Poppin' Arms Guild ~ Main Lobby

[Namohysip]

"I'm going to ask Toffee. She usually knows where everyone is." Owen nodded, but then he suddenly stopped, glancing to the left. "Oh, he's actually here. Huh. We got lucky."

Owen turned around and gestured for Typhlosion and the team to follow. Despite the fact that they didn't really knowhow to talk to this team of six, it was clear to tell who was in charge. Typhlosion behaved as the leader, standing at the head of the squad. Then was Alakazam, who occasionally glanced left and right, careful and cautious, murmuring to Typhlosion who nodded back. Gengar was sitting on top of Magnezone with Weavile, both of them leaning against one another muttering sweet nothings. Magnezone's three eyes rolled. Crobat, meanwhile, was looking nervously left and right.

"Silver?" Owen called.

"Still not used to that." Silver floated a little higher, the Cosmog looking mildly annoyed. "What? Who are all those Pokemon?"

 

[Negrek]

Ah, fuck. Silver had already said he didn't remember his team, but Nate had hoped that seeing them all together might trigger something for him. Might even help knock a few other memories loose at the same time. "Ah. They're your team," he said. He pointed to one after another. "Gengar and crobat I mentioned before. Typhlosion woulda been your first pokémon, I think. And all of them, well, I guess they were stuck down in some kinda dungeon maze thing with that Mewtwo. Probably you started out there, too."

 

[Namohysip]

Typhlosion looked at Silver skeptically, then at Nate with even more skepticism.

"No, it's really him," Owen assured. "He's a little different, and he lost his memories, but maybe you guys can reawaken some of them?"

Typhlosion's flames rippled along the back of his fur coat. He got on all fours and tried to get a closer look at Silver, who drifted backward.

"Hey, c'mon," he said. "You're way too big for that now."

Typhlosion backed away, frowning, and looked to Nate and Owen. He didn't seem like Silver...

 

[Negrek]

Well, this was going fucking swimmingly. "Oh, no," Rocky murmured, ears drooping.

These pokémon spoke some other language, right? That obviously presented a problem, but if he could get the idea across, maybe it could be an advantage, too. The way they talked was another thing from Silver's world that he might recall, especially if it was a familiar word or phrase. "Can you say your trainer's name?" he asked the typhlosion. "What's his name?"

Nate couldn't believe he was going for some kind of mystical "being called by your true name" bullshit, but what the hell, it had apparently worked on Sword. Kinda-sorta, maybe. (And how the fuck had he not managed to guess "Sword" in the first place? Goddammit.)

"You, uh, had some memory issues earlier on, right?" Nate muttered to Owen. "Got any tips?"

 

[Namohysip]

"They all came flooding back when I saw my Grass form," Owen said. "It was so freaky that it reminded me of when the same thing happened to me back home. And from there it kind of all just..." Owen made a vague, exploding gesture with his hands, then sighed.

Typhlosion was trying to contort his throat in a way he wasn't familiar. It came out as an odd growl, then a grunt, a frustrated snort.... "S.. Sil... ver," Typhlosion managed to mimic.

Silver didn't look surprised and was unaffected. "I know they're supposed to be my team. You told me. I just..." He sank a little lower. "Nothing's coming up."

 

[Negrek]

"Mmm." Nate morosely watched the typhlosion struggle to form words for a moment. "Guess we'll have to find whatever the trigger is, then. If it even works the same way."

He hadn't expected Silver's name in his native language to just... sound like "Silver." No help there, then. "Thanks, big guy," he said to the typhlosion. "I guess it didn't really work. I'm sorry."

To Silver he said, "Yeah. I guess it ain't gonna be that easy." He sighed. "I dunno. Maybe it would be different if you tried battling with them? Head down to the colosseum and command them for a match or something. Put you in that familiar kind of situation, you know? But it's a long shot."

 

[Namohysip]

Silver considered that. "...Y'know, that's actually not a bad idea. Maybe I'll observe you guys during the fight and see what they have to say about it. I'm in no position to do commanding yet, but maybe after seeing that fight, I'll... get something."

Typhlosion and his team seemed disappointed. Perhaps they understood that Silver wasn't going to be commanding them. Gengar and Weavile, meanwhile, watched Silver with suspicion and skepticism. Was that really their trainer? He didn't seem at all like the Silver they knew... Typhlosion, though, had hope that Silver was still in there somewhere.

 

[Negrek]

Nate had been hoping that Silver would try to command his team himself, even if he needed someone there to help him out. No substitute for being in the trainer's box yourself, not that they actually had trainer's boxes here. Pushing probably wouldn't do any good, though. "Well, I'm up for it if you are," he said. "What do you say, team? Want to see if a battle will help out your trainer's memory?"

 

[Namohysip]

Magnezone buzzed something to Alakazam, who in turn grunted and nodded. Gengar and Weavile just scowled. Typhlosion, however, stood a little higher and looked to Crobat, then said some rallying cry to the others, which called them to attention. Silver watched Typhlosion's speech--something that he simply could not understand, and frowned. He still didn't feel anything.

 

[Negrek]

Nate nodded. "Great. I guess we can--"

"Yeah!" Rocky's flames blazed bright, and his eyes glowed with anticipation. "When? Right now? Are we gonna battle right now?"

"Jesus Christ, these guys just got back from fighting all of us, or did you fucking forget?"

"I didn't forget." Rocky frowned. "Okay, so I guess they heal up, and then we fight?"

 

[Namohysip]

"I guess so," Silver said, sighing. "Maybe that can actually awaken something..." He floated toward Typhlosion, looking for an answer he didn't know was there. And with a final sigh, he said, "Alright. Guess we'll see after the fight."

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah. Guess we will." Nate couldn't muster much hope about the whole thing at this point, and Rocky's obvious enthusiasm wasn't helping. "All right, all right," he said, waving off the familiar's excited chatter about how "awesome" the fight was going to be. "So where are these guys staying? Should we take them back to the lucario, or do they need their own rooms, or what? Should they hang out with Silver now?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Shield's being kept under some kind of house arrest in one of the rooms," Owen explained, gesturing to the dorms. "It's so short notice that they just had to use one of the dorms that we didn't use yet. But these six, Arceus didn't seem too concerned about, so..."

"I wouldn't want them wandering around unsupervised," Silver remarked. "Maybe they should just rest in their Poke Balls for now. Shield must still have them in his bag."

 

[Negrek]

Wandering around unsupervised? "Well, maybe we can show them around sometime later. Ain't no reason they shouldn't be able to enjoy the city if they like." Kind of fucking figured Arceus and the rest had kind of expected them to sort themselves out. "But you guys are probably tired after all that fighting. Let's go find your pokéballs, at least. Don't wanna lose track of those."

"Follow me!" Rocky said, bounding towards the lobby doors. Now that he was all charged up about another fight, he probably needed to do something to blow off steam.

"Hang on a fucking second!" Nate yelled after him. The last thing he wanted to do was get dragged across town by whatever psychic link bullshit because the familiar was in high spirits. Nate gave Silver a hasty nod. "Catch you later, then. I guess even if it doesn't actually help, it should be a great fight to watch. Where else you going to catch legends throwing shit around, right?"

No time to get a real response from Silver. Rocky was bouncing up and down in place, calling him a slowpoke. "Fuck's sake! Fine, let's go already!" Nate ran to catch up, then had to keep it up, more or less, to keep from getting left behind entirely. To think he'd actually been feeling pretty good coming off that fight, like maybe they were actually getting somewhere. Too much to hope, right? When did any fucking thing ever actually work out?

<><><>​

 

[Namohysip]

Toffee hummed peacefully to herself, looking through her badge for the latest news from The Ideal View. The feature presentation this time was an article about one of Team Spectrum's own, Saltriv, and seemed to be focused mostly on how they and all the rest of Team Spectrum had fought Rayquaza. In an interview, Rayquaza claimed that while he still was uncertain about their patron's true power, he saw that the hearts of his subjects were in the right place.

Then a hole ripped through the lobby's center, and out tumbled Maple, Soda, Owen, Cabot, and so many others, with a medium-sized Ho-Oh to cover them after the hole closed.

"Ah! Oh--oh, what?! You're back?!"

 

[Negrek]

"Ow. Motherfucker." Nate picked himself up off the tile, nursing what felt like it was going to be a full-body bruise from where he'd crashed down on the floor. Rocky was on his back nearby, looking dazed. "Aww. The pokéball didn't work."

"Yeah. Either there's something about him becoming a pokémon that makes pokéballs not work on him, or he's already got a pokéball stashed somewhere, or he's got some kind of device that blocks them," Nate said, pacing around the familiar while Rocky pulled himself to a sitting position, looking dejected but unharmed. Taking some floor to the face probably didn't hurt much when you didn't really have a body. "You manage to drag all that Rocket shit with you?"

"I thought I grabbed it," Rocky said, scanning the jumble of groggy pokémon for the net.

Nate looked it over, too. Somebody'd managed to grab the ho-oh; good. But what about... "Hey. Did somebody manage to pull Entei and them out?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Yup," came the muffled voice of Owen, and then Wishkeeper, who spat out the three capsules from his shadowy maw. "We got 'em..."

"Nnngh... what happened?" Ho-Oh mumbled, breathing out. Blacklight flames emerged from his beak, but they weren't strong enough to overtake him. He seemed agitated, grumpy, dazed... but not out of control. Those readings for him had been quite small... Had they saved Brulee from the same fate as Lugia?

It seemed that, in the mad rush to go, they had left a lot of their findings behind. But salvaged among it, despite the rush, was the net with some of the supplies (a lot had fallen out,) the three Beasts, and Brulee. They had left behind all but a few crystal pieces, the rest of the tech, and the current Ho-Oh herself.

 

[Virgil134]

"Hey, it's alright," Cabot reassured. "We managed to rescued you and you're currently at the guild in Destiny Village."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Luz staggered to her feet and looked herself over, wincing. The escape had been a bit of a tumble, sure, but that burning sensation—

"Did someone... attack me?" she asked aloud, unsure.

She'd been hit by attacks in battle before, of course, but there was something deeply caustic about whatever had hurt her this time...

 

[Namohysip]

Brulee was too out of it to make a proper response to Cabot. He fell to the ground again, muttering something about having to save someone.

Maple looked over the supplies that they had gathered, but her eyes stopped on one piece in particular. "...Cabot. What is...what is that?" Her voice had, just barely, trembled.