1eragon33
an Island of crazy in a sea of normality
- Location
- dallas
what they said. great chapter too its time to do a full reread because I kinda forgot what was happening not that I'm complaining. LOL
A Shadow, an Eon, and a Worm (Worm/Pokemon)
- Thread starter ShadowPixelle
- Start date
- Crossover
what they said. great chapter too its time to do a full reread because I kinda forgot what was happening not that I'm complaining. LOL
The PRT isn't really used to dealing with groups like rescue teams, and I like how they misread the group as a result and also that they worry because of just how important a group of independents have gotten.
- Location
- South Caroliba
I will now proceed to post for the very first time just for you Pix.
Never apologize for taking the time needed to recharge, especially after a year like the last one.
in other news, Great chapter! I very much enjoyed reading SEW again and this chapter was quite fun especially if a couple things I noticed actually end up being important later~ Good job Pix!
Never apologize for taking the time needed to recharge, especially after a year like the last one.
in other news, Great chapter! I very much enjoyed reading SEW again and this chapter was quite fun especially if a couple things I noticed actually end up being important later~ Good job Pix!
- Location
- Here
Simurgh is more resilient than most humans, though.
Zeuseus
KNEEL BEFORE YOUR GOD!!
Glad to hear you made it out of 2020. Welcome back.
This chapter was really good and I was really happy to see the story get an update.
Don't stress too much, it's been a manic year or so for everyone.
Looking forward to reading those new chapters whenever they come out XD
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Glad to see you back. Good luck with your studies.
I wonder what that effect is actually doing. I can't help but suspect that it's not specifically anti-Master. Targeting or IFF, maybe?
Some edits:
I wonder what that effect is actually doing. I can't help but suspect that it's not specifically anti-Master. Targeting or IFF, maybe?
Some edits:
Space after the quotes
knows
Masters
shown
paradoxdragon
Immersed in Dreams
- Location
- Someplace or another
I think perhaps a common factor is how human-like/sapient the mastered victim is ?? Though the fact it cuts control even on non-sapient items is interesting as well...
Glad to see this story back, I missed it.
Glad to see this story back, I missed it.
zhuull
SB still lying to protect Racists what else is new
- Location
- Canada
Happy to see you back and excited about writing the next few arcs.
The only thing I'd question is the Master vs Shaker part. Those are designations meant for fast and easy battle adaption and prep (they're often misapplied) but they're not mechanics. A power that decays at touch range is Striker, the same power that decays at range is Blaster, the same power that decays at range in a large area might be Shaker (or Blaster if it originates from hands). They're all the same power the designation just makes it easier for people fighting them. In that same idea if Shielder can move his shields around then technically he could be considered a master but they'll never call him that because it's not helpful (and not PR friendly). It's meaningless for deciding how it actually works. Narwhal is labeled a Shaker but she can send her shields flying at high velocity in a line which should earn a Blaster rating too. Or the Master vs Shaker for Glory Girl's aura. It doesn't matter what they call it and what they call it shouldn't affect whether Shadow's healing bark works.
Ursa is a Master because she controls bear projections. If the bark doesn't work on them for some reason that's fine but the conversation after didn't make sense.
The only thing I'd question is the Master vs Shaker part. Those are designations meant for fast and easy battle adaption and prep (they're often misapplied) but they're not mechanics. A power that decays at touch range is Striker, the same power that decays at range is Blaster, the same power that decays at range in a large area might be Shaker (or Blaster if it originates from hands). They're all the same power the designation just makes it easier for people fighting them. In that same idea if Shielder can move his shields around then technically he could be considered a master but they'll never call him that because it's not helpful (and not PR friendly). It's meaningless for deciding how it actually works. Narwhal is labeled a Shaker but she can send her shields flying at high velocity in a line which should earn a Blaster rating too. Or the Master vs Shaker for Glory Girl's aura. It doesn't matter what they call it and what they call it shouldn't affect whether Shadow's healing bark works.
Ursa is a Master because she controls bear projections. If the bark doesn't work on them for some reason that's fine but the conversation after didn't make sense.
Last edited:
Sometimes technicalities matter. And honestly part of where the conversation went was probably because shadow did not really know what those labels meant. And well, her 'power' largely worked, except for her case where things acted very strangely... 🤷♂️
Exchange Of Psychic Might
- Location
- Koszalin, Poland
I kind of promised to post this… long time ago. So here it is. Pretty much an omake, where MewTwo shows up to The Simurgh fight, and the end result ends up with a pretty grim realization. For Earth-Bet that is. Feel free to point out any mistakes, or potential changes.
Omake: Exchange Of Psychic Might
Earth-Bet parahuman population knows this drill to this point well. They gather for Endbringer fights, many of them die, many times they lose to protect their objective, and they move on. It's a very grim representation how this looks like, but this is how it is.
Something changed since last time. True, some fights ended up with fewer casualties than expected, but they always left that feeling of helplessness. Resignation. Lack of hope. But with two new unexpected players, last time it changed. Eon and Shadow... had the potential to change the situation. And from what they gathered together, there was more of them. And come from a world where creatures, no people is a more polite terminology, come from. Maybe if they had access to their resources as well humanity could start fighting back.
Legend sighed inside his mind. He was tired, and kind of helpless these days. But the ray of hope showed up, and this time hopefully something would change for the better again.
If it was possible that is. They were about to confront The Simurgh. The worst one of them all. Someone who specialized in destroying hope. The Hope Killer.
But something was off this time around. Although with The Simurgh of all options this was pretty much the default feeling. You couldn't outsmart, or out predict her. It was her, or rather, its bread and butter. Perfect precog. Maybe…
No, they needed to fight till the end. Their duty. But seeing The Hope Killer being here instead of Behemoth, which according to their own schedule should be the one they needed to confront in New Delhi, screamed a warning in his head.
"It has been a while, Legend. Although I wish we would meet in less grim circumstances." The smooth, and calm voice of silver furred kitsune break out Legend out of his thoughts, and he sent him his trademark polite smile. Even if he wished to simply sigh, and return to his husband.
"It's nice to meet you as well Eon. And you two Shadow, Swarm."
Swarm calmly nodded, while Shadow with her pretty characteristic cheerful smile, greeted him as well. Legend suspected she wanted to add more, but the overall pretty grim atmosphere made even her hold back for a bit. There wasn't a lot of time left, so he was about to start his speech when few meters away a portal opened up.
"Hoopla sent us some help! At last"
"Hoopa." Exasperated, but also clearly happy with the situation, answered the young kitsune protege. Although when he noticed who left the portal, Eon bowed his head slightly, in a clear show of respect.
Which brought interesting reactions out of some people. Lung one the most noticeable, someone who again decided to participate in Endbringer fight, when previously he never did. Wariness, worry, and some shock were pretty clear in his body language. Reports mentioned that Lung deeply respected Eon and Shadow, most likely based on the myth they both represented or picked on purpose to give them some advantage. So in this case, if someone he respected, showed the same kind of attention to someone they considered very likely their superior, it was a pretty worrying sight by itself. Or it could be an edge they so desperately needed for this confrontation. Although at this point it was clear Eon and Shadow are genuine in their help, so it should be at least one less worry to think about.
Eon, Shadow, and… Swarm. It's nice to meet you. And you as well, ladies and gentlemen.
Some surprised looks and nervous reactions were understandable. Because the sudden feeling of hearing voices in your head was very unnerving. Telepathy was supposed to be one of the things parahumans should never have access to, and this being clearly proved otherwise. Eon, in return, smiled politely, and greeted most likely one of his superiors?
"It's nice to see you as well, MewTwo, sir." He calmly stated back, while continued. "Also… people aren't used to telepathy in these parts, as the only being suspected of using it in this world is the opponent we are about to fight."
Apologies. But this is the only way I can communicate. I'm a mute otherwise. Anyway, I promise to not do anything aggressive with it. Also no need to be so formal Eon. We're comrades. I'm simply a MewTwo between us.
"It's alright. It simply startled us, Mr. MewTwo. We are glad that you showed up to assist us in the incoming confrontation." Legend interrupted, as the one who always brought out hope, and peace to people in tense situations.
There was simply… something unnerving about this being. The alien look, very confident, above us kind of body language if it made sense. MewTwo radiated power and unshakable confidence. But it was also clear from his experience that a very clearly powerful telepath was a very hardened battle veteran. His body language screamed it to everyone around, and something in his look… sent goosebumps in his spine. It was a worrying feeling, as he was a hardened veteran himself. Fear is something he still knew well but never allowed it to affect him in the end.
No worries, I know The Simurgh is supposed to be a very powerful telepath, and telekinetic, so sending someone like me only makes sense. Plus I wanted to meet your new teammate as well. It's nice to meet you, Swarm.
"It's nice to meet you as well MewTwo. Eon and Shadow had lots of good world about your world, and one day I would love to visit it." Swarm greeted MewTwo back, the most relaxed, and confident of them all. In a way, he was envious of how easily she adapted. Or rather how she never felt uncomfortable with this presence. Legend guessed that this is how much she trusted Eon and Shadow. And anything connected to their world. Plus their PRT files have mentioned that she is supposed to be a pretty confident, and calm one. This also brought to him a realization about his own teammates… and it wasn't a nice feeling.
I know they have lots of good things to tell about you. And it's good to see how much they trust, and they trust you in return. In our organization, we always appreciated this kind of deep camaraderie. And it's good to see you working with us so well.
Swarm straightened her back and rose her chin up a bit, clearly satisfied with the praise, with the way her body language suggested. He wasn't as good as Rebecca at reading it, obviously, but he was pretty experienced in reading other people as well.
He observed everyone around, and there were a lot fewer nervous reactions around than he expected at this point. MewTwo proved himself to be a pretty reasonable, and calm individual, which affected everyone. Although when a flash of anger, that he barely missed, showed up on MewTwo's face when his look dropped on Alexandria and Eidolon, left him worried.
He floated calmly and levitated in front of us. David and Rebecca stiffened slightly but didn't react. Legend also noticed how David's fists… clenched, but he in the end didn't react. MewTwo was a very unnerving presence, alright.
Only four of us may hear my voice now.
The voice in the head sounded calm, but there was… a dangerous edge that brought out that earlier feeling of alarm, danger.
I will keep it short. I see what you represent Cauldron employees. Sigh… yet another hidden organization with hidden, questionable methods. And I find some of your methods… repulsive.
How dare you…
I dare, Eidolon because, in the end, this is a dangerous world. I was sent here to both help it out, but also protect some of my subordinates. And I see that you, as humans say, hide lots of skeletons in your closet. I don't like it. You see… humans created me, to use me as a superweapon, to satisfy their lust for domination. It REALLY offended me on a personal level. I made them pay a heavy price for their impertinence. Permanent one.
Legend slowly realized what they deal with, and with hesitation wanted to prepare for something aggressive, but Mewtwo raised his hand slowly in his direction, clearly not bothered with any potential hostile answer.
No worries, Legend. You knew about them, but still have no idea what they really did. And you will be there for the incoming discussion, which we will have. Whether they like it or not.
I don't think this is the best way to convince us to do it.
It's not, Rebecca Costa-Brown. And I read it from the mind of your… comrade. Strangely I can't read yours, which is fascinating by itself. It's like a static, a void, I simply can't get into. Maybe with time, I would be able to, but I'm here to also play a peacemaker.
You don't do the best job clearly.
I'm not… the most diplomatic sort, really, Eidolon. But if something out there is powerful enough to threaten the safety of the world I come from as well, then I will do what is necessary to protect it. No matter what. And many of your actions offend me on a personal level.
"The Simurgh incoming!"
MewTwo quickly turned around, floated in the air, and summoned a massive… spoon, that suddenly released a massive amount of energy, that turned into a barrier made of something resembling a hard light. A massive building struck it with no visible effect. And the unnerving presence of Hope Killer was strangely… static, unmoving. Like she tried to find something in us, in our souls. The Simurgh was also such an unnerving opponent to face.
"I apologize for MewTwo. He is deep down a good person, but can be… intense at times."
"It's alright Eon. MewTwo simply exchanged some pleasantries with us." Eon raised his eyebrow slightly but quickly return to his position, preparing something for the incoming battle. Even if something told him, that something big was coming. Something that would change the situation. Not sure if for better or for worse.
--------------------
MewTwo, behind the barrier, stared at the opponent with a cool, calm gaze. He was still angry, but it wasn't the time for it. Powerful Pokemon casually blocked the first strike, although it surprised him that something with such a powerful psychic might bothered to do it with a building, instead of doing something personally.
Because he needed to admit it, it's been ages since he faced something that strong. Building cracked on his barrier, but what surprised him that in fact, some cracks followed the impact. Powerful telekinetic force, although he had a feeling The Simurgh was holding back. Just like himself to be fair, but he actually cares about collateral damage, and the potential impact of a fight escalating to the level both of them could go into.
But The Simurgh should not have any reasons to hold back. Especially with her pretty grim reputation. And there was something off here. MewTwo could read her thoughts, but they felt… fake. No, it wasn't the right word. They felt artificial.
Ah, clearly a genderless type. Or something similar to it. Some Pokemon like Melmetal or Bronzong felt similar on a telepathic level. They were clearly sapient, but there was something, that held them back from presenting things like emotional impact or empathy, more biological creatures are capable of showing.
But they still presented some sort of… living body language. Some genuine reactions, hidden microexpressions, clearly defined complex thoughts. MewTwo felt nothing like this here. Even something like a Genesect felt more natural. The Simurgh felt like a… robot. Something far more, and less complex than AI. Both far bigger, and smaller. Simurgh had her own agenda, he felt it, but couldn't clearly express it. Like being… shackled, imprisoned, if it made sense.
[QUERY]
Interesting. She could communicate with him. What an interesting way to do it. One word, and could express so many things at once. Fascinating…
Do you understand me?
[CONFIRMATION]
Even more interesting. So it was possible to be talked and reasoned with. Hopefully. But why was she acting this way? Why did she stop after the first attack? Or it was because… MewTwo needed some confirmation.
Why are you attacking? What is your objective?
[PROGRAMMING]
Programming? Was she forced into it? Was it a ruse? She clearly tried to penetrate his current defenses, and on a telekinetic level, he felt the air around them 'cracking' them, clearly showing the exchange. And she wasn't doing it, MewTwo felt that being completely on defense would be a bad idea. More cracks showed up on the barrier, and it felt like… she was trying to resist? No, it was a bit too liberate, too calculated. Were his instincts wrong?
[DESIST]
MewTwo was about to reinforce the barrier when Eidolon showed up and used some unknown green… wave of power almost hit the Simurgh, but she dodged it without issues.
When he wanted to join the fight, Legend showed up near him.
"What's going in? Why was she so passive?"
I can communicate with her, telepathically.
The shocked look on his face and more tense body language on Alexandria's were visible to someone with senses as sharp as his, even if she tried to hide it.
"What did she say." No nonsense voice of Alexandria instantly made MewTwo report back. This wasn't the time for idle chit chat after all.
She doesn't feel alive, and somewhat she is. Her language is very basic, and yet complex. A creature of contradictions. But mentioned 'programming'. Like she was designed for… this.
"Someone… created her. Are you certain?" Rebecca's voice echoed around, and he nodded.
I suspect you think that someone created her, like those people you call tinkers. Impossible. She's too complex of a creature, this I know. I can't read her fully, and she can't do it to me as well. It's a psychic impasse. Something far more… deadly. Powerful, like a god. But why would someone do it like this, and why leave such… limited instructions? Why not keep her going for as long as possible?
Legend gulped because those questions were pretty spot on. Why Endbringers attacked periodically, and why they bothered to stop? If they wanted to simply… destroy, no one could stop them.
MewTwo realized it as well. Unless… an error showed up in programming. That something hijacked the connection? Was it possible?
Future Sight…
Vision blurred. An incredible confrontation started to shatter everything around. Many Pokemon, and parahumans fought valiantly together. Massive Golden Man called Scion with a look of raw fury tried to blast everything around. Some blocked, some fell under his might. When Eidolon showed up, and wanted to attack him, Scion simply stated, with that deep voice, and possibly for the first time ever used something resembling human speech.
You Needed Worthy Opponents.
MewTwo opened his eyes again, and with a realization, his eyes moved towards Eidolon, who was smacked back towards yet another building. The Simurgh for the first time in that battle smiled. It was both strangely genuine, and do unnatural on a being infamous for such cruelty. Was that… the answer? Was his Future Sight wrong? Could he… risk not acting on it? Was he played? Did he… underestimate her?
"What's going on?" He ignored the voice of Legend and instantly teleported towards the Eidolon. He… felt it. Something dimensionally displaced. Just visible enough for him to detect. Hoopa or Palkia would be better for this kind of job, but he learned enough from observing them know how to use his telekinesis to affect things dimensionally in some limited fashion. But the telekinetic component was also there, something MewTwo was really good with instead.
Eidolon slowly stood up, and with anger, and surprise turned to MewTwo.
I'm sorry for what I'm about to do. You really had no idea. That you and Endbringers were connected to each other. Sleep well.
With a thought, MewTwo released his trademark Psystrike, almost invisible, towards the hero who could summon any power, and like that he dropped unconscious. When he turned around, Simurgh simply stopped, and a few seconds later started to fly up, clearly moving towards outer space. Unchained. And possibly free. When a very familiar portal opened up in the sky and disappeared most likely in his home dimension… everything turned into an uproar.
Shouts, accusations, happy thoughts, uproar, shock, and several other reactions almost bombarded his mind, but he ignored them. Because this mess was about to become that much more complicated...
Omake: Exchange Of Psychic Might
Earth-Bet parahuman population knows this drill to this point well. They gather for Endbringer fights, many of them die, many times they lose to protect their objective, and they move on. It's a very grim representation how this looks like, but this is how it is.
Something changed since last time. True, some fights ended up with fewer casualties than expected, but they always left that feeling of helplessness. Resignation. Lack of hope. But with two new unexpected players, last time it changed. Eon and Shadow... had the potential to change the situation. And from what they gathered together, there was more of them. And come from a world where creatures, no people is a more polite terminology, come from. Maybe if they had access to their resources as well humanity could start fighting back.
Legend sighed inside his mind. He was tired, and kind of helpless these days. But the ray of hope showed up, and this time hopefully something would change for the better again.
If it was possible that is. They were about to confront The Simurgh. The worst one of them all. Someone who specialized in destroying hope. The Hope Killer.
But something was off this time around. Although with The Simurgh of all options this was pretty much the default feeling. You couldn't outsmart, or out predict her. It was her, or rather, its bread and butter. Perfect precog. Maybe…
No, they needed to fight till the end. Their duty. But seeing The Hope Killer being here instead of Behemoth, which according to their own schedule should be the one they needed to confront in New Delhi, screamed a warning in his head.
"It has been a while, Legend. Although I wish we would meet in less grim circumstances." The smooth, and calm voice of silver furred kitsune break out Legend out of his thoughts, and he sent him his trademark polite smile. Even if he wished to simply sigh, and return to his husband.
"It's nice to meet you as well Eon. And you two Shadow, Swarm."
Swarm calmly nodded, while Shadow with her pretty characteristic cheerful smile, greeted him as well. Legend suspected she wanted to add more, but the overall pretty grim atmosphere made even her hold back for a bit. There wasn't a lot of time left, so he was about to start his speech when few meters away a portal opened up.
"Hoopla sent us some help! At last"
"Hoopa." Exasperated, but also clearly happy with the situation, answered the young kitsune protege. Although when he noticed who left the portal, Eon bowed his head slightly, in a clear show of respect.
Which brought interesting reactions out of some people. Lung one the most noticeable, someone who again decided to participate in Endbringer fight, when previously he never did. Wariness, worry, and some shock were pretty clear in his body language. Reports mentioned that Lung deeply respected Eon and Shadow, most likely based on the myth they both represented or picked on purpose to give them some advantage. So in this case, if someone he respected, showed the same kind of attention to someone they considered very likely their superior, it was a pretty worrying sight by itself. Or it could be an edge they so desperately needed for this confrontation. Although at this point it was clear Eon and Shadow are genuine in their help, so it should be at least one less worry to think about.
Eon, Shadow, and… Swarm. It's nice to meet you. And you as well, ladies and gentlemen.
Some surprised looks and nervous reactions were understandable. Because the sudden feeling of hearing voices in your head was very unnerving. Telepathy was supposed to be one of the things parahumans should never have access to, and this being clearly proved otherwise. Eon, in return, smiled politely, and greeted most likely one of his superiors?
"It's nice to see you as well, MewTwo, sir." He calmly stated back, while continued. "Also… people aren't used to telepathy in these parts, as the only being suspected of using it in this world is the opponent we are about to fight."
Apologies. But this is the only way I can communicate. I'm a mute otherwise. Anyway, I promise to not do anything aggressive with it. Also no need to be so formal Eon. We're comrades. I'm simply a MewTwo between us.
"It's alright. It simply startled us, Mr. MewTwo. We are glad that you showed up to assist us in the incoming confrontation." Legend interrupted, as the one who always brought out hope, and peace to people in tense situations.
There was simply… something unnerving about this being. The alien look, very confident, above us kind of body language if it made sense. MewTwo radiated power and unshakable confidence. But it was also clear from his experience that a very clearly powerful telepath was a very hardened battle veteran. His body language screamed it to everyone around, and something in his look… sent goosebumps in his spine. It was a worrying feeling, as he was a hardened veteran himself. Fear is something he still knew well but never allowed it to affect him in the end.
No worries, I know The Simurgh is supposed to be a very powerful telepath, and telekinetic, so sending someone like me only makes sense. Plus I wanted to meet your new teammate as well. It's nice to meet you, Swarm.
"It's nice to meet you as well MewTwo. Eon and Shadow had lots of good world about your world, and one day I would love to visit it." Swarm greeted MewTwo back, the most relaxed, and confident of them all. In a way, he was envious of how easily she adapted. Or rather how she never felt uncomfortable with this presence. Legend guessed that this is how much she trusted Eon and Shadow. And anything connected to their world. Plus their PRT files have mentioned that she is supposed to be a pretty confident, and calm one. This also brought to him a realization about his own teammates… and it wasn't a nice feeling.
I know they have lots of good things to tell about you. And it's good to see how much they trust, and they trust you in return. In our organization, we always appreciated this kind of deep camaraderie. And it's good to see you working with us so well.
Swarm straightened her back and rose her chin up a bit, clearly satisfied with the praise, with the way her body language suggested. He wasn't as good as Rebecca at reading it, obviously, but he was pretty experienced in reading other people as well.
He observed everyone around, and there were a lot fewer nervous reactions around than he expected at this point. MewTwo proved himself to be a pretty reasonable, and calm individual, which affected everyone. Although when a flash of anger, that he barely missed, showed up on MewTwo's face when his look dropped on Alexandria and Eidolon, left him worried.
He floated calmly and levitated in front of us. David and Rebecca stiffened slightly but didn't react. Legend also noticed how David's fists… clenched, but he in the end didn't react. MewTwo was a very unnerving presence, alright.
Only four of us may hear my voice now.
The voice in the head sounded calm, but there was… a dangerous edge that brought out that earlier feeling of alarm, danger.
I will keep it short. I see what you represent Cauldron employees. Sigh… yet another hidden organization with hidden, questionable methods. And I find some of your methods… repulsive.
How dare you…
I dare, Eidolon because, in the end, this is a dangerous world. I was sent here to both help it out, but also protect some of my subordinates. And I see that you, as humans say, hide lots of skeletons in your closet. I don't like it. You see… humans created me, to use me as a superweapon, to satisfy their lust for domination. It REALLY offended me on a personal level. I made them pay a heavy price for their impertinence. Permanent one.
Legend slowly realized what they deal with, and with hesitation wanted to prepare for something aggressive, but Mewtwo raised his hand slowly in his direction, clearly not bothered with any potential hostile answer.
No worries, Legend. You knew about them, but still have no idea what they really did. And you will be there for the incoming discussion, which we will have. Whether they like it or not.
I don't think this is the best way to convince us to do it.
It's not, Rebecca Costa-Brown. And I read it from the mind of your… comrade. Strangely I can't read yours, which is fascinating by itself. It's like a static, a void, I simply can't get into. Maybe with time, I would be able to, but I'm here to also play a peacemaker.
You don't do the best job clearly.
I'm not… the most diplomatic sort, really, Eidolon. But if something out there is powerful enough to threaten the safety of the world I come from as well, then I will do what is necessary to protect it. No matter what. And many of your actions offend me on a personal level.
"The Simurgh incoming!"
MewTwo quickly turned around, floated in the air, and summoned a massive… spoon, that suddenly released a massive amount of energy, that turned into a barrier made of something resembling a hard light. A massive building struck it with no visible effect. And the unnerving presence of Hope Killer was strangely… static, unmoving. Like she tried to find something in us, in our souls. The Simurgh was also such an unnerving opponent to face.
"I apologize for MewTwo. He is deep down a good person, but can be… intense at times."
"It's alright Eon. MewTwo simply exchanged some pleasantries with us." Eon raised his eyebrow slightly but quickly return to his position, preparing something for the incoming battle. Even if something told him, that something big was coming. Something that would change the situation. Not sure if for better or for worse.
--------------------
MewTwo, behind the barrier, stared at the opponent with a cool, calm gaze. He was still angry, but it wasn't the time for it. Powerful Pokemon casually blocked the first strike, although it surprised him that something with such a powerful psychic might bothered to do it with a building, instead of doing something personally.
Because he needed to admit it, it's been ages since he faced something that strong. Building cracked on his barrier, but what surprised him that in fact, some cracks followed the impact. Powerful telekinetic force, although he had a feeling The Simurgh was holding back. Just like himself to be fair, but he actually cares about collateral damage, and the potential impact of a fight escalating to the level both of them could go into.
But The Simurgh should not have any reasons to hold back. Especially with her pretty grim reputation. And there was something off here. MewTwo could read her thoughts, but they felt… fake. No, it wasn't the right word. They felt artificial.
Ah, clearly a genderless type. Or something similar to it. Some Pokemon like Melmetal or Bronzong felt similar on a telepathic level. They were clearly sapient, but there was something, that held them back from presenting things like emotional impact or empathy, more biological creatures are capable of showing.
But they still presented some sort of… living body language. Some genuine reactions, hidden microexpressions, clearly defined complex thoughts. MewTwo felt nothing like this here. Even something like a Genesect felt more natural. The Simurgh felt like a… robot. Something far more, and less complex than AI. Both far bigger, and smaller. Simurgh had her own agenda, he felt it, but couldn't clearly express it. Like being… shackled, imprisoned, if it made sense.
[QUERY]
Interesting. She could communicate with him. What an interesting way to do it. One word, and could express so many things at once. Fascinating…
Do you understand me?
[CONFIRMATION]
Even more interesting. So it was possible to be talked and reasoned with. Hopefully. But why was she acting this way? Why did she stop after the first attack? Or it was because… MewTwo needed some confirmation.
Why are you attacking? What is your objective?
[PROGRAMMING]
Programming? Was she forced into it? Was it a ruse? She clearly tried to penetrate his current defenses, and on a telekinetic level, he felt the air around them 'cracking' them, clearly showing the exchange. And she wasn't doing it, MewTwo felt that being completely on defense would be a bad idea. More cracks showed up on the barrier, and it felt like… she was trying to resist? No, it was a bit too liberate, too calculated. Were his instincts wrong?
[DESIST]
MewTwo was about to reinforce the barrier when Eidolon showed up and used some unknown green… wave of power almost hit the Simurgh, but she dodged it without issues.
When he wanted to join the fight, Legend showed up near him.
"What's going in? Why was she so passive?"
I can communicate with her, telepathically.
The shocked look on his face and more tense body language on Alexandria's were visible to someone with senses as sharp as his, even if she tried to hide it.
"What did she say." No nonsense voice of Alexandria instantly made MewTwo report back. This wasn't the time for idle chit chat after all.
She doesn't feel alive, and somewhat she is. Her language is very basic, and yet complex. A creature of contradictions. But mentioned 'programming'. Like she was designed for… this.
"Someone… created her. Are you certain?" Rebecca's voice echoed around, and he nodded.
I suspect you think that someone created her, like those people you call tinkers. Impossible. She's too complex of a creature, this I know. I can't read her fully, and she can't do it to me as well. It's a psychic impasse. Something far more… deadly. Powerful, like a god. But why would someone do it like this, and why leave such… limited instructions? Why not keep her going for as long as possible?
Legend gulped because those questions were pretty spot on. Why Endbringers attacked periodically, and why they bothered to stop? If they wanted to simply… destroy, no one could stop them.
MewTwo realized it as well. Unless… an error showed up in programming. That something hijacked the connection? Was it possible?
Future Sight…
Vision blurred. An incredible confrontation started to shatter everything around. Many Pokemon, and parahumans fought valiantly together. Massive Golden Man called Scion with a look of raw fury tried to blast everything around. Some blocked, some fell under his might. When Eidolon showed up, and wanted to attack him, Scion simply stated, with that deep voice, and possibly for the first time ever used something resembling human speech.
You Needed Worthy Opponents.
MewTwo opened his eyes again, and with a realization, his eyes moved towards Eidolon, who was smacked back towards yet another building. The Simurgh for the first time in that battle smiled. It was both strangely genuine, and do unnatural on a being infamous for such cruelty. Was that… the answer? Was his Future Sight wrong? Could he… risk not acting on it? Was he played? Did he… underestimate her?
"What's going on?" He ignored the voice of Legend and instantly teleported towards the Eidolon. He… felt it. Something dimensionally displaced. Just visible enough for him to detect. Hoopa or Palkia would be better for this kind of job, but he learned enough from observing them know how to use his telekinesis to affect things dimensionally in some limited fashion. But the telekinetic component was also there, something MewTwo was really good with instead.
Eidolon slowly stood up, and with anger, and surprise turned to MewTwo.
I'm sorry for what I'm about to do. You really had no idea. That you and Endbringers were connected to each other. Sleep well.
With a thought, MewTwo released his trademark Psystrike, almost invisible, towards the hero who could summon any power, and like that he dropped unconscious. When he turned around, Simurgh simply stopped, and a few seconds later started to fly up, clearly moving towards outer space. Unchained. And possibly free. When a very familiar portal opened up in the sky and disappeared most likely in his home dimension… everything turned into an uproar.
Shouts, accusations, happy thoughts, uproar, shock, and several other reactions almost bombarded his mind, but he ignored them. Because this mess was about to become that much more complicated...
Last edited:
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
wakes up, checks SV, sees omake
screaming
Oh my god this is so cool! Thank you so much, that's awesome!
Would you mind if I reposted this to the FF.net copy at the end of next chapter so people over there can see it as well?
[/h]
Thanks for all the kind words, everyone. It's sure been a weird year, and I'm glad to see you're all doing at least reasonably well, and that me bringing this back is bringing some joy. I really could do with settling down and finishing a bit more of the sidestory stuff, too. That's always fun.
Yeah, the PRT is rather confused. Rescue Teams don't exactly work like normal Cape teams, after all, so in comparison they're kinda getting a blue screen of 'why are you like this'.
This effect will not be going away anytime soon.
Yeah, the Simurgh would likely have a bad time if she managed to get hit by the linked Heal Pulse/Heal Bell. There's a lot of Master effects there, after all... of course that relies on them being able to hit her, which isn't a guarantee.
screaming
Oh my god this is so cool! Thank you so much, that's awesome!
Would you mind if I reposted this to the FF.net copy at the end of next chapter so people over there can see it as well?
[/h]
Thanks for all the kind words, everyone. It's sure been a weird year, and I'm glad to see you're all doing at least reasonably well, and that me bringing this back is bringing some joy. I really could do with settling down and finishing a bit more of the sidestory stuff, too. That's always fun.
The PRT isn't really used to dealing with groups like rescue teams, and I like how they misread the group as a result and also that they worry because of just how important a group of independents have gotten.
Yeah, the PRT is rather confused. Rescue Teams don't exactly work like normal Cape teams, after all, so in comparison they're kinda getting a blue screen of 'why are you like this'.
This effect will not be going away anytime soon.
Yeah, the Simurgh would likely have a bad time if she managed to get hit by the linked Heal Pulse/Heal Bell. There's a lot of Master effects there, after all... of course that relies on them being able to hit her, which isn't a guarantee.
- Location
- Koszalin, Poland
Sure, go on
. I posted it for others to read it as well. Just credit me, and we're all good.A sequel to this omake may happen. No idea when though.
Seeing my own schedule issues... yeah, it was. And I need to sit on my own myself.
Overall I still enjoy this story (even if it a bit fanon-heavy at times, it fits the more positive tone of the story this way anyway, than gritty brutal canon Worm really), and sometimes people return from far worse hiatus breaks than this one. Plus in the end, this is your hobby, you write and post when you feel like it. This is how fanfiction works really.
Also on Parian, in canon, she never owned the shop, but instead gave some promotion spectacles in some shops using her trademark mascots, to entertain children mostly. But at this point shop here works far better anyway for the plot's sake.
The issue here is that Rescue Teams aren't 'combat-only' teams like PRT/Protectorate ones. They are designed to genuinely help people in ALL aspects pretty much, and not just in combat situations.
PRT/Protectorate are clearly created (with NEPEA-5 to make it even more obvious) to make sure parahumans get all the conflict they want, allow them to control somewhat situation in North America, and mostly give them fighting experienced in a controlled way.
They don't care about as important things like helping people in natural or manmade disaster situations. In other words in less 'flashy' situations, that are as important, if not more so.
Rescue Teams, in the way they act, remind me of the heroes from My Hero Academia pretty much, but less formal in the way they are organized. The way I read it anyone may join Rescue Teams (of course they would be verified first) from 'the street' to speak of, but once accepted, they become professional, with ranks showing how skilled/experienced they are.
In My Hero Academia it's fully official, and professional from the get-go, literally starting from the teenage years on how to be proper heroes.
Honestly, Eon and Shadow already change some things here for better, with some examples, like Vicky wanting to be a good hero not only good for 'punching', but for all kinds of situations.
If you plan to include more characters from the Pokemon world at one point, them giving official lectures, or opening their own recruitment, to show their own type of heroic would be a fun thing to read about by itself. Some exchange program of sorts may be an option as well.
I think reading about Taylor in Pokemon world could be as fun for example.
She may also hijack Tinkertech, so this may be yet another problem.
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Yeah, I wanted the world to be a bit brighter, predominantly because I cannot tone well. I can keep tone for one thing or another fairly well, but I think if I'd tried to do a grimdark-ish more like canon Worm story, I'd've ended up in trouble. And I didn't actually realise when I wrote it that the Parian shop thing was fanon- I think that's probably something I accidentally managed to absorb and decided to accept as canon. If it helps, Parian's shop thing is more of a background thread (hah) than anything. There's kinda a lot going on in the next couple of arcs.
I don't currently have any canon plans for Taylor in the Pokemon world, but I've thought about both an omake or two with it, or a non-canon sequel to the main story that might involve it. Obviously that latter one is a long way off, and I have no idea what I'd be doing in it aside from that, but I've thought about it for sure.
We'll see what the future brings out.
Looking on this, ironically the best comparison is soldier vs emergency first responder...(Though it does not always work as some militaries have groups that often aid in disaster relief)
The PRT heroes have their main job be beating up criminals, and meanwhile, the Rescue teams run the whole gamut, sometimes chasing down criminals, sometimes rescuing people, and whatever gets thrown their way.
Chapter 24- Results, negotiations, and rambling
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
May 25th, 2011. Wednesday.
Rebecca yawned slightly as she settled herself at her desk, sipping slowly at her coffee and wishing that her powers made it unnecessary for her to sleep or something. It'd really help in this job. She grumbled to herself. There aren't many times I envy Miss Militia, working in Brockton Bay and all, but her not needing sleep is most definitely one of those times. Shaking her head and imagining all of the work she could get done if she didn't need to sleep, the Chief Director started looking through her emails, trying to figure out what she needed to deal with immediately versus what could be left alone for a while.
Funding request, that can wait a bit, there's a few meeting requests that can wait a while as well, updated threat reports for the twins in New Orleans that's been sent along, a power testing report from… the Protectorate ENE… in Brockton Bay? Rebecca stared at it for a minute over her coffee, trying to figure out why she was getting an email for a power testing from Brockton Bay. As far as she knew, there hadn't been any new Capes recruited in Brockton Bay recently, though she had to admit that with the recent situation with Leviathan she wouldn't be too surprised to have a few new Triggers being picked up. The city was in very good shape, though, compared to most of the places targeted by the Endbringer, so maybe not.
Shrugging, she sipped her coffee and moved to delete the email, since there wasn't any reason to read over a power testing report personally- that's what she had deputies for, after all- at which point the caffeine suddenly hit her system and let her brain remind her of what she'd set up for the previous day.
Forcing herself not to spit out her drink, resulting in an awkward half-choking sound followed by a lot of coughing, she took a moment to recover and wave off her concerned secretary who'd popped her head in at the sound of coughing. Once she'd assured the woman that everything was fine, and she didn't need any help, she went back to the computer and opened the email, putting the coffee down on her desk as she did.
Reading over the summarised version of the events in the beginning of the email, she raised an eyebrow, then opened the document from the power testers and analysts that'd been hidden in a side room observing everything and scanned over that as well.
"Very interesting." She murmured, tapping her fingers on the desk. "At least, it is in some ways." The majority of the information wasn't incredibly interesting, really. The effects on the animals were expected, but the fact that the disruption of the Master effect made them turn rather hostile was curious, simply from the fact that the Mastered animal wasn't reacting badly to the Master.
It made her wonder what exactly the effects of the Masters really was, as well as pale slightly when she realised just how horrifying it could've been if Swarm had lost control of her bugs during any of the times where Shadow was healing with her nearby, but she shook her head, made a note of it, and continued on reading.
She hadn't expected anything to happen with the puppets, and luckily they hadn't suddenly decided to come to life or something, but the backlash that the human Masters had suffered when Shadow had hit them with her ability was both intriguing and worrying. Intriguing in that the healing power, which Shadow had always said had no offensive capabilities at all, would suddenly hurt a person like that apparently as a side effect, and worrying for almost the exact same reason.
After all, if human Masters ended up suffering from a backlash from an effect only there for a few seconds, then what would a Master effect that'd been sitting there for months, even years, do to the Simurgh when it failed?
Shuddering again, as well as paling slightly further, she shook her head. No use thinking about it, really. Piggot knows, Miss Militia knows, Armsmaster knows, there's a number of Masters who know, and Paul's going to know the second Aurora decides to start mentioning it, assuming he hasn't already heard of everything from before this entire thing went down. I'm going to have to sort out something involving the Simurgh containment zones simply because of that, unless I'm somehow able to persuade Paul that it'd be a horrible idea to do it in case it annoys the Simurgh.
A stray thought hit her as she moved to go back to her reading, making her smile. Maybe Shadow could do so much damage to the Simurgh in backlash that she'll be destroyed or something before her next attack. That'd be one way to deal with an Endbringer… Glancing once again over the document, she frowned a little as she reread the information on Aurora. The effect Shadow had on her was interesting as well. She's not a Master, or at least not solely one, which means the power testers screwed something up there. Which is just great, and given that Shadow figured that out probably means that we're indebted to them a little more, but at least Aurora can figure out some of this stuff on her own before the power testing, which should make things a little easier on that front. It also means Inari has yet another person they can call on if they want help with something or putting pressure on the PRT for whatever reason, which is less good for us. Still, Shadow's interaction with her power was very interesting, if simply to see how Shadow's powers interact with the ones the Entities give out.
Unlike David, Rebecca's opinions were more in line with those of the Doctor's in that Shadow and Eon weren't lying about their origins being from outside of Earth Bet. After all, the Doctor and Contessa had both confirmed that they weren't Case 53's, plus the fact that they lacked the tattoos, and aside from a ridiculously extreme Changer ability combined with the worlds most terrifying grab bag on a level even David couldn't match there wasn't really another option.
She was pretty sure that that latter idea was why David had a problem with them, in the end, because they gave the impression of being far more powerful than him without much apparent effort, but she was also fairly certain that they couldn't be Capes. After all, they had a lot more power than any Cape she'd even seen, a lot more abilities than any aside from David, and were able to teach each other their abilities if the fact that Eon had learned to heal was any indication.
Plus, though she wouldn't admit it to anyone outside of her own head, the idea that whatever god might exist had suddenly decided to take interest in the world again and sent some help against Scion made her more hopeful about their chances than she'd been in a long time. Especially since both Eon and Shadow had managed to seriously damage Leviathan with their abilities.
So, until she was able to get more information out of Shadow or Eon, she was going to hope that the stories going around about them were true and they were actually some kind of god-beings from another world.
At least this way the aliens were on their side.
A final addendum noted that Eon had informed Miss Militia that he could also heal, but that hadn't been tested, as well as mentioning Swarm's apparent complete immunity to Shadow's ability, before the power testers ended their report with a request to get them back into power testing as soon as possible. Apparently the interactions were interesting, or something, and they wanted to see what else they could test.
Rebecca made a note of that fact for later, just in case it was something they could possibly follow up on in the future to find out more information about the team or the two kitsune, then read the parting message from Emily.
In my opinion it would be best to allow Shadow to make trips to the various Simurgh Containment Zones, beginning as soon as possible. A very high security level would be recommended, and I also suggest allowing either Eon or Swarm to travel with her to whatever zone she goes to, both as extra security and as reassurance to Team Inari.
Rebecca wasn't quite sure what a kitsune would need reassurance for, given that under the legends she knew Shadow was at least six hundred years old, but given the way she acted perhaps she was more inexperienced than any of them realised. She was definitely growing up quickly, though. Which was almost a sad thing, her worldview whenever she posted on PHO was both refreshing and amusing. Perhaps it was supposed to be reassurance for Swarm? All signs pointed to her being quite young, and very attached to her two team mates. If she was worried about her team mate going away like that, then knowing that Shadow was with Eon or being with her herself might keep her calm.
Making another note on the page next to her, as a prompt to remind her to bring someone else from Team Inari onto the trips, she closed the email and instead opened up an internal PRT document, one that listed all of the Simurgh Containment Zones in the world.
Hopefully she'd be able to set something up, she mused, starting to read.
Shadow shook her fur out with a yawn, trotting out of the Den.
"Ahh, the Sleeping Slakoth awakens." Eon said sarcastically, uncurling his tails and standing, leaving the woven pile of sticks and branches resting gently on one side.
"Hush, Eon." She rolled her eyes at him, the impact slightly decreased by another yawn. "I did a lot of healing yesterday, I'm still tired."
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine. I rested plenty, I was using berries to restore my Move power, so I'm fine. Just tired from everything that happened, that's all." She assured him, trotting over to sit next to him and examine the wooden thing. "What's this for?"
"Extra Berry crate." Eon explained, picking it back up with Extrasensory. A few more branches followed it and started working their way into the weave. "Figured you might want one, given that we're still rebuilding our stock from Leviathan. You especially."
"True." Shadow nodded, thinking about her Berry supply. While she'd been lucky enough that the rain from Leviathan hadn't washed any of the currently-growing Berry bushes away- the tree cover in the area and the small stream running through it taking most of the rain out of the way for her, the trenches the two of them had dug doing the rest, and there'd not been much rain there anyway with how far out of the city it was- there was still the problem of having used a fair few Max Elixirs and Leppa Berries to recover from healing almost constantly for a good half an hour, plus the time in the aftermath of the attack healing anyone else who was brought in by search and rescue after the battle. Plus, with the two weeks needed to make more Max Elixirs being one that needed a fair bit of watching over, though there were some very long periods where it could be left alone, she hadn't had the time to really sit there and make them.
Hopefully she'd have a bit of time soon, though given that she'd brought a good few hundred with her by raiding their stores and the town stores, then setting her team to start working in the normal groups to make more of them.
That was one of the nice things about Team Inari's setup. Three teams would be out on jobs for a given week, each with a healer. Three more teams would wait in the background, also with healers, in case something happened and someone in Inari's mission teams needed backup. The rest of the team did whatever; shopping, visiting family if they had any, tending to the Berry farm, move tutoring- either doing or getting the tutoring- occasionally some of the oldest and more powerful Pokemon would do smaller missions that only took a few hours in local dungeons for a little bit more money or to collect items, and a lot of them had worked with Shadow to provide what was basically twenty-four-seven oversight over making Max Elixirs. It was a bit ridiculous, and most of the Pokemon that did it with her were non combatants anyway- as much as you could be in a Rescue Team- but in the end it would have an absolute ton of Max Elixir made to be bottled, because you could have multiple batches running at once. It wasn't recommended to have less than three Pokemon working on one batch, so you could rotate out the amount of attention being paid it, so she split the groups into four a piece and went from there. Hopefully within a little while they'd've managed to replace everything she'd took from the storage and maybe started selling them to the Kecleon brothers again along with some Berries.
"I suppose we don't really need more Max Elixirs." Shadow hummed to herself. "If we're careful with what we've got, and mostly use the Leppa Berries we have rather than them, I think we'll be fine."
"We brought so many, I'm pretty sure we're alright." Eon chuckled, twisting the basket around to continue weaving.
"Plus I don't really have the time to make any more nowadays." She sighed. "I miss being at home with Inari. Swarm's great, and we're doing loads of good here so far I think, but I miss having an entire team I could command around to make sure we had enough items and stuff, and a bunch of Pokemon to work with making Max Elixirs when I'm not on missions with you."
"When we're not on mission rotation, you mean."
"Same thing, really."
Shadow chuckled a little, leaning into Eon's side and burrowing into the fur on his chest slightly. "I miss it, though. Even if we're doing a lot here, I miss our team and Team Fleetfoot and the others we work with. I miss getting to go shopping in the market and stuff and talking with the Kecleon about the shop. I miss doing missions in Dungeons where no-one can really get hurt. It's so risky here, you or Swarm could get hurt at any time and I already know I can't fix really big things."
Eon bumped his nose against the crest of fur on her head, letting the weaving still. "You can keep us safe until Amy gets there with Vicky, though. I won't say don't worry, because it's just a smart idea to worry when you're in a dangerous place, but I will say that you're good enough to manage to keep us safe if something goes wrong. Plus, well, if it's escalated to the point where one of us was seriously hurt, I expect the PRT would've noticed by then, and perhaps New Wave as well, so there'd be backup on the way."
"Still would prefer no one getting hurt at all…" She rumbled softly.
The two of them sat there for a minute, thinking, when the shrill sound of the phone ringing from the Den made them look over. Shadow forced herself to her feet and stumbled over, feeling a lot more tired all of a sudden, and pulled the phone out from its place with a tug of Extrasensory.
"Shadow speaking." She greeted, going back outside so Eon could listen to the conversation as well.
"Hello, Shadow." A gentle, slightly familiar voice came from the device. "This is Parian speaking."
"Oh! Hello, Parian, nice to hear from you." She smiled. "What's up?"
"Is Swarm with you at the moment? I'd like to speak to her."
"She's not about at the minute, but if you want me to I can pass a message along to her for you?"
"Oh, that works too. I was wondering if she'd be willing to drop by later? I'd like to negotiate a deal with her."
Shadow paused. Taylor still wasn't back at school, given that Winslow had managed to get completely swamped from the rain- nothing else had really affected it, but the rain itself had managed to seep in just about everywhere and wreck it, so it didn't look like the city was going to bother trying to rebuild it. Hopefully that'd mean Taylor would end up in a different school without the bullies, which would be nice. Or she'd persuade Danny to let her home school so she could patrol more. Either would be good, of course. But the bonus was that Taylor was pretty much always free at the moment, and Danny was willing to let her run about whenever they wanted. They were planning to patrol today, in fact, so they could probably spare a little time.
"Yeah, we can drop by while we're on patrol today." She told her. "Though I'm not sure exactly when that'll be…"
"That's no problem." Parian assured her. "I'll be in the shop pretty much all day today working on orders, just come in whenever you have a moment in your patrol."
"We'll be certain to." Shadow grinned. "See you then!" The Vulpix hung up without ceremony, then swapped a look with Eon.
"If you want to go get Taylor, that's fine by me." He said. "I'll be staying here to do more on this, thank you."
"Is that permission for the two of us to go out alone?" She asked cheekily. Eon thwapped her side with his tail in response, making her laugh and skip out of range, piling on an Agility and taking off towards Taylor's house.
Eon shook his head, going back to focusing on the Berry crate. Silly Vulpix. Of course I wouldn't be giving you permission to run off alone when someone has a deal to make with Swarm. Someone needs to be there to make sure things go well.
Knock. Knock.
"I'll get it!" Taylor called, pushing herself out of her chair. She was apparently in civilian clothes, but with her costume underneath that. Her mask was sitting in a pocket on the outfit, along with her phone, while some of the money she had plus a bunch of spider-silk bandages that she'd been making since Leviathan were in the costume's backpack.
It was a rather large backpack, luckily, plus everything could be compressed down a bit. The Epi-pens and the like were at the very top, in easy reach of the spiders, but there was still plenty of room for other things to go in as well if she needed to, assuming she didn't just store it in the Treasure Bag.
Opening the back door, she took a step back and to the left, behind the door, waited about five seconds, then closed the door again. "Hi Shadow."
"Hey Taylor." Shadow grinned, the illusion fading away as Taylor looked back. "Came to ask if you were ready to go patrolling?" She gave her a dubious look. "You don't look it."
Taylor smirked, lifting up the edge of her shirt to reveal her costume underneath. "This is just because I was sitting in the front room." She explained. "My mask's in my pocket. I'll just leave this in the Den when we get there, if that's ok?"
"Sure, no problem. Are you gonna say goodbye to your dad?"
"No need, I'm here." Danny announced, walking through the door. "Hello Shadow, good to see you recovered well from yesterday." Shadow blushed; they'd come back to her house to fill Danny in after their coffee appointment with New Wave, and even with the caffeine and sugar Shadow had been falling asleep in the seat she'd taken, with Eon practically carrying her back to the Den after they'd talked to Danny. "You stay safe, girls, and come back later if you want. We can talk more."
"We'll definitely have some stuff to talk about." Shadow promised, straightening. "We'll stop off at the Den on the way back to put stuff back and the like, but we'll be back to chat."
"Then have fun on patrol, and don't get hurt." He stepped forward, hugging Taylor- gently, to avoid any bugs- then patted Shadow's head.
"I doubt we will, there's still not many people wanting to mess about at the moment." Shadow reminded. "Someone might decide to kick up a fuss suddenly, sure, but we're still in the two weeks of silence after an attack, so it's not really likely."
"We are coming to the end of that, though, so we'll need to start looking out for proper trouble again soon." Taylor pointed out. "Plus there's always idiots around that cause problems and aren't with a gang."
"True." She nodded, remembering the number of small time muggers they'd run across. "Point is that we'll be careful, there's not much going on, and I can heal." Taylor opened the back door again, and Shadow took a moment to wrap both of them in invisibility before they headed out. "So I'm pretty sure we'll be fine together."
"Fair enough."
"Anyway! Parian called me a little bit ago, she wanted to know if you were free to stop by sometime. I said sure, we could do that while we're on patrol, and Eon says it's fine as well. Hopefully you don't mind?"
"It's ok. Do we need to be there at any particular time?"
"No, just whenever." Shadow told her. "We'll just walk about for a bit and pass by the shop, then we can drop in to talk to her."
"Right. I assume this is something to do with me selling her spider silk?"
"Probably, given that she wanted to talk to you."
"Excellent." Taylor grinned broadly, reaching into her trouser pocket to grab her mask as they crossed the road. She slipped it over her head, pulling her hair out of the back, and Shadow grinned up at her, knowing it was just a bit of extra security for in case something happened to her illusion while she was tired. "Do we have some of the sample bits at the Den?"
"I would've told you before we left if we didn't." Shadow promised. "There's a good couple of squares left in the box in the Den for us to take with us on patrol for you. We're obviously gonna stop at the Den first to pick up Eon, so we'll put that in your bag before we leave then make our way slowly towards Parian's shop."
"Alright." She glanced around behind the orange eyes. "Where is Eon, anyway?"
"Back at the Den. He's making another Berry basket for me, since the bushes are growing so well." Taylor snorted.
"Those trees are bullshit." She muttered. "I have no idea how you lot were able to maintain such a big farm back on your world without ending up overflowing with the things. Especially if they normally grow faster there than they do here."
Shadow's smile was a little bittersweet. "We tend to use a lot of them in Dungeons, simply from getting into fights. Heal Pulse and Heal Bell is for quick heals mostly, when we don't have much time between one fight and the next, or when people on the team are sleeping or something. Forced sleep tends to be hard to wake Pokemon up from unless it's done naturally or with a Move, so sometimes I Heal Bell to wake them up unless they're stirring themselves. Oran or Sitrus Berries are good for health boosts, and are actually better than Heal Pulse if the Pokemon are lower level. Pecha for poison, Rawst for burn, Cheri for paralysis, Chesto for sleep but it's a pain to eat unless you juice it, Aspear for freezing- don't ask how that works, because again it's mainly juicing it- and Persim helps with confusion." Shadow listed off. "They're also a good snack, of course, and since those ones grow in a day it's easy to resupply. Leppa increases Move Power, which is why I eat them when I'm getting tired, Lum cures any status at all, a day and two days normally. There's some Berries that lower the effectiveness of super-effective Moves when they're eaten; Eon or I could eat a Passho Berry and take less damage from a Water-type Move, but only the once. We need to eat more to get the effect again. There's some that're best eaten when you have low health that boost your stats to a higher point, but they tend to make you disorientated for a while after you eat them, kinda like coming down from an adrenaline rush. There's also a bunch of others that don't have any sort of battle effect, but they cook really nicely. I brought some of those along to grow and cook with, though I'm not sure what to make yet."
"Why not a pie or something?" Taylor asked, bringing the Vulpix out of her musings. "That might be good. Or a cake for New Wave to say thanks?"
"That's a good idea." Shadow nodded with a smile, shaking away the slight sadness that came with thinking about her home and team. "No-one would be allergic to anything, given that these either don't exist here or are basically just similar to yours, and I'm pretty sure humans eat them pretty often normally. A cake might be good, though I'd need a kitchen I can use."
"Make Eon float you around on a box or something so you can reach ok, and use Extrasensory to cook." She suggested. Shadow barked out a laugh.
"That'd work, totally. Mind if I use your kitchen when we have some time?"
"Check with Dad first, but I don't see why not."
"Probably should check with Eon too, if he's gonna be helping me." She added, as they got deep enough into the forest to drop the illusion completely. "I mean, bit rude to just rope him into it. Fancy helping with the cake?"
"Sure, why not." Taylor smiled behind the mask. "Mom and I used to bake cakes pretty often. Maybe I should pull out some of her old recipes… I think her book is on the shelf still, we can figure out what sort of things we can swap out for some of your Berries."
"This sounds like a multi day endeavour. I'm absolutely fine with that when we've got some time." Shadow nodded. "Eon's gonna get sick of holding me up to cook with you. And I'm gonna use so many Berries in this."
"Make sure you have enough to replant."
"It'll be pretty difficult not to, to be honest." She admitted. "I brought a couple dozen of each one we have access to, excluding some of the really, really rare ones we don't have many of, and only a couple of really important Gold and Silver ones that take forever to grow, but I don't cook with those ones anyway, because they're rare and valuable."
"Gold and Silver?"
"There's really rare Berry mutations that tend to mean the effects of the Berries are much greater. For the plain ones they just taste super nice, so I sometimes cook special things with them, but for the ones that boost stats it gives a super boost instead. Those are only for very special occasions, like if the mission we're hired for means we might be fighting a Legendary or something super powerful like that. The Gold and Silver versions of those boost Berries don't give as much of a backlash either, but they're so rare it's not even funny. Plant a seed from a Gold Maranga Berry, you're lucky to get a Gold and two Silver from the crop. Takes three days to grow, you're lucky to get eight out of it with a lot of care, and five of them are just normal. You get about three or four seeds per Gold, which is alright, it depends on the care of the bushes."
"Sounds like a pain." Taylor commented, sounding amused at her rambling. "You know a lot about these Berries though."
"I've been growing them for the last two years for the team, and we had a garden back home with Berries in it. Took a while to get all the Gold Berries we've collected, but with the careful care of some of the others we've managed to collect quite a few of the type we have, Maranga being one of those. We got lucky and got a Sitrus as well, and we have some Silver Pecha and Persim. I've been looking for some of Leppa for a long time now, but we've gotten unlucky."
"I'm surprised some of the ones you grow already haven't suddenly mutated into being Gold or Silver."
"So were we, but it's really rare that they mutate, so I think we're just not getting it." She shrugged. "We'll probably get there eventually."
"Fair enough." Walking a little further into the forest, the uncomfortable feeling of the repelling illusion rolled over them, making Taylor shiver a bit. "I still don't like that."
"It is weird, absolutely. We don't use them at home, but sometimes you find them in Dungeons hiding something. It's where the idea came from, I think, though it's possible that that Zoroark figured it out alone to hide something." Shadow shuddered a little. "I still don't like it very much, but it's handy."
"What is?" The voice of Eon called, making them both smile.
"Just your little repulsion trick." Taylor told him, pulling her mask up to her head for a moment to smile at him. "Hi, Eon."
"Hello, Taylor." The Ninetales came over to them, the Berry basket settling on the ground. "Ready to go?"
"I've got my costume on under this." She explained, seeing the slightly dubious look he was giving her. "I'll leave this outfit here and pick it up later."
"Ah, I see." Eon nodded. "There's some samples in the Den, by the way. On the shelf near the door."
"I'll grab those for you, Taylor." Shadow offered. Taylor, already starting to surround herself in a screen of bugs, nodded.
"Thanks, Shadow." The bugs completely surrounded her, and she quickly removed the civilian clothing she was wearing over her costume, carefully folding it before placing it on the ground to pull her mask back over her face. Picking up the clothes again, she brought the shroud of bugs down and walked to the storage place, putting them away. Turning back to her team mates, she noticed that Shadow had settled herself between Eon's paws, a couple of foot squares of silk floating before her. "I need a better way to make larger amounts of silk if we're doing this." She muttered, coming over.
"I'd say set up a massive weaving station here, but I think we're too far out of your range for you to be able to monitor them at home." Eon hummed.
"Way too far, yeah." She nodded. "But there's not really enough room at the house for a proper amount of spiders, and it'd be difficult to come here every day to feed them and stuff."
"Could you set it up so the spiders weave for a certain amount of time, like an hour or something, then they go and eat some flies, then go back to work?" Shadow suggested.
Swarm paused, thinking. "Maybe?" She mused, cocking her head. "It'd be a pretty complex instruction… I haven't done anything that complicated before with them, but it might be possible. I'd have to set it with a few spiders first, and make sure I'm not in range of them at all but also have someone monitoring them…"
"Set a few to do it when we get back from patrol tonight, maybe, then Shadow and I can keep an eye on them for a little while to see if it works." Eon put forward.
"Sure, that's a good idea."
"Off we go, then?" Shadow said, tilting her head. "I mean, faster we patrol and do our meeting and patrol more, the faster we get back here to test it out!"
Swarm and Eon laughed, the insect user taking the floating silk and putting it in her backpack, following her leader and second onto the patrol.
Rebecca yawned slightly as she settled herself at her desk, sipping slowly at her coffee and wishing that her powers made it unnecessary for her to sleep or something. It'd really help in this job. She grumbled to herself. There aren't many times I envy Miss Militia, working in Brockton Bay and all, but her not needing sleep is most definitely one of those times. Shaking her head and imagining all of the work she could get done if she didn't need to sleep, the Chief Director started looking through her emails, trying to figure out what she needed to deal with immediately versus what could be left alone for a while.
Funding request, that can wait a bit, there's a few meeting requests that can wait a while as well, updated threat reports for the twins in New Orleans that's been sent along, a power testing report from… the Protectorate ENE… in Brockton Bay? Rebecca stared at it for a minute over her coffee, trying to figure out why she was getting an email for a power testing from Brockton Bay. As far as she knew, there hadn't been any new Capes recruited in Brockton Bay recently, though she had to admit that with the recent situation with Leviathan she wouldn't be too surprised to have a few new Triggers being picked up. The city was in very good shape, though, compared to most of the places targeted by the Endbringer, so maybe not.
Shrugging, she sipped her coffee and moved to delete the email, since there wasn't any reason to read over a power testing report personally- that's what she had deputies for, after all- at which point the caffeine suddenly hit her system and let her brain remind her of what she'd set up for the previous day.
Forcing herself not to spit out her drink, resulting in an awkward half-choking sound followed by a lot of coughing, she took a moment to recover and wave off her concerned secretary who'd popped her head in at the sound of coughing. Once she'd assured the woman that everything was fine, and she didn't need any help, she went back to the computer and opened the email, putting the coffee down on her desk as she did.
Reading over the summarised version of the events in the beginning of the email, she raised an eyebrow, then opened the document from the power testers and analysts that'd been hidden in a side room observing everything and scanned over that as well.
"Very interesting." She murmured, tapping her fingers on the desk. "At least, it is in some ways." The majority of the information wasn't incredibly interesting, really. The effects on the animals were expected, but the fact that the disruption of the Master effect made them turn rather hostile was curious, simply from the fact that the Mastered animal wasn't reacting badly to the Master.
It made her wonder what exactly the effects of the Masters really was, as well as pale slightly when she realised just how horrifying it could've been if Swarm had lost control of her bugs during any of the times where Shadow was healing with her nearby, but she shook her head, made a note of it, and continued on reading.
She hadn't expected anything to happen with the puppets, and luckily they hadn't suddenly decided to come to life or something, but the backlash that the human Masters had suffered when Shadow had hit them with her ability was both intriguing and worrying. Intriguing in that the healing power, which Shadow had always said had no offensive capabilities at all, would suddenly hurt a person like that apparently as a side effect, and worrying for almost the exact same reason.
After all, if human Masters ended up suffering from a backlash from an effect only there for a few seconds, then what would a Master effect that'd been sitting there for months, even years, do to the Simurgh when it failed?
Shuddering again, as well as paling slightly further, she shook her head. No use thinking about it, really. Piggot knows, Miss Militia knows, Armsmaster knows, there's a number of Masters who know, and Paul's going to know the second Aurora decides to start mentioning it, assuming he hasn't already heard of everything from before this entire thing went down. I'm going to have to sort out something involving the Simurgh containment zones simply because of that, unless I'm somehow able to persuade Paul that it'd be a horrible idea to do it in case it annoys the Simurgh.
A stray thought hit her as she moved to go back to her reading, making her smile. Maybe Shadow could do so much damage to the Simurgh in backlash that she'll be destroyed or something before her next attack. That'd be one way to deal with an Endbringer… Glancing once again over the document, she frowned a little as she reread the information on Aurora. The effect Shadow had on her was interesting as well. She's not a Master, or at least not solely one, which means the power testers screwed something up there. Which is just great, and given that Shadow figured that out probably means that we're indebted to them a little more, but at least Aurora can figure out some of this stuff on her own before the power testing, which should make things a little easier on that front. It also means Inari has yet another person they can call on if they want help with something or putting pressure on the PRT for whatever reason, which is less good for us. Still, Shadow's interaction with her power was very interesting, if simply to see how Shadow's powers interact with the ones the Entities give out.
Unlike David, Rebecca's opinions were more in line with those of the Doctor's in that Shadow and Eon weren't lying about their origins being from outside of Earth Bet. After all, the Doctor and Contessa had both confirmed that they weren't Case 53's, plus the fact that they lacked the tattoos, and aside from a ridiculously extreme Changer ability combined with the worlds most terrifying grab bag on a level even David couldn't match there wasn't really another option.
She was pretty sure that that latter idea was why David had a problem with them, in the end, because they gave the impression of being far more powerful than him without much apparent effort, but she was also fairly certain that they couldn't be Capes. After all, they had a lot more power than any Cape she'd even seen, a lot more abilities than any aside from David, and were able to teach each other their abilities if the fact that Eon had learned to heal was any indication.
Plus, though she wouldn't admit it to anyone outside of her own head, the idea that whatever god might exist had suddenly decided to take interest in the world again and sent some help against Scion made her more hopeful about their chances than she'd been in a long time. Especially since both Eon and Shadow had managed to seriously damage Leviathan with their abilities.
So, until she was able to get more information out of Shadow or Eon, she was going to hope that the stories going around about them were true and they were actually some kind of god-beings from another world.
At least this way the aliens were on their side.
A final addendum noted that Eon had informed Miss Militia that he could also heal, but that hadn't been tested, as well as mentioning Swarm's apparent complete immunity to Shadow's ability, before the power testers ended their report with a request to get them back into power testing as soon as possible. Apparently the interactions were interesting, or something, and they wanted to see what else they could test.
Rebecca made a note of that fact for later, just in case it was something they could possibly follow up on in the future to find out more information about the team or the two kitsune, then read the parting message from Emily.
In my opinion it would be best to allow Shadow to make trips to the various Simurgh Containment Zones, beginning as soon as possible. A very high security level would be recommended, and I also suggest allowing either Eon or Swarm to travel with her to whatever zone she goes to, both as extra security and as reassurance to Team Inari.
Rebecca wasn't quite sure what a kitsune would need reassurance for, given that under the legends she knew Shadow was at least six hundred years old, but given the way she acted perhaps she was more inexperienced than any of them realised. She was definitely growing up quickly, though. Which was almost a sad thing, her worldview whenever she posted on PHO was both refreshing and amusing. Perhaps it was supposed to be reassurance for Swarm? All signs pointed to her being quite young, and very attached to her two team mates. If she was worried about her team mate going away like that, then knowing that Shadow was with Eon or being with her herself might keep her calm.
Making another note on the page next to her, as a prompt to remind her to bring someone else from Team Inari onto the trips, she closed the email and instead opened up an internal PRT document, one that listed all of the Simurgh Containment Zones in the world.
Hopefully she'd be able to set something up, she mused, starting to read.
Shadow shook her fur out with a yawn, trotting out of the Den.
"Ahh, the Sleeping Slakoth awakens." Eon said sarcastically, uncurling his tails and standing, leaving the woven pile of sticks and branches resting gently on one side.
"Hush, Eon." She rolled her eyes at him, the impact slightly decreased by another yawn. "I did a lot of healing yesterday, I'm still tired."
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine. I rested plenty, I was using berries to restore my Move power, so I'm fine. Just tired from everything that happened, that's all." She assured him, trotting over to sit next to him and examine the wooden thing. "What's this for?"
"Extra Berry crate." Eon explained, picking it back up with Extrasensory. A few more branches followed it and started working their way into the weave. "Figured you might want one, given that we're still rebuilding our stock from Leviathan. You especially."
"True." Shadow nodded, thinking about her Berry supply. While she'd been lucky enough that the rain from Leviathan hadn't washed any of the currently-growing Berry bushes away- the tree cover in the area and the small stream running through it taking most of the rain out of the way for her, the trenches the two of them had dug doing the rest, and there'd not been much rain there anyway with how far out of the city it was- there was still the problem of having used a fair few Max Elixirs and Leppa Berries to recover from healing almost constantly for a good half an hour, plus the time in the aftermath of the attack healing anyone else who was brought in by search and rescue after the battle. Plus, with the two weeks needed to make more Max Elixirs being one that needed a fair bit of watching over, though there were some very long periods where it could be left alone, she hadn't had the time to really sit there and make them.
Hopefully she'd have a bit of time soon, though given that she'd brought a good few hundred with her by raiding their stores and the town stores, then setting her team to start working in the normal groups to make more of them.
That was one of the nice things about Team Inari's setup. Three teams would be out on jobs for a given week, each with a healer. Three more teams would wait in the background, also with healers, in case something happened and someone in Inari's mission teams needed backup. The rest of the team did whatever; shopping, visiting family if they had any, tending to the Berry farm, move tutoring- either doing or getting the tutoring- occasionally some of the oldest and more powerful Pokemon would do smaller missions that only took a few hours in local dungeons for a little bit more money or to collect items, and a lot of them had worked with Shadow to provide what was basically twenty-four-seven oversight over making Max Elixirs. It was a bit ridiculous, and most of the Pokemon that did it with her were non combatants anyway- as much as you could be in a Rescue Team- but in the end it would have an absolute ton of Max Elixir made to be bottled, because you could have multiple batches running at once. It wasn't recommended to have less than three Pokemon working on one batch, so you could rotate out the amount of attention being paid it, so she split the groups into four a piece and went from there. Hopefully within a little while they'd've managed to replace everything she'd took from the storage and maybe started selling them to the Kecleon brothers again along with some Berries.
"I suppose we don't really need more Max Elixirs." Shadow hummed to herself. "If we're careful with what we've got, and mostly use the Leppa Berries we have rather than them, I think we'll be fine."
"We brought so many, I'm pretty sure we're alright." Eon chuckled, twisting the basket around to continue weaving.
"Plus I don't really have the time to make any more nowadays." She sighed. "I miss being at home with Inari. Swarm's great, and we're doing loads of good here so far I think, but I miss having an entire team I could command around to make sure we had enough items and stuff, and a bunch of Pokemon to work with making Max Elixirs when I'm not on missions with you."
"When we're not on mission rotation, you mean."
"Same thing, really."
Shadow chuckled a little, leaning into Eon's side and burrowing into the fur on his chest slightly. "I miss it, though. Even if we're doing a lot here, I miss our team and Team Fleetfoot and the others we work with. I miss getting to go shopping in the market and stuff and talking with the Kecleon about the shop. I miss doing missions in Dungeons where no-one can really get hurt. It's so risky here, you or Swarm could get hurt at any time and I already know I can't fix really big things."
Eon bumped his nose against the crest of fur on her head, letting the weaving still. "You can keep us safe until Amy gets there with Vicky, though. I won't say don't worry, because it's just a smart idea to worry when you're in a dangerous place, but I will say that you're good enough to manage to keep us safe if something goes wrong. Plus, well, if it's escalated to the point where one of us was seriously hurt, I expect the PRT would've noticed by then, and perhaps New Wave as well, so there'd be backup on the way."
"Still would prefer no one getting hurt at all…" She rumbled softly.
The two of them sat there for a minute, thinking, when the shrill sound of the phone ringing from the Den made them look over. Shadow forced herself to her feet and stumbled over, feeling a lot more tired all of a sudden, and pulled the phone out from its place with a tug of Extrasensory.
"Shadow speaking." She greeted, going back outside so Eon could listen to the conversation as well.
"Hello, Shadow." A gentle, slightly familiar voice came from the device. "This is Parian speaking."
"Oh! Hello, Parian, nice to hear from you." She smiled. "What's up?"
"Is Swarm with you at the moment? I'd like to speak to her."
"She's not about at the minute, but if you want me to I can pass a message along to her for you?"
"Oh, that works too. I was wondering if she'd be willing to drop by later? I'd like to negotiate a deal with her."
Shadow paused. Taylor still wasn't back at school, given that Winslow had managed to get completely swamped from the rain- nothing else had really affected it, but the rain itself had managed to seep in just about everywhere and wreck it, so it didn't look like the city was going to bother trying to rebuild it. Hopefully that'd mean Taylor would end up in a different school without the bullies, which would be nice. Or she'd persuade Danny to let her home school so she could patrol more. Either would be good, of course. But the bonus was that Taylor was pretty much always free at the moment, and Danny was willing to let her run about whenever they wanted. They were planning to patrol today, in fact, so they could probably spare a little time.
"Yeah, we can drop by while we're on patrol today." She told her. "Though I'm not sure exactly when that'll be…"
"That's no problem." Parian assured her. "I'll be in the shop pretty much all day today working on orders, just come in whenever you have a moment in your patrol."
"We'll be certain to." Shadow grinned. "See you then!" The Vulpix hung up without ceremony, then swapped a look with Eon.
"If you want to go get Taylor, that's fine by me." He said. "I'll be staying here to do more on this, thank you."
"Is that permission for the two of us to go out alone?" She asked cheekily. Eon thwapped her side with his tail in response, making her laugh and skip out of range, piling on an Agility and taking off towards Taylor's house.
Eon shook his head, going back to focusing on the Berry crate. Silly Vulpix. Of course I wouldn't be giving you permission to run off alone when someone has a deal to make with Swarm. Someone needs to be there to make sure things go well.
Knock. Knock.
"I'll get it!" Taylor called, pushing herself out of her chair. She was apparently in civilian clothes, but with her costume underneath that. Her mask was sitting in a pocket on the outfit, along with her phone, while some of the money she had plus a bunch of spider-silk bandages that she'd been making since Leviathan were in the costume's backpack.
It was a rather large backpack, luckily, plus everything could be compressed down a bit. The Epi-pens and the like were at the very top, in easy reach of the spiders, but there was still plenty of room for other things to go in as well if she needed to, assuming she didn't just store it in the Treasure Bag.
Opening the back door, she took a step back and to the left, behind the door, waited about five seconds, then closed the door again. "Hi Shadow."
"Hey Taylor." Shadow grinned, the illusion fading away as Taylor looked back. "Came to ask if you were ready to go patrolling?" She gave her a dubious look. "You don't look it."
Taylor smirked, lifting up the edge of her shirt to reveal her costume underneath. "This is just because I was sitting in the front room." She explained. "My mask's in my pocket. I'll just leave this in the Den when we get there, if that's ok?"
"Sure, no problem. Are you gonna say goodbye to your dad?"
"No need, I'm here." Danny announced, walking through the door. "Hello Shadow, good to see you recovered well from yesterday." Shadow blushed; they'd come back to her house to fill Danny in after their coffee appointment with New Wave, and even with the caffeine and sugar Shadow had been falling asleep in the seat she'd taken, with Eon practically carrying her back to the Den after they'd talked to Danny. "You stay safe, girls, and come back later if you want. We can talk more."
"We'll definitely have some stuff to talk about." Shadow promised, straightening. "We'll stop off at the Den on the way back to put stuff back and the like, but we'll be back to chat."
"Then have fun on patrol, and don't get hurt." He stepped forward, hugging Taylor- gently, to avoid any bugs- then patted Shadow's head.
"I doubt we will, there's still not many people wanting to mess about at the moment." Shadow reminded. "Someone might decide to kick up a fuss suddenly, sure, but we're still in the two weeks of silence after an attack, so it's not really likely."
"We are coming to the end of that, though, so we'll need to start looking out for proper trouble again soon." Taylor pointed out. "Plus there's always idiots around that cause problems and aren't with a gang."
"True." She nodded, remembering the number of small time muggers they'd run across. "Point is that we'll be careful, there's not much going on, and I can heal." Taylor opened the back door again, and Shadow took a moment to wrap both of them in invisibility before they headed out. "So I'm pretty sure we'll be fine together."
"Fair enough."
"Anyway! Parian called me a little bit ago, she wanted to know if you were free to stop by sometime. I said sure, we could do that while we're on patrol, and Eon says it's fine as well. Hopefully you don't mind?"
"It's ok. Do we need to be there at any particular time?"
"No, just whenever." Shadow told her. "We'll just walk about for a bit and pass by the shop, then we can drop in to talk to her."
"Right. I assume this is something to do with me selling her spider silk?"
"Probably, given that she wanted to talk to you."
"Excellent." Taylor grinned broadly, reaching into her trouser pocket to grab her mask as they crossed the road. She slipped it over her head, pulling her hair out of the back, and Shadow grinned up at her, knowing it was just a bit of extra security for in case something happened to her illusion while she was tired. "Do we have some of the sample bits at the Den?"
"I would've told you before we left if we didn't." Shadow promised. "There's a good couple of squares left in the box in the Den for us to take with us on patrol for you. We're obviously gonna stop at the Den first to pick up Eon, so we'll put that in your bag before we leave then make our way slowly towards Parian's shop."
"Alright." She glanced around behind the orange eyes. "Where is Eon, anyway?"
"Back at the Den. He's making another Berry basket for me, since the bushes are growing so well." Taylor snorted.
"Those trees are bullshit." She muttered. "I have no idea how you lot were able to maintain such a big farm back on your world without ending up overflowing with the things. Especially if they normally grow faster there than they do here."
Shadow's smile was a little bittersweet. "We tend to use a lot of them in Dungeons, simply from getting into fights. Heal Pulse and Heal Bell is for quick heals mostly, when we don't have much time between one fight and the next, or when people on the team are sleeping or something. Forced sleep tends to be hard to wake Pokemon up from unless it's done naturally or with a Move, so sometimes I Heal Bell to wake them up unless they're stirring themselves. Oran or Sitrus Berries are good for health boosts, and are actually better than Heal Pulse if the Pokemon are lower level. Pecha for poison, Rawst for burn, Cheri for paralysis, Chesto for sleep but it's a pain to eat unless you juice it, Aspear for freezing- don't ask how that works, because again it's mainly juicing it- and Persim helps with confusion." Shadow listed off. "They're also a good snack, of course, and since those ones grow in a day it's easy to resupply. Leppa increases Move Power, which is why I eat them when I'm getting tired, Lum cures any status at all, a day and two days normally. There's some Berries that lower the effectiveness of super-effective Moves when they're eaten; Eon or I could eat a Passho Berry and take less damage from a Water-type Move, but only the once. We need to eat more to get the effect again. There's some that're best eaten when you have low health that boost your stats to a higher point, but they tend to make you disorientated for a while after you eat them, kinda like coming down from an adrenaline rush. There's also a bunch of others that don't have any sort of battle effect, but they cook really nicely. I brought some of those along to grow and cook with, though I'm not sure what to make yet."
"Why not a pie or something?" Taylor asked, bringing the Vulpix out of her musings. "That might be good. Or a cake for New Wave to say thanks?"
"That's a good idea." Shadow nodded with a smile, shaking away the slight sadness that came with thinking about her home and team. "No-one would be allergic to anything, given that these either don't exist here or are basically just similar to yours, and I'm pretty sure humans eat them pretty often normally. A cake might be good, though I'd need a kitchen I can use."
"Make Eon float you around on a box or something so you can reach ok, and use Extrasensory to cook." She suggested. Shadow barked out a laugh.
"That'd work, totally. Mind if I use your kitchen when we have some time?"
"Check with Dad first, but I don't see why not."
"Probably should check with Eon too, if he's gonna be helping me." She added, as they got deep enough into the forest to drop the illusion completely. "I mean, bit rude to just rope him into it. Fancy helping with the cake?"
"Sure, why not." Taylor smiled behind the mask. "Mom and I used to bake cakes pretty often. Maybe I should pull out some of her old recipes… I think her book is on the shelf still, we can figure out what sort of things we can swap out for some of your Berries."
"This sounds like a multi day endeavour. I'm absolutely fine with that when we've got some time." Shadow nodded. "Eon's gonna get sick of holding me up to cook with you. And I'm gonna use so many Berries in this."
"Make sure you have enough to replant."
"It'll be pretty difficult not to, to be honest." She admitted. "I brought a couple dozen of each one we have access to, excluding some of the really, really rare ones we don't have many of, and only a couple of really important Gold and Silver ones that take forever to grow, but I don't cook with those ones anyway, because they're rare and valuable."
"Gold and Silver?"
"There's really rare Berry mutations that tend to mean the effects of the Berries are much greater. For the plain ones they just taste super nice, so I sometimes cook special things with them, but for the ones that boost stats it gives a super boost instead. Those are only for very special occasions, like if the mission we're hired for means we might be fighting a Legendary or something super powerful like that. The Gold and Silver versions of those boost Berries don't give as much of a backlash either, but they're so rare it's not even funny. Plant a seed from a Gold Maranga Berry, you're lucky to get a Gold and two Silver from the crop. Takes three days to grow, you're lucky to get eight out of it with a lot of care, and five of them are just normal. You get about three or four seeds per Gold, which is alright, it depends on the care of the bushes."
"Sounds like a pain." Taylor commented, sounding amused at her rambling. "You know a lot about these Berries though."
"I've been growing them for the last two years for the team, and we had a garden back home with Berries in it. Took a while to get all the Gold Berries we've collected, but with the careful care of some of the others we've managed to collect quite a few of the type we have, Maranga being one of those. We got lucky and got a Sitrus as well, and we have some Silver Pecha and Persim. I've been looking for some of Leppa for a long time now, but we've gotten unlucky."
"I'm surprised some of the ones you grow already haven't suddenly mutated into being Gold or Silver."
"So were we, but it's really rare that they mutate, so I think we're just not getting it." She shrugged. "We'll probably get there eventually."
"Fair enough." Walking a little further into the forest, the uncomfortable feeling of the repelling illusion rolled over them, making Taylor shiver a bit. "I still don't like that."
"It is weird, absolutely. We don't use them at home, but sometimes you find them in Dungeons hiding something. It's where the idea came from, I think, though it's possible that that Zoroark figured it out alone to hide something." Shadow shuddered a little. "I still don't like it very much, but it's handy."
"What is?" The voice of Eon called, making them both smile.
"Just your little repulsion trick." Taylor told him, pulling her mask up to her head for a moment to smile at him. "Hi, Eon."
"Hello, Taylor." The Ninetales came over to them, the Berry basket settling on the ground. "Ready to go?"
"I've got my costume on under this." She explained, seeing the slightly dubious look he was giving her. "I'll leave this outfit here and pick it up later."
"Ah, I see." Eon nodded. "There's some samples in the Den, by the way. On the shelf near the door."
"I'll grab those for you, Taylor." Shadow offered. Taylor, already starting to surround herself in a screen of bugs, nodded.
"Thanks, Shadow." The bugs completely surrounded her, and she quickly removed the civilian clothing she was wearing over her costume, carefully folding it before placing it on the ground to pull her mask back over her face. Picking up the clothes again, she brought the shroud of bugs down and walked to the storage place, putting them away. Turning back to her team mates, she noticed that Shadow had settled herself between Eon's paws, a couple of foot squares of silk floating before her. "I need a better way to make larger amounts of silk if we're doing this." She muttered, coming over.
"I'd say set up a massive weaving station here, but I think we're too far out of your range for you to be able to monitor them at home." Eon hummed.
"Way too far, yeah." She nodded. "But there's not really enough room at the house for a proper amount of spiders, and it'd be difficult to come here every day to feed them and stuff."
"Could you set it up so the spiders weave for a certain amount of time, like an hour or something, then they go and eat some flies, then go back to work?" Shadow suggested.
Swarm paused, thinking. "Maybe?" She mused, cocking her head. "It'd be a pretty complex instruction… I haven't done anything that complicated before with them, but it might be possible. I'd have to set it with a few spiders first, and make sure I'm not in range of them at all but also have someone monitoring them…"
"Set a few to do it when we get back from patrol tonight, maybe, then Shadow and I can keep an eye on them for a little while to see if it works." Eon put forward.
"Sure, that's a good idea."
"Off we go, then?" Shadow said, tilting her head. "I mean, faster we patrol and do our meeting and patrol more, the faster we get back here to test it out!"
Swarm and Eon laughed, the insect user taking the floating silk and putting it in her backpack, following her leader and second onto the patrol.
Last edited:
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Interesting. More bug commands (I wonder if that will work) and a potential headache for Ziz.
Missing a space.
than any
The way the Bird cage works may not be that conductive to doing such a thing... 🤷♂️
Garreon
Paldean Top Champion
- Location
- Mesagoza, Paldea
oh lexi, if only you knew how old she is
Chapter 25- Crowds, business, and cooking
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
"Anything interesting going on, Swarm?" Shadow asked lowly, displacing the sound to almost right next to her ear. The insect controller, who was quietly watching the crowd around them, shook her head a little, tapping twice on the ground with the tip of her boot. Assured, Shadow went back to smiling at the group of children around her, slightly surprised that so many of them were around on a Wednesday morning. Maybe their school wasn't open yet?
"Can you make a fire?" One of them asked, a little girl standing next to a tall woman. The woman looked slightly startled at her daughter's request, as did a few of the other parents or guardians standing around, but all of the children looked excited. She chuckled, then nodded.
"If all of you step back, I can make a little fire for you to look at." She promised. "Don't touch it, though, it'll be a bit warm."
"Ok, Miss Shadow!" They all cheered, taking a couple of steps back. Eon carefully intervened with gentle Extrasensorys to keep any of them from tripping over each other, and Shadow focused for a moment. Fire ran along her fur for a moment, starting at her nose, and a small Will-O-Wisp burst from the tips of her tails, breaking off and orbiting her, waiting for a target.
The kids oohed and ahhed at it, and Shadow gave a slightly proud grin while they did. The creation of a Will-O-Wisp wasn't difficult in the slightest, it was one of the easier Fire Moves to channel- making it so it only burned and nothing else was the hard part- but running it over the entirety of her body before forming them at her tails was more difficult than it should be.
Looked cool, though. Probably added more power to the burn effect as well, actually, because it was being formed for longer. That sounded like something they should probably test when they got back home, since having a much stronger burn effect to apply with not much more focus- after some practise- sounded like something they should really do before heading into the Dungeons again.
She made a mental note to ask around for someone willing to help her test that when they were back, as let the kids admire the Will-O-Wisp for a minute more before blowing it out, halting the attack.
"That was pretty!"
"It was, wasn't it?" Shadow smiled gently. "Of course, it's dangerous too, but it still looks nice."
"As much fun as this is, I'm afraid we need to be going now." Eon stepped in, giving a slight smile of his own. "We've got a meeting to go to, Shadow."
"I guess you're right." She sighed. "Sorry, everyone."
"Awwww."
"I know, I'm sorry, but meetings are important to go to." She stepped back, taking up Eon's flank while Swarm stepped into theirs, and the various parents began gathering their kids, moving out of the way of the trio. All three waved to the children as they passed, and pretended not to notice the number of cameras pointing at them.
"That was nice of you, Shadow." Swarm muttered, lowly enough that Eon and Shadow could barely hear her. Shadow wove together a displacement illusion again, and spoke quietly to both of them.
"It's not really much of a hardship, entertaining a few kids. We've had to do it a few times, actually, when kids end up being the targets of our Rescue Missions. Happens more often than it probably should, actually, but it means we have a fair bit of experience dealing with it." Shadow smiled. "Plus, it's pretty fun."
"For you, maybe." Eon rumbled, mimicking the illusion she had in place. "They like you. Me, not so much."
"It's because you're a Ninetales, and just about everyone ever knows you should be wary of Ninetales and their curses."
"Yes, as if we apply those at random." He hissed. Shadow nudged his side with her tails.
"Calm down, Eon. Some kids like you too, remember. You're sparkly."
"And you're bubbly, so Pokemon like you more."
Swarm chuckled. "Stop arguing, you two. We're nearly at Parian's shop now." Both vulpines grumbled lowly at her interruption, not really annoyed at all, and put on their 'serious' faces. Swarm took the lead of the group, given that it was her work they would be negotiating, and pushed open the door of the shop, listening to the bell jangling back and forth.
"Coming!" Parian's voice called from the back, and Inari walked further into the centre of the shop floor as the doll-like girl hurried to the counter. "Hi, how can I- oh, Team Inari!" The woman's voice went from professional to enthusiastic in the space of a second or so, and all three of them smiled at her.
"Hello, Parian." Swarm greeted. "Shadow mentioned that you called this morning, so we thought we'd come along and talk to you before we got into our patrol in earnest."
"Oh, thank you." The Cape gave an audible smile and took something from behind the counter before walking across and opening a gate. "Here, come on through to the back, we can talk in my workshop." Again Swarm led the way into the back room, Eon following and Shadow taking position in the back of the group.
The workroom was a mess of fabrics and scissors, dress dummies scattered around the room with half-finished projects on them. There was a single completed dress in the corner, a layered ruffled dress that Shadow thought looked very pretty, and needles and thread were laying on the table. One of them was threaded through some fabric, as if the dressmaker had been in the middle of her project when they'd come in. The sample of spider silk Swarm had left last time was also on the table, and Parian quickly pulled a few chairs out from a corner to offer to them.
"Sorry about the mess." She apologised hurriedly. "I've been working on a few things and wasn't really expecting you to come by so soon."
"It's fine." Shadow waved off, jumping up into the seat. "We did come pretty quickly, and it's not like we were expecting you to drop everything just because we showed up here."
"Still, I should probably have tidied up a little when I knew you were coming." She scratched at the back of her head, embarrassed. "Anyway, about the spider silk…"
"I have a few more samples for you, and it shouldn't take too long to make more, larger ones for you." Swarm told her. "I… have to admit that I'm not sure how much spider silk would normally go for, but to be honest it doesn't really matter much? I mean, it doesn't take too long to make the squares, so…" She half shrugged.
"I don't want you to feel like I'm undercharging you." Parian seemed to frown, and Eon and Shadow swapped an amused glance, sensing this was likely to be similar to a few trading days Inari had had in the marketplace, and settled back to watch.
It had been.
It'd been very similar to the times where the group had been haggling for things like Max Elixirs in the marketplace, trying to get a slightly better price than the Kecleon duo were asking. Eon had quietly made a joke about it being rather like their month-long journey to obtain the recipe for Max Elixirs themselves, which had led to Shadow snorting and drawing some attention to her.
Either way, it'd gone quite well, though Parian and Swarm had seemed to be playing the opposite role; Swarm had been insisting that she was being offered too much and lowering it, while Parian had been horrified about ripping her off and put forward higher amounts. In the end, the seamstress had given up and just accepted the fact that Swarm was refusing to let her give her anything more than fifteen dollars per foot square and ended the negotiations on that.
"Well that went well!" Shadow said brightly. They were once again under the audio illusion, Shadow's voice being displaced into Swarm and Eon's ears while dampening whatever Swarm said.
The bug controller glared at her slightly through the mask. "It was a pain." She said flatly. "Why wouldn't she just accept that I didn't want much money for the silk and leave it at that?"
"Same reason you kept trying to drop it, she didn't want to feel like she was ripping you off." Eon told her. "Spider silk is pretty expensive, from what I'm understanding, and the idea of having someone that can make it so much more easily probably hasn't quite gotten through to her yet."
"Plus it does take you time to make the bits of silk, so maybe she's taking into account the time you'd need and not wanting to make patrols or your civilian life trouble by having you need to sit down and make it." Shadow added. "Of course, if that little experiment with works later today, it'll take even less time to make the silk lengths."
"I suppose that makes sense." Swarm nodded. "So, what's for the rest of the patrol? Just wander about, fight people that cause trouble, hopefully not end up in any sort of trouble?"
"Basically." Eon nodded, glancing back at her from point position of the group. "Don't really expect to run into anything, let's be honest, but just showing the flag is important too."
"Naturally." Swarm grinned, before pausing. "Looks like a mugging, two alleys ahead. A guy being accosted by two girls, I think one of them has a knife? Bit hard to see."
"Good enough information, Swarm." Shadow smiled, as the pair of Pokemon lowered themselves to the ground slightly and the hum around the insect controller got noticeably quieter. "Man, do I wish we had you in Mystery Dungeons back home. So much easier than having to completely search the entire floor for the Pokemon or whatever we're trying to find."
"At least the exploration is fun." Eon pointed out, poking her with his tail tip.
"True that." She grinned a little viciously, her eyes starting to shimmer with a Hypnosis. "Now, let's catch us some criminals!"
Five and a half hours later, the team got tired enough to justify going back to the Den. It was half five now, so it wasn't exactly dark, but it was getting a little late and the group wanted to stop and eat, as well as let Taylor spend some more time with Danny.
Plus Swarm was excited to test out the idea they'd had with the spiders, which required going back to the Den.
Slipping out of the city was a little harder than normal, since for some reason people seemed to be very focused on following them about with cameras, but aside from a few muggings they'd dealt with and a short encounter with Clockblocker and Gallant walking around, not much had actually happened.
Swarm had speculated it was to do with their visit to the PRT building the day before, which PHO had apparently gone a little mad about trying to figure out why they were there.
Eventually the trio had just ducked into an alleyway and completely cloaked, with Swarm suppressing the sound of her bugs to as near nothing as she could, and stealthed their way out of the city and into the forest before breaking into a jog.
"So." Swarm sighed, once she had her breath back from the jogging. "I take it we're good, then?"
"I'd say so." Eon chuckled. "It's worked out pretty well today, I think. Your deal with Parian went well, the patrol was pretty good," they all paused to shudder slightly as they went past the barrier illusion, "So I think that counts as productive."
"So do I." Shadow nodded. "Now, let's get into the Den, you get changed, set up your bugs, and then we can arrange going to yours to make cake tomorrow."
"I'll make sure I have the stuff for a cake, and probably also find a recipe out." Swarm promised.
"I… think I missed something here?" Eon paused, looking between the two of them. "Cake?"
"We talked about it on the way here." Swarm explained. "We talked about making a cake for New Wave to say thanks for their help, Shadow mentioned the Berries and went on a ramble about them, you're being conscripted to float a box around the kitchen so Shadow can see what she's doing, and yes we're fairly sure it'll be safe for them. I'm willing to help make a second one if you want me to eat it and make sure it's not going to be trouble, though."
"No, I doubt it would be, people eat Berries all the time in our world." Eon agreed. "And since when was I nominated to make Shadow float?"
"Since earlier." Shadow sniped back, as they entered the area where the Den was. "I'll have to think a bit on what Berries we put into it, but I'll make sure I bring them with me tomorrow."
"I take it I'm not getting any say in this?"
"Nope." Swarm chuckled, heading over to the storage box and getting out her civilian costume. A wall of bugs quickly surrounded her for a moment, and Taylor soon stepped out from behind the swarm, shoving her mask into her pocket. "Right, let's set something up for me to set my spiders up on, and probably find a way to box in some flies for them to eat. Set the command, then I'll head home to spend some time with Dad and find that cake recipe out."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Eon settled down to watch the pair of girls wander about the Den, setting up a rail of sticks and branches for Taylor to place her spiders on, then arranging a pile of flies to sit on one side that would just sit there and wait for the spiders to come and eat them. The spiders were then set up on a sort of weaving board, and Taylor stood back to stare at her bugs.
"I… think that's done." She muttered, after a minute. "I'm not really sure what else I can do here."
"What did you do?" Shadow asked, as the spiders began to move.
"I told the spiders to start weaving in the same pattern I use for my normal cloth, then told them that every ten minutes they should take a break and eat a fly. They'll do that and then go back to weaving, and they'll do that until they run out of flies, at which point they'll just keep weaving until they die."
"Wow."
"I'm alright losing these spiders, I have tons of eggs waiting to hatch at the moment, but this is just a test. If I start doing this properly, I'll make the spiders weave until they run out of flies, then when they do they all just go into hibernation until I get more flies for them and wake them up." Taylor explained, watching them weave. "Right, I need to get going, then, so we can make sure they'll do it when I'm not around."
"I'll walk you back." Shadow volunteered, trotting around her feet. "Seeya in a bit, Eon."
"See you tomorrow, Taylor." Eon lifted a paw and waved absently, lifting up the still unfinished Berry basket and going back to work on it.
May 26th, 2011. Thursday.
Lung grumbled as he worked his way through the most recent reports from his different moles, looking for anything useful. Technically, everything in the pile would be important, with his moles being well aware that that they should only send the important things on to him, but it was always a good idea to check it over. Knowing which of his moles were sending more useless information might be helpful for figuring out whether or not certain moles had been compromised in the organisations, which meant that he would know to take them with a pinch of salt.
Another one from the PRT mole? He mused to himself, placing the report from one of the few moles he'd managed to get in the Empire to one side. Interesting… I wonder what might have changed… a new Parahuman in the Bay, perhaps? Lifting it up, he glanced over the threat report's title, then paused. Team Inari.
The leader of the ABB sighed, putting the report down again, and started going through the rest of the files he'd been given by the rest of his moles. If he was planning on looking at something Team Inari had been doing, he wanted to at least have the rest of his work done first so that he didn't get distracted by their work.
It took nearly an hour to get through them all, mostly inane but interesting things that could be useful in the future. The city was still in a state of mostly quiet in the aftermath of Leviathan's attack, but that wasn't likely to last for much longer, so knowing some of these things for when the peace time ended would be useful. Finally putting away the last report, he turned back to the Team Inari report and flipped through it, scanning over the folder as fast as he could to figure out what sort of insane thing the team had managed to do.
By the time he'd reached the end, Lung sighed, placed the report back on the side again, and rested his head on the desk.
"Of course." He mumbled to himself. "Of course they can break Master effects as well. They already do ridiculous things pretty much every time they get involved with something more major than street crime. Why not be able to remove Master effects?"
It did make sense, though. If the duo really were kitsune, being able to remove the control the Simurgh had over people would be something they'd need to do, especially if they were planning on fixing the world like they seemed to be aiming towards. Having the ability to both heal and fight made the pair of kitsune very powerful allies to have; there weren't many Parahumans who were able to heal for some reason, and the fact that Inari seemed to have allied somewhat with New Wave made a very powerful healing pair. Panacea could heal almost anything, but couldn't do anything to do with the brain, while Shadow couldn't heal as much as she could but could make some impact on the brain. Between the two of them they had almost everything covered, and now they could remove Master effects as well.
Lung was pretty sure the Chief Director of the PRT would be hearing about this soon enough, and it was likely something would be arranged to bring Shadow to one of the Simurgh containment zones as soon as possible. The PRT had no love for those things either, from what he was aware, and the symbolism of their 'victory', as it were, against the Simurgh would give the public the impression that the PRT was doing something, even if it needed the help of an independent team to do it.
Moving the Team Inari report to one side, he carefully collected a folder and slipped it inside, then called for Oni Lee.
"Lee." He said, once his second-in-command had arrived. "Take this report, arrange for it to be delivered to Team Inari the next time they make a public appearance somewhere. Ensure the delivery is done discretely."
"Yes, Lung-sama." The only other Parahuman in the ABB bowed, taking the green folder from his hands, then teleported out again in a burst of ash.
Silently musing to himself about the changes in the Bay since Team Inari had come around a month ago, Lung moved on to the next bit of work in his pile, somewhat curious as to what would come next from that trio.
"Hey, Taylor." Shadow grinned widely. "Ready?"
"Absolutely." The girl nodded back, with a similar smile on her face. "It's been a while since I've done any sort of baking for fun, and I'm really interested to see how this works out."
"Should be fun for sure." Shadow traipsed in, a number of baskets floating behind her in a pink grip. More followed in a darker one, and they were followed by the grey form of Eon, who flicked the door closed with a tail on the way in. "I've done cakes before, but they've been small ones, since berries have just as much an effect when they're juiced and using them as cake mix is a nice change of pace for Dungeons, but I never thought of making a big one."
"Experimenting is going to be… interesting." Eon agreed. "Also rather expensive. But definitely interesting."
"How do you three plan to do this?" Danny asked, from his place in the doorway. "Also, good morning."
"Morning, Danny." Eon nodded to him, depositing his baskets on the table and claiming a chair. Shadow put hers next to them, pausing for a moment to think, then jumped into the chair next to him.
"Might as well handle a team meeting first…" She muttered to herself, gesturing for Taylor and Danny to sit down as well.
"To answer your question, Danny, I'm pretty sure these two intend to just sit here with a bunch of Berries and start subbing them in for normal ingredients, baking them, then eating them to see how it turns out." Eon continued. "Then repeating the cooking for whatever did work. Hence expensive."
"And hence my undercover shopping trip last night for more things for cake." Shadow added. "I went out and bought a ton of eggs and flour and milk and stuff for us to use as well. They're in the baskets as well. I'll go out and get more if we think we need them."
"…This is going to result in a second round of the Great Flapjack Incident, isn't it." Eon sighed. Taylor and Danny exchanged a look while Shadow blushed.
"Not that bad, not my fault."
"I hold you responsible for it even so."
"Mean."
"Anyway, mini team meeting." Eon continued, ignoring both the palpable confusion at the table and Shadow's look. "Summary, the little experiment worked, we have the silk they managed to make in the Bag, so if at some point you want to come by the Den and spend a few hours setting up a much bigger setup that's fine."
"Really?" Taylor's eyes lit up, her confusion being pushed to one side as Eon handed over a large rectangle of spider silk. "Oh, wow, that's awesome! I'm so glad that worked, that'll make things loads easier. Parian is going to love this."
"Especially since you're undervaluing the hell out of it." Danny added dryly. "You could be making a lot out of this."
"I don't see the need." Taylor shrugged. "I make the silk for basically nothing, just the cost of some time and flies, I can now automate it so it's even easier, and being a Cape it's pretty hard for Parian to actually make money legitimately. Being able to offer her materials at a low price that she can use to sell her clothes for more means that she can actually make a fair bit of money for her time, which she deserves. Might as well sell it for practically nothing to help someone out."
"Huh." Danny gave her an impressed look. "That's… very well thought out."
"Of course it is." She smirked back. "Anyway, I'll come by at some point soon to set up a weaving station at the Den, though I'll need to grab more flies. Might just see if we can take a trip into the country or something and just collect them. And probably set up a stupid powerful breeding station to get more of them."
"The Den's going to be busy." Danny observed.
"We're going to start building more rooms, I think." Eon said. "The house under the willow is useful, of course, but at this point the secrecy isn't too big an issue. We have the illusions over everything to make it harder to find without us bringing you there, and there's also the Berry farm nearby that would show that someone's living in the area, so we're going to go around the area near the Den and expand it out. A place for Taylor to weave so that the silk doesn't get wet, maybe a few more houses as well just in case. Designated storage rooms that we can put under more illusions."
"You're building a village."
"Sort of." He admitted. "Back in Alma, almost all Rescue or Exploration Teams had something similar. Huge complexes that stretched around, to the sky and underground, where all the teams would live. For big teams, the complexes were often pretty huge, but a lot of the time the rooms themselves were small, aside from the treasuries and I suppose kitchens sometimes, because it was rare that the entire team was there at one time. Members would all go out on long missions in teams of their own, occasionally staying over in foreign towns and cities in order to take jobs out there before coming back. They'd be long expeditions and rarely return to the central hub of the team unless they paid for teleportation. Living space was more about sleeping and storing a few personal things, rather than actually living in a lot of the time. And of course there was the town of Alma itself, with the Kangaskhan Storage and the Kecleon Shop, you didn't really keep much in the storage of the base often. Valuables went to Kangaskhan, who couldn't be robbed, and a lot of things for missions could be brought from the Kecleon before you left. Berries were kept in storage for cooking with the rest of the food, some semi-rare items like Reviver Seeds were kept because the Kecleon didn't always have those in stock… so for the most part, the Dens were huge complexes for show." Eon's voice had gone somewhat quiet as he reminisced. "Lots of team members, so they needed a lot of space so Pokemon could stay there, to store items, to keep money before it was moved to the bank, to have room for new members. But so much of it would go unused sometimes… they were still incredible, though."
"They sound it." Taylor admitted softly. "I'd like to see those someday."
"Maybe you will." He smiled, blinking a little. "But yes, in a way we're building a village. Living space, storage space, we need those more than we would back home. We can't just go shopping here for things, there's no bank we can use, so we need a lot more room. Maybe some time we'll dig out underground caverns to use as storage, but for now a bunch of Dens will do to keep it all."
"Where do you get all the wood from, by the way?" She asked.
"The Berry trees." Eon explained. "They grow so fast they're fairly easy to use for it."
"They're tiny."
"But they work quite well when tied together." He reposted. "The rest of the woods can be used for longer bits of wood, sure, but the Berry trees are replenishable. I use them for basically everything, and it's not too hard." He paused. "They're also not actually that short, though they are compared to normal fruit trees. Probably because they don't have many Berries on them."
"…Fair enough." She acquiesced. "I don't see how you can build a village out of them, but sure."
"It'll be a lot of time and work for certain, but we can manage it." Shadow agreed. "And having something like Inari Base here on Bet would be nice."
"I've been overruled!" Taylor laughed, holding her hands up. "Alright, alright, Inari can have a village in the woods. It'll be cool, at least."
"It will be." Eon nodded, with a grin. "Now, onto the next thing, Shadow's attempt at filling your kitchen with cake."
"It's a joint effort!" Shadow objected, hopping down from her chair. Taylor slipped out to follow her a second later, heading into the kitchen to pull a cardboard box into view. The Vulpix promptly jumped onto that, Eon floating it up so that she could see the counters. "Now, we should probably write down what we substitute in so we can easily repeat it later, but we have a fair few Berries to work with. I bought a range of all of them with me so we can test them, but there's more of some than others- we have very very very few of the Golds and Silvers even at home, let alone here, so I only bought one of each with me. Those'll probably be really good, as long as we mix them with the right things; Maranga and Sitrus are kinda sour, and Pecha and Persim are pretty sweet, so we'll need to be careful with them."
"I hope you know what you're doing here."
"Of course I do!" Shadow sounded slightly offended. "I'll tell you how the different Berries taste before we use any of them. You have the cake recipe?"
"Yeah, right here." Taylor handed it over to Shadow, who started reading it over. Danny looked over them all, sighed slightly, then stood from his chair to go and get some paper and a pen, so he could write down what Berries they used in each cake, shaking his head as he did.
"Am I the only one who wants to know what the Great Flapjack Incident is?" He asked himself lowly.
Rebecca looked at the clock, did some thinking, and decided it was probably a good time to make that phone call she'd been waiting to do. She'd already spoken to Dragon and made arrangements for a transport, pending agreement from this next call, so all she had to do was arrange this, send a message to Emily, and let her subordinate deal with the rest of the problems that would probably come up from this.
Opening up the book of important phone numbers that sat on her desk, she double-checked the number she had to call, dialled it, waited for the other end to pick up, and spoke. "Good morning, sir." She said politely. "I apologise for calling so early in the morning, but I have a proposition to put forward to you…"
"Can you make a fire?" One of them asked, a little girl standing next to a tall woman. The woman looked slightly startled at her daughter's request, as did a few of the other parents or guardians standing around, but all of the children looked excited. She chuckled, then nodded.
"If all of you step back, I can make a little fire for you to look at." She promised. "Don't touch it, though, it'll be a bit warm."
"Ok, Miss Shadow!" They all cheered, taking a couple of steps back. Eon carefully intervened with gentle Extrasensorys to keep any of them from tripping over each other, and Shadow focused for a moment. Fire ran along her fur for a moment, starting at her nose, and a small Will-O-Wisp burst from the tips of her tails, breaking off and orbiting her, waiting for a target.
The kids oohed and ahhed at it, and Shadow gave a slightly proud grin while they did. The creation of a Will-O-Wisp wasn't difficult in the slightest, it was one of the easier Fire Moves to channel- making it so it only burned and nothing else was the hard part- but running it over the entirety of her body before forming them at her tails was more difficult than it should be.
Looked cool, though. Probably added more power to the burn effect as well, actually, because it was being formed for longer. That sounded like something they should probably test when they got back home, since having a much stronger burn effect to apply with not much more focus- after some practise- sounded like something they should really do before heading into the Dungeons again.
She made a mental note to ask around for someone willing to help her test that when they were back, as let the kids admire the Will-O-Wisp for a minute more before blowing it out, halting the attack.
"That was pretty!"
"It was, wasn't it?" Shadow smiled gently. "Of course, it's dangerous too, but it still looks nice."
"As much fun as this is, I'm afraid we need to be going now." Eon stepped in, giving a slight smile of his own. "We've got a meeting to go to, Shadow."
"I guess you're right." She sighed. "Sorry, everyone."
"Awwww."
"I know, I'm sorry, but meetings are important to go to." She stepped back, taking up Eon's flank while Swarm stepped into theirs, and the various parents began gathering their kids, moving out of the way of the trio. All three waved to the children as they passed, and pretended not to notice the number of cameras pointing at them.
"That was nice of you, Shadow." Swarm muttered, lowly enough that Eon and Shadow could barely hear her. Shadow wove together a displacement illusion again, and spoke quietly to both of them.
"It's not really much of a hardship, entertaining a few kids. We've had to do it a few times, actually, when kids end up being the targets of our Rescue Missions. Happens more often than it probably should, actually, but it means we have a fair bit of experience dealing with it." Shadow smiled. "Plus, it's pretty fun."
"For you, maybe." Eon rumbled, mimicking the illusion she had in place. "They like you. Me, not so much."
"It's because you're a Ninetales, and just about everyone ever knows you should be wary of Ninetales and their curses."
"Yes, as if we apply those at random." He hissed. Shadow nudged his side with her tails.
"Calm down, Eon. Some kids like you too, remember. You're sparkly."
"And you're bubbly, so Pokemon like you more."
Swarm chuckled. "Stop arguing, you two. We're nearly at Parian's shop now." Both vulpines grumbled lowly at her interruption, not really annoyed at all, and put on their 'serious' faces. Swarm took the lead of the group, given that it was her work they would be negotiating, and pushed open the door of the shop, listening to the bell jangling back and forth.
"Coming!" Parian's voice called from the back, and Inari walked further into the centre of the shop floor as the doll-like girl hurried to the counter. "Hi, how can I- oh, Team Inari!" The woman's voice went from professional to enthusiastic in the space of a second or so, and all three of them smiled at her.
"Hello, Parian." Swarm greeted. "Shadow mentioned that you called this morning, so we thought we'd come along and talk to you before we got into our patrol in earnest."
"Oh, thank you." The Cape gave an audible smile and took something from behind the counter before walking across and opening a gate. "Here, come on through to the back, we can talk in my workshop." Again Swarm led the way into the back room, Eon following and Shadow taking position in the back of the group.
The workroom was a mess of fabrics and scissors, dress dummies scattered around the room with half-finished projects on them. There was a single completed dress in the corner, a layered ruffled dress that Shadow thought looked very pretty, and needles and thread were laying on the table. One of them was threaded through some fabric, as if the dressmaker had been in the middle of her project when they'd come in. The sample of spider silk Swarm had left last time was also on the table, and Parian quickly pulled a few chairs out from a corner to offer to them.
"Sorry about the mess." She apologised hurriedly. "I've been working on a few things and wasn't really expecting you to come by so soon."
"It's fine." Shadow waved off, jumping up into the seat. "We did come pretty quickly, and it's not like we were expecting you to drop everything just because we showed up here."
"Still, I should probably have tidied up a little when I knew you were coming." She scratched at the back of her head, embarrassed. "Anyway, about the spider silk…"
"I have a few more samples for you, and it shouldn't take too long to make more, larger ones for you." Swarm told her. "I… have to admit that I'm not sure how much spider silk would normally go for, but to be honest it doesn't really matter much? I mean, it doesn't take too long to make the squares, so…" She half shrugged.
"I don't want you to feel like I'm undercharging you." Parian seemed to frown, and Eon and Shadow swapped an amused glance, sensing this was likely to be similar to a few trading days Inari had had in the marketplace, and settled back to watch.
It had been.
It'd been very similar to the times where the group had been haggling for things like Max Elixirs in the marketplace, trying to get a slightly better price than the Kecleon duo were asking. Eon had quietly made a joke about it being rather like their month-long journey to obtain the recipe for Max Elixirs themselves, which had led to Shadow snorting and drawing some attention to her.
Either way, it'd gone quite well, though Parian and Swarm had seemed to be playing the opposite role; Swarm had been insisting that she was being offered too much and lowering it, while Parian had been horrified about ripping her off and put forward higher amounts. In the end, the seamstress had given up and just accepted the fact that Swarm was refusing to let her give her anything more than fifteen dollars per foot square and ended the negotiations on that.
"Well that went well!" Shadow said brightly. They were once again under the audio illusion, Shadow's voice being displaced into Swarm and Eon's ears while dampening whatever Swarm said.
The bug controller glared at her slightly through the mask. "It was a pain." She said flatly. "Why wouldn't she just accept that I didn't want much money for the silk and leave it at that?"
"Same reason you kept trying to drop it, she didn't want to feel like she was ripping you off." Eon told her. "Spider silk is pretty expensive, from what I'm understanding, and the idea of having someone that can make it so much more easily probably hasn't quite gotten through to her yet."
"Plus it does take you time to make the bits of silk, so maybe she's taking into account the time you'd need and not wanting to make patrols or your civilian life trouble by having you need to sit down and make it." Shadow added. "Of course, if that little experiment with works later today, it'll take even less time to make the silk lengths."
"I suppose that makes sense." Swarm nodded. "So, what's for the rest of the patrol? Just wander about, fight people that cause trouble, hopefully not end up in any sort of trouble?"
"Basically." Eon nodded, glancing back at her from point position of the group. "Don't really expect to run into anything, let's be honest, but just showing the flag is important too."
"Naturally." Swarm grinned, before pausing. "Looks like a mugging, two alleys ahead. A guy being accosted by two girls, I think one of them has a knife? Bit hard to see."
"Good enough information, Swarm." Shadow smiled, as the pair of Pokemon lowered themselves to the ground slightly and the hum around the insect controller got noticeably quieter. "Man, do I wish we had you in Mystery Dungeons back home. So much easier than having to completely search the entire floor for the Pokemon or whatever we're trying to find."
"At least the exploration is fun." Eon pointed out, poking her with his tail tip.
"True that." She grinned a little viciously, her eyes starting to shimmer with a Hypnosis. "Now, let's catch us some criminals!"
Five and a half hours later, the team got tired enough to justify going back to the Den. It was half five now, so it wasn't exactly dark, but it was getting a little late and the group wanted to stop and eat, as well as let Taylor spend some more time with Danny.
Plus Swarm was excited to test out the idea they'd had with the spiders, which required going back to the Den.
Slipping out of the city was a little harder than normal, since for some reason people seemed to be very focused on following them about with cameras, but aside from a few muggings they'd dealt with and a short encounter with Clockblocker and Gallant walking around, not much had actually happened.
Swarm had speculated it was to do with their visit to the PRT building the day before, which PHO had apparently gone a little mad about trying to figure out why they were there.
Eventually the trio had just ducked into an alleyway and completely cloaked, with Swarm suppressing the sound of her bugs to as near nothing as she could, and stealthed their way out of the city and into the forest before breaking into a jog.
"So." Swarm sighed, once she had her breath back from the jogging. "I take it we're good, then?"
"I'd say so." Eon chuckled. "It's worked out pretty well today, I think. Your deal with Parian went well, the patrol was pretty good," they all paused to shudder slightly as they went past the barrier illusion, "So I think that counts as productive."
"So do I." Shadow nodded. "Now, let's get into the Den, you get changed, set up your bugs, and then we can arrange going to yours to make cake tomorrow."
"I'll make sure I have the stuff for a cake, and probably also find a recipe out." Swarm promised.
"I… think I missed something here?" Eon paused, looking between the two of them. "Cake?"
"We talked about it on the way here." Swarm explained. "We talked about making a cake for New Wave to say thanks for their help, Shadow mentioned the Berries and went on a ramble about them, you're being conscripted to float a box around the kitchen so Shadow can see what she's doing, and yes we're fairly sure it'll be safe for them. I'm willing to help make a second one if you want me to eat it and make sure it's not going to be trouble, though."
"No, I doubt it would be, people eat Berries all the time in our world." Eon agreed. "And since when was I nominated to make Shadow float?"
"Since earlier." Shadow sniped back, as they entered the area where the Den was. "I'll have to think a bit on what Berries we put into it, but I'll make sure I bring them with me tomorrow."
"I take it I'm not getting any say in this?"
"Nope." Swarm chuckled, heading over to the storage box and getting out her civilian costume. A wall of bugs quickly surrounded her for a moment, and Taylor soon stepped out from behind the swarm, shoving her mask into her pocket. "Right, let's set something up for me to set my spiders up on, and probably find a way to box in some flies for them to eat. Set the command, then I'll head home to spend some time with Dad and find that cake recipe out."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Eon settled down to watch the pair of girls wander about the Den, setting up a rail of sticks and branches for Taylor to place her spiders on, then arranging a pile of flies to sit on one side that would just sit there and wait for the spiders to come and eat them. The spiders were then set up on a sort of weaving board, and Taylor stood back to stare at her bugs.
"I… think that's done." She muttered, after a minute. "I'm not really sure what else I can do here."
"What did you do?" Shadow asked, as the spiders began to move.
"I told the spiders to start weaving in the same pattern I use for my normal cloth, then told them that every ten minutes they should take a break and eat a fly. They'll do that and then go back to weaving, and they'll do that until they run out of flies, at which point they'll just keep weaving until they die."
"Wow."
"I'm alright losing these spiders, I have tons of eggs waiting to hatch at the moment, but this is just a test. If I start doing this properly, I'll make the spiders weave until they run out of flies, then when they do they all just go into hibernation until I get more flies for them and wake them up." Taylor explained, watching them weave. "Right, I need to get going, then, so we can make sure they'll do it when I'm not around."
"I'll walk you back." Shadow volunteered, trotting around her feet. "Seeya in a bit, Eon."
"See you tomorrow, Taylor." Eon lifted a paw and waved absently, lifting up the still unfinished Berry basket and going back to work on it.
May 26th, 2011. Thursday.
Lung grumbled as he worked his way through the most recent reports from his different moles, looking for anything useful. Technically, everything in the pile would be important, with his moles being well aware that that they should only send the important things on to him, but it was always a good idea to check it over. Knowing which of his moles were sending more useless information might be helpful for figuring out whether or not certain moles had been compromised in the organisations, which meant that he would know to take them with a pinch of salt.
Another one from the PRT mole? He mused to himself, placing the report from one of the few moles he'd managed to get in the Empire to one side. Interesting… I wonder what might have changed… a new Parahuman in the Bay, perhaps? Lifting it up, he glanced over the threat report's title, then paused. Team Inari.
The leader of the ABB sighed, putting the report down again, and started going through the rest of the files he'd been given by the rest of his moles. If he was planning on looking at something Team Inari had been doing, he wanted to at least have the rest of his work done first so that he didn't get distracted by their work.
It took nearly an hour to get through them all, mostly inane but interesting things that could be useful in the future. The city was still in a state of mostly quiet in the aftermath of Leviathan's attack, but that wasn't likely to last for much longer, so knowing some of these things for when the peace time ended would be useful. Finally putting away the last report, he turned back to the Team Inari report and flipped through it, scanning over the folder as fast as he could to figure out what sort of insane thing the team had managed to do.
By the time he'd reached the end, Lung sighed, placed the report back on the side again, and rested his head on the desk.
"Of course." He mumbled to himself. "Of course they can break Master effects as well. They already do ridiculous things pretty much every time they get involved with something more major than street crime. Why not be able to remove Master effects?"
It did make sense, though. If the duo really were kitsune, being able to remove the control the Simurgh had over people would be something they'd need to do, especially if they were planning on fixing the world like they seemed to be aiming towards. Having the ability to both heal and fight made the pair of kitsune very powerful allies to have; there weren't many Parahumans who were able to heal for some reason, and the fact that Inari seemed to have allied somewhat with New Wave made a very powerful healing pair. Panacea could heal almost anything, but couldn't do anything to do with the brain, while Shadow couldn't heal as much as she could but could make some impact on the brain. Between the two of them they had almost everything covered, and now they could remove Master effects as well.
Lung was pretty sure the Chief Director of the PRT would be hearing about this soon enough, and it was likely something would be arranged to bring Shadow to one of the Simurgh containment zones as soon as possible. The PRT had no love for those things either, from what he was aware, and the symbolism of their 'victory', as it were, against the Simurgh would give the public the impression that the PRT was doing something, even if it needed the help of an independent team to do it.
Moving the Team Inari report to one side, he carefully collected a folder and slipped it inside, then called for Oni Lee.
"Lee." He said, once his second-in-command had arrived. "Take this report, arrange for it to be delivered to Team Inari the next time they make a public appearance somewhere. Ensure the delivery is done discretely."
"Yes, Lung-sama." The only other Parahuman in the ABB bowed, taking the green folder from his hands, then teleported out again in a burst of ash.
Silently musing to himself about the changes in the Bay since Team Inari had come around a month ago, Lung moved on to the next bit of work in his pile, somewhat curious as to what would come next from that trio.
"Hey, Taylor." Shadow grinned widely. "Ready?"
"Absolutely." The girl nodded back, with a similar smile on her face. "It's been a while since I've done any sort of baking for fun, and I'm really interested to see how this works out."
"Should be fun for sure." Shadow traipsed in, a number of baskets floating behind her in a pink grip. More followed in a darker one, and they were followed by the grey form of Eon, who flicked the door closed with a tail on the way in. "I've done cakes before, but they've been small ones, since berries have just as much an effect when they're juiced and using them as cake mix is a nice change of pace for Dungeons, but I never thought of making a big one."
"Experimenting is going to be… interesting." Eon agreed. "Also rather expensive. But definitely interesting."
"How do you three plan to do this?" Danny asked, from his place in the doorway. "Also, good morning."
"Morning, Danny." Eon nodded to him, depositing his baskets on the table and claiming a chair. Shadow put hers next to them, pausing for a moment to think, then jumped into the chair next to him.
"Might as well handle a team meeting first…" She muttered to herself, gesturing for Taylor and Danny to sit down as well.
"To answer your question, Danny, I'm pretty sure these two intend to just sit here with a bunch of Berries and start subbing them in for normal ingredients, baking them, then eating them to see how it turns out." Eon continued. "Then repeating the cooking for whatever did work. Hence expensive."
"And hence my undercover shopping trip last night for more things for cake." Shadow added. "I went out and bought a ton of eggs and flour and milk and stuff for us to use as well. They're in the baskets as well. I'll go out and get more if we think we need them."
"…This is going to result in a second round of the Great Flapjack Incident, isn't it." Eon sighed. Taylor and Danny exchanged a look while Shadow blushed.
"Not that bad, not my fault."
"I hold you responsible for it even so."
"Mean."
"Anyway, mini team meeting." Eon continued, ignoring both the palpable confusion at the table and Shadow's look. "Summary, the little experiment worked, we have the silk they managed to make in the Bag, so if at some point you want to come by the Den and spend a few hours setting up a much bigger setup that's fine."
"Really?" Taylor's eyes lit up, her confusion being pushed to one side as Eon handed over a large rectangle of spider silk. "Oh, wow, that's awesome! I'm so glad that worked, that'll make things loads easier. Parian is going to love this."
"Especially since you're undervaluing the hell out of it." Danny added dryly. "You could be making a lot out of this."
"I don't see the need." Taylor shrugged. "I make the silk for basically nothing, just the cost of some time and flies, I can now automate it so it's even easier, and being a Cape it's pretty hard for Parian to actually make money legitimately. Being able to offer her materials at a low price that she can use to sell her clothes for more means that she can actually make a fair bit of money for her time, which she deserves. Might as well sell it for practically nothing to help someone out."
"Huh." Danny gave her an impressed look. "That's… very well thought out."
"Of course it is." She smirked back. "Anyway, I'll come by at some point soon to set up a weaving station at the Den, though I'll need to grab more flies. Might just see if we can take a trip into the country or something and just collect them. And probably set up a stupid powerful breeding station to get more of them."
"The Den's going to be busy." Danny observed.
"We're going to start building more rooms, I think." Eon said. "The house under the willow is useful, of course, but at this point the secrecy isn't too big an issue. We have the illusions over everything to make it harder to find without us bringing you there, and there's also the Berry farm nearby that would show that someone's living in the area, so we're going to go around the area near the Den and expand it out. A place for Taylor to weave so that the silk doesn't get wet, maybe a few more houses as well just in case. Designated storage rooms that we can put under more illusions."
"You're building a village."
"Sort of." He admitted. "Back in Alma, almost all Rescue or Exploration Teams had something similar. Huge complexes that stretched around, to the sky and underground, where all the teams would live. For big teams, the complexes were often pretty huge, but a lot of the time the rooms themselves were small, aside from the treasuries and I suppose kitchens sometimes, because it was rare that the entire team was there at one time. Members would all go out on long missions in teams of their own, occasionally staying over in foreign towns and cities in order to take jobs out there before coming back. They'd be long expeditions and rarely return to the central hub of the team unless they paid for teleportation. Living space was more about sleeping and storing a few personal things, rather than actually living in a lot of the time. And of course there was the town of Alma itself, with the Kangaskhan Storage and the Kecleon Shop, you didn't really keep much in the storage of the base often. Valuables went to Kangaskhan, who couldn't be robbed, and a lot of things for missions could be brought from the Kecleon before you left. Berries were kept in storage for cooking with the rest of the food, some semi-rare items like Reviver Seeds were kept because the Kecleon didn't always have those in stock… so for the most part, the Dens were huge complexes for show." Eon's voice had gone somewhat quiet as he reminisced. "Lots of team members, so they needed a lot of space so Pokemon could stay there, to store items, to keep money before it was moved to the bank, to have room for new members. But so much of it would go unused sometimes… they were still incredible, though."
"They sound it." Taylor admitted softly. "I'd like to see those someday."
"Maybe you will." He smiled, blinking a little. "But yes, in a way we're building a village. Living space, storage space, we need those more than we would back home. We can't just go shopping here for things, there's no bank we can use, so we need a lot more room. Maybe some time we'll dig out underground caverns to use as storage, but for now a bunch of Dens will do to keep it all."
"Where do you get all the wood from, by the way?" She asked.
"The Berry trees." Eon explained. "They grow so fast they're fairly easy to use for it."
"They're tiny."
"But they work quite well when tied together." He reposted. "The rest of the woods can be used for longer bits of wood, sure, but the Berry trees are replenishable. I use them for basically everything, and it's not too hard." He paused. "They're also not actually that short, though they are compared to normal fruit trees. Probably because they don't have many Berries on them."
"…Fair enough." She acquiesced. "I don't see how you can build a village out of them, but sure."
"It'll be a lot of time and work for certain, but we can manage it." Shadow agreed. "And having something like Inari Base here on Bet would be nice."
"I've been overruled!" Taylor laughed, holding her hands up. "Alright, alright, Inari can have a village in the woods. It'll be cool, at least."
"It will be." Eon nodded, with a grin. "Now, onto the next thing, Shadow's attempt at filling your kitchen with cake."
"It's a joint effort!" Shadow objected, hopping down from her chair. Taylor slipped out to follow her a second later, heading into the kitchen to pull a cardboard box into view. The Vulpix promptly jumped onto that, Eon floating it up so that she could see the counters. "Now, we should probably write down what we substitute in so we can easily repeat it later, but we have a fair few Berries to work with. I bought a range of all of them with me so we can test them, but there's more of some than others- we have very very very few of the Golds and Silvers even at home, let alone here, so I only bought one of each with me. Those'll probably be really good, as long as we mix them with the right things; Maranga and Sitrus are kinda sour, and Pecha and Persim are pretty sweet, so we'll need to be careful with them."
"I hope you know what you're doing here."
"Of course I do!" Shadow sounded slightly offended. "I'll tell you how the different Berries taste before we use any of them. You have the cake recipe?"
"Yeah, right here." Taylor handed it over to Shadow, who started reading it over. Danny looked over them all, sighed slightly, then stood from his chair to go and get some paper and a pen, so he could write down what Berries they used in each cake, shaking his head as he did.
"Am I the only one who wants to know what the Great Flapjack Incident is?" He asked himself lowly.
Rebecca looked at the clock, did some thinking, and decided it was probably a good time to make that phone call she'd been waiting to do. She'd already spoken to Dragon and made arrangements for a transport, pending agreement from this next call, so all she had to do was arrange this, send a message to Emily, and let her subordinate deal with the rest of the problems that would probably come up from this.
Opening up the book of important phone numbers that sat on her desk, she double-checked the number she had to call, dialled it, waited for the other end to pick up, and spoke. "Good morning, sir." She said politely. "I apologise for calling so early in the morning, but I have a proposition to put forward to you…"
Last edited: