A Shadow, an Eon, and a Worm (Worm/Pokemon)
- Thread starter ShadowPixelle
- Start date
- Crossover
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Am I right that she's calling up Coil for one of his favors? If so, that's a good way for the negotiations to end up failing... 
This might be a typo:
This might be a typo:
Balrog
not Durin's Bane
- Location
- The Mines of Moria
Nope she's calling the President. The President would be in the book of I.P.N. Coil would not. Coil would be in the book of P.W.O.F. (people who owe favors.)
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
The plan would be that Danny wouldn't be the one bringing the cakes around. Inari's just using his kitchen.
For Science, y'know.
It'd be Team Inari that's bringing cakes around as party favours for people. Or themselves, because who doesn't love cake when they're working? (Just don't give Shadow too many because that's a lot of sugar)
Am I right that she's calling up Coil for one of his favors? If so, that's a good way for the negotiations to end up failing...
Coil would indeed be in the book of P.W.O.F, and that'd probably require sending Contessa on An Adventure To Terrify An Idiot rather than just ringing a phone number. Also I can't see Coil knowing that the Chief Director is a member of Cauldron, though I might be wrong (as far as I can find on the wiki he has no idea, but also shrug)
I honestly can't remember if that's a typo, but it annoyed me so consider it to be one and now it's gone.
Chapter 26- Shopping, information, and gift
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
"Well that went well." Eon said decisively, lowering Shadow's box-seat to the floor again.
"You're not the one who no longer has eggs or flour in the house." Danny muttered in return, looking around at the counters in the kitchen, then the washing up in the sink.
"Perhaps, but that's easily sorted. Nothing got dropped, or set on fire, or broken, so I think that counts as a win." The Ninetales smirked slightly at the look on Danny's face, Shadow jumping into the seat opposite while Taylor checked the temperature on the oven.
"Those'll cook on their own for the next twenty minutes or so." She nodded triumphantly. "And that'll be the last of it. It was a way better idea to do the tests as more of a cupcake style, Dad, you were right."
"It just means we don't have tons of cake left over to eat our way through." He shrugged. "And means that this only took five hours, instead of… however long it would take to bake a bunch of very large cakes."
"Though we do need to go shopping again now." Taylor admitted. "Eggs, flour, and we should probably grab some cupcake cases for if we decide we want to make cakes again."
"We could go shopping now if you want." Shadow offered. "We have money on us just fine, it's not like anyone could notice that it was us with illusions, so why not?"
"Sure." Taylor grinned. "I'll go put my costume on and we can head out. Dad, Eon, keep an eye on the cakes?"
"Sure thing, Taylor." Eon sighed. "Be careful, you two."
"We will be, Eon. Nothing is gonna go wrong, it's just shopping."
"Honestly, that's what I'm afraid of…" He muttered, as the pair of females left the room to get ready. "It's impossible for Shadow to have a quiet shopping trip." He elaborated, at Danny's raised eyebrow. "No matter what she goes for or who she goes with, something happens. Not usually criminals, though that has happened a few times, more often than not she'll walk out of there with some kind of thing she never intended to buy or get gifted. We once got given a Secret Slab completely randomly by a passerby that didn't know what it was but thought it would be useful for a Rescue Pokemon to have… how we met Hoopa, actually, we took the Slab to Warp Temple and found Hoopa hiding there."
"Impressive."
"Oh, for sure, but also slightly nerve wracking to watch her leave the Den to go shopping because it's always a game wondering what she'll bring back this time." Eon nodded, as an illusion rippled in the house and the front door slammed shut. "Oh well, I suppose we'll see." Casting a glance over the kitchen area, he sighed. "Do you think we should try and clean up a little before they get back?"
"It'll save time, at least." Danny agreed. "Though they'll probably get all of this out again to make whichever cake they decide they want to give to New Wave."
"That's why it's cleaning and not tidying." Eon repeated, as he started shuffling the baskets on the table around- they were mostly empty now, only a few Berries in each, so Eon started tipping the remaining ones into one basket and piling the others inside themselves. "That way they don't have to spend long getting everything together to bake another one."
"Fair enough." Danny went into the kitchen and started on the washing up, watching Eon's work with some interest. "Out of curiosity, why don't you put those in that magic bag of yours? I know Taylor said it stacks things strangely."
"That… is a good question." Eon mused slowly. "I think it just never occurred to us. We don't usually use the Treasure Bag to put mundane stuff in, just to carry things in Dungeons, so I guess we didn't think of it." Carefully levitating the empty baskets, both of them watched as they went straight into the Bag, not even a bulge to say they were there.
"That is so strange."
"It was the first few times we saw it too." Eon nodded. "But it's really useful, and after a while you do get used to it."
"I suppose you'd have to, since you use it so often."
"Not wrong there." They worked quietly for a minute, listening out for the girls, then Eon added, "Fancy placing a bet on what Shadow comes back with?"
"Alright, simple run, eggs, flour, do you think we might want to also grab some more milk as well?" Shadow asked, as they wove their way into the city proper. "We did use a lot."
"It might be a good idea to just get everything we need for the cake, plus some extra, because we're gonna be baking again once we decide what sort of cake we want to do." Swarm suggested, with a small hum. "I mean, it's not like we don't have the money for it. I have, like, some hundred dollars in my backpack, and that's not including whatever you have."
"I actually don't have much on me, though there's a little in my scarf." Shadow paused for a half-second to pat it with a paw. "The scarf was custom done by my siblings- well, custom ordered, they couldn't make something like this on their own- and it has a little pocket thing in it to put money. They figured I wouldn't always have my bag on me so it'd be a good idea to have somewhere to put money aside from the magical Rescue Team bag." She smiled gently. "Of course I brought my bag with me to Bet, but since I don't want to have it all the time I've taken to putting some money in there all the time. There's fifty or so in small notes, I think."
"That's still plenty." Swarm nodded, as they dropped the cloaking illusion and exited an alley onto the main street. "Now come on, let's go grab what we need before the hordes of your adoring fans show up looking for cuddles or whatever."
"Oh hush, you." Shadow scolded, amused. "You're just jealous." She gave the Vulpix a look that seemed to show an eye roll without being able to see her eyes, and she chuckled again before leading the way into one of the small shops on the main street. Swarm picked up an basket on the way past, having made sure to leave most of her bugs outside, and the pair manoeuvred their way through the aisles, ignoring the number of stares they were getting from the other shoppers- as well as the multitude of phones being pointed in their direction.
"Alright, eggs, butter, milk, flour, simple as." Swarm muttered to herself. "Let's see here…"
"Here's the eggs for you." Shadow passed them over in the grip of Extrasensory, two boxes gently being placed in the basket. "Milk should be- oh, it's over there, hang on." She trotted over to that as well, pulling one of the larger jugs from the fridge and carefully reading the label. "I… think this is the same one?"
"Looks like it." Swarm nodded, catching up and taking it from her. "Yeah, it's fine."
"Do you want more?"
"No, one's fine." She smiled through her mask, moving on and carefully slipping past a pair of teens that were standing in the middle of the aisle, gaping. They did move aside as she got closer, but continued to gape, and she chuckled quietly to herself as she took some butter from the shelf as they passed. Flour was added to the basket in short order and they made their way to the till, Shadow handing some of the money in her scarf over for them to pay. "You do realise that having fifty dollars on you at all times is a little overkill for just about anything?" Swarm commented, handing over a few of the notes and taking the bag from the- slightly overwhelmed- cashier.
"Eh, better to be over the top than not have enough." Shadow shrugged, grabbing the change from Swarm's hand and tucking it back into her scarf. "Thanks, by the way." She nodded to the person on the counter, who gave a stunned one back, and Swarm gave a wave to the public at large before they headed out the door.
"I guess that's fair." She frowned, inclining her head to one side. "Did you normally do that?"
"No, we normally had access to the banks, even in the field, so money was fine." She explained. "Plus money was easy to find in Dungeons, and while there were Kecleon markets sometimes in Dungeons you didn't normally need money for much outside of towns, where there were banks, so…" she shrugged.
"I guess that makes sense, yeah." Swarm nodded, as they turned into the alleyway again. "I guess everyone worked the same way in that case?"
"I think most of them do, but I don't know about all. It's just easier than trying to always predict how much money you'll need, after all, and the Duskull bank is basically unrobbable."
"That's not a word."
"Is now." She stuck her tongue out at her. "Anyway, yeah, no-one messes with the Duskull or Kangaskhan or Kecleon in town. They are… scary, when they're mad."
"I'll take your word for it." Swarm nodded, then stiffened. "Incoming. Looks like… I have no idea but they're teleporting, I can't keep them in sight for long enough to figure it out."
"Team Inari." The vaguely familiar voice of Oni Lee greeted them from behind, apparently having just teleported into the alley.
Both frowned heavily, Swarm taking a step back as they turned to let Shadow take the helm as second. "Oni Lee." She replied, a greeting and invitation in one.
"Lung-sama ordered this to be delivered to you." He continued, holding out a dark green folder for them. "When I saw you today, I took it on myself to deliver it."
Carefully, Shadow reached out with Extrasensory, taking the folder in its grip. Oni Lee let go of it, letting her float it over and open it, peering inside at the contents. Just paper. She nodded. "Thank you, Oni Lee. Pass our thanks to Lung as well." He bowed, then vanished in a sprinkle of ash.
Shadow immediately handed the folder over to Swarm and cloaked them, leading the insect controller further through the alleys. "Looks like another report of some kind." She said lowly. "Let's get back to yours so we can show Eon."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Swarm nodded firmly, taking a more careful hold on the folder and hurrying after her second.
"Another report?" Eon asked curiously, as Taylor sat down at the table. The duo had returned in a hurry, Taylor going directly upstairs to change out of her costume, while Shadow had come into the kitchen to put what they'd bought into the fridge and brief her team leader. "Interesting…"
"Think it's about the power testing you three did on Tuesday?" Danny suggested, looking at the green folder.
"Probably." Shadow nodded. "If the report went into the system today, Lung probably has standing orders with his people in the PRT to pull anything to do with us out of the system and hand it over to him so he can hand it to us."
"They've managed that pretty quickly, then."
"Maybe it went in early?" She shrugged. "Any way it is, we have it now. Want to take a look?"
"Of course." Eon reached out with Extrasensory, flipping the folder open and pulling the stack of paper out. "A lot of this is just the original report… ah, here, it's added as a note." He nodded, putting the original report to one side and scanning over the new one.
Addendum to PRT Internal Document EP//THRPT//1022-01-00102659//2011-05-14
SUBJECT: Team Inari
Updated May 24th, 2011.
Addendum made to Threat Assessment Ratings.
Subject:
Eon, Independent Hero
Real name:
Unknown
Affiliation:
Team Inari
Addendum made to threat ratings:
Subject Eon should now be considered to have a rating of Shaker 8, from the previous of Shaker 6, due to the ability to create healing waves that can also break Master effects. This is the same effect used by his team mate, Shadow. His team mate, Swarm, is immune to his ability to break the connection to Mastered minions.
Subject:
Shadow, Independent Hero
Real name:
Unknown
Affiliation:
Team Inari
Addendum made to threat ratings:
Subject Shadow should now be considered to have a rating of Shaker 8, from the previous of Shaker 6, due to the ability to create healing waves that can also break Master effects. This is the same effect her team mate Eon uses, however Shadow is able to use it much more than Eon, possibly also with more power than him. Her team mate, Swarm, is immune to her ability to break the connection to Mastered minions.
"Well, that's nice of them." Taylor muttered, with a frown. "Although I'm not sure why the power to break Master effects makes you more dangerous to them."
"Probably the fact that we can break the control their Capes have over their animals or minions or whatever." Eon suggested. "It means that if we ever went hostile, they wouldn't be able to send Master class Capes after us, because we could break their control over whatever they're using. It doesn't matter that they can take control back a few seconds later, because those few seconds could be all we need to take them down, or for the animals they're controlling to go on a rampage and maybe hurt someone. Especially since the animals seem to be pretty mad when the control's broken."
"That… makes sense." She nodded. "I didn't think of that, actually."
"You know, the more I hear about your powers, the more I wonder what the PRT thinks of you." Danny said slowly. "From their perspective, you're probably the two most powerful Capes in the world aside from Eidolon, and even he doesn't actually have the sort of strangeness that you two have."
"Honestly, I have no idea." Eon shrugged. "But as long as they let us do our best to help out, I don't really care either." Glancing into the kitchen area, he added, "Do you two plan on tasting those cakes so you can pick what you're doing for New Wave, then?"
"Oh!" Shadow, who'd been sitting their contemplatively in silence, suddenly perked up. "I'd forgotten about that! Yeah, we should eat the cakes! Then we can make a proper big one for New Wave!"
The Vulpix jumped down from her chair and hurried into the kitchen, Taylor following and bringing some of the tester cupcakes to put on the table.
"Right, which one first?" Taylor asked.
"I think… probably the Pecha and Custap?" Shadow suggested. "That one's gonna be pretty sweet, and I think if it's too sweet we should probably disregard a lot of the similar creations."
"Hello, Dragon."
"Chief Director." The avatar of Dragon smiled slightly over the video monitor. "A pleasure to hear from you. Is there something you need?"
"I was hoping to ask a favour from you." Rebecca admitted. She didn't really want to be indebted to the Guild or Dragon, but she also didn't see any good way of managing what she needed to do without asking the Tinker for help. "It's about the power testing Team Inari went through on Tuesday."
"I doubt we'll be able to get them back in for more power testing, if that's what you're hoping for." She replied.
Rebecca shook her head. "No, it's not about that, though it is based on that. I was speaking, earlier today, to the Australian government about possibly arranging for Shadow and Eon to be transported to Canberra-"
"To see if Shadow can help the Simurgh victims there?" Dragon caught on, audibly straightening and focusing more on the call. "That would likely work quite well, though the logistics of it could be difficult…"
"Actually, the most difficult part is going to be getting them there at this point." She corrected. "The Australians are quite eager to possibly have someone removing any Master effects in the city, thus also removing the need for a quarantine zone at all. They'd like us to get Team Inari over there as soon as possible, and I'd like to ask if you could supply a transport to take Eon and Shadow over there."
"That wouldn't be a problem at all." Dragon promised. "If you'd like, I'll also contact Director Piggot about contacting Team Inari."
"Do we even have a contact number for them?" Rebecca wondered idly, flipping through her notes.
"Eon gave one to the ENE PRT during Shadow's power testing." Dragon told her. "Director Piggot shouldn't have any difficulty reaching them."
"I see." For a moment, she contemplated the idea of letting Dragon handle it, then shook her head. "No, I'll contact Director Piggot myself. It won't take long. But thank you for your help, Dragon."
"It's no problem, Chief Director. Helping Simurgh victims is always something I'll support." The Tinker on the other end of the call hung up, probably to go sort out things herself, and Rebecca sighed before picking up the phone for her next call.
"So, we're in agreement, then?"
They all nodded. "Silver Pecha and Micle Berries work well together. Micle Berries are a little dry, but that helps offset the amount of sweetness the Silver Pecha Berry has, plus the Micle Berry itself." Danny put forward. "Some of the others would be pretty good for a cake as well, but I think for this one we want to go with that."
"We can make more cakes some other time." Shadow promised. "This was really fun, actually, so I'd love to make more sometime. Course it'll be a bit annoying to keep making cakes, but it's not like we can't afford it as Team Inari."
"As long as we're not destroying my kitchen, and you lot make plans to store it somewhere other than the house, then I'm fine with that." Danny told her. "These are all very good cakes."
"Yeah, we'll have to come up with a better way to do that." Eon agreed, looking around at the collection of half eaten cakes that were scattered around the table and kitchen area. "But I think as long as we don't do it too often, we probably won't have too much trouble with keeping them in the fridge or something here. Either that or we get some kind of cool box for the Den."
"Well, you know Freeze Dry, and you do need more practice with it, so maybe we could use that to set something up?"
"You can probably buy something like that at a shop somewhere, which would be less effort." Taylor pointed out. "Though I don't know how good those would be for cake."
"We should look into that." Eon mused, obviously making a mental note. "More importantly, are you planning on making New Wave's cake now, or not?"
Shadow glanced at the clock. "It's nearly half past seven now, so we… probably have time to make a proper big cake and set it to cook before we need to leave?"
"Well we don't have anything important to do tomorrow, so you can sleep in if we end up staying up too late." Danny pointed out. "How long's it going to take?"
"Maybe… an hour or so?" Taylor guessed, getting up to go look at the recipe. "Hm, maybe a little longer… how many people are there in New Wave again?"
"Seven?" Shadow guessed. "Amy, Vicky, their dad, their cousins, and their parents. So yeah, seven."
"Might want to go a little bigger than this recipe is, then." Taylor muttered with a frown. "Because this is for six. It's not too much of a bother, obviously, and we have plenty of stuff for that without needing to go shopping again."
"Let's get to cake making!" Shadow cheered, jumping down from her seat. She headed straight for the box-seat that they'd left on one side, only for all of them to freeze at the sound of a phone ringing from inside the Treasure Bag.
"Is that-" Danny started, only for Taylor to hush him. Eon fished his phone out of the bag, sent a glance around at the other two members of his team, and hit answer and speaker in quick succession.
"Team Inari Eon speaking."
"Good evening, Eon, this is Director Piggot of the PRT." The voice replied. "Is Shadow there with you?"
"I am, yes." Shadow put in, jumping back into her chair. "A pleasure to speak to you again, madam Director. Is something wrong?"
"Not as such, no. The Chief Director called. Apparently she's been speaking to the Australian government, and they'd like you to make a trip to Canberra as soon as possible."
"The most recent Simurgh attack zone?" Taylor checked, a group of bugs around her to give her her 'Swarm' voice.
"Correct, Swarm." She confirmed, after a moment's pause. "The Chief Director spoke to Dragon about providing transport to Canberra for Shadow and Eon, and I was told to pass that along to you in the hopes of getting the pair of you to be willing to travel to Canberra."
"To try and help the Simurgh victims there?" Shadow tilted her head. "I don't see any trouble with that. Maybe this Saturday, the 28th, so everyone can get things together?"
"I don't have any trouble with that." Eon agreed.
"I'll call the Chief Director back and get that scheduled, as well as messaging Dragon." Director Piggot told them. "From what I can tell, the Australian government want it done as soon as possible, so they're willing to take anything at all."
"I'd just be glad to help." Shadow said earnestly. "If we show up at the PRT building at something like nine in the morning on Saturday, would that be a problem for you?"
"I don't see why not."
"Then I suppose we'll see you then, barring any more contact because things need to be rearranged."
"Indeed. Good evening, Team Inari."
"You as well, Director." Eon hung up the call, putting the phone away in the Treasure Bag again, and looked at the Vulpix next to him. "You think you can do it?"
"I don't see why not." She shrugged. "It's just Heal Pulse and Heal Bell. Sure, it'll be over a much larger area than normal, but I can heal fine, and heal a lot in succession fine, so I don't see why I can manage it. And it'll help a bunch of people out- it looks like I'm the only one who can after all, so of course I want to help."
"Then I guess on Saturday we're going to Canberra." Eon nodded. "Sorry, Taylor, but I guess you'll have to find something else to do that day."
"I'll figure something." She shrugged. "Go to the Den and set up the spiders to do a load of weaving, wander around on a solo patrol, just hang around with Dad."
"All good plans."
"Now cake?" Shadow reminded, looking hopeful. All three of them laughed.
"Yes, Shadow." Taylor laughed, patting her on the head. "Now cake."
"Excellent!" She jumped down from the chair once more and went back to the box-seat on the side, which Eon obligingly picked up with Extrasensory and floated into the kitchen, where Taylor was preparing the counters to make another, larger cake.
"Right, we said something about making things bigger, any idea how?"
"I don't see why we really need to, to be honest." Shadow responded, leaning over her shoulder to look at the recipe. "It's a pretty big cake, I'm pretty sure- where's the cake dish?" Taylor pulled it out of the cupboard, letting Shadow take the recipe from her hands to keep reading. She glanced up, then nodded. "Nah, that looks fine. Don't see why we'd need to make it any bigger."
"If you say so." Taylor pursed her lips, then put the dish down. "Let's just go for it and find out, yeah?"
"Sounds like a plan to me."
Eon and Danny shared another amused glance, then settled back to watch the pair of them work on their cake.
May 27th, 2011. Friday.
"How did I end up being the one nominated to do this?" Shadow asked quietly, holding the large box with their gift in it.
"Because you were the one who suggested the cake, I was holding you up while you were making it, and we used Swarm's kitchen to make it." Eon replied lowly. They were holding their conversation under an illusion, but that didn't mean that they didn't want to be careful even so. "And you're also the one with the closest friendship to Vicky and Amy, so you should be the one to hand things over."
"Right." She paused. "Shouldn't you be the one to do it, though, because you're team leader?"
"You were the one most affected by what New Wave did for us." Swarm pointed out. "Now stop delaying, or I'm ringing the bell for you."
"Fine." A careful bit of very fiddly telekinesis lifted a small rock up to the doorbell to press it in, the bell dinging from inside the house.
"Coming!" The door was quickly opened, Vicky floating slightly in the air. She looked a little confused at first, seeing Swarm, then glanced down and smiled at Shadow and Eon. "Hi, guys!" She waved, drifting backwards. "Come on in."
Shadow took the lead, walking into the familiar house and into the living room, where Amy and Mark Dallon were both sitting. Eon and Swarm trailed behind, looking around curiously, and Vicky shut the door before floating after them.
"Shadow?" Amy asked, closing the book in her hand. Mark looked up as well, muting the TV as he did- there was some sort of sports thing on, Shadow thought, though she didn't really know much about it- but let Amy continue, "Is something wrong? Oh, and hello Eon, Swarm."
"Hey Amy." Swarm waved, while Eon smiled and nodded back.
"Hi Amy, Mr Dallon, and no, nothing's wrong." Shadow shook her head, the box next to her following the movements for a moment before she focused and stabilised it. The slightly brighter glow on her eyes caught their attention, making them look at the box, and she moved it over to a clear spot on the table before settling it down. "We just wanted to bring you this."
"What is it?" Vicky asked, tilting her head to one side. Shadow gestured towards it in a silent offer for her to take a look, and the blonde quickly flew over them to open the top.
"Cake?" Amy blinked, as Vicky carefully reached in and lifted it out of the box. "Why cake?"
"It's to say thank you for your help with the power testing." Shadow explained, while they looked at it. It did look fairly interesting, a silver-green-pink mix from the Berries they'd used mixing together into a sparkly grey-pink colour, with only a tiny bit of green dotted around. It looked quite pretty, Shadow thought. "I mean, Amy gave up some of her afternoon to come and stand around checking on the Master Capes I was working with, and your aunt was really helpful in setting all of it up and arranging it. And Amy was the one who started everything off, too. So we figured we'd get you a sort of gift to you all to say thanks for your help, and then I started talking to Swarm about food and stuff, and one thing lead to another…" She shrugged. "We ended up with cake. Took a little while yesterday to do it, messed about with a bunch of things to get there, and then when we finally made up our minds on what we wanted to do we made this one to give you."
"You didn't have to." Amy hurriedly responded, eyes a little wide. "It wasn't a big deal, really! The PRT probably would've wanted me to come in to check on them afterwards anyway, so doing it at the same time as you just made sense to make it easier on everyone."
"You still came." Shadow shrugged again. "And besides, if it hadn't been for you and your theory then we wouldn't've thought of the idea of trying to use my power to help Master victims, and without your aunt I don't think we would've managed to actually talk to the PRT and arrange for the testing to happen."
"And without that we wouldn't be doing what we're doing tomorrow." Eon added.
"What's going on tomorrow?" Vicky asked.
"The PRT have arranged a transport to take Shadow and I over to Australia to try and clear out the Canberra Simurgh Zone." He explained. "Shadow's going to be the one doing most the work, to be fair, but I might be able to help out too while she recovers, depending on how they've got things laid out."
All three of the Capes looked slightly stunned, then Amy got off the couch and knelt down beside Shadow, lifting her into a hug. "That's awesome!" She cheered, grinning.
"Hell yeah!" Vicky added, snapping out of her shock. "Helping out Simurgh victims… that's so cool!"
"From what Miss Militia said during the power testing, it also might be quite dangerous if it gets out and certain people hear about it." Swarm put in. "Not that it won't get out pretty much the second these two get back from Canberra and the people in Australia start posting on PHO about the Simurgh victims being released."
"We'll make sure to keep it quiet until then." Vicky promised.
"The PRT will likely make a press release about it as well." Mark noted. "Probably as soon as they're able to confirm that you've succeeded in clearing them and they're able to start dismantling things."
"Do you have any idea how long it's going to take you?"
"Not really." Shadow shrugged. "It depends on how many people they're willing to put into a room. The amount of effort it takes per person barely moves up the more there are, so if there's a thousand people in a big room then we'll be able to clear it fairly quickly."
"There's about three hundred fifty thousand people in Canberra."
"Then just make bigger rooms." Shadow frowned. "It'd take a while to be sure, mostly just moving people in and out, but if they just set up a bunch of roped off areas and arrange for people to stand in them I can move from one to the next and clear them, then leave the PRT and Australian government to handle sorting everything out. I don't expect it to take all day, though."
Amy seemed quite shocked at that idea, and Shadow used that to wriggle out of her arms and back onto the floor.
"Anyway, I was hoping you'd share some of that to your aunt and uncle and cousins to say thanks as well." She continued. "Plus maybe a review on what you thought of the cake? It's the first time I've done something like this, really, so I'd be curious as to what you thought. I've done pies and salads and stuff, but not cake. Normally I buy that if I really want it."
"Sure, I'll send you a message when we're tried some." Vicky promised, reaching over to pat her on the head. "And good luck with your trip tomorrow, both of you. Swarm's not going?"
"No, I'm staying here. Probably going to spend some time out being a Cape, I think. Been doing a lot of Cape stuff recently." She nodded.
"If you want a partner to patrol with, though, let me know."
"I will."
"You're not the one who no longer has eggs or flour in the house." Danny muttered in return, looking around at the counters in the kitchen, then the washing up in the sink.
"Perhaps, but that's easily sorted. Nothing got dropped, or set on fire, or broken, so I think that counts as a win." The Ninetales smirked slightly at the look on Danny's face, Shadow jumping into the seat opposite while Taylor checked the temperature on the oven.
"Those'll cook on their own for the next twenty minutes or so." She nodded triumphantly. "And that'll be the last of it. It was a way better idea to do the tests as more of a cupcake style, Dad, you were right."
"It just means we don't have tons of cake left over to eat our way through." He shrugged. "And means that this only took five hours, instead of… however long it would take to bake a bunch of very large cakes."
"Though we do need to go shopping again now." Taylor admitted. "Eggs, flour, and we should probably grab some cupcake cases for if we decide we want to make cakes again."
"We could go shopping now if you want." Shadow offered. "We have money on us just fine, it's not like anyone could notice that it was us with illusions, so why not?"
"Sure." Taylor grinned. "I'll go put my costume on and we can head out. Dad, Eon, keep an eye on the cakes?"
"Sure thing, Taylor." Eon sighed. "Be careful, you two."
"We will be, Eon. Nothing is gonna go wrong, it's just shopping."
"Honestly, that's what I'm afraid of…" He muttered, as the pair of females left the room to get ready. "It's impossible for Shadow to have a quiet shopping trip." He elaborated, at Danny's raised eyebrow. "No matter what she goes for or who she goes with, something happens. Not usually criminals, though that has happened a few times, more often than not she'll walk out of there with some kind of thing she never intended to buy or get gifted. We once got given a Secret Slab completely randomly by a passerby that didn't know what it was but thought it would be useful for a Rescue Pokemon to have… how we met Hoopa, actually, we took the Slab to Warp Temple and found Hoopa hiding there."
"Impressive."
"Oh, for sure, but also slightly nerve wracking to watch her leave the Den to go shopping because it's always a game wondering what she'll bring back this time." Eon nodded, as an illusion rippled in the house and the front door slammed shut. "Oh well, I suppose we'll see." Casting a glance over the kitchen area, he sighed. "Do you think we should try and clean up a little before they get back?"
"It'll save time, at least." Danny agreed. "Though they'll probably get all of this out again to make whichever cake they decide they want to give to New Wave."
"That's why it's cleaning and not tidying." Eon repeated, as he started shuffling the baskets on the table around- they were mostly empty now, only a few Berries in each, so Eon started tipping the remaining ones into one basket and piling the others inside themselves. "That way they don't have to spend long getting everything together to bake another one."
"Fair enough." Danny went into the kitchen and started on the washing up, watching Eon's work with some interest. "Out of curiosity, why don't you put those in that magic bag of yours? I know Taylor said it stacks things strangely."
"That… is a good question." Eon mused slowly. "I think it just never occurred to us. We don't usually use the Treasure Bag to put mundane stuff in, just to carry things in Dungeons, so I guess we didn't think of it." Carefully levitating the empty baskets, both of them watched as they went straight into the Bag, not even a bulge to say they were there.
"That is so strange."
"It was the first few times we saw it too." Eon nodded. "But it's really useful, and after a while you do get used to it."
"I suppose you'd have to, since you use it so often."
"Not wrong there." They worked quietly for a minute, listening out for the girls, then Eon added, "Fancy placing a bet on what Shadow comes back with?"
"Alright, simple run, eggs, flour, do you think we might want to also grab some more milk as well?" Shadow asked, as they wove their way into the city proper. "We did use a lot."
"It might be a good idea to just get everything we need for the cake, plus some extra, because we're gonna be baking again once we decide what sort of cake we want to do." Swarm suggested, with a small hum. "I mean, it's not like we don't have the money for it. I have, like, some hundred dollars in my backpack, and that's not including whatever you have."
"I actually don't have much on me, though there's a little in my scarf." Shadow paused for a half-second to pat it with a paw. "The scarf was custom done by my siblings- well, custom ordered, they couldn't make something like this on their own- and it has a little pocket thing in it to put money. They figured I wouldn't always have my bag on me so it'd be a good idea to have somewhere to put money aside from the magical Rescue Team bag." She smiled gently. "Of course I brought my bag with me to Bet, but since I don't want to have it all the time I've taken to putting some money in there all the time. There's fifty or so in small notes, I think."
"That's still plenty." Swarm nodded, as they dropped the cloaking illusion and exited an alley onto the main street. "Now come on, let's go grab what we need before the hordes of your adoring fans show up looking for cuddles or whatever."
"Oh hush, you." Shadow scolded, amused. "You're just jealous." She gave the Vulpix a look that seemed to show an eye roll without being able to see her eyes, and she chuckled again before leading the way into one of the small shops on the main street. Swarm picked up an basket on the way past, having made sure to leave most of her bugs outside, and the pair manoeuvred their way through the aisles, ignoring the number of stares they were getting from the other shoppers- as well as the multitude of phones being pointed in their direction.
"Alright, eggs, butter, milk, flour, simple as." Swarm muttered to herself. "Let's see here…"
"Here's the eggs for you." Shadow passed them over in the grip of Extrasensory, two boxes gently being placed in the basket. "Milk should be- oh, it's over there, hang on." She trotted over to that as well, pulling one of the larger jugs from the fridge and carefully reading the label. "I… think this is the same one?"
"Looks like it." Swarm nodded, catching up and taking it from her. "Yeah, it's fine."
"Do you want more?"
"No, one's fine." She smiled through her mask, moving on and carefully slipping past a pair of teens that were standing in the middle of the aisle, gaping. They did move aside as she got closer, but continued to gape, and she chuckled quietly to herself as she took some butter from the shelf as they passed. Flour was added to the basket in short order and they made their way to the till, Shadow handing some of the money in her scarf over for them to pay. "You do realise that having fifty dollars on you at all times is a little overkill for just about anything?" Swarm commented, handing over a few of the notes and taking the bag from the- slightly overwhelmed- cashier.
"Eh, better to be over the top than not have enough." Shadow shrugged, grabbing the change from Swarm's hand and tucking it back into her scarf. "Thanks, by the way." She nodded to the person on the counter, who gave a stunned one back, and Swarm gave a wave to the public at large before they headed out the door.
"I guess that's fair." She frowned, inclining her head to one side. "Did you normally do that?"
"No, we normally had access to the banks, even in the field, so money was fine." She explained. "Plus money was easy to find in Dungeons, and while there were Kecleon markets sometimes in Dungeons you didn't normally need money for much outside of towns, where there were banks, so…" she shrugged.
"I guess that makes sense, yeah." Swarm nodded, as they turned into the alleyway again. "I guess everyone worked the same way in that case?"
"I think most of them do, but I don't know about all. It's just easier than trying to always predict how much money you'll need, after all, and the Duskull bank is basically unrobbable."
"That's not a word."
"Is now." She stuck her tongue out at her. "Anyway, yeah, no-one messes with the Duskull or Kangaskhan or Kecleon in town. They are… scary, when they're mad."
"I'll take your word for it." Swarm nodded, then stiffened. "Incoming. Looks like… I have no idea but they're teleporting, I can't keep them in sight for long enough to figure it out."
"Team Inari." The vaguely familiar voice of Oni Lee greeted them from behind, apparently having just teleported into the alley.
Both frowned heavily, Swarm taking a step back as they turned to let Shadow take the helm as second. "Oni Lee." She replied, a greeting and invitation in one.
"Lung-sama ordered this to be delivered to you." He continued, holding out a dark green folder for them. "When I saw you today, I took it on myself to deliver it."
Carefully, Shadow reached out with Extrasensory, taking the folder in its grip. Oni Lee let go of it, letting her float it over and open it, peering inside at the contents. Just paper. She nodded. "Thank you, Oni Lee. Pass our thanks to Lung as well." He bowed, then vanished in a sprinkle of ash.
Shadow immediately handed the folder over to Swarm and cloaked them, leading the insect controller further through the alleys. "Looks like another report of some kind." She said lowly. "Let's get back to yours so we can show Eon."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Swarm nodded firmly, taking a more careful hold on the folder and hurrying after her second.
"Another report?" Eon asked curiously, as Taylor sat down at the table. The duo had returned in a hurry, Taylor going directly upstairs to change out of her costume, while Shadow had come into the kitchen to put what they'd bought into the fridge and brief her team leader. "Interesting…"
"Think it's about the power testing you three did on Tuesday?" Danny suggested, looking at the green folder.
"Probably." Shadow nodded. "If the report went into the system today, Lung probably has standing orders with his people in the PRT to pull anything to do with us out of the system and hand it over to him so he can hand it to us."
"They've managed that pretty quickly, then."
"Maybe it went in early?" She shrugged. "Any way it is, we have it now. Want to take a look?"
"Of course." Eon reached out with Extrasensory, flipping the folder open and pulling the stack of paper out. "A lot of this is just the original report… ah, here, it's added as a note." He nodded, putting the original report to one side and scanning over the new one.
Addendum to PRT Internal Document EP//THRPT//1022-01-00102659//2011-05-14
SUBJECT: Team Inari
Updated May 24th, 2011.
Addendum made to Threat Assessment Ratings.
Subject:
Eon, Independent Hero
Real name:
Unknown
Affiliation:
Team Inari
Addendum made to threat ratings:
Subject Eon should now be considered to have a rating of Shaker 8, from the previous of Shaker 6, due to the ability to create healing waves that can also break Master effects. This is the same effect used by his team mate, Shadow. His team mate, Swarm, is immune to his ability to break the connection to Mastered minions.
Subject:
Shadow, Independent Hero
Real name:
Unknown
Affiliation:
Team Inari
Addendum made to threat ratings:
Subject Shadow should now be considered to have a rating of Shaker 8, from the previous of Shaker 6, due to the ability to create healing waves that can also break Master effects. This is the same effect her team mate Eon uses, however Shadow is able to use it much more than Eon, possibly also with more power than him. Her team mate, Swarm, is immune to her ability to break the connection to Mastered minions.
"Well, that's nice of them." Taylor muttered, with a frown. "Although I'm not sure why the power to break Master effects makes you more dangerous to them."
"Probably the fact that we can break the control their Capes have over their animals or minions or whatever." Eon suggested. "It means that if we ever went hostile, they wouldn't be able to send Master class Capes after us, because we could break their control over whatever they're using. It doesn't matter that they can take control back a few seconds later, because those few seconds could be all we need to take them down, or for the animals they're controlling to go on a rampage and maybe hurt someone. Especially since the animals seem to be pretty mad when the control's broken."
"That… makes sense." She nodded. "I didn't think of that, actually."
"You know, the more I hear about your powers, the more I wonder what the PRT thinks of you." Danny said slowly. "From their perspective, you're probably the two most powerful Capes in the world aside from Eidolon, and even he doesn't actually have the sort of strangeness that you two have."
"Honestly, I have no idea." Eon shrugged. "But as long as they let us do our best to help out, I don't really care either." Glancing into the kitchen area, he added, "Do you two plan on tasting those cakes so you can pick what you're doing for New Wave, then?"
"Oh!" Shadow, who'd been sitting their contemplatively in silence, suddenly perked up. "I'd forgotten about that! Yeah, we should eat the cakes! Then we can make a proper big one for New Wave!"
The Vulpix jumped down from her chair and hurried into the kitchen, Taylor following and bringing some of the tester cupcakes to put on the table.
"Right, which one first?" Taylor asked.
"I think… probably the Pecha and Custap?" Shadow suggested. "That one's gonna be pretty sweet, and I think if it's too sweet we should probably disregard a lot of the similar creations."
"Hello, Dragon."
"Chief Director." The avatar of Dragon smiled slightly over the video monitor. "A pleasure to hear from you. Is there something you need?"
"I was hoping to ask a favour from you." Rebecca admitted. She didn't really want to be indebted to the Guild or Dragon, but she also didn't see any good way of managing what she needed to do without asking the Tinker for help. "It's about the power testing Team Inari went through on Tuesday."
"I doubt we'll be able to get them back in for more power testing, if that's what you're hoping for." She replied.
Rebecca shook her head. "No, it's not about that, though it is based on that. I was speaking, earlier today, to the Australian government about possibly arranging for Shadow and Eon to be transported to Canberra-"
"To see if Shadow can help the Simurgh victims there?" Dragon caught on, audibly straightening and focusing more on the call. "That would likely work quite well, though the logistics of it could be difficult…"
"Actually, the most difficult part is going to be getting them there at this point." She corrected. "The Australians are quite eager to possibly have someone removing any Master effects in the city, thus also removing the need for a quarantine zone at all. They'd like us to get Team Inari over there as soon as possible, and I'd like to ask if you could supply a transport to take Eon and Shadow over there."
"That wouldn't be a problem at all." Dragon promised. "If you'd like, I'll also contact Director Piggot about contacting Team Inari."
"Do we even have a contact number for them?" Rebecca wondered idly, flipping through her notes.
"Eon gave one to the ENE PRT during Shadow's power testing." Dragon told her. "Director Piggot shouldn't have any difficulty reaching them."
"I see." For a moment, she contemplated the idea of letting Dragon handle it, then shook her head. "No, I'll contact Director Piggot myself. It won't take long. But thank you for your help, Dragon."
"It's no problem, Chief Director. Helping Simurgh victims is always something I'll support." The Tinker on the other end of the call hung up, probably to go sort out things herself, and Rebecca sighed before picking up the phone for her next call.
"So, we're in agreement, then?"
They all nodded. "Silver Pecha and Micle Berries work well together. Micle Berries are a little dry, but that helps offset the amount of sweetness the Silver Pecha Berry has, plus the Micle Berry itself." Danny put forward. "Some of the others would be pretty good for a cake as well, but I think for this one we want to go with that."
"We can make more cakes some other time." Shadow promised. "This was really fun, actually, so I'd love to make more sometime. Course it'll be a bit annoying to keep making cakes, but it's not like we can't afford it as Team Inari."
"As long as we're not destroying my kitchen, and you lot make plans to store it somewhere other than the house, then I'm fine with that." Danny told her. "These are all very good cakes."
"Yeah, we'll have to come up with a better way to do that." Eon agreed, looking around at the collection of half eaten cakes that were scattered around the table and kitchen area. "But I think as long as we don't do it too often, we probably won't have too much trouble with keeping them in the fridge or something here. Either that or we get some kind of cool box for the Den."
"Well, you know Freeze Dry, and you do need more practice with it, so maybe we could use that to set something up?"
"You can probably buy something like that at a shop somewhere, which would be less effort." Taylor pointed out. "Though I don't know how good those would be for cake."
"We should look into that." Eon mused, obviously making a mental note. "More importantly, are you planning on making New Wave's cake now, or not?"
Shadow glanced at the clock. "It's nearly half past seven now, so we… probably have time to make a proper big cake and set it to cook before we need to leave?"
"Well we don't have anything important to do tomorrow, so you can sleep in if we end up staying up too late." Danny pointed out. "How long's it going to take?"
"Maybe… an hour or so?" Taylor guessed, getting up to go look at the recipe. "Hm, maybe a little longer… how many people are there in New Wave again?"
"Seven?" Shadow guessed. "Amy, Vicky, their dad, their cousins, and their parents. So yeah, seven."
"Might want to go a little bigger than this recipe is, then." Taylor muttered with a frown. "Because this is for six. It's not too much of a bother, obviously, and we have plenty of stuff for that without needing to go shopping again."
"Let's get to cake making!" Shadow cheered, jumping down from her seat. She headed straight for the box-seat that they'd left on one side, only for all of them to freeze at the sound of a phone ringing from inside the Treasure Bag.
"Is that-" Danny started, only for Taylor to hush him. Eon fished his phone out of the bag, sent a glance around at the other two members of his team, and hit answer and speaker in quick succession.
"Team Inari Eon speaking."
"Good evening, Eon, this is Director Piggot of the PRT." The voice replied. "Is Shadow there with you?"
"I am, yes." Shadow put in, jumping back into her chair. "A pleasure to speak to you again, madam Director. Is something wrong?"
"Not as such, no. The Chief Director called. Apparently she's been speaking to the Australian government, and they'd like you to make a trip to Canberra as soon as possible."
"The most recent Simurgh attack zone?" Taylor checked, a group of bugs around her to give her her 'Swarm' voice.
"Correct, Swarm." She confirmed, after a moment's pause. "The Chief Director spoke to Dragon about providing transport to Canberra for Shadow and Eon, and I was told to pass that along to you in the hopes of getting the pair of you to be willing to travel to Canberra."
"To try and help the Simurgh victims there?" Shadow tilted her head. "I don't see any trouble with that. Maybe this Saturday, the 28th, so everyone can get things together?"
"I don't have any trouble with that." Eon agreed.
"I'll call the Chief Director back and get that scheduled, as well as messaging Dragon." Director Piggot told them. "From what I can tell, the Australian government want it done as soon as possible, so they're willing to take anything at all."
"I'd just be glad to help." Shadow said earnestly. "If we show up at the PRT building at something like nine in the morning on Saturday, would that be a problem for you?"
"I don't see why not."
"Then I suppose we'll see you then, barring any more contact because things need to be rearranged."
"Indeed. Good evening, Team Inari."
"You as well, Director." Eon hung up the call, putting the phone away in the Treasure Bag again, and looked at the Vulpix next to him. "You think you can do it?"
"I don't see why not." She shrugged. "It's just Heal Pulse and Heal Bell. Sure, it'll be over a much larger area than normal, but I can heal fine, and heal a lot in succession fine, so I don't see why I can manage it. And it'll help a bunch of people out- it looks like I'm the only one who can after all, so of course I want to help."
"Then I guess on Saturday we're going to Canberra." Eon nodded. "Sorry, Taylor, but I guess you'll have to find something else to do that day."
"I'll figure something." She shrugged. "Go to the Den and set up the spiders to do a load of weaving, wander around on a solo patrol, just hang around with Dad."
"All good plans."
"Now cake?" Shadow reminded, looking hopeful. All three of them laughed.
"Yes, Shadow." Taylor laughed, patting her on the head. "Now cake."
"Excellent!" She jumped down from the chair once more and went back to the box-seat on the side, which Eon obligingly picked up with Extrasensory and floated into the kitchen, where Taylor was preparing the counters to make another, larger cake.
"Right, we said something about making things bigger, any idea how?"
"I don't see why we really need to, to be honest." Shadow responded, leaning over her shoulder to look at the recipe. "It's a pretty big cake, I'm pretty sure- where's the cake dish?" Taylor pulled it out of the cupboard, letting Shadow take the recipe from her hands to keep reading. She glanced up, then nodded. "Nah, that looks fine. Don't see why we'd need to make it any bigger."
"If you say so." Taylor pursed her lips, then put the dish down. "Let's just go for it and find out, yeah?"
"Sounds like a plan to me."
Eon and Danny shared another amused glance, then settled back to watch the pair of them work on their cake.
May 27th, 2011. Friday.
"How did I end up being the one nominated to do this?" Shadow asked quietly, holding the large box with their gift in it.
"Because you were the one who suggested the cake, I was holding you up while you were making it, and we used Swarm's kitchen to make it." Eon replied lowly. They were holding their conversation under an illusion, but that didn't mean that they didn't want to be careful even so. "And you're also the one with the closest friendship to Vicky and Amy, so you should be the one to hand things over."
"Right." She paused. "Shouldn't you be the one to do it, though, because you're team leader?"
"You were the one most affected by what New Wave did for us." Swarm pointed out. "Now stop delaying, or I'm ringing the bell for you."
"Fine." A careful bit of very fiddly telekinesis lifted a small rock up to the doorbell to press it in, the bell dinging from inside the house.
"Coming!" The door was quickly opened, Vicky floating slightly in the air. She looked a little confused at first, seeing Swarm, then glanced down and smiled at Shadow and Eon. "Hi, guys!" She waved, drifting backwards. "Come on in."
Shadow took the lead, walking into the familiar house and into the living room, where Amy and Mark Dallon were both sitting. Eon and Swarm trailed behind, looking around curiously, and Vicky shut the door before floating after them.
"Shadow?" Amy asked, closing the book in her hand. Mark looked up as well, muting the TV as he did- there was some sort of sports thing on, Shadow thought, though she didn't really know much about it- but let Amy continue, "Is something wrong? Oh, and hello Eon, Swarm."
"Hey Amy." Swarm waved, while Eon smiled and nodded back.
"Hi Amy, Mr Dallon, and no, nothing's wrong." Shadow shook her head, the box next to her following the movements for a moment before she focused and stabilised it. The slightly brighter glow on her eyes caught their attention, making them look at the box, and she moved it over to a clear spot on the table before settling it down. "We just wanted to bring you this."
"What is it?" Vicky asked, tilting her head to one side. Shadow gestured towards it in a silent offer for her to take a look, and the blonde quickly flew over them to open the top.
"Cake?" Amy blinked, as Vicky carefully reached in and lifted it out of the box. "Why cake?"
"It's to say thank you for your help with the power testing." Shadow explained, while they looked at it. It did look fairly interesting, a silver-green-pink mix from the Berries they'd used mixing together into a sparkly grey-pink colour, with only a tiny bit of green dotted around. It looked quite pretty, Shadow thought. "I mean, Amy gave up some of her afternoon to come and stand around checking on the Master Capes I was working with, and your aunt was really helpful in setting all of it up and arranging it. And Amy was the one who started everything off, too. So we figured we'd get you a sort of gift to you all to say thanks for your help, and then I started talking to Swarm about food and stuff, and one thing lead to another…" She shrugged. "We ended up with cake. Took a little while yesterday to do it, messed about with a bunch of things to get there, and then when we finally made up our minds on what we wanted to do we made this one to give you."
"You didn't have to." Amy hurriedly responded, eyes a little wide. "It wasn't a big deal, really! The PRT probably would've wanted me to come in to check on them afterwards anyway, so doing it at the same time as you just made sense to make it easier on everyone."
"You still came." Shadow shrugged again. "And besides, if it hadn't been for you and your theory then we wouldn't've thought of the idea of trying to use my power to help Master victims, and without your aunt I don't think we would've managed to actually talk to the PRT and arrange for the testing to happen."
"And without that we wouldn't be doing what we're doing tomorrow." Eon added.
"What's going on tomorrow?" Vicky asked.
"The PRT have arranged a transport to take Shadow and I over to Australia to try and clear out the Canberra Simurgh Zone." He explained. "Shadow's going to be the one doing most the work, to be fair, but I might be able to help out too while she recovers, depending on how they've got things laid out."
All three of the Capes looked slightly stunned, then Amy got off the couch and knelt down beside Shadow, lifting her into a hug. "That's awesome!" She cheered, grinning.
"Hell yeah!" Vicky added, snapping out of her shock. "Helping out Simurgh victims… that's so cool!"
"From what Miss Militia said during the power testing, it also might be quite dangerous if it gets out and certain people hear about it." Swarm put in. "Not that it won't get out pretty much the second these two get back from Canberra and the people in Australia start posting on PHO about the Simurgh victims being released."
"We'll make sure to keep it quiet until then." Vicky promised.
"The PRT will likely make a press release about it as well." Mark noted. "Probably as soon as they're able to confirm that you've succeeded in clearing them and they're able to start dismantling things."
"Do you have any idea how long it's going to take you?"
"Not really." Shadow shrugged. "It depends on how many people they're willing to put into a room. The amount of effort it takes per person barely moves up the more there are, so if there's a thousand people in a big room then we'll be able to clear it fairly quickly."
"There's about three hundred fifty thousand people in Canberra."
"Then just make bigger rooms." Shadow frowned. "It'd take a while to be sure, mostly just moving people in and out, but if they just set up a bunch of roped off areas and arrange for people to stand in them I can move from one to the next and clear them, then leave the PRT and Australian government to handle sorting everything out. I don't expect it to take all day, though."
Amy seemed quite shocked at that idea, and Shadow used that to wriggle out of her arms and back onto the floor.
"Anyway, I was hoping you'd share some of that to your aunt and uncle and cousins to say thanks as well." She continued. "Plus maybe a review on what you thought of the cake? It's the first time I've done something like this, really, so I'd be curious as to what you thought. I've done pies and salads and stuff, but not cake. Normally I buy that if I really want it."
"Sure, I'll send you a message when we're tried some." Vicky promised, reaching over to pat her on the head. "And good luck with your trip tomorrow, both of you. Swarm's not going?"
"No, I'm staying here. Probably going to spend some time out being a Cape, I think. Been doing a lot of Cape stuff recently." She nodded.
"If you want a partner to patrol with, though, let me know."
"I will."
Last edited:
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
So, let me guess that their use of those berries in that cake is going to do something weird but helpful to New Wave. Beyond Amy's brain freeze, anyway.
I am also hoping that Dragon gets 'improved,' yes.
I am also hoping that Dragon gets 'improved,' yes.
to them
you meant practice
Chapter 27- Reminiscing, impact, and travelling
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
May 28th, 2011. Saturday.
"Seven AM is too early for this." Shadow grumbled, spitting a bit of fire to warm the thermos of coffee up to a decent temperature. It wouldn't be as nice as it being done properly, but warmed ice and some coffee grounds would work to keep them awake until they got to the PRT building.
Or, rather, it would keep Eon awake. After the Moonlight Cavern incident, Shadow wasn't allowed coffee. She was making do with very warm chocolate, and the hope that the plane ride would be long enough for her to wake up properly so she could focus on healing.
"A little, yes." Eon nodded, taking the thermos and sipping. "When we get back, we need to start working on Berry drinks again. Having a decent supply of both those and the cakes would be useful, especially since they seem to keep the properties of the Berries, even here."
"We really should've thought about that earlier, actually. Having a bunch of Berry cakes to carry with us on missions would be helpful." Shadow mused. "Or cookies! We could make Berry cookies!"
"You and Taylor can talk it over when we get home, if you want." He offered, setting his thermos to one side and stretching. "For now, though, we need to get ready, check things over, and then get to the PRT building."
"Yaaaaaaayyy…" She said sarcastically, stumbling into the Den and digging out her purple adventurer's bag. It had already been packed the night before, after they'd gotten back from the Dallon's and Taylor had set up more of her most disposable spiders to let them weave overnight. The resulting length of spider silk was still sitting on the makeshift loom, where Taylor would pick up the dead spiders and replace them with new ones, as well as arranging for a lot more food to be left for this set. She'd been breeding flies specifically for this, and while there weren't exactly many flies compared to everything else, there were a lot of eggs- so many that Danny had started to get disturbed by them and ask that she breed them elsewhere, or at least put them somewhere where they wouldn't infest the entire house every time she went out.
Taylor was planning on moving the flies into the Den, but the only problem was that it would mean spending a lot more time at the Den to look after them. Not that that was an issue for Eon and Shadow, they were used to having the entire team on base with them, but they both thought that Taylor should spend time with her dad too and that was difficult at the Den.
"Leppa Berries, check, Oran Berries, check, Sitrus Berries, check… wonder if the Gems work on things like Heal Pulse, I never checked. Maybe if I carried two, and did Heal Pulse and Heal Bell at once, they'd both activate and boost both Moves?" She mused. "Hey Eon!"
"Yeah?"
"Do we have a Normal and Psychic Gem you don't mind me using?" She asked him, as his head popped through the doorway. "I was wondering if they worked with Heal Bell and Heal Pulse."
"I… don't think they do." He mused. "I think they only boost damage, not the status Moves."
"Oh, really?" Shadow tilted her head, going back to poking around in her bag. Water, just in case, yeah, one of the Max Elixirs that we have left- I swear I need a good two week downtime to make more of these, though it's not like we can't just use Leppa Berries instead- and that's the bag, so where's my scarf. Lifting the bag with Extrasensory, she fastened it onto her back and started looking around the Den to find her scarf.
Silently, Eon handed it over to her, tying it around her neck for her, and pinning the Rescue Badge onto it.
"Thanks." She muttered, yawning.
"When we get to the PRT building and onto the plane, I'm sure Dragon won't mind if you take a nap before we get to Australia to help out in Canberra." He told her, making her grunt. "C'mon, pix, let's get moving. It won't take two hours to get there, but we can grab some decent food or something from one of the shops open at the moment, and if you promise to be careful I'll let you grab a Coke or something from the shop for the sugar."
"Promise?" She asked, tilting her head. Her ears perked forward slightly at the idea of sugary drinks and a little more energy for the morning, and Eon laughed quietly before picking her up by the scruff of her neck and depositing her outside the Den, closing the door with his tail.
"Yes, Shadow, I promise." She grinned as much as the hour would allow, her eyes drooping slightly even through the promise of sugar, and took up her place on his tail.
"Then lead the way, Leader Eon! I want sugar and food and to get on this plane."
"Well, it's all on the list." Eon chuckled, his tails waving slightly as he placed a few more illusions over the area to keep it safe while they were in Australia. Nothing that would make it difficult for Taylor to get there later, but it would cause trouble for anyone who they hadn't brought to their base personally, which would stop intruders from getting in. "So we'll head out into Brockton Bay proper, stop at one of the shops on the way to the PRT building, basically just make it an early morning patrol, then head to the building for a little bit before nine so we can grab our plane out of here."
"It's nice of Dragon to offer to let us use one of her planes to get there." Shadow noted, as they started walking.
"It is to help Simurgh victims." Eon reminded her. "I doubt there'd be many people that'd have trouble with that. Pretty sure we could ask the US government and get a free army escort if it wasn't for all the issues and the fact that Dragon's Tinkertech is faster."
"Guess it's because we never have things like this happen at home." She mused. "I mean, there's big threats sometimes- not that we've run into one, but you remember that Team… what's their name?"
"Burning Flame, I think."
"Yeah, them, they had that massive thing last year that we heard all about- by the way that is a really weird name, given that their second is Grass type."
"I'm pretty sure that was meant to be the joke."
"Really?"
"Yeah. After all, if the second covers them in Grass stuff, like Sleep Powder, then things can be set on fire."
"Oh. Huh. Good point." Shadow thought over that for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever, not the point. Anyway, other people kinda got involved in that thing, but it's a surprise that their Wigglytuff Guild didn't reach out to any of the other ones around the place to ask for help dealing with things."
"From what I remember, they didn't actually realise how big the problem was until it was almost too late." Eon told her. "They knew about the Grovyle thing, and that got spread around everywhere. But they didn't realise what was actually going on until it was nearly too late, at which point it's not like it was worth running around trying to get the news out and get some help dealing with it."
"I guess that's true." She frowned. "Though I thought they had a few days warning?"
"Would a few days really matter, though? Sure we have teleports and things, but I'm not exactly sure that would've been enough time to call in reinforcements… plus they would've needed to get to that place as well to be able to help, and for all we know maybe having a bigger team or lots of teams would've caused more trouble."
"I guess…" She nodded, frowning a little more. "I mean, it could've been like… um, I forget which Dungeon it was. But that one that only lets so many Pokemon into the Dungeon at one time."
"I suppose it could've been, yeah." He agreed. "Or they might not've called in reinforcements for some other reason."
"Maybe when we get back we can speak to that team again and try asking them." She suggested, with a grin. "It'd be nice to see them in person again. Writing letters is fun too, but it's not quite the same."
"They are fairly fun to talk to, but the Teleport costs are terrible." Eon reminded her, as they turned onto a main road and into one of the small corner stores that was open this early. "Now, go grab your drink."
"Yes!" Shadow did a mini fist pump, jumping in the air, and hurried inside. Eon could hear a slight gasp of surprise from inside the shop at the sudden appearance of a Cape, and chuckled quietly before following her inside, looping his tails around to avoid knocking anything over in the store.
Hopefully he wouldn't come to regret this…
"Is there a bin anywhere near here?" Shadow asked casually, holding a can in her telekinetic grip and looking around. She was currently standing near Eon's side, a little closer than a second usually would, and quietly tilted the can to get the last of the drink out before looking around a little more closely. "I don't see one, actually. What the heck, why aren't there any bins around here?"
"There's probably some in the PRT building, you know." He pointed out, taking a look around himself. "So you could just wait."
"Yeah, I guess- oh, wait, there's a bin over there!" She grinned. "Be right back, Eon, just gonna go put this in there, then I'll be back and we can get going!" She hurried over with bouncy steps, jittering back and forth as she moved, and Eon winced slightly.
Oh Arceus, she's going to go hyper, isn't she? He mused to himself, with a low sigh. Why did I agree to let her have caffeine… Shadow, please, for the love of everything, don't get too weird and jumpy when we're travelling to Australia and helping people out…
"Whatchya thinking about, Eon?" She asked cheerfully, making him startle.
"Oh, just thinking about the trip we're about to make." He half-admitted. "It's going to be quite interesting, isn't it?"
Shadow gave him a slightly startled look, then realised that there was an illusion over them that was hiding their conversation by making it sound far, far quieter than it was supposed to be and nodded. "Yeah, I guess it is." She hummed, flicking her tails back and forth. "I mean, Australia's really far away, so it's probably gonna be a long trip, but I wonder how long it's gonna be if we're flying with one of Dragon's aircraft instead of taking a proper plane."
"Well, from what Swarm said, from here to Canberra it's about twenty hours, which is why we're leaving so early." Eon reminded. "Because we wouldn't get there until tomorrow morning going on normal flights. With Tinkertech that's not exactly guaranteed, but it seems pretty likely that it'll still take most of today to get there."
"That's annoying." Shadow sighed. "Spending an entire day- actually, probably more like two or three- away from Swarm…"
"We've spent more time away from our team mates before, little pix." He teased. "So much more time. Why are you worrying about leaving Swarm?"
"She's the only one here." Shadow pawed the ground, her tails curling. "Back home we have a lot of them in and out of the Den all the time, so there's always plenty of Pokemon there to look after any of the littler recruits and trainees. Swarm's gonna be on her own…"
"Her father's here for her so that she doesn't spend too much time doing Cape stuff, but if she wants to go out and do something then she can call on Vicky and Amy to go out with her." Eon pointed out, prodding her with a tail. "Relax, kit, and focus on getting ready for your healing stint."
"Right." She shook her head. "Right. Right. I have people to heal, people who really need help getting out from under the grip of that damn Simurgh. Focus, focus, focus."
"Are you going to be using Calm Mind?"
"I want the boosts. They don't help much when it comes to Heal Pulse and Heal Bell, but they help a little." Shaking her head again, she batted at her own nose with her paw. "That drink was a mistake… oh well. Nothing to do about it now."
"Sadly not." Eon chuckled, gently nudging her. "Now come on, form up and let's get in there, it's nearly a quarter to nine."
"Ok." Shadow dropped back slightly, just enough to take her second spot, and followed Eon into the PRT building- there weren't nearly as many people hanging around as the last time they'd been in the building. Probably because it was early, and very few people knew they were supposed to be there?- with a smile. I'm getting to help a lot of people now. She reminded herself. There's a lot of people in Canberra, all of them really need help, and I'm probably one of the only beings on the planet that can help them. No matter how long it takes, I'm going to help every single one of them. Then I'll work with the PRT to go to the rest of the Simurgh Zones, and help every single one of them too. I wonder if this is why Hoopa sent us here? I mean, there's a lot of problems on Earth Bet. The Slaughterhouse Nine, Heartbreaker, Ash Beast, the Endbringers, the Yangban… so many issues. But a lot of them can be dealt with by normal humans and Parahumans. It's just the Endbringers that are really a problem, and even then they can probably handle it given time. But breaking people out of Master effects… unless someone new Triggers with the power to do exactly that then Eon and I are the only people who can do it. Slowly, she exhaled again. It's a lot of responsibility, but… it's something important, so I can do this. I have to do this, for the sake of all these people here. If this is what Hoopa sent us here to do, then it's the responsibility that I'll need to handle, as part of the mission. If it's not… well, it's something good I can do while we wait to figure out what Hoopa did send us here to do. Win-win, really.
"Hello." Eon greeted the receptionist, making her snap out of her thoughts and stand a little taller. "I'm Eon, of Team Inari, here with Shadow. We're here for an appointment with Armsmaster and Miss Militia. Would you mind notifying them?"
"Oh- of course, Team Inari." He stumbled. "If you would take a seat?"
Hannah had volunteered to be the one to go down to the reception and escort Inari when they arrived, simply because she knew Colin would want to talk with Dragon more before she set off with the pair for Canberra. Not that they couldn't talk while they were flying, since the craft was mostly automatic once it had a destination set, but the pair of them liked the few chances they got to talk in person, and would take them at every opportunity.
It slightly surprised Hannah that Dragon had turned up personally to escort them, but she supposed that since Inari had already met the Tinker- albeit briefly and under the stress of an Endbringer battle- it made sense for someone they were reasonably familiar with to go with them to Australia for the test. It would also allow Dragon to act as an intermediate, given that most people knew of the Guild Tinker from her reputation. That would most likely help Inari handle things, depending on how unfamiliar the situation was to them.
Upon walking into the reception area, she didn't have to look far to see the pair of kitsune sitting in the chairs, being the only ones there at this time of morning on a Saturday. Eon was already looking at the door, Shadow gazing around idly as if bored, jumping to attention when her leader tapped her on the back with a tail.
"Oh, Miss Militia." Shadow smiled widely, jumping down from the chair. Eon followed, flowing into a standing position and strolling over with Shadow at his side.
"Greetings, Miss Militia." He gave a much smaller smile and a nod to her, which she returned with an outstretched hand. "Thank you for offering to work with us." He shook it, as did Shadow.
"It's quite an important situation, after all." Hannah returned. "But come along, we should get moving."
"Of course." Eon nodded, following her through the door and into the passageway. The pair of vulpine creatures looked around curiously as she led them up to the rooftop, where Dragon and her transport were waiting.
Colin was still quietly talking to her, but stopped as they approached, turning towards Inari. "Inari." He nodded respectfully.
"Good morning, Armsmaster." Eon gave a little bow, and a slightly deeper one to Dragon's suit standing beside him. "Dragon. Thank you for offering us transport."
"It's no trouble at all, Eon." Dragon replied, with a smile in her voice. She offered a slight bow back as well, something that clearly surprised the Kyuubi and his partner, and added, "After all, it's a very special thing that'll help a lot of people, and making sure you get there safely is important for that."
"Still, thank you anyway." He insisted. "Now, I assume we're ready to go?"
"The very last of the checks are just being done now, so almost, yes." She confirmed. "Unless there's anything you need to do, we'll be leaving shortly."
"No, the both of us are fine."
"How long d'you think it'll take?" Shadow asked, tapping her paw on the ground. It was an action somewhat unlike her, Hannah thought, and wondered what the problem was. Maybe she was just anticipatory for heading out to help people?
"The checks shouldn't take much more than five minutes." Dragon told her. "The flight itself... maybe nine or so hours? Since it's mostly open ocean on our route, we'll be flying at around the sound barrier, which would cut a lot off of our time."
"Oh, that's handy!" Shadow grinned. "So, we'll get there around six... our time, that is, and then we can handle everything there."
"It'll be around ten in the morning in Canberra when we get there." Dragon said. "Hopefully it won't take too long to handle the actual effects."
"Probably not." The little kitsune agreed. "Depends on how everything's organised, I guess, but it shouldn't take too long even so. Should be fine in the end."
"Huh, we might even be back home by tomorrow, then." Eon muttered.
"Possibly."
The remainder of the five minutes was spent talking quietly among themselves about assorted things, mostly to do with their trip to Canberra but also about the city of Brockton Bay and how things had changed. Mostly because Lung had started slowly going to ground, taking the rest of the ABB with him, due in part to the appearance of the two kitsune wandering around the city and dealing with crime, which was leading to the Empire 88 getting a little more brave, pushing the boundaries between them and the ABB a little in the hopes of taking territory.
The Merchants hadn't been doing the same, but there was speculation on the idea that they'd even noticed, given how drugged up they were. And the fact that the Capes of the team had been too busy rampaging about the fact that their money kept vanishing due to being Inari's favoured target for messing with and stealing money from, which meant that they were paying rather less attention to the doings of the other gangs in the belief that it was some internal action that was making the money go away.
This was despite the fact that it was fairly public knowledge that Inari favoured them as targets, and also despite it being very public knowledge that Inari had members on the team that could go invisible, which Hannah found incredibly amusing. From the looks on their faces, Inari did as well, with Shadow making a funny half-snort sound which she quickly buried under her paw.
The PRT trooper who was in charge of checking over the Dragoncraft was waiting somewhat awkwardly at the side while they talked, until Dragon noticed him and waved him over. "Everything's ready to go, Ma'am." He said, saluting. "You're cleared to take off at any time you like."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." The Tinker audibly smiled back, then looked towards Inari. "If you're ready to go…?"
"Of course." Eon smiled, with a nod. "Whenever you're ready, we're willing to continue on."
"One trip to Canberra, coming up." Dragon started over to the transport, beckoning them to follow after.
"Safe travels." Hannah offered, as Inari went to leave as well. Eon turned back, bowing once more.
"Again, thank you for your help with this matter. Thank the Madam Director as well, please?"
"I'll pass along your gratitude." She agreed, before Colin could step in.
"Then may we see each other shortly, and in success." Shadow bowed lowly. Eon gave her a sideways glance, then gave his own slightly shorter bow.
"Indeed. Good day." Both kitsune started walking again, while Hannah swapped a slightly confused look with Colin.
"What was that about?" She asked quietly, once she was fairly sure the pair were out of range of even their extended hearing.
"Unknown." Colin replied, similarly quietly. "I have never seen any member of Inari offer that as a greeting or goodbye before."
"I don't think Eon expected it either, from the way he looked at her." She told him, knowing that he would've missed something like that from the Kyuubi. "I wonder if it's not something that's normally said by her?"
"Perhaps."
Eon was curious as to why Shadow had offered one of the typical farewells for teams to the pair of Protectorate members, but given that they were now on Dragon's shuttle and getting settled onto the pair of larger couches that were waiting on the inside he knew he would have to keep his curiosity to himself until after the trip. While on the plane it was likely that they were being monitored, and in Australia they'd probably be too busy to manage to really talk about it, so it would need to wait. Not that he minded too much, it was just curiosity, but Shadow hadn't spoken those words at all since they'd left the Den and their team over a month ago- nearly two now, actually.
It was possible it was just the sugar getting to her, in fairness, but Eon didn't think so. The Vulpix had been quite sincere in her words, he could tell, so it seemed like she had genuinely meant to give them a team's farewell.
Whatever the reason was, however, it was shoved to one side in favour of listening to the Tinker before them, who was standing near a discrete door at the front that most likely led to the pilot's cabin.
"Hopefully this is comfortable for you, I had the internals redone slightly yesterday to give you a bit more sitting room, since we'll be flying for quite a while. There's a mini bar in the wall over there that slides out using the button, and there's also a bathroom you can use if you need it behind the other door on the side. Feel free to take what you want from the bar, I don't mind and it'll all be cleared out once we get back anyway."
"Thank you, Dragon." Eon offered a nod that verged slightly onto a bow, as best as he could from his position lying on the seat, and Dragon offered a bow back before vanishing through the door. The engines started up a moment later, likely some kind of limited AI handling it- like how Porygon or Rotom would often handle computer based things in the rescue world when it was necessary- that Dragon would then be monitoring as they flew, and smoothly caused them to rise into the air.
He turned his head to Shadow, who was happily stretched out on her couch. "So, looking forward to it?"
"Mhm." She hummed, eyes closed. "Should be interesting. Now lemme sleep. Wanna make sure I'm not too tired when we get there."
Eon chuckled quietly. "Sure thing, pix." The air was soon filled with gentle snoring as she slept off the sugar rush from earlier, while Eon did his best to ignore the slight motions he could feel from the flight.
Taylor sighed somewhat despondently, quietly stirring her cereal with her spoon, resting her head on her hand and gazing at the little whirlpool she was making.
"Taylor?"
"Huh?" She blinked, looking up at Danny in confusion.
"Is something wrong?" He asked her. "You're acting a little odd."
Danny was pretty sure he knew what was up with her, but it was still a good idea to check before he tried to reassure her about something, just in case he was wrong.
"It's weird. Not having Shadow and Eon around, I mean." Taylor murmured, still stirring her cereal absently. "Sure, they're not normally here anyway, because they live at the Den, but knowing that they're not in the city at all feels... different."
"Because they're not in easy calling distance?"
"I guess." She frowned. "I could call them easily, I think, but since they're probably flying out about now that wouldn't be the best idea, I guess. It just feels odd to know that they're going flying out to Australia to help people out, and I'm stuck here."
"Are you upset about being left behind?"
Taylor opened her mouth, then paused. "I... kinda." She mused. "I think… it's odd to not have Eon and Shadow here in the city. I've gotten kind of used to having them here, even though it's only been… well, less than two months since they got here and invited me into their team. But the fact that they invited me at all is… I'd sort of given up on making friends." Taylor put her spoon down, resting her head in her hands. "Because of those three… I didn't think I'd get the opportunity to make friends again. Then I Triggered, and started doing Cape things, and then they intervened… it was all pretty weird, to be honest."
Danny didn't say anything, just letting her speak.
"Getting to join their team was… kind of a dream come true, actually. I never expected to end up in a team since, well… I didn't want to join the Wards, because of the oversight and drama, and I wouldn't join New Wave because it'd put you at risk, and there's not really any other options.. or well, I thought." Taylor shrugged. "Then they came along, and I started to work with them, and… so much has happened. It's so odd. And now they aren't here…"
"You miss them."
"Yeah." She nodded. "And I guess I do kind of feel a bit left out, being left here in the city alone while they go traipsing off into far away places. But I understand that they need someone here in the city to handle things while they're gone, and it's always possible I could go along with them the next time."
"I'd be worried if you did, I'll admit." Danny told her. "But I'm also well aware that you can take care of yourself, and that even Shadow alone is probably a match for just about anything that might try to harm you, let alone having Eon beside her. Next trip, depending on what happens with this one, we'll talk it over with Eon and Shadow and think about you going."
He wasn't totally sure it was a safe idea to do that, given how powerful Capes could be compared to Taylor's relatively weaker insect control, but seeing how her face lit up at the thought was worth it.
"Thank you!" She smiled widely. "I'm not really sure how I could help, except for guard duty of some sort which the PRT probably would already have covered, but…"
"Your insects might catch something they miss, and just having you around would likely help your team mates feel more relaxed about their healing." Danny pointed out. "And having you around to perform that layer of guard duty might let Eon feel relaxed enough to help out with the healing somewhat."
"That'd get things over and done with a fair bit quicker, I guess, if they can split up to cover more rooms." Taylor nodded. "Which would mean that Team Inari can help people out faster, and get home faster, and then go out faster."
"Just make sure that none of you overtire yourselves, Taylor." He warned her. "Eon's usually a pretty down-to-earth person- ah, Pokemon- but it's possible that he'll get a little lost in the idea of helping out a lot of people all at once. The three of you need to work together to make sure none of you get exhausted doing this, and leave time for your normal patrols and to relax as well."
"And to rob the Merchants."
"And to rob the Merchants, yes." He chuckled. "They're good targets, I suppose, and it's a decent enough way to fund your Cape team."
"Maybe we should sell those cakes we made, as a more legit way of doing it." Taylor suggested, finally starting to eat her cereal. "That'd be pretty funny. Three Capes doing a bake sale."
Danny shook his head. "Maybe don't start selling out cakes, Taylor." He replied. "It's not like you need to, and honestly it's probably better that you keep them for your own team. Especially since they seem to have something of the power the Berries themselves have."
"Yeah, I guess." Taylor frowned. "I think I know what I want to do today."
"Oh?"
"I want to go to the Den, set up the weaving again for Parian, then check on the Berry trees for Shadow." She explained. "Then I think it might be a good idea to collect some of the healing ones- I think that's Oran, Sitrus and… Leppa? That… sounds right- and bring them back, maybe make some cakes or something out of them to start carrying around in our bags."
"Not going out with Glory Girl?"
"No." Taylor shook her head. "I've spent plenty of time patrolling with Inari, I don't need to do any more right now. I'd rather stay home with you and use my time in a more effective way, helping prepare things for the team to use rather than going out and possibly getting myself injured and causing trouble."
Danny smiled. "Keep thinking things through, kiddo, and you'll all do fine."
"Thanks, Dad." Taylor paused, tilting her head- a gesture amusingly like Shadow. "You've not seen the Den, have you?"
"Not yet."
"Come with me!" She invited enthusiastically. "Make up a little basket and we can pretend we're going out for a walk in the woods if anyone happens to ask, and we'll go to the Den together."
Danny smiled a little more widely. "I'd love to, Taylor."
"Seven AM is too early for this." Shadow grumbled, spitting a bit of fire to warm the thermos of coffee up to a decent temperature. It wouldn't be as nice as it being done properly, but warmed ice and some coffee grounds would work to keep them awake until they got to the PRT building.
Or, rather, it would keep Eon awake. After the Moonlight Cavern incident, Shadow wasn't allowed coffee. She was making do with very warm chocolate, and the hope that the plane ride would be long enough for her to wake up properly so she could focus on healing.
"A little, yes." Eon nodded, taking the thermos and sipping. "When we get back, we need to start working on Berry drinks again. Having a decent supply of both those and the cakes would be useful, especially since they seem to keep the properties of the Berries, even here."
"We really should've thought about that earlier, actually. Having a bunch of Berry cakes to carry with us on missions would be helpful." Shadow mused. "Or cookies! We could make Berry cookies!"
"You and Taylor can talk it over when we get home, if you want." He offered, setting his thermos to one side and stretching. "For now, though, we need to get ready, check things over, and then get to the PRT building."
"Yaaaaaaayyy…" She said sarcastically, stumbling into the Den and digging out her purple adventurer's bag. It had already been packed the night before, after they'd gotten back from the Dallon's and Taylor had set up more of her most disposable spiders to let them weave overnight. The resulting length of spider silk was still sitting on the makeshift loom, where Taylor would pick up the dead spiders and replace them with new ones, as well as arranging for a lot more food to be left for this set. She'd been breeding flies specifically for this, and while there weren't exactly many flies compared to everything else, there were a lot of eggs- so many that Danny had started to get disturbed by them and ask that she breed them elsewhere, or at least put them somewhere where they wouldn't infest the entire house every time she went out.
Taylor was planning on moving the flies into the Den, but the only problem was that it would mean spending a lot more time at the Den to look after them. Not that that was an issue for Eon and Shadow, they were used to having the entire team on base with them, but they both thought that Taylor should spend time with her dad too and that was difficult at the Den.
"Leppa Berries, check, Oran Berries, check, Sitrus Berries, check… wonder if the Gems work on things like Heal Pulse, I never checked. Maybe if I carried two, and did Heal Pulse and Heal Bell at once, they'd both activate and boost both Moves?" She mused. "Hey Eon!"
"Yeah?"
"Do we have a Normal and Psychic Gem you don't mind me using?" She asked him, as his head popped through the doorway. "I was wondering if they worked with Heal Bell and Heal Pulse."
"I… don't think they do." He mused. "I think they only boost damage, not the status Moves."
"Oh, really?" Shadow tilted her head, going back to poking around in her bag. Water, just in case, yeah, one of the Max Elixirs that we have left- I swear I need a good two week downtime to make more of these, though it's not like we can't just use Leppa Berries instead- and that's the bag, so where's my scarf. Lifting the bag with Extrasensory, she fastened it onto her back and started looking around the Den to find her scarf.
Silently, Eon handed it over to her, tying it around her neck for her, and pinning the Rescue Badge onto it.
"Thanks." She muttered, yawning.
"When we get to the PRT building and onto the plane, I'm sure Dragon won't mind if you take a nap before we get to Australia to help out in Canberra." He told her, making her grunt. "C'mon, pix, let's get moving. It won't take two hours to get there, but we can grab some decent food or something from one of the shops open at the moment, and if you promise to be careful I'll let you grab a Coke or something from the shop for the sugar."
"Promise?" She asked, tilting her head. Her ears perked forward slightly at the idea of sugary drinks and a little more energy for the morning, and Eon laughed quietly before picking her up by the scruff of her neck and depositing her outside the Den, closing the door with his tail.
"Yes, Shadow, I promise." She grinned as much as the hour would allow, her eyes drooping slightly even through the promise of sugar, and took up her place on his tail.
"Then lead the way, Leader Eon! I want sugar and food and to get on this plane."
"Well, it's all on the list." Eon chuckled, his tails waving slightly as he placed a few more illusions over the area to keep it safe while they were in Australia. Nothing that would make it difficult for Taylor to get there later, but it would cause trouble for anyone who they hadn't brought to their base personally, which would stop intruders from getting in. "So we'll head out into Brockton Bay proper, stop at one of the shops on the way to the PRT building, basically just make it an early morning patrol, then head to the building for a little bit before nine so we can grab our plane out of here."
"It's nice of Dragon to offer to let us use one of her planes to get there." Shadow noted, as they started walking.
"It is to help Simurgh victims." Eon reminded her. "I doubt there'd be many people that'd have trouble with that. Pretty sure we could ask the US government and get a free army escort if it wasn't for all the issues and the fact that Dragon's Tinkertech is faster."
"Guess it's because we never have things like this happen at home." She mused. "I mean, there's big threats sometimes- not that we've run into one, but you remember that Team… what's their name?"
"Burning Flame, I think."
"Yeah, them, they had that massive thing last year that we heard all about- by the way that is a really weird name, given that their second is Grass type."
"I'm pretty sure that was meant to be the joke."
"Really?"
"Yeah. After all, if the second covers them in Grass stuff, like Sleep Powder, then things can be set on fire."
"Oh. Huh. Good point." Shadow thought over that for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever, not the point. Anyway, other people kinda got involved in that thing, but it's a surprise that their Wigglytuff Guild didn't reach out to any of the other ones around the place to ask for help dealing with things."
"From what I remember, they didn't actually realise how big the problem was until it was almost too late." Eon told her. "They knew about the Grovyle thing, and that got spread around everywhere. But they didn't realise what was actually going on until it was nearly too late, at which point it's not like it was worth running around trying to get the news out and get some help dealing with it."
"I guess that's true." She frowned. "Though I thought they had a few days warning?"
"Would a few days really matter, though? Sure we have teleports and things, but I'm not exactly sure that would've been enough time to call in reinforcements… plus they would've needed to get to that place as well to be able to help, and for all we know maybe having a bigger team or lots of teams would've caused more trouble."
"I guess…" She nodded, frowning a little more. "I mean, it could've been like… um, I forget which Dungeon it was. But that one that only lets so many Pokemon into the Dungeon at one time."
"I suppose it could've been, yeah." He agreed. "Or they might not've called in reinforcements for some other reason."
"Maybe when we get back we can speak to that team again and try asking them." She suggested, with a grin. "It'd be nice to see them in person again. Writing letters is fun too, but it's not quite the same."
"They are fairly fun to talk to, but the Teleport costs are terrible." Eon reminded her, as they turned onto a main road and into one of the small corner stores that was open this early. "Now, go grab your drink."
"Yes!" Shadow did a mini fist pump, jumping in the air, and hurried inside. Eon could hear a slight gasp of surprise from inside the shop at the sudden appearance of a Cape, and chuckled quietly before following her inside, looping his tails around to avoid knocking anything over in the store.
Hopefully he wouldn't come to regret this…
"Is there a bin anywhere near here?" Shadow asked casually, holding a can in her telekinetic grip and looking around. She was currently standing near Eon's side, a little closer than a second usually would, and quietly tilted the can to get the last of the drink out before looking around a little more closely. "I don't see one, actually. What the heck, why aren't there any bins around here?"
"There's probably some in the PRT building, you know." He pointed out, taking a look around himself. "So you could just wait."
"Yeah, I guess- oh, wait, there's a bin over there!" She grinned. "Be right back, Eon, just gonna go put this in there, then I'll be back and we can get going!" She hurried over with bouncy steps, jittering back and forth as she moved, and Eon winced slightly.
Oh Arceus, she's going to go hyper, isn't she? He mused to himself, with a low sigh. Why did I agree to let her have caffeine… Shadow, please, for the love of everything, don't get too weird and jumpy when we're travelling to Australia and helping people out…
"Whatchya thinking about, Eon?" She asked cheerfully, making him startle.
"Oh, just thinking about the trip we're about to make." He half-admitted. "It's going to be quite interesting, isn't it?"
Shadow gave him a slightly startled look, then realised that there was an illusion over them that was hiding their conversation by making it sound far, far quieter than it was supposed to be and nodded. "Yeah, I guess it is." She hummed, flicking her tails back and forth. "I mean, Australia's really far away, so it's probably gonna be a long trip, but I wonder how long it's gonna be if we're flying with one of Dragon's aircraft instead of taking a proper plane."
"Well, from what Swarm said, from here to Canberra it's about twenty hours, which is why we're leaving so early." Eon reminded. "Because we wouldn't get there until tomorrow morning going on normal flights. With Tinkertech that's not exactly guaranteed, but it seems pretty likely that it'll still take most of today to get there."
"That's annoying." Shadow sighed. "Spending an entire day- actually, probably more like two or three- away from Swarm…"
"We've spent more time away from our team mates before, little pix." He teased. "So much more time. Why are you worrying about leaving Swarm?"
"She's the only one here." Shadow pawed the ground, her tails curling. "Back home we have a lot of them in and out of the Den all the time, so there's always plenty of Pokemon there to look after any of the littler recruits and trainees. Swarm's gonna be on her own…"
"Her father's here for her so that she doesn't spend too much time doing Cape stuff, but if she wants to go out and do something then she can call on Vicky and Amy to go out with her." Eon pointed out, prodding her with a tail. "Relax, kit, and focus on getting ready for your healing stint."
"Right." She shook her head. "Right. Right. I have people to heal, people who really need help getting out from under the grip of that damn Simurgh. Focus, focus, focus."
"Are you going to be using Calm Mind?"
"I want the boosts. They don't help much when it comes to Heal Pulse and Heal Bell, but they help a little." Shaking her head again, she batted at her own nose with her paw. "That drink was a mistake… oh well. Nothing to do about it now."
"Sadly not." Eon chuckled, gently nudging her. "Now come on, form up and let's get in there, it's nearly a quarter to nine."
"Ok." Shadow dropped back slightly, just enough to take her second spot, and followed Eon into the PRT building- there weren't nearly as many people hanging around as the last time they'd been in the building. Probably because it was early, and very few people knew they were supposed to be there?- with a smile. I'm getting to help a lot of people now. She reminded herself. There's a lot of people in Canberra, all of them really need help, and I'm probably one of the only beings on the planet that can help them. No matter how long it takes, I'm going to help every single one of them. Then I'll work with the PRT to go to the rest of the Simurgh Zones, and help every single one of them too. I wonder if this is why Hoopa sent us here? I mean, there's a lot of problems on Earth Bet. The Slaughterhouse Nine, Heartbreaker, Ash Beast, the Endbringers, the Yangban… so many issues. But a lot of them can be dealt with by normal humans and Parahumans. It's just the Endbringers that are really a problem, and even then they can probably handle it given time. But breaking people out of Master effects… unless someone new Triggers with the power to do exactly that then Eon and I are the only people who can do it. Slowly, she exhaled again. It's a lot of responsibility, but… it's something important, so I can do this. I have to do this, for the sake of all these people here. If this is what Hoopa sent us here to do, then it's the responsibility that I'll need to handle, as part of the mission. If it's not… well, it's something good I can do while we wait to figure out what Hoopa did send us here to do. Win-win, really.
"Hello." Eon greeted the receptionist, making her snap out of her thoughts and stand a little taller. "I'm Eon, of Team Inari, here with Shadow. We're here for an appointment with Armsmaster and Miss Militia. Would you mind notifying them?"
"Oh- of course, Team Inari." He stumbled. "If you would take a seat?"
Hannah had volunteered to be the one to go down to the reception and escort Inari when they arrived, simply because she knew Colin would want to talk with Dragon more before she set off with the pair for Canberra. Not that they couldn't talk while they were flying, since the craft was mostly automatic once it had a destination set, but the pair of them liked the few chances they got to talk in person, and would take them at every opportunity.
It slightly surprised Hannah that Dragon had turned up personally to escort them, but she supposed that since Inari had already met the Tinker- albeit briefly and under the stress of an Endbringer battle- it made sense for someone they were reasonably familiar with to go with them to Australia for the test. It would also allow Dragon to act as an intermediate, given that most people knew of the Guild Tinker from her reputation. That would most likely help Inari handle things, depending on how unfamiliar the situation was to them.
Upon walking into the reception area, she didn't have to look far to see the pair of kitsune sitting in the chairs, being the only ones there at this time of morning on a Saturday. Eon was already looking at the door, Shadow gazing around idly as if bored, jumping to attention when her leader tapped her on the back with a tail.
"Oh, Miss Militia." Shadow smiled widely, jumping down from the chair. Eon followed, flowing into a standing position and strolling over with Shadow at his side.
"Greetings, Miss Militia." He gave a much smaller smile and a nod to her, which she returned with an outstretched hand. "Thank you for offering to work with us." He shook it, as did Shadow.
"It's quite an important situation, after all." Hannah returned. "But come along, we should get moving."
"Of course." Eon nodded, following her through the door and into the passageway. The pair of vulpine creatures looked around curiously as she led them up to the rooftop, where Dragon and her transport were waiting.
Colin was still quietly talking to her, but stopped as they approached, turning towards Inari. "Inari." He nodded respectfully.
"Good morning, Armsmaster." Eon gave a little bow, and a slightly deeper one to Dragon's suit standing beside him. "Dragon. Thank you for offering us transport."
"It's no trouble at all, Eon." Dragon replied, with a smile in her voice. She offered a slight bow back as well, something that clearly surprised the Kyuubi and his partner, and added, "After all, it's a very special thing that'll help a lot of people, and making sure you get there safely is important for that."
"Still, thank you anyway." He insisted. "Now, I assume we're ready to go?"
"The very last of the checks are just being done now, so almost, yes." She confirmed. "Unless there's anything you need to do, we'll be leaving shortly."
"No, the both of us are fine."
"How long d'you think it'll take?" Shadow asked, tapping her paw on the ground. It was an action somewhat unlike her, Hannah thought, and wondered what the problem was. Maybe she was just anticipatory for heading out to help people?
"The checks shouldn't take much more than five minutes." Dragon told her. "The flight itself... maybe nine or so hours? Since it's mostly open ocean on our route, we'll be flying at around the sound barrier, which would cut a lot off of our time."
"Oh, that's handy!" Shadow grinned. "So, we'll get there around six... our time, that is, and then we can handle everything there."
"It'll be around ten in the morning in Canberra when we get there." Dragon said. "Hopefully it won't take too long to handle the actual effects."
"Probably not." The little kitsune agreed. "Depends on how everything's organised, I guess, but it shouldn't take too long even so. Should be fine in the end."
"Huh, we might even be back home by tomorrow, then." Eon muttered.
"Possibly."
The remainder of the five minutes was spent talking quietly among themselves about assorted things, mostly to do with their trip to Canberra but also about the city of Brockton Bay and how things had changed. Mostly because Lung had started slowly going to ground, taking the rest of the ABB with him, due in part to the appearance of the two kitsune wandering around the city and dealing with crime, which was leading to the Empire 88 getting a little more brave, pushing the boundaries between them and the ABB a little in the hopes of taking territory.
The Merchants hadn't been doing the same, but there was speculation on the idea that they'd even noticed, given how drugged up they were. And the fact that the Capes of the team had been too busy rampaging about the fact that their money kept vanishing due to being Inari's favoured target for messing with and stealing money from, which meant that they were paying rather less attention to the doings of the other gangs in the belief that it was some internal action that was making the money go away.
This was despite the fact that it was fairly public knowledge that Inari favoured them as targets, and also despite it being very public knowledge that Inari had members on the team that could go invisible, which Hannah found incredibly amusing. From the looks on their faces, Inari did as well, with Shadow making a funny half-snort sound which she quickly buried under her paw.
The PRT trooper who was in charge of checking over the Dragoncraft was waiting somewhat awkwardly at the side while they talked, until Dragon noticed him and waved him over. "Everything's ready to go, Ma'am." He said, saluting. "You're cleared to take off at any time you like."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." The Tinker audibly smiled back, then looked towards Inari. "If you're ready to go…?"
"Of course." Eon smiled, with a nod. "Whenever you're ready, we're willing to continue on."
"One trip to Canberra, coming up." Dragon started over to the transport, beckoning them to follow after.
"Safe travels." Hannah offered, as Inari went to leave as well. Eon turned back, bowing once more.
"Again, thank you for your help with this matter. Thank the Madam Director as well, please?"
"I'll pass along your gratitude." She agreed, before Colin could step in.
"Then may we see each other shortly, and in success." Shadow bowed lowly. Eon gave her a sideways glance, then gave his own slightly shorter bow.
"Indeed. Good day." Both kitsune started walking again, while Hannah swapped a slightly confused look with Colin.
"What was that about?" She asked quietly, once she was fairly sure the pair were out of range of even their extended hearing.
"Unknown." Colin replied, similarly quietly. "I have never seen any member of Inari offer that as a greeting or goodbye before."
"I don't think Eon expected it either, from the way he looked at her." She told him, knowing that he would've missed something like that from the Kyuubi. "I wonder if it's not something that's normally said by her?"
"Perhaps."
Eon was curious as to why Shadow had offered one of the typical farewells for teams to the pair of Protectorate members, but given that they were now on Dragon's shuttle and getting settled onto the pair of larger couches that were waiting on the inside he knew he would have to keep his curiosity to himself until after the trip. While on the plane it was likely that they were being monitored, and in Australia they'd probably be too busy to manage to really talk about it, so it would need to wait. Not that he minded too much, it was just curiosity, but Shadow hadn't spoken those words at all since they'd left the Den and their team over a month ago- nearly two now, actually.
It was possible it was just the sugar getting to her, in fairness, but Eon didn't think so. The Vulpix had been quite sincere in her words, he could tell, so it seemed like she had genuinely meant to give them a team's farewell.
Whatever the reason was, however, it was shoved to one side in favour of listening to the Tinker before them, who was standing near a discrete door at the front that most likely led to the pilot's cabin.
"Hopefully this is comfortable for you, I had the internals redone slightly yesterday to give you a bit more sitting room, since we'll be flying for quite a while. There's a mini bar in the wall over there that slides out using the button, and there's also a bathroom you can use if you need it behind the other door on the side. Feel free to take what you want from the bar, I don't mind and it'll all be cleared out once we get back anyway."
"Thank you, Dragon." Eon offered a nod that verged slightly onto a bow, as best as he could from his position lying on the seat, and Dragon offered a bow back before vanishing through the door. The engines started up a moment later, likely some kind of limited AI handling it- like how Porygon or Rotom would often handle computer based things in the rescue world when it was necessary- that Dragon would then be monitoring as they flew, and smoothly caused them to rise into the air.
He turned his head to Shadow, who was happily stretched out on her couch. "So, looking forward to it?"
"Mhm." She hummed, eyes closed. "Should be interesting. Now lemme sleep. Wanna make sure I'm not too tired when we get there."
Eon chuckled quietly. "Sure thing, pix." The air was soon filled with gentle snoring as she slept off the sugar rush from earlier, while Eon did his best to ignore the slight motions he could feel from the flight.
Taylor sighed somewhat despondently, quietly stirring her cereal with her spoon, resting her head on her hand and gazing at the little whirlpool she was making.
"Taylor?"
"Huh?" She blinked, looking up at Danny in confusion.
"Is something wrong?" He asked her. "You're acting a little odd."
Danny was pretty sure he knew what was up with her, but it was still a good idea to check before he tried to reassure her about something, just in case he was wrong.
"It's weird. Not having Shadow and Eon around, I mean." Taylor murmured, still stirring her cereal absently. "Sure, they're not normally here anyway, because they live at the Den, but knowing that they're not in the city at all feels... different."
"Because they're not in easy calling distance?"
"I guess." She frowned. "I could call them easily, I think, but since they're probably flying out about now that wouldn't be the best idea, I guess. It just feels odd to know that they're going flying out to Australia to help people out, and I'm stuck here."
"Are you upset about being left behind?"
Taylor opened her mouth, then paused. "I... kinda." She mused. "I think… it's odd to not have Eon and Shadow here in the city. I've gotten kind of used to having them here, even though it's only been… well, less than two months since they got here and invited me into their team. But the fact that they invited me at all is… I'd sort of given up on making friends." Taylor put her spoon down, resting her head in her hands. "Because of those three… I didn't think I'd get the opportunity to make friends again. Then I Triggered, and started doing Cape things, and then they intervened… it was all pretty weird, to be honest."
Danny didn't say anything, just letting her speak.
"Getting to join their team was… kind of a dream come true, actually. I never expected to end up in a team since, well… I didn't want to join the Wards, because of the oversight and drama, and I wouldn't join New Wave because it'd put you at risk, and there's not really any other options.. or well, I thought." Taylor shrugged. "Then they came along, and I started to work with them, and… so much has happened. It's so odd. And now they aren't here…"
"You miss them."
"Yeah." She nodded. "And I guess I do kind of feel a bit left out, being left here in the city alone while they go traipsing off into far away places. But I understand that they need someone here in the city to handle things while they're gone, and it's always possible I could go along with them the next time."
"I'd be worried if you did, I'll admit." Danny told her. "But I'm also well aware that you can take care of yourself, and that even Shadow alone is probably a match for just about anything that might try to harm you, let alone having Eon beside her. Next trip, depending on what happens with this one, we'll talk it over with Eon and Shadow and think about you going."
He wasn't totally sure it was a safe idea to do that, given how powerful Capes could be compared to Taylor's relatively weaker insect control, but seeing how her face lit up at the thought was worth it.
"Thank you!" She smiled widely. "I'm not really sure how I could help, except for guard duty of some sort which the PRT probably would already have covered, but…"
"Your insects might catch something they miss, and just having you around would likely help your team mates feel more relaxed about their healing." Danny pointed out. "And having you around to perform that layer of guard duty might let Eon feel relaxed enough to help out with the healing somewhat."
"That'd get things over and done with a fair bit quicker, I guess, if they can split up to cover more rooms." Taylor nodded. "Which would mean that Team Inari can help people out faster, and get home faster, and then go out faster."
"Just make sure that none of you overtire yourselves, Taylor." He warned her. "Eon's usually a pretty down-to-earth person- ah, Pokemon- but it's possible that he'll get a little lost in the idea of helping out a lot of people all at once. The three of you need to work together to make sure none of you get exhausted doing this, and leave time for your normal patrols and to relax as well."
"And to rob the Merchants."
"And to rob the Merchants, yes." He chuckled. "They're good targets, I suppose, and it's a decent enough way to fund your Cape team."
"Maybe we should sell those cakes we made, as a more legit way of doing it." Taylor suggested, finally starting to eat her cereal. "That'd be pretty funny. Three Capes doing a bake sale."
Danny shook his head. "Maybe don't start selling out cakes, Taylor." He replied. "It's not like you need to, and honestly it's probably better that you keep them for your own team. Especially since they seem to have something of the power the Berries themselves have."
"Yeah, I guess." Taylor frowned. "I think I know what I want to do today."
"Oh?"
"I want to go to the Den, set up the weaving again for Parian, then check on the Berry trees for Shadow." She explained. "Then I think it might be a good idea to collect some of the healing ones- I think that's Oran, Sitrus and… Leppa? That… sounds right- and bring them back, maybe make some cakes or something out of them to start carrying around in our bags."
"Not going out with Glory Girl?"
"No." Taylor shook her head. "I've spent plenty of time patrolling with Inari, I don't need to do any more right now. I'd rather stay home with you and use my time in a more effective way, helping prepare things for the team to use rather than going out and possibly getting myself injured and causing trouble."
Danny smiled. "Keep thinking things through, kiddo, and you'll all do fine."
"Thanks, Dad." Taylor paused, tilting her head- a gesture amusingly like Shadow. "You've not seen the Den, have you?"
"Not yet."
"Come with me!" She invited enthusiastically. "Make up a little basket and we can pretend we're going out for a walk in the woods if anyone happens to ask, and we'll go to the Den together."
Danny smiled a little more widely. "I'd love to, Taylor."
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LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
kitsune
a team's
the pilot's cabin
I like how they figure that the engines are under AI control. I suppose that's true, in a certain way...
Chapter 28- Canberra, helping, and familiarity
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Eight hours, thirty-five minutes later, the Dragoncraft touched down in Australia, just a little outside of the Canberra Containment Zone. Almost immediately, Eon sighed in relief, closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing for a moment.
"That was not fun." He announced decisively. "Not even slightly."
"Maybe you should try sleeping through it next time?" Shadow, who'd woken up around two hours before and promptly raided the snack bar of the majority of the fruit on there, steadily eating through it. Not that he blamed her, she was about to be using a lot of energy over the course of their work, and he hoped the people running this had thought to bring food for her. "That helped me."
"I'll try that on the way back, assuming you haven't completely given up after healing." He told her.
"Both of you can feel free to rest on the way back to the Bay." Dragon offered, entering the room. "It's highly unlikely that anything would happen to the shuttle."
"Old habits tend to die hard, I'm afraid." Eon admitted, slowly slipping from the couch. The world was spinning slightly, which was annoying, but slow breathing was helping a little. "When you're on the job and travelling, you should always have a team member keeping watch. Two is preferable, but always one."
"I... see." Dragon seemed somewhat startled by that- for some reason- but she looked between the two Team Inari Pokemon and nodded. "Well, are you two ready to go?"
"Certainly."
"All ready to go." Shadow agreed, stepping into the second position. Eon moved back, pushing her with his tails to stand at his side, and chuckled.
"This is your work, Shadow. We're working as equals today."
"Oh. Ok." Shadow blinked, also seeming startled. Eon wasn't surprised by this, since it was a pretty blatant disregarding of normal Rescue Team protocol for official things, but Eon didn't care. This was Shadow's day, not his, and there wasn't any reason to really follow protocol this time. There were no official Guilds or Teams, no outlaws or police to be talking to, the only reason for Eon to be in charge aside from being the nominal team leader, which was barely a consideration when there was only two of them.
"Lead the way, Dragon." Eon gestured slightly to the front of the shuttle. The Tinker nodded, apparently triggering the opening of the door on the back, and the three walked out.
There were three people there to meet them as well, two people in costume that were obviously Capes and a third, in a suit. He introduced himself as a general- someone named Hurley- and started to speak to Dragon, leaving Eon free to ignore things for a moment and examine the Capes.
Shadow was paying attention, she'd fill him in if he missed anything. For today, he was playing bodyguard and backup, more than leader. Though if they asked him to help heal he would, naturally, that wasn't his actual role today. Looking after Shadow would be much more important to him, and that meant scouting out the area to make sure nothing would hurt her. Including the Capes working with them.
They'd had teams betray them on the job before.
The Cape on the left of the group was tall and willowy- a similar build to Taylor, actually- though the man himself was obviously different. He seemed somewhat bored with the entire thing, leaning on a back foot like he wasn't expecting to need to do anything at all, and gazing absently around the area. Poor awareness, perhaps? Eon mused. Or is this person arrogant enough to not consider us a threat at all? I wonder what their power is, in that case. Their costume didn't give any hints; it was quite plain, a form-fitting spandex that emphasised the slight muscularity that he had, mostly blue with bronze highlights, and his helmet covered his head almost completely.
Eon made a note to watch him carefully, just in case he decided to be a problem.
The other Cape, in contrast, was quite bright and bubbly. She seemed young, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and was seated on a literal bubble, bright pink. Her costume was a dress, down just below her knees, in a cheerful green, with a simple domino mask that barely concealed her identity. Red hair brushed her shoulders, blue-green eyes darting around enthusiastically but mostly remaining focused on Shadow. A pair of large, fairy-like wings sat on her back, and as he watched they fluttered, making the bubble sway slightly in the draught. A flier, then, possibly the person who would escort Shadow to wherever the healing was happening. Or possibly it would be going from place to place, which would make the flying Cape's job moving her around.
Which slightly annoyed Eon, from the perspective of guarding Shadow. If she was moving around a lot- and being flown around, specifically- it would make looking after her a lot more difficult. He'd need to find a way to keep up with her, which might be difficult depending on how quickly the female Cape moved around. Most flying Capes moved pretty fast, in his experience- in fact, most flying Pokemon did too. Eon supposed that it was part of the package- so that might be troubling.
"...We've started to move people into set ups in town." The general was saying, when Eon refocused on him. "There's marquees set up to hold people, as many as we can get into one room, we're hoping you'll be able to clear them out from near the door so you can just move from place to place quick. We weren't able to get everyone into the rooms, unfortunately, but once you've worked your magic we'll move them out and into processing centres that we've set up."
"Processing centres?" Shadow asked, tilting her head.
"To get them out of here." He told her. "All of them are registered as Simurgh victims, so we'll need to strike them off the list and help them get back into society again. Canberra's being emptied out, basically, to let the folks get used to living in the real world and to check the place over. It's not been long since the attack, sure, but it'll need doing." Hurley shook his head. "Not my department, luckily, and I don't envy them doing the older zones."
"The Guild are offering help to the governments of the countries with older containment zones." Dragon put forward. "The American government and the PRT are offering their own aid as well, wherever they can."
Hurley looked surprised by this, for some reason, and Eon made a mental note to request information from Dragon on the way back.
"Good of you." He decided finally. "Right, Shadow. Iridessa here will take you over to the first tent, and she'll be acting as your escort around the area too. Thud is going to be helping out with crowd control for the moving people." Hurley looked questioningly at Eon, who swapped a look with Shadow.
"I'll be staying near Shadow's position, making sure that there's no scuffles that might hurt her." He said firmly. "Or attacks, for that matter."
Thud seemed to raise an eyebrow. "You expect us to attack you?"
"Not necessarily." He denied. "But people can do stupid things if they're worried. Or if they're not thinking straight. From what I understand, the Simurgh programs people, yes?" He waited to get a nod from Dragon before he continued, "Who's to say some of that programming doesn't require they attack anyone able to break the Mastering?"
The others- except Shadow, who'd heard this and a thousand other theories while they were making plans for the trip- did a double take.
"We never even thought of that." Dragon murmured, sounding irritated with herself.
Eon shrugged fluidly. "No need to beat yourself up over it. We can't all think of everything, after all. Shadow and I thought about it, Inari worked together to figure out what we could do. As such, I'll stop beside Shadow and make sure she's safe. It's no big deal, really. I can handle it just fine."
"I… see." Hurley nodded slowly. Iridessa just shrugged, flittering her wings to make the pink bubble she was sitting on drift forward, then shuffled slightly and offered her arms to Shadow.
"C'mon, you can fly with me!" She grinned, before looking over Eon. "I… don't know if my bubbles would be strong enough to carry you without me being in contact with it, though."
Eon shrugged, a rippling movement that ended in a small tail lash. "No worries." He easily lied. "I can keep up well enough, and Shadow needs to focus for her healing anyway."
"Yeah, I… kinda followed you guys on PHO with your healing stuff." Iridessa blushed a little. "So I knew from that that healing was a bit hard on Shadow. It's why I volunteered to help out."
"Oh?"
"I thought my power might be useful for transporting you around, since the bubbles move pretty fast even without me using my wings to push further."
Shadow and Eon exchanged a glance, feeling that there was more to it than what was being said by the fairy-like girl, then nodded.
"Thank you." Shadow smiled, stepping forward to let Iridessa lift her up. "Come on, let's get moving. The faster we can get these people out of this situation, the better."
Eon couldn't help but feel proud of his little second as the pair began to move. Always thinking of others... you've grown up a lot, Shadow, but you're still that little kit that only wanted to help people as an adventurer. Shaking himself, he piled up an Agility to make sure he could keep up with them. "Well, you heard her. I expect you'll be getting your first crowd of un-Mastered people soon, General. I'll go and make sure Shadow's safe and that everything works as intended."
"I'll make sure our people know to start getting ready on the paperwork, then." Hurley nodded, saluting them both. "Thank you for your assistance."
"Thank you, General." Eon replied, bowing. "Shadow, since the day we became a team and well before that, only really wanted to help people. She's been a little awestruck with glory a few times, as can only be expected from someone young, but being helpful has always been what she wanted. I'm glad she's able to find ways to keep doing it, even here."
"You keep an eye on that girl, because she'll be getting offers for awards faster than you can blink if she keeps this up."
"Trust me, General." Eon let a bit of fang show in his smile, and was roughly amused when the Brute gulped and stepped back. "I'll never let anything take Shadow off the ground. It's what we do, protect and ground each other. That won't stop, no matter how big our work gets."
Taking a glance over at the pair, who were now in some kind of quiet conversation as they flew towards their destination, Eon gave another bow to the group before hurrying off in long bounds. Given how quickly he was moving compared to them, it wouldn't be too hard to catch them before they reached the first tent, where he could keep an eye on Shadow.
"So, what's the real reason you wanted me to fly with you?" Shadow asked casually, as the two of them floated along on the bubble. It was quite an interesting experience, she found; bobbing up and down slightly while Iridessa fluttered her wings to push them along, the bubble holding their weight perfectly- as could be expected of Parahuman powers, she supposed. It was a shame that there weren't any Pokemon that could do the same thing, at least as far as she knew. Maybe they could suggest it to one of the Water types on their team for them to have a go at replicating. Would be cool, she mused, as Iridessa did a double take. Using bubbles to move about a Dungeon or something. Could maybe use it in escorts too, to keep the client safe out of the way while we walk.
"W-what do you mean?" Iridessa stuttered, her arms tightening slightly around Shadow. They were already wrapped around her, since the Vulpix was sitting in her lap while they floated along, but that was more of a careful enclosure to make sure that she didn't fall if they shifted around on the wind.
"Well, you've been following our work, apparently, so you probably know about how fast me and Eon move around, so you know I don't need someone to carry me over to the place." She pointed out, her tails shifting slightly. "We'd need a guide, sure, but not really a proper lift. So you offered me a lift for some reason other than just being polite or wanting me to get there fine."
"H-how do you know I wasn't just trying to be nice and making sure you didn't get too tired?" Iridessa retorted, a little defensively. Her face under her mask was a little pink, and she shot a glance to one side before refocusing on her flight. "I mean, I know that healing takes a lot of power for you to do, or at least do repeatedly for people! I follow your PHO stuff after all. How do you know I wasn't just trying to keep you from getting too tired early on?"
"That's fair, but there's the fact that you reacted super defensively to what I said, the fact that if you followed us on PHO then you'd know that I always bring stuff to boost my energy when I'm doing big healing runs with Panacea to try and clear out the hospital." Shadow replied. "Plus I can smell that you're embarrassed about something, which I'd assume is the fact that I caught you out."
"Ah!" The fairy-like Cape winced, the bubble shaking a little as she did, then sagged. "Alright, yeah. I did have another reason for wanting you to fly along with me."
"Go on."
"See, I was hoping you could help me with my own medical problems as well, while you're here." She was blushing a little darker now, and Shadow tilted her head a little, moving to bump her head crest reassuringly against her chin. "I… it's not a problem in my Cape ID, because of the bubbles, but when I'm a civilian I'm stuck in a wheelchair a lot of the time. I got hurt a while back, and I'm doing… better, but it's really hard to handle."
"Wouldn't getting healed be suspicious, though?" Shadow asked. "I mean, you'll be getting healed as a Cape, so…"
"It's not that I can't move, it's just difficult to." She explained. "Or, rather, difficult to do a lot of it. I can walk a bit, but not much, I get tired too easily. I'm doing physio to help, but it's really annoying not being able to walk around at home." Iridessa blushed harder. "That… feels kind of silly… I mean… I'm getting better… It's not really like it's something that needs your help…"
"I'm willing to give it, though." Shadow told her gently. "If you're sure. You'll need to remember that you're not supposed to be able to walk, after all. You might find that difficult to do, especially if you keep walking around at home. And there's the physio to think of."
"I… think I don't mind, to be honest." She murmured. "I'd like to be able to walk properly again. I can just pretend that my recovery's suddenly gotten a lot faster or something. I just… I miss being able to go up the stairs and not have to pant for breath at the top. Or being able to walk from the front room to the kitchen without needing to use my chair after only a few steps."
"I think I get that." Shadow said. While she'd not exactly been in that situation, she supposed it was rather like not being able to use her fire. And not like when she was a kid and still learning, like not being able to do it now, when she was a Rescue Pokemon and a Dungeon Explorer. Of course, for Iridessa her Cape activities weren't being affected- she could just float around on her bubbles, while Shadow would have trouble doing her job as an adventurer if she couldn't use her fire. "And yeah, I've got no problem healing you. Just be around when I use my power and you'll be affected by it."
"That won't cause trouble?"
"No, not at all." She shook her head. "It's not that much more energy to heal one person. I've almost definitely healed some of the nurses when I'm working in the hospital, and I know Panacea's been caught on the edges a few times. It's no problem."
"Thank you." The Vulpix smiled gently at the Cape holding her, carefully adjusting how she was sitting to pat her on the arm.
"It's no problem." She assured. "Honestly, I like helping people out- it's why I'm here, after all. There's a lot of people here in this city that need help, and I'm one of the only people here that can help them. Eon can too, but he can't do it as many heals in a row as I can. Plus he struggles a bit using both powers at once, which is what I'm doing… that's why he's a guard and not a healer. But still, I want to help people out, and it'd be bad for my honour as a healer to not offer help to someone who needs it when I'm on a trip to heal people!"
"Still, thank you." Iridessa smiled softly, then looked up. "Ok, this is the place."
'The place' was a large white shape, like a large tent. There was an opening on the side they had landed on, obviously to let her in, and after a moment to let Eon catch up Shadow jumped down from her perch on the bubble, landing elegantly on the floor and slipping in with her two escorts.
"Huh." She managed, after a moment of mildly stunned silence.
The marquee was a lot bigger on the inside than she'd expected. Not just in a 'wow the bit I couldn't see went further than I thought it would' way, but actually definitely bigger-than-it-should-be. The roof was a lot higher up than it should have been as well, and looking around showed her that there were an awful lot of walkways acting as extra levels above them, laid out in a way that her power would still count all of it as a single room.
There must have been at least a thousand people there. Maybe more, from the volume of people shuffling, whispering, nervous and confused, unsure exactly what was going on…
Shadow's tails drooped slightly, curling further inwards. So many people... She'd never healed this many people before. Not in one go, anyway… possibly not at all, even with all the healing she did in Dungeons and when they stopped in towns on their missions. Could she even manage it?
Something heavy draped itself over her back, making her startle and barely contain a yelp. Looking over at Eon, she took a deep breath and smiled, nodding slightly. I'm ok, she promised.
"I didn't expect this." Iridessa admitted quietly, casting her gaze around as well. "I wonder how they did it?"
"Some power like Vista's back home?" Eon suggested. "Or perhaps it's the effect of something Tinker-made. Though if it's the latter I rather wonder how much money was spent on all of this…"
"Well, it's certainly going to help out." Shadow muttered, breathing deeply again. The sudden onset of panic had been a new experience, one that was quickly fading and she wasn't eager to repeat. "There's hundreds of thousands of people in Canberra. It's going to take so long…"
"You'll manage." Eon assured her gently. "Now, we should probably go and inform someone of what we're doing."
Iridessa nodded audibly, the bubbly nature climbing back, and Shadow felt a small spark of her own rising back up.
"I'll go find someone to speak to, give me a sec."
She could do this. She'd healed time and time again before, it was just more people that were relying on her here. Thousands more people, who'd all suffered under the shadow of a beast for months now…
But they were people. There would be more people, soon. More from Canberra, in other tents around the walled off city, more from other walled off cities in other countries, and she and Eon were the only ones who could help them.
Iridessa and her bubble floated back, accompanied by a man in a suit, and another subtle glance at Eon for comfort had him dropping back and her moving forward- a perfect reversal of their normal leader and second.
Explaining everything to him took only a few minutes, and a little more to ensure that everything was set up right. Doors were pinned shut to make walls, an announcement was made about who she was as she was escorted further in- not that it was needed for her powers to work, but no-one wanted to risk someone getting missed- and Shadow closed her eyes, breathing deeply again.
The natural warmth that radiated from the Ninetales was familiar, and for a moment she could almost pretend she was back home, back in a Dungeon somewhere, and all that was waiting for her was her team, needing a quick healing after a difficult fight- maybe a Monster House, or some combat rite against a Legendary.
The loud howl came easily after that.
Taylor drifted easily around the Inari Den, a part of her mind on the spiders she was weaving with while the rest of her paid attention to her dad, guiding him around the small complex her team mates were working on building. It wasn't really much, at least compared to the stories she'd heard of the Den back on their world; a sleeping-room, with a few boxes for important things, like Shadow's bag and some of their money, a main storage block, which held Berries and a good chunk of the money, a few carefully hidden bags webbed in the trees containing more of their money, the new addition of a large loom for her spiders to work on with a box containing the flies, and the large garden a little ways away that had been made out of a powerful spring they'd been lucky enough to find. A stack of wood sat at one side, quite small, and a firepit in the middle of the clearing explained why it was there, and another pile of branches was sitting further away, set aside for some other project.
Compared to the stories she'd heard of Inari's Den on their world, of a massive sprawling complex of wood and stone that climbed four stories into the air and had another level below ground- plus the large open sparring area for when team members didn't want to go to one of the public grounds- Taylor couldn't help but feel the stirrings of… something. She wasn't sure what; pity, at the two Pokemon who led her team's sacrifices? Sorrow, that they'd had to give up what they'd built to come and help Earth Bet? Amazement and joy that they had done that, not knowing anything about where they were going or even why before they landed?
Taylor had no idea what exactly she was feeling, but she knew she was glad that the two of them had done what they'd done, and that she'd been lucky enough to meet them on that first night.
Right now, though, she and her father were wandering about in the Berry fields, carefully looking over the bushes to see if any of them were fully grown. Those that were were picked and placed into one of the silk bags. Usually they were sorted by effect- or at least, Taylor thought they were- but neither of them really knew what most of the Berries did, so instead they looked through the bags for one that looked to be around the same shape and put them in the same bag. Taylor was pretty sure they were doing it right, because the Berries did look the same… though if they were wrong then at least Shadow and Eon would be able to help them put things in the right place again.
"How on Earth did the two of them set all this up in so little time?" Danny asked, part way through picking the Berries off of a particularly fruitful Leppa tree.
"These trees are weird." Taylor explained. "The Berries grow to full in only a few days, I think the longest is about a week long. Back on their original planet they're even quicker. I'm pretty sure they brought a ton of things with them when they decided to come here, and they've just been growing them ever since. Plus there's a lot of Berries on all of these, so it's easy to plant more." She paused, tugging a stubborn Iapapa Berry from it's branch, then continued, "They've probably been replanting most of these to get more, which is why we've got all of this. I mean I can't blame them, it's really helpful."
"They are, yes." Danny nodded. "Most of these are healing of some kind, aren't they?"
"I think so." She thought back. "I think they're a lot of healing Berries, but a good number of these boost their ability to do things, like temporarily making them faster or making their attacks more powerful. It's like some of their Moves, but I think the effect lasts for less time? Or something like that, anyway. It's been a while, and since I can't use them I don't really remember everything they said."
Danny opened his mouth, and Taylor winced. "Yes, I know I should," she cut him off, "It was just a bit hard. Everything was still so new and I was a little bit distracted by the fact that the kitsune that had beaten Lung a few days ago wanted me on their team. I've been doing my best to learn everything I missed that time, though it's a bit difficult." She swept a hand around the field. "There's a lot of Berries to learn. I've basically just been focusing on the healing ones, and making sure I can grab some of the booster Berries if some kind of emergency comes up that means Shadow or Eon needs one." She paused again. "Then again, they don't really carry many Berries around with them. Leppa and Sitrus for healing, sometimes some Oran for smaller heals, but that's usually about it, really. I guess they don't want to accidentally waste some of the booster Berries on things? Or maybe they just don't like carrying them around too much. I know that bag of Eon's is ridiculously big on the inside, but I also know they don't like using too much storage at once, so…"
"Why is that, exactly?"
"Something to do with the Dungeons." Taylor explained. "Dungeons seem to randomly have items lying around in them, so teams like Inari get into the habit of not carrying more than the absolute essentials around with them, in order to make sure they have enough space in their bags for anything interesting or potentially valuable they find."
"Surely they could just take more bags?"
"Well, yeah, but that gets burdensome. Too many bags makes it difficult to manoeuvre around the Dungeon, and in fights it gets harder to dodge. Plus the bags can get damaged in fights. I think Shadow said Inari usually has one of their members acting as a carrier, usually one of the larger Pokemon, so that they can have a few more bags, but it's still a habit to carry as little as they can get away with to make sure they have room."
"Fair enough, I suppose." Danny hummed. The pair lapsed into silence for a little while, going back to focusing on the Berry field. Taylor also put a little more focus onto the spiders at the Den, making sure that the weaving was going as intended. Hopefully pretty soon she'd have enough silk made up to give to Parian for her work, which would be nice. Despite the conversation only being quite short, Taylor had rather liked the Rogue, and she was glad to be able to help her out in some way that didn't involve fighting.
A lot of Parahumans only seemed to be capable of fighting, so it was nice to be a part of more peaceful things, like Parian's shop or Inari's anti-Simurgh efforts.
She hoped Shadow was doing ok…
Shadow sagged a little in exhaustion as the energy pulse rippled through the room, taking with it all of the lingering Master effects on the people there. Iridessa immediately floated off to help organise the people in the tent, while Eon stepped forward slightly, letting his second-in-command lean against him.
"Thanks." She muttered, closing her eyes and listening to the steady sound of people walking.
"No problem, pix." He said, just as softly. One tail curled around her side to keep her close, and she couldn't help but relax a little. "You should take a break. There's no good in overworking yourself for this."
"No, I... well, I think I can do one or two more." She argued. "I'll definitely need to rest then, that's for sure, but I think I can handle doing a couple more tents."
"Shadow, you must've done thousands of people by now. Maybe more." Eon scolded. "And it's only been what, an hour? Two? You've used up so many healing combos that I'm surprised the Leppa Berries are still having an effect."
"It's close cut." Shadow admitted reluctantly. "They're starting to get to the point where it's not doing anything at all."
"So yes, you need a break." He sighed. "I'll let you do one more, then we'll tell Iridessa and one of the government people that you need to rest for a while before you can do anything more. See if Dragon can bring food from the craft, and we'll find a place for you to take another nap before we continue on."
The Vulpix slowly nodded, wanting to argue but knowing that her team leader had a point. If she kept going like she was, only using the Berries and Max Elixirs to keep her energy up, then pretty soon they'd stop working altogether and she would crash. It was better to take a break now, while she still had some energy left to recover, so that she would recover faster and be able to get back to things.
"Alright." She acquiesced. "We'll do that. Don't... don't let me sleep too long, though. I don't really want to be sleeping when there's still people to help..."
"But you can't be helping people if you don't have the power." Eon reminded her. "Tell you what. If you'd like, and you're willing to trust her, we'll ask Iridessa to keep an eye on you and I'll have a go at clearing out a few of the tents. That way Inari's still clearing out some of the tents, but you're able to recover."
"Are you gonna be able to do it?" Shadow cracked open an eye to look at him. He nodded.
"I should be able to. It's a bit of a mental trick for me to do what you do, but I've done it quite a few times, so I don't see why I wouldn't be able to do it again. I'd likely not be able to do it as many times as you, but I can still do it a few times, so you can rest a while."
"...I think I trust her enough." Shadow decided. "I mean, she'd only be carrying me about with you, so it's not like you'd be far away."
"Then you'll do one more tent, and then we'll ask her." Eon settled, patting her back with his tail-tip. "Get as much of a break as you can now, too, so that it's easier for you to recover after this next tent."
Shadow hummed in agreement, closing her eye again and leaning a little closer to Eon. It was almost warm enough to fall asleep, sort of like when they were in Dungeons and all curled up together to rest, taking turns sitting on guard in a group of fur and fluff and skin.
Again, if it hadn't been for the volume, the loud chorus of excited people moving towards freedom, it would've been easy to pretend she was back home. Maybe not even back home in a Dungeon with Inari; the warmth and curl of fur could almost be her and her siblings, curled up in front of the living room fire, listening to Momma or Gram telling Talekeeper stories, enthralled and at the time believing wholeheartedly that she would be doing that someday, telling stories that had been in the family so long that some people forgot where they even came from. The crowds of people could almost fade away into the background, becoming nothing but the noise of her siblings shuffling around, claws scratching slightly on the floor as they got more comfortable, or Pa working on something in the back of the room and listening with half an ear.
It's kind of odd. Shadow mused sleepily. How quickly some things have become familiar.
Because it was also the sound of her and Taylor and Eon sitting in the Den after a patrol, Eon letting himself be used as a sort of backrest because of the warmth of his internal fire, discussing what went well and what didn't before walking Taylor back to her house.
It's odd how quickly some things can become a part of home.
"That was not fun." He announced decisively. "Not even slightly."
"Maybe you should try sleeping through it next time?" Shadow, who'd woken up around two hours before and promptly raided the snack bar of the majority of the fruit on there, steadily eating through it. Not that he blamed her, she was about to be using a lot of energy over the course of their work, and he hoped the people running this had thought to bring food for her. "That helped me."
"I'll try that on the way back, assuming you haven't completely given up after healing." He told her.
"Both of you can feel free to rest on the way back to the Bay." Dragon offered, entering the room. "It's highly unlikely that anything would happen to the shuttle."
"Old habits tend to die hard, I'm afraid." Eon admitted, slowly slipping from the couch. The world was spinning slightly, which was annoying, but slow breathing was helping a little. "When you're on the job and travelling, you should always have a team member keeping watch. Two is preferable, but always one."
"I... see." Dragon seemed somewhat startled by that- for some reason- but she looked between the two Team Inari Pokemon and nodded. "Well, are you two ready to go?"
"Certainly."
"All ready to go." Shadow agreed, stepping into the second position. Eon moved back, pushing her with his tails to stand at his side, and chuckled.
"This is your work, Shadow. We're working as equals today."
"Oh. Ok." Shadow blinked, also seeming startled. Eon wasn't surprised by this, since it was a pretty blatant disregarding of normal Rescue Team protocol for official things, but Eon didn't care. This was Shadow's day, not his, and there wasn't any reason to really follow protocol this time. There were no official Guilds or Teams, no outlaws or police to be talking to, the only reason for Eon to be in charge aside from being the nominal team leader, which was barely a consideration when there was only two of them.
"Lead the way, Dragon." Eon gestured slightly to the front of the shuttle. The Tinker nodded, apparently triggering the opening of the door on the back, and the three walked out.
There were three people there to meet them as well, two people in costume that were obviously Capes and a third, in a suit. He introduced himself as a general- someone named Hurley- and started to speak to Dragon, leaving Eon free to ignore things for a moment and examine the Capes.
Shadow was paying attention, she'd fill him in if he missed anything. For today, he was playing bodyguard and backup, more than leader. Though if they asked him to help heal he would, naturally, that wasn't his actual role today. Looking after Shadow would be much more important to him, and that meant scouting out the area to make sure nothing would hurt her. Including the Capes working with them.
They'd had teams betray them on the job before.
The Cape on the left of the group was tall and willowy- a similar build to Taylor, actually- though the man himself was obviously different. He seemed somewhat bored with the entire thing, leaning on a back foot like he wasn't expecting to need to do anything at all, and gazing absently around the area. Poor awareness, perhaps? Eon mused. Or is this person arrogant enough to not consider us a threat at all? I wonder what their power is, in that case. Their costume didn't give any hints; it was quite plain, a form-fitting spandex that emphasised the slight muscularity that he had, mostly blue with bronze highlights, and his helmet covered his head almost completely.
Eon made a note to watch him carefully, just in case he decided to be a problem.
The other Cape, in contrast, was quite bright and bubbly. She seemed young, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and was seated on a literal bubble, bright pink. Her costume was a dress, down just below her knees, in a cheerful green, with a simple domino mask that barely concealed her identity. Red hair brushed her shoulders, blue-green eyes darting around enthusiastically but mostly remaining focused on Shadow. A pair of large, fairy-like wings sat on her back, and as he watched they fluttered, making the bubble sway slightly in the draught. A flier, then, possibly the person who would escort Shadow to wherever the healing was happening. Or possibly it would be going from place to place, which would make the flying Cape's job moving her around.
Which slightly annoyed Eon, from the perspective of guarding Shadow. If she was moving around a lot- and being flown around, specifically- it would make looking after her a lot more difficult. He'd need to find a way to keep up with her, which might be difficult depending on how quickly the female Cape moved around. Most flying Capes moved pretty fast, in his experience- in fact, most flying Pokemon did too. Eon supposed that it was part of the package- so that might be troubling.
"...We've started to move people into set ups in town." The general was saying, when Eon refocused on him. "There's marquees set up to hold people, as many as we can get into one room, we're hoping you'll be able to clear them out from near the door so you can just move from place to place quick. We weren't able to get everyone into the rooms, unfortunately, but once you've worked your magic we'll move them out and into processing centres that we've set up."
"Processing centres?" Shadow asked, tilting her head.
"To get them out of here." He told her. "All of them are registered as Simurgh victims, so we'll need to strike them off the list and help them get back into society again. Canberra's being emptied out, basically, to let the folks get used to living in the real world and to check the place over. It's not been long since the attack, sure, but it'll need doing." Hurley shook his head. "Not my department, luckily, and I don't envy them doing the older zones."
"The Guild are offering help to the governments of the countries with older containment zones." Dragon put forward. "The American government and the PRT are offering their own aid as well, wherever they can."
Hurley looked surprised by this, for some reason, and Eon made a mental note to request information from Dragon on the way back.
"Good of you." He decided finally. "Right, Shadow. Iridessa here will take you over to the first tent, and she'll be acting as your escort around the area too. Thud is going to be helping out with crowd control for the moving people." Hurley looked questioningly at Eon, who swapped a look with Shadow.
"I'll be staying near Shadow's position, making sure that there's no scuffles that might hurt her." He said firmly. "Or attacks, for that matter."
Thud seemed to raise an eyebrow. "You expect us to attack you?"
"Not necessarily." He denied. "But people can do stupid things if they're worried. Or if they're not thinking straight. From what I understand, the Simurgh programs people, yes?" He waited to get a nod from Dragon before he continued, "Who's to say some of that programming doesn't require they attack anyone able to break the Mastering?"
The others- except Shadow, who'd heard this and a thousand other theories while they were making plans for the trip- did a double take.
"We never even thought of that." Dragon murmured, sounding irritated with herself.
Eon shrugged fluidly. "No need to beat yourself up over it. We can't all think of everything, after all. Shadow and I thought about it, Inari worked together to figure out what we could do. As such, I'll stop beside Shadow and make sure she's safe. It's no big deal, really. I can handle it just fine."
"I… see." Hurley nodded slowly. Iridessa just shrugged, flittering her wings to make the pink bubble she was sitting on drift forward, then shuffled slightly and offered her arms to Shadow.
"C'mon, you can fly with me!" She grinned, before looking over Eon. "I… don't know if my bubbles would be strong enough to carry you without me being in contact with it, though."
Eon shrugged, a rippling movement that ended in a small tail lash. "No worries." He easily lied. "I can keep up well enough, and Shadow needs to focus for her healing anyway."
"Yeah, I… kinda followed you guys on PHO with your healing stuff." Iridessa blushed a little. "So I knew from that that healing was a bit hard on Shadow. It's why I volunteered to help out."
"Oh?"
"I thought my power might be useful for transporting you around, since the bubbles move pretty fast even without me using my wings to push further."
Shadow and Eon exchanged a glance, feeling that there was more to it than what was being said by the fairy-like girl, then nodded.
"Thank you." Shadow smiled, stepping forward to let Iridessa lift her up. "Come on, let's get moving. The faster we can get these people out of this situation, the better."
Eon couldn't help but feel proud of his little second as the pair began to move. Always thinking of others... you've grown up a lot, Shadow, but you're still that little kit that only wanted to help people as an adventurer. Shaking himself, he piled up an Agility to make sure he could keep up with them. "Well, you heard her. I expect you'll be getting your first crowd of un-Mastered people soon, General. I'll go and make sure Shadow's safe and that everything works as intended."
"I'll make sure our people know to start getting ready on the paperwork, then." Hurley nodded, saluting them both. "Thank you for your assistance."
"Thank you, General." Eon replied, bowing. "Shadow, since the day we became a team and well before that, only really wanted to help people. She's been a little awestruck with glory a few times, as can only be expected from someone young, but being helpful has always been what she wanted. I'm glad she's able to find ways to keep doing it, even here."
"You keep an eye on that girl, because she'll be getting offers for awards faster than you can blink if she keeps this up."
"Trust me, General." Eon let a bit of fang show in his smile, and was roughly amused when the Brute gulped and stepped back. "I'll never let anything take Shadow off the ground. It's what we do, protect and ground each other. That won't stop, no matter how big our work gets."
Taking a glance over at the pair, who were now in some kind of quiet conversation as they flew towards their destination, Eon gave another bow to the group before hurrying off in long bounds. Given how quickly he was moving compared to them, it wouldn't be too hard to catch them before they reached the first tent, where he could keep an eye on Shadow.
"So, what's the real reason you wanted me to fly with you?" Shadow asked casually, as the two of them floated along on the bubble. It was quite an interesting experience, she found; bobbing up and down slightly while Iridessa fluttered her wings to push them along, the bubble holding their weight perfectly- as could be expected of Parahuman powers, she supposed. It was a shame that there weren't any Pokemon that could do the same thing, at least as far as she knew. Maybe they could suggest it to one of the Water types on their team for them to have a go at replicating. Would be cool, she mused, as Iridessa did a double take. Using bubbles to move about a Dungeon or something. Could maybe use it in escorts too, to keep the client safe out of the way while we walk.
"W-what do you mean?" Iridessa stuttered, her arms tightening slightly around Shadow. They were already wrapped around her, since the Vulpix was sitting in her lap while they floated along, but that was more of a careful enclosure to make sure that she didn't fall if they shifted around on the wind.
"Well, you've been following our work, apparently, so you probably know about how fast me and Eon move around, so you know I don't need someone to carry me over to the place." She pointed out, her tails shifting slightly. "We'd need a guide, sure, but not really a proper lift. So you offered me a lift for some reason other than just being polite or wanting me to get there fine."
"H-how do you know I wasn't just trying to be nice and making sure you didn't get too tired?" Iridessa retorted, a little defensively. Her face under her mask was a little pink, and she shot a glance to one side before refocusing on her flight. "I mean, I know that healing takes a lot of power for you to do, or at least do repeatedly for people! I follow your PHO stuff after all. How do you know I wasn't just trying to keep you from getting too tired early on?"
"That's fair, but there's the fact that you reacted super defensively to what I said, the fact that if you followed us on PHO then you'd know that I always bring stuff to boost my energy when I'm doing big healing runs with Panacea to try and clear out the hospital." Shadow replied. "Plus I can smell that you're embarrassed about something, which I'd assume is the fact that I caught you out."
"Ah!" The fairy-like Cape winced, the bubble shaking a little as she did, then sagged. "Alright, yeah. I did have another reason for wanting you to fly along with me."
"Go on."
"See, I was hoping you could help me with my own medical problems as well, while you're here." She was blushing a little darker now, and Shadow tilted her head a little, moving to bump her head crest reassuringly against her chin. "I… it's not a problem in my Cape ID, because of the bubbles, but when I'm a civilian I'm stuck in a wheelchair a lot of the time. I got hurt a while back, and I'm doing… better, but it's really hard to handle."
"Wouldn't getting healed be suspicious, though?" Shadow asked. "I mean, you'll be getting healed as a Cape, so…"
"It's not that I can't move, it's just difficult to." She explained. "Or, rather, difficult to do a lot of it. I can walk a bit, but not much, I get tired too easily. I'm doing physio to help, but it's really annoying not being able to walk around at home." Iridessa blushed harder. "That… feels kind of silly… I mean… I'm getting better… It's not really like it's something that needs your help…"
"I'm willing to give it, though." Shadow told her gently. "If you're sure. You'll need to remember that you're not supposed to be able to walk, after all. You might find that difficult to do, especially if you keep walking around at home. And there's the physio to think of."
"I… think I don't mind, to be honest." She murmured. "I'd like to be able to walk properly again. I can just pretend that my recovery's suddenly gotten a lot faster or something. I just… I miss being able to go up the stairs and not have to pant for breath at the top. Or being able to walk from the front room to the kitchen without needing to use my chair after only a few steps."
"I think I get that." Shadow said. While she'd not exactly been in that situation, she supposed it was rather like not being able to use her fire. And not like when she was a kid and still learning, like not being able to do it now, when she was a Rescue Pokemon and a Dungeon Explorer. Of course, for Iridessa her Cape activities weren't being affected- she could just float around on her bubbles, while Shadow would have trouble doing her job as an adventurer if she couldn't use her fire. "And yeah, I've got no problem healing you. Just be around when I use my power and you'll be affected by it."
"That won't cause trouble?"
"No, not at all." She shook her head. "It's not that much more energy to heal one person. I've almost definitely healed some of the nurses when I'm working in the hospital, and I know Panacea's been caught on the edges a few times. It's no problem."
"Thank you." The Vulpix smiled gently at the Cape holding her, carefully adjusting how she was sitting to pat her on the arm.
"It's no problem." She assured. "Honestly, I like helping people out- it's why I'm here, after all. There's a lot of people here in this city that need help, and I'm one of the only people here that can help them. Eon can too, but he can't do it as many heals in a row as I can. Plus he struggles a bit using both powers at once, which is what I'm doing… that's why he's a guard and not a healer. But still, I want to help people out, and it'd be bad for my honour as a healer to not offer help to someone who needs it when I'm on a trip to heal people!"
"Still, thank you." Iridessa smiled softly, then looked up. "Ok, this is the place."
'The place' was a large white shape, like a large tent. There was an opening on the side they had landed on, obviously to let her in, and after a moment to let Eon catch up Shadow jumped down from her perch on the bubble, landing elegantly on the floor and slipping in with her two escorts.
"Huh." She managed, after a moment of mildly stunned silence.
The marquee was a lot bigger on the inside than she'd expected. Not just in a 'wow the bit I couldn't see went further than I thought it would' way, but actually definitely bigger-than-it-should-be. The roof was a lot higher up than it should have been as well, and looking around showed her that there were an awful lot of walkways acting as extra levels above them, laid out in a way that her power would still count all of it as a single room.
There must have been at least a thousand people there. Maybe more, from the volume of people shuffling, whispering, nervous and confused, unsure exactly what was going on…
Shadow's tails drooped slightly, curling further inwards. So many people... She'd never healed this many people before. Not in one go, anyway… possibly not at all, even with all the healing she did in Dungeons and when they stopped in towns on their missions. Could she even manage it?
Something heavy draped itself over her back, making her startle and barely contain a yelp. Looking over at Eon, she took a deep breath and smiled, nodding slightly. I'm ok, she promised.
"I didn't expect this." Iridessa admitted quietly, casting her gaze around as well. "I wonder how they did it?"
"Some power like Vista's back home?" Eon suggested. "Or perhaps it's the effect of something Tinker-made. Though if it's the latter I rather wonder how much money was spent on all of this…"
"Well, it's certainly going to help out." Shadow muttered, breathing deeply again. The sudden onset of panic had been a new experience, one that was quickly fading and she wasn't eager to repeat. "There's hundreds of thousands of people in Canberra. It's going to take so long…"
"You'll manage." Eon assured her gently. "Now, we should probably go and inform someone of what we're doing."
Iridessa nodded audibly, the bubbly nature climbing back, and Shadow felt a small spark of her own rising back up.
"I'll go find someone to speak to, give me a sec."
She could do this. She'd healed time and time again before, it was just more people that were relying on her here. Thousands more people, who'd all suffered under the shadow of a beast for months now…
But they were people. There would be more people, soon. More from Canberra, in other tents around the walled off city, more from other walled off cities in other countries, and she and Eon were the only ones who could help them.
Iridessa and her bubble floated back, accompanied by a man in a suit, and another subtle glance at Eon for comfort had him dropping back and her moving forward- a perfect reversal of their normal leader and second.
Explaining everything to him took only a few minutes, and a little more to ensure that everything was set up right. Doors were pinned shut to make walls, an announcement was made about who she was as she was escorted further in- not that it was needed for her powers to work, but no-one wanted to risk someone getting missed- and Shadow closed her eyes, breathing deeply again.
The natural warmth that radiated from the Ninetales was familiar, and for a moment she could almost pretend she was back home, back in a Dungeon somewhere, and all that was waiting for her was her team, needing a quick healing after a difficult fight- maybe a Monster House, or some combat rite against a Legendary.
The loud howl came easily after that.
Taylor drifted easily around the Inari Den, a part of her mind on the spiders she was weaving with while the rest of her paid attention to her dad, guiding him around the small complex her team mates were working on building. It wasn't really much, at least compared to the stories she'd heard of the Den back on their world; a sleeping-room, with a few boxes for important things, like Shadow's bag and some of their money, a main storage block, which held Berries and a good chunk of the money, a few carefully hidden bags webbed in the trees containing more of their money, the new addition of a large loom for her spiders to work on with a box containing the flies, and the large garden a little ways away that had been made out of a powerful spring they'd been lucky enough to find. A stack of wood sat at one side, quite small, and a firepit in the middle of the clearing explained why it was there, and another pile of branches was sitting further away, set aside for some other project.
Compared to the stories she'd heard of Inari's Den on their world, of a massive sprawling complex of wood and stone that climbed four stories into the air and had another level below ground- plus the large open sparring area for when team members didn't want to go to one of the public grounds- Taylor couldn't help but feel the stirrings of… something. She wasn't sure what; pity, at the two Pokemon who led her team's sacrifices? Sorrow, that they'd had to give up what they'd built to come and help Earth Bet? Amazement and joy that they had done that, not knowing anything about where they were going or even why before they landed?
Taylor had no idea what exactly she was feeling, but she knew she was glad that the two of them had done what they'd done, and that she'd been lucky enough to meet them on that first night.
Right now, though, she and her father were wandering about in the Berry fields, carefully looking over the bushes to see if any of them were fully grown. Those that were were picked and placed into one of the silk bags. Usually they were sorted by effect- or at least, Taylor thought they were- but neither of them really knew what most of the Berries did, so instead they looked through the bags for one that looked to be around the same shape and put them in the same bag. Taylor was pretty sure they were doing it right, because the Berries did look the same… though if they were wrong then at least Shadow and Eon would be able to help them put things in the right place again.
"How on Earth did the two of them set all this up in so little time?" Danny asked, part way through picking the Berries off of a particularly fruitful Leppa tree.
"These trees are weird." Taylor explained. "The Berries grow to full in only a few days, I think the longest is about a week long. Back on their original planet they're even quicker. I'm pretty sure they brought a ton of things with them when they decided to come here, and they've just been growing them ever since. Plus there's a lot of Berries on all of these, so it's easy to plant more." She paused, tugging a stubborn Iapapa Berry from it's branch, then continued, "They've probably been replanting most of these to get more, which is why we've got all of this. I mean I can't blame them, it's really helpful."
"They are, yes." Danny nodded. "Most of these are healing of some kind, aren't they?"
"I think so." She thought back. "I think they're a lot of healing Berries, but a good number of these boost their ability to do things, like temporarily making them faster or making their attacks more powerful. It's like some of their Moves, but I think the effect lasts for less time? Or something like that, anyway. It's been a while, and since I can't use them I don't really remember everything they said."
Danny opened his mouth, and Taylor winced. "Yes, I know I should," she cut him off, "It was just a bit hard. Everything was still so new and I was a little bit distracted by the fact that the kitsune that had beaten Lung a few days ago wanted me on their team. I've been doing my best to learn everything I missed that time, though it's a bit difficult." She swept a hand around the field. "There's a lot of Berries to learn. I've basically just been focusing on the healing ones, and making sure I can grab some of the booster Berries if some kind of emergency comes up that means Shadow or Eon needs one." She paused again. "Then again, they don't really carry many Berries around with them. Leppa and Sitrus for healing, sometimes some Oran for smaller heals, but that's usually about it, really. I guess they don't want to accidentally waste some of the booster Berries on things? Or maybe they just don't like carrying them around too much. I know that bag of Eon's is ridiculously big on the inside, but I also know they don't like using too much storage at once, so…"
"Why is that, exactly?"
"Something to do with the Dungeons." Taylor explained. "Dungeons seem to randomly have items lying around in them, so teams like Inari get into the habit of not carrying more than the absolute essentials around with them, in order to make sure they have enough space in their bags for anything interesting or potentially valuable they find."
"Surely they could just take more bags?"
"Well, yeah, but that gets burdensome. Too many bags makes it difficult to manoeuvre around the Dungeon, and in fights it gets harder to dodge. Plus the bags can get damaged in fights. I think Shadow said Inari usually has one of their members acting as a carrier, usually one of the larger Pokemon, so that they can have a few more bags, but it's still a habit to carry as little as they can get away with to make sure they have room."
"Fair enough, I suppose." Danny hummed. The pair lapsed into silence for a little while, going back to focusing on the Berry field. Taylor also put a little more focus onto the spiders at the Den, making sure that the weaving was going as intended. Hopefully pretty soon she'd have enough silk made up to give to Parian for her work, which would be nice. Despite the conversation only being quite short, Taylor had rather liked the Rogue, and she was glad to be able to help her out in some way that didn't involve fighting.
A lot of Parahumans only seemed to be capable of fighting, so it was nice to be a part of more peaceful things, like Parian's shop or Inari's anti-Simurgh efforts.
She hoped Shadow was doing ok…
Shadow sagged a little in exhaustion as the energy pulse rippled through the room, taking with it all of the lingering Master effects on the people there. Iridessa immediately floated off to help organise the people in the tent, while Eon stepped forward slightly, letting his second-in-command lean against him.
"Thanks." She muttered, closing her eyes and listening to the steady sound of people walking.
"No problem, pix." He said, just as softly. One tail curled around her side to keep her close, and she couldn't help but relax a little. "You should take a break. There's no good in overworking yourself for this."
"No, I... well, I think I can do one or two more." She argued. "I'll definitely need to rest then, that's for sure, but I think I can handle doing a couple more tents."
"Shadow, you must've done thousands of people by now. Maybe more." Eon scolded. "And it's only been what, an hour? Two? You've used up so many healing combos that I'm surprised the Leppa Berries are still having an effect."
"It's close cut." Shadow admitted reluctantly. "They're starting to get to the point where it's not doing anything at all."
"So yes, you need a break." He sighed. "I'll let you do one more, then we'll tell Iridessa and one of the government people that you need to rest for a while before you can do anything more. See if Dragon can bring food from the craft, and we'll find a place for you to take another nap before we continue on."
The Vulpix slowly nodded, wanting to argue but knowing that her team leader had a point. If she kept going like she was, only using the Berries and Max Elixirs to keep her energy up, then pretty soon they'd stop working altogether and she would crash. It was better to take a break now, while she still had some energy left to recover, so that she would recover faster and be able to get back to things.
"Alright." She acquiesced. "We'll do that. Don't... don't let me sleep too long, though. I don't really want to be sleeping when there's still people to help..."
"But you can't be helping people if you don't have the power." Eon reminded her. "Tell you what. If you'd like, and you're willing to trust her, we'll ask Iridessa to keep an eye on you and I'll have a go at clearing out a few of the tents. That way Inari's still clearing out some of the tents, but you're able to recover."
"Are you gonna be able to do it?" Shadow cracked open an eye to look at him. He nodded.
"I should be able to. It's a bit of a mental trick for me to do what you do, but I've done it quite a few times, so I don't see why I wouldn't be able to do it again. I'd likely not be able to do it as many times as you, but I can still do it a few times, so you can rest a while."
"...I think I trust her enough." Shadow decided. "I mean, she'd only be carrying me about with you, so it's not like you'd be far away."
"Then you'll do one more tent, and then we'll ask her." Eon settled, patting her back with his tail-tip. "Get as much of a break as you can now, too, so that it's easier for you to recover after this next tent."
Shadow hummed in agreement, closing her eye again and leaning a little closer to Eon. It was almost warm enough to fall asleep, sort of like when they were in Dungeons and all curled up together to rest, taking turns sitting on guard in a group of fur and fluff and skin.
Again, if it hadn't been for the volume, the loud chorus of excited people moving towards freedom, it would've been easy to pretend she was back home. Maybe not even back home in a Dungeon with Inari; the warmth and curl of fur could almost be her and her siblings, curled up in front of the living room fire, listening to Momma or Gram telling Talekeeper stories, enthralled and at the time believing wholeheartedly that she would be doing that someday, telling stories that had been in the family so long that some people forgot where they even came from. The crowds of people could almost fade away into the background, becoming nothing but the noise of her siblings shuffling around, claws scratching slightly on the floor as they got more comfortable, or Pa working on something in the back of the room and listening with half an ear.
It's kind of odd. Shadow mused sleepily. How quickly some things have become familiar.
Because it was also the sound of her and Taylor and Eon sitting in the Den after a patrol, Eon letting himself be used as a sort of backrest because of the warmth of his internal fire, discussing what went well and what didn't before walking Taylor back to her house.
It's odd how quickly some things can become a part of home.
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LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
did too
There are marquees
programs
too easily
do things
Chapter 29- Exhaustion, report, and warning
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Shadow was having to use Eon as a support by the time they were done with the healing, the Ninetales noticed, curling a tail around to rest on her back. The Vulpix glanced up at him in curiosity, making him give her a silent look.
Silly girl. He thought to himself, when she blushed and looked away. Tiring yourself out too much yet again...
Clearing out the entirety of Canberra's Simurgh zone hadn't taken anywhere near as long as they'd been expecting. A large part of that, Eon supposed, came from the fact that the two of them had split up when Shadow had recovered the first time. She'd woken up from her nap still tired out, but with enough energy to go back to healing and not have to worry about running completely dry, and after spending an hour working more directly with Iridessa while Shadow slept Eon had felt plenty comfortable leaving his second-in-command with her and splitting away to make his own contributions to the effort.
It didn't work as well, with Eon needing a little more time to make sure the two Moves were going to do what they needed, but it still worked well enough that having both of them working to clear out the tents of civilians had dramatically cut down on the time. It also helped that things got a lot more efficient as they went on, teams moving in to empty the healed tents even before Shadow or Eon left them, meaning that there were always people waiting for them once they finished.
Eon was just glad neither he nor Shadow had anything to do with the other side of the equation, which was getting people out of the Simurgh zone as quickly as possible. The amount of paperwork that was going to be required for that was immense, he could tell, but fortunately that wasn't Eon's business. He and Shadow were just here to do the healing, nothing more.
It was dark out now, which was Eon's only measurement of what time it was; he hadn't exactly cared all that much when he was working, since it didn't matter, but the darkness was just annoying enough that he fired off a Calm Mind to keep him settled and alert, while a tiny bit of fire skittered down his back and tails in a little glow. It would be a handy weapon too, just in case, but Eon really didn't expect trouble now, unless by 'trouble' he was talking about hordes of people wanting to thank him and Shadow for the help, which he was pretty sure was being dealt with by the Australian government's people instead. Thankfully. Eon didn't really want to be put into a situation where he needed to use his fire to get a bunch of people away from Shadow, though he absolutely would if he had to. Shadow was tired, after all, he wasn't all that much better, and he'd quite like to get back to the Inari Den sooner rather than later.
"That's everyone, right?" Shadow asked softly, making him look down. She was leaning comfortably against his side now, letting him practically hold her up, and her eyes were half closed- though there was enough of an alert glimmer to them that he wasn't worried about her falling asleep on him yet.
"It should be." He nodded. "Assuming that the government here had everything right."
"I hope so." She yawned. "I think I'd like to get back to the Den."
"Same here, pix." Her yawn was contagious, Eon having to press down one of his own before he shook his head. "Come on, let's go and see if there's anything we need to do to finish up here, then see if Dragon's willing to take us home."
"If she's not, I'm taking a nap in the plane." Shadow mumbled, pushing herself upright and shaking herself out. "Mean, gonna do that anyway, but I'm gonna do it more if we're not going home soon." Eon chuckled.
"I can't blame you there." He stepped up to her side and carefully guided her over to Iridessa, who was floating out of the way and talking to one of the men that had been working in this tent. "I believe we're all done, right?"
"That's right." The man nodded, then gave a salute as the fairy-like Cape moved to sit next to them. "Thank you so much for your help, both of you. You've done a lot of good today."
Shadow stepped a little bit forward, enough to draw attention to her while still being close to Eon, and gave her own salute, standing unsteadily on three legs for a moment. "I'm glad we were able to help, sir." She said. "That's the entire reason Team Inari formed, to help people, and being able to help those that'd be hopeless otherwise is one of the best things we can do as a team."
"Quite." Eon agreed, herding his second back so that Iridessa could reach down and lift her onto her lap. "Let's head back to the main setup and see if there's anything more they need of us."
"Sounds good to me." The two of them hurried off, leaving the rest of the people to handle the tents and sorting. Eon had to use another Agility to keep up, since the Cape he was working with seemed quite eager to get back, though he only realised why when they came to a halt and she carefully lowered a nearly-sleeping Shadow to the ground.
The Vulpix yawned widely and shook herself again, then gave Iridessa a bow. "Thank you for your help today."
Behind her mask, the Cape's eyes went wide, before she shuffled slightly on her support bubble to give a bow of her own. "I'm glad I was able to help you out." She shifted again, then held out her hand for Eon to take. "Both of you, even if I didn't do very much for you, Eon."
"You watched over Shadow for me so that I could work on helping out with the healing, which meant a lot of people got helped a lot faster." Eon corrected, shaking her hand. "That means a lot. To the both of us, as well as everyone that was stuck in Canberra."
"Thank you." The girl sounded a little overwhelmed, and after a moment floated herself away from the duo as Dragon approached instead.
"You did a lot of good today." The Tinker said quietly, a smile in her voice. "I expect you're going to get rather sick of hearing that."
"Eventually." Eon agreed, chuckling. "For now though... it's good to know that we're doing some good here. Especially when it's something like this... where no-one else seems able to help."
Eon knew what it was like to be stuck and feeling like you have no options, after all. Being transformed into a shiny Ninetales had led to one of the best things ever with his team, sure, but the early period before he met Shadow had been... complicated. Being a shiny Pokemon had netted him enough attention on its own, let alone when it had spread that he was a human who had lost his memories and been transformed. Like a number of old legends. Even if he'd had a few options, it hadn't stopped Eon feeling like he had none at all.
Luckily Shadow had shown up and needed a partner for her Rescue Team, so he'd taken the chance to do something he'd thought he'd like to do by taking up a place as her team leader. And he didn't regret that, either, even if it had led to him standing on another world with his second, looking up at a woman in power armour who had helped fly the two of them half way around the world to help others.
"I think I understand the feeling." Dragon nodded, before gesturing to the transport. The back was once again open, he noticed, as she continued, "I can see Shadow's tired, and honestly you don't look much better. There's nothing more for you to do, though I still need to handle a few things before we leave. Feel free to go and settle down for the flight."
"Thank you, Dragon." Eon gave another slight bow before carefully herding Shadow into the transport with his tails. It wasn't difficult, given how tired the Vulpix was, with the most irritating part being trying to get Shadow onto the couch she had used on the journey over. Once she was up there, though, she barely spared the energy to murmur a quiet thanks before drifting off to sleep.
Eon sighed again. Really, pix, you need to be more careful. He mused to himself, as he walked away and settled on the other couch, head on his paws so he could watch her the entire time. I know you want to help, but you need to be more careful with your boundaries. And some of the other Containment Zones were bound to be worse, too. He had no idea which ones were bigger than Canberra, but he was sure at least some of them had to be. Those would almost definitely mean an overnight stay, and it would also mean that Eon would need to keep a closer eye on Shadow to keep her from wearing herself out. Once we're back at the Den, we'll need to talk to Taylor and Danny about having Swarm come along next time. Her bugs would be really helpful. Swarm would be able to handle keeping an eye out for threats as well as keeping an eye on Shadow to keep her from exhausting herself healing, which would free Eon to do more healing as well.
Shifting slightly on the couch, he watched his team mate curl closer in on herself, mumbling something into her tails as she tucked her face under them. Eon yawned a little in sympathy, feeling a similar sense of exhaustion; being on guard all day was hard enough, even ignoring the fact that he'd done a fair bit of healing as well to help Shadow out, plus all the running around to keep up with Shadow and Iridessa as they moved between the tents. The flight back wouldn't be all that fun, either, now that he was thinking about heading home rather than just focusing on getting Shadow around where she needed to be. From what Shadow had said earlier sleeping helped, or at least her being asleep meant that she hadn't noticed any issues- though given her ability to use Magnet Rise she was also fairly used to drifting around in the air... which would be another bonus to having Swarm with them, actually. He could sleep on the flight with Shadow and still have someone from the team on guard. As much as he trusted Dragon's word that they'd be safe on her craft, it was comfortingly familiar to have a team member on watch as well.
Blinking slowly, Eon moved again, then grumbled softly as the fur of his head crest dropped past his ear and into his eyes. He blinked again, a little startled, but didn't bother to try and move it. The shade was kind of nice, and he didn't really need to be watching over Shadow the entire time. If something happened, he'd be able to deal with it by hearing it just was well as if he saw it...
Eon startled awake at the jolt of the floor below him, abruptly going into high alert as he started searching for the threat. If the guard on the team hadn't warned him, then that meant they'd already been taken out, and the jolt had the characteristics of the start of an Earthquake. With Shadow exhausted and him not much better, any fight they got into would be difficult-
Very suddenly Eon's brain caught up with the rest of the world, and he remembered where he was; inside Dragon's shuttle-craft, flying back to Brockton Bay, not in a Dungeon in the middle of a mission.
With a slightly embarrassed huff, he settled himself down on the couch again- he'd nearly sprung off of it in his hurry to find the perceived threat- and focused instead on taking in his surroundings. Shadow was still asleep on the couch opposite, apparently not having noticed the shuddering that woke him- a clear sign of how tired she was after the healing, which made Eon feel guilty for not keeping a closer eye on her while she was working and making sure that she took breaks properly- though she had shifted a little in her sleep, no longer curled up under her tails but now lying on her side with her tails brought up along her stomach. She looked somewhat uncomfortable, Eon thought, as he slowly made his way off the couch and over to her.
Carefully, mostly due to the fact that the craft was still shuddering a little, he placed a paw on her forehead, gently moving the fur aside. She feels a little colder than normal... he mused. Probably because of how tired she is. It was rare that either of them ever got tired enough for their internal fires to dim, but it had happened before. It had been more common in the early days as a team, because they were rather less powerful, but it had still happened even after two years of missions and training.
Once again, Eon scolded himself for not keeping a closer eye on his second in command. She was a lot younger than him, and as her commander it was his job to make sure she, like the rest of his team, wasn't overstressing herself. Just because she'd grown up a little from the bubbly, naive ten year old he'd first met and started a team with, it didn't mean he should stop doing his own job. It didn't help that the Vulpix could often still be just as hopeful as when she was younger, and that hopeful 'help everyone' mindset could- and honestly had in the past- led to her getting into a fair bit of trouble on missions because she was overdoing it. Too much healing, using too many Moves, taking too many hits in defence of team mates or clients... it had even caused issues in their downtime, mostly when she refused to use it as such and instead spent the entire time practising Moves.
Eon had had to drag her out of the training grounds and back home more times than he would like to count, either ignoring her protests or listening to her quiet snores.
Doing just that now, listening to his partner quietly snoring, he wondered if it would be worth using a small Will-O-Wisp to try and boost her inner fire a little. He'd have to be careful using it, given that they were inside someone else's craft, and it did run the risk of waking her up as Flash Fire activated and absorbed the attack, but he could still do it to try and make her feel better. Waking up with a cooled inner flame was not a fun experience, and usually led to the Vulpix or Ninetales in question getting ill. Eon had only experienced that once, and that one time had been enough.
A quiet background humming, one that Eon had noticed but not consciously registered, shifted with a click, making his ears perk up. He stepped back, letting Shadow's fur flop back over her forehead, and looked around for the source.
"Hello, Eon." The fairly familiar voice of Dragon said softly, making Eon relax a little.
"Dragon." He nodded in the direction of the voice, assuming that whatever speaker she had in that corner was attached to a camera of some kind.
"My apologies for the sudden rough movement, we hit some turbulence as I was starting to slow down in preparation for approaching Brockton Bay." She continued. "I've done my best to accommodate for that so as not to disturb Shadow, but it might get a little bumpy as we go to land."
"Given how exhausted she is, I'm not certain that even an uncomfortable flight could wake her." Eon admitted, looking back at the Vulpix. She shifted again in her sleep as they spoke, rolling onto her stomach and nearly falling off the couch before Eon caught her with his tails, forming a sort of platform to lift her back up again. His friend didn't react at all throughout, making Eon frown a little more. "She really should have been more careful with her healing." Shadow's overly idealistic view of their work was frightening sometimes, mostly because Eon worried she'd actually hurt herself one day.
"She did do a lot of work." Dragon agreed. "Now that she's done this one, I have something of a better idea of her capabilities. Rest assured, next time I will endeavour to keep an eye on her so that she doesn't exhaust herself so thoroughly again."
"Thank you." He smiled a little. "I'll be more careful to keep an eye on her as well, and hopefully next time we'll be able to bring Swarm with us to act as an extra guard. That should let me handle some of the healing as well, which means Shadow doesn't need to do as much work."
"Swarm's bugs would also be much more optimised to keeping an eye on a large area, which would let her spot problems from further away than you could alone and alert us faster." The Tinker added, before going silent. The craft tilted, making Eon stumble a little and go dizzy, and she finished, "We'll be coming in to land in a few minutes. If you're able to wake Shadow, I recommend that you do so now."
"I'll at least have a go. Can't guarantee that she'll wake up, though." Eon took a steadying breath in an attempt to ignore the dizziness the flight brought, then lit a weak Will-O-Wisp on one tailtip and touched it to Shadow's side.
The ethereal blue-purple flame vanished in a flash, and Shadow gave a murmuring grumble, twitching. Eon placed a paw on her forehead again, feeling her warm ever so slightly, and one eye cracked open to look at him with displeasure.
"Sorry, kit." He said softly. "But we're nearly back at the Bay now, so you need to wake up, ok?"
"Tired..." She whispered, eye fluttering shut again. "Really tired..."
"I know, I know." Eon patted her side a little. Exhaustion was no joke, and getting tired enough that your inner flame started to cool was horrible. Most of the next day or so would probably be spent recovering from it, with a few Flash Fire boosts to try and help it along. "You just need to be awake long enough to get home to the Den, ok? Then you can sleep all you want."
Shadow seemed to contemplate that for a while, silent for just long enough that Eon wondered if she'd fallen asleep again, then nodded a little. "Ok. Just a while?"
"Just a little while, yes."
"Ok." She slowly sat up, giving a jaw cracking yawn, then shook herself. Her tails poofed out a little as she did, and she carefully slipped down from the couch to stand at his side. "It's kinda cold." She muttered, leaning into him.
Eon nodded, wrapping a tail around her. "You've tired yourself out enough that your inner flame is getting cold, Shadow." He told her- she knew this, but right now she was tired enough that she didn't remember that fact. "You'll be ok after a bit more rest."
"Right." She yawned again. "I don't like being cold. It's weird."
"It is a little, yes." He nodded. "Like I say, you just need to stay awake to get back to the Den, then you can go back to sleep. I'll make sure you're nice and warm."
"Puff blanket?" She requested, tilting her head. Like this, with her eyes fluttering and little yawns constantly slipping out, his second in command looked a lot like the tiny child he'd met, and less like the well-reasoned and powerful girl he worked with in Dungeons.
The thought made him chuckle a little, and he nodded again. "Sure thing, pix. I'll get you the puffy blanket, and we can start a little campfire for you as well if you want."
"Fire's nice." She mumbled. "It makes my fire burn more."
"Then I'll light you a little campfire when we're home, and you can sleep there." For her sake, he circled up another Will-O-Wisp and let her Ability absorb it, then lifted up her bag with an Extrasensory and packed it into the Treasure Bag. It was mostly empty anyway by this point, so there was no reason to give it to Shadow to carry when she was already exhausted. Slinging the Treasure Bag back onto his back and repositioning it with another touch of Extrasensory, he nodded over at the corner where he assumed Dragon's camera was. "We should be good to go now."
"Alright." Dragon replied, as the craft shuddered again. "We'll be landing in about a minute or so, Armsmaster and Director Piggot are waiting for you. I've already warned them that Shadow is rather tired out, so they likely won't keep you for very long."
"Good."
Eon kept his tails around Shadow for the entirety of the shaky descent, not able to stop himself from giving a small sigh of relief once it landed with a thud and the engines stopped their whining. Shadow shook herself slightly at the jolt, looking around and stepping out from under Eon's tails, and Eon blinked at her in surprise as she straightened up as best she can and tried to look serious.
"Shadow..."
"'ll survive serious for a bit." She stated, shaking her head again and blinking sleep out of her eyes. "At least enough to report in for the mission."
Eon chuckled. "If you say so, pix." It wouldn't be the first time that a member of Team Inari had given a mission report while drop-fainted exhausted. While both he and his second in command could be stubborn, there were also plenty of occasions where members of the team had put together their own group for missions and the elected team leader had given a summary of the entire thing even though they were practically passed out on their feet. Eon had no idea how he'd managed to collect a team of such dedicated Pokemon, but that had led to their reputation of being impressively good even though they were a somewhat smaller team than many. Working closely with the local Wigglytuff Guild helped, too.
The armoured form of Dragon came out of the cockpit as the door began opening, making Eon shake his head a little again and focus on the task at hand. It was late enough at night that Eon was surprised to see a number of PRT troopers around as well, but he supposed it made sense to have a night guard in a city like Brockton Bay, with all of the gangs around. As Dragon had warned, Armsmaster and Director Piggot were both waiting for them, and looked with some surprise at the state Shadow was in.
"Good evening Director, Armsmaster." Eon greeted, with a nod. "I'm glad to inform you that the mission went well, and Canberra Containment Zone is completely cleared. They were still working on the paperwork when we left."
"That is... impressive work." Armsmaster said, visor fixed on Shadow. "To manage that in such a short period of time..."
"Eon helped." Shadow responded, stepping up beside him. "And while there was a lot of people, it was a good setup that was being used so I could get quite a lot done. I might be able to do even bigger rooms, with more people, but I think that'd need testing." Suddenly she swayed slightly, covering her mouth in a yawn. "And maybe also more breaks."
Eon placed a tail on her back again, making her look over and roll her eyes at him, shrugging him off. He stifled a sigh at her stubbornness and refocused on the pair of leaders. "Would you prefer a verbal report, or would a written summary suffice?"
Director Piggot looked rather more surprised at that, for some reason, then shook her head. "Ah, we should be fine, Eon. Dragon can give us a report, and I expect we'll get something from the Chief Director once the Australians are finished dealing with everything in Canberra."
The Ninetales paused, then nodded slowly. "As you will." It made sense to ask for a report from Dragon, since she had been- at least, as far as he knew, she had been- mostly free for the entire healing period, so she likely had had more time to compose a sort of report for the Director. Plus she was a known entity and apparently a fairly trusted associate of the local team, which gave reason to believe she might've given reports before and thus be acquainted with the reporting style required.
That didn't mean Eon wasn't going to endeavour to write up and hand in a written report for them, of course, but it did make sense. Plus having a report from both an observer and a participant in the situation would probably be a good thing for the PRT's records. It was the reason why joint or group missions that involved multiple teams and worked with the Wigglytuff Guild- which was most of them, since usually the only way you linked up with another team was through them and their group postings, unless another team asked you specifically to work with them- required that the team leader for each team write up their own report to hand into the Guild for the mission archives. That way, the Guild got a good perspective of the entire mission coming from a number of different people. Team Inari used a similar method; the team leader handed in a report, but the team members would all look over it before it was handed in and add their own opinions to the report, to give their own perspective on issues. It helped for training, too.
Shaking himself free of the slight ache that had started to form as he thought about the rest of his team, he touched Shadow's side lightly with a tail and gave a small bow to the trio that had helped them. "Thank you once again for your assistance with this. I look forward to being able to work with you again."
"Many thanks for your help." Shadow agreed, with her own little bow. She swayed a little as she straightened, and Eon couldn't help but smile a little as the three gave their own bows back, despite seeming confused by the motion.
"Karaday will show you out." Director Piggot told them, gesturing to one of the guards standing nearby. "And- well done."
He smiled a little at her, careful not to show any teeth, then turned and trotted over to the guard, listening to Shadow following along with a tired gait.
Karaday led them over to an elevator shaft, which he was thankful for, and for a moment they descended in silence.
"I just want to say," he murmured lowly, around the sounds of the elevator moving, "That I respect what you did today. A lot of people are going to feel the same, too."
"We are aware." Eon admits. "I'll be doing my best to keep Shadow safe and on the ground. In the end, it's something we can do that no-one else seems to be able too, so it's something that we'll do."
"Still, be prepared for a lot of respect once it starts spreading around what you've done." Karaday grinned crookedly. "You'll need to be careful about the nutjobs, though. There's always some who aren't going to like what you're doing."
Like the Fallen, he mused, outwardly just nodding. "Don't worry. We'll be defended when it comes to that too."
The trooper looked down at them both for a long moment, then nodded back. "Somehow, I don't doubt that."
The lobby was empty when they walked out, Karaday walking them to the main door anyway before leaving them be, and the streets were similarly silent, with only the occasional sound of a car driving in the distance. Eon looked down at Shadow, who was again obviously flagging. "Are you going to be ok getting back to the Den, pix?"
"I... should be ok?" She shook herself violently, her fur puffing out as though she was standing knee-deep in snow. "It's really cold, Eon..."
Eon grimaced. "Sorry, pix. Let's get back to the Den, and then we can make sure you're comfortable." He promised, placing a paw on her side again and grimacing harder at how cool she felt. It was almost uncomfortable, given that a Fire type's inner flame would easily keep them warm all the time, for her to be that cool. "Maybe we should talk to Parian about getting some kind of insulated, fire-proof coat for when we need to do this again." He mused, shifting away and starting down the road towards the network of alleyways that they would use to get out of the city and into the woods.
"That'd be nice." Shadow hummed, trotting after him with slightly uneven steps. "It sounds comfy, too. I don't like it being cold..."
"No, the cold certainly isn't very nice." He agreed, before looking around at the darkness uncomfortably. Normally it wouldn't be an issue, since they could see fairly well in the dark even ignoring their other senses, but with Shadow as exhausted as she was... Eon decided that he might as well treat it as an escort mission, flicking a group of Will-O-Wisps from his tails to orbit around him and light up the surrounding area, then stepped back a little so that Shadow was within that orbit as well. "Still, if we can get back pretty quickly, then we can settle down somewhere where it won't be cold. Then tomorrow, we can talk to Swarm and to Parian about some kind of coat."
"Sounds good to me." She shivered again, stepping as close to the Will-O-Wisp as she could without her Flash Fire activating and absorbing it, and picked up the pace as much as she could, obviously wanting to get back home.
Eon couldn't find it in himself to blame her, starting to walk a little faster himself, keeping his senses open for any idiot who might decide that the two of them were good targets for a fight. He didn't expect there to be anyone, admittedly, but there were always idiots, especially in this city.
Taylor shook herself again from the slight doze she felt herself falling into and groaned, rubbing her hand across her cheeks before sighing. Putting one hand on the tree behind her, she pulled herself upright and stretched.
"Maybe it'd be a good idea to go for a walk..." She mused, feeling her back crack slightly as she moved out of the position that she'd been sitting in for... clearly far too long, if that was how it felt.
Pushing the stretch a little further, just enough to make it uncomfortable, Taylor took another look around with her bugs before deciding to make her way back down to the Berry fields again. There wasn't really much of a reason to do so but given that she really did need that walk after sitting down for so long, she thought it might be a good idea. It was incredible to see that some of the plants were flowering already, ready to burst into more Berries, and not for the first time, Taylor couldn't help but shake her head at the absolute absurdity that was these Berry trees.
"Honestly, and to think that they're even faster to grow back on whatever world they're from…" Taylor muttered to herself, running a hand across the vibrantly green leaves of the nearest plant- she thought this one was one of the many Leppa plants that the pair had brought with them, but she wasn't totally sure given that given that this one wasn't flowering and thus could be any number of things- as she walked by. "If they could figure out how that worked, then that alone would probably be a lifesaver for a lot of people… But then again, we'd also have to figure out how to even make other plants do that, and I doubt that would be easy with all of the issues around Biotinkers…" She hummed little to herself again, absently pulling her mask back onto her face just in case. Technically, this area was also a part of Team Inari's base of operations, but that wasn't really any particularly good reason to be risking getting outed if someone managed to breach across the illusion barrier that Shadow and Eon had set up.
As such, Swarm stayed there for a little while, mostly just wandering around in an attempt to see how the plants were doing; even though they weren't actually her plants she felt responsible for keeping an eye on them while the rest of her team was out of the country, especially since they were quite important to her friends. She was also using her bugs to keep an eye on the surrounding area, assuming that the two Pokemon would return straight back to the base once they were done with their mission and hoping that she'd be able to see them.
She was also hopeful that they wouldn't be too tired to fill her in on things, though she wasn't exactly counting on it; it had been a very long trip for both of them, and honestly if Shadow wasn't exhausted then Swarm would be both impressed and very, very curious as to what exactly they'd done to manage that.
Almost as if they'd been summoned by her thoughts, one of the conglomerates of bugs placed near their main walkway in to the base spotted the- slightly bleary, given that it was being seen through bugs- form of the silver Ninetales that was her team leader. Swarm couldn't have helped the smile that spread across her face when she saw that even if she had wanted to, and hurriedly turned away from the large Berry field and started back towards the main segment of the base, knowing that she would get there around the same time as them. The entire time, she kept watch with her bugs, watching carefully how Eon was always sure to keep his tails pulled around the side of him like he was keeping something safe, and the abundance of Will-O-Wisps that were floating around him.
I wonder where Shadow is, Swarm mused to herself, gathering more bugs in that area and, after a moment of quiet deliberation with herself, forming a swarm of bugs that she vaguely shaped like a person. The swarm easily caught Eon's attention and the rather improved vision of having more bugs in one place meant that the insect's controller quite clearly saw the smile that brushed over his face as he turned his attention to her.
"Swarm." He greeted lowly, giving her a slight nod as he continued to walk towards the base. "I don't suppose you could do me the favour of going into the main Den and getting Shadow's blanket out, will you?" As he stepped closer, Swarm could clearly see that her second teammate was burrowed under Eon's tails and apparently shivering somewhat violently.
From where she was on her way back to the base, Swarm's eyes widened behind her mask, but she could do nothing but nod with her avatar and dispel it, her real body picking up the pace to hurry back and hopefully get there before her team did.
Once she arrived, she quickly did as asked, ducking into the main den that Shadow and Eon used and headed for the collection of boxes that sat along the wall. Though none of them were labelled, it wasn't actually particularly difficult to figure out where the blanket was, given that she knew where the pair kept all of the bedding that they'd bought- entertainingly blatantly as well, given that the three of them had literally walked into a store during one of their patrols, partly because Shadow had spotted the place while bored at the quiet, and spent an enjoyable hour or so wandering about the shop, eventually walking out with both blankets and quilts for the pair of them to place in and over the little sleeping burrows that they had within their shelter. Not that it had stopped Taylor from using her spiders to make silk ones for them, because they were her team and that felt like something she should do, but it had been a fun trip. Especially since they were technically using the Merchant's money to buy all of it. She'd actually come out of that same trip with a few things for herself as well, which was stored in another box within another woven building in the den, the larger one built for herself for whenever she ended up stopping over at the base for whatever reason.
The blanket in question, however, wasn't actually one from that trip. Instead it was one that Shadow had brought with her when she and Eon had come from their original world and base. Shadow had reasoned, Swarm was told, that since they had no idea where they would be going or what sort of civilisation there would be, it would be a good idea to take something like that in case they needed it. Eon thusly had his own blanket, but that one was quite different from the fluffy monstrosity that Shadow had chosen. It was a teal blue, made mostly from the wool of something called Mareep, was big enough to wrap its way around her several times just based on a glance, and was probably the most overly fluffy thing Swarm had seen in quite a long time. Shadow claimed that it had been one of several going away gifts that her Gran had given her when she'd decided and finally proven that she could become a rescue Pokemon, and Swarm couldn't help but think privately that it was quite hilarious.
It took a few seconds to finagle the entire thing out of the box and into her arms, but once she did she knocked the lid shut again and walked out. Eon was just emerging from the trees, the form of Shadow still firmly under his tails, and he smiled a little as he saw her.
"Thanks, Swarm." He said quietly, directing the Vulpix under his tails towards her. "Wrap her up in that, I'll get the fire started."
Shadow's ears perked up slightly at the word fire, and she took her gaze off of the ground to look up at her team leader. "Fire?"
"Yes, kit, fire." He nudged her side gently, causing her to stumble a little. "Go let Swarm wrap you up, then you can sit by the fire and warm up, ok?"
"That's a good idea." She mumbled, slipping out from under Eon's tails and trotting- somewhat unsteadily, to Swarm's eyes- over to her. "Warm is good. I like warm. Not like cold."
"I don't suppose cold is very fun for Fire types." Swarm knelt down, laying the blanket out on the grassy floor, and frowned a little more as Shadow all but fell onto it, instinctively curling herself into a ball to conserve heat. Carefully, Swarm reached out, prodding her into stretching before tucking the blanket around her and wrapping it up like some kind of fluffy burrito.
Swarm turned back to Eon, who was partly inside one of the storage dens containing firewood, and pulled off her mask again to raise an eyebrow at the Ninetales. He winced a little at the expression when he turned around, lifting a large bundle of twigs and sticks out using Extrasensory, and looked away. "She's exhausted herself." He explained to Taylor as he started setting up the campfire in the centre of the base's area. "Fire types, when they get too cold, can start to lose a bit of their inner flame. It's not dangerous," he hurried to add, when Taylor's eyes widened. "But it can be if it gets too cold. Right now she needs warmth and fire to fuel it. The fire will help with both, since she'll probably absorb some of it. I've been handing off Will-O-Wisps for a lot of the trip."
As if reminded of the tiny flames still hovering around, Eon flicked his tail, making them fly towards the campfire and catch it alight. The mystical fire burned brightly for a few moments, keeping the lilac tinge of the Move, then settled down into a normal red flame as the Move died out. It would take some time for the fire to be big enough, Taylor knew, but already there was a distinct warmth to it that had Shadow grumbling in her half-asleep state and trying to wriggle closer.
Taylor decided to help her a little with that, pushing the wrapped up blanket closer to the edge of the stone circle, but being careful that any sparks jumping off the fire wouldn't hit the blanket and light it off. "But she'll be ok?"
"Perfectly, after some rest and warmth." Eon promised. "Getting her something warm to eat or drink would help as well, but given that she's practically asleep..."
"No' 'sleep..." A quiet mumble protested, making Taylor smile and pat the blanket bundle.
"You should be, you're tired." She scolded. "And Eon, why did you let her get this tired?"
"She's good at hiding it, and honestly with the amount of people there to help this was going to be the result even if I did get her to take more breaks." He admitted, sitting down and curling his tails around his paws as he watched the fire build itself. "There were... far too many people there. Too many for her to handle alone, and even with me helping as much as I could..." He shrugged, looking towards the Vulpix who was now softly snoring under Taylor's hand.
"Was it really that bad?" Taylor asked quietly, the weight of what her two friends had done returning to her mind.
Eon paused, still looking at the fire, then stood in a flowing movement of fur and trotted off into the Den. Taylor watched silently as he did, coming back with a small bag of marshmallows and two skewers. Popping open the bag, he stabbed the skewers in and handed one off to Taylor, who took it with an amused look. "Really?"
"Might as well." He returned. "Waste of a good campfire otherwise."
"And Shadow?"
The Vulpix snored louder.
"She's the one who got so tired, if she wants to complain about not getting marshmallows she should've just agreed to take a bit of extra time there or something."
"I suppose." Internally, Taylor could understand wanting to help the people in the containment zone as quickly as possible, given how long they'd suffered, but she also agreed with Eon that Shadow should've been more careful to pace herself. She was the only person who could help those in the Simurgh zones, after all, aside from Eon, so making herself ill or worse trying to help wasn't going to help anyone at all.
Holding her marshmallow over the slowly rising fire, she looked back at Eon and gestured for him to begin, tilting her head. "So, what happened?"
Silly girl. He thought to himself, when she blushed and looked away. Tiring yourself out too much yet again...
Clearing out the entirety of Canberra's Simurgh zone hadn't taken anywhere near as long as they'd been expecting. A large part of that, Eon supposed, came from the fact that the two of them had split up when Shadow had recovered the first time. She'd woken up from her nap still tired out, but with enough energy to go back to healing and not have to worry about running completely dry, and after spending an hour working more directly with Iridessa while Shadow slept Eon had felt plenty comfortable leaving his second-in-command with her and splitting away to make his own contributions to the effort.
It didn't work as well, with Eon needing a little more time to make sure the two Moves were going to do what they needed, but it still worked well enough that having both of them working to clear out the tents of civilians had dramatically cut down on the time. It also helped that things got a lot more efficient as they went on, teams moving in to empty the healed tents even before Shadow or Eon left them, meaning that there were always people waiting for them once they finished.
Eon was just glad neither he nor Shadow had anything to do with the other side of the equation, which was getting people out of the Simurgh zone as quickly as possible. The amount of paperwork that was going to be required for that was immense, he could tell, but fortunately that wasn't Eon's business. He and Shadow were just here to do the healing, nothing more.
It was dark out now, which was Eon's only measurement of what time it was; he hadn't exactly cared all that much when he was working, since it didn't matter, but the darkness was just annoying enough that he fired off a Calm Mind to keep him settled and alert, while a tiny bit of fire skittered down his back and tails in a little glow. It would be a handy weapon too, just in case, but Eon really didn't expect trouble now, unless by 'trouble' he was talking about hordes of people wanting to thank him and Shadow for the help, which he was pretty sure was being dealt with by the Australian government's people instead. Thankfully. Eon didn't really want to be put into a situation where he needed to use his fire to get a bunch of people away from Shadow, though he absolutely would if he had to. Shadow was tired, after all, he wasn't all that much better, and he'd quite like to get back to the Inari Den sooner rather than later.
"That's everyone, right?" Shadow asked softly, making him look down. She was leaning comfortably against his side now, letting him practically hold her up, and her eyes were half closed- though there was enough of an alert glimmer to them that he wasn't worried about her falling asleep on him yet.
"It should be." He nodded. "Assuming that the government here had everything right."
"I hope so." She yawned. "I think I'd like to get back to the Den."
"Same here, pix." Her yawn was contagious, Eon having to press down one of his own before he shook his head. "Come on, let's go and see if there's anything we need to do to finish up here, then see if Dragon's willing to take us home."
"If she's not, I'm taking a nap in the plane." Shadow mumbled, pushing herself upright and shaking herself out. "Mean, gonna do that anyway, but I'm gonna do it more if we're not going home soon." Eon chuckled.
"I can't blame you there." He stepped up to her side and carefully guided her over to Iridessa, who was floating out of the way and talking to one of the men that had been working in this tent. "I believe we're all done, right?"
"That's right." The man nodded, then gave a salute as the fairy-like Cape moved to sit next to them. "Thank you so much for your help, both of you. You've done a lot of good today."
Shadow stepped a little bit forward, enough to draw attention to her while still being close to Eon, and gave her own salute, standing unsteadily on three legs for a moment. "I'm glad we were able to help, sir." She said. "That's the entire reason Team Inari formed, to help people, and being able to help those that'd be hopeless otherwise is one of the best things we can do as a team."
"Quite." Eon agreed, herding his second back so that Iridessa could reach down and lift her onto her lap. "Let's head back to the main setup and see if there's anything more they need of us."
"Sounds good to me." The two of them hurried off, leaving the rest of the people to handle the tents and sorting. Eon had to use another Agility to keep up, since the Cape he was working with seemed quite eager to get back, though he only realised why when they came to a halt and she carefully lowered a nearly-sleeping Shadow to the ground.
The Vulpix yawned widely and shook herself again, then gave Iridessa a bow. "Thank you for your help today."
Behind her mask, the Cape's eyes went wide, before she shuffled slightly on her support bubble to give a bow of her own. "I'm glad I was able to help you out." She shifted again, then held out her hand for Eon to take. "Both of you, even if I didn't do very much for you, Eon."
"You watched over Shadow for me so that I could work on helping out with the healing, which meant a lot of people got helped a lot faster." Eon corrected, shaking her hand. "That means a lot. To the both of us, as well as everyone that was stuck in Canberra."
"Thank you." The girl sounded a little overwhelmed, and after a moment floated herself away from the duo as Dragon approached instead.
"You did a lot of good today." The Tinker said quietly, a smile in her voice. "I expect you're going to get rather sick of hearing that."
"Eventually." Eon agreed, chuckling. "For now though... it's good to know that we're doing some good here. Especially when it's something like this... where no-one else seems able to help."
Eon knew what it was like to be stuck and feeling like you have no options, after all. Being transformed into a shiny Ninetales had led to one of the best things ever with his team, sure, but the early period before he met Shadow had been... complicated. Being a shiny Pokemon had netted him enough attention on its own, let alone when it had spread that he was a human who had lost his memories and been transformed. Like a number of old legends. Even if he'd had a few options, it hadn't stopped Eon feeling like he had none at all.
Luckily Shadow had shown up and needed a partner for her Rescue Team, so he'd taken the chance to do something he'd thought he'd like to do by taking up a place as her team leader. And he didn't regret that, either, even if it had led to him standing on another world with his second, looking up at a woman in power armour who had helped fly the two of them half way around the world to help others.
"I think I understand the feeling." Dragon nodded, before gesturing to the transport. The back was once again open, he noticed, as she continued, "I can see Shadow's tired, and honestly you don't look much better. There's nothing more for you to do, though I still need to handle a few things before we leave. Feel free to go and settle down for the flight."
"Thank you, Dragon." Eon gave another slight bow before carefully herding Shadow into the transport with his tails. It wasn't difficult, given how tired the Vulpix was, with the most irritating part being trying to get Shadow onto the couch she had used on the journey over. Once she was up there, though, she barely spared the energy to murmur a quiet thanks before drifting off to sleep.
Eon sighed again. Really, pix, you need to be more careful. He mused to himself, as he walked away and settled on the other couch, head on his paws so he could watch her the entire time. I know you want to help, but you need to be more careful with your boundaries. And some of the other Containment Zones were bound to be worse, too. He had no idea which ones were bigger than Canberra, but he was sure at least some of them had to be. Those would almost definitely mean an overnight stay, and it would also mean that Eon would need to keep a closer eye on Shadow to keep her from wearing herself out. Once we're back at the Den, we'll need to talk to Taylor and Danny about having Swarm come along next time. Her bugs would be really helpful. Swarm would be able to handle keeping an eye out for threats as well as keeping an eye on Shadow to keep her from exhausting herself healing, which would free Eon to do more healing as well.
Shifting slightly on the couch, he watched his team mate curl closer in on herself, mumbling something into her tails as she tucked her face under them. Eon yawned a little in sympathy, feeling a similar sense of exhaustion; being on guard all day was hard enough, even ignoring the fact that he'd done a fair bit of healing as well to help Shadow out, plus all the running around to keep up with Shadow and Iridessa as they moved between the tents. The flight back wouldn't be all that fun, either, now that he was thinking about heading home rather than just focusing on getting Shadow around where she needed to be. From what Shadow had said earlier sleeping helped, or at least her being asleep meant that she hadn't noticed any issues- though given her ability to use Magnet Rise she was also fairly used to drifting around in the air... which would be another bonus to having Swarm with them, actually. He could sleep on the flight with Shadow and still have someone from the team on guard. As much as he trusted Dragon's word that they'd be safe on her craft, it was comfortingly familiar to have a team member on watch as well.
Blinking slowly, Eon moved again, then grumbled softly as the fur of his head crest dropped past his ear and into his eyes. He blinked again, a little startled, but didn't bother to try and move it. The shade was kind of nice, and he didn't really need to be watching over Shadow the entire time. If something happened, he'd be able to deal with it by hearing it just was well as if he saw it...
Eon startled awake at the jolt of the floor below him, abruptly going into high alert as he started searching for the threat. If the guard on the team hadn't warned him, then that meant they'd already been taken out, and the jolt had the characteristics of the start of an Earthquake. With Shadow exhausted and him not much better, any fight they got into would be difficult-
Very suddenly Eon's brain caught up with the rest of the world, and he remembered where he was; inside Dragon's shuttle-craft, flying back to Brockton Bay, not in a Dungeon in the middle of a mission.
With a slightly embarrassed huff, he settled himself down on the couch again- he'd nearly sprung off of it in his hurry to find the perceived threat- and focused instead on taking in his surroundings. Shadow was still asleep on the couch opposite, apparently not having noticed the shuddering that woke him- a clear sign of how tired she was after the healing, which made Eon feel guilty for not keeping a closer eye on her while she was working and making sure that she took breaks properly- though she had shifted a little in her sleep, no longer curled up under her tails but now lying on her side with her tails brought up along her stomach. She looked somewhat uncomfortable, Eon thought, as he slowly made his way off the couch and over to her.
Carefully, mostly due to the fact that the craft was still shuddering a little, he placed a paw on her forehead, gently moving the fur aside. She feels a little colder than normal... he mused. Probably because of how tired she is. It was rare that either of them ever got tired enough for their internal fires to dim, but it had happened before. It had been more common in the early days as a team, because they were rather less powerful, but it had still happened even after two years of missions and training.
Once again, Eon scolded himself for not keeping a closer eye on his second in command. She was a lot younger than him, and as her commander it was his job to make sure she, like the rest of his team, wasn't overstressing herself. Just because she'd grown up a little from the bubbly, naive ten year old he'd first met and started a team with, it didn't mean he should stop doing his own job. It didn't help that the Vulpix could often still be just as hopeful as when she was younger, and that hopeful 'help everyone' mindset could- and honestly had in the past- led to her getting into a fair bit of trouble on missions because she was overdoing it. Too much healing, using too many Moves, taking too many hits in defence of team mates or clients... it had even caused issues in their downtime, mostly when she refused to use it as such and instead spent the entire time practising Moves.
Eon had had to drag her out of the training grounds and back home more times than he would like to count, either ignoring her protests or listening to her quiet snores.
Doing just that now, listening to his partner quietly snoring, he wondered if it would be worth using a small Will-O-Wisp to try and boost her inner fire a little. He'd have to be careful using it, given that they were inside someone else's craft, and it did run the risk of waking her up as Flash Fire activated and absorbed the attack, but he could still do it to try and make her feel better. Waking up with a cooled inner flame was not a fun experience, and usually led to the Vulpix or Ninetales in question getting ill. Eon had only experienced that once, and that one time had been enough.
A quiet background humming, one that Eon had noticed but not consciously registered, shifted with a click, making his ears perk up. He stepped back, letting Shadow's fur flop back over her forehead, and looked around for the source.
"Hello, Eon." The fairly familiar voice of Dragon said softly, making Eon relax a little.
"Dragon." He nodded in the direction of the voice, assuming that whatever speaker she had in that corner was attached to a camera of some kind.
"My apologies for the sudden rough movement, we hit some turbulence as I was starting to slow down in preparation for approaching Brockton Bay." She continued. "I've done my best to accommodate for that so as not to disturb Shadow, but it might get a little bumpy as we go to land."
"Given how exhausted she is, I'm not certain that even an uncomfortable flight could wake her." Eon admitted, looking back at the Vulpix. She shifted again in her sleep as they spoke, rolling onto her stomach and nearly falling off the couch before Eon caught her with his tails, forming a sort of platform to lift her back up again. His friend didn't react at all throughout, making Eon frown a little more. "She really should have been more careful with her healing." Shadow's overly idealistic view of their work was frightening sometimes, mostly because Eon worried she'd actually hurt herself one day.
"She did do a lot of work." Dragon agreed. "Now that she's done this one, I have something of a better idea of her capabilities. Rest assured, next time I will endeavour to keep an eye on her so that she doesn't exhaust herself so thoroughly again."
"Thank you." He smiled a little. "I'll be more careful to keep an eye on her as well, and hopefully next time we'll be able to bring Swarm with us to act as an extra guard. That should let me handle some of the healing as well, which means Shadow doesn't need to do as much work."
"Swarm's bugs would also be much more optimised to keeping an eye on a large area, which would let her spot problems from further away than you could alone and alert us faster." The Tinker added, before going silent. The craft tilted, making Eon stumble a little and go dizzy, and she finished, "We'll be coming in to land in a few minutes. If you're able to wake Shadow, I recommend that you do so now."
"I'll at least have a go. Can't guarantee that she'll wake up, though." Eon took a steadying breath in an attempt to ignore the dizziness the flight brought, then lit a weak Will-O-Wisp on one tailtip and touched it to Shadow's side.
The ethereal blue-purple flame vanished in a flash, and Shadow gave a murmuring grumble, twitching. Eon placed a paw on her forehead again, feeling her warm ever so slightly, and one eye cracked open to look at him with displeasure.
"Sorry, kit." He said softly. "But we're nearly back at the Bay now, so you need to wake up, ok?"
"Tired..." She whispered, eye fluttering shut again. "Really tired..."
"I know, I know." Eon patted her side a little. Exhaustion was no joke, and getting tired enough that your inner flame started to cool was horrible. Most of the next day or so would probably be spent recovering from it, with a few Flash Fire boosts to try and help it along. "You just need to be awake long enough to get home to the Den, ok? Then you can sleep all you want."
Shadow seemed to contemplate that for a while, silent for just long enough that Eon wondered if she'd fallen asleep again, then nodded a little. "Ok. Just a while?"
"Just a little while, yes."
"Ok." She slowly sat up, giving a jaw cracking yawn, then shook herself. Her tails poofed out a little as she did, and she carefully slipped down from the couch to stand at his side. "It's kinda cold." She muttered, leaning into him.
Eon nodded, wrapping a tail around her. "You've tired yourself out enough that your inner flame is getting cold, Shadow." He told her- she knew this, but right now she was tired enough that she didn't remember that fact. "You'll be ok after a bit more rest."
"Right." She yawned again. "I don't like being cold. It's weird."
"It is a little, yes." He nodded. "Like I say, you just need to stay awake to get back to the Den, then you can go back to sleep. I'll make sure you're nice and warm."
"Puff blanket?" She requested, tilting her head. Like this, with her eyes fluttering and little yawns constantly slipping out, his second in command looked a lot like the tiny child he'd met, and less like the well-reasoned and powerful girl he worked with in Dungeons.
The thought made him chuckle a little, and he nodded again. "Sure thing, pix. I'll get you the puffy blanket, and we can start a little campfire for you as well if you want."
"Fire's nice." She mumbled. "It makes my fire burn more."
"Then I'll light you a little campfire when we're home, and you can sleep there." For her sake, he circled up another Will-O-Wisp and let her Ability absorb it, then lifted up her bag with an Extrasensory and packed it into the Treasure Bag. It was mostly empty anyway by this point, so there was no reason to give it to Shadow to carry when she was already exhausted. Slinging the Treasure Bag back onto his back and repositioning it with another touch of Extrasensory, he nodded over at the corner where he assumed Dragon's camera was. "We should be good to go now."
"Alright." Dragon replied, as the craft shuddered again. "We'll be landing in about a minute or so, Armsmaster and Director Piggot are waiting for you. I've already warned them that Shadow is rather tired out, so they likely won't keep you for very long."
"Good."
Eon kept his tails around Shadow for the entirety of the shaky descent, not able to stop himself from giving a small sigh of relief once it landed with a thud and the engines stopped their whining. Shadow shook herself slightly at the jolt, looking around and stepping out from under Eon's tails, and Eon blinked at her in surprise as she straightened up as best she can and tried to look serious.
"Shadow..."
"'ll survive serious for a bit." She stated, shaking her head again and blinking sleep out of her eyes. "At least enough to report in for the mission."
Eon chuckled. "If you say so, pix." It wouldn't be the first time that a member of Team Inari had given a mission report while drop-fainted exhausted. While both he and his second in command could be stubborn, there were also plenty of occasions where members of the team had put together their own group for missions and the elected team leader had given a summary of the entire thing even though they were practically passed out on their feet. Eon had no idea how he'd managed to collect a team of such dedicated Pokemon, but that had led to their reputation of being impressively good even though they were a somewhat smaller team than many. Working closely with the local Wigglytuff Guild helped, too.
The armoured form of Dragon came out of the cockpit as the door began opening, making Eon shake his head a little again and focus on the task at hand. It was late enough at night that Eon was surprised to see a number of PRT troopers around as well, but he supposed it made sense to have a night guard in a city like Brockton Bay, with all of the gangs around. As Dragon had warned, Armsmaster and Director Piggot were both waiting for them, and looked with some surprise at the state Shadow was in.
"Good evening Director, Armsmaster." Eon greeted, with a nod. "I'm glad to inform you that the mission went well, and Canberra Containment Zone is completely cleared. They were still working on the paperwork when we left."
"That is... impressive work." Armsmaster said, visor fixed on Shadow. "To manage that in such a short period of time..."
"Eon helped." Shadow responded, stepping up beside him. "And while there was a lot of people, it was a good setup that was being used so I could get quite a lot done. I might be able to do even bigger rooms, with more people, but I think that'd need testing." Suddenly she swayed slightly, covering her mouth in a yawn. "And maybe also more breaks."
Eon placed a tail on her back again, making her look over and roll her eyes at him, shrugging him off. He stifled a sigh at her stubbornness and refocused on the pair of leaders. "Would you prefer a verbal report, or would a written summary suffice?"
Director Piggot looked rather more surprised at that, for some reason, then shook her head. "Ah, we should be fine, Eon. Dragon can give us a report, and I expect we'll get something from the Chief Director once the Australians are finished dealing with everything in Canberra."
The Ninetales paused, then nodded slowly. "As you will." It made sense to ask for a report from Dragon, since she had been- at least, as far as he knew, she had been- mostly free for the entire healing period, so she likely had had more time to compose a sort of report for the Director. Plus she was a known entity and apparently a fairly trusted associate of the local team, which gave reason to believe she might've given reports before and thus be acquainted with the reporting style required.
That didn't mean Eon wasn't going to endeavour to write up and hand in a written report for them, of course, but it did make sense. Plus having a report from both an observer and a participant in the situation would probably be a good thing for the PRT's records. It was the reason why joint or group missions that involved multiple teams and worked with the Wigglytuff Guild- which was most of them, since usually the only way you linked up with another team was through them and their group postings, unless another team asked you specifically to work with them- required that the team leader for each team write up their own report to hand into the Guild for the mission archives. That way, the Guild got a good perspective of the entire mission coming from a number of different people. Team Inari used a similar method; the team leader handed in a report, but the team members would all look over it before it was handed in and add their own opinions to the report, to give their own perspective on issues. It helped for training, too.
Shaking himself free of the slight ache that had started to form as he thought about the rest of his team, he touched Shadow's side lightly with a tail and gave a small bow to the trio that had helped them. "Thank you once again for your assistance with this. I look forward to being able to work with you again."
"Many thanks for your help." Shadow agreed, with her own little bow. She swayed a little as she straightened, and Eon couldn't help but smile a little as the three gave their own bows back, despite seeming confused by the motion.
"Karaday will show you out." Director Piggot told them, gesturing to one of the guards standing nearby. "And- well done."
He smiled a little at her, careful not to show any teeth, then turned and trotted over to the guard, listening to Shadow following along with a tired gait.
Karaday led them over to an elevator shaft, which he was thankful for, and for a moment they descended in silence.
"I just want to say," he murmured lowly, around the sounds of the elevator moving, "That I respect what you did today. A lot of people are going to feel the same, too."
"We are aware." Eon admits. "I'll be doing my best to keep Shadow safe and on the ground. In the end, it's something we can do that no-one else seems to be able too, so it's something that we'll do."
"Still, be prepared for a lot of respect once it starts spreading around what you've done." Karaday grinned crookedly. "You'll need to be careful about the nutjobs, though. There's always some who aren't going to like what you're doing."
Like the Fallen, he mused, outwardly just nodding. "Don't worry. We'll be defended when it comes to that too."
The trooper looked down at them both for a long moment, then nodded back. "Somehow, I don't doubt that."
The lobby was empty when they walked out, Karaday walking them to the main door anyway before leaving them be, and the streets were similarly silent, with only the occasional sound of a car driving in the distance. Eon looked down at Shadow, who was again obviously flagging. "Are you going to be ok getting back to the Den, pix?"
"I... should be ok?" She shook herself violently, her fur puffing out as though she was standing knee-deep in snow. "It's really cold, Eon..."
Eon grimaced. "Sorry, pix. Let's get back to the Den, and then we can make sure you're comfortable." He promised, placing a paw on her side again and grimacing harder at how cool she felt. It was almost uncomfortable, given that a Fire type's inner flame would easily keep them warm all the time, for her to be that cool. "Maybe we should talk to Parian about getting some kind of insulated, fire-proof coat for when we need to do this again." He mused, shifting away and starting down the road towards the network of alleyways that they would use to get out of the city and into the woods.
"That'd be nice." Shadow hummed, trotting after him with slightly uneven steps. "It sounds comfy, too. I don't like it being cold..."
"No, the cold certainly isn't very nice." He agreed, before looking around at the darkness uncomfortably. Normally it wouldn't be an issue, since they could see fairly well in the dark even ignoring their other senses, but with Shadow as exhausted as she was... Eon decided that he might as well treat it as an escort mission, flicking a group of Will-O-Wisps from his tails to orbit around him and light up the surrounding area, then stepped back a little so that Shadow was within that orbit as well. "Still, if we can get back pretty quickly, then we can settle down somewhere where it won't be cold. Then tomorrow, we can talk to Swarm and to Parian about some kind of coat."
"Sounds good to me." She shivered again, stepping as close to the Will-O-Wisp as she could without her Flash Fire activating and absorbing it, and picked up the pace as much as she could, obviously wanting to get back home.
Eon couldn't find it in himself to blame her, starting to walk a little faster himself, keeping his senses open for any idiot who might decide that the two of them were good targets for a fight. He didn't expect there to be anyone, admittedly, but there were always idiots, especially in this city.
Taylor shook herself again from the slight doze she felt herself falling into and groaned, rubbing her hand across her cheeks before sighing. Putting one hand on the tree behind her, she pulled herself upright and stretched.
"Maybe it'd be a good idea to go for a walk..." She mused, feeling her back crack slightly as she moved out of the position that she'd been sitting in for... clearly far too long, if that was how it felt.
Pushing the stretch a little further, just enough to make it uncomfortable, Taylor took another look around with her bugs before deciding to make her way back down to the Berry fields again. There wasn't really much of a reason to do so but given that she really did need that walk after sitting down for so long, she thought it might be a good idea. It was incredible to see that some of the plants were flowering already, ready to burst into more Berries, and not for the first time, Taylor couldn't help but shake her head at the absolute absurdity that was these Berry trees.
"Honestly, and to think that they're even faster to grow back on whatever world they're from…" Taylor muttered to herself, running a hand across the vibrantly green leaves of the nearest plant- she thought this one was one of the many Leppa plants that the pair had brought with them, but she wasn't totally sure given that given that this one wasn't flowering and thus could be any number of things- as she walked by. "If they could figure out how that worked, then that alone would probably be a lifesaver for a lot of people… But then again, we'd also have to figure out how to even make other plants do that, and I doubt that would be easy with all of the issues around Biotinkers…" She hummed little to herself again, absently pulling her mask back onto her face just in case. Technically, this area was also a part of Team Inari's base of operations, but that wasn't really any particularly good reason to be risking getting outed if someone managed to breach across the illusion barrier that Shadow and Eon had set up.
As such, Swarm stayed there for a little while, mostly just wandering around in an attempt to see how the plants were doing; even though they weren't actually her plants she felt responsible for keeping an eye on them while the rest of her team was out of the country, especially since they were quite important to her friends. She was also using her bugs to keep an eye on the surrounding area, assuming that the two Pokemon would return straight back to the base once they were done with their mission and hoping that she'd be able to see them.
She was also hopeful that they wouldn't be too tired to fill her in on things, though she wasn't exactly counting on it; it had been a very long trip for both of them, and honestly if Shadow wasn't exhausted then Swarm would be both impressed and very, very curious as to what exactly they'd done to manage that.
Almost as if they'd been summoned by her thoughts, one of the conglomerates of bugs placed near their main walkway in to the base spotted the- slightly bleary, given that it was being seen through bugs- form of the silver Ninetales that was her team leader. Swarm couldn't have helped the smile that spread across her face when she saw that even if she had wanted to, and hurriedly turned away from the large Berry field and started back towards the main segment of the base, knowing that she would get there around the same time as them. The entire time, she kept watch with her bugs, watching carefully how Eon was always sure to keep his tails pulled around the side of him like he was keeping something safe, and the abundance of Will-O-Wisps that were floating around him.
I wonder where Shadow is, Swarm mused to herself, gathering more bugs in that area and, after a moment of quiet deliberation with herself, forming a swarm of bugs that she vaguely shaped like a person. The swarm easily caught Eon's attention and the rather improved vision of having more bugs in one place meant that the insect's controller quite clearly saw the smile that brushed over his face as he turned his attention to her.
"Swarm." He greeted lowly, giving her a slight nod as he continued to walk towards the base. "I don't suppose you could do me the favour of going into the main Den and getting Shadow's blanket out, will you?" As he stepped closer, Swarm could clearly see that her second teammate was burrowed under Eon's tails and apparently shivering somewhat violently.
From where she was on her way back to the base, Swarm's eyes widened behind her mask, but she could do nothing but nod with her avatar and dispel it, her real body picking up the pace to hurry back and hopefully get there before her team did.
Once she arrived, she quickly did as asked, ducking into the main den that Shadow and Eon used and headed for the collection of boxes that sat along the wall. Though none of them were labelled, it wasn't actually particularly difficult to figure out where the blanket was, given that she knew where the pair kept all of the bedding that they'd bought- entertainingly blatantly as well, given that the three of them had literally walked into a store during one of their patrols, partly because Shadow had spotted the place while bored at the quiet, and spent an enjoyable hour or so wandering about the shop, eventually walking out with both blankets and quilts for the pair of them to place in and over the little sleeping burrows that they had within their shelter. Not that it had stopped Taylor from using her spiders to make silk ones for them, because they were her team and that felt like something she should do, but it had been a fun trip. Especially since they were technically using the Merchant's money to buy all of it. She'd actually come out of that same trip with a few things for herself as well, which was stored in another box within another woven building in the den, the larger one built for herself for whenever she ended up stopping over at the base for whatever reason.
The blanket in question, however, wasn't actually one from that trip. Instead it was one that Shadow had brought with her when she and Eon had come from their original world and base. Shadow had reasoned, Swarm was told, that since they had no idea where they would be going or what sort of civilisation there would be, it would be a good idea to take something like that in case they needed it. Eon thusly had his own blanket, but that one was quite different from the fluffy monstrosity that Shadow had chosen. It was a teal blue, made mostly from the wool of something called Mareep, was big enough to wrap its way around her several times just based on a glance, and was probably the most overly fluffy thing Swarm had seen in quite a long time. Shadow claimed that it had been one of several going away gifts that her Gran had given her when she'd decided and finally proven that she could become a rescue Pokemon, and Swarm couldn't help but think privately that it was quite hilarious.
It took a few seconds to finagle the entire thing out of the box and into her arms, but once she did she knocked the lid shut again and walked out. Eon was just emerging from the trees, the form of Shadow still firmly under his tails, and he smiled a little as he saw her.
"Thanks, Swarm." He said quietly, directing the Vulpix under his tails towards her. "Wrap her up in that, I'll get the fire started."
Shadow's ears perked up slightly at the word fire, and she took her gaze off of the ground to look up at her team leader. "Fire?"
"Yes, kit, fire." He nudged her side gently, causing her to stumble a little. "Go let Swarm wrap you up, then you can sit by the fire and warm up, ok?"
"That's a good idea." She mumbled, slipping out from under Eon's tails and trotting- somewhat unsteadily, to Swarm's eyes- over to her. "Warm is good. I like warm. Not like cold."
"I don't suppose cold is very fun for Fire types." Swarm knelt down, laying the blanket out on the grassy floor, and frowned a little more as Shadow all but fell onto it, instinctively curling herself into a ball to conserve heat. Carefully, Swarm reached out, prodding her into stretching before tucking the blanket around her and wrapping it up like some kind of fluffy burrito.
Swarm turned back to Eon, who was partly inside one of the storage dens containing firewood, and pulled off her mask again to raise an eyebrow at the Ninetales. He winced a little at the expression when he turned around, lifting a large bundle of twigs and sticks out using Extrasensory, and looked away. "She's exhausted herself." He explained to Taylor as he started setting up the campfire in the centre of the base's area. "Fire types, when they get too cold, can start to lose a bit of their inner flame. It's not dangerous," he hurried to add, when Taylor's eyes widened. "But it can be if it gets too cold. Right now she needs warmth and fire to fuel it. The fire will help with both, since she'll probably absorb some of it. I've been handing off Will-O-Wisps for a lot of the trip."
As if reminded of the tiny flames still hovering around, Eon flicked his tail, making them fly towards the campfire and catch it alight. The mystical fire burned brightly for a few moments, keeping the lilac tinge of the Move, then settled down into a normal red flame as the Move died out. It would take some time for the fire to be big enough, Taylor knew, but already there was a distinct warmth to it that had Shadow grumbling in her half-asleep state and trying to wriggle closer.
Taylor decided to help her a little with that, pushing the wrapped up blanket closer to the edge of the stone circle, but being careful that any sparks jumping off the fire wouldn't hit the blanket and light it off. "But she'll be ok?"
"Perfectly, after some rest and warmth." Eon promised. "Getting her something warm to eat or drink would help as well, but given that she's practically asleep..."
"No' 'sleep..." A quiet mumble protested, making Taylor smile and pat the blanket bundle.
"You should be, you're tired." She scolded. "And Eon, why did you let her get this tired?"
"She's good at hiding it, and honestly with the amount of people there to help this was going to be the result even if I did get her to take more breaks." He admitted, sitting down and curling his tails around his paws as he watched the fire build itself. "There were... far too many people there. Too many for her to handle alone, and even with me helping as much as I could..." He shrugged, looking towards the Vulpix who was now softly snoring under Taylor's hand.
"Was it really that bad?" Taylor asked quietly, the weight of what her two friends had done returning to her mind.
Eon paused, still looking at the fire, then stood in a flowing movement of fur and trotted off into the Den. Taylor watched silently as he did, coming back with a small bag of marshmallows and two skewers. Popping open the bag, he stabbed the skewers in and handed one off to Taylor, who took it with an amused look. "Really?"
"Might as well." He returned. "Waste of a good campfire otherwise."
"And Shadow?"
The Vulpix snored louder.
"She's the one who got so tired, if she wants to complain about not getting marshmallows she should've just agreed to take a bit of extra time there or something."
"I suppose." Internally, Taylor could understand wanting to help the people in the containment zone as quickly as possible, given how long they'd suffered, but she also agreed with Eon that Shadow should've been more careful to pace herself. She was the only person who could help those in the Simurgh zones, after all, aside from Eon, so making herself ill or worse trying to help wasn't going to help anyone at all.
Holding her marshmallow over the slowly rising fire, she looked back at Eon and gestured for him to begin, tilting her head. "So, what happened?"
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- Location
- Russia
And the confusion about this group continues to grow...
This stuff loosely reminds me of a certain anime I watched some of
A group of independent capes with a lot of power and especially now, clout. And yet at the same time they are surprisingly open, cheerful, helpful, and now there is going to be an unasked for report given which is only gonna add to the confusion. The poor PRT has no clue who they are dealing with.
I think a Lot will be an understatement
- Location
- Internet, The
Good to see these more frequent updates. De-mastering a whole city took much less time than I expected.
That seems unlikely. "Victim is commanded to fight against anti-mastering attempt" seems like Mastering 101.
"of her"
lowercase "how"
lowercase "back"