the others and then attacked ME when I tried to ask her to stay."
He took a desperate breath. He was awfully lightheaded. "Then I used the feather I found to wake you up. I'm so relieved it actually worked, with Cresselia…." He trailed off. Saniya was fine, just shocked.
"That's… oh," she managed. Saniya swallowed, cast a desperate look to see if anyone else would wake up and jump up to reveal this was all an elaborate joke. "Okay." She suppressed the internal screaming. "Well… I guess we should talk to Torkoal."
Scout nodded. She fluttered forwards, face blank before she shook her head. "Um… I think I can teleport us that far." She grabbed onto Scout's ear, and then they vanished in a pink blur.
Saniya's teleports were always rather rough. When they appeared, Scout was flung into the hot springs face first. Ponyta jumped from the sudden bang and splash and elder Torkoal looked up from his hot stone.
Saniya groaned and held her temples. "Ugh." She rubbed her head, sinking to the ground, as Scout resurfaced.
"I say!" Ponyta gasped, stamping his hooves. "Do not surprise me like that, thank you very much."
"We do not have TIME for this," Scout snapped. "Treasure Town is under a nightmare spell, Saniya, me, and you two are the ONLY ones awake, Cresselia is evil, and Rai, Mane, and Sean are trapped on Ashen Island and I don't even know if they are okay or not!"
Ponyta blinked at him. "I… what?" That was a little much to take in in five seconds.
Torkoal raised himself up with creaking bones. "The town is in peril?" he gasped.
"Elder Torkoal!" Ponyta called, splashing over to him. "Don't get up so quickly."
"The town is in peril, young one," Torkoal protested, groaning as he took a step. "I must… I must…."
"Don't do anything rash," Saniya said, recovered and flying up again. "Or… as rash as you can, I suppose. We need to ask something first!"
Scout nodded rapidly. "Darkrai is gone now, Soothe and I was able to fight him off. Soothe also appeared, she's an audino who-"
"Is of the shiny colouration," Torkoal said, concluding that point. "Yes, I remember her. Spirited young pokémon, Wigglytuff and Chatot were never the same after… well. So, she is alive?"
"You don't seem very surprised," Saniya said.
"Word of the guild searching for a lavender audino had crossed even my old earholes," Torkoal said. "Wigglytuff would not have begun that if there was not a considerable chance, she still lived. So, she was here?"
"And close enough that she was able to come after Darkrai minutes after he dropped everyone," Scout said, frowning. "That's… well that can wait! What matters is that she said that if I wanted to save the others on Ashen Island, I had to talk to you!"
"Is that so?" Torkoal asked. "Talk to me? Or to Ponyta?" He frowned. "And how would she know of that?"
Ponyta cringed. "Can I never hear the end of my past? Why is it coming up so often now?"
"Ponyta," Torkoal chastised. "This is not the time."
"He's right!" Saniya said, flying into the steam to poke Ponyta's nose. "If you have a way… actually, yeah. How DID you get from Ashen Island to here?"
Ponyta's expression wasn't friendly, but he wasn't going to refuse to answer now. "Well, not that I knew at the time having only recently regained my wits but leaving the Dark Crater dungeon to search for someone, not a slobbering beast led me to fall into a crack. The resulting dungeon was infinitely worse than anything the Dark Crater had presented, but I persevered, and upon reaching the exit I was… over here."
He glanced to his right, far-right at a sharp northeast angle. Eyes lingering on the distant mountain, not so distant from here.
Scout and Saniya's eyes followed him, and Scout whispered. "Noo…?"
"Ponyta was found mulling around near Mt. Bristle," Torkoal said, taking over. "Lost and confused. He was taken here, and I took him in. Eventually, I had him show me how he had come from Ashen Island, where no pokémon often goes, to here without crossing the sea. I had my fears, and they were justified."
"You've heard of the 'treasure' of Mt. Bristle, I assume?" Ponyta snapped, tossing his majestic mane. "Well, there is no treasure. At the top is a collapsed pile of rocks and the only thing you'll find within them is a magnagate."
Scout gasped, and Saniya's eyes widened into saucers of horror.
"Those are illegal," Scout gasped. The Guild had explained that to him ages back, and what Team Sunrise had to say about them had reinforced that.
"I didn't activate it," Ponyta snapped again. "I stumbled into it. Upon Elder Torkoal determining what it was, we collapsed the rocks onto it so nothing… foul could get through it."
"If the magnagate is still active," Torkoal continued where Ponyta left off. "And they always tend to be if not deactivated, then that is your best shot of getting to Ashen Island."
Scout breathed a sigh and nodded. "Alright. Saniya?" He turned to her.
She nodded back, but he absolutely hated the look of fear in her eyes. "I'll warp us there, just… give me a moment. That last one was a bit too quick."
As she focused, Ponyta stood up and out of the hot springs. "I must go as well. If the town is truly asleep, then it is defenceless, and Darkrai, Cresselia, or anything could happen."
"Bring me with you," Torkoal requested, slowly walking off the stone.
Ponyta hesitated. "Elder…."
"Yes," Torkoal said. His voice was aged, but unwavering. "I am your elder. I am the elder of Treasure Town. I founded it. I have seen it through its fragile infancy to this dangerous, uncertain, time. I will not stay here and do nothing as my town, and my people are put at risk." He paused at a lower point of the rock, looking sternly at Ponyta.
The younger yielded and walked over, hooves clopping on the hot stones. He held steady as Torkoal carefully crawled onto his back.
"We'll be back as soon as we can," Scout said. "But… Darkrai said he's unleashed feral pokémon from the surrounding dungeons, there may be a fight before we can get back."
"Thank you for the heads up," Ponyta said. "So, let me give you one in kind. The magnagate is a source of my worst fears and nightmares. Dark Crater was hellish and unreal, but the short trip through that unstable dungeon scared me more than anything has since. What Lucario had to say about them is true, but word alone cannot prepare you." He gave Saniya a significant look and she nodded. "Do not let your guard down within it for a single moment."
With that cheery word, Ponyta trotted off. He couldn't gallop, fearing Torkoal would slip off, but he went at a fast pace regardless. Saniya soon gathered enough focus and warped them to the base of Mt. Bristle.
Upon appearing, Scout was flung again, even more viciously, and he collided with a machop.
"Choooop!" the feral pokémon screeched, and a battle ensued. Machop, starly, wurmple, aron, they were all leaving the dungeon and attacked upon their arrival.
Saniya quickly dispatched most of them with Scout taking out the few she didn't.
"Looks like Darkrai was telling the truth," Scout said, staring at the defeated ferals. They outright knocked them out, not wanting to unleash more threats on the town. Or any of the other settlements close by.
"Looks like it," Saniya agreed. "Let's hurry up then."
Mt. Bristle was not a difficult dungeon.
Despite being a mountain, it took only about two hours to clear when looking for someone. When punching everything into just getting to the end, they made it there within forty minutes.
Scout had been to Mt. Bristle plenty of times. Never for Drowzee, but he'd still checked out the collapsed pile of rocks and wondered what was in there.
There was a gap, but it was too small for him to get through, even being a feline. He'd make a guess that it would have been too small for Azurill as well. No one could fit through there, since it was blocked off further in.
Several tonnes of rock had collapsed onto the hidden secret of the dungeon. The amount of Power Torkoal would have had to use to damage a dungeon that severely was inspiring to imagine.
Saniya raised her hands, eyes glowing a blazing lavender. The rocks began to shiver. She bit her lip and squeezed harder around nothing. The air was rippling from the amount of Power she was putting into it, and slowly the rocks began to rise.
"Go!" Saniya gasped out, pulling the gap wider. Scout didn't have time to hesitate to jump into the most claustrophobic place he could imagine, he just dashed for it.
Saniya groaned as she forced rocks to tumble to the side, opening it up further for their eventual return.
She glowed slightly with a soft light, which was needed as her power slipped and the rocks crashed down, as she slipped up beside him.
They held close together as everything banged and boomed, their surroundings shivering and risking coming down on them at any moment.
"Let's just get this done," Scout suggested, edging forth. With Saniya's light, they were able to see a few feet ahead of them. Which was fine because there were only a few feet in this enclosure.
The rocks covered an opening into a tiny chamber in which the magnagate resided, a tear in space that was darker and more foreboding than any dungeon entrance. It was so dark it was almost purple, like a bruise against reality itself.
The magnagate did not emit light. It was darker than dark and eyes tended to slip off it as if it wasn't there. But Scout could sense it, and Saniya hung onto his arm as they edged forth.
"Ready?" Scout asked.
"No, but yes."
They both took a deep breath and jumped into the magnagate.
Within the laws of the Grass Continent, magnagate's were illegal to activate. That had been a surprise to Scout, he knew they played a part on the Mist Continent.
He had asked why, and the answer had been nice and straightforward. Mystery Dungeons were chaotic places, with endless twisting turns and crazed pokémon. They were dangerous places; indeed, entering one unaware was akin to a death sentence if you were not strong enough.
But they were stable. They were formed out of existing places, drawing in helpless pokémon to become part of their danger. They were rooted in the world, and in the Dark Future, they had, ironically, become bastions of stability. Still dangerous of course, even more so, but they were stable in time and space when everything else wasn't.
Magnagate Dungeons, however, did not have that stability. They were not formed out of any understanding of how normal dungeons worked. They were some of the most powerful means of transportation in the world.
Two people with an attuned entercard could create a dungeon that could take you from one place in the world to one place that was anywhere else, no matter how far. You'd have a path between continents. It was amazing. It was fantastic. It was perfect.
Yet they were illegal here because what was found within a magnagate was terrifying. And what would happen if one side was broken with people still inside them? No one was ever seen again when that happened.
Scout and Saniya immediately became breathless as they stepped into the shivering, blurry, purple walls. Oxygen was not native here, only what little had slipped through in this magnagate's time could be breathed, and there wasn't much of it. There was the stink of sulphur through it all, likely due to the other end of it.
The magnagate's walls were undetermined. They flowed like water, sometimes solid, sometimes not. They looked like they were there, but they weren't always. They moved in, and Scout nearly broke his nose before simply disappearing into a new area.
A vapour-like essence hung around the ground. It was the only thing that seemed relatively stable here, crunching and cracking as Scout stepped. It felt like it could collapse at any minute, so he hung onto Saniya, and she huddled close in return.
It wasn't as bad as Scout feared it would be. Though, Saniya was taking short, rapid, terrified breaths, the darkness wasn't so imposing to him. Maybe he had just gone past terror and had slipped into a manic state of focus? He had to get to Rai, Mane, and Sean. He had to.
There was no sound here, except there was. The beating of their hearts. The vibration of the walls. A distant call sang like the shriek of a siren, inviting them to deviate from their path.
Neither did. Hanging as close as possible, squinting as the vapour stung their eyes, made their noses itch, and caressed the back of their heads.
Grasping hands, paws, fingers, and limbs reached out for them. What they wanted, no one could be sure. Where they reaching a hand for help? Or extending a trick to drag you with them?
They were not there. They never were.
There was no sound except that in your head. It wasn't real. It was all in your head. It is real, it is all in your head.
Scout gave a weak sound as his foot touched something, and it touched back, sliding around its legs and holding on. He tried to jump, kick away, but he couldn't risk jarring Saniya off him. Her arms were trembling, strong and weak at the same time.
It was getting worse, actually, Scout decided.
Something was touching his ear. Something was in his ear. Crawling in, burrowing deeper. He hit his head, smacked his ear. It wriggled deeper. He nearly drew a Night Slash to plunge into his own ear, but Saniya caught him.
There was nothing in his ear.
In his ear.
His ear.
His.
Yours
The two pokémon, a celebi and a meowth walked until they didn't need to walk anymore.
A star blast of light nearly blinded them, and they gasped desperate gulps of air, hiccupping within moments. The scent of sulphur increased but so did an ashy stench, but it was not stale and lifeless as the air in the magnagate.
The reason they were illegal suddenly made more sense. The dungeon itself felt like a dream or a bubble blown by a child. Risking popping at any moment.
Pokémon had been lost to oblivion when one side of a magnagate was destroyed or failed. No one knew what happened to them, creating a new magnagate in the same area could not find them.
Only echoes and siren songs to step off the path and join them.
That was behind them, they were breathing again, desperate inhales of smoky air that stung their lungs and caused them to cough and gag. But that was better than things wriggling deeper in your ears.
They didn't separate as they breathed, but once the reality they had passed through became clear, they looked up and then away.
"L-let's go," Scout said, pulling Saniya forward.
"I'll go up high," she suggested, fluttering up. "Look from above!" she called louder. He nodded and sprinted on all fours after her.
If Ponyta had found it after exiting the Dark Crater, hopefully, that meant it was close by. Scout didn't look forward to the chance that they may have to fight their way through it to find them, but he'd go through hell if that's what it took.
Striker was vindicated in the value of orbs when Saniya gave a sharp cry. "THERE!"
She zoomed off at breakneck speed, and Scout wasn't far behind her. Dark Crater was right on the edge of the island, waves crashed on black-sanded beaches as three pokémon argued furiously.
"BOYS!" Saniya screamed, diving down.
"GUYS!" Scout cried seconds after her.
They reached a stunned group of injured pokémon, previously arguing if they could swim the whole way back to the mainland.
"Saniya?" Sean gasped.
"Scout!" Rai and Mane shouted.
Scout reached them as Saniya picked Sean up and gasped. "Oh, fuck you two are hurt!" Sean had tied the scarves as best as he could, but Cresselia's Slash had cut distressingly deep.
"We're okay," Rai said, but he didn't look okay. "It's Cresselia!"
"I know!" Scout replied, grabbing onto Rai and Mane to look at their wounds. "I figured it out when I found one of her feathers and then Darkrai showed up and put everyone asleep!"
"And so he says SOOTHE showed up!" Saniya shouted, pulling Sean over. "To help him fight off Darkrai."
"We almost had him too," Scout growled, claws coming out. "But that's when Cresselia showed up, and they escaped. I cut his arm off, though."
"You cut Darkrai's arm off?" Mane whistled. "Nice." He gave him an approving up-and-down look.
Scout managed a weak smile. "I got rid of Darkrai for now but Soothe then disappeared on me. After attacking me." He rubbed a glittering spot on his chest. "And I used the feather to wake up Saniya."
"That's how you got here?" Sean asked.
"No, we used illegal means!" Saniya replied. "Ponyta used a magnagate to get from here to the Grass Continent, and it's just over there." She gestured the way they came. "It comes out at the top of Mt. Bristle."
"A magnagate IN a dungeon?" Rai asked, disbelieving. "That's even possible?"
"Apparently."
"Magnagate or not," Mane said. "You got here."
"And we'll use it to get back," Scout said. Although he wasn't thrilled at the idea of going back into that purple hell, he liked the injuries before him even less.
They began to walk, and Scout filled them in on the rest of it while being filled in on Cresselia. Most pointedly, Scout spoke of the feral attacks that Darkrai said.
"There were ferals outside of the Dark Crater," Rai said softly.
"Mt. Bristle as well," Saniya said. She and Scout shared a worried look, the others weren't walking very fast, and they didn't want to push them.
Sean had done what he could, but blood loss was a tricky thing to tackle. They didn't even have any berries to get some energy back. And neither of them had thought to grab some items just in case, being pulled along with the winds of panic too easily.
Saniya was able to offer some help with a Life Dew, but it could only go so far.
Once they reached the magnagate, hidden within a crevice, they realised they should split the party.
"Those dungeons aren't supposed to be very stable," Mane pointed out. "Even with Sean's 'not counting' in them, I don't think we should test our luck. Especially today."
"Take Rai and Mane," Scout said, passing the two to Saniya. "I'll get Sean and I through it."
"You sure?"
"You're stronger, you should take the two."
She entered first, letting Sean and Scout sit in exhausted silence for a moment. Sean looked tiredly horrified of entering the Magnagate but they had no choice.
"Had any idea Cresselia was bad?" Sean asked.
Scout shook his head. "She was supposed to be useless, not malicious. I don't know what Darkrai did to her, or if she really did just snap from that time freeze thing."
"We did see her. I remembered when she started talking about it like it reminded me. Damn, I wish I hadn't forgotten."
"We all forgot. Even me and Saniya."
"I just thought she was being overconfident, getting herself injured that many times. It didn't even occur to me she might be draining our items."
"Didn't even occur to me that considering so many things have been different, that why wouldn't she? At most I thought maybe Darkrai wouldn't be there… which was true in the end."
"We fucked up."
Scout didn't respond to that. He was still getting used to the idea of 'we' when it came to a fault.
Once they had waited long enough, they stepped into the magnagate.
Scout had thought that clinging onto Saniya for a rock was hard enough. The dungeon pulling at his everything, whispering into his ear, tugging his whiskers, and probing his eyes was bad.
Somehow it was so much worse with Sean.
They walked in arms linked, and almost immediately Sean groaned and buckled against him, Scout having to half-carry, half-drag, the heavier riolu as Sean began to whimper and mutter.
Saniya had shared the burden, but Sean needed everything and then some. It was like the purple smog of the nightmare coiled around him like a physical chain, tugging his ankles and causing him to stumble and almost pull Scout down with him. He could hear Sean's heartbeat, pumping away as if it was in his own head.
It wasn't his heart, no.
He knew it was Sean's.
He didn't know how.
He could almost see it.
Could almost t-
The pounding of the beat bored into Scout's skull, churning his brain to jelly, causing him to break out in fits of laughter and Sean's muttering continued.
He began to dream. Sean separating from him and running into the mists. Throwing Sean into it. Taking his claws and driving them into the soft-
Sean was there. Sean was there. Sean was there.
He was heavy. He was real. He was Sean.
Scout began to repeat that as he pulled him along, not releasing him for a moment and bruising Sean when his grip tightened, tightened further, and continued growing tenser until he was nearly crushing Sean's arm with his paws.
Sean was deadweight the entire time, but at least he didn't resist the pull. He only muttered increasingly delirious words under his breath. His eyes seemed far away, like he was having a Scream vision.
"First. Last. Fallen. The. Last. Fall. Shadow. Darkness. Bones. Fire. Fire. Fire. The Fire. Returns. Deep. Woods. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fir. .re. fi. re. Fire. Returns."
Once the mist faded and the walls changed to collapsed rocks, Sean screamed.
Saniya had raised the rocks already in preparation for their arrival, and Sean came sprinting out of it, screaming like a banshee. He ran towards the wall of the room and slammed a devastating Force Palm into it.
A shockwave tinged with dark rippled out, and Sean collapsed to his knees, coughing and retching out a mixture of blood, bile, spit, all tinged with fading lines of oily blackness.
Once it was all out of his system, he got up onto shaking legs.
They didn't speak of it, but the five of them didn't drop a hand or paw or tail from another as they left the dungeon and were teleported back to Treasure Town by Saniya.
The distance they went caused an even harder toss upon appearing and with three of them injured that was not for the best.
Scout, however, pulled himself onto his feet and ran off to find as many oran berries, sitrus berries, and anything else Chimecho had showed him that he could find.
He was no healer, but he had wound up under Chimecho's care often enough that she had taught him a few simple tricks. Sean too, had learned how to care for the injuries of them during the Dark Future, and Saniya knew Life Dew.
Between the three of them, they'd be okay.
They would have to be.
Torkoal had, very helpfully, just been in the middle of sorting some items out for them just in case. At the same time, Ponyta busied himself with moving many pokémon as he could.
With hooves, he had some trouble getting them onto his back. Saniya, once she'd done what she could, moved to help him. Levitating a few pokémon onto his back before carrying a couple herself.
"We've noticed something," Ponyta huffed as Team Ion and Sean began to acclimate to the slumbering situation around them. "No sign of Team Celestial or Vigoroth."
Scout blinked once before gasping, "Vigoroth said he was going to Beach Cave with them to train! Could they still be in there?"
"What if they're asleep too?" Rai asked worried. "Even in that dungeon that'd be dangerous."
"I'll go in," Scout declared. "Get them out if I need to." He took an escape orb with him for good measure.
Beach Cave was a small dungeon, it had never grown particularly problematic even so close to town, and some ferals wandered out of it anyway, the krabby that blew bubbles at dusk were feral.
There were a number of them emerging as Scout crossed the sand. A few Shadow Balls had them down and out and he raced down the slick slide of the dungeon, managing to keep his balance and running into the maze.
It didn't take long for him to find the sounds of battle. Growls and grunts and blasts of flame. He followed eagerly to find Team Celestial having quite a battle with each other.
He had to pause for just a moment. Rai, Mane, and him battled on occasion and he knew Team Sunrise did as well. They always pulled their punches a little, it was for training, not because they wanted to hurt each other.
Vigoroth and Grovyle battled like they hated each other. Strikes from claws and thorny vines drew blood eagerly and without restraint. Vigorth tugged a thorned vine down, cutting his own hand to slam Grovyle into the ground and it was slick with blood as well as slime by this point.
"Woah," Scout gasped. Braixen wasn't as beaten up or fighting as violently, but they were scorch marks everywhere. For a moment he feared the dungeon had gotten to them and turned them feral but then he saw Vigoroth grinning.
"Meowth!" he called cheerfully. "What's up, mon?"
To Scout's surprise, he saw Grovlye flushed and grinning as well, though his was a lot more wild and he was panting heavily as his sister swiftly made her way over to him.
Remembering why he was here, Scout quickly blurted out, "Town is in danger! Everyone is asleep, drove Darkrai off but there are a LOT of feral pokemon coming! They're leaving the dungeons! We gotta get everyone to safety and defend the place! And holy shit are you two okay?"
"We are fine," Grovyle said, stepping forth determindly. "Town is in danger?" Scout nodded. "Let us leave then."
Braixen and Vigoroth nodded and Scout took out the escape orb.
The condition of Team Celestial apparently wasn't much of a surprise to Torkoal or Ponyta. Ponyta shook his head and Torkoal looked almost amused and a touch concerned as well. He saw Scout's hovering anxiety and quietly explained, "It's not unheard for Vigoroth and Grovyle to fight to the point of passing out from bloodloss, this appears relatively controlled for them."
If everyone was sure. They had bigger things to worry about then possible sadomasochism.
Feral pokémon were coming. And even if they weren't, they couldn't simply leave the bulk of Treasure Town's populace out in the open, exposed to the elements.
Torkoal directed Scout and Celestial to gather as many pokemon as they could from all around town, including the homes as they did not know how far Darkrai's sleep spell had gone.
With Treasure Town being so busy in repairs, so many of the townsfolk had been out and about. Scout checked out the housing district further in and found Azumarill along with plenty of other pokémon in their homes, sound asleep.
He also found Bidoof, although he wasn't around the housing, he was slumped over on the track leading to them. He appeared to have fallen asleep on his way back from somewhere.
Bidoof was heavy, but Scout was able to drag at least him into town where Vigoroth came jogging over carrying Charmeleon and Machoke on his shoulders and picked Bidoof up as well.
Marowak's Dojo became their bastion. With the guild destroyed they obviously couldn't use that, but the dojo was quite large as well. A few pokémon were also placed into the tents of the remade guild as well as Sharpedo Bluff.
Pokémon that were already in their homes was a topic of argument.
"If we're going to have a horde of ferals on us, that will be the first place they go!" Scout argued.
"The homes are sturdy," Ponyta fired back. "And pulling everyone into the middle of town is just placing a big welcome sign for an all-you-can-eat buffet!"
Their argument was broken up by Torkoal but not resolved.
On the second day since everyone had been dropped to sleep, they got their first bit of good news.
"Oh. Oh my gosh… what happened here?"
Sunflora returned.
She hadn't stuck around in Evertrail Town for long, itching to get back to Treasure Town sooner rather than later but walked instead of the fast trip she took the first time. Causing her to miss everything that went down that had been broadcasted across the Psychic Network.
Sunflora had left a whole and stable Treasure Town, moving with Team Gazer to save some heroes.
Sunflora returned to her home, the guild itself, shattered and broken. The town blasted to splinters. Dugtrio dead. And a majority of the populace unconscious and not waking up.
She took it remarkably well upon an explanation given by a tired Sean. Saniya had stopped talking much to them, Scout was almost as silent, Grovyle wasn't much of a talker at all, Vigoroth was working the hardest, Braixen had gone pretty silent herself, and Ponyta was in a very poor mood, so he took it upon himself to help where he could.
Sunflora bowed her head upon hearing of Dugtrio's death. She wiped her eyes with her leaves. "I see," she managed. "Well, that's… oh poor Diglett."
Sean let her cry, giving her space.
To her credit, Sunflora only cried for a minute and then she did not cry again.
Once she composed herself, she set herself to bearing some of the load they were suffering. With carefully manipulated moves, Sunflora was able to lay a patchwork of Grassy Terrain over a lot of distance.
Setting as many pokémon on this terrain as they could, they could give them some substance with the energy of the move, working hard just to protect them.
It was hard to give food and water to several hundred sleeping pokémon, with just eleven pokemon. The terrain would only help a little, but it gave them a bit more time.
She went another step further and spread Ingrain vines through terrain spreading across the housing district. Sunflora could control those vines for more than just sucking up nutrients, she covered houses with them to reinforce them a little more, to convince the ferals to turn back or just continue forward without trying to attack.
She couldn't cover it all. She was not nearly so powerful, but she could protect the doors and most of the windows at the very most.
The work took another day, and a half and Sunflora crashed afterwards.
As they worked, pokémon from the Beach Cave had indeed been leaving en-masse as Darkrai warned. Thankfully many of them simply slipped into the waves of the beach. Those who did not were still not much of a threat, at least to awake pokémon.
They found Lapras there, on the beach. Risking being swept out to sea, so they dragged him up.
Rai, Mane, and Sean convinced the ferals to leave under Torkoal's supervision. They were healing, but not fast enough. Not for what they feared was coming.
With as many preparations as they could do, Torkoal ordered everyone to rest for at least one night.
On the fourth day, the horde arrived.
Blossom the sunflora was a Grass-type.
In other words, the Grass-type was widely considered to be the safest type for new training. Avoiding the often-literal fiery attitude of Fire-type's and the overwhelming pressure of many Water-type's.
Easy-going was the norm among Grass-type starters, but there were other reasons. They were the toughest, able to survive off more than just kibble and physical food, safe for a young trainer who may not know how to take care of a pokémon on their own.
They were loyal, or at least pleasant, and would fight for their trainers.
But another reason that wasn't often built upon. Grass-type's could be the master of terrain battling. Difficult to utilise well in the varying battlefields of the Pokémon Journey, but powerful, nonetheless.
Blossom was a Grass-type.
She had been perched where the guild once stood, connected to the vines that had crossed through the town. She couldn't see with her eyes, closed or not. She couldn't feel with her leaves, awake or not. What she could do, however, was see and feel through the network of vines she'd laid.
It was rough, it was minuscule, she could only sense damage to them, she could only see movement through them. It was not real sight or feeling. It left her body entirely vulnerable, guarded by little Shinx. So brave, so strong.
She had seen him grow up.
There was a fact about Blossom that no one really realised.
She was flighty, she was giggly, all gossip reached her soon enough. If a pokémon wanted to know something, approaching Blossom with the right price could likely get them what they wanted.
She was an apprentice of the Wigglytuff Guild and had been for a couple years. Everyone knew she was strong enough to graduate but was waiting for the right moment.
She was best friends with Chimecho, argued with Loudred, and always did her best to help.
One thing that few realised was that Blossom knew everyone in Treasure Town. Everyone.
She knew the Kecleon Brothers. She knew Marill and Azurill. She knew Banette. She knew Machoke and Charmander and Spinda and Delibird.
She knew Lairon and Lapras, Wynaut and Wobbuffet too. She knew the shopkeepers, the shoppers, the exploration teams that came in and out. She knew the pokémon who called Treasure Town their home. She knew everyone.
No one else could claim that. Every pokémon that came in and out, she knew their smiles, their stories, their lives.
She knew that Vigoroth would want nothing more than to be helping protect everyone here. That the rest of the guild would. That the exploration teams would. That the townsfolk would. Everyone was in danger and the entire town that she knew personally.
She knew everyone. And resolved to not let a single person perish.
Something, or someone, touched a vine, and Blossom felt, or even heard, two words with a dire warning. "They're here."
Then the vines began getting trampled she found a way to let little Shinx know. He didn't want to leave her, she could tell that even without being able to see him.
She made sure he did, they had to know it was time. The horde had arrived. Darkrai's threat had come to fruition, and now everyone was at risk.
Little Shinx raced off, fast as a bolt of lightning and Blossom smiled. She dropped the smile and pulled on her Power, tripping the vines, knocking rampaging ferals over. Her smile returned as she fought them from a distance, as she was protecting the town she loved.
As they grew closer, ripping and tearing, she wanted to wrench her roots from the ground and charge down to fight in the thick of it. She could not. Blossom could not. She had to keep the vines stable, she had to keep the Grassy Terrain going, to protect those pokémon left out there who stood no chance of protecting themselves.
She had to.
Things had fallen apart immediately.
To Scout, that was honestly expected, and so he smoothly flipped into Plan B.
Sunflora's vines, as powerful as she had surprisingly turned out to be, were stretched razor-thin. She couldn't do a whole lot besides protecting the pokémon further out and warning them of when the ferals were about to arrive.
Rai had come sprinting down, trading places with Mane in protecting Sunflora, to let them know.
Frankly, Scout had almost expected it to be worse. Yet even then, paradoxically, he had not been mentally prepared for the horde.
It caused him to flashback to when he first arrived. The blank eyes of the anorith, the screeching shellos. They had unnerved him so much, but he'd gotten used to the ferals quickly like they weren't so bad.
After being in the Dark Future, he realised why. They really weren't so bad compared to the creatures there.
These thoughts were fought by the horde, however. It was less of a collection of pokémon as it was a writhing mass of carnage, an unnatural disaster besetting itself upon the town without thought, reason, or mercy. Some glittered.
There was nothing they could do to hold that from reaching the town. Forget trying to stop a flood with your hands, trying to halt this horde was like thinking you could blow a hurricane away with your breath.
The ferals had hit the reinforced area in front of the town, thick vines to trip them, rocks piled, fire behind it, and smashed straight through it.
Many had been caught and crushed under the feet of those who came after. The first had been pushed into the fire by those who were behind them, at least some sense of self-preservation in their broken minds.
This had been fire started by Scout, Saniya, and Vigoroth painstakingly created by rubbing sticks and leaves together. The fire created by Mane, Ponyta, or Torkoal would be magical to some degree.
Ironically, it was a real wildfire that was dangerous here. Anyone could take a Flamethrower to the face and be okay, the magic of pokémon protecting. But actual fire was hazardous, but they had no other option besides try and keep it contained and hope it slowed them down.
The fire was beaten to death under the feet and bodies of feral pokémon before they burst forward, the floodgates opened.
Some had been stopped. Some had been beaten already. But it was only the beginning of it, by no means the end.
Really, the fact they had broken through wasn't even the first plan failing. It was just an unfortunate certainty. So, those that remained to fight fell into action.
Scout used orbs and seeds, claws and blood.
Scout ran from the dojo, creating a big enough scene to set a group of ferals trying to break in to instead chase him. He couldn't fight so well in a brawl, but he was fast and sharp. That was the best he could do. That had to be enough.
His best had to be enough.
Three days was not enough time.
It simply wasn't. It wasn't enough time to be nearly killed, dragged through a hellscape to safety, and start saving a town of sleeping pokémon.
Wounds did not heal that fast. At least, not the kind of injuries Sean had, that Rai and Mane also had. Cresselia had been attacking to kill them. Sean hadn't even five minutes to process that with everything else going on. And the thought stuck unpleasantly in his head at this worst of moments.
They could not have been healed even if they had Chansey to give them magical healing rays. Or had Soothe stuck around, apparently being here. She was an audino, she could have helped.
But there was no Soothe to be seen, only unconscious pokémon they had to drag away to help.
Three days was not enough. Not enough to figure out a plan to place everyone in a safe, comfortable area. It was not enough time to fortify an entire village.
Treasure Town was on the coast, it was the end of a line. They were on edge and had nowhere to run. But at least that also meant there was only one direction the ferals would be coming from.
Three days. Three days, not that they even knew it was three days. Only soon.
Only when stragglers became more common. Only when they had just managed to protect enough that they could set up a watch for the attack.
And to do it, they had to lose one of their strongest fighters. Sunflora was strong, everyone knew that. She was needed in another way, however.
Three days to recover from mortal injuries, drag hundreds of pokémon to safety, and fortify an entire town against a horde of creatures coming for their blood.
Three days was not enough, but it would have to be enough.
Sean felt his injuries stinging from the wear of running, from the needle-pricks of Power Energies washing over his healing body. They had all been given as much energy with sitrus and chesto berries that they could stomach.
Enough to ignore the pain and exhaustion.
Enough to fight.
He mimicked a flash of white around a staravia and flew into the air himself on translucent wings. Punching that bird out of the sky.
It landed, and he landed on something else, slamming a Force Palm through the paw on his foot to knock it out as well.
That was two, but there were so many more. He grabbed an orb to stun a horde of them.
He would fight them all. There was no choice. He hadn't chosen this life at first but he was choosing it now. He would save them. All of them.
He had to.
They were protecting Sunflora. Not only because she was protecting others, but because she couldn't defend herself.
If things were right, a whole squad could be guarding her against any threat. Even a single hit might knock that incredibly fragile sense of control out, and her defensive line would collapse entirely. Already it was clear Sunflora was wilting at the edges from the sheer Power she was exhausting to keep this up, any hit would be dire.
It was Rai, then it was Mane, then it was Rai again, then Sean, then Rai once more, now it was him. It was Mane when they knew the ferals were coming.
Mane hated that. He hated that he was the best pick for this. Rai's sharp aim and Sean's ability to run items alongside Scout meant they were needed down there. Mane's firepower was also needed, dearly needed.
But where Rai could hold many pokémon off with sharp, direct, jolts and Sean could hardly even do that, Mane could set them on fire.
Few things were a better deterrent than fire.
First, it was singular Embers, a nice simple attack that didn't drain him much. Soon it was more Embers. Then scattering in some Fire Blasts to really force them back.
He could dodge their attacks, but so many would then hit Sunflora. He let some hit him, exploded some in mid-air before they could beat him. He was still injured, same as Rai and Mane. That's why they were the protectors. That's why he was.
Torkoal and Ponyta could do this job too, but they weren't injured. Mane had argued that Torkoal was elderly, but he confidently proved he was stronger than either of them.
If they ever needed a truly big ace in the hole, Torkoal could do it. Mane, for everything he had, would probably kill himself if he had to do the same. He still couldn't turn his head all the way without it hurting, but he did so anyway, he had to see everything around him.
So, he was here. Holding off the clambering beasts rising up the broken stairs. Parts of them had been removed for renovations in the town, others had just been damaged when Palkia was here.
Mane continued to fight and blast, even Hyper Voice's to knock them back. The ferals were getting closer, it was taking more and more to hold them back, and they were getting closer and closer.
Mane took a deep breath and slid his eyes closed for just a moment, so damn tired.
Then, he roared.
A shockwave of fire, his Fire Blast melded with his Hyper Voice, set the horde on fire as well as the stairs.
It was awful, really, to be the one to do this. The stairs were the last remnant of the Wigglytuff Guild, the steep final obstacle to the proud coalition.
And Mane was the one to burn it to ash.
It was terrible and yet….
He had to do it.
It was getting worse.
They were eleven pokémon. Eleven extraordinary pokémon indeed, but still only eleven. This was hundreds of ferals. This was more than the number of pokémon that a single dungeon would usually contain! Sheer weight of numbers could overwhelm anything if you had enough.
And even then only a fraction of those enemies would be fought. A smaller number of them would have to be knocked out, most ferals fled once you fought back.
These ones… it took so much more.
Ponyta's hooves smashed down on a yanma, and he felt a crunch. He winced and didn't look at his hooves.
Was it better that way? To be put out of your misery at last?
Or could that yanma have been saved? Like he had. He had been saved, but this yanma would never be.
Ferals that were awoken were not common pokémon, even fewer would ever admit to having been one. It took quite a bit for Ponyta to admit it only earlier, with the world itself perhaps at stake.
He was a formal feral, but that meant he stared upon this horde and didn't only see beasts of ferals, he saw pokémon. Most explorers, most pokémon wild or civilised, learned to not look at ferals as pokémon.
It was easier that way. Ferals were eaten, ferals were stolen from, ferals had their homes intruded upon, attacked, and abandoned to the madness of the twisting corridors of a Mystery Dungeon.
They couldn't be reasoned with or reliably saved. No one even knew how ferals snapped out of it. No formal feral had any idea, besides being knocked out in a battle against a sane pokémon.
Most ferals fled before they could be knocked out. And those that were left unconscious happened to be easy prey for other ferals. Many pokémon had defeated ferals and dragged them out of the dungeon, expecting them to wake up.
They didn't. They just attacked, still maddened.
Without a known way, or if it was anything more than luck or some other factor in play, this was the way things were.
Ponyta was an explorer himself. He had been raised well enough by Torkoal to join the Wigglytuff Guild and graduated. He joined Team Flame afterwards, his two teammates never being guild pokémon. He wasn't the leader, even if he was the most accomplished of them.
He fought ferals for a living, and he did what many pokémon did and didn't think about them. Except he did. There was no time, no dungeon, that he didn't take a look back at least once and wonder why he was lucky enough to be helped.
Ultimately, that was the reason behind his name. As Torkoal had dubbed him, fortunate. Fortune, to be exact, was his name and he always wondered if that was right.
Still, Fortune didn't feel very lucky at the moment. With houndoom and mightyena on his back, biting him even as his flames pulsed. Electrike and herdier biting at his legs, an arcanine barrelling into his side to break his ribs and knock him spinning.
No, being on the other side of a canine pokémon pack hunting him down did not feel very lucky. Fortune breathed fire, but the houndoom drank it. Flame Body.
He stomped his hooves, arcanine smashed into his side again. If ribs weren't broken before, they definitely were now. The other canines attacked him again, sharp claws and sharper teeth digging through his flesh for purchase.
Still, he got back up and reared up, smashing his staggeringly-hard hooves into the arcanine's head. He couldn't fail here. He had to keep fighting.
For everyone here. For Torkoal who raised him and loved this town.
He had to.
Twila the Braixen had not known what a home was like to have until she came back to it. Returned from their exam and realised she knew the people they were coming back to, and could not wait to see them again.
Her earliest memories spoke of a time of warmth and safety, comfort and love, but those memories were like of a different person. In a lot of ways, they were of a different person.
Fissure took care of its own but she had not been their own for a long, long, time. She wondered if Old Delphox was still there and if she survived this, she'd ask Team Ion if she was. She couldn't imagine that old hag could have croaked it, but time made fools of us all.
The road had not been home but it had been safety. Movement, constant movement, never settling, never letting anything get close enough to find out, to risk it all. He had been too young to grow up, but he had to grow up nonetheless. They both had to.
And then, here. Treasure Town. The name did not do it justice. Oh, Twila knew what the pokemon were like here. It was a… it was a small town, and carried the thoughts that small towns often did. The Guild, though, oh the Guild.
She spun her wand, sending a bolting blaze of scorching flame at ferals mobilising around the well that lay on the crossroads. Fire was a great deterrent, she and Mane agreed on that.
In any other battle, any other dungeon fight, this would be easy. Lay enough screens and spells and let Luno and Sol go wild.
And they were. She knew they were, deeper into the town, holding the surging pokemon off from reaching those that were helpless and she was so very proud for that.
This was home, even if it was currently blasted to bits by rampaging gods.
A biting maw loomed from the carnage for her neck but she deflected it with her psychic power. A stream of ice, and lightning, and fire all came at her from different angles.
She could weather a lot. Not as much as her brother, but she was not delicate.
She too had grown up too fast.
She had to.
The ferals would overwhelm her. She knew that. She knew her limits and how far she could go before it would crack her defences and bleed too much out of her to continue. There was no place to go to escape, the only option was to keep fighting, every plan crumbling under the horde.
Nothing left but grit and hope.
A Fire Blast careened over her head and sent a group scattering. She didn't turn back to thank Mane, she couldn't drop her eyes for a second.
She could only hope that they would make it through this. She saw something dark erupting near the town square and her heart dropped.
The only hope left was that it didn't cost them their home in order to save it.
But if it did?
Then. They would survive.
They had to.
It had been three hours. The horde was still coming. They had split them up as best as they could, Scout was stunning with that.
Quick strikes, leaps in and out to draw more of the attackers off to chase him rather than grouping together. He cut a houndoom off Ponyta, drew seven pokémon to follow him to the bridge before blasting a hole in it and sending them into the water. He did his best.
And Rai loved him for it.
And yet there were still so many of them. Bodies littered the ground, some of them not breathing anymore. These ferals were riled to madness, just attacking them rarely worked to drive them away. They had to be defeated outright.
It was Torkoal, Ponyta, and Team Celestial who were actually killing, however. They had the strength to do so without risking themselves. Or perhaps just the grim intent necessary. The amount of Power Rai would need to expend would stagger him for the next wave.
Scout was cutting deadly lines through the ferals, though.
Rai, Sean, and Mane were set to guard rather than fight actively, still being injured. Torkoal was supposed to as well, but he crawled into the fray quickly, seeking out Ponyta, as blasts of fire sent ferals flying.
Rai guarded the dojo. It was where most of the pokémon were positioned. Sean was doing his best to protect the nursery, where the bulk of the rest of them was. Scout did his best to stop the ferals trampling the tents, where more pokémon were held but was struggling.
There were barricades, of course, but only so much could be done in three days and only so much could be done against numbers like this. The ferals sought out the defenceless pokémon.
Ponyta and Torkoal joined Scout there, to light a wall of fire to ward them off.
Rai was guarding the largest number. Probably a hundred or more pokémon were in the dojo, and he was one little shinx. They attacked the sides of the dojo and Rai had to encourage them around to him with electricity or away if they pleased.
They rarely did.
More ferals came in a ceaseless line. It would almost have been polite, but perhaps they were too used to lining up in corridors. Plenty broke rank and charged the doors, and they got battered.
Many even ignored Rai, the tiny shinx being ignored for what could be smelled behind the thick doors.
Rai was just one shinx. His friends were in the dojo. His community was in the dojo. The guild was in the dojo. He put his tail through the twin handles and called on Arashi's teaching.
She had been giving him tips, training, all the while travelling back with Team Gazer. She wanted to give him something to help him, something they both could do that their parents could do as well. Iron Tail.
He didn't have it entirely down yet, but he could do it enough. Enough to hold the doors closed with his tail, even as the doors were smashed back and forth and his control over the Steel-energy flickered in and out. He was sure he was broken bones in his tail, but they couldn't get inside.
He would not allow it.
Rai roared, lightning struck from the ground and the cloudy sky. A reprieve, but only for a few seconds.
He would hold the line.
He had to.
Saniya threw the almost-rebuilt Electivire Link Shop at the ferals charging the back of the dojo. They could rebuild it. They couldn't rebuild anyone killed by the ferals.
She threw a dozen pokémon far into the air, letting them drop to the gravity. Let gravity do its work.
She threw pokémon into the water, into the sea. It was cruel, but they couldn't afford to be kind.
The shop was smashed to smithereens by the weight of the fall, but it crushed a dozen ferals that were going for those asleep. She was so tired.
She almost attacked Sean, charging for her to give her some berries. She didn't, though.
He raced off to help Rai, the ferals were all beginning to congregate on the dojo. Leaving Sunflora and Mane. Leaving the nursery. They were all going for one place.
The ground was thick with pokémon, it was difficult to step without trampling one. Saniya floated, so she didn't care.
She hadn't slept. Not one of these three days of preparation. She was Celebi, she didn't need as much sleep like other pokémon. She could sustain herself on energy, at least for a while. It was how she had survived in the Dark Future with Dialga itself hunting her.
It was not wise to sleep often there if you had no one to help you. It was maddening to go longer and longer without it, however.
She could go weeks without sleep if she truly had to, but she was so much weaker now. And she was so tired.
Saniya tossed more pokémon before racing off to the dojo. She had to protect it. Striker and Guardian were in there. They couldn't be harmed. She couldn't lose them. She had to keep going.
She had to.
Sol the vigoroth was a whirlwind of destruction. Everywhere his feet took him, every slash and swipe of his claws, left blood and bodies in his wake.
Sol was a whirlwind of protection. Everywhere his feet took him, every slash and swipe of his claws, it was to protect the place they could not protect itself any longer.
Once upon a time, Team Razor Wind had contained four members. Zangoose the leader. Sandslash and Scyther. And Slakoth. Even as a slakoth he'd had uncontrolled energy, pushed them onwards to bigger and better things.
Then he evolved and had grown too much and they left him here.
This place, this Treasure Town, had taken him in. Even with his energy. Even with his friendly thoughtlessness. Even with the fragile things he broke and the times he spoke too loudly, which was most of the time.
It became his home, his refuge, the place he belonged. A place he wasn't tolerated, but adored for all his strangeness. And then, then, a braixen and grovyle stumbled into town and he remembered what being happy was like.
Treasure Town was made as a place for those who didn't belong anywhere else. It's why Wigglytuff had felt it was the place to start his Guild, another door open to those who weren't accepted in other places. They had the hard-working bidoof, the former feral ponyta, they had the giggly gossip and the serene and scary chimecho.
They had the fussy old bird who cared too much. They had the wild child raised in civilisation and the son of the Shadow Pokemon.
They had the grovyle with scars that told so many stories and the braixen whose eyes told just as many.
That's what this place was. It was in the Kecleon Brothers who gave freely to struggling families. Motherly Kangaskhan who asked no questions, only opened her arms. Chansey and Banette, so surly, so rough, yet raised all the children thrown away by the world without a hint of resignation or regret.
And Sol would fight to the death to protect it. It wasn't perfect, no place was, but it was perfect to him.
His claws were a whirlwind of elemental attacks for hours and then it was raw energy and then it was just his claws, blunting against scales and chitin, cracking against stone and steel, dulled by blood and viscera.
He didn't feel much pain through his thick fur and powerful muscles. The pain made him feel alive when it did spark through. It sang in his veins and reminded him of what it was like to truly live with every fibre of your being.
He loved that about Luno. He never failed, every minute they got to see each other, to remind him what it was like to be alive.
And as claws and teeth, fire and lightning, ice and steel, psychic blasts and cruelly dark blades, as it all tore through Sol he knew he was alive and fighting.
He also knew that he wouldn't survive this fight.
Dugtrio had died for his son. He chose to.
Chatot had died for Team Ion. He chose to.
Sol would die for the town and its people and he'd have no regrets. His movements began to slow, an exhaustion that was comfortingly familiar making itself home in his muscles. His arms began to feel heavier, his lungs fuller without taking as many breaths, his body lighter.
He looked down at one point, he wasn't sure if it was his blood or the ferals.
He grinned through a bloodied maw. "HERE!" He roared, leading more ferals to charge him. He'd take them all on and he'd win.
His body felt like it was stone but he pushed it anyway. Claws sang through the air, screams and roars mixed into a song of violence. Sol did not like hurting others, but he enjoyed a fight like this.
They tore into him as he tore through them, taking the brunt of multiple legions worth of ferals onto him and away from the others. They couldn't survive this like he could. Not for as long at least
When he stumbled, however, he knew it was drawing to a close.
Sol glanced down, marvelling at a leg that was just stopped in responding to him and he tilted like an old tree. The world was beginning to swim, the haze of red in sides of his vision spreading across his eyes.
He noticed there was a blade of a bisharp in his stomach, ah so that's what it was. The bisharp itself wasn't attached to the blade anymore.
Sol staggered, dropped to his knees, and then dropped to his hands as well. He heard a sound. It was an awful sound. A scream of what he could call nothing less than anguish and he didn't recognise the owner despite its familiarity.
Turning enough he realised what, and who, it was an he reconsidered a previous thought.
He did have one regret as Luno descended upon the ferals around him like a storm. Yeah, one regret and what a time to realise it, but his mouth was filled with blood and so were his lungs so he couldn't say it.
Still, he marvelled at Luno as he hit the horde. Utterly marvelled at the sheer impact of brutality he could put out, he almost chuckled as the thought of Luno holding out on him bubbled through his darkening brain.
He had one regret and so he couldn't die now, no.
He had to get through this.
He had to.
Luno the grovyle had known little more than violence his entire life.
From the scorching maw of that twisted pyroar around his neck to every step on the road by Twila's side.
Violence was life, violence was known, violence was safety. When it got too much he took it out on the ferals, it was the only thing that seemed to help, that pressed that simmering feeling deep in his stomach and deeper still back down.
He would not hurt Twila. No more than he did simply by existing every day in and out. Everything could be hurt if necessary except her.
To have no neck bared to another meant nothing could strike it. He had believed that, he had known that to the core of his bones. It did not matter for him, just for her, but somehow something had slunk in anyway.
They had a place to return to. A place to be welcomed. A place that took in those other places did not. They would reject them in time, they would hurt them if they stayed too long, but then the vigoroth came.
It would be funny to realise that it was his attachment that anchored them here first, not hers. Twila was better than him at remaining distant, it seemed. She had training after all, it was simply woven into him.
And then the vigoroth came. Marowak asked them to help, they agreed because Twila said it was the appropriate thing to do, and Luno had felt alive in the battle that followed.
He forgot, for just a moment, that eyes were on them and let it loose. The vigoroth had shouted not in pain or fury but in jubilation and matched him. He might have wondered if they were the same, but no. The vigoroth brimmed with light and warmth, too much to take, too much to withstand unless you were without it so long that you were greedy for every grasp you could take.
Luno would not deny it was selfishness of the highest order.
He could take and take and Vigoroth, Sol, would have more to give. So much that he couldn't take enough. So much that he couldn't take too much. So much that….
So much.
The battle ongoing right now was exhilarating. It exceeded what tiny limits they put on themselves for the battle in Beach Cave, the ones that fed that Hunger and left him sated for however long he needed to be.
This was a fight that had no limits. Death fell from his claws, vitality of the living rent into nothing, a display of violence that was to protect all things here.
Protect. Protect?
He had to have more. He had to. He had to kill more. Kill. More. Do more. Need more. He had to. He had to. He ha-
Sol's groan of pain cut through the bloodrush like lightning. It was low and weak, he hadn't even realised he was so close. It shouldn't have been heard over the torrent of ferals but he had grown used to the sound over the years, knew that was the point to stop, knew that it would only take a small push to finally take all that warmth for good and so he had to stop.
He was greedy, so greedy that it was as hard as it was every time to pull that urge back. Because the warmth meant something. Luno did not know what it was, could not understand, but he did not need to understand.
He did not have to.
He did not have to hold back.
He chose to.
And when that sound reached his ears and he saw Sol buckle, he stopped seeing anything at all. His vision darkened besides the flash of white and red that was Sol until that too darkened and was lost to his eyes. A buzzing sound overcame the roars around him and he felt himself be lost completely.
A crackling purple aura built around the grovyle's torn body like a rotting smog and the wounds were inked over by something dark and viscous, almost crawling with some directed intention before Sol's eyes as Luno erupted with energy that he recognised deep in the marrow of his bones.
The Shadow Pokemon went mad.
Luno was a Shadow Pokemon.
His eyes lost all life and revealed the undead Hunger that lay within it and he attacked the ferals with a ferocity that made the battle up to this point look like a picnic with friends.
He tore them apart. Tendrils of rotting purple energy melded with his thorny vines to become cruel lassos of deadly proficiency, binding and tearing into pokemon and draining them of more than ever before, causing a feedback loop of energy that left him with near unlimited energy to devastate everything around them, draining the pokemon of their very lives to fuel his rampage.
In mere moments the bloodied battlefield turned to a rest mist around Sol as Luno obliterated everything around them. Everything except Sol himself, though the stinging energies still glanced him and he felt a presence burning his body and knocking on the door to his mind in a way he felt terror in letting in.
He couldn't move, however, could not step back as Luno's lost eyes finally turned towards him with that Hunger within them.
"LUNO!"
To Sol's astonishment, Twila came burning through the retreating ferals, those that recognised the danger and whatever drove them to attack was overridden by the need to survive.
"Don't," Sol croaked, willing something inside him to get up and do something, what? He wasn't sure.
She did not heed and crossed the distance to her brother and slammed the tip of her wand into the crook under his jaw. A Hypnosis attack slammed into him and then she buckled when something slammed back into her mind, her knees bent and she nearly collapsed.
Sol managed to stand and stagger over, hoping to do something but he did not know what.
"He's alive," Twila croaked as Luno's vines had sprouted again, tipped with dripping purple thorns. "Sol is alive."
And then Sol impacted him.
He didn't plan what he was going to do, he never did. Maybe attack, but once he hit Luno he pulled him into a hug. Blood mixed with blood as Luno froze like stone, eyes wide and bulging and flooded with that rotting purple stuff.
Twila's wand pressed harder as Sol managed a weak, "Luno, please."
A frown cracked across the shadow's vacant expression and finally his eyes closed. He began to sag and Sol was going down with him, but Luno's eyes opened again and they were free of the darkness.
He cast an unsure look at Sol, for once not merely quiet but speechless.
Sol kept on hugging him. At that moment, he decided, it didn't matter. It did not matter. It did not matter because it was still Luno.
He had to be.
The battle lasted for hours. The ferals hadn't attacked at daybreak, but partly into it. The sun travelled across the sky, beaming hot rays down. It aided the likes of Fortune, Saniya, Blossom, Luno, and Hearth.
Hearth had started Treasure Town. He was not the only founder, by no means at all, but he was the only one still alive.
He had already been aging when he began it, deciding, at last, to put a life of adventure down and take up an easier time. Help raise the next few generations and build a place of community, excitement, and treasure.
No one actually remembered why it was called Treasure Town. Some pokémon had sniffed around, expecting something hidden like an old shanty pirate and accused Torkoal of concealing it. He was no pirate, bandit, or rogue.
Some believed that the town was Hearth's treasure, and in a sense that was correct. But that wasn't why it was named as such.
There were even pokémon who believed that it was merely a homage to his old life. An explorer and finder of many treasures, and again those guesses were wrong.
This was Treasure Town because this was a promise to his first and last friend, whose name was Treasure. Fortune and the team with no name were the only ones who knew that, however.
It had survived everything that the world could throw at it. Being set on the ocean meant storms were common and dangerous and with a guild taking root here it attracted trouble no matter how well-intentioned.
Torkoal was not a fast pokémon, never had been even in his prime. When he heard Ponyta screaming, however, he ran.
Torkoal had never had children, the only one he would have asked was long gone. Part of him viewed the town itself and those in it as his children, but Ponyta was more literal. He had actually adopted him, after all, taught him how to survive in the world that was and supported him at every endeavour, even when it seemed like they were at odds.
The fiery equine was so very stubborn after all.
They'd never actually spoken in such direct terms, however.
Dugtrio had died to save his son and Hearth knew he'd do the same.
He was old, and Ponyta wasn't. He erupted with fire and left the protection of the far back. Flying with fire, he erupted again and sent ferals flying.
Scout, sharp as ever, took a houndoom off Fortune but Torkoal did the rest. He gasped for breath, not young not anymore, and demanded Fortune run back.
Fortune did not.
Stubborn as a mudbray that one. Just like him.
They fought together, a roiling inferno of firepower. Fortune was once feral, and Torkoal knew a world that was far rougher than what it had become, where people feared the stranger and word of those that were Fallen ran like poison in the water. Together they reduced those that would tear Treasure Town's heart out to ash.
Pokémon were resistant to all kinds of elemental abilities. Even those who were 'weak' to those abilities. Resistance could only go so far, however, against pure plasma.
The final bell of the battle tolled as the sun left the horizon and the world became darker. For a moment the battle became day once more when Hearth unleashed hellfire on the ferals, breaking the last bastion of monsters and sending what few remained finally fleeing.
He collapsed next to Fortune.
He had fought for his town and did his best.
He had.
"We can't survive that again."
Nine pokémon were assembled together; no one was okay, not after that. The only ones missing were Sol and Luno. Scout had come across them standing amid the devastation shortly after the ferals had finally broken running from Hearth's eruption and perhaps something more.
Sol and Luno apparently needed to be alone and staggered off to the beach, Twila had gone with them initially but came back quickly, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"No one here can survive THAT again," Sean corrected, not feeling the twinges of his body anymore. Scout had been the one to say it first, the first one to speak after they had all just fallen silent.
Torkoal was alive, shockingly. He had dropped after a titanic eruption but was still breathing. Scout and Sean were able to carry him back, but no one knew what to do for him.
They were all alive, shockingly. So many feral pokémon at once was almost hard to believe, thinking back to it, they weren't sure if their exhausted, fearful, minds didn't just exaggerate it. The dozens upon dozens of bodies, some breathing some not, spoke otherwise.
Scout worried about Sol in particular but Twila assured him that Luno would keep him safe. He wasn't so sure and slipped off to the beach himself, though he returned quickly, assuring Rai and Mane that it WAS FINE and to not go down there.
Saniya, almost mechanically, got rid of those ferals that remained. She threw them into the sea but let those who regained consciousness flee into the Beach Cave. Some had puncture wounds, slash marks, and fear in their eyes.
"Is that the only time this will happen?" Blossom whispered. Physically she was the healthiest here, Mane had defended her very well, but she was still as drained as anyone else. Maintaining so many vines and terrains at once had curled the edges of her leaves and petals, and she couldn't quite stop an exhausted tremble across her body.
"Or are there going to be more?" Mane finished. His bandages were crusted with dried blood.
No one could answer that. That had to be over a dozen dungeons worth of ferals, but there were hundreds of dungeons across the continent. Was this only happening here, or were other towns being attacked?
Were they asleep, or could they protect themselves?
These were answers no one had. Saniya was trying to tap into the Psychic Network, but something with her was just… not there. Twila would give it a go later, but her head was not in it at the moment. She seemed jumpy, which no one could blame.
The celebi, though, had a blank expression on her face. Not a focused expression of serenity, just blank and glassy-eyed. She blinked, that was the only thing showing she was still even conscious.
"Even if there aren't more coming," Rai said, speaking into the silence. "We have a whole town asleep. They can't eat and drink like that, and we can't keep that many pokémon fed and watered on our own."
It was true. The Grassy Terrain would help keep the unconscious pokémon going, but it could only do so much. Without food and water, and sunlight for some, they would die eventually anyway.
What did Darkrai think? Would they remain trapped in The Dream even if their bodies expired? Such a guess couldn't be ruled out.
"I have an idea," Scout said. They were all past exhausted, just numb now. "Star Cave. Jirachi. If we can get to him, then we can get a wish. If we can wish for the pokémon here awake…?"
"Maybe we could wish for Jirachi to just erase Darkrai," Mane added, but there was a touch of derision to it. "'Jirachi' wishes don't exist."
"Not true," Saniya said, absentmindedly. She was poking at a cut on her body without much thought. She felt eyes on her and glanced up. "Jirachi exists, although I doubt it'll have the power to erase Darkrai like that."
"It does exist," Scout said, forcefully. "And it can do wishes, I'm certain."
"Certainty from you works out so well as well all know," Sean said, also blankly.
Scout managed a small frown, he glanced at Sean but sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Look. Bidoof should have a map. I do know the guild never went, so it didn't happen as it was 'supposed' to, so I'm not sure but what other choice do we have?"
There was no real argument there.
"I'll go look," Scout offered, finding the will to get up.
"What if it was lost when the guild was destroyed?" Sunflora asked. "And are you sure he has this map? I never knew of that, and he tells anyone who will listen to everything."
Sunflora didn't know why he would know, and Scout was all too willing to tell her. Later. "I'm sure," he said, instead, dragging himself out of the tent. There was no time to talk about that, he'd run out of foreknowledge anyway. Dark Crater wasn't the end at all, even if it had nearly been one for them.
He went to the tent Bidoof, Croagunk, Corphish, and Loudred. He found Bidoof's diary and remembered liking to check that in-game, he thumbed through it, but his vision was swimming. He thought about Sunflora's diary, it was likely lost to the sea. Like Dugtrio.
He continued poking through Bidoof's belongings but found nothing. So, he went back to the diary. The start of it was very early on, a couple of years ago before he even reached the guild.
He flicked forward a bit, taking in flashes.
A friendly stranger helped….
The guild is tough.
Chatot scares me and….
Should I quit?
Bell's asking why I don't use the map and I….
He continued on before noticing he had missed something and went back, reading over that day. Bidoof's writing wasn't exactly easy to read, but it confirmed he did have the map.
Had it been lost then? Scout didn't want to think of that. No matter how he wracked his brain, he didn't know where Star Cave was. He was reasonably confident it was relatively close to Treasure Town, but where exactly?
There were precious few references to the map in Bidoof's diary, but Scout's vision was swimming anyway. He ended up fainting, there in the tent, face planting on the book.
He was eventually joined by Rai and Mane, who only had enough strength to call that they had found him before dropping themselves.
Saniya floated slightly around the others. Ponyta had curled up around Torkoal, Rai and Mane had gone off to find Scout. Sunflora had fallen asleep and Sean hadn't been far behind her.
It was just Saniya awake now. She knew that, knew that even though she hadn't seen the kitties. She knew they were asleep, of course they were.
She floated, still conscious. Someone had to watch over the town while they were sleeping, make sure nothing came. If she went to sleep, she was afraid she wouldn't wake up. She was so damn tired.
Sleep.
Saniya blinked her eyes open, having felt them slide closed. That would not do. She had to remain awake.
Sleeeep.
She started again, noticing her head drooping. She slapped her cheeks and stopped trying to tap into the Psychic Network, it was too calm and peaceful.
Sleep... Saniya.
She noticed she was on the ground, having forgotten how to float. She wanted to rise back up, but she also didn't. Saniya remained lying down, it couldn't hurt to rest even if she didn't sleep. She was still watching over everyone.
Everyone sleeping peacefully, with not a nightmare to be seen.
Only the hundreds of pokémon trapped in an endless nightmare elsewhere in the town. But she couldn't see those.
Sleep….
She was so tired. Saniya's eyes slipped shut and she did not wake back up.
If the world was kind, they would sleep until this mess was resolved, but that wasn't the case, and Scout woke up and continued pouring over Bidoof's scribbles.
It was a new day so he roused Saniya, who had been sleeping painfully still, to help him. They took a look at the crumbling cliff that remained of the old guild and into the rooms. There was nothing left that hadn't already been retrieved. She didn't talk much. Or at all, really.
Salvation came as a stroke of luck.
"Is… this actually it?" Scout gasped, after unfolding an old map found under Bidoof's pillow. He was almost certain they'd looked there before, but everyone was so tired that maybe they just hadn't until now. The words were plain if faded. Whoever had drawn this map had been light on the charcoal, it was long poured-over, and a lot of the fragile lines had been smudged.
But the words were unmistakable and Torkoal was able to be roused long enough to confirm the area it pointed to.
The decision of who was to go was easy.
"You three can't go," Saniya said, softly. "You're still injured. Luno and Sol aren't back and should stick around in case the town needs some fighters again. Twila is tapping into the network. Torkoal's too exhausted and the town needs someone strong to keep a watch here, but just one isn't enough. Scout and I can do this, all we have to do is find Jirachi."
"And wake him up," Scout added. "Lucky bastard, getting to sleep as much as he wants."
The only real argument came from Blossom, but she accepted that they had to keep watch of the town in case another attack came. Darkrai and Cresselia could also be anywhere, and Scout just wasn't as powerful as most there.
He could do this, this was something that was for him.
Saniya continued to be quiet when they teleported. It was hardly a jolt at all when they appeared, Scout stumbled, but that was it.
"Good one," Scout complimented. "You're getting a lot better at that."
"Practice makes perfect," Saniya replied softly. "Let's just… get a move on."
He nodded, and they entered Star Cave.
After fighting hundreds of ferals the previous day, a dozen or so in the old, small, dungeon was nothing. It was never the pokémon itself that were the challenge.
They chatted little as they walked. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen past this?" Saniya asked.
"We fight Jirachi asleep, wake him up, ask for something."
"That's not what I meant, Scout."
"I know." Scout was so tired, but he had to push on. He was tired, but he was surprisingly not stupid. An idiot, yes, but not stupid. "I've got some ideas, Darkrai probably thinks he's so far ahead, but... well, with everything changed it's hard to say exactly. Super and Dark Matter may not even happen, and I don't really know exactly when that's going to start going down… hopefully not for ages."
Saniya didn't really have a response to that. She gave him an uncertain nod and that was it.
When they reached the final room, Saniya was puzzled.
"It's a fake room," Scout said, tapping his head. "In the story, Wigglytuff blasted a hole through it. Think you're up to the task?"
Saniya nodded, and Scout aided her with a Shadow Ball, sending several blasts into the wall until it crackled and crumbled away into a perfect entryway.
They walked into a softly lit room with a star symbol taking up the whole floor. Lights glittered in the air like gems.
The true star of the final chamber, however, was a small, floating, figure. Wrapped with its own body like a swaddled baby, an alabaster creature swayed in the air.
Its head was crested and gold with three ribbon-like objects hanging from that large crest.
Jirachi.
"Mmmm, who goes there?" Jirachi murmured, shifting in the air and yawning. He didn't open his eyes.
"It is I, Celebi!" Saniya called loudly. "Awaken!"
"Mmhmm, okay." Jirachi rolled over in mid-air and began to snore. "Sorry, sleeping."
Saniya glowed with energy and Scout began to form a Shadow Ball.
A blast knocked them both back. It was a psychic pulse, but it impacted the air with enough force that it sent even the Psychic-Immune Scout back.
"And I… tend to toss and turn," Jirachi continued sleepily. "I'll probably attack you. Oh, I'm doing it right now. Yawn."
Scout glared, he was almost sure that this was just an act.
They didn't have to beat Jirachi, just… 'wake him up', and so that is what they charged him to do.
Saniya flickered in and out, teleporting rapidly to throw the sleep-attacking Jirachi off. At the same time, Scout came in for a Night Slash.
One. Jirachi stumbled despite floating.
Two. Jirachi nearly hit the ground.
Three. Jirachi was left open for Saniya.
She caught him in a strong Psychic and Scout took aim. A Shadow Ball sent Jirachi crashing into a wall. Something glowed bright enough that he had to look away and when he turned back, Jirachi was rubbing his eyes.
"Hm? Oh. Hello."
"Hi," Scout drawled, whether or not Jirachi actually had been asleep could be shelved for now.
"I get the feeling you are not a happy pokémon. You look terrible," Jirachi said, yawning one more time before perking up entirely. "But that's where things can change! Say the word, and I'll give you any material possession you want!"
"We're here for a different reason," Scout said, noticing Saniya was staring blankly ahead. "We need you to wake up a WHOLE town of pokémon."
Jirachi blinked. "Wake up? Some sort of surprise party?"
"Actually Darkrai is dropping the entire world into an endless nightmare, and I'd rather not let everyone at home die. We've just held off an entire feral invasion force, so we're not doing well. Can you help?"
Jirachi stared at him for a moment. "That's… well. Uh…"
That didn't sound promising to Scout and he asked. "What?"
"What you may have heard about me might be a little grandiose," Jirachi explained, squirming a little. "I can summon you pretty much anything that exists in the wider realities, not even just from this one. But uh…." He tapped one of his tassels. "I'm not finding anything that can wake up that many pokémon at once. I could probably get you a cresselia feather! We could start with this one." He gestured a thumb at Saniya.
Scout paused, he started into action just fast enough to avoid a Magical Leaf through his throat. Saniya instead hit him with a levitated rock and disappeared into the dungeon.
Jirachi stared at him as Scout began to curse some impressively filthy words. "I'm guessing you didn't realise she was asleep?"
"I USED a cresselia feather on her!" Scout shouted. "And Cresselia is WORKING WITH DARKRAI!" Of course, it was just another trap. Oh my FUCKING GOD!"
Jirachi waited for Scout to stop shouting and screaming before raising his hand. "So… what was that about the world in danger?"
Scout faced him with a very unpleasant look. It wasn't directed at Jirachi, just the world in general. "Grrrrr. Uuugh. Alright, okay. Can you summon cresselia feathers that WON'T do what just happened to her?"
"What DID happen to her?" Jirachi asked. "She was like me when I sleep fight. Awake, but not. Kinda…."
"Controlled?" Scout growled.
Jirachi snapped his fingers. "Yeah, that's the word!"
Scout didn't look pleased with that, and Jirachi lowered the enthusiasm.
"Can you take me back to Treasure Town?" Scout asked softly. "Please. Saniya's gone, obviously, and they really need help. The world is in danger, whatever reason you're in here… whether it's protection or just avoiding pokémon nagging you for wishes… please."
Jirachi sighed. "I'm in here for exactly that, plus the unfortunate reality of my Power. All us 'legendary' pokémon had to give up a large portion of our power millennia ago. It's why I can't grant wishes like I used to. We're not supposed to interfere with the world even before that though."
"Darkrai and Cresselia are behind this," Scout argued, and Jirachi nodded.
"Right. If they are bending the rules, why not me? I'll help you."
Scout exhaled a hard sigh of relief, a reasonable legend. What a miracle. "Let's go then."
Jirachi nodded.
It had been the first time Jirachi exited the dungeon in a very long time. He was a little wide-eyed at the bright of the sun but pulled himself into gear and took Scout's paw, using his mind to direct them where they needed to go.
It was perhaps bending the rules of the wish slightly, but Scout didn't directly wish for that. Either way, one thing was clear.
Something had happened to Saniya, and Scout was far too done with everything to freak out about that. They were done Saniya, but they were up one limited-wish-granting Jirachi.
He had to be able to help.
He had to.
Or they were out of options.
This was always one of my favourite chapters of the original story, thus it's mostly the same as it was before, just updated for the new stuff.
Also, yeah, Luno. That's fun :)