Water Veil Cove

[Negrek]

[[ Awww, Mightyena doesn't have to go zero for two on getting her feelings across to Nate. <3 ]]

Nate waved the energy question away impatiently. "You know, pokémon energy. The same thing that powers attacks and whatever. Infinity energy, whatever they call it. But what," he gave Mightyena an exasperated look, "fucking scizor trainer? I don't know who the fuck you're talking about."

Mightyena's tail thumped again, and she sounded a bit smug as she said, "He was friends with the dragon girl. From breakfast. But he didn't meet her like he was supposed to, and she thought he left. But that didn't make sense, because there's no way to leave here." As far as she could tell, Nate hadn't even realized he'd accepted that the other trainer could understand her yet. Pointing it out was bound to make him mad, so she'd have to keep her smugness to herself for the moment.

The ninetales speaking human, though, that was something she'd never expected. Mightyena was left dumbstruck for a second, but she recovered quickly. "That's amazing! Where did you get it? I want one!"

Nate was feeling less amazed. Now the fucking ninetales spoke human? When it didn't even have any vocal cords or whatever the fuck? What was this, some kind of ventrillo... ventrila... ventrililo... throwing your voice thing? These two had to be putting him on somehow. Had to be. "Just what the fuck is going on here?" Nate asked desperately, looking back and forth between the ninetales and its trainer.

 

[Dragonfree]

Spirit was basking in the attention. "My name is Spirit," she said. "I was--"

"Yeah, she's got some weird powers," May interrupted, giving her a firm glance. "They're not actually in the necklace, and also we really shouldn't talk about it."

Spirit hmphed, but nodded reluctantly after a second. "The reasons are a secret. But I have been able to speak human since I was a Vulpix."

"Anyway," May said. Mightyena's elaboration was a whole lot more interesting. Someone'd disappeared without a trace? "Mightyena says there was a dragon girl at breakfast, and she was supposed to meet with this Scizor trainer but he didn't show, and she thought he'd left but that doesn't add up because there's no way to leave. What do you mean, no way to leave? Couldn't he just have taken another boat or something?"

 

[Negrek]

Mightyena tipped her head. "Somebody would have noticed if one of the boats was gone, wouldn't they?" Mightyena asked, tipping her head.

"Sure, boat, teleport, whatever ring thing brought us here in the first place," Nate said dismissively. "So he got sick of this place's shit and fucked off. I don't blame him. But how about the giant fucking elephant in the room, huh? Okay, so the ninetales has weird powers and can talk human, I can accept that, I guess." Not like he hadn't encountered weirder shit. Unfortunately. "But just where the hell are you from that any of this is normal?"

 

[Dragonfree]

May took a deep breath. "Johto," she said. "New Bark Town. But in the Kanto I know everyone learns Pokémon speech too. So some way or another it doesn't seem like it's the same place. Meanwhile there's a girl here with a weird clone Pikachu that she said was created by Team Rocket, which where I come from has been disbanded for like twenty years, and a Tropius who speaks human but insists she's from a world where there are no humans at all. So I don't know what the hell to make of any of that either, unless somehow we are all from different worlds and I guess that's what the portals we came through were."

"You're sure no boats have left?" Spirit asked. "Or teleporters, or anything? Someone might notice, but would you know if they had?"

 

[Negrek]

Team Rocket disbanded... Now there was a fucking thought. They'd only been around for like hundreds of fucking years; hard to imagine them just throwing in the towel. Didn't really feel like anything could stop them, most days. "Yeah. That sure as hell don't sound like where I come from," he said slowly. "We've got Team Rocket running around, too, and nobody speaks fucking pokémon, obviously. Multiple universes is kind of a giant fucking pill to swallow, though, ain't it? At that point, hell, it almost seems more likely that we all got kidnapped and drugged and are just completely tripping balls right now or some shit." Nate rubbed his face pensively. Was that even possible? At that point, who was he to even say if he really knew what he knew? Maybe the kid was right, everybody spoke pokémon, and he'd, like, fucking forgot somehow. Goddammit. The invitation itself had already been weird as fuck, and accepting it had obviously been one giant fucking mistake. "Those rings we came through..." he said after a moment. "Supposedly they were made by that little goblin pokémon the rich guy had with him last night, right? You know anything about that? I ain't never seen one of them before."

Mightyena huffed irritably. "I didn't look," she said. "The other girl was going to check! She just assumed her friend left because he didn't show up to breakfast this morning. Which sounds more likely to you, a human forgetting or oversleeping, or one turning around and leaving this place right after they arrived? Without even getting breakfast!"

[[ Mightyena knows that if Nate was going to peace out of the island, he would never do it without taking advantage of the free breakfast! ]]

 

[Dragonfree]

Well, May could think of plenty of reasons somebody might want to get out of this place as quickly as possible. But still. This guy'd told someone he would be there, and then he wasn't.

"It's Hoopa, some kind of legendary that makes portals, I don't know. I know somebody who could probably recite you an essay about it on the spot but he's not here." She frowned. "At least where I come from, there are apparently legendaries that exist 'outside the universe', so I guess it's not that much of a stretch if there are other universes, and maybe the portal legendary can go between them, or something." Was Hoopa one of the legendaries the other legendary hunters had supposedly caught, or one of the outside-the-universe ones? She had no idea.

"That's what I said," Spirit said, a little huffily.

"Anyway, Mightyena's saying the guy probably wouldn't leave without getting breakfast, but also that he could've forgotten or overslept? But if he just overslept there's no mystery. Are you saying he disappeared or not?"

 

[Negrek]

Hoopa. What a fucking name. "I guess that might make sense," Nate said. "I ain't never heard of anything outside the universe where I'm from, but what the hell would I know?" He definitely wasn't an expert on this shit, and he didn't want to be, either. "If there's something that lives outside the world but still shows up from time to time, it has to get around somehow." Nate still didn't know whether he bought all this multiverse bullshit, but what he really needed was some solid time to think about it. For now, sure, why not, the "Hoopa" could port people across realities. He really needed to find some way of getting close to it and figuring out what was up.

Mightyena dug at the ground with a paw. "I'm saying he was supposed to meet the dragon girl, and then he didn't. That's all anybody knows! Maybe he left the island, but he might not have, either. We don't know if he's sleeping or not because nobody's looked in his room."

 

[Dragonfree]

May rubbed her face. "Okay, so what you're saying is just... you want to go check out the dorms? See if he is in his room?" Then why were they way out here asking her if she'd seen him? Did they even know this guy? Why did Mightyena even care if some random friend of a girl whose name she didn't even know had overslept? "I mean, I guess. Do you know where his room is? What dorm he's in?"

Spirit's ears perked up. "I could look for him," she said. "I'm good at finding things."

 

[Negrek]

"The dragon girl's looking in the dorms!" Mightyena said cheerfully. "That's why I'm out here. In case the scizor trainer went somewhere else instead."

Nate rubbed the back of his neck and gave Mightyena a sidelong look. "No offense, Mightyena, but I don't know if we want to be running around the island looking for some rando who might've left or might not've left or who even fucking knows. Sounds like he's doing his own thing, no reason to send out a search party if he missed like one meeting. We've got our own stuff to do, you know?"

"We can look for legendaries and the scizor trainer," Mightyena said. "It's easy, see? We'd be out here either way. We might as well help."

 

[Dragonfree]

May blinked. "Wait, you're looking for legendaries? I guess you also heard the stuff about Manaphy?"

Spirit looked a little dejected about not getting to run around the dorms looking for this trainer, which was probably for the best; May suspected that would've involved invisibly phasing through walls to snoop in people's rooms. "If the dragon trainer is looking in the dorms, then it sounds like there's only cause for alarm if she looks and doesn't find him." She stuck her nose to the ground anyway, probably trying to pick up any interesting scents.

[Odor Sleuth] @Flyg0n

 

[Negrek]

Nate glanced at Mightyena. Presumably that had come from her. He'd have to talk with her later about not broadcasting what they were doing here... especially if it wasn't just the pokémon who were going to be able to pick up on what she was saying. "I mean, yeah, that's one of the big reasons to even visit this place, ain't it?" Nate asked. "Didn't think I bought a bunch of ultra-rare pokémon all coming to town for whatever fucking festival, but I guess if we're talking other-world nonsense maybe it was easy enough to scoop a bunch of them up. At least the hoopa seems real enough."

It looked like the humans had mostly calmed down, so Mightyena could go ahead and do what she'd come here to do in the first place: look for any sign of the scizor trainer. And, she supposed, the legendary pokémon Nate wanted to meet, too. The ninetales was already off sniffing around, but Mightyena could help! She nosed around on the opposite side of the path, tail wagging now and again as she meandered along.

 

[Dragonfree]

May glanced at Spirit and Mightyena as they nosed around. "Yeah, that's why I came here too. I mean, at first I was figuring no way were all these legendaries here because they're... in my world they're really not supposed to be out here hanging around some island, especially not as a favor to some rich eccentric. But if this is a different world, for all I know legendaries just do that over here, I don't know." She sighed. Imagine if some guy could just cheerfully bribe all the legendaries to show up for a festival back home. Recruit some trainers with Master Balls to attend, problem solved once and for all. "And how the hell is the guy just... buddies with Hoopa?"

 

[Flyg0n]

May blinked. "Wait, you're looking for legendaries? I guess you also heard the stuff about Manaphy?"

Spirit looked a little dejected about not getting to run around the dorms looking for this trainer, which was probably for the best; May suspected that would've involved invisibly phasing through walls to snoop in people's rooms. "If the dragon trainer is looking in the dorms, then it sounds like there's only cause for alarm if she looks and doesn't find him." She stuck her nose to the ground anyway, probably trying to pick up any interesting scents.

[Odor Sleuth] @Flyg0n

The air is teeming with scents - wild pokemon, the smell of the salty ocean, other humans and of course, Nate and Mightyena. There's the faint scent of a Milotic and Gyrados lingering in the air, probably from those other trainers. But there seems to be nothing unusual in the air. No scent of a Scizor or their trainer can be detected, and there doesn't appear to be anything else out of the ordinary.

Spirit used Odor Sleuth! But nothing happened!

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah, if nothing else, I can't imagine many of the legendaries in my world all hanging out together on one island without starting major shit. They seem to like their fucking space." The hoopa thing honestly seemed less strange than that. "Yeah, you got to figure there's a real story there." Maybe even that the rich guy wasn't as in charge of the situation as he thought he was. From what he'd seen, a legend befriending a human felt a little far-fetched. But using one? Absolutely. "Probably ought to go see if I can get anything about it out of the guy. If nothing else, he needs to hear it for not mentioning a little thing like going to another fucking universe on his fucking invitations."

The low scrub that flanked the path was full of interesting scents, but nothing too interesting. Nothing like what Mightyena was looking for. She trotted back towards the humans, feeling refreshed but a little disappointed. "I didn't find anything," she called to Spirit. "Did you?"

 

[Dragonfree]

May grimaced. "Yeah. This whole thing is weird. You've somehow got a universe-hopping legendary and the thing you do with it is you decide you want to meet, what, 'unique trainers', and instead of just picking out some of the millions of trainers in your own world you use some kind of universe magic to bring them from other worlds, while making it sound like just your average vacation?" Something occurred to her finally, her brow furrowing. "And I mean, how the hell did he choose who to invite in the first place? I was assuming they just saw me at the League, but what, is he watching every League in every universe?"

Spirit looked up at Mightyena, sighing. "No. There's nothing here."

 

[Negrek]

I was assuming they just saw me at the league put a momentary chill down Nate's spine. He very, very much hoped nobody had seen him at the League and decided to bring him here on that account. Maybe this was actually some sort of twisted punishment for people the hoopa thought weren't getting enough of it in their own worlds. Sure seemed like the boat had held a lot of sketchy types, outright criminals, or at least assholes, not paragons of friendship. It was kind of hard to imagine the kid standing in front of him as any sort of person who deserved divine punishment, but based on his previous success at guessing ages, maybe she was actually like thirty with multiple homicides to her name or something.

"Exactly," he said. "This world oughta have plenty of its own champions to call up to a festival, if that was what you wanted. Hard to believe that the people around here just ain't friendly enough to qualify for this gag. And forget watching all the leagues in all the worlds, I can't really believe that everybody on that boat was some kind of champion." If nothing else, Nate had a hard time imagining Knife Guy on the winner's podium. His eevee weren't that strong, not to mention the obvious instability issue.

Nate shook his head, exasperated. "You've done a league, then? Indigo, I'm guessing?"

It had been disappointing to hear Spirit report no success on her end, either, but Mightyena brightened at that. "Nate did the League Championships, too! We should totally battle sometime."

 

[Dragonfree]

Hard to believe that the people around here just ain't friendly enough to qualify for this gag. And forget watching all the leagues in all the worlds, I can't really believe that everybody on that boat was some kind of champion.

There was a sickening jab in her stomach. "Well, I'm not the champion."

Nate shook his head, exasperated. "You've done a league, then? Indigo, I'm guessing?"

She shook her head. "Not Indigo, Ouen. I wound up journeying there because I wanted a Skarmory and then..." Her throat tightened. "It's a long story."

Spirit perked up at Mightyena's words. "Mightyena suggests we should battle sometime," she said, in human. "I would love to."

A battle? Maybe. She hadn't exactly expected this guy to be some kind of hotshot trainer, but if he was any good... She hadn't really had a real proper battle in a while, had she. Not one that wasn't taking down legendaries, or training to take down legendaries.

She took a deep breath, forcibly unclenched her fists. "Yeah. Sure."

 

[Negrek]

Hoenn? Weird fucking place to go if you wanted a skarmory, especially if you were coming from Johto in the first place. It was obvious the girl didn't want to talk about it, though. He really hoped she wasn't covering for something there. The whole "hoopa brought in a bunch of assholes to torment" theory was, uncomfortably, looking better and better the more he thought about it.

"Well, okay, not champion, we got people like Blue around here, too. And I ain't no champion, neither. But, like, that sort of trainer," Nate said. A battle, though? He sized the ninetales up for a moment. Yeah, he could buy it fighting in a League. It should be a good fight. And he was entitled to some fun while he was here, right? If this actually was all a festival of friendship. "Sure, I'm game." He looked up and down at the steep path, the tangled vegetation pressing in close on all sides. "Probably want to head back to the hotel where they've got the arena and all, though. Wouldn't want nobody getting accidentally knocked off a cliff or some shit."

"He should be champion," Mightyena said loyally. "He would be, if the champion hadn't cheated. He shouldn't even have been allowed to use that clone, but everybody's so scared of him that they let him do whatever he wants."

 

[Dragonfree]

What. What.

The edges of her vision blackened, a heavy thump of blood in her chest.

"Yeah. Later," she somehow managed to say through the taste of bile in her mouth before turning around and striding back down the path.

-------

Spirit looked anxiously after May, ears flat, before turning her head sharply to Mightyena. "What are you talking about?" she hissed, dropping back into Pokémon speech. "Who? What clone?"

 

[Negrek]

"Uhh," Nate began, blinking at the place where the girl used to be. The ninetales was growling at Mightyena, who looked just as perplexed as he did. What the fuck was that all about? She hadn't exactly seemed stoked about a battle, but she hadn't seemed that pissed, neither.

He raised a hand, starting to call out after her, but no, that would be stupid. Something had obviously set her off, there was no way she was going to do him a favor now. Great. Managed to fuck that one up somehow, hadn't he?

"The champion has a special clone of Mew that's super strong. Stronger than any other pokémon," Mightyena said. She had no idea why the ninetales was mad at her all of a sudden. "It's called a mewtwo. You've heard of it, right? Why is your trainer leaving?"