I'm more worried about the reaction of a certain band of degenerate hillbillies who worship Endbringers.
A Shadow, an Eon, and a Worm (Worm/Pokemon)
- Thread starter ShadowPixelle
- Start date
- Crossover
What i want IS the reaction of the people IT should be Something Like in ancient Legos a world id
I think some people will worship jirachi even more so when they learn they are basiacally gods in their world
AnantaAtman
I wandered, I watched, I judged
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It felt anticlimatic. Perhaps, a PHO character is in order.
Chapter 42- Cleanup, backstories, and feelings
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
The cleanup work was, as expected, long and arduous. Mostly due to the number of buildings that had been utterly wrecked by Behemoth during the fight. The numerous earthquakes he'd set off hadn't helped matters in the slightest, Shadow thought to herself as she walked, since they'd destabilised things that had already been somewhat unsteady just from his approach, let alone everything else that had been thrown about during the fight. Fireballs, lightning, radiation bursts, Capes that were hit with the side effects of any of those, things that the Capes themselves were throwing around...
It was sort of amazing that New Delhi was standing at all, to be honest.
Shadow had helped out as much as she could manage, which was a fairly large amount given that she'd only been in the healing rooms during the attack itself. Mostly she'd focused on moving rubble out of the way so that it could be removed from the scene by other people, along with the occasional rescue of a person who'd been trapped or- unfortunately more often- the removal of a body that would be taken away for a proper honouring.
There was a part of her that wanted to set Behemoth on fire herself every time a body was removed, from under rubble or just from the streets they were on. She was glad that he was dead- or destroyed, given that she wasn't totally sure the Endbringers were conscious enough to be capable of death- but whenever they found someone else who'd been unlucky enough not to be able to escape, she wished he could have been tormented just a little bit more.
Still, it was in the past now. Behemoth was gone, courtesy of Jirachi, the cleanup was well under way, and a text had gone out about ten minutes ago that Inari was going to be heading home soon. She was glad for that, since she had been able to feel the start of exhaustions crawl, so she'd confirmed that she was on her way, finished up what she was helping with, and started to pick her way through the city streets towards the teleport point, where the others would be waiting.
Shadow sort of wished she could be doing more- she felt a bit guilty that she hadn't been able to help as much as she would have liked in the healing rooms during the fight, because of the way her powers worked and how few people were actually coming through, and a similar guilt was being carried about the fact that she hadn't dismissed herself from healing when she'd realised that she wasn't helping and gone into combat instead- but she was getting tired, the others on her team were almost certainly exhausted by now- especially Swarm, given that she didn't have the same stamina that Pokemon had- and things were going well. In all the situation was good enough that going home and resting wasn't a bad idea, even if it was unlikely that they'd be returning to do anything more. The rest of their week would be spent recovering, getting Deoxys and Jirachi up to date on things, and waiting for the inevitable PRT meeting that they were going to be called to when the Time Gear thing got around.
And wasn't that just a cherry on the cake, Shadow thought bitterly. Confirmation that somehow the Endbringers were related to Time Gears, that her hit on Leviathan was why the Time Gear in Brockton Bay had been created... and Shadow really wanted to see if they could figure out some answers on all of it, because the Time Gears back in Sinah hadn't been anywhere big enough to possibly create one of the Endbringers, let alone the three that Earth Bet had.
Sure, those ones were carved into actual gear shapes- which was another bundle of questions they'd never gotten an answer for- while these ones were chunks of it, but it still didn't make any Arceus-damned sense at all and was something she wanted answers for. Even if she probably wouldn't even get any.
She turned the corner onto the main base that'd been made up for the cleanup stuff with that irritating thought in mind, and easily spotted the rest of her team standing just a little ways away from the teleport points, clearly waiting for her. Swarm and Deoxys standing together made for a pretty impressive sight, and they were tall enough that they were easy to spot.
"Hi, sorry, I was further away than I thought." She apologised, hurrying over to them.
"No worries, Shadow." Eon assured in return, looking her over. "I take it you have everything with you?"
"Yeah, I'm good to go."
There was a noise that sounded faintly like a barely-audible cheer from Deoxys' direction, and when Shadow glanced over she saw Jirachi was bundled up in his ribbon-like trails and being held close to their chest. Understandably so, given that he'd been obviously exhausted after destroying Behemoth, and she didn't want to know how much effort even just floating about must have taken after that. Jirachi and Deoxys had stayed out of the cleanup for good reason, after all, and Shadow felt vaguely bad about making them wait to leave so the Wish Maker could rest.
They started to move towards the teleport point, where they'd wait until Strider appeared and get a lift back to the Brockton Bay PRT building, before the sounds of someone coming in to land next to them caught her attention. For a moment, Shadow assumed that it was just someone else heading for the teleporter, before a loud voice called out, "Inari!"
Eon turned sharply, and she and Swarm quickly fell into step behind him, eyes widening slightly at the sight of Alexandria walking over to them.
"Alexandria." Eon greeted. "Is something wrong?"
"I had a question about the clones." She said, sharply. "Will they vanish if they leave?"
Shadow was a bit annoyed by the rudeness in her tone, but she figured that Alexandria was probably pretty stressed out helping to run the Protectorate response to all of this, so she let it slide and glanced back at Deoxys.
'Explanation; duplicates have assigned orders. Units will continue functioning until assigned orders are complete.'
'Deoxys told them to help clean up.' Jirachi's tired voice added. 'They'll stay around until the clean up is mostly complete, then start dispelling. They might get a bit weaker or more strange once Deoxys is out of command range, but it won't be too bad.'
"I see." She nodded. "My thanks." The Brute flew away just as abruptly as she'd arrived, and as one the five of them traded shrugs before moving back to the teleporters.
"I'd like if you all stayed over the Den tonight." Eon said quietly, as they waited for Strider to return. "There's plenty of space, and I'd feel better having everyone nearby when we're all worn down like this."
'Works for me...' Jirachi yawned again. Deoxys shrugged, apparently accepting their friend's judgement, and Shadow looked up at Swarm.
"I'll need to send a message first, but yeah." She sounded just as exhausted as everyone else, and there was a slight sag in her shoulders from holding herself upright. "Better to have everyone together."
Things started to blur together after that; Shadow remembered going through Strider's teleport, all of them wobbling slightly on landing, remembered Swarm taking out her phone and texting Danny about the arrangements, remembered all of them walking through the city and guiding Deoxys towards the Den, but all of it felt foggy from tiredness.
"We'll need to talk more tomorrow." Eon added on, as they all started settling down.
"Tomorrow." Shadow agreed, yawning into her paw and stumbling into their room. "But sleep now."
Rebecca frowned slightly as she watched Inari teleport away, thinking furiously. The fact that her powers didn't work on anyone aside from Swarm in the group wasn't actually surprising, all things considered, but it was still annoying. She wasn't used to struggling to figure out what people were thinking.
There was a part of her that wanted to try and recruit the new creatures that had appeared, either into the Protectorate or into Cauldron. Something with that level of power would be extremely helpful in the fight against Scion, given that they'd just demonstrated the ability to down an Endbringer.
As much as Rebecca wanted to find out what had happened there, she knew she'd be getting a report at some point. She just had to be patient, which was better than trying to hold them for an explanation right now.
On the other hand, though, these beings weren't Parahumans, so there was no reason to try pushing them into the Protectorate, and she wasn't entirely certain that they would agree with Cauldron as an organisation. Maybe the goal, but given what they knew of the spirits from conversations with the two kitsune it seemed more likely that they'd just try to challenge Scion in combat of some kind, and that could be disastrous to every world that the Entity was working on.
So no, it was better to keep them at arms length and let Inari continue doing what they wanted, within reason. At the very least they'd then have their support when Scion eventually went off, and possibly they'd attract more of their kind that would work with them.
Until then, though, she had other things to focus on. Like co-ordinating the cleanup, both on-site as Alexandria and off-site as the PRT's Chief Director, and at some point she could figure out a way to set up a meeting with Inari- preferably out of Brockton Bay and closer to her main offices instead, so that she could more covertly set up her own equipment to monitor things.
Once again, she wished that her powers had come with the ability to avoid sleep.
July 27th, 2011. Wednesday.
Jirachi woke up slowly, with the kind of haziness that he'd only really felt a few times before. The sort that came from a bone-deep exhaustion.
For a while, he couldn't actually remember what was going on. That wasn't exactly new, because when he was travelling in comet form with Deoxys he only had a faint awareness of what was going on around him; it was why he relied on his guardian so much, because they were the one who kept an eye on things to keep them both out of trouble. But just the fact that he'd woken up, rather than come aware of things while coming out of his comet form, made him struggle to push himself to figure out what had happened.
Then he pulled himself out of the protective curve of Deoxys' arm, looked around at the faintly-familiar wooden weave around them, and felt it all come rushing back.
Doom Desire would definitely explain why I'm so tired... he thought, partly amused. Most of him was upset that he'd needed to use that Move, the side effects and the destruction being nowhere worth the rush of power that came with it, but there was still a sort of amusement to it as well. Like a regretful one.
He wondered if there was a word for that.
Mindful of both his power levels and the fact that Deoxys was still in rest mode, he floated into the air and made his way over to the doorway, pushing aside the sheet that covered it and landing again in order to take in his surroundings.
The Den, as Eon had called it the previous night, was a very simple campsite. Compared to the buildings that they'd seen during the fight it seemed almost primitive. But to Jirachi, it was a fond reminder of the few campsites he'd been in before he and Deoxys had started travelling starwards instead, though it was also larger than those. Which made sense, given that it was being built as a permanent home and a team compound, not just a place to stay overnight.
The main building was hidden partly under a willow tree, which Shadow and Eon had disappeared into the previous night. Another room made up Swarm's retreat, which was much larger to accommodate for her height. He and Deoxys had taken one of the other larger rooms, one that had probably been made for visitors in the past. A number of other buildings dotted around the clearing they were in, with sheets of the same kind of fabric that was on the other doors hiding the contents of them. The centre of the clearing was taken up by a large-ish fire pit, and somewhere to his left he could hear a river.
In all, it felt very much like what Jirachi expected a Rescue Team base to feel like. Though he'd never really seen them before, having left not long after the Guilds had started being built up and never having had the opportunity to go and visit the bases of any of the teams that had existed before that point, he understood that they'd likely have been large compounds just to be able to house all of the team and any equipment, and he didn't think that would've changed over... however long they'd been gone.
Jirachi sighed a little. In some ways, there was a part of him that regretted going starwards with Deoxys all that time ago. He'd adored it, getting to travel with them around space- because they could avoid needing to breathe with their powers, which was good- was cool even if he didn't always remember a lot of it because he was in comet form, and it had gotten away from a world that, at the time, had been getting hostile. Things had been a little more dangerous, with all of the Mystery Dungeons that had been popping up, and Pokemon had been getting more and more insistent on challenging him in order to win a wish from him. For a while, he'd been totally on his own, relying on whatever help he could get to learn Moves and defending himself as best he could.
Then Deoxys had appeared.
Something of a machine Pokemon and an alien, they'd encountered him outside of a Mystery Dungeon and promptly latched onto him, needing direction in the strange new world they'd found themselves in. He hadn't minded, because it had worked well for both of them; Deoxys had direction, and he had someone who was willing to help protect himself from Pokemon that were after Wish Challenges. While at first Deoxys hadn't been much better trained than him, the two of them had managed to figure out a few Moves together and a few more from Pokemon willing to help, and they'd gotten by.
Deoxys had been the one to suggest going starwards, in the end. When it had gotten too much, and Jirachi had had to use Doom Desire for the first- and before yesterday only- time to get them out of danger. Jirachi had been thinking about retreating into some kind of Dungeon at first, but that had also carried the risk of powerful teams finding them, and Jirachi still wasn't confident enough in himself to handle that.
So they'd left, Jirachi entering comet form and Deoxys clinging to him as they floated themselves into space and just... went. They'd travelled about, going wherever Deoxys had decided to take them, and just moved on with things.
The end result was that neither of them were particularly powerful in terms of Moves for a pair of Legendary Pokemon, but in space that hadn't been an issue. Even if it had been a bit troublesome during the fight before.
He sighed again. The fight yesterday... Arceus, wasn't that just something to think about. A giant monster- though not the biggest being he'd ever seen, given how large some Pokemon could get- rampaging through the streets of a city, hell-bent on destroying everything in its path and killing hundreds of people in the process... it was like something out of an old Talekeeper fiction, and dealing with it had been terrifying.
He couldn't even begin to figure out how he was going to sort out that mess.
The familiar psychic presence of his partner made him look up, Deoxys' Normal Forme giving him the slight look that he knew meant they were concerned.
'Query; has Unit: Wish Maker recovered well?'
'Yeah.' He shrugged a little, turning on the spot to look at them more easily. It was still a little hard, given the massive height difference, but Deoxys ducked down further to make it better. 'I'm still a little tired, but that'll go away.'
'Agreement. Further query; Unit: Self has concerns about Unit: Wish Maker's state of mind.'
He sighed again, rolling his eyes a little at his guardian's over protectiveness. 'I'm... well, not fine, but I'll be ok. Just tired, and still trying to wrap my head around everything that happened yesterday.'
'Understanding. Observation; the events of previous day were unusual and concerning. Further information is required.'
'Eon and Shadow might be able to fill us in more.' He suggested. 'We could see if they're awake.'
Deoxys nodded slightly, reaching down with two tentacles that morphed into a hand after a moment. Accepting the gesture for what it was, he let himself be picked up and cradled to their chest again, leaning on the crystalline core as the two of them left the room.
Outside, a tall human that he didn't recognise was tending to a small fire. Next to her was a number of cooking tools and packets of food, which she clearly meant to cook over the fire once it was stronger. Given that the only human who'd been there the night before was Swarm, he assumed that this was her as the two of them went closer.
"Hey." She said, easily, looking up from the firepit. "Swarm, or Taylor Hebert as I'm known out of costume. We didn't get to talk much yesterday, with everything, so it's nice to meet you." Taylor stood, offering her hand.
Jirachi leaned forward and shook it first, Deoxys following his lead a moment later. 'Nice to meet you to. How come you have two names?'
"Parahumans here have a name that they use in costume. It's to help keep their family safe. So my name's Taylor, but when I'm in costume, everyone knows me as Swarm."
'That's odd.'
She laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is when you didn't grow up with it. Eon and Shadow were pretty confused too, from what I know. And I sure thought the whole Rescue Team thing was weird when I first heard of it." She went back to the fire as she spoke, sitting down on a log that was placed at the side and gesturing to the other that was there. "We'll make sure you're up to date on everything, though, so that you don't get lost in everything going on."
'Like that Behemoth thing?'
Taylor winced slightly at that, though she seemed happy even so. "Yeah, like that. We'll need to wait for Shadow and Eon to wake up first, and I'm gonna need to be heading home pretty soon. I need to see Dad. He'll be worried until he sees that I'm fine in person."
'So your dad knows about this?'
"Yeah, of course." Taylor shrugged. "I mean, he didn't at first, but we told him after an incident near the beginning of everything. He's been helping us out, being someone outside of everything that we can bounce ideas off of. Hey, you two."
"Good morning." Eon greeted, having just poked his head out of the room he'd been in. Shadow was at his side, also peering out around him, and after a moment pushed straight by and came over to the fire.
"You should probably go to Danny, Taylor." Shadow agreed, puffing a small Ember at the fire and making it blaze brighter. "We can handle cooking, and you really do need to get home to tell him you're ok."
She smiled- though Jirachi felt that the look seemed a bit strained- and nodded. "That's fair enough, I guess. You guys gonna fill them in on everything ok, though?"
"'S Time Gears and Parahumans, we can handle that." Shadow grinned. "We'll be by pretty soon to see Danny, though."
"I'll tell him." Taylor stood, heading back over to her room and pulling out a bag. "I'll see you later, then?"
"Stay safe, Taylor." Eon said.
They watched as she left, ducking between the trees like she'd lived here all her life, then settled back down again.
"So; local issues, or the Time Gears first?" The leader of the team asked them.
Jirachi looked up at Deoxys, who tilted their head slightly in a sign that they didn't care. 'I guess the Time Gears? That sounded like something that was dangerous, so getting that out of the way is probably good.'
Eon nodded. "Fair enough. It'll be the short version, because there's a lot to it. Though I'm surprised you don't know anything about them..."
'Not all of us are Creation Legendaries.'
"True. We don't know much about Time Gears ourselves, admittedly." He waved his tail in the air, forming an illusion of a blue-green gear. "But they're dangerous. From the story we've been told..."
"From the story we've been told," Shadow took over, as Eon's voice faded. "They're supposed to reside within a Moment in Time, where they help regulate the flow of Time. When they're disturbed, it can lead to the planet becoming paralysed."
Jirachi inhaled sharply, for multiple reasons. He could infer what a planet being paralysed would mean, in both the short and long term, and there was no way it was good. The fact that fragments of these Time Gears had appeared when he'd destroyed the monster with Doom Desire implied something much worse, since they were clearly so dangerous. But also...
'You're a- wait, of course.' He started to ask, distractedly, before shaking his head. 'I'm sorry, I forgot. You said you were a Talekeeper earlier… I sort of forgot, I'm sorry, but I recognise the tone. I met a couple, once, when I was still travelling around our world.'
"Interesting... and yes, sort of. Talekeeper Shadow, technically in training, at your service." She inclined her head. "I started my training, but put it on hold to focus on being a Rescue Pokemon. I picked it up a bit here and there once I was more settled, and you don't ever really forget some things. But, anyway. Time Gears are dangerous, and it's worrying that they keep appearing..."
'Since they're clearly being disturbed.' Jirachi finished, frowning. 'This needs to be investigated... Why would one appear after that... Behemoth thing?'
"I have a theory." Eon admitted, making all of them look at him in surprise- even his second in command. "I think they appear where- or rather when particularly momentous occasions happen. I also think it might be a side effect of Shadow and I arriving here; perhaps something in our Aura is setting it off?"
"You think we're unbalancing things?" Shadow sounded hurt, and Eon grimaced.
"I... think it's less that, and more that things were already unbalancing when we came here. It's just slipping faster and faster now. I don't think it's because of us," He hurried to add, when Shadow just seemed to pale further. "But I think it might be what we were sent to stop." He paused, then, and looked back up at Jirachi and Deoxys. "The only other time a Time Gear has appeared was when we drove off Leviathan. Before that day, the Endbringers had never been driven away so quickly and with that much damage."
'So they're linked to that?'
"Maybe." Eon shrugged, glanced at Shadow, and then settled slightly more. It was a Talekeeper pose, though one done by someone who obviously wasn't a Talekeeper, but it made it clear how important everything was. "We'll do our best to explain just how important the Endbringers are, and how Parahumans came to be."
Jirachi nodded his acceptance, settling more comfortably against Deoxys' core as he did. It felt like it was going to be a long story.
Danny didn't bother to contain the small smile that grew on his lips when he heard the back door unlock from his place on the stairs. He hurried the rest of the way down as his daughter locked the door, stepping around the table and hugging her before holding her at arms length to check for injuries. While he's sure that they would have warned him- either Taylor would've said something more than just an 'all fine' in her message, or one of the vulpines would've sent something along to warn him that she was hurt in some way- and he knows Shadow would've offered to heal her ahead of going home anyway, it still didn't feel right not to check her over.
Instead of injuries, though, he got a good look at the sadness on her face.
"What's wrong?" He asked. Taylor opened her mouth, and he fixed her with a raise eyebrow. "And don't try brushing me off, Taylor. There's something bothering you."
She paused for a moment, then huffed, throwing herself into a chair and dropping her bag next to her. "I'm an awful friend."
"I doubt that, but why?" It was better to get his daughter talking rather than letting her stew in things, he knew, so he went into the kitchen to start on breakfast while she talked.
"I was being an ass about Jirachi and Deoxys." She said. "They've just gotten here and I got worried because they're gonna be part of the team and what use am I when we're getting another two really powerful Pokemon onto the team?"
"Did you actually say any of that to them?"
Taylor blinked. "No?"
"Then I don't see how you were being an ass about it. And Taylor, you do different things to them. Your powers are more structured than the rest of your teams' are, and that puts you in a difficult spot, but you have your own role in the team. Even if you're mostly doing scouting, that's incredibly valuable because no team works well without information, and you being able to get that information for your team means that it's a lot less likely that someone gets hurt while you guys are out there."
"It just feels like I'm barely doing anything on the team-"
"Then talk to the team about it." Danny shrugged. "Maybe they can think of something else you could be doing. But I don't think you're not doing much. Maybe on patrols it can feel like it, but you're still giving them information on what's going on around them, which is helping. You've also been keeping an eye on them when they're exhausting themselves but still insist on being out in public. And then outside of that, you've been handling a lot of public relations while they've been busy; doing your own solo patrols, talking with people out on the streets, chatting on PHO on behalf of your team... you're doing a fair bit, it's just that it doesn't feel like much because it doesn't seem like Cape work."
"...I hadn't thought of it like that." She admitted, looking a little ashamed.
"Talk with your team." He repeated, turning to put a hand on her shoulder. "Let them know how you're feeling, and I bet they'll say the same thing I did. But you'll all be able to work together to figure out what else you can do as part of the team."
"That makes sense." Taylor nodded. "The others should be coming by later, Eon and Shadow are explaining the Time Gears and Parahumans and stuff to Jirachi and Deoxys right now, but they said they'd be coming over here to see you... I think they might also ask those two for their story then, since I'm not there at the moment and they'd want me to hear it as well."
"That makes sense." Danny turned back towards breakfast with a nod of his own. "No reason not to save it for when they get here."
The next half an hour lapsed into easy silence; Taylor sitting at the table thinking, while Danny cooked for both of them, assuming that she wouldn't have eaten before she left the Den earlier in the morning. Eating was done mostly in silence, too, and just as the two of them had started to clean up there was a knock at the back door.
"Hi guys." Taylor murmured, opening it and standing aside. There was nothing obviously there, but Danny knew that the rest of Team Inari would be traipsing in under one of the invisibility illusions. "Jirachi, Deoxys, welcome to my house. This is my dad."
'Hello.'
'Greetings.'
He startled slightly at the sound of voices appearing in his head, but was less surprised than he probably should've been, instead just turning around and taking in the two new Pokemon that had probably joined the team.
"Nice to meet you too." He greeted. "Give me a moment to put this away... Taylor said you'd got a story to share with us?"
'That's right.' The little one sitting in the other's arms said. 'It's not much, but Eon said it'd be a good idea to tell it.'
Danny hurried up the cleaning at that, letting the others use the time to find places to sit so that they were all comfortable. The smaller one- he really should've gotten even a basic description of them both from Taylor before they arrived- was sitting on the table in front of his friend, leaning back against the faintly glowing purple thing in that one's chest and looking exhausted.
"At some point I'd also like to know how the fight went, but that can wait a bit." Danny added. "Drinks?"
He mostly ended up giving out water, though there was a moment of amusement when he tried to find a small enough glass for the little one to use, then sat down in the remaining free chair and waited.
'Ok, so...' The little one started. 'I... don't really know how to do this... um. I'm Jirachi, and from what Eon's said about their- our?- world now I'm actually from a really long time ago compared to both of them. I'm a Wish Maker, which is something my species gets called a lot because we can grant wishes with our powers, and I'm specifically a Challenge type, which means I need someone to do a battle with me before I can grant their wish. That used to make things kind of difficult, because people would challenge me a lot but I couldn't always defend myself properly, and I was thinking about retreating into a Mystery Dungeon of some sort like a lot of Legendaries were before I met Deoxys.'
"So you're older than the Dungeons are?" Taylor asked, sounding surprised. "I thought they were really old..."
'I mean, yes?' Jirachi seemed a little nervous, and shrugged. 'It doesn't feel like that long ago to me, but then I've been in space... um. A-anyway. I met them near one of the Dungeons I was looking at, and we kept exploring for a little while before Deoxys suggested that we go starwards instead. So I went into comet form, Deoxys latched onto me because that's something that their kind can do, and then we went travelling. We've stopped at a few worlds before, though there's not always been a lot there, and I guess now we're here?' He shrugged again. 'I... don't really know what else to say... There's kind of a lot and not a lot at the same time, because a lot of it's all about the other places we found and that's... not really relevant?'
"I'd like to hear about them some other time, though." Shadow requested, from where she was sitting on Taylor's lap. "They sound interesting."
'Sometimes it was neat.' He nodded. 'But, um, yes. We've never come across anything like these Parahumans before, which sound cool, and most of it's been travelling in space? Also I've never actually gotten much about what they were doing before they found me out of Deoxys, so, um, there's that too...'
"That's fair, I suppose." Eon hummed. "And don't worry if you don't think there's much to talk about. It's still nice to hear about."
'Thank you.' The small Pokemon seemed to be blushing slightly, and glanced down. 'But anyway, what are we going to do now?'
"Well, you can always join the Rescue Team." Eon suggested. "It's mostly just patrolling around town and stopping humans from causing crimes, and talking to people. Or you can just do what you like, I guess. You don't really have to do anything, though I think a lot of people would like it if you showed up for Endbringer fights again once this gets out- oh, by the way, information about what happened won't be coming out for about two weeks, since that's the grace period for things to get sorted out first, so the only people that could pester you about it would be the Parahumans that knew it was you who did that."
"It also might be best if the Wish Maker thing doesn't get spread around too far to the general public if you're not working with the team- or even if you are." Danny added. "Since you don't want to need to defend yourself from people after a wish."
'I don't have to accept the Challenge, but I see what you mean.' He nodded slowly. 'And I think it would be best if we stayed with Team Inari, at least for now? While we get our bearings for things.'
"Then that's what you can do." Shadow smiled welcomingly. "For however long you want to be, you're a part of Team Inari. We'll help sort things out."
It was sort of amazing that New Delhi was standing at all, to be honest.
Shadow had helped out as much as she could manage, which was a fairly large amount given that she'd only been in the healing rooms during the attack itself. Mostly she'd focused on moving rubble out of the way so that it could be removed from the scene by other people, along with the occasional rescue of a person who'd been trapped or- unfortunately more often- the removal of a body that would be taken away for a proper honouring.
There was a part of her that wanted to set Behemoth on fire herself every time a body was removed, from under rubble or just from the streets they were on. She was glad that he was dead- or destroyed, given that she wasn't totally sure the Endbringers were conscious enough to be capable of death- but whenever they found someone else who'd been unlucky enough not to be able to escape, she wished he could have been tormented just a little bit more.
Still, it was in the past now. Behemoth was gone, courtesy of Jirachi, the cleanup was well under way, and a text had gone out about ten minutes ago that Inari was going to be heading home soon. She was glad for that, since she had been able to feel the start of exhaustions crawl, so she'd confirmed that she was on her way, finished up what she was helping with, and started to pick her way through the city streets towards the teleport point, where the others would be waiting.
Shadow sort of wished she could be doing more- she felt a bit guilty that she hadn't been able to help as much as she would have liked in the healing rooms during the fight, because of the way her powers worked and how few people were actually coming through, and a similar guilt was being carried about the fact that she hadn't dismissed herself from healing when she'd realised that she wasn't helping and gone into combat instead- but she was getting tired, the others on her team were almost certainly exhausted by now- especially Swarm, given that she didn't have the same stamina that Pokemon had- and things were going well. In all the situation was good enough that going home and resting wasn't a bad idea, even if it was unlikely that they'd be returning to do anything more. The rest of their week would be spent recovering, getting Deoxys and Jirachi up to date on things, and waiting for the inevitable PRT meeting that they were going to be called to when the Time Gear thing got around.
And wasn't that just a cherry on the cake, Shadow thought bitterly. Confirmation that somehow the Endbringers were related to Time Gears, that her hit on Leviathan was why the Time Gear in Brockton Bay had been created... and Shadow really wanted to see if they could figure out some answers on all of it, because the Time Gears back in Sinah hadn't been anywhere big enough to possibly create one of the Endbringers, let alone the three that Earth Bet had.
Sure, those ones were carved into actual gear shapes- which was another bundle of questions they'd never gotten an answer for- while these ones were chunks of it, but it still didn't make any Arceus-damned sense at all and was something she wanted answers for. Even if she probably wouldn't even get any.
She turned the corner onto the main base that'd been made up for the cleanup stuff with that irritating thought in mind, and easily spotted the rest of her team standing just a little ways away from the teleport points, clearly waiting for her. Swarm and Deoxys standing together made for a pretty impressive sight, and they were tall enough that they were easy to spot.
"Hi, sorry, I was further away than I thought." She apologised, hurrying over to them.
"No worries, Shadow." Eon assured in return, looking her over. "I take it you have everything with you?"
"Yeah, I'm good to go."
There was a noise that sounded faintly like a barely-audible cheer from Deoxys' direction, and when Shadow glanced over she saw Jirachi was bundled up in his ribbon-like trails and being held close to their chest. Understandably so, given that he'd been obviously exhausted after destroying Behemoth, and she didn't want to know how much effort even just floating about must have taken after that. Jirachi and Deoxys had stayed out of the cleanup for good reason, after all, and Shadow felt vaguely bad about making them wait to leave so the Wish Maker could rest.
They started to move towards the teleport point, where they'd wait until Strider appeared and get a lift back to the Brockton Bay PRT building, before the sounds of someone coming in to land next to them caught her attention. For a moment, Shadow assumed that it was just someone else heading for the teleporter, before a loud voice called out, "Inari!"
Eon turned sharply, and she and Swarm quickly fell into step behind him, eyes widening slightly at the sight of Alexandria walking over to them.
"Alexandria." Eon greeted. "Is something wrong?"
"I had a question about the clones." She said, sharply. "Will they vanish if they leave?"
Shadow was a bit annoyed by the rudeness in her tone, but she figured that Alexandria was probably pretty stressed out helping to run the Protectorate response to all of this, so she let it slide and glanced back at Deoxys.
'Explanation; duplicates have assigned orders. Units will continue functioning until assigned orders are complete.'
'Deoxys told them to help clean up.' Jirachi's tired voice added. 'They'll stay around until the clean up is mostly complete, then start dispelling. They might get a bit weaker or more strange once Deoxys is out of command range, but it won't be too bad.'
"I see." She nodded. "My thanks." The Brute flew away just as abruptly as she'd arrived, and as one the five of them traded shrugs before moving back to the teleporters.
"I'd like if you all stayed over the Den tonight." Eon said quietly, as they waited for Strider to return. "There's plenty of space, and I'd feel better having everyone nearby when we're all worn down like this."
'Works for me...' Jirachi yawned again. Deoxys shrugged, apparently accepting their friend's judgement, and Shadow looked up at Swarm.
"I'll need to send a message first, but yeah." She sounded just as exhausted as everyone else, and there was a slight sag in her shoulders from holding herself upright. "Better to have everyone together."
Things started to blur together after that; Shadow remembered going through Strider's teleport, all of them wobbling slightly on landing, remembered Swarm taking out her phone and texting Danny about the arrangements, remembered all of them walking through the city and guiding Deoxys towards the Den, but all of it felt foggy from tiredness.
"We'll need to talk more tomorrow." Eon added on, as they all started settling down.
"Tomorrow." Shadow agreed, yawning into her paw and stumbling into their room. "But sleep now."
Rebecca frowned slightly as she watched Inari teleport away, thinking furiously. The fact that her powers didn't work on anyone aside from Swarm in the group wasn't actually surprising, all things considered, but it was still annoying. She wasn't used to struggling to figure out what people were thinking.
There was a part of her that wanted to try and recruit the new creatures that had appeared, either into the Protectorate or into Cauldron. Something with that level of power would be extremely helpful in the fight against Scion, given that they'd just demonstrated the ability to down an Endbringer.
As much as Rebecca wanted to find out what had happened there, she knew she'd be getting a report at some point. She just had to be patient, which was better than trying to hold them for an explanation right now.
On the other hand, though, these beings weren't Parahumans, so there was no reason to try pushing them into the Protectorate, and she wasn't entirely certain that they would agree with Cauldron as an organisation. Maybe the goal, but given what they knew of the spirits from conversations with the two kitsune it seemed more likely that they'd just try to challenge Scion in combat of some kind, and that could be disastrous to every world that the Entity was working on.
So no, it was better to keep them at arms length and let Inari continue doing what they wanted, within reason. At the very least they'd then have their support when Scion eventually went off, and possibly they'd attract more of their kind that would work with them.
Until then, though, she had other things to focus on. Like co-ordinating the cleanup, both on-site as Alexandria and off-site as the PRT's Chief Director, and at some point she could figure out a way to set up a meeting with Inari- preferably out of Brockton Bay and closer to her main offices instead, so that she could more covertly set up her own equipment to monitor things.
Once again, she wished that her powers had come with the ability to avoid sleep.
July 27th, 2011. Wednesday.
Jirachi woke up slowly, with the kind of haziness that he'd only really felt a few times before. The sort that came from a bone-deep exhaustion.
For a while, he couldn't actually remember what was going on. That wasn't exactly new, because when he was travelling in comet form with Deoxys he only had a faint awareness of what was going on around him; it was why he relied on his guardian so much, because they were the one who kept an eye on things to keep them both out of trouble. But just the fact that he'd woken up, rather than come aware of things while coming out of his comet form, made him struggle to push himself to figure out what had happened.
Then he pulled himself out of the protective curve of Deoxys' arm, looked around at the faintly-familiar wooden weave around them, and felt it all come rushing back.
Doom Desire would definitely explain why I'm so tired... he thought, partly amused. Most of him was upset that he'd needed to use that Move, the side effects and the destruction being nowhere worth the rush of power that came with it, but there was still a sort of amusement to it as well. Like a regretful one.
He wondered if there was a word for that.
Mindful of both his power levels and the fact that Deoxys was still in rest mode, he floated into the air and made his way over to the doorway, pushing aside the sheet that covered it and landing again in order to take in his surroundings.
The Den, as Eon had called it the previous night, was a very simple campsite. Compared to the buildings that they'd seen during the fight it seemed almost primitive. But to Jirachi, it was a fond reminder of the few campsites he'd been in before he and Deoxys had started travelling starwards instead, though it was also larger than those. Which made sense, given that it was being built as a permanent home and a team compound, not just a place to stay overnight.
The main building was hidden partly under a willow tree, which Shadow and Eon had disappeared into the previous night. Another room made up Swarm's retreat, which was much larger to accommodate for her height. He and Deoxys had taken one of the other larger rooms, one that had probably been made for visitors in the past. A number of other buildings dotted around the clearing they were in, with sheets of the same kind of fabric that was on the other doors hiding the contents of them. The centre of the clearing was taken up by a large-ish fire pit, and somewhere to his left he could hear a river.
In all, it felt very much like what Jirachi expected a Rescue Team base to feel like. Though he'd never really seen them before, having left not long after the Guilds had started being built up and never having had the opportunity to go and visit the bases of any of the teams that had existed before that point, he understood that they'd likely have been large compounds just to be able to house all of the team and any equipment, and he didn't think that would've changed over... however long they'd been gone.
Jirachi sighed a little. In some ways, there was a part of him that regretted going starwards with Deoxys all that time ago. He'd adored it, getting to travel with them around space- because they could avoid needing to breathe with their powers, which was good- was cool even if he didn't always remember a lot of it because he was in comet form, and it had gotten away from a world that, at the time, had been getting hostile. Things had been a little more dangerous, with all of the Mystery Dungeons that had been popping up, and Pokemon had been getting more and more insistent on challenging him in order to win a wish from him. For a while, he'd been totally on his own, relying on whatever help he could get to learn Moves and defending himself as best he could.
Then Deoxys had appeared.
Something of a machine Pokemon and an alien, they'd encountered him outside of a Mystery Dungeon and promptly latched onto him, needing direction in the strange new world they'd found themselves in. He hadn't minded, because it had worked well for both of them; Deoxys had direction, and he had someone who was willing to help protect himself from Pokemon that were after Wish Challenges. While at first Deoxys hadn't been much better trained than him, the two of them had managed to figure out a few Moves together and a few more from Pokemon willing to help, and they'd gotten by.
Deoxys had been the one to suggest going starwards, in the end. When it had gotten too much, and Jirachi had had to use Doom Desire for the first- and before yesterday only- time to get them out of danger. Jirachi had been thinking about retreating into some kind of Dungeon at first, but that had also carried the risk of powerful teams finding them, and Jirachi still wasn't confident enough in himself to handle that.
So they'd left, Jirachi entering comet form and Deoxys clinging to him as they floated themselves into space and just... went. They'd travelled about, going wherever Deoxys had decided to take them, and just moved on with things.
The end result was that neither of them were particularly powerful in terms of Moves for a pair of Legendary Pokemon, but in space that hadn't been an issue. Even if it had been a bit troublesome during the fight before.
He sighed again. The fight yesterday... Arceus, wasn't that just something to think about. A giant monster- though not the biggest being he'd ever seen, given how large some Pokemon could get- rampaging through the streets of a city, hell-bent on destroying everything in its path and killing hundreds of people in the process... it was like something out of an old Talekeeper fiction, and dealing with it had been terrifying.
He couldn't even begin to figure out how he was going to sort out that mess.
The familiar psychic presence of his partner made him look up, Deoxys' Normal Forme giving him the slight look that he knew meant they were concerned.
'Query; has Unit: Wish Maker recovered well?'
'Yeah.' He shrugged a little, turning on the spot to look at them more easily. It was still a little hard, given the massive height difference, but Deoxys ducked down further to make it better. 'I'm still a little tired, but that'll go away.'
'Agreement. Further query; Unit: Self has concerns about Unit: Wish Maker's state of mind.'
He sighed again, rolling his eyes a little at his guardian's over protectiveness. 'I'm... well, not fine, but I'll be ok. Just tired, and still trying to wrap my head around everything that happened yesterday.'
'Understanding. Observation; the events of previous day were unusual and concerning. Further information is required.'
'Eon and Shadow might be able to fill us in more.' He suggested. 'We could see if they're awake.'
Deoxys nodded slightly, reaching down with two tentacles that morphed into a hand after a moment. Accepting the gesture for what it was, he let himself be picked up and cradled to their chest again, leaning on the crystalline core as the two of them left the room.
Outside, a tall human that he didn't recognise was tending to a small fire. Next to her was a number of cooking tools and packets of food, which she clearly meant to cook over the fire once it was stronger. Given that the only human who'd been there the night before was Swarm, he assumed that this was her as the two of them went closer.
"Hey." She said, easily, looking up from the firepit. "Swarm, or Taylor Hebert as I'm known out of costume. We didn't get to talk much yesterday, with everything, so it's nice to meet you." Taylor stood, offering her hand.
Jirachi leaned forward and shook it first, Deoxys following his lead a moment later. 'Nice to meet you to. How come you have two names?'
"Parahumans here have a name that they use in costume. It's to help keep their family safe. So my name's Taylor, but when I'm in costume, everyone knows me as Swarm."
'That's odd.'
She laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is when you didn't grow up with it. Eon and Shadow were pretty confused too, from what I know. And I sure thought the whole Rescue Team thing was weird when I first heard of it." She went back to the fire as she spoke, sitting down on a log that was placed at the side and gesturing to the other that was there. "We'll make sure you're up to date on everything, though, so that you don't get lost in everything going on."
'Like that Behemoth thing?'
Taylor winced slightly at that, though she seemed happy even so. "Yeah, like that. We'll need to wait for Shadow and Eon to wake up first, and I'm gonna need to be heading home pretty soon. I need to see Dad. He'll be worried until he sees that I'm fine in person."
'So your dad knows about this?'
"Yeah, of course." Taylor shrugged. "I mean, he didn't at first, but we told him after an incident near the beginning of everything. He's been helping us out, being someone outside of everything that we can bounce ideas off of. Hey, you two."
"Good morning." Eon greeted, having just poked his head out of the room he'd been in. Shadow was at his side, also peering out around him, and after a moment pushed straight by and came over to the fire.
"You should probably go to Danny, Taylor." Shadow agreed, puffing a small Ember at the fire and making it blaze brighter. "We can handle cooking, and you really do need to get home to tell him you're ok."
She smiled- though Jirachi felt that the look seemed a bit strained- and nodded. "That's fair enough, I guess. You guys gonna fill them in on everything ok, though?"
"'S Time Gears and Parahumans, we can handle that." Shadow grinned. "We'll be by pretty soon to see Danny, though."
"I'll tell him." Taylor stood, heading back over to her room and pulling out a bag. "I'll see you later, then?"
"Stay safe, Taylor." Eon said.
They watched as she left, ducking between the trees like she'd lived here all her life, then settled back down again.
"So; local issues, or the Time Gears first?" The leader of the team asked them.
Jirachi looked up at Deoxys, who tilted their head slightly in a sign that they didn't care. 'I guess the Time Gears? That sounded like something that was dangerous, so getting that out of the way is probably good.'
Eon nodded. "Fair enough. It'll be the short version, because there's a lot to it. Though I'm surprised you don't know anything about them..."
'Not all of us are Creation Legendaries.'
"True. We don't know much about Time Gears ourselves, admittedly." He waved his tail in the air, forming an illusion of a blue-green gear. "But they're dangerous. From the story we've been told..."
"From the story we've been told," Shadow took over, as Eon's voice faded. "They're supposed to reside within a Moment in Time, where they help regulate the flow of Time. When they're disturbed, it can lead to the planet becoming paralysed."
Jirachi inhaled sharply, for multiple reasons. He could infer what a planet being paralysed would mean, in both the short and long term, and there was no way it was good. The fact that fragments of these Time Gears had appeared when he'd destroyed the monster with Doom Desire implied something much worse, since they were clearly so dangerous. But also...
'You're a- wait, of course.' He started to ask, distractedly, before shaking his head. 'I'm sorry, I forgot. You said you were a Talekeeper earlier… I sort of forgot, I'm sorry, but I recognise the tone. I met a couple, once, when I was still travelling around our world.'
"Interesting... and yes, sort of. Talekeeper Shadow, technically in training, at your service." She inclined her head. "I started my training, but put it on hold to focus on being a Rescue Pokemon. I picked it up a bit here and there once I was more settled, and you don't ever really forget some things. But, anyway. Time Gears are dangerous, and it's worrying that they keep appearing..."
'Since they're clearly being disturbed.' Jirachi finished, frowning. 'This needs to be investigated... Why would one appear after that... Behemoth thing?'
"I have a theory." Eon admitted, making all of them look at him in surprise- even his second in command. "I think they appear where- or rather when particularly momentous occasions happen. I also think it might be a side effect of Shadow and I arriving here; perhaps something in our Aura is setting it off?"
"You think we're unbalancing things?" Shadow sounded hurt, and Eon grimaced.
"I... think it's less that, and more that things were already unbalancing when we came here. It's just slipping faster and faster now. I don't think it's because of us," He hurried to add, when Shadow just seemed to pale further. "But I think it might be what we were sent to stop." He paused, then, and looked back up at Jirachi and Deoxys. "The only other time a Time Gear has appeared was when we drove off Leviathan. Before that day, the Endbringers had never been driven away so quickly and with that much damage."
'So they're linked to that?'
"Maybe." Eon shrugged, glanced at Shadow, and then settled slightly more. It was a Talekeeper pose, though one done by someone who obviously wasn't a Talekeeper, but it made it clear how important everything was. "We'll do our best to explain just how important the Endbringers are, and how Parahumans came to be."
Jirachi nodded his acceptance, settling more comfortably against Deoxys' core as he did. It felt like it was going to be a long story.
Danny didn't bother to contain the small smile that grew on his lips when he heard the back door unlock from his place on the stairs. He hurried the rest of the way down as his daughter locked the door, stepping around the table and hugging her before holding her at arms length to check for injuries. While he's sure that they would have warned him- either Taylor would've said something more than just an 'all fine' in her message, or one of the vulpines would've sent something along to warn him that she was hurt in some way- and he knows Shadow would've offered to heal her ahead of going home anyway, it still didn't feel right not to check her over.
Instead of injuries, though, he got a good look at the sadness on her face.
"What's wrong?" He asked. Taylor opened her mouth, and he fixed her with a raise eyebrow. "And don't try brushing me off, Taylor. There's something bothering you."
She paused for a moment, then huffed, throwing herself into a chair and dropping her bag next to her. "I'm an awful friend."
"I doubt that, but why?" It was better to get his daughter talking rather than letting her stew in things, he knew, so he went into the kitchen to start on breakfast while she talked.
"I was being an ass about Jirachi and Deoxys." She said. "They've just gotten here and I got worried because they're gonna be part of the team and what use am I when we're getting another two really powerful Pokemon onto the team?"
"Did you actually say any of that to them?"
Taylor blinked. "No?"
"Then I don't see how you were being an ass about it. And Taylor, you do different things to them. Your powers are more structured than the rest of your teams' are, and that puts you in a difficult spot, but you have your own role in the team. Even if you're mostly doing scouting, that's incredibly valuable because no team works well without information, and you being able to get that information for your team means that it's a lot less likely that someone gets hurt while you guys are out there."
"It just feels like I'm barely doing anything on the team-"
"Then talk to the team about it." Danny shrugged. "Maybe they can think of something else you could be doing. But I don't think you're not doing much. Maybe on patrols it can feel like it, but you're still giving them information on what's going on around them, which is helping. You've also been keeping an eye on them when they're exhausting themselves but still insist on being out in public. And then outside of that, you've been handling a lot of public relations while they've been busy; doing your own solo patrols, talking with people out on the streets, chatting on PHO on behalf of your team... you're doing a fair bit, it's just that it doesn't feel like much because it doesn't seem like Cape work."
"...I hadn't thought of it like that." She admitted, looking a little ashamed.
"Talk with your team." He repeated, turning to put a hand on her shoulder. "Let them know how you're feeling, and I bet they'll say the same thing I did. But you'll all be able to work together to figure out what else you can do as part of the team."
"That makes sense." Taylor nodded. "The others should be coming by later, Eon and Shadow are explaining the Time Gears and Parahumans and stuff to Jirachi and Deoxys right now, but they said they'd be coming over here to see you... I think they might also ask those two for their story then, since I'm not there at the moment and they'd want me to hear it as well."
"That makes sense." Danny turned back towards breakfast with a nod of his own. "No reason not to save it for when they get here."
The next half an hour lapsed into easy silence; Taylor sitting at the table thinking, while Danny cooked for both of them, assuming that she wouldn't have eaten before she left the Den earlier in the morning. Eating was done mostly in silence, too, and just as the two of them had started to clean up there was a knock at the back door.
"Hi guys." Taylor murmured, opening it and standing aside. There was nothing obviously there, but Danny knew that the rest of Team Inari would be traipsing in under one of the invisibility illusions. "Jirachi, Deoxys, welcome to my house. This is my dad."
'Hello.'
'Greetings.'
He startled slightly at the sound of voices appearing in his head, but was less surprised than he probably should've been, instead just turning around and taking in the two new Pokemon that had probably joined the team.
"Nice to meet you too." He greeted. "Give me a moment to put this away... Taylor said you'd got a story to share with us?"
'That's right.' The little one sitting in the other's arms said. 'It's not much, but Eon said it'd be a good idea to tell it.'
Danny hurried up the cleaning at that, letting the others use the time to find places to sit so that they were all comfortable. The smaller one- he really should've gotten even a basic description of them both from Taylor before they arrived- was sitting on the table in front of his friend, leaning back against the faintly glowing purple thing in that one's chest and looking exhausted.
"At some point I'd also like to know how the fight went, but that can wait a bit." Danny added. "Drinks?"
He mostly ended up giving out water, though there was a moment of amusement when he tried to find a small enough glass for the little one to use, then sat down in the remaining free chair and waited.
'Ok, so...' The little one started. 'I... don't really know how to do this... um. I'm Jirachi, and from what Eon's said about their- our?- world now I'm actually from a really long time ago compared to both of them. I'm a Wish Maker, which is something my species gets called a lot because we can grant wishes with our powers, and I'm specifically a Challenge type, which means I need someone to do a battle with me before I can grant their wish. That used to make things kind of difficult, because people would challenge me a lot but I couldn't always defend myself properly, and I was thinking about retreating into a Mystery Dungeon of some sort like a lot of Legendaries were before I met Deoxys.'
"So you're older than the Dungeons are?" Taylor asked, sounding surprised. "I thought they were really old..."
'I mean, yes?' Jirachi seemed a little nervous, and shrugged. 'It doesn't feel like that long ago to me, but then I've been in space... um. A-anyway. I met them near one of the Dungeons I was looking at, and we kept exploring for a little while before Deoxys suggested that we go starwards instead. So I went into comet form, Deoxys latched onto me because that's something that their kind can do, and then we went travelling. We've stopped at a few worlds before, though there's not always been a lot there, and I guess now we're here?' He shrugged again. 'I... don't really know what else to say... There's kind of a lot and not a lot at the same time, because a lot of it's all about the other places we found and that's... not really relevant?'
"I'd like to hear about them some other time, though." Shadow requested, from where she was sitting on Taylor's lap. "They sound interesting."
'Sometimes it was neat.' He nodded. 'But, um, yes. We've never come across anything like these Parahumans before, which sound cool, and most of it's been travelling in space? Also I've never actually gotten much about what they were doing before they found me out of Deoxys, so, um, there's that too...'
"That's fair, I suppose." Eon hummed. "And don't worry if you don't think there's much to talk about. It's still nice to hear about."
'Thank you.' The small Pokemon seemed to be blushing slightly, and glanced down. 'But anyway, what are we going to do now?'
"Well, you can always join the Rescue Team." Eon suggested. "It's mostly just patrolling around town and stopping humans from causing crimes, and talking to people. Or you can just do what you like, I guess. You don't really have to do anything, though I think a lot of people would like it if you showed up for Endbringer fights again once this gets out- oh, by the way, information about what happened won't be coming out for about two weeks, since that's the grace period for things to get sorted out first, so the only people that could pester you about it would be the Parahumans that knew it was you who did that."
"It also might be best if the Wish Maker thing doesn't get spread around too far to the general public if you're not working with the team- or even if you are." Danny added. "Since you don't want to need to defend yourself from people after a wish."
'I don't have to accept the Challenge, but I see what you mean.' He nodded slowly. 'And I think it would be best if we stayed with Team Inari, at least for now? While we get our bearings for things.'
"Then that's what you can do." Shadow smiled welcomingly. "For however long you want to be, you're a part of Team Inari. We'll help sort things out."
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- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Things I would not recommend;
- Heat exhaustion
- Sleep deprivation
- Mild dehydration
Guess what I picked up all at the same time.
So yeah, sorry this is super late, and as a heads up I'm again out of buffer- though I am close to finishing the next one, my brain has been massive bad recently, at least partly from the super-sick I got last week. I'll be doing my best, though.
- Heat exhaustion
- Sleep deprivation
- Mild dehydration
Guess what I picked up all at the same time.
So yeah, sorry this is super late, and as a heads up I'm again out of buffer- though I am close to finishing the next one, my brain has been massive bad recently, at least partly from the super-sick I got last week. I'll be doing my best, though.
Zakara
Part-Time Heterodyne Specialty: Analysis
- Location
- Chaldea, Wandering Sea
That theory about the Time Gears actualIizing in response to momentous occasions sounds plausible, but I'm not sure that's what's happening. They've only been showing up in response to the Endbringers receiving damage, or getting destroyed in Behemoth's case. That seriously implies a level of connectivity between the Time Gears and the Endbringers, and given how the Entities are bio-crystal organisms...
- Location
- Argentina
Drink lots of water and rest, that usually helps.
Though of course, that opens a whole new can of worms, since it would leave the question of how the hell there is enough time gear material to make multiple kaijus...
So Occom's razor would seem to imply it being something else.
Well to be fair, I don't think they have said if those are the time gears for Earth. Considering the entities travel between dimensions and planets, and have consumed planets for resources, they could be bit of time gears of other worlds that got tossed in when the endbringers were made and show themselves a bit more easily with the way the damage was inflicted.
After all is said and done they end up with a massive surplus of Time Gear material just lying around in a cave somewhere.
That is likely what is going on, but our heroes don't know bout the dimension hopping.Well to be fair, I don't think they have said if those are the time gears for Earth. Considering the entities travel between dimensions and planets, and have consumed planets for resources, they could be bit of time gears of other worlds that got tossed in when the endbringers were made and show themselves a bit more easily with the way the damage was inflicted.
After all is said and done they end up with a massive surplus of Time Gear material just lying around in a cave somewhere.
Things are gonna get weirder before it gets clearer.
haha Taylor not even giving any descriptions. Good thing jirachi is cute otherwise Danny might gain a heart attack.
Wonder what lies team Inari will come up with for their public cover story. Will they be considered their superiors or just fellow spirits since even if they are legendaries they don't actual have a role in governing existence .
Wonder what lies team Inari will come up with for their public cover story. Will they be considered their superiors or just fellow spirits since even if they are legendaries they don't actual have a role in governing existence .
I really hope that Taylor gets more screentime and story relevance soon. I'd suggest a wish challenge but if she got a wish I doubt she'd use it to empower herself when she could instead use it to get rid of the simurgh or leviathan.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
That should be infer, but otherwise, great chapter!
Chapter 43- Arrangements, worry, and setup
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
29th July, 2011. Friday.
Rebecca frowned heavily, thankful that the call was voice only, carefully keeping it out of her voice as she nodded. "Yes- yes, of course. Thank you. Yes, I'll see to it. Goodbye."
Ending the call before it could end up dragging even longer than it's original time, she leaned back and sighed, allowing herself a few moments of weakness. Glancing at her schedule as she sat up again, she saw that she had around ten minutes until her next meeting and sighed again, this time with relief.
"No matter how many times I do it, it's never easier..." She murmured to herself, reaching out for the mug of coffee on her desk. Taking a sip, she allowed herself to relax a little so she could gather her thoughts.
Dealing with the after effects of an Endbringer attack wasn't easy, no, but at the very least this time had a lot less death and destruction attached to it. There were still deaths, certainly, and there was still an unfortunate amount of buildings that had been destroyed during the entire thing that needed to be cleaned up and rebuilt, but things were moving smoothly enough. From the information she'd gotten, the vast majority of the dead had already been found, and the cleanup efforts were well underway.
It helped that a lot of the damage had been confined to a fairly small area, too. Less damage than normal and most of that being in one place meant that it was fairly simple for work crews- or assisting Parahumans- to get things done. And that meant less running around organising things, which was good.
Still, the fact that she was still working on things like that two days after the attack wasn't unusual. In fact Rebecca wouldn't be surprised if she was still working on things in a week's time, and the only surprise there would be if things stopped at that point. Normally the efforts were still going on by the time the generally accepted two weeks silence was over.
And we know who to thank for the lack of trouble... she thought to herself, caught somewhere between sour and grateful. Inari. Or at least, those new creatures that were working with Inari.
Rebecca had been annoyed to come back after the attack and find a memo in her inbox, buried among all of the Endbringer-related fallout that she had to handle, but fortunately it had been a short read. The annoyance mostly came from the fact that she hadn't seen it before the attack began; it had been sent only a few minutes before, and at the time she'd been busy in a meeting that had only ended shortly before the alarms went off, so she hadn't had the time to see what was in her mail box.
Coming back from the attack and seeing a memo from Piggot about her damn city and the strange creatures that they'd sent Inari and Dragon out to meet hadn't exactly been her idea of a pleasant return, though.
Because her train of thought had taken her that way, she moved her mouse and opened the message again, letting it sit on the screen so she could stare at it.
At approximately 7:46am EDT an unknown entity was captured on one of the Simurgh's monitoring cameras. The event triggered one of Dragon's monitoring subroutines, and once it was confirmed that it wasn't the Simurgh moving, estimations were made as to the landing zone of the falling object and cameras were dispatched to attempt to get a clearer picture for closer evaluation.
Inari's Eon and Shadow were also called to attempt to provide backup should something occur, and upon the camera drone's arrival at the site identified the falling object, which we discovered to be two different beings. They, along with Dragon, have been dispatched on a Dragoncraft to make contact.
That was all. There was no information about what Inari had said, no description of the creatures- spirits, she supposed reluctantly, if they were part of the same type of group as Inari- looked like, and nothing about the meeting that they'd had. Though that had the excuse of the message probably being sent before Inari and Dragon had touched down to meet with them. Still, there wasn't even any information about what had been said to persuade Piggot to send out Inari in the first place, which would've been nice to know as the PRT's Chief Director!
Breathing in slowly, she put her mug down before she shattered it and leaned back. The lack of information was galling, true, but it also meant that she could put together her own opinions and ideas about these thing's powers before she got given that information. She already had a bit of information from the fight, as well, and eventually they'd be able to figure out enough that they could decide how to use them.
For now, though, she had her next meeting to get ready for, which meant finishing her coffee and making sure the office was locked up so no-one could get in there while she was gone.
Leaving with a nod to her secretary, who would hold any incoming calls for her while she was busy, Rebecca left the building and slipped carefully into an alleyway. "Door to Cauldron HQ." She announced, stepping through.
"Rebecca." Doctor Mother greeted, inclining her head. Kurt and Contessa were there as well, and a moment later David stepped through a portal of his own to walk over to the table.
"Doctor." She returned, sitting down. "David, how's the situation in India?"
"Good enough, things are cleaning up quickly. I still don't see why I needed to be out there, there's no threat and I have better things to do."
She rolled her eyes at his sulk. "Because none of Inari has been back to help clean up, so it's a show that the PRT's strongest are willing to help out with messes they didn't cause while the people who were a part of things don't care."
Which had the benefit of being somewhat true, even if it wasn't her main reason for recommending that to him. The main benefit was that it meant David was out in public on the other side of the world, so he couldn't go wandering off to Brockton Bay to try and pick a fight with those beings that had shown him up during the fight. Given what they'd managed to do to Behemoth, she didn't want to know what they'd end up responding with if Eidolon tried to attack them, and she'd prefer not to have to help Paul clean up that mess as well.
"Do we have any more information about what happened?" Doctor Mother asked, interest piquing in her voice.
"Not much more than what we saw." Rebecca sighed. "Big purple shield appeared, trapped Behemoth, big flash of light inside it, and then Behemoth was gone. The shield went away shortly after, then cleanup started after the announcement went out that Behemoth was down." She gave Contessa a short glance, and the woman shook her head.
"Whatever they are, they can't be Pathed." She told them. "It's the same issue that I have with the rest of Inari; different to the Endbringers, but still unavailable."
And wasn't that just the kick in the teeth. Rebecca leaned back and folded her arms. "I'm going to try and bring them in for a meeting." She decided. "Or at least get Piggot to put pressure on that team to write up a report about what the hell went on on that field. It's absurd that we don't have any information about how those things managed to completely destroy an Endbringer, and they're just wandering around Brockton Bay freely for all we know!"
"Get a report on what happened first." The Doctor recommended. "We can use that to see if it's worth trying to pull them into Cauldron or if we should try and find out more about their powers independently of that first. The power to destroy an Endbringer like Behemoth…" The woman shook her head, seeming almost awed. "That sort of power could potentially even damage Scion greatly. It would be a wonderful boon to our side."
"If we can get them on our side." David said bitterly. "They're friends with Inari, after all, and that lot have those rules that they work by. If they work the same way then they'd be incompatible to work with us, you said it yourself."
"There's always the chance that they could be persuaded." She retorted. "Just because it was decided that Eon and Shadow were too attached to their morals doesn't mean that these ones will be so troubling."
Rebecca's phone buzzed with an incoming email, cutting off the argument before it could begin and making her pale slightly. Her phone was always muted during these meetings, with the exception of a few words that would allow her to get an alert. Most of them were related to the Endbringers, since there had been occasions where an attack had started while they were offworld, but one of the other ones was…
"Brockton fucking Bay." She snapped, picking it up and opening the email. She read over it once, swore, read over it again more closely, swore again with great depth of feeling, then slapped her phone onto the table so she could glare at the wall.
"What happened?"
Rebecca picked up her phone again, reopening the email- and feeling just a little bit glad that she hadn't managed to crack the screen again- and read aloud.
Chief Director,
Below is a summary of the events leading up to the Behemoth fight surrounding the two new spirits that arrived with Team Inari.
Summary of events;
While on route to the crash site of the two beings, Eon and Shadow offered us some information. This is in the summary below, along with information gained during the flight towards the fight. Upon arriving, they led the way into the confrontation, meeting with both Jirachi and Deoxys and introducing themselves and Dragon to the spirits. Both Jirachi and Deoxys communicated solely with telepathy; Dragon reports that she found Deoxys' method somewhat difficult to understand yet Inari had no problems with it, while Jirachi was apparently clear to all. When the Endbringer alarm activated, Eon requested the assistance of the two spirits, who agreed to side with the team.
Summary of spirits;
The larger of the two is called Deoxys. They can apparently travel on meteorites, being spirits that usually live in space, and their primary method of communication is via a kind of telepathy, though they can also see electromagnetic waves and communicate that way, and it is unknown if they can speak aloud. The orange body is in fact some kind of shell, with the lilac crystal in the centre of their chest being the actual primary body. They have the ability to shift 'Formes', which grants them different capabilities; the 'Normal Forme' is their default, the 'Attack Forme' is more powerful offensively, the 'Defence Forme' is more defensively based, and the 'Speed Forme' is known for moving incredibly quickly. They are also able to create clones, though the parameters of that are currently unknown.
The small white being with a yellow helmet-like hat is called Jirachi. He is apparently incredibly powerful with the same sort of abilities seen in Eon and Shadow, however his main ability is being something known as a Wish Maker, which allegedly allows him to grant wishes when the conditions are met. He is apparently unable to grant wishes continuously due to the power usage, and some things are too intensive to grant, as well as the fact that Jirachi is able to ignore requests. He also communicates primarily with a kind of telepathy, and it is also unknown if he can speak aloud.
It currently appears that both Jirachi and Deoxys intend to stay around Brockton Bay with Team Inari, and based on the lack of sightings recently it is likely that they are staying at Inari's base- currently an unknown location.
Director Piggot, ENE.
"Granting wishes?" Doctor Mother repeated, after a few moments of somewhat stunned silence. "How interesting…"
"That's something we should look into." David said decisively. "Who knows how dangerous a power like that could be?"
Rebecca frowned at him. "There's plenty of other powers just as dangerous." She pointed out, a little sharply. "But you're right. A spirit that's able to grant wishes like that could be extremely useful for the fight against Scion when that happens…"
"I wonder if that's how Behemoth was destroyed." The Doctor added. "Depending on what the conditions are for the being to use it's powers, that might be a valuable weapon against the other Endbringers as well…"
"Possibly it's only something that can happen with the help of the other spirits?" Kurt, who'd been silent and mostly focused on something else on a tablet the entire time, looked up. "We have no idea what causes it, but if it requires the other spirits in any way, then we might not be able to use it at all. Given that we don't think Inari would work with us without a lot of difficulty, and all."
"True." Rebecca thought for a moment. "I'll request a meeting with Team Inari… or rather, I'll request a meeting with this Jirachi, and tell them that Inari and this Deoxys can also come with him. That way we should be able to get some answers out of them, but it'll give them a sense of security having their fellows with them. I'll need to leave it until the end of the two weeks, of course, because of the amount of things to do until then, but then I can try and press them for more information."
"Acceptable." The Doctor nodded. "Once that happens, we should be able to figure out if we can use them as part of the fight against Scion- and see how far we could bring them into Cauldron when that happens."
Rebecca nodded her own agreement, mentally beginning to compose her email back to Piggot to try and get that meeting. Using the Director would be a good idea, since Inari already had a rapport with her, so they'd be less likely to turn down a request from her rather than one from the Chief Director…
And she'd need to bring Paul into it as well, even just as an observer, since he was the head of the Protectorate. Possibly also bringing in some other members of the PRT that were high up enough to be trusted…
There truly was too much work to do in this job sometimes.
"Are you alright, Colin?"
The way her friend jolted slightly when she called his name made Dragon even more concerned than she was, and she turned her armour slightly more to look at him. He was looking away from a computer screen and rubbing the bridge of his nose, now, and leaning a little to glance around him showed that he was analysing data on Behemoth.
Again.
"I am fine, Dragon." He assured her. "Just…"
"Concerned?"
"Somewhat." He admitted. "We don't have much data on Behemoth, but everything we do have says that he's so extremely durable that nothing would really be able to do much more than superficial damage. The fact that this Jirachi was able to destroy him is…"
"I understand." Dragon agreed. She shared a number of those concerns, but having met the small 'Legendary' she felt that they were, while not unfounded, less likely to be realistic than most people were worried. "Seeing Shadow and Eon both damage Leviathan so heavily was impressive and frightening, but Leviathan has been damaged before." By Lung, most notably, but even then not to that extent. "They did warn us that Jirachi and Deoxys were both much more powerful than they were, Colin."
"There's being warned, and then there's seeing it." Colin said dryly. "And then there's… the other thing."
"The fragments?"
"Yes." He sighed. "I know, in my head, that that was the right way to handle it. That they need to be hidden to stop people from using them and possibly getting hurt. But there's a lot of people that would disagree… and a part of me wants to use them again."
"I… wouldn't have expected that." The conversation was taking a turn into more introspection than she usually got from Colin, though that had been a theme for the last few months now. But the way Colin had reacted to the last time the Time Gear had been used- hearing about Mannequin targeting him, especially, though the vision of the tower had apparently worried him as well- she wouldn't have thought that he'd want to try using one of them again.
"Neither would I." He said. "But the chance to see the future interests me. Possibly too much… It's better that they're not here, but them being sent away and hidden without any sort of discussion and only on the word of Inari is going to cause a lot of problems."
"Only among the people that know, and currently that's us, Director Piggot, Inari, and the Chief Director." Dragon pointed out. "Inari isn't likely to complain since they're the ones that sent them away, we're not likely to complain because we know how dangerous they are, Director Piggot isn't likely to complain because it's technically out of her remit since it didn't happen in the town, which only leaves the Chief Director to complain, and she probably won't if only to avoid annoying Inari."
Slowly, Colin nodded. Dragon knew he agreed with her, it was just the fact that he was worried that was making him focus so much on the situation. She placed a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. "It'll be fine." She assured. "Come on, let's look more into that preposition that Leet had for us. I'd be quite interested in working more with him if everything he can hand over is like this."
Her friend brightened, and shortly after they were both buried in the details of Leet's projection system, examining how it worked to construct those Dungeons that Inari had used a time or two for training.
It was incredibly interesting to see, as well as having the bonus of showing a bit more of why Eon and Shadow tended to work like they did- if this was the way things usually worked for them, then it explained a lot about the tactics that they used when they were out on patrol.
1st August, 2011. Monday.
Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) found the situation… confusing. Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) appeared confused also, though he was able to navigate the situation well between the new units. Conversations between the four of them were going passably, while Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) struggled to make themselves understood in most cases.
Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) appeared pleased with the state of affairs, often conversing with Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) about the new world that the two of them had arrived on, giving him more information about the situation that they were both now in so that they could more easily fit into the area. Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) was also using that information to assess potential local threats against Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi), as he was still vulnerable from his fight against Opponent Unit: Behemoth (Designation Endbringer).
Allied Unit: Inari Talekeeper Shadow (Designation Vulpix) also spoke to both of them often, usually in the form of gathering stories from the time that they were on, as she referred to it as, 'Earth Mystery Dungeon'. Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) enjoyed those conversations, according to their observations, spending long periods of time telling stories from before Dungeons had become common and they had left the planet. Allied Unit: Inari Talekeeper Shadow (Designation Vulpix) had also taken it upon herself to attempt to teach Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) new Moves, claiming that it was a poor idea to be travelling as they did without any abilities to heal. Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) had taken to it well, even though he was unused to using Aura in that way.
Allied Unit: Inari Third Swarm (Designation Parahuman) was more quiet than the two Pokemon on her team. She had a second life, Unit: Taylor Hebert (Designation Parahuman), that she was required to attend to and limited her time acting as Allied Unit: Inari Third Swarm (Designation Parahuman) with the rest of Team Inari. She also was interested in the stories that Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) and Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) had about their travelling, and often attempted to converse with themselves rather than Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) for it, despite the issues that they had using their telepathy with her.
Which was potentially the most troubling thing about their new world, in their opinion. Before, most Pokemon could understand their telepathy just fine, even if Psychic types were the only ones who could get the full depth of everything, but here on Earth Bet, the humans could barely understand a thing they said. It meant that they were forced to rely on Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) to put what they were trying to say into words for them, and it was…
Irritating.
Much like right now, for example.
"Everything seems to be in order." Unit: PRT Director Emily Piggot (Designation Human) said, after a long period of silence (2.45 seconds) after looking over the report that she had been given. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, Director." Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) replied. "We're happy to be able to have been of help."
The woman sighed. "Indeed you have been, even if you've also given me a lot more paperwork now that my city is hosting the being who killed an Endbringer."
"Worth it?" Allied Unit: Inari Talekeeper Shadow (Designation Vulpix) asked.
"It's still not as bad as the Chief Director and Legend are dealing with, so I'll take it." Unit: PRT Director Emily Piggot (Designation Human) shrugged. "Keep an eye on your team mates after this gets out, Inari, they'll end up swamped with even more fans than Shadow got after the Simurgh happened."
"Maybe we should finally get a P.O box, then." Allied Unit: Inari Third Swarm (Designation Parahuman) muttered. Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) gave her a look, which made her quieten.
"We'll leave you to your work, Director."
'Request: Priority Unit: Wish Maker inform Unit: PRT Director Emily Piggot of Unit: Self's gratitude?' They directed.
'Deoxys and I thank you, Madam Director.' He repeated for them. She winced.
"Yes, well, if that's all?"
"Of course." Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) began to move towards the door, the rest of them following silently to meet with the guard that had escorted them.
4th August, 2011. Thursday.
"Can I talk to you two?" Taylor asked, kneeling down at the fire pit outside of the Den. Jirachi and Deoxys were out at the moment, wandering around the town and just generally getting acquainted with the new world that they were on, this time without any sort of escort from the other members of Team Inari- not that she had a problem leading the two Pokemon around her hometown and showing things off, it felt a lot like those first few weeks a few months ago with Eon and Shadow, but it was also nice to have a bit of time to talk with those Pokemon without having to deal with the others.
"Sure thing, Taylor?" Shadow rolled over from where she'd been lying on her back, staring contemplatively at the sky, and tilted her head. "Wazzup?"
"There's… something I need to speak about." She hesitated a little as Eon looked up from the laptop he was using to browse PHO- probably tracking the newest members around. "I've… already spoke to Dad about it, and he said I should talk to you guys…"
"You're not leaving the team, are you?"
"Wha- no!" Taylor startled. "No, not at all! Being a Parahuman and being in Inari's been some of the best times I've had in years- well I could've done without the Trigger Event, but otherwise it's been great!"
"Oh. Good." Eon relaxed slightly from where he'd sat up to his full height, and gave her a curious look. "Then what is it?"
"Ok. So. I was… I spoke to Dad because during Behemoth's fight I started getting worried that I wasn't being of any use to the team. I'd kinda felt like it before, and then when Jirachi and Deoxys showed up it got worse, because, well… They're both really powerful Pokemon, y'know? And then there's me, who just controls bugs around the place. And I felt like I wasn't really doing anything useful." She blushed and looked away.
"That's daft." Shadow said quietly. "You do loads. Sure, you're not the most combat-oriented team mate we coulda had, but that's probably more of a good thing. Eon and I pack plenty of punch, but you're the one who makes sure that we have information for when we're working around things."
"That's what Dad said, too." She admitted. "It's harder for me to do stuff because my powers are more structured than yours are, but what I can do I do pretty well."
"Which you do." Eon assured. "Giving us information is extremely helpful, I can't tell you the number of times missions have gone mad because we didn't quite have all the information we needed, or because it was wrong- or even because we didn't have any, which really sucked- so having someone that can reliably head into a situation before us is great. Before we'd enter the Dungeons and need a Ghost type to scout, and that was risky because they could get hurt and they'd still have to get back to us to be able to tell us anything. With you, you can be standing right next to us, which lets us defend you while you search, and since you're already there you can give us updates in real time. That's gotten us out of a lot."
"Maybe you could try figuring out a way to speak with your bugs?" Shadow suggested. "Less bugs, I mean. I know you can do funny kinda-sounds to talk through them, but that needs a lot of bugs and it's kinda obvious? So maybe you can figure out how to do that with less bugs, or quieter. Then you can pass on messages from further away. Y'know, if something changes while we're on a mission or something."
"That… could work." Taylor admitted slowly, running the idea around her head. "It'd be a bit difficult, but I might be able to get a hang of it…"
"So even just trying that might be a good start." Eon continued. "We can sit down and try to think of more ideas if you'd like, once we've got a good amount of time to do that. And even if you're not doing more things on missions, you can still help out in other ways. Like that deal you have with Parian."
Taylor started, glancing reflexively over to the collection of looms; rather more of them than she'd started with, and with much better fabric on it. She'd looked up some videos on weaving and how to do it during her downtime, and started applying that to her spiders, and it made everything look a lot better than the flat single layer that it had been before.
"That's a good point." She nodded. "I didn't think about that." She'd been putting a lot of work into that whenever she'd had downtime, and since she could set her spiders to keep working while she was away, she tended to have a lot of silk to hand over. It made quite a bit of money, even though she'd negotiated with Parian to give the tailor a very low price. It wasn't like it really cost her all that much to make them, so she didn't see a problem with it, even if the other Parahuman had been almost offended at the fact that Taylor was asking for so little money. But pretty much every other week now she made her way over to the tailor's shop in costume, taking a bag with all of the fabric over to her, and swapped it- occasionally ending up walking out with new scarves or something as a part of the payment, because Parian refused to let her actually pay for things when she was providing so much silk for the shop.
"It's been a small amount of money, but it's still been helpful, and more importantly you've been helping a lot of other people that way." Eon explained. "Back in Alma, there were members of Inari that did similar jobs to this; they were part of the Rescue Team, but they didn't actually participate in rescue missions, just handled things around the base. Looking after the Berry fields, for example, or making things out of silk or whatever. Ariados would do that sort of thing, mostly. Vespiquen would make hives and make honey, and we could sell that stuff to the Kecleon market or other teams or whatever. Or use it to bake things and then sell those. It was a pretty good way to get a little bit of extra money, either for the team as a whole to use, or personally."
"And even if you're not making a lot of money, you also need to think about what the impact of it is." Shadow added. "You're selling silk, which Parian can use to make her wares. Then she can sell them, which helps her shop stay in business, and it also means that the people who're buying them benefit as well. So it's good for a lot of people, not just us as a team."
Taylor nodded. "That makes sense. Thanks, guys." She looked away and blushed slightly. "I feel a little silly now… it feels kinda like I was worrying for no reason."
"I wouldn't say it was for no reason. You didn't feel like you were contributing much to the team, which made you worried because you want to be helpful. But you came to ask for help and didn't just bottle it all up, and we were able to figure out a solution together." Eon stood, walking over to pat her on the shoulder gently. "And even if you were right, and you weren't able to do much on the team, you'd still be the third in command. Just because Jirachi and Deoxys are more powerful than you, we wouldn't replace you with one of them because you've got more experience. You're more able to work as the third in command since you've done more missions, so you're able to judge things better- plus you're more of a scout than an actual battler, which is probably better for a third when you consider that both Shadow and I are mostly battle Pokemon, as much as Shadow's also a healer."
Shadow walked over as well, nudging her nose against Taylor's arm. "You did good, Taylor. You had a problem, you talked it over with the rest of the team, and we figured out a solution to the problem." She grinned. "And you're gonna need to help us show Jirachi and Deoxys around, after all. We compared a lot of things to Dungeons when we were getting used to things, but they don't have Dungeons as a point of reference for things. Plus Rescue Teams were kinda different back then, from what I know, so…" She shrugged. "We'll probably need to figure out a completely different way to explain things again, and you'll be really helpful for that."
"I can do that." Taylor agreed.
9th August, 2011. Tuesday.
"Of course, Chief Director." Piggot nodded, despite the fact that the other woman couldn't see her. "I'll send an invitation to them as soon as I can."
"Good. I want to meet with them as soon as possible." Costa-Brown said, somewhat sharply.
"It might take a little while." She warned, for about the fourth time in the conversation. "We'll need to make sure they can be flown up to D.C, and that requires Dragon being available as well as them."
There was an almost audible sound of someone waving a point away. "Just get it organised." The other woman ended the call without much fanfare, and Piggot spared a moment to scowl at the now-silent phone before putting it to the side to start writing an email to the address that Inari had set up for better communication with the PRT.
Team Inari,
The Chief Director of the Parahuman Response Team has requested that you meet with her in D.C. in the aftermath of the incident with Behemoth during the Battle of New Dehli on July 26th. This meeting has been set for as soon as possible, and the presence of Jirachi and Deoxys is strongly requested due to their actions in the fight…
Rebecca frowned heavily, thankful that the call was voice only, carefully keeping it out of her voice as she nodded. "Yes- yes, of course. Thank you. Yes, I'll see to it. Goodbye."
Ending the call before it could end up dragging even longer than it's original time, she leaned back and sighed, allowing herself a few moments of weakness. Glancing at her schedule as she sat up again, she saw that she had around ten minutes until her next meeting and sighed again, this time with relief.
"No matter how many times I do it, it's never easier..." She murmured to herself, reaching out for the mug of coffee on her desk. Taking a sip, she allowed herself to relax a little so she could gather her thoughts.
Dealing with the after effects of an Endbringer attack wasn't easy, no, but at the very least this time had a lot less death and destruction attached to it. There were still deaths, certainly, and there was still an unfortunate amount of buildings that had been destroyed during the entire thing that needed to be cleaned up and rebuilt, but things were moving smoothly enough. From the information she'd gotten, the vast majority of the dead had already been found, and the cleanup efforts were well underway.
It helped that a lot of the damage had been confined to a fairly small area, too. Less damage than normal and most of that being in one place meant that it was fairly simple for work crews- or assisting Parahumans- to get things done. And that meant less running around organising things, which was good.
Still, the fact that she was still working on things like that two days after the attack wasn't unusual. In fact Rebecca wouldn't be surprised if she was still working on things in a week's time, and the only surprise there would be if things stopped at that point. Normally the efforts were still going on by the time the generally accepted two weeks silence was over.
And we know who to thank for the lack of trouble... she thought to herself, caught somewhere between sour and grateful. Inari. Or at least, those new creatures that were working with Inari.
Rebecca had been annoyed to come back after the attack and find a memo in her inbox, buried among all of the Endbringer-related fallout that she had to handle, but fortunately it had been a short read. The annoyance mostly came from the fact that she hadn't seen it before the attack began; it had been sent only a few minutes before, and at the time she'd been busy in a meeting that had only ended shortly before the alarms went off, so she hadn't had the time to see what was in her mail box.
Coming back from the attack and seeing a memo from Piggot about her damn city and the strange creatures that they'd sent Inari and Dragon out to meet hadn't exactly been her idea of a pleasant return, though.
Because her train of thought had taken her that way, she moved her mouse and opened the message again, letting it sit on the screen so she could stare at it.
At approximately 7:46am EDT an unknown entity was captured on one of the Simurgh's monitoring cameras. The event triggered one of Dragon's monitoring subroutines, and once it was confirmed that it wasn't the Simurgh moving, estimations were made as to the landing zone of the falling object and cameras were dispatched to attempt to get a clearer picture for closer evaluation.
Inari's Eon and Shadow were also called to attempt to provide backup should something occur, and upon the camera drone's arrival at the site identified the falling object, which we discovered to be two different beings. They, along with Dragon, have been dispatched on a Dragoncraft to make contact.
That was all. There was no information about what Inari had said, no description of the creatures- spirits, she supposed reluctantly, if they were part of the same type of group as Inari- looked like, and nothing about the meeting that they'd had. Though that had the excuse of the message probably being sent before Inari and Dragon had touched down to meet with them. Still, there wasn't even any information about what had been said to persuade Piggot to send out Inari in the first place, which would've been nice to know as the PRT's Chief Director!
Breathing in slowly, she put her mug down before she shattered it and leaned back. The lack of information was galling, true, but it also meant that she could put together her own opinions and ideas about these thing's powers before she got given that information. She already had a bit of information from the fight, as well, and eventually they'd be able to figure out enough that they could decide how to use them.
For now, though, she had her next meeting to get ready for, which meant finishing her coffee and making sure the office was locked up so no-one could get in there while she was gone.
Leaving with a nod to her secretary, who would hold any incoming calls for her while she was busy, Rebecca left the building and slipped carefully into an alleyway. "Door to Cauldron HQ." She announced, stepping through.
"Rebecca." Doctor Mother greeted, inclining her head. Kurt and Contessa were there as well, and a moment later David stepped through a portal of his own to walk over to the table.
"Doctor." She returned, sitting down. "David, how's the situation in India?"
"Good enough, things are cleaning up quickly. I still don't see why I needed to be out there, there's no threat and I have better things to do."
She rolled her eyes at his sulk. "Because none of Inari has been back to help clean up, so it's a show that the PRT's strongest are willing to help out with messes they didn't cause while the people who were a part of things don't care."
Which had the benefit of being somewhat true, even if it wasn't her main reason for recommending that to him. The main benefit was that it meant David was out in public on the other side of the world, so he couldn't go wandering off to Brockton Bay to try and pick a fight with those beings that had shown him up during the fight. Given what they'd managed to do to Behemoth, she didn't want to know what they'd end up responding with if Eidolon tried to attack them, and she'd prefer not to have to help Paul clean up that mess as well.
"Do we have any more information about what happened?" Doctor Mother asked, interest piquing in her voice.
"Not much more than what we saw." Rebecca sighed. "Big purple shield appeared, trapped Behemoth, big flash of light inside it, and then Behemoth was gone. The shield went away shortly after, then cleanup started after the announcement went out that Behemoth was down." She gave Contessa a short glance, and the woman shook her head.
"Whatever they are, they can't be Pathed." She told them. "It's the same issue that I have with the rest of Inari; different to the Endbringers, but still unavailable."
And wasn't that just the kick in the teeth. Rebecca leaned back and folded her arms. "I'm going to try and bring them in for a meeting." She decided. "Or at least get Piggot to put pressure on that team to write up a report about what the hell went on on that field. It's absurd that we don't have any information about how those things managed to completely destroy an Endbringer, and they're just wandering around Brockton Bay freely for all we know!"
"Get a report on what happened first." The Doctor recommended. "We can use that to see if it's worth trying to pull them into Cauldron or if we should try and find out more about their powers independently of that first. The power to destroy an Endbringer like Behemoth…" The woman shook her head, seeming almost awed. "That sort of power could potentially even damage Scion greatly. It would be a wonderful boon to our side."
"If we can get them on our side." David said bitterly. "They're friends with Inari, after all, and that lot have those rules that they work by. If they work the same way then they'd be incompatible to work with us, you said it yourself."
"There's always the chance that they could be persuaded." She retorted. "Just because it was decided that Eon and Shadow were too attached to their morals doesn't mean that these ones will be so troubling."
Rebecca's phone buzzed with an incoming email, cutting off the argument before it could begin and making her pale slightly. Her phone was always muted during these meetings, with the exception of a few words that would allow her to get an alert. Most of them were related to the Endbringers, since there had been occasions where an attack had started while they were offworld, but one of the other ones was…
"Brockton fucking Bay." She snapped, picking it up and opening the email. She read over it once, swore, read over it again more closely, swore again with great depth of feeling, then slapped her phone onto the table so she could glare at the wall.
"What happened?"
Rebecca picked up her phone again, reopening the email- and feeling just a little bit glad that she hadn't managed to crack the screen again- and read aloud.
Chief Director,
Below is a summary of the events leading up to the Behemoth fight surrounding the two new spirits that arrived with Team Inari.
Summary of events;
While on route to the crash site of the two beings, Eon and Shadow offered us some information. This is in the summary below, along with information gained during the flight towards the fight. Upon arriving, they led the way into the confrontation, meeting with both Jirachi and Deoxys and introducing themselves and Dragon to the spirits. Both Jirachi and Deoxys communicated solely with telepathy; Dragon reports that she found Deoxys' method somewhat difficult to understand yet Inari had no problems with it, while Jirachi was apparently clear to all. When the Endbringer alarm activated, Eon requested the assistance of the two spirits, who agreed to side with the team.
Summary of spirits;
The larger of the two is called Deoxys. They can apparently travel on meteorites, being spirits that usually live in space, and their primary method of communication is via a kind of telepathy, though they can also see electromagnetic waves and communicate that way, and it is unknown if they can speak aloud. The orange body is in fact some kind of shell, with the lilac crystal in the centre of their chest being the actual primary body. They have the ability to shift 'Formes', which grants them different capabilities; the 'Normal Forme' is their default, the 'Attack Forme' is more powerful offensively, the 'Defence Forme' is more defensively based, and the 'Speed Forme' is known for moving incredibly quickly. They are also able to create clones, though the parameters of that are currently unknown.
The small white being with a yellow helmet-like hat is called Jirachi. He is apparently incredibly powerful with the same sort of abilities seen in Eon and Shadow, however his main ability is being something known as a Wish Maker, which allegedly allows him to grant wishes when the conditions are met. He is apparently unable to grant wishes continuously due to the power usage, and some things are too intensive to grant, as well as the fact that Jirachi is able to ignore requests. He also communicates primarily with a kind of telepathy, and it is also unknown if he can speak aloud.
It currently appears that both Jirachi and Deoxys intend to stay around Brockton Bay with Team Inari, and based on the lack of sightings recently it is likely that they are staying at Inari's base- currently an unknown location.
Director Piggot, ENE.
"Granting wishes?" Doctor Mother repeated, after a few moments of somewhat stunned silence. "How interesting…"
"That's something we should look into." David said decisively. "Who knows how dangerous a power like that could be?"
Rebecca frowned at him. "There's plenty of other powers just as dangerous." She pointed out, a little sharply. "But you're right. A spirit that's able to grant wishes like that could be extremely useful for the fight against Scion when that happens…"
"I wonder if that's how Behemoth was destroyed." The Doctor added. "Depending on what the conditions are for the being to use it's powers, that might be a valuable weapon against the other Endbringers as well…"
"Possibly it's only something that can happen with the help of the other spirits?" Kurt, who'd been silent and mostly focused on something else on a tablet the entire time, looked up. "We have no idea what causes it, but if it requires the other spirits in any way, then we might not be able to use it at all. Given that we don't think Inari would work with us without a lot of difficulty, and all."
"True." Rebecca thought for a moment. "I'll request a meeting with Team Inari… or rather, I'll request a meeting with this Jirachi, and tell them that Inari and this Deoxys can also come with him. That way we should be able to get some answers out of them, but it'll give them a sense of security having their fellows with them. I'll need to leave it until the end of the two weeks, of course, because of the amount of things to do until then, but then I can try and press them for more information."
"Acceptable." The Doctor nodded. "Once that happens, we should be able to figure out if we can use them as part of the fight against Scion- and see how far we could bring them into Cauldron when that happens."
Rebecca nodded her own agreement, mentally beginning to compose her email back to Piggot to try and get that meeting. Using the Director would be a good idea, since Inari already had a rapport with her, so they'd be less likely to turn down a request from her rather than one from the Chief Director…
And she'd need to bring Paul into it as well, even just as an observer, since he was the head of the Protectorate. Possibly also bringing in some other members of the PRT that were high up enough to be trusted…
There truly was too much work to do in this job sometimes.
"Are you alright, Colin?"
The way her friend jolted slightly when she called his name made Dragon even more concerned than she was, and she turned her armour slightly more to look at him. He was looking away from a computer screen and rubbing the bridge of his nose, now, and leaning a little to glance around him showed that he was analysing data on Behemoth.
Again.
"I am fine, Dragon." He assured her. "Just…"
"Concerned?"
"Somewhat." He admitted. "We don't have much data on Behemoth, but everything we do have says that he's so extremely durable that nothing would really be able to do much more than superficial damage. The fact that this Jirachi was able to destroy him is…"
"I understand." Dragon agreed. She shared a number of those concerns, but having met the small 'Legendary' she felt that they were, while not unfounded, less likely to be realistic than most people were worried. "Seeing Shadow and Eon both damage Leviathan so heavily was impressive and frightening, but Leviathan has been damaged before." By Lung, most notably, but even then not to that extent. "They did warn us that Jirachi and Deoxys were both much more powerful than they were, Colin."
"There's being warned, and then there's seeing it." Colin said dryly. "And then there's… the other thing."
"The fragments?"
"Yes." He sighed. "I know, in my head, that that was the right way to handle it. That they need to be hidden to stop people from using them and possibly getting hurt. But there's a lot of people that would disagree… and a part of me wants to use them again."
"I… wouldn't have expected that." The conversation was taking a turn into more introspection than she usually got from Colin, though that had been a theme for the last few months now. But the way Colin had reacted to the last time the Time Gear had been used- hearing about Mannequin targeting him, especially, though the vision of the tower had apparently worried him as well- she wouldn't have thought that he'd want to try using one of them again.
"Neither would I." He said. "But the chance to see the future interests me. Possibly too much… It's better that they're not here, but them being sent away and hidden without any sort of discussion and only on the word of Inari is going to cause a lot of problems."
"Only among the people that know, and currently that's us, Director Piggot, Inari, and the Chief Director." Dragon pointed out. "Inari isn't likely to complain since they're the ones that sent them away, we're not likely to complain because we know how dangerous they are, Director Piggot isn't likely to complain because it's technically out of her remit since it didn't happen in the town, which only leaves the Chief Director to complain, and she probably won't if only to avoid annoying Inari."
Slowly, Colin nodded. Dragon knew he agreed with her, it was just the fact that he was worried that was making him focus so much on the situation. She placed a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. "It'll be fine." She assured. "Come on, let's look more into that preposition that Leet had for us. I'd be quite interested in working more with him if everything he can hand over is like this."
Her friend brightened, and shortly after they were both buried in the details of Leet's projection system, examining how it worked to construct those Dungeons that Inari had used a time or two for training.
It was incredibly interesting to see, as well as having the bonus of showing a bit more of why Eon and Shadow tended to work like they did- if this was the way things usually worked for them, then it explained a lot about the tactics that they used when they were out on patrol.
1st August, 2011. Monday.
Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) found the situation… confusing. Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) appeared confused also, though he was able to navigate the situation well between the new units. Conversations between the four of them were going passably, while Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) struggled to make themselves understood in most cases.
Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) appeared pleased with the state of affairs, often conversing with Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) about the new world that the two of them had arrived on, giving him more information about the situation that they were both now in so that they could more easily fit into the area. Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) was also using that information to assess potential local threats against Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi), as he was still vulnerable from his fight against Opponent Unit: Behemoth (Designation Endbringer).
Allied Unit: Inari Talekeeper Shadow (Designation Vulpix) also spoke to both of them often, usually in the form of gathering stories from the time that they were on, as she referred to it as, 'Earth Mystery Dungeon'. Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) enjoyed those conversations, according to their observations, spending long periods of time telling stories from before Dungeons had become common and they had left the planet. Allied Unit: Inari Talekeeper Shadow (Designation Vulpix) had also taken it upon herself to attempt to teach Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) new Moves, claiming that it was a poor idea to be travelling as they did without any abilities to heal. Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) had taken to it well, even though he was unused to using Aura in that way.
Allied Unit: Inari Third Swarm (Designation Parahuman) was more quiet than the two Pokemon on her team. She had a second life, Unit: Taylor Hebert (Designation Parahuman), that she was required to attend to and limited her time acting as Allied Unit: Inari Third Swarm (Designation Parahuman) with the rest of Team Inari. She also was interested in the stories that Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) and Unit: Self (Designation Deoxys) had about their travelling, and often attempted to converse with themselves rather than Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) for it, despite the issues that they had using their telepathy with her.
Which was potentially the most troubling thing about their new world, in their opinion. Before, most Pokemon could understand their telepathy just fine, even if Psychic types were the only ones who could get the full depth of everything, but here on Earth Bet, the humans could barely understand a thing they said. It meant that they were forced to rely on Priority Unit: Wish Maker (Designation Jirachi) to put what they were trying to say into words for them, and it was…
Irritating.
Much like right now, for example.
"Everything seems to be in order." Unit: PRT Director Emily Piggot (Designation Human) said, after a long period of silence (2.45 seconds) after looking over the report that she had been given. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, Director." Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) replied. "We're happy to be able to have been of help."
The woman sighed. "Indeed you have been, even if you've also given me a lot more paperwork now that my city is hosting the being who killed an Endbringer."
"Worth it?" Allied Unit: Inari Talekeeper Shadow (Designation Vulpix) asked.
"It's still not as bad as the Chief Director and Legend are dealing with, so I'll take it." Unit: PRT Director Emily Piggot (Designation Human) shrugged. "Keep an eye on your team mates after this gets out, Inari, they'll end up swamped with even more fans than Shadow got after the Simurgh happened."
"Maybe we should finally get a P.O box, then." Allied Unit: Inari Third Swarm (Designation Parahuman) muttered. Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) gave her a look, which made her quieten.
"We'll leave you to your work, Director."
'Request: Priority Unit: Wish Maker inform Unit: PRT Director Emily Piggot of Unit: Self's gratitude?' They directed.
'Deoxys and I thank you, Madam Director.' He repeated for them. She winced.
"Yes, well, if that's all?"
"Of course." Allied Unit: Inari Leader Eon (Designation Ninetales) began to move towards the door, the rest of them following silently to meet with the guard that had escorted them.
4th August, 2011. Thursday.
"Can I talk to you two?" Taylor asked, kneeling down at the fire pit outside of the Den. Jirachi and Deoxys were out at the moment, wandering around the town and just generally getting acquainted with the new world that they were on, this time without any sort of escort from the other members of Team Inari- not that she had a problem leading the two Pokemon around her hometown and showing things off, it felt a lot like those first few weeks a few months ago with Eon and Shadow, but it was also nice to have a bit of time to talk with those Pokemon without having to deal with the others.
"Sure thing, Taylor?" Shadow rolled over from where she'd been lying on her back, staring contemplatively at the sky, and tilted her head. "Wazzup?"
"There's… something I need to speak about." She hesitated a little as Eon looked up from the laptop he was using to browse PHO- probably tracking the newest members around. "I've… already spoke to Dad about it, and he said I should talk to you guys…"
"You're not leaving the team, are you?"
"Wha- no!" Taylor startled. "No, not at all! Being a Parahuman and being in Inari's been some of the best times I've had in years- well I could've done without the Trigger Event, but otherwise it's been great!"
"Oh. Good." Eon relaxed slightly from where he'd sat up to his full height, and gave her a curious look. "Then what is it?"
"Ok. So. I was… I spoke to Dad because during Behemoth's fight I started getting worried that I wasn't being of any use to the team. I'd kinda felt like it before, and then when Jirachi and Deoxys showed up it got worse, because, well… They're both really powerful Pokemon, y'know? And then there's me, who just controls bugs around the place. And I felt like I wasn't really doing anything useful." She blushed and looked away.
"That's daft." Shadow said quietly. "You do loads. Sure, you're not the most combat-oriented team mate we coulda had, but that's probably more of a good thing. Eon and I pack plenty of punch, but you're the one who makes sure that we have information for when we're working around things."
"That's what Dad said, too." She admitted. "It's harder for me to do stuff because my powers are more structured than yours are, but what I can do I do pretty well."
"Which you do." Eon assured. "Giving us information is extremely helpful, I can't tell you the number of times missions have gone mad because we didn't quite have all the information we needed, or because it was wrong- or even because we didn't have any, which really sucked- so having someone that can reliably head into a situation before us is great. Before we'd enter the Dungeons and need a Ghost type to scout, and that was risky because they could get hurt and they'd still have to get back to us to be able to tell us anything. With you, you can be standing right next to us, which lets us defend you while you search, and since you're already there you can give us updates in real time. That's gotten us out of a lot."
"Maybe you could try figuring out a way to speak with your bugs?" Shadow suggested. "Less bugs, I mean. I know you can do funny kinda-sounds to talk through them, but that needs a lot of bugs and it's kinda obvious? So maybe you can figure out how to do that with less bugs, or quieter. Then you can pass on messages from further away. Y'know, if something changes while we're on a mission or something."
"That… could work." Taylor admitted slowly, running the idea around her head. "It'd be a bit difficult, but I might be able to get a hang of it…"
"So even just trying that might be a good start." Eon continued. "We can sit down and try to think of more ideas if you'd like, once we've got a good amount of time to do that. And even if you're not doing more things on missions, you can still help out in other ways. Like that deal you have with Parian."
Taylor started, glancing reflexively over to the collection of looms; rather more of them than she'd started with, and with much better fabric on it. She'd looked up some videos on weaving and how to do it during her downtime, and started applying that to her spiders, and it made everything look a lot better than the flat single layer that it had been before.
"That's a good point." She nodded. "I didn't think about that." She'd been putting a lot of work into that whenever she'd had downtime, and since she could set her spiders to keep working while she was away, she tended to have a lot of silk to hand over. It made quite a bit of money, even though she'd negotiated with Parian to give the tailor a very low price. It wasn't like it really cost her all that much to make them, so she didn't see a problem with it, even if the other Parahuman had been almost offended at the fact that Taylor was asking for so little money. But pretty much every other week now she made her way over to the tailor's shop in costume, taking a bag with all of the fabric over to her, and swapped it- occasionally ending up walking out with new scarves or something as a part of the payment, because Parian refused to let her actually pay for things when she was providing so much silk for the shop.
"It's been a small amount of money, but it's still been helpful, and more importantly you've been helping a lot of other people that way." Eon explained. "Back in Alma, there were members of Inari that did similar jobs to this; they were part of the Rescue Team, but they didn't actually participate in rescue missions, just handled things around the base. Looking after the Berry fields, for example, or making things out of silk or whatever. Ariados would do that sort of thing, mostly. Vespiquen would make hives and make honey, and we could sell that stuff to the Kecleon market or other teams or whatever. Or use it to bake things and then sell those. It was a pretty good way to get a little bit of extra money, either for the team as a whole to use, or personally."
"And even if you're not making a lot of money, you also need to think about what the impact of it is." Shadow added. "You're selling silk, which Parian can use to make her wares. Then she can sell them, which helps her shop stay in business, and it also means that the people who're buying them benefit as well. So it's good for a lot of people, not just us as a team."
Taylor nodded. "That makes sense. Thanks, guys." She looked away and blushed slightly. "I feel a little silly now… it feels kinda like I was worrying for no reason."
"I wouldn't say it was for no reason. You didn't feel like you were contributing much to the team, which made you worried because you want to be helpful. But you came to ask for help and didn't just bottle it all up, and we were able to figure out a solution together." Eon stood, walking over to pat her on the shoulder gently. "And even if you were right, and you weren't able to do much on the team, you'd still be the third in command. Just because Jirachi and Deoxys are more powerful than you, we wouldn't replace you with one of them because you've got more experience. You're more able to work as the third in command since you've done more missions, so you're able to judge things better- plus you're more of a scout than an actual battler, which is probably better for a third when you consider that both Shadow and I are mostly battle Pokemon, as much as Shadow's also a healer."
Shadow walked over as well, nudging her nose against Taylor's arm. "You did good, Taylor. You had a problem, you talked it over with the rest of the team, and we figured out a solution to the problem." She grinned. "And you're gonna need to help us show Jirachi and Deoxys around, after all. We compared a lot of things to Dungeons when we were getting used to things, but they don't have Dungeons as a point of reference for things. Plus Rescue Teams were kinda different back then, from what I know, so…" She shrugged. "We'll probably need to figure out a completely different way to explain things again, and you'll be really helpful for that."
"I can do that." Taylor agreed.
9th August, 2011. Tuesday.
"Of course, Chief Director." Piggot nodded, despite the fact that the other woman couldn't see her. "I'll send an invitation to them as soon as I can."
"Good. I want to meet with them as soon as possible." Costa-Brown said, somewhat sharply.
"It might take a little while." She warned, for about the fourth time in the conversation. "We'll need to make sure they can be flown up to D.C, and that requires Dragon being available as well as them."
There was an almost audible sound of someone waving a point away. "Just get it organised." The other woman ended the call without much fanfare, and Piggot spared a moment to scowl at the now-silent phone before putting it to the side to start writing an email to the address that Inari had set up for better communication with the PRT.
Team Inari,
The Chief Director of the Parahuman Response Team has requested that you meet with her in D.C. in the aftermath of the incident with Behemoth during the Battle of New Dehli on July 26th. This meeting has been set for as soon as possible, and the presence of Jirachi and Deoxys is strongly requested due to their actions in the fight…
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- Location
- Argentina
This fanfic is a balm to the soul, is so great to have Taylor have such nice friends and team.
AnantaAtman
I wandered, I watched, I judged
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pokemons are always nice. Even bad guys seemed nice if you ignore the world destruction stuffs and stealing pokemons in general
Missing period
Nightchill
from the cold of night
- Pronouns
- Derg
I wonder if any of team inari will mention the gods
Yeah the mention of dialga palkia and so on will Drive them nuts
Garreon
Paldean Top Champion
- Location
- Mesagoza, Paldea
Considering Dialga controls time itself, Palkia Space and Giratina antimatter.....Yeah, everyone in EB will shit their collective pants