Chapter 16- Stories, musings, and Scream
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
I do not own the tale of the selfish human, nor the one about the Burned Tower. The thing to do with the netherworld is partially my own.
A good half an hour later, both the conversation and the late-ish breakfast was over, and the group went their separate ways. Aquamarina had made her way towards the teleporters, having decided that there wasn't really anything else she could do in the Bay, so she was going back to LA, but have slipped a phone number to Swarm with the offer of keeping in touch and helping out if they needed it- an offer that touched both girls. Vicky was heading back into the field, planning on seeing if she could help out with moving some of the rubble out of the way, and Amy was going to be making rounds to check on some of the people that were still recovering from things she couldn't heal entirely.
Shadow had offered to go and help, but the healer had firmly rebuffed her, telling her that she was healing herself, so she shouldn't need to worry about doing anything right now.
Vista had wandered off to try and find her remaining team mates, seeming in a much better mood than she had been when Shadow found her, and the two members of Team Inari were heading back to the recovery room, where Eon was still sleeping off his injury.
Shadow was incredibly surprised that he was still unconscious, but according to Aquamarina, he'd been thrown by Leviathan head-first into a wall after the impact he'd landed, when he'd seemed a little disoriented, which had lead to Shadow changing her opinion.
As far as she knew, unless Eon had picked something up without telling her, he didn't have any decent Defence boosting Moves, so an impact like that would've hurt, even with the fact that she knew they were tougher than the norm for this world.
Though the titbit that Leviathan had used all nine of Eon's tails for leverage in his throw made her curious as to what sort of curse would've been placed on the creature. Hopefully, it was something that would lead to the Endbringer losing the next time he tried to attack.
"Hey, Shadow." The Vulpix looked up, tilting her head back to meet the orange eyes of Swarm's mask. "That story you were telling Vista earlier on... is that actually a story you know?"
"Yeah, it is." She nodded. "And the other ones I was telling earlier are as well. I just adjusted them to remove the mentions of Pokemon, is all."
"Oh. Would you mind telling me the real ones?"
"Sure." Swarm briefly took one hand out from under Shadow's forepaws to open the door, then deposited her team mate on the bed before closing it again. Shadow dropped her bag on the floor next to her, having picked it up telekinetically on the way in, and settled down. "So, that first one, the one I was telling Vista, is actually called the Selfish Human, though it's not really a cautioning tale, it's something that actually happened in the past of our world. It was before I was born, and before Momma was as well. Grandma Ninetails was alive, though, she was about forty or fifty- that's really young for our kind, by the way. Ninetails can live up to about a thousand- and it was during her travelling years. She was in another region of the world when the meteor came down, and hurried to ask around the nearest cities and towns for information, eventually being given the entire story by the pair of Pokemon that were central to it.
"Basically, a human was travelling with a Pokemon called Gardevoir, and they encountered a Ninetails on the way. It's thought that the Ninetails might've been Inari himself, but we don't know. The human offended the Ninetails somehow, probably by pulling his tails, so the Ninetails cursed the human. But the Gardevoir, who was extremely loyal to her human partner, took the curse herself to save him. The human abandoned the Gardevoir, since she was now cursed and would've been a problem, and this further enraged the Ninetails, who prophesied that the human would be reborn as a Pokemon, and the appearance of that Pokemon in the world would doom the balance of nature in the world. This happened many years ago, and Grandma thought it might be the reason why Inari is rarely seen by humans or Pokemon; he was disgusted at the show of selfishness that the human made, so he avoids both species to stop himself seeing people like that again.
"Anyway, years and years later, a human is reborn as a Pokemon. They became a Totodile, and were found in the woods by their partner Pokemon, who was a Pikachu. They formed a Rescue Team, like Eon and I, because the balance of the world had been disturbed and things were becoming more dangerous for normal Pokemon. The human had lost all their memories of before, only knowing that they were once human and their name, but they worked with the Pikachu to help Pokemon.
"One day, they spoke to a Pokemon called Xatu, who were known for telling the future, in hopes of finding out why the Totodile had become a Pokemon. The Xatu told them this story, but another Pokemon, a Gengar, overheard and spread the rumour that the Totodile was the human in the legend, and that they needed to be killed to return the world's balance. The two of them were chased out of town and eventually found their way to the top of a mountain, assisted by an Absol who could sense disasters and knew the two needed help, where they met the Ninetails of the legend and learned that the Totodile wasn't the human of the legend, but the human was alive.
"The two return home and tell the story, and Gengar and his team are chased away in turn. They continued doing missions to help people, when one day Xatu told them that a falling star was heading towards the planet, and that that was causing the imbalance in nature. A Gardevoir then visited the human in a dream, explaining that their role was to save the Pokemon world, and they'd allowed themselves to be transformed into a Pokemon and lose their memories, but the dream ended before they found out how.
"Totodile and Pikachu journeyed to the top of the Sky Tower, where Rayquaza lives, and asked him to help destroy the meteor, which is his job. The explosion caused Totodile's spirit to end up in the netherworld, which is a sort of a between world where gravity is all wrong and twisted, and nothing can be found. Gengar leads them back to the Pokemon world, where the group celebrate saving the world.
"A few months passed, and the Gengar reappears, having left his team and vanished. One of his team mates, a Medicham, revealed that he was trying to climb Mount Freeze, which is where the Totodile and Pikachu had found the Ninetails from the legend. They go after him at the request of Medicham and Ekans, and the Gengar apologises for his actions towards them. He reveals that he was the selfish human the Ninetails cursed, and he wanted to ask the Ninetails to help him apologise to Gardevoir. They found Ninetails, who sent them to a place called Murky Cave, where Gardevoir was living as a half-there spirit, the curse having sent her partly into the netherworld, allowing her to visit dreams, but leaving her anchored to the cave forever. She had also lost all memory of her human partner, only knowing that she'd been cursed by a Ninetails long ago. Gengar still apologised, and decided to remain in the cave with Gardevoir until the curse ended or she regained her memories."
Shadow shook her head slightly, her voice having become more and more introspective as she spoke, and dismissed the faint illusions she'd been using to illustrate her story as she did. "Grandma met the Totodile and Pikachu months after this, and as far as they knew Gengar and Gardevoir were still waiting together in the cave."
"That's... wow." Swarm muttered, a frown in her voice. "It's kind of strange... then again, I've heard a lot of mythology from my world, so something like that really happening isn't that odd." She rested a hand on Eon's back. "Could you tell me more about that netherworld?"
"Sure." Shadow nodded. "I don't know as much about this, but the netherworld is a place where gravity is wrong and nothing much exists. There's no Pokemon and no humans, though apparently fruited trees can grow there, and you can find both human and Pokemon settlements there. It's made up of floating platforms, and as you go between them gravity shifts so you can't really fall unless you jump away from everything, and there's no ground either, just a bottomless pit of swirling blues and purple. It's also closely related to the dream world, or might be the dream world, no-one's quite sure. According to some of the Pokemon that've migrated to our side of the world from the human world, the humans sometimes refer to it as the Distortion World, on account of how everything's twisted and distorted there, with buildings and stuff looking like they're in a warped mirror. The Mythical Shaymin can open portals to the netherworld with their Seed Flare Move, and Giratina is apparently the keeper of that world who can open portals on any reflective surface, allowing them to pass between the 'real' and distorted worlds."
"So it's like an afterlife?"
"Oh, no." Shadow shook her head rapidly. "Not at all. It's just another world, that you could theoretically go to, but you'd need a Shaymin or Giratina to open the portal there."
"I see." Swarm paused for a minute, taking that in, before cocking her head. "I've heard the name Giratina before somewhere..."
"I sorta mentioned that earlier, in the story about the serpent being sealed in a golden stone. I don't think that one's real, but it might be. Giratina is the serpent-like Pokemon that was sealed away due to fighting with their siblings, Dialga and Palkia, and causing disruption in the world. They only look like a serpent in the netherworld, though. In our world, they have six legs and the six wings become two, like this." She formed an illusion of the two forms, much smaller than they really were, and let Swarm inspect them. "I slipped up a bit telling the story and used the name Giratina, but I don't think anyone else noticed."
"Which is good, I guess." The bug user commented. "What about the story about the burning tower?"
"That one's real, but it's actually more of a human one, about the creation of the three Legendary Beasts. The Pokemon one is a bit different, though since there's a lot of different versions of them- not as many as common Pokemon, but more than one trio- this one's true of one of them, but not all." Settling back down, having sat forward to form her illusions properly, Shadow rested her head on her two front paws and curled her tails close to her body, shuffling slightly to position herself comfortably. "See, that one started in a city called Ecruteak, a human city, which had two tall towers..."
"Vicky!"
The unexpected shout made the flying Brute blink, but she ignored it for a moment to remain focused on holding the segment of building she was under upright, waiting for the Cape underneath it to finish pulling out the body of the unfortunate other Cape that had been standing in the wrong place when it fell. That Cape, some out-of-towner that hadn't left yet and was sticking around to try and help find any more bodies- she thought they might be PRT affiliated in some way, but Vicky would be the first to admit that she'd never really paid as much attention to that as she should- gave her a signal and she slowly floated out from under the brickwork, letting it fall to the ground as she did.
That job done, she looked around and up towards the shout.
"Hey, Eric!" She called back, lifting a few more feet off the ground to close the distance with her cousin, floating on a shield. "What's up?"
"Mom's trying to call New Wave together, as much as she can." He explained. "I volunteered to come find you, and Dad went to go get Amy from the medical place- though I'd think there'd be no-one left in there, with how she and Shadow went through everyone." Vicky chuckled.
"Yeah, they did a really great job. Anyway, just gimme a minute, and I'll be along." Her cousin nodded, so she dropped back down a bit to speak with the Cape she'd been working with, who quickly waved her off to go be with her family.
Suppressing a wince at the slight reminder of the situation, she started following Eric back to where her aunt was waiting.
"How's Crystal doing?" She asked, as a way to fill the silence.
"She's alright now, just a bit shocked is all." He replied. "But Amy and Shadow did really good work, so she's ok physically." Vicky nodded thoughtfully.
Crystal had ended up caught in the massive tsunami that had come some time after Shadow had knocked her out, which Amy had filled her in on during the intervening downtime between her ending her round of healing and the pair of them going to find somewhere to get some food. The invincible Cape definitely felt sorry for her other cousin, given that she wasn't invulnerable and her shields weren't as strong as her brother's, so being stuck just far away from the safe zones and just too low for her to fly out of the way would've been terrifying. Luckily, she'd managed to escape mostly alright, if one considered having both arms broken and a couple of ribs cracked 'alright'- which Vicky did, given that the wave came from Leviathan and probably should've been much worse.
Amy had fixed that, and Shadow had dealt with the concussion she'd also been given, then a couple of PRT folk had handed her over to her mother at the earliest opportunity.
"That's good. I was kinda worried when I heard what happened to her." Eric shot her a sideways glance, and Vicky blushed. "I had a bit of a bitch fit when I heard about Mom, so Shadow put me to sleep. I slept through the entire rest of the battle, and a good bit of the early aftermath stuff as well. I only woke up about six."
"Damn, you really did miss a lot." He chuckled. "I guess Amy filled you in?"
"Yeah, between her healing and getting some breakfast." Vicky nodded. "So, what's Aunt Sarah want to talk to us about?"
"I don't know, she just wanted to get everyone together." He gave her an apologetic look, then continued, "I think it might be something to do with Aunt Carol." Vicky winced and bit her lip, but nodded again, and the two continued to fly in silence towards their destination, which turned out to be one of the spare medical tents that hadn't been taken down yet.
Amy was already waiting there with their dad, and Vicky hurried over to hug both of them before drifting to gently wrap her arms around Crystal as well. She greeted her aunt and uncle just as quickly, before settling down to listen to what her aunt wanted to say.
"I'm glad you're ok, Vicky." Neil said, before they began. "We heard you go down from the armbands, and since we didn't see you come back out for a while we were worried about you." Vicky blushed again.
"I'm fine, I didn't even get hurt. Shadow knocked me out 'cause I went a bit mental after hearing about Mom." The entire group winced, and Sarah cleared her throat slightly.
"I suppose that brings me to what I wanted to ask, how you three were coping with it." She grimaced. "Though I also suppose that gives me an answer for Vicky…"
"I'm actually doing ok." Vicky butted in. "Shadow and I had a bit of a chat-"
"After you went off at her for putting you to sleep in the first place." Amy snarked.
"She forgave me, and admitted that it probably wasn't the best thing, even if it was the only option." She countered. "Anyway, we had a chat, and she helped me out a bit. I still feel bad, sure, but I've got better ways of spending my time than brooding, or attempting to go on self-righteous quests to punch Leviathan in the face for vengeance." Amy snorted at that.
"I'm… fairly ok too." She agreed. "I didn't really have the time to talk to Shadow like you did- during the battle we were either running about healing, or I was comforting her when Swarm and Eon went down- but we spoke a little afterwards about it all. She's pretty good at being comforting."
"Must be all the fuzzies." Crystal put it, making them all chuckle.
"Probably. She's adorable at the best of times, and she doesn't mind you hugging her for comfort- it's like holding a giant hot water bottle, at least when she's not running out of energy. She said it's something to do with her inner flame and aura, which I think I'd like to ask more about- but she's also pretty good at giving advice about things." Amy smiled. "But yeah, I'm not too bad. I mean, I'll miss her, sure, but Carol… wasn't always the nicest to me."
Vicky grimaced, leaning over and squeezing her sister's arm, before throwing her own around her shoulders and pulling Amy to her side.
Mark merely shrugged, apparently not wanting to talk about it.
Amy paused for a moment, frowning deeply and chewing her lip as she thought, then her eyes widened. "I think I need to go talk to Shadow."
"Why?" Sarah asked. "Is something wrong?"
"No, not wrong, but I need to check something about how her powers work, because I think I might've just had an absolute breakthrough on the medical side of things if it works like I hope it does." Amy said hurriedly, shifting out from under Vicky's arm and going to stand. The blonde pulled her back down with a slight smile.
"Hey, running off out of nowhere's my thing, remember?" She joked. "C'mon, Ames, explain!"
"Shadow's healing power is really fucking weird." The other girl told them bluntly. "The 'Heal Bell' part of it especially."
"Excuse me?"
"Shadow describes her power in two ways; Heal Pulse, which is what does the injuries and energy restoring thing, and then Heal Bell, which is the weird part." Amy replied to her uncle. "We've talked about it a couple of times after clearing out the hospital, and according the her, the Heal Bell version is what deals with a lot of other things, mostly mental stuff like concussions, but it'll also heal burns, poisoning since the Pulse thing misses that for some reason, most forms of artificial sleep though it doesn't work on everything, stuff like that. I'm not sure which of the two is the thing healing brain injuries, but maybe it's a mix of both. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it'll be able to do something to Master effects, which I think might be something to talk to the PRT about testing, and I'm almost certain it'd do something to chemical imbalances too." The healer was almost bouncing in her seat, something so unusual for the quiet girl that her cousin commented on it.
"Why's that so interesting, Ames?"
"Because, Crystal, mental illnesses like depression are because of chemical imbalances, which I can't fix because it's to do with the brain-"
"But Shadow's power does." Vicky suddenly realised.
"Wait, go back a minute, what's that about Master effects?" Sarah interrupted.
"Oh, since Shadow's power can target and cure mental afflictions, I figured she might be able to do something about Master effects that target a person's brain." Amy replied quickly. "I figured we'd need the help of the PRT for something like that, since they'd probably be able to get their hands on someone suffering from a Master effect a lot easier than a couple of independents would, but if it worked then who knows?" The healer grinned. "Do you think we'd be able to arrange that, Aunt Sarah?"
Neil answered for her. "If you and your friend have a way to clear up Master effects, I doubt they'll be saying no to your request for help." Sarah nodded absently.
"Do you mind if I go see if I can get Shadow, so we can talk about that?"
"Go ahead." Sarah nodded again, apparently thinking hard. "We'd probably have to call the Director and explain all this to her, but when it comes to important things like this she's normally fairly reasonable…" The team leader was still muttering to herself as Vicky and Amy left, the blonde taking her sister in her arms to fly the two of them over to the medical area Team Inari would likely be in.
"Why do I feel like you're leaving something out there?" Vicky accused lightly, drifting slowly towards their destination.
"Because you're you, and you're nosey." Amy snarked back, glancing up with a grin. "But yeah, I kinda was. I'm almost certain Shadow's power deals with depression, given that it's apparently gotten rid of mine."
Vicky froze in mid air for a moment, staring.
"…Huh." She finally managed, dropping back towards the ground. "I guess you have been a lot less grumpy lately. Ever since you and Shadow first started doing hospital rounds together, actually."
"That's when I've pinned it down to too." Amy nodded. "Though…" She looked around a bit, then lowered her voice, "I also only noticed it when I realised something had happened to your aura."
"Pardon?"
"Your aura's seemed a lot stronger than normal to me recently. I figured I was just imagining things, since no-one else noticed, but then I realised that I'd been caught in Shadow's healing blast a lot since that first started happening."
"Are you saying…" Vicky tried, dropping heavily onto the ground.
"I don't know for sure," Amy stressed, "And honestly I doubt it really is, but if your power acts like something of a Master effect, even if it just prompts a person's brain to produce more of a certain chemical, then that means that Shadow's power most likely does work on those sorts of power." The brunette bit her lip. "Then again, I don't really know if that counts as a Master power, since it's still kinda a Shaker…"
"No… no, it does sound more like a Master power when you put it that way." Vicky admitted, leaning against the wall. "Fucking… no wonder Mom was always so forceful about calling it a Shaker field, the PR nightmare from being known as a Master publicly…"
"Yeah, you'd've been fucked, and so would New Wave for having a Master that makes people like her, and that couldn't happen." Amy sighed bitterly, and Vicky joined her.
"Dammit, Ames, I wish you hadn't brought that up." The Brute grimaced. "Knowing that my power's technically probably a Master effect isn't the greatest thing to be adding to my pile of shit today."
"Sorry, Vicky." Amy winced sympathetically. "But I guess it's one more reason to keep control over your aura? Besides, at least Shadow can fix pretty much any damage done by it."
"Yeah." She pushed off the wall again and floated after her sister, into the medical tent. "C'mon, let's just go get Shadow so I can stop thinking about it." Amy nodded, making a beeline for the area on the other side of the tent, which was blocked off with a hastily created wall and door, while Vicky floated after her, deep in thought.
Amy knocked on the door, and a few seconds later Inari's insect controller- Swarm- opened the door, her head tilted slightly to one side. "Hello, Panacea." She greeted warmly, a hint of insect buzz in her voice. "Is there something you needed?"
"Is Shadow still awake? We were hoping to borrow her for something." Amy replied, smiling at her. Vicky floated over her shoulder to look slightly into the room, seeing the sleeping form of Eon still lying along a bed, while Shadow was lying next to him on a separate bed, looking up towards the door. A couple of strangely shaped illusions were in the middle of dispelling themselves in the centre of the room, making Vicky curious as to what they were, but the small fox jumped down and trotted over to the door.
"What's up, Amy?" She asked. "Do you need my help healing someone?"
"Sort of." Vicky's sister waved a hand towards her. "I was speculating on some stuff during a bit of a New Wave meeting, and I wanted to see if you would be ok talking to my Aunt Sarah about some of your healing powers?"
Shadow glanced up at Swarm, then shrugged. "Sure, no problem. Swarm, can you stay with Eon? Just in case he wakes up."
"No problem, Shadow." Swarm nodded, crouching down and running a hand down her back. "You go help out, I'm sure Eon'll be fine."
"Thanks." Following Amy and Vicky out of the tent, Swarm closing the door behind them, Shadow continued, "So what's the situation, exactly?"
"It's mostly to do with some of the stuff you've said about how your Heal Bell works, since it got me thinking about a couple of things, mostly just wondering how it might interact with some other stuff." Amy half-explained, kneeling and holding out her arms for Shadow to climb into. The brunette was promptly picked up by Vicky, who started flying them back towards the tent New Wave had commandeered. "We're back!" She called, as Vicky landed and let the two out of her arms. Brushing aside the entrance to the tent, the five Capes inside looked over to them with smiles, and Amy put Shadow back onto the floor. "Shadow, this is our family. That's Dad, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil are over there, and those're our cousins, Crystal and Eric. Everyone, this is Shadow."
"Nice to meet you all." Shadow grinned, ducking her head slightly in an approximation of a bow. "Now, Amy's being all mysterious, so what did you need me for?"
"Amy said that your healing abilities have a thing for mental issues?" Mark asked in return, quietly.
"Oh, sort of." Shadow acknowledged, as the three sat down. "Heal Bell works strangely, but for the most part it'll work on mental stuff. Amy's watched it before, something to do with chemicals?"
"Would you mind giving a demonstration, Shadow?" Sarah requested, as Amy sidled along and took her dad's hand.
"Sure, no problem." Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, there was a moment's pause before she howled, a barely-there wave of energy following.
Amy's eyes widened as she saw the slight shifts happening in Mark's biology.
"And that works on most things?" Neil questioned.
"When they're combined, yeah. Not so much on their own, it's a bit fiddly." Shadow shrugged.
"Do you think it'd work on Master effects?" Vicky put in, interested. Shadow paused, thinking.
"I'm... not sure." She admitted. "It doesn't do anything to Swarm when she's caught in them, after all, and that's a Master power, but maybe it's only certain types?"
"Amy came up with the idea." Sarah explained. "I'd like to offer to contact the PRT on Team Inari's behalf, in an attempt to get some Master victims that could be used for you to test that."
"If you could cure Master victims, that'd be awesome." Crystal put in, grinning widely. "I mean, there's loads of different Master victims in the world, an no-one can figure out how to get rid of the effects, aside from finding the Master."
"Thank you, Lady Photon." Shadow smiled widely, again giving one of those slight bows. "That'd be great, I'd love to be able to help more people that way."
"I'll make contact with the PRT as soon as I can. Would I be able to contact you through Amy at some point?"
"No problem, assuming Amy doesn't mind. We'll probably end up meeting up to do more healing pretty soon anyway, so we'll end up being near each other." Shadow glanced up at the healer, who nodded.
"I don't have any problems with that." Amy agreed.
"I don't know when I'll be able to make contact with them for you, given the entire clean up operation from the aftermath of this attack." Sarah added. "But I'll do my best to put this forward as soon as possible. Being able to cure Master victims isn't something that should be put off for long."
"Don't try rushing it on my behalf." Shadow objected. "The PRT and Protectorate are gonna have more stuff to do than deal with a random independent for a while, because other things should definitely take priority over it. Still, just passing it on for us is great, thank you."
"You've been helping take a lot off of Amy's workload in the last few weeks." Neil replied. "It's the least New Wave can do to thank you for that." Shadow nodded, though Vicky got the impression that she was discreetly rolling her eyes at them.
"Amy and I have a lot in common in terms of wanting to help people. The fact that she volunteered to help me get in touch with the hospital to help out means enough to me as-is." The fox assured them, before glancing back out of the tent. "And, pardon me, but is it ok if I go? I want to stay near Eon."
"Of course, your team mate's injured, you should be with him." Mark said. "Vicky, would you mind...?"
"I'll drop her back." The blonde nodded, standing. Shadow smiled again at the rest of the room, shook Sarah's hand when it was offered, and pattered out with Vicky.
Somewhat warily, she lifted the fox into her arms, and Shadow laughed. "I won't bite, you know." Vicky giggled slightly and took off, leisurely drifting towards the tent Eon was in.
"I know, I know." She smiled. "Hey, out of curiosity, what was with the little bow-thing you were doing? It's not like it was a formal thing, I've seen you doing it when talking to the Wards or the Protectorate on patrol, and I've seen you give Amy or the hospital staff one as well a couple of times."
"Bowing in our... culture... is a bit weird." Shadow answered carefully. "Bowing deeply to someone is a sign on respect, and it's normally pretty formal; I'd bow to a Kyuubi normally, though I don't do it with Eon because he's my team leader, so I only do that when he's pulling rank, so to speak, or I'd bow to someone high up like the Director or Chief Director, or Legend, because they're powerful leaders. Little bows are more like acknowledgements of advice or gifts, like the fact that your Aunt is offering to contact the PRT in my name to request that help with the Master thing. With a lot of the other stuff, it's because they gave advice in terms of how to handle being a Cape team here on Bet, things like that."
"Weird."
"It is a bit. Technically I should've bowed deeper to your Aunt, since Lady Photon's the team leader and she has more power than me, being older and with more influence, but she's also got no real influence over me, whereas someone like Legend... they have a lot more direct power over what I'd do, because they have the power to declare me or Inari a real threat, so they have to be bowed to that way." Vicky blinked.
"I see." She said, thinking. "What about with Lung? Apparently you and Eon bowed there."
"Respect of his abilities and returning the respect he was giving us." She explained. "And in my case, following the lead of my superior before staying out of the way, because he clearly wanted to talk to Eon and not me."
"Huh."
"Our culture has a lot of weird things like that. We've been teaching Swarm some, since she's our team mate, but for the most part she'd never need to know it because it's unlikely she'll run into them." Shadow chuckled. "I mean, what's the use in knowing that if you meet a Uxie you should bow deeply in respect to a higher superior, then keep your head lowered and eyes down in deference, if you're never going to meet a Uxie?" Vicky raised an eyebrow as she descended, but Shadow didn't elaborate, so she made a quiet promise to herself to do some searching around as soon as she could to try and find out what a Uxie was.
Vicky knelt down to let Shadow out of her arms, stretching slightly as she did so. "Thanks for the lift back, and thanks to your family for offering that." Shadow shook herself out slightly as Vicky smiled.
"No problem. Hope Eon gets better soon, and say hello to Swarm for me as well." She waved, and Shadow lifted a paw in response as the blonde flew off back towards her family, and the fox went inside to sit with her team again.
"What on earth happened there?" Alexandria, also known as Rebecca Costa-Brown, demanded, rubbing her arm irately. "How did that even happen?"
"How did that little fox thing have the power to do that?" David added. "And since when could either of them shoot lightning, anyway?"
"No idea." Paul shrugged, leaning against the wall. He was suspiciously calm about the entire situation, all things considered, but he'd been well out of the way of the lightning strike and therefore hadn't really gotten much of the effect.
David had been somewhat closer, and had felt the electricity booming past, while Rebecca had taken it head on.
A couple of bandages wrapped around the upper part of her arm under her costume told the story of how that went.
"It's more interesting that it managed to scare away Leviathan, I think." He continued with a shrug. "If those two happen to have a way to do something similar to Behemoth and Simurgh, we might be able to start ending the attacks far quicker by just aiming either Shadow or Eon at them."
"We need to find out more about them." The Doctor said, from her place on the other end of the room. "They're far more powerful than any normal Trigger I've ever seen, and neither of them are one of ours. I want to know where they came from, and if we can duplicate it."
"What about their team mate? Swarm?"
"She's nothing special, just an insect controller." She dismissed. "There's no reason to try looking into her at all. We should focus on Shadow and Eon." Paul looked somewhat uncertain about that, but said nothing.
The meeting continued in the background, but Contessa didn't bother to pay attention to it. If she needed to know something, the Path would tell her where to find it out.
Instead, she focused on a new issue.
Path to finding out more about Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to locating Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to discovering Eon's past.
Entity not found.
Path to discovering Shadow's past.
Entity not found.
This pattern continued every time either of their names came up in the Path request. Even using them as a secondary, for example Path to using Swarm to get information on Shadow and Eon came out with the same failure.
It was unsettling.
Especially as Contessa never normally got an error like that, even from her blind spots like the Entities, Endbringers and Eidolon. With them, things just blanked out silently into nothing, forcing her to reset the Path to get around it.
Having a pair of Capes that just outright blocked her abilities in a way that seemed to give her no way around it was… unnerving, for someone who needed the Path to make sure the world didn't end, and wanted to try using the targets to help save it.
Ocean swirled around them, rain pounding on it from above and joining the shifting of the tides. Debris from the slowly-sinking islands started forcing waves to form, but with a moments thought they were frozen, lowered back into the water to join the shifting.
Their eyes flickered back and forth through the water, the dust and blood and bodies having no effect on their vision, searching for the thing they had been tracking, the thing that had led them to here…
There. A faint ripple in the water, invisible to normal eyes yet painfully obvious to them, and they shifted to trace it, darting towards it with no regard for anything else and circling once.
A shield, overlaid over the city and hiding it from view. It had drifted here with the currents, but now with them there, the currents were shifting too fast to follow, leaving it trapped.
The ocean began to compress, pressing down on the shield with all the force they could manage, pulling with it all the debris in the area and forcing them down too. Things impacted their back, but they ignored it, too focused on their goal to care- and beyond the ability to care in themselves.
A flash of yellow. The shield broke, water and pieces of island rushing in, down on top of it, and the sound of shattering. Crystal shapes floated out of the ruins, and they waited for a moment before forcing more water around them, shattering them.
Something floated out of the ruins after them, a small oval shape, and after a moment they decided that it was merely another piece of rubble, drifting off into the ocean.
They relaxed, their orders complete, and then something else impacted their back.
Another instinct took over, orders to fight, and so they did, lunging out of the ocean and towards the source of the great roar that echoed around them, their tail impacting the rubble behind them and sending it flying out into further waters, away from them.
Beneath them, the island continued to sink, and the waves continued to be suppressed, used instead for the sole purpose of pushing the evidence of the main target away.
Red and yellow flickered, the area of water shining, and then there was nothing.
Not even them.
A good half an hour later, both the conversation and the late-ish breakfast was over, and the group went their separate ways. Aquamarina had made her way towards the teleporters, having decided that there wasn't really anything else she could do in the Bay, so she was going back to LA, but have slipped a phone number to Swarm with the offer of keeping in touch and helping out if they needed it- an offer that touched both girls. Vicky was heading back into the field, planning on seeing if she could help out with moving some of the rubble out of the way, and Amy was going to be making rounds to check on some of the people that were still recovering from things she couldn't heal entirely.
Shadow had offered to go and help, but the healer had firmly rebuffed her, telling her that she was healing herself, so she shouldn't need to worry about doing anything right now.
Vista had wandered off to try and find her remaining team mates, seeming in a much better mood than she had been when Shadow found her, and the two members of Team Inari were heading back to the recovery room, where Eon was still sleeping off his injury.
Shadow was incredibly surprised that he was still unconscious, but according to Aquamarina, he'd been thrown by Leviathan head-first into a wall after the impact he'd landed, when he'd seemed a little disoriented, which had lead to Shadow changing her opinion.
As far as she knew, unless Eon had picked something up without telling her, he didn't have any decent Defence boosting Moves, so an impact like that would've hurt, even with the fact that she knew they were tougher than the norm for this world.
Though the titbit that Leviathan had used all nine of Eon's tails for leverage in his throw made her curious as to what sort of curse would've been placed on the creature. Hopefully, it was something that would lead to the Endbringer losing the next time he tried to attack.
"Hey, Shadow." The Vulpix looked up, tilting her head back to meet the orange eyes of Swarm's mask. "That story you were telling Vista earlier on... is that actually a story you know?"
"Yeah, it is." She nodded. "And the other ones I was telling earlier are as well. I just adjusted them to remove the mentions of Pokemon, is all."
"Oh. Would you mind telling me the real ones?"
"Sure." Swarm briefly took one hand out from under Shadow's forepaws to open the door, then deposited her team mate on the bed before closing it again. Shadow dropped her bag on the floor next to her, having picked it up telekinetically on the way in, and settled down. "So, that first one, the one I was telling Vista, is actually called the Selfish Human, though it's not really a cautioning tale, it's something that actually happened in the past of our world. It was before I was born, and before Momma was as well. Grandma Ninetails was alive, though, she was about forty or fifty- that's really young for our kind, by the way. Ninetails can live up to about a thousand- and it was during her travelling years. She was in another region of the world when the meteor came down, and hurried to ask around the nearest cities and towns for information, eventually being given the entire story by the pair of Pokemon that were central to it.
"Basically, a human was travelling with a Pokemon called Gardevoir, and they encountered a Ninetails on the way. It's thought that the Ninetails might've been Inari himself, but we don't know. The human offended the Ninetails somehow, probably by pulling his tails, so the Ninetails cursed the human. But the Gardevoir, who was extremely loyal to her human partner, took the curse herself to save him. The human abandoned the Gardevoir, since she was now cursed and would've been a problem, and this further enraged the Ninetails, who prophesied that the human would be reborn as a Pokemon, and the appearance of that Pokemon in the world would doom the balance of nature in the world. This happened many years ago, and Grandma thought it might be the reason why Inari is rarely seen by humans or Pokemon; he was disgusted at the show of selfishness that the human made, so he avoids both species to stop himself seeing people like that again.
"Anyway, years and years later, a human is reborn as a Pokemon. They became a Totodile, and were found in the woods by their partner Pokemon, who was a Pikachu. They formed a Rescue Team, like Eon and I, because the balance of the world had been disturbed and things were becoming more dangerous for normal Pokemon. The human had lost all their memories of before, only knowing that they were once human and their name, but they worked with the Pikachu to help Pokemon.
"One day, they spoke to a Pokemon called Xatu, who were known for telling the future, in hopes of finding out why the Totodile had become a Pokemon. The Xatu told them this story, but another Pokemon, a Gengar, overheard and spread the rumour that the Totodile was the human in the legend, and that they needed to be killed to return the world's balance. The two of them were chased out of town and eventually found their way to the top of a mountain, assisted by an Absol who could sense disasters and knew the two needed help, where they met the Ninetails of the legend and learned that the Totodile wasn't the human of the legend, but the human was alive.
"The two return home and tell the story, and Gengar and his team are chased away in turn. They continued doing missions to help people, when one day Xatu told them that a falling star was heading towards the planet, and that that was causing the imbalance in nature. A Gardevoir then visited the human in a dream, explaining that their role was to save the Pokemon world, and they'd allowed themselves to be transformed into a Pokemon and lose their memories, but the dream ended before they found out how.
"Totodile and Pikachu journeyed to the top of the Sky Tower, where Rayquaza lives, and asked him to help destroy the meteor, which is his job. The explosion caused Totodile's spirit to end up in the netherworld, which is a sort of a between world where gravity is all wrong and twisted, and nothing can be found. Gengar leads them back to the Pokemon world, where the group celebrate saving the world.
"A few months passed, and the Gengar reappears, having left his team and vanished. One of his team mates, a Medicham, revealed that he was trying to climb Mount Freeze, which is where the Totodile and Pikachu had found the Ninetails from the legend. They go after him at the request of Medicham and Ekans, and the Gengar apologises for his actions towards them. He reveals that he was the selfish human the Ninetails cursed, and he wanted to ask the Ninetails to help him apologise to Gardevoir. They found Ninetails, who sent them to a place called Murky Cave, where Gardevoir was living as a half-there spirit, the curse having sent her partly into the netherworld, allowing her to visit dreams, but leaving her anchored to the cave forever. She had also lost all memory of her human partner, only knowing that she'd been cursed by a Ninetails long ago. Gengar still apologised, and decided to remain in the cave with Gardevoir until the curse ended or she regained her memories."
Shadow shook her head slightly, her voice having become more and more introspective as she spoke, and dismissed the faint illusions she'd been using to illustrate her story as she did. "Grandma met the Totodile and Pikachu months after this, and as far as they knew Gengar and Gardevoir were still waiting together in the cave."
"That's... wow." Swarm muttered, a frown in her voice. "It's kind of strange... then again, I've heard a lot of mythology from my world, so something like that really happening isn't that odd." She rested a hand on Eon's back. "Could you tell me more about that netherworld?"
"Sure." Shadow nodded. "I don't know as much about this, but the netherworld is a place where gravity is wrong and nothing much exists. There's no Pokemon and no humans, though apparently fruited trees can grow there, and you can find both human and Pokemon settlements there. It's made up of floating platforms, and as you go between them gravity shifts so you can't really fall unless you jump away from everything, and there's no ground either, just a bottomless pit of swirling blues and purple. It's also closely related to the dream world, or might be the dream world, no-one's quite sure. According to some of the Pokemon that've migrated to our side of the world from the human world, the humans sometimes refer to it as the Distortion World, on account of how everything's twisted and distorted there, with buildings and stuff looking like they're in a warped mirror. The Mythical Shaymin can open portals to the netherworld with their Seed Flare Move, and Giratina is apparently the keeper of that world who can open portals on any reflective surface, allowing them to pass between the 'real' and distorted worlds."
"So it's like an afterlife?"
"Oh, no." Shadow shook her head rapidly. "Not at all. It's just another world, that you could theoretically go to, but you'd need a Shaymin or Giratina to open the portal there."
"I see." Swarm paused for a minute, taking that in, before cocking her head. "I've heard the name Giratina before somewhere..."
"I sorta mentioned that earlier, in the story about the serpent being sealed in a golden stone. I don't think that one's real, but it might be. Giratina is the serpent-like Pokemon that was sealed away due to fighting with their siblings, Dialga and Palkia, and causing disruption in the world. They only look like a serpent in the netherworld, though. In our world, they have six legs and the six wings become two, like this." She formed an illusion of the two forms, much smaller than they really were, and let Swarm inspect them. "I slipped up a bit telling the story and used the name Giratina, but I don't think anyone else noticed."
"Which is good, I guess." The bug user commented. "What about the story about the burning tower?"
"That one's real, but it's actually more of a human one, about the creation of the three Legendary Beasts. The Pokemon one is a bit different, though since there's a lot of different versions of them- not as many as common Pokemon, but more than one trio- this one's true of one of them, but not all." Settling back down, having sat forward to form her illusions properly, Shadow rested her head on her two front paws and curled her tails close to her body, shuffling slightly to position herself comfortably. "See, that one started in a city called Ecruteak, a human city, which had two tall towers..."
"Vicky!"
The unexpected shout made the flying Brute blink, but she ignored it for a moment to remain focused on holding the segment of building she was under upright, waiting for the Cape underneath it to finish pulling out the body of the unfortunate other Cape that had been standing in the wrong place when it fell. That Cape, some out-of-towner that hadn't left yet and was sticking around to try and help find any more bodies- she thought they might be PRT affiliated in some way, but Vicky would be the first to admit that she'd never really paid as much attention to that as she should- gave her a signal and she slowly floated out from under the brickwork, letting it fall to the ground as she did.
That job done, she looked around and up towards the shout.
"Hey, Eric!" She called back, lifting a few more feet off the ground to close the distance with her cousin, floating on a shield. "What's up?"
"Mom's trying to call New Wave together, as much as she can." He explained. "I volunteered to come find you, and Dad went to go get Amy from the medical place- though I'd think there'd be no-one left in there, with how she and Shadow went through everyone." Vicky chuckled.
"Yeah, they did a really great job. Anyway, just gimme a minute, and I'll be along." Her cousin nodded, so she dropped back down a bit to speak with the Cape she'd been working with, who quickly waved her off to go be with her family.
Suppressing a wince at the slight reminder of the situation, she started following Eric back to where her aunt was waiting.
"How's Crystal doing?" She asked, as a way to fill the silence.
"She's alright now, just a bit shocked is all." He replied. "But Amy and Shadow did really good work, so she's ok physically." Vicky nodded thoughtfully.
Crystal had ended up caught in the massive tsunami that had come some time after Shadow had knocked her out, which Amy had filled her in on during the intervening downtime between her ending her round of healing and the pair of them going to find somewhere to get some food. The invincible Cape definitely felt sorry for her other cousin, given that she wasn't invulnerable and her shields weren't as strong as her brother's, so being stuck just far away from the safe zones and just too low for her to fly out of the way would've been terrifying. Luckily, she'd managed to escape mostly alright, if one considered having both arms broken and a couple of ribs cracked 'alright'- which Vicky did, given that the wave came from Leviathan and probably should've been much worse.
Amy had fixed that, and Shadow had dealt with the concussion she'd also been given, then a couple of PRT folk had handed her over to her mother at the earliest opportunity.
"That's good. I was kinda worried when I heard what happened to her." Eric shot her a sideways glance, and Vicky blushed. "I had a bit of a bitch fit when I heard about Mom, so Shadow put me to sleep. I slept through the entire rest of the battle, and a good bit of the early aftermath stuff as well. I only woke up about six."
"Damn, you really did miss a lot." He chuckled. "I guess Amy filled you in?"
"Yeah, between her healing and getting some breakfast." Vicky nodded. "So, what's Aunt Sarah want to talk to us about?"
"I don't know, she just wanted to get everyone together." He gave her an apologetic look, then continued, "I think it might be something to do with Aunt Carol." Vicky winced and bit her lip, but nodded again, and the two continued to fly in silence towards their destination, which turned out to be one of the spare medical tents that hadn't been taken down yet.
Amy was already waiting there with their dad, and Vicky hurried over to hug both of them before drifting to gently wrap her arms around Crystal as well. She greeted her aunt and uncle just as quickly, before settling down to listen to what her aunt wanted to say.
"I'm glad you're ok, Vicky." Neil said, before they began. "We heard you go down from the armbands, and since we didn't see you come back out for a while we were worried about you." Vicky blushed again.
"I'm fine, I didn't even get hurt. Shadow knocked me out 'cause I went a bit mental after hearing about Mom." The entire group winced, and Sarah cleared her throat slightly.
"I suppose that brings me to what I wanted to ask, how you three were coping with it." She grimaced. "Though I also suppose that gives me an answer for Vicky…"
"I'm actually doing ok." Vicky butted in. "Shadow and I had a bit of a chat-"
"After you went off at her for putting you to sleep in the first place." Amy snarked.
"She forgave me, and admitted that it probably wasn't the best thing, even if it was the only option." She countered. "Anyway, we had a chat, and she helped me out a bit. I still feel bad, sure, but I've got better ways of spending my time than brooding, or attempting to go on self-righteous quests to punch Leviathan in the face for vengeance." Amy snorted at that.
"I'm… fairly ok too." She agreed. "I didn't really have the time to talk to Shadow like you did- during the battle we were either running about healing, or I was comforting her when Swarm and Eon went down- but we spoke a little afterwards about it all. She's pretty good at being comforting."
"Must be all the fuzzies." Crystal put it, making them all chuckle.
"Probably. She's adorable at the best of times, and she doesn't mind you hugging her for comfort- it's like holding a giant hot water bottle, at least when she's not running out of energy. She said it's something to do with her inner flame and aura, which I think I'd like to ask more about- but she's also pretty good at giving advice about things." Amy smiled. "But yeah, I'm not too bad. I mean, I'll miss her, sure, but Carol… wasn't always the nicest to me."
Vicky grimaced, leaning over and squeezing her sister's arm, before throwing her own around her shoulders and pulling Amy to her side.
Mark merely shrugged, apparently not wanting to talk about it.
Amy paused for a moment, frowning deeply and chewing her lip as she thought, then her eyes widened. "I think I need to go talk to Shadow."
"Why?" Sarah asked. "Is something wrong?"
"No, not wrong, but I need to check something about how her powers work, because I think I might've just had an absolute breakthrough on the medical side of things if it works like I hope it does." Amy said hurriedly, shifting out from under Vicky's arm and going to stand. The blonde pulled her back down with a slight smile.
"Hey, running off out of nowhere's my thing, remember?" She joked. "C'mon, Ames, explain!"
"Shadow's healing power is really fucking weird." The other girl told them bluntly. "The 'Heal Bell' part of it especially."
"Excuse me?"
"Shadow describes her power in two ways; Heal Pulse, which is what does the injuries and energy restoring thing, and then Heal Bell, which is the weird part." Amy replied to her uncle. "We've talked about it a couple of times after clearing out the hospital, and according the her, the Heal Bell version is what deals with a lot of other things, mostly mental stuff like concussions, but it'll also heal burns, poisoning since the Pulse thing misses that for some reason, most forms of artificial sleep though it doesn't work on everything, stuff like that. I'm not sure which of the two is the thing healing brain injuries, but maybe it's a mix of both. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it'll be able to do something to Master effects, which I think might be something to talk to the PRT about testing, and I'm almost certain it'd do something to chemical imbalances too." The healer was almost bouncing in her seat, something so unusual for the quiet girl that her cousin commented on it.
"Why's that so interesting, Ames?"
"Because, Crystal, mental illnesses like depression are because of chemical imbalances, which I can't fix because it's to do with the brain-"
"But Shadow's power does." Vicky suddenly realised.
"Wait, go back a minute, what's that about Master effects?" Sarah interrupted.
"Oh, since Shadow's power can target and cure mental afflictions, I figured she might be able to do something about Master effects that target a person's brain." Amy replied quickly. "I figured we'd need the help of the PRT for something like that, since they'd probably be able to get their hands on someone suffering from a Master effect a lot easier than a couple of independents would, but if it worked then who knows?" The healer grinned. "Do you think we'd be able to arrange that, Aunt Sarah?"
Neil answered for her. "If you and your friend have a way to clear up Master effects, I doubt they'll be saying no to your request for help." Sarah nodded absently.
"Do you mind if I go see if I can get Shadow, so we can talk about that?"
"Go ahead." Sarah nodded again, apparently thinking hard. "We'd probably have to call the Director and explain all this to her, but when it comes to important things like this she's normally fairly reasonable…" The team leader was still muttering to herself as Vicky and Amy left, the blonde taking her sister in her arms to fly the two of them over to the medical area Team Inari would likely be in.
"Why do I feel like you're leaving something out there?" Vicky accused lightly, drifting slowly towards their destination.
"Because you're you, and you're nosey." Amy snarked back, glancing up with a grin. "But yeah, I kinda was. I'm almost certain Shadow's power deals with depression, given that it's apparently gotten rid of mine."
Vicky froze in mid air for a moment, staring.
"…Huh." She finally managed, dropping back towards the ground. "I guess you have been a lot less grumpy lately. Ever since you and Shadow first started doing hospital rounds together, actually."
"That's when I've pinned it down to too." Amy nodded. "Though…" She looked around a bit, then lowered her voice, "I also only noticed it when I realised something had happened to your aura."
"Pardon?"
"Your aura's seemed a lot stronger than normal to me recently. I figured I was just imagining things, since no-one else noticed, but then I realised that I'd been caught in Shadow's healing blast a lot since that first started happening."
"Are you saying…" Vicky tried, dropping heavily onto the ground.
"I don't know for sure," Amy stressed, "And honestly I doubt it really is, but if your power acts like something of a Master effect, even if it just prompts a person's brain to produce more of a certain chemical, then that means that Shadow's power most likely does work on those sorts of power." The brunette bit her lip. "Then again, I don't really know if that counts as a Master power, since it's still kinda a Shaker…"
"No… no, it does sound more like a Master power when you put it that way." Vicky admitted, leaning against the wall. "Fucking… no wonder Mom was always so forceful about calling it a Shaker field, the PR nightmare from being known as a Master publicly…"
"Yeah, you'd've been fucked, and so would New Wave for having a Master that makes people like her, and that couldn't happen." Amy sighed bitterly, and Vicky joined her.
"Dammit, Ames, I wish you hadn't brought that up." The Brute grimaced. "Knowing that my power's technically probably a Master effect isn't the greatest thing to be adding to my pile of shit today."
"Sorry, Vicky." Amy winced sympathetically. "But I guess it's one more reason to keep control over your aura? Besides, at least Shadow can fix pretty much any damage done by it."
"Yeah." She pushed off the wall again and floated after her sister, into the medical tent. "C'mon, let's just go get Shadow so I can stop thinking about it." Amy nodded, making a beeline for the area on the other side of the tent, which was blocked off with a hastily created wall and door, while Vicky floated after her, deep in thought.
Amy knocked on the door, and a few seconds later Inari's insect controller- Swarm- opened the door, her head tilted slightly to one side. "Hello, Panacea." She greeted warmly, a hint of insect buzz in her voice. "Is there something you needed?"
"Is Shadow still awake? We were hoping to borrow her for something." Amy replied, smiling at her. Vicky floated over her shoulder to look slightly into the room, seeing the sleeping form of Eon still lying along a bed, while Shadow was lying next to him on a separate bed, looking up towards the door. A couple of strangely shaped illusions were in the middle of dispelling themselves in the centre of the room, making Vicky curious as to what they were, but the small fox jumped down and trotted over to the door.
"What's up, Amy?" She asked. "Do you need my help healing someone?"
"Sort of." Vicky's sister waved a hand towards her. "I was speculating on some stuff during a bit of a New Wave meeting, and I wanted to see if you would be ok talking to my Aunt Sarah about some of your healing powers?"
Shadow glanced up at Swarm, then shrugged. "Sure, no problem. Swarm, can you stay with Eon? Just in case he wakes up."
"No problem, Shadow." Swarm nodded, crouching down and running a hand down her back. "You go help out, I'm sure Eon'll be fine."
"Thanks." Following Amy and Vicky out of the tent, Swarm closing the door behind them, Shadow continued, "So what's the situation, exactly?"
"It's mostly to do with some of the stuff you've said about how your Heal Bell works, since it got me thinking about a couple of things, mostly just wondering how it might interact with some other stuff." Amy half-explained, kneeling and holding out her arms for Shadow to climb into. The brunette was promptly picked up by Vicky, who started flying them back towards the tent New Wave had commandeered. "We're back!" She called, as Vicky landed and let the two out of her arms. Brushing aside the entrance to the tent, the five Capes inside looked over to them with smiles, and Amy put Shadow back onto the floor. "Shadow, this is our family. That's Dad, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil are over there, and those're our cousins, Crystal and Eric. Everyone, this is Shadow."
"Nice to meet you all." Shadow grinned, ducking her head slightly in an approximation of a bow. "Now, Amy's being all mysterious, so what did you need me for?"
"Amy said that your healing abilities have a thing for mental issues?" Mark asked in return, quietly.
"Oh, sort of." Shadow acknowledged, as the three sat down. "Heal Bell works strangely, but for the most part it'll work on mental stuff. Amy's watched it before, something to do with chemicals?"
"Would you mind giving a demonstration, Shadow?" Sarah requested, as Amy sidled along and took her dad's hand.
"Sure, no problem." Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, there was a moment's pause before she howled, a barely-there wave of energy following.
Amy's eyes widened as she saw the slight shifts happening in Mark's biology.
"And that works on most things?" Neil questioned.
"When they're combined, yeah. Not so much on their own, it's a bit fiddly." Shadow shrugged.
"Do you think it'd work on Master effects?" Vicky put in, interested. Shadow paused, thinking.
"I'm... not sure." She admitted. "It doesn't do anything to Swarm when she's caught in them, after all, and that's a Master power, but maybe it's only certain types?"
"Amy came up with the idea." Sarah explained. "I'd like to offer to contact the PRT on Team Inari's behalf, in an attempt to get some Master victims that could be used for you to test that."
"If you could cure Master victims, that'd be awesome." Crystal put in, grinning widely. "I mean, there's loads of different Master victims in the world, an no-one can figure out how to get rid of the effects, aside from finding the Master."
"Thank you, Lady Photon." Shadow smiled widely, again giving one of those slight bows. "That'd be great, I'd love to be able to help more people that way."
"I'll make contact with the PRT as soon as I can. Would I be able to contact you through Amy at some point?"
"No problem, assuming Amy doesn't mind. We'll probably end up meeting up to do more healing pretty soon anyway, so we'll end up being near each other." Shadow glanced up at the healer, who nodded.
"I don't have any problems with that." Amy agreed.
"I don't know when I'll be able to make contact with them for you, given the entire clean up operation from the aftermath of this attack." Sarah added. "But I'll do my best to put this forward as soon as possible. Being able to cure Master victims isn't something that should be put off for long."
"Don't try rushing it on my behalf." Shadow objected. "The PRT and Protectorate are gonna have more stuff to do than deal with a random independent for a while, because other things should definitely take priority over it. Still, just passing it on for us is great, thank you."
"You've been helping take a lot off of Amy's workload in the last few weeks." Neil replied. "It's the least New Wave can do to thank you for that." Shadow nodded, though Vicky got the impression that she was discreetly rolling her eyes at them.
"Amy and I have a lot in common in terms of wanting to help people. The fact that she volunteered to help me get in touch with the hospital to help out means enough to me as-is." The fox assured them, before glancing back out of the tent. "And, pardon me, but is it ok if I go? I want to stay near Eon."
"Of course, your team mate's injured, you should be with him." Mark said. "Vicky, would you mind...?"
"I'll drop her back." The blonde nodded, standing. Shadow smiled again at the rest of the room, shook Sarah's hand when it was offered, and pattered out with Vicky.
Somewhat warily, she lifted the fox into her arms, and Shadow laughed. "I won't bite, you know." Vicky giggled slightly and took off, leisurely drifting towards the tent Eon was in.
"I know, I know." She smiled. "Hey, out of curiosity, what was with the little bow-thing you were doing? It's not like it was a formal thing, I've seen you doing it when talking to the Wards or the Protectorate on patrol, and I've seen you give Amy or the hospital staff one as well a couple of times."
"Bowing in our... culture... is a bit weird." Shadow answered carefully. "Bowing deeply to someone is a sign on respect, and it's normally pretty formal; I'd bow to a Kyuubi normally, though I don't do it with Eon because he's my team leader, so I only do that when he's pulling rank, so to speak, or I'd bow to someone high up like the Director or Chief Director, or Legend, because they're powerful leaders. Little bows are more like acknowledgements of advice or gifts, like the fact that your Aunt is offering to contact the PRT in my name to request that help with the Master thing. With a lot of the other stuff, it's because they gave advice in terms of how to handle being a Cape team here on Bet, things like that."
"Weird."
"It is a bit. Technically I should've bowed deeper to your Aunt, since Lady Photon's the team leader and she has more power than me, being older and with more influence, but she's also got no real influence over me, whereas someone like Legend... they have a lot more direct power over what I'd do, because they have the power to declare me or Inari a real threat, so they have to be bowed to that way." Vicky blinked.
"I see." She said, thinking. "What about with Lung? Apparently you and Eon bowed there."
"Respect of his abilities and returning the respect he was giving us." She explained. "And in my case, following the lead of my superior before staying out of the way, because he clearly wanted to talk to Eon and not me."
"Huh."
"Our culture has a lot of weird things like that. We've been teaching Swarm some, since she's our team mate, but for the most part she'd never need to know it because it's unlikely she'll run into them." Shadow chuckled. "I mean, what's the use in knowing that if you meet a Uxie you should bow deeply in respect to a higher superior, then keep your head lowered and eyes down in deference, if you're never going to meet a Uxie?" Vicky raised an eyebrow as she descended, but Shadow didn't elaborate, so she made a quiet promise to herself to do some searching around as soon as she could to try and find out what a Uxie was.
Vicky knelt down to let Shadow out of her arms, stretching slightly as she did so. "Thanks for the lift back, and thanks to your family for offering that." Shadow shook herself out slightly as Vicky smiled.
"No problem. Hope Eon gets better soon, and say hello to Swarm for me as well." She waved, and Shadow lifted a paw in response as the blonde flew off back towards her family, and the fox went inside to sit with her team again.
"What on earth happened there?" Alexandria, also known as Rebecca Costa-Brown, demanded, rubbing her arm irately. "How did that even happen?"
"How did that little fox thing have the power to do that?" David added. "And since when could either of them shoot lightning, anyway?"
"No idea." Paul shrugged, leaning against the wall. He was suspiciously calm about the entire situation, all things considered, but he'd been well out of the way of the lightning strike and therefore hadn't really gotten much of the effect.
David had been somewhat closer, and had felt the electricity booming past, while Rebecca had taken it head on.
A couple of bandages wrapped around the upper part of her arm under her costume told the story of how that went.
"It's more interesting that it managed to scare away Leviathan, I think." He continued with a shrug. "If those two happen to have a way to do something similar to Behemoth and Simurgh, we might be able to start ending the attacks far quicker by just aiming either Shadow or Eon at them."
"We need to find out more about them." The Doctor said, from her place on the other end of the room. "They're far more powerful than any normal Trigger I've ever seen, and neither of them are one of ours. I want to know where they came from, and if we can duplicate it."
"What about their team mate? Swarm?"
"She's nothing special, just an insect controller." She dismissed. "There's no reason to try looking into her at all. We should focus on Shadow and Eon." Paul looked somewhat uncertain about that, but said nothing.
The meeting continued in the background, but Contessa didn't bother to pay attention to it. If she needed to know something, the Path would tell her where to find it out.
Instead, she focused on a new issue.
Path to finding out more about Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to locating Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to discovering Eon's past.
Entity not found.
Path to discovering Shadow's past.
Entity not found.
This pattern continued every time either of their names came up in the Path request. Even using them as a secondary, for example Path to using Swarm to get information on Shadow and Eon came out with the same failure.
It was unsettling.
Especially as Contessa never normally got an error like that, even from her blind spots like the Entities, Endbringers and Eidolon. With them, things just blanked out silently into nothing, forcing her to reset the Path to get around it.
Having a pair of Capes that just outright blocked her abilities in a way that seemed to give her no way around it was… unnerving, for someone who needed the Path to make sure the world didn't end, and wanted to try using the targets to help save it.
Ocean swirled around them, rain pounding on it from above and joining the shifting of the tides. Debris from the slowly-sinking islands started forcing waves to form, but with a moments thought they were frozen, lowered back into the water to join the shifting.
Their eyes flickered back and forth through the water, the dust and blood and bodies having no effect on their vision, searching for the thing they had been tracking, the thing that had led them to here…
There. A faint ripple in the water, invisible to normal eyes yet painfully obvious to them, and they shifted to trace it, darting towards it with no regard for anything else and circling once.
A shield, overlaid over the city and hiding it from view. It had drifted here with the currents, but now with them there, the currents were shifting too fast to follow, leaving it trapped.
The ocean began to compress, pressing down on the shield with all the force they could manage, pulling with it all the debris in the area and forcing them down too. Things impacted their back, but they ignored it, too focused on their goal to care- and beyond the ability to care in themselves.
A flash of yellow. The shield broke, water and pieces of island rushing in, down on top of it, and the sound of shattering. Crystal shapes floated out of the ruins, and they waited for a moment before forcing more water around them, shattering them.
Something floated out of the ruins after them, a small oval shape, and after a moment they decided that it was merely another piece of rubble, drifting off into the ocean.
They relaxed, their orders complete, and then something else impacted their back.
Another instinct took over, orders to fight, and so they did, lunging out of the ocean and towards the source of the great roar that echoed around them, their tail impacting the rubble behind them and sending it flying out into further waters, away from them.
Beneath them, the island continued to sink, and the waves continued to be suppressed, used instead for the sole purpose of pushing the evidence of the main target away.
Red and yellow flickered, the area of water shining, and then there was nothing.
Not even them.
