- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Hums amusedly.
Let's just say Lung will be reconsidering the validity of some of the old legends, and be very curious about some of the others...
There is much scope for trolling.
A Shadow, an Eon, and a Worm (Worm/Pokemon)
- Thread starter ShadowPixelle
- Start date
- Crossover
Hums amusedly.
Let's just say Lung will be reconsidering the validity of some of the old legends, and be very curious about some of the others...
There is much scope for trolling.
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Thanks, though I have to say that a lot of the credit goes to @eonmoon for coming up with the original idea as part of a bored bit of speculation. It all kind of escalated from there, which was fun. Lots of people came up with ideas for this.
Chapter 3- Bases, conclusions, and exposition
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
"This place looks pretty neat!" Shadow grinned enthusiastically, bolting around the area with glee. "All foresty and green… it's pretty, too! Way nicer than the guild, or the cave in Sharpedo Bluff."
"I thought you liked Sharpedo Bluff." Eon queried, seating himself at the base of a tree to watch her.
"I did. It was just kinda drafty, and a bit boring in there. Too many rocks, made me think of that boring old mountain we found the smith Ninetales on. This is nice, though. Lots of trees to mess about with and it's all pretty!"
"You'd need to be more careful not to set this one on fire, though." Eon said drily. Shadow popped out from behind the tree she was running near and glared at him.
"It only happened once, and that wasn't even my fault!" Shadow yipped angrily at him. "And we fixed it! Besides, that field was ugly anyway!" Eon chortled to himself.
"As you say, little pix." He grinned. "Besides the point. Set up a base here?"
"Hmmm..." Shadow walked around the tree, looking about the forest. "Yeah, I think so. It's pretty, and kinda nicely hidden." She hummed. "We'd need to knock down a bunch of stuff to make a base, though."
"Eh." Eon shrugged, standing again with a ripple. "We can put something together, don't you think?"
"Yeah!" The Vulpix bounced. "C'mon, Eon, let's go find stuff and build a little base!" He laughed.
"You go and find sticks and branches to build with, ok? I'll set up the area to build in."
"O-kay!" Shadow ran off, weaving through the trees, while Eon panned his view about. His eyes fell on an old tree, a willow, with a few roots poking out from the ground.
"Hmm..." Sniffing for a moment, Eon nodded. "Yeah, this'll do." Pawing at the ground to make a little indent, he began digging using his Psychic power, making a hole under the tree roots.
Lung looked up as Armsmaster entered his view, standing outside his cell.
"Come to gloat?" He growled, before Miss Militia made her way over as well.
"No. We came to find out what happened." The woman said, looking at him. Lung raised an eyebrow.
"I thought you would know, Miss Militia." He scowled. "Indeed, I do not myself, truly." Armsmaster stiffened slightly.
"How don't you know?" He asked. "You were the one fighting."
"Indeed." The Dragon of Kyushu nodded. "I was. I fought an insect user. She was not who won, however."
"So you killed her." It wasn't phrased as a question, but he snorted and shook his head.
"No. She was carried away by my opponent's partner." He laughed. "A grey Kyuubi, one clearly of great power, rescued her from our fight."
"A Kyuubi?" Miss Militia asked, confused.
"A kitsune of legend, but one who has aged to the point of near-Kami." He explained slowly. "Such a powerful creature could defeat even me with ease, such are their strength."
"So this... Kyuubi," Armsmaster said, "Fought you?" Lung barked out a laugh.
"No, it did not. If it had, I feel it may be likely there would have been more damage to our arena." He snorted. "And potentially more weather changes. No, the white Kyuubi did not challenge me. That it left to a younger kitsune, with six tails, it called its shadow."
"And the younger one beat you?" Miss Militia checked.
"It did. Do not be fooled; young at it may have appeared, to have six tails tells of its great strength." He growled to himself again, irritated at the memory of his defeat. "And it did not even use its power upon me. It merely spoke, and calmed my rage with its words, before sending me to sleep, where you clearly found me. The Kyuubi and its kitsune must have taken the Cape with them as they left. The Undersiders were there as well, though I do not know what those legendary creatures would have done with them." He thought for a moment. "Perhaps it killed them, though I doubt it. Kitsune are not known for such actions. More likely that the Kyuubi merely removed them from the area for whatever reason it may have had." Miss Militia and Armsmaster exchanged glances, before the Tinker thudded away. Miss Militia waited a moment more, giving a nod of thanks to the captive Cape, before following her fellow Protectorate member.
Lung snorted, settling back in his cell.
A Kyuubi saved that girl, he thought to himself, and a white Kyuubi at that. Even if it sent the younger kit to battle me, the Kyuubi was still the one to save her. His eyes widened slightly, long-ago stories coming back to the forefront of his mind. A white Kyuubi... one of Inari-sama's messengers? And the young kitsune must have been a younger Zenko kitsune. Perhaps some kind of apprentice?
He placed a hand on his chin.
For not one, but two messengers of Inari-sama to come to the rescue of that Cape, and two so old and powerful as a six-tailed and a Kyuubi no less... interesting. He mused silently. Yes, very interesting indeed. For Inari-sama to send a messenger to her... but was it for her, or for me? He paused at that. If it was for me, it was to stop my actions and protect the girl. If not, Inari-sama had a message for the Cape, and I was a target of opportunity. As, perhaps, were the Undersiders. He nodded firmly to himself. If Inari-sama allows it, then perhaps I shall watch for that Cape as well. I believe she will go to do great things.
Decision made, Lung leaned back against the wall again, resolving to instruct his men to avoid the girl and Inari's kitsune the next chance he got, when he inevitably was broken out of the PRT's hold, as well as resolving to try and follow the Cape's journey closely.
He did not think she would die, like most Capes who were independent. She would likely not be a villain, given what he saw of her morals and that Inari himself was guiding her in some way. New Wave was unlikely, unless she had no family, and the Wards would be a bad fit for her if she was being guided by a Kami. No, independent she would be, so he would watch to see where she went in her career.
It would, at the very least, be interesting.
Carefully, Shadow nudged the last branch into place under Eon's watching eyes.
"I think we're done." She grinned, flopping to the ground. "Right, Eon?" The Ninetales walked forward, circling the little den once before nodding.
"I think so, Shadow." He agreed, smiling at her. "Should do well."
"Mhm." The little fox yawned. "Took a bit too long, though. Probably going to be daytime soon."
"There's enough time to rest, though." Eon said, poking her in the side. She yipped, affronted, and he snickered. "C'mon pix, we'll go explore a bit more later."
"Mkay." She grumbled, slinking inside. He heard her curl up on the bed she'd claimed, and a few seconds later her snores drifted out, making him smile to himself.
"Good job, pix." He said quietly. "Might've pushed our luck asking you to fight the dragon guy- Lung, but you did good there. Definitely not the little apprentice I picked up a few years ago." He chuckled at the memory of the young, wide-eyed Vulpix who'd asked him to help her be a Rescue team Pokemon, before following her inside, pulling closed the woven door while the willow tree settled around them, hiding it from sight.
"... and that's how our universe works." Tattletale finished, leaning back in her chair and sipping on a mug of coffee. On the other side of the table, Eon nodded.
"I see."
"So, there's a bunch of people with powers that've been through a really bad event, and loads of them keep fighting each other? Sounds kinda scary." Shadow opined, drinking her hot chocolate.
"It can be, especially the Endbringers." Tattletale nodded. "I've never actually seen one up close, and I really hope I won't have to anytime in the future, but we've all seen the new reports. The last attack was in Feburary, the Simurgh, so there's probably going to be another next month."
"I see..." Eon mused again, twitching his tails.
"Yeah." She said. "Well, you've shown up randomly at our base- and it's really annoying me that you found us so easily, by the way- and I've explained how everything here works so you don't do something stupid. Now, your end of the deal. Where did you come from, and how?" Eon chuckled.
"Alright, alright. You've certainly helped us, so we will explain. We come from a world full of Pokemon, creatures like ourselves and the ones we showed you yesterday. I'm called a Ninetales there, while Shadow is a Vulpix, the pre-evolved form."
"I'm not gonna evolve, though. I like being me!" Shadow grinned.
"There are different types of Pokemon, eighteen in total, and some types have an advantage over others- for example, as a Fire type, I have an advantage against Ice, but in turn Water types have an advantage over me." Eon waved his tail. "Moves have types as well, so Moves that have the same type as the user are stronger than others.
"Most Pokemon are fairly common, but some are known as Legendaries, like Genesect. These are very rare Pokemon- sometimes there's only one in existence- and they're pretty close to a sort of god. Then there are Mythicals, though I admit I don't really know what the difference is between a Legend and a Mythical."
"Interesting." Tattletale hummed. "What did Shadow mean about Hyper Rank last night?"
"Ah, you heard that?" Shadow blushed. "Well, in our world there's things called Mystery Dungeons, and Rescue or Exploration teams get formed to go look about in them. A lot of the time they do jobs, like rescuing people or finding lost items or fighting criminals that're hiding in a dungeon. There's ranks that get assigned that say how good your team is, which lets you do more difficult missions." She brightened a little. "Sometimes, if you get really powerful and famous, you might get challenges from Legendary or Mythical Pokemon!"
"And you're Hyper Rank?"
"Yep!" Shadow turned, showing Tattletale the badge on her scarf. "Exploration teams start on Normal Rank, then there's Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Super, Ultra and Hyper. Above that is Master, and that climbs through three starred versions to Guildmaster." She frowned. "Though we aren't all that famous, and we still got a challenge from Hoopla, which is what brought us here in the first place."
"You're here because of a challenge?"
"Naw, we finished that." Shadow shook her head. "Dunno why Hoopla sent us here, but he kinda showed up on one of our off days and asked if we could go somewhere for some reason. We said yeah, and then we came here."
"Anyway, we got that challenge request from Hoopa, which we ended up winning." Eon flicked his fur slightly. "And to be fair, we were kinda famous for helping out with that rescue for Uxie and Azelf, which is probably why we got a challenge from Hoopa."
"Uxie, Azelf?" Tattletale questioned. A flick of his tail caused three illusionary Legends to appear above the table.
"Uxie is the yellow one, Azelf is the blue one. The pink one's called Mesprit. We were asked to help find Mesprit, since she'd gone missing. They're Legends, but it turns out someone had attacked Mesprit to try and steal something she was guarding."
"What was it?"
"A crystal." Shadow said, unnaturally serious. "Part of something really important, Uxie and Azelf had been attacked over them as well, and we were asked to make sure she was ok, and found her unconscious, though the crystal was safe."
"To be fair, at least it was for a good reason." Eon reasoned. "Though he could have explained things rather than just stealing them."
"What-"
"Another time, Tattletale." Eon said seriously. "But for the most part, that's all there is to our world. The battle mechanics Pokemon tend to use are complicated, there's status effects and stuff to deal with too, but none of those are really relevant here so there's no point going into them."
"I see." The Thinker- as she'd explained her powers- looked annoyed at the fact that her power didn't work on them very well, but she let the subject drop. "What do you plan on doing now?"
"The normal rescue work, probably." Eon shrugged with a ripple. "Rescue people, explore... not sure other than that."
"Yeah, there's not really any Dungeons or anything here..." Tattletale frowned. "Hero work might do for you... Don't suppose I could persuade you to join a villain team? The Undersiders have fairly good pay, the Boss is pretty generous." Smirking vulpinely, Eon reached a paw across the table.
"No, I think we'd rather avoid villain work. Though acting as your heroic rivals might be an amusing pass time." Tattletale grinned, putting her hand on his paw-
"As you wish. I have been watching you for some time, Lisa Wilbourn, I have become aware that you are something special, and I would like to buy your services."
Word choice, buy vs. hire: large amounts of money involved.
Word choice, buy vs. make an offer: not really a negotiation.
She glanced at the weapons the three hired guns had in hand.
"I'm listening."
-Eon shuddered slightly at the vision, a sound suspiciously like a scream echoing in the back of his mind.
"Yeah, that might be funny. Look, get yourself a phone or something- a burner, not something permanent- and maybe we can try and set something up with you sometime. It might give you some clout with the heroes." The purple-suited Cape frowned behind her mask. "Maybe I should see about giving Bugs some help too. Either on our team or maybe try set her up with you guys, if you'll take her."
"I'd love to!" Shadow grinned, while Eon removed his paw. "It'd be fun, though she wouldn't fit the theme."
"Theme?"
"We're Team Inari." Tattletale snorted.
"Like the Japanese God?" Shadow cocked her head.
"Dunno about that. In our world, Inari's a Ninetales like Eon here, but massive and super powerful and super old. Sometimes he's white, and sometimes he's a normal gold Ninetales, but a lot of the time he shows up as a red Ninetales. Apparently he hides in a mountain range that no-one's ever found. Pokemon used to think Eon was a messenger from Inari, since he's a shiny Ninetales."
"And I wouldn't know either way." Eon grumped. "Amnesia for a lot of my life, so I wouldn't know if I was one of Inari's helping Ninetales or not. Things were dull for a while, then Shadow here worked up the courage to ask me to make an Exploration team with her so she could join the Wigglytuff Guild. Had a lot of fun there over the last year and a half."
"Do you care that you don't remember?" Tattletale asked gently.
"Not really. If I find out what went on before, then I will. I'm happy as I am, so I'm not gonna try tripping the balance for something that doesn't matter all that much anymore." Tattletale blinked slowly.
"I see... Well, Inari's a god here as well. I'll let you use the computer to look it up if you want, though you could probably use your illusions and just go to a library or something to use the computers there." She grinned. "But yeah, you should probably go and look the stuff up at some point. Y'know, just in case..."
Taylor looked around the room carefully once again. It was a computer lesson, and she'd finished with her work, so she was going to use the rest of the time she had left to do a little bit of research into what had happened the night before.
It had been... weird, to say the least. Running into that group with the dogs was a bit of a surprise, as was finding out from Tattletale that Lung had been after them for a stunt they'd pulled. That had been a bit awkward, since it wasn't really children she'd been trying to save after all.
Quickly, she looked up the names that'd come up in the conversation with the other strange additions and read the results.
Her eyes widened.
Villains? She thought, closing the tabs and leaning back in her chair to think. I went and fought Lung for a bunch of villains? Before she could get too worked up about that, she frowned. Then again, they seemed… alright. Not like bad people at all. She shook her head, reaching for the mouse again. Never mind that for now. I can figure out more about them later, when there's time. Moving for the search bar again, she contemplated what she was about to do for a second, then typed in a search for information on white nine-tails foxes.
Nearly ten minutes later, she closed the tab and leaned back, gaping slightly.
You've got to be kidding me. She closed her eyes, pressing the balls of her palms against them, and flinched as the bell rang. Slowly shutting down her computer, she contemplated what she'd just read over, trying to figure it out as she walked to her next class, head down. Is someone pranking me? Using a projection of a white Kyuubi as a way of fooling me? And a little kitsune as well? Or am I literally being followed around by a god's messenger and it's friend? The thought followed her through the rest of the day, causing her to completely ignore the attempts at bullying the rest of the school did.
I wonder if it's true?
"Y'kay, Eon?" Shadow asked, as the invisible duo left the city proper and headed into the outskirts.
"Hm?" The larger fox shook his head, looking down at her in confusion.
"You ok?" She asked again, cocking her head. "You look kinda distracted. You were like that in the Undersider's base too, actually." She grinned. "Something on your mind?"
"Had another dizzy spell." He said quietly. Her eyes widened, and she automatically glanced around, despite there being no-one around and them being invisible.
"What did you see?" Shadow questioned softly.
"Flashback into Tattletale's past, I think." He replied, just as gently.
"Anything interesting?"
"I don't think she willingly joined that group." Eon muttered. "I saw the conversation where she was... recruited." He practically spat the word. "Three people, two males and a female, with guns, while her boss talked to her. It wasn't a request for her to work with him."
"I see." Shadow bit her lip, fangs pointing over slightly. "Do you think we should take a look into that?"
"Maybe, yeah." He nodded. "And we should probably look into this Inari thing, as well."
"We've got some time." Shadow looked upwards. "Think we should go search for a library for a bit?"
"Sure." Eon agreed, shaking the thoughts of the vision from his mind for a while. "Stay close, ok?"
"Ok!" Her mood immediately bounced back to normal, grinning and jumping on the spot as she began looking around them both, moving back towards the city again. Eon chuckled lowly at her change, following behind her as she ran from building to building, balancing on her back paws as she looked into windows.
"I thought you liked Sharpedo Bluff." Eon queried, seating himself at the base of a tree to watch her.
"I did. It was just kinda drafty, and a bit boring in there. Too many rocks, made me think of that boring old mountain we found the smith Ninetales on. This is nice, though. Lots of trees to mess about with and it's all pretty!"
"You'd need to be more careful not to set this one on fire, though." Eon said drily. Shadow popped out from behind the tree she was running near and glared at him.
"It only happened once, and that wasn't even my fault!" Shadow yipped angrily at him. "And we fixed it! Besides, that field was ugly anyway!" Eon chortled to himself.
"As you say, little pix." He grinned. "Besides the point. Set up a base here?"
"Hmmm..." Shadow walked around the tree, looking about the forest. "Yeah, I think so. It's pretty, and kinda nicely hidden." She hummed. "We'd need to knock down a bunch of stuff to make a base, though."
"Eh." Eon shrugged, standing again with a ripple. "We can put something together, don't you think?"
"Yeah!" The Vulpix bounced. "C'mon, Eon, let's go find stuff and build a little base!" He laughed.
"You go and find sticks and branches to build with, ok? I'll set up the area to build in."
"O-kay!" Shadow ran off, weaving through the trees, while Eon panned his view about. His eyes fell on an old tree, a willow, with a few roots poking out from the ground.
"Hmm..." Sniffing for a moment, Eon nodded. "Yeah, this'll do." Pawing at the ground to make a little indent, he began digging using his Psychic power, making a hole under the tree roots.
Lung looked up as Armsmaster entered his view, standing outside his cell.
"Come to gloat?" He growled, before Miss Militia made her way over as well.
"No. We came to find out what happened." The woman said, looking at him. Lung raised an eyebrow.
"I thought you would know, Miss Militia." He scowled. "Indeed, I do not myself, truly." Armsmaster stiffened slightly.
"How don't you know?" He asked. "You were the one fighting."
"Indeed." The Dragon of Kyushu nodded. "I was. I fought an insect user. She was not who won, however."
"So you killed her." It wasn't phrased as a question, but he snorted and shook his head.
"No. She was carried away by my opponent's partner." He laughed. "A grey Kyuubi, one clearly of great power, rescued her from our fight."
"A Kyuubi?" Miss Militia asked, confused.
"A kitsune of legend, but one who has aged to the point of near-Kami." He explained slowly. "Such a powerful creature could defeat even me with ease, such are their strength."
"So this... Kyuubi," Armsmaster said, "Fought you?" Lung barked out a laugh.
"No, it did not. If it had, I feel it may be likely there would have been more damage to our arena." He snorted. "And potentially more weather changes. No, the white Kyuubi did not challenge me. That it left to a younger kitsune, with six tails, it called its shadow."
"And the younger one beat you?" Miss Militia checked.
"It did. Do not be fooled; young at it may have appeared, to have six tails tells of its great strength." He growled to himself again, irritated at the memory of his defeat. "And it did not even use its power upon me. It merely spoke, and calmed my rage with its words, before sending me to sleep, where you clearly found me. The Kyuubi and its kitsune must have taken the Cape with them as they left. The Undersiders were there as well, though I do not know what those legendary creatures would have done with them." He thought for a moment. "Perhaps it killed them, though I doubt it. Kitsune are not known for such actions. More likely that the Kyuubi merely removed them from the area for whatever reason it may have had." Miss Militia and Armsmaster exchanged glances, before the Tinker thudded away. Miss Militia waited a moment more, giving a nod of thanks to the captive Cape, before following her fellow Protectorate member.
Lung snorted, settling back in his cell.
A Kyuubi saved that girl, he thought to himself, and a white Kyuubi at that. Even if it sent the younger kit to battle me, the Kyuubi was still the one to save her. His eyes widened slightly, long-ago stories coming back to the forefront of his mind. A white Kyuubi... one of Inari-sama's messengers? And the young kitsune must have been a younger Zenko kitsune. Perhaps some kind of apprentice?
He placed a hand on his chin.
For not one, but two messengers of Inari-sama to come to the rescue of that Cape, and two so old and powerful as a six-tailed and a Kyuubi no less... interesting. He mused silently. Yes, very interesting indeed. For Inari-sama to send a messenger to her... but was it for her, or for me? He paused at that. If it was for me, it was to stop my actions and protect the girl. If not, Inari-sama had a message for the Cape, and I was a target of opportunity. As, perhaps, were the Undersiders. He nodded firmly to himself. If Inari-sama allows it, then perhaps I shall watch for that Cape as well. I believe she will go to do great things.
Decision made, Lung leaned back against the wall again, resolving to instruct his men to avoid the girl and Inari's kitsune the next chance he got, when he inevitably was broken out of the PRT's hold, as well as resolving to try and follow the Cape's journey closely.
He did not think she would die, like most Capes who were independent. She would likely not be a villain, given what he saw of her morals and that Inari himself was guiding her in some way. New Wave was unlikely, unless she had no family, and the Wards would be a bad fit for her if she was being guided by a Kami. No, independent she would be, so he would watch to see where she went in her career.
It would, at the very least, be interesting.
Carefully, Shadow nudged the last branch into place under Eon's watching eyes.
"I think we're done." She grinned, flopping to the ground. "Right, Eon?" The Ninetales walked forward, circling the little den once before nodding.
"I think so, Shadow." He agreed, smiling at her. "Should do well."
"Mhm." The little fox yawned. "Took a bit too long, though. Probably going to be daytime soon."
"There's enough time to rest, though." Eon said, poking her in the side. She yipped, affronted, and he snickered. "C'mon pix, we'll go explore a bit more later."
"Mkay." She grumbled, slinking inside. He heard her curl up on the bed she'd claimed, and a few seconds later her snores drifted out, making him smile to himself.
"Good job, pix." He said quietly. "Might've pushed our luck asking you to fight the dragon guy- Lung, but you did good there. Definitely not the little apprentice I picked up a few years ago." He chuckled at the memory of the young, wide-eyed Vulpix who'd asked him to help her be a Rescue team Pokemon, before following her inside, pulling closed the woven door while the willow tree settled around them, hiding it from sight.
"... and that's how our universe works." Tattletale finished, leaning back in her chair and sipping on a mug of coffee. On the other side of the table, Eon nodded.
"I see."
"So, there's a bunch of people with powers that've been through a really bad event, and loads of them keep fighting each other? Sounds kinda scary." Shadow opined, drinking her hot chocolate.
"It can be, especially the Endbringers." Tattletale nodded. "I've never actually seen one up close, and I really hope I won't have to anytime in the future, but we've all seen the new reports. The last attack was in Feburary, the Simurgh, so there's probably going to be another next month."
"I see..." Eon mused again, twitching his tails.
"Yeah." She said. "Well, you've shown up randomly at our base- and it's really annoying me that you found us so easily, by the way- and I've explained how everything here works so you don't do something stupid. Now, your end of the deal. Where did you come from, and how?" Eon chuckled.
"Alright, alright. You've certainly helped us, so we will explain. We come from a world full of Pokemon, creatures like ourselves and the ones we showed you yesterday. I'm called a Ninetales there, while Shadow is a Vulpix, the pre-evolved form."
"I'm not gonna evolve, though. I like being me!" Shadow grinned.
"There are different types of Pokemon, eighteen in total, and some types have an advantage over others- for example, as a Fire type, I have an advantage against Ice, but in turn Water types have an advantage over me." Eon waved his tail. "Moves have types as well, so Moves that have the same type as the user are stronger than others.
"Most Pokemon are fairly common, but some are known as Legendaries, like Genesect. These are very rare Pokemon- sometimes there's only one in existence- and they're pretty close to a sort of god. Then there are Mythicals, though I admit I don't really know what the difference is between a Legend and a Mythical."
"Interesting." Tattletale hummed. "What did Shadow mean about Hyper Rank last night?"
"Ah, you heard that?" Shadow blushed. "Well, in our world there's things called Mystery Dungeons, and Rescue or Exploration teams get formed to go look about in them. A lot of the time they do jobs, like rescuing people or finding lost items or fighting criminals that're hiding in a dungeon. There's ranks that get assigned that say how good your team is, which lets you do more difficult missions." She brightened a little. "Sometimes, if you get really powerful and famous, you might get challenges from Legendary or Mythical Pokemon!"
"And you're Hyper Rank?"
"Yep!" Shadow turned, showing Tattletale the badge on her scarf. "Exploration teams start on Normal Rank, then there's Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Super, Ultra and Hyper. Above that is Master, and that climbs through three starred versions to Guildmaster." She frowned. "Though we aren't all that famous, and we still got a challenge from Hoopla, which is what brought us here in the first place."
"You're here because of a challenge?"
"Naw, we finished that." Shadow shook her head. "Dunno why Hoopla sent us here, but he kinda showed up on one of our off days and asked if we could go somewhere for some reason. We said yeah, and then we came here."
"Anyway, we got that challenge request from Hoopa, which we ended up winning." Eon flicked his fur slightly. "And to be fair, we were kinda famous for helping out with that rescue for Uxie and Azelf, which is probably why we got a challenge from Hoopa."
"Uxie, Azelf?" Tattletale questioned. A flick of his tail caused three illusionary Legends to appear above the table.
"Uxie is the yellow one, Azelf is the blue one. The pink one's called Mesprit. We were asked to help find Mesprit, since she'd gone missing. They're Legends, but it turns out someone had attacked Mesprit to try and steal something she was guarding."
"What was it?"
"A crystal." Shadow said, unnaturally serious. "Part of something really important, Uxie and Azelf had been attacked over them as well, and we were asked to make sure she was ok, and found her unconscious, though the crystal was safe."
"To be fair, at least it was for a good reason." Eon reasoned. "Though he could have explained things rather than just stealing them."
"What-"
"Another time, Tattletale." Eon said seriously. "But for the most part, that's all there is to our world. The battle mechanics Pokemon tend to use are complicated, there's status effects and stuff to deal with too, but none of those are really relevant here so there's no point going into them."
"I see." The Thinker- as she'd explained her powers- looked annoyed at the fact that her power didn't work on them very well, but she let the subject drop. "What do you plan on doing now?"
"The normal rescue work, probably." Eon shrugged with a ripple. "Rescue people, explore... not sure other than that."
"Yeah, there's not really any Dungeons or anything here..." Tattletale frowned. "Hero work might do for you... Don't suppose I could persuade you to join a villain team? The Undersiders have fairly good pay, the Boss is pretty generous." Smirking vulpinely, Eon reached a paw across the table.
"No, I think we'd rather avoid villain work. Though acting as your heroic rivals might be an amusing pass time." Tattletale grinned, putting her hand on his paw-
"As you wish. I have been watching you for some time, Lisa Wilbourn, I have become aware that you are something special, and I would like to buy your services."
Word choice, buy vs. hire: large amounts of money involved.
Word choice, buy vs. make an offer: not really a negotiation.
She glanced at the weapons the three hired guns had in hand.
"I'm listening."
-Eon shuddered slightly at the vision, a sound suspiciously like a scream echoing in the back of his mind.
"Yeah, that might be funny. Look, get yourself a phone or something- a burner, not something permanent- and maybe we can try and set something up with you sometime. It might give you some clout with the heroes." The purple-suited Cape frowned behind her mask. "Maybe I should see about giving Bugs some help too. Either on our team or maybe try set her up with you guys, if you'll take her."
"I'd love to!" Shadow grinned, while Eon removed his paw. "It'd be fun, though she wouldn't fit the theme."
"Theme?"
"We're Team Inari." Tattletale snorted.
"Like the Japanese God?" Shadow cocked her head.
"Dunno about that. In our world, Inari's a Ninetales like Eon here, but massive and super powerful and super old. Sometimes he's white, and sometimes he's a normal gold Ninetales, but a lot of the time he shows up as a red Ninetales. Apparently he hides in a mountain range that no-one's ever found. Pokemon used to think Eon was a messenger from Inari, since he's a shiny Ninetales."
"And I wouldn't know either way." Eon grumped. "Amnesia for a lot of my life, so I wouldn't know if I was one of Inari's helping Ninetales or not. Things were dull for a while, then Shadow here worked up the courage to ask me to make an Exploration team with her so she could join the Wigglytuff Guild. Had a lot of fun there over the last year and a half."
"Do you care that you don't remember?" Tattletale asked gently.
"Not really. If I find out what went on before, then I will. I'm happy as I am, so I'm not gonna try tripping the balance for something that doesn't matter all that much anymore." Tattletale blinked slowly.
"I see... Well, Inari's a god here as well. I'll let you use the computer to look it up if you want, though you could probably use your illusions and just go to a library or something to use the computers there." She grinned. "But yeah, you should probably go and look the stuff up at some point. Y'know, just in case..."
Taylor looked around the room carefully once again. It was a computer lesson, and she'd finished with her work, so she was going to use the rest of the time she had left to do a little bit of research into what had happened the night before.
It had been... weird, to say the least. Running into that group with the dogs was a bit of a surprise, as was finding out from Tattletale that Lung had been after them for a stunt they'd pulled. That had been a bit awkward, since it wasn't really children she'd been trying to save after all.
Quickly, she looked up the names that'd come up in the conversation with the other strange additions and read the results.
Her eyes widened.
Villains? She thought, closing the tabs and leaning back in her chair to think. I went and fought Lung for a bunch of villains? Before she could get too worked up about that, she frowned. Then again, they seemed… alright. Not like bad people at all. She shook her head, reaching for the mouse again. Never mind that for now. I can figure out more about them later, when there's time. Moving for the search bar again, she contemplated what she was about to do for a second, then typed in a search for information on white nine-tails foxes.
Nearly ten minutes later, she closed the tab and leaned back, gaping slightly.
You've got to be kidding me. She closed her eyes, pressing the balls of her palms against them, and flinched as the bell rang. Slowly shutting down her computer, she contemplated what she'd just read over, trying to figure it out as she walked to her next class, head down. Is someone pranking me? Using a projection of a white Kyuubi as a way of fooling me? And a little kitsune as well? Or am I literally being followed around by a god's messenger and it's friend? The thought followed her through the rest of the day, causing her to completely ignore the attempts at bullying the rest of the school did.
I wonder if it's true?
"Y'kay, Eon?" Shadow asked, as the invisible duo left the city proper and headed into the outskirts.
"Hm?" The larger fox shook his head, looking down at her in confusion.
"You ok?" She asked again, cocking her head. "You look kinda distracted. You were like that in the Undersider's base too, actually." She grinned. "Something on your mind?"
"Had another dizzy spell." He said quietly. Her eyes widened, and she automatically glanced around, despite there being no-one around and them being invisible.
"What did you see?" Shadow questioned softly.
"Flashback into Tattletale's past, I think." He replied, just as gently.
"Anything interesting?"
"I don't think she willingly joined that group." Eon muttered. "I saw the conversation where she was... recruited." He practically spat the word. "Three people, two males and a female, with guns, while her boss talked to her. It wasn't a request for her to work with him."
"I see." Shadow bit her lip, fangs pointing over slightly. "Do you think we should take a look into that?"
"Maybe, yeah." He nodded. "And we should probably look into this Inari thing, as well."
"We've got some time." Shadow looked upwards. "Think we should go search for a library for a bit?"
"Sure." Eon agreed, shaking the thoughts of the vision from his mind for a while. "Stay close, ok?"
"Ok!" Her mood immediately bounced back to normal, grinning and jumping on the spot as she began looking around them both, moving back towards the city again. Eon chuckled lowly at her change, following behind her as she ran from building to building, balancing on her back paws as she looked into windows.
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- Location
- Norway. Mid-Norway. Møre og Romsdal.
Looking forward to their reaction to lore about several tailed foxes.
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Reactions will hopefully be fairly amusing. Also confused. Lots and lots of confusion abound... as is right and proper.
Yeah, another fox there. There's a lot of history for these guys I need to get sorted out at some point, though I don't want to end up with an infodump chapter... unless you want a chapter that's just these two trading off about their history.
And yeah, to the library... nothing could possibly go wrong.
Also also, I went and updated the info tag at the beginning. I think I got everything important that you'd need to start out with this fic, though I'll probably be adding to it as I go.
- Location
- United States
So they're going to a library... the same day Taylor is likely going to the same library. This may be fun.
Chapter 4- Exploring, talking and teaming
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
"Eeeeeoooonnnnn?"
Eon sighed. "Yes, Shadow?"
"I'm bboooorrrreeeddd." The little Vulpix whined. "Where the hell are the library's in this city?"
"I don't know, Shadow." Eon sighed again, casually tugging her closer to his side to make sure she didn't run into the person they were passing in the other direction. "I don't know the layout of this city either, remember?"
"I know..." She huffed. "But still, how could we get through this much of the city and not run into a single library?"
"...Yeah, that is a little ridiculous." He nodded. "You don't smell anything?"
"Nope, and I know you don't either, Eon." Shadow grumped, looking around again. "There's just humans everywhere. Some of the shops look pretty cool, though." Eon glanced over, seeing her looking into a window of a nearby building, one filled with colourful clothes.
"I suppose." The Ninetales sighed. "Though I dunno why you're looking."
"Use them for illusions." She explained, moving along. "We might need 'em." Eon raised an eyebrow at her, then shot a speculative look at the window again and following her.
"Fair enough." Eon nodded. "Anything interesting?"
"Eh, some of it." Shadow shrugged. "Looks cool and all, but I don't really see the point in a lot of it."
"Hm..." Eon said non-commentally. "How're your illusions doing?" He asked instead.
"Ok, I think." She grinned. "I've been working pretty hard at them." Looking around, Eon nodded towards an alley that smelt abandoned.
"Want to show me?"
"Sure!" Shadow pattered down the alley, her tails waving in anticipation, while Eon padded after her in curiosity. "Alright," she turned, looking at him. "Whaddya want to see first?"
"Anything you want." He shrugged. Shadow nodded, chewing her lip.
"Right." Closing her eyes, she waved her tails back and forth, focusing. A second Ninetales, one the normal golden colour, flickered into being next to her, breathing steadily as it looked at Eon. The shiny Ninetales' eyes widened, and he carefully circled it, watching the illusion move to track him with its eyes.
"...Impressive." He said slowly. "Very impressive." Shadow blushed, pawing at her neck.
"I've been watching how you move a lot." She explained. "It's one I've been working on for ages."
"You do all this through observation?" He asked.
"Mhm. I've done it with some of the others in the Guild and around town, too. It's... difficult," Shadow admitted, "Even Pokemon you'd expect to move the same like Stantler and Sawsbuck have loads of little differences to follow." She waved her tails again, the Ninetales copy moved its jaw for a moment.
"This was the hardest part, though." It said, in Shadow's voice. Eon gaped.
"Sounds too?" He stared, eyes wide.
"Yeah." The Vulpix coughed, her illusion stilling aside from its breathing. "Trying to throw my voice was hard at first. Then I figured out how to make the illusion of my voice. It's weird, and it took a while to make it sound right- I had Chatot help me with it- but I've got it now." She looked down. "Can't make it sound any different, though."
"Shadow, that's still very impressive." Eon smiled proudly. "What else can you do?" The Ninetales vanished into the air, and Shadow's fur changed to a dark purple, with the fur on her tail turning black and her feet grey.
"Colour changing as well." She grinned, stepping backwards into the shadow of a dumpster. "Figured it'd be useful to hide with, now we're somewhere else." Eon nodded, focusing his own illusion. His grey fur went completely black, with dark grey tail tips, and smiled.
"Yeah, it probably would be a good idea." Eon replied, stepping out and dropping the illusion again. He quickly checked the invisibility one, as well as the one that was keeping them from being heard, while Shadow moved out.
"Mhm." She pawed at the edge of her scarf again, messing with the Rescue Badge proudly pinned there. "I've been messing with projections, mostly. Figured that if we can scare people off, we can avoid fighting too much here."
"Good idea, little kit." Eon stretched. "Now, want to keep going?"
"Sure." Shadow took a step forward, then froze, sniffing. "Huh?"
"What's up?" The Ninetales took a step forward.
"Shush!" Shadow snapped, sniffing around. "Something's weird."
"How?" Eon didn't move as the little Vulpix walked slowly around the area, focusing on a small spider on the wall.
"This spider." She said softly, careful not to startle it. "Something's wrong with it."
"What?" Eon shifted, leaning closer.
"I'm... not sure." She admitted. "It smells... wrong, though." Eon raised an eyebrow, then sniffed.
"Huh." He frowned. "You're right." Sniffing at the bug again, he noted the scent that seemed to cling to it below the normal smell that bugs had. That smells oddly familiar... he mused to himself.
"It smells kinda like..." Shadow paused, eyes suddenly wide. "The Bug Girl from last night." Eon's eyes widened as well, and he sniffed again.
"It is!" The Ninetales barked, surprised.
"Is she nearby, do you think?"
"Probably." Eon nodded. "We don't know how far her powers can stretch, but then again she could've just come through here."
"I don't think so." Shadow frowned. "The smell's too recent. It's kinda like she's exactly here, not just been here before." The little Vulpix brightened. "Hey, let's go find her and say hello!"
"Shadow, wait!" Eon sighed loudly. "Remember what Tattletale said about the Rules."
"Don't say hi to the Capes if they're not in costume, even if you know them." She nodded. "I know. I just wanna see if she's around."
"Alright." He sighed again at his younger partner, then followed her out of the alley. "But no interacting with her if she's out of costume."
"I know, Eon." Shadow grumbled, exasperated.
"Just making sure." The larger vulpine shook himself carefully. "Now, second point. Any idea how to find her?" She paused, thinking.
"No idea." Shadow admitted. Eon snorted.
"Thought not."
Taylor sighed miserably as she glanced at the nearest window. Mentally, she noticed a few of the bugs in her range skittering about strangely as something passed them by, but the vision on her bugs was still too blurry for her to properly make anything out, so she ignored it and continued walking.
She wanted to go out in costume again.
She'd enjoyed the night before, once the absolute terror of fighting against Lung had worn off. The feeling of doing something, even just patrolling the rooftops, after that shitty day at school, had been great. She wanted to do it again.
And maybe she'd get lucky enough to run into the Undersiders again. They'd seemed nice, even if they were villains, and she wouldn't mind talking with them again.
Even Tattletale. She'd seemed like she was alright, though Taylor knew that their interaction had been shaded a bit by everything that'd gone on before, but she seemed like she'd be alright to talk to on occasion.
And then there were the foxes.
Taylor frowned, pausing at a display to think. The foxes had been... strange, to say the very least. Shadow and Eon. A pair of kitsune, apparently, one with six tails and one white one with nine. From what she'd read- assuming that she did her best to ignore the contradicting stories she'd found while looking- that meant that Shadow was the younger one, but still about six hundred years old and would be incredibly powerful, while Eon was a lot older, at least a millennium at a guess, and even more powerful.
She wondered why they'd never intervened with the Endbringers before. Maybe they hadn't been able to leave; given that she'd seen that they were apparently messengers of Inari, a Japanese God, she wouldn't be too surprised.
Taylor hoped to see them again as well. It'd be interesting to ask them to tell her stories, and maybe she could confirm that they were actually godly messengers of some kind.
And of course, ask them why they'd intervened against Lung for her.
That, in particular, was something that'd been creeping in the back of her mind since she'd read about it earlier that day. Even the actions of the Trio hadn't been able to knock the foxes from her thoughts. The fact that the two had fought against Lung for her- well, that Shadow had put Lung down for her, was incredible to her. She was just Taylor, and they were- probably- god-level creatures. Why would they fight for her?
Taylor shook her head. There's no way they were actually fighting for me. They'd probably come to deliver some kind of message to Lung by defeating him, and saving my life was just a side effect of it all. She began walking back towards her house, planning to get as much of her homework done as possible so she'd be able to go out later and patrol again.
Looking around last second before she crossed a road, she frowned deeply when one of her bugs was shifted around by some unseen force in the alley nearby. Carefully, she moved a few more spiders and roaches into the area, trying to get a better image of what was there. There was a few minutes of shuffling, then a quiet cough.
"Hey, Bug Girl?" Taylor stiffened slightly, biting her lip to stop a shout, as the comparatively large fox rippled into view from nowhere. "Can you hear me?"
"Probably not, Pix." The other fox from the previous night put in, also appearing from nowhere. "Pretty sure bugs aren't as good with their senses as any of us are."
"Dangit." Shadow cursed lightly. "I was hoping to talk to her." Slowly, Taylor started moving her bugs about to get a better look at the two, drawing more and more bugs into the area, before arranging them into words.
Yes I can hear you.
"Oh!" Shadow barked. "You can hear us. Sweet! Hey Bug Girl, could we talk to you?" Taylor blinked.
Will patrol tonight. Meet then.
"Sure!" She got the impression that the fox was grinning. "Seeya then!" The two vanished, making Taylor raise an eyebrow before shrugging and continuing to walk towards her home.
She was still pretty confused by the foxes, but at least she was likely to get some answers now.
"That was a bit mean, Pix." Eon scolded lightly as they left the alley. "You've probably confused her."
"I just want to talk with her later, Eon." She grinned, bouncing about. "We'll still have to find her later too." The Vulpix went contemplative. "Maybe we should try and find where she tends to hang about, so we could set up meeting places there." Eon sighed.
"Shadow, did you even listen to Tattletale's lecture on the Unwritten Rules?"
"Of course I did." She looked back at him, offended. "But they're unwritten, so they're unofficial, and besides if we end up working with Bug Girl then we'd need places we could meet up in the city to save her having to walk to our base all the time." Eon blinked, then nodded.
"Makes sense. Sorry, thought you meant before we see if she wants to work with us." Shadow snorted.
"Heh. Nah, I wouldn't do that. Those rules're obviously there for a reason, so we should probably follow them." She snorted again. "Even if they're really stupid. I mean, this entire world relies on a mask and people's unwillingness to 'out' the person behind it to function right. All it'd take is one guy with too much knowledge in stuff they shouldn't know, and everyone'd be screwed." She looked up at the sky for a moment, sighing. "Everything's way simpler back home. Famous people are famous, and teams get mission requests. Unless there's a stupid crisis, no-one's really in that much danger."
"I know what you mean, Pix." Eon patted her head gently. "C'mon, let's see if we can find one of those dang libraries about."
"Alright." The two of them pattered off, Shadow staying quite close to Eon as they made their way through the crowd on what seemed to be the main street of the city.
"Found one!" Shadow called, pushing off of the wall and away from the building she'd been sniffing at.
"Finally." Eon growled. "Seriously, how was it so hard to find a library in this city?"
"Dunno. Maybe there's just not that many libraries?" Shadow shrugged. "Or we just got really unlucky and started on the exact opposite side of the city to where they all are?"
"One of them, sure." Eon tapped her side, herding her towards an alleyway. "Let's go put up some sort of human illusion so we can go in."
"Sure." Shadow yawned slightly. "Urgh. Tired."
"Really?"
"A bit, yeah." She yawned again, shaking herself. "No idea why. Anyway, can you do human as an illusion for a long time?"
"Well, I can do Lucario and Gardevoir, and I doubt it's much different to that." Eon shrugged, flicking his tails. "So let me put this one up, then I'll drop the other illusions we need to get rid of."
"I really want to learn how to layer illusions like that." Shadow muttered jealously.
"You'll get there in time, little Pix." Eon grinned. "Anyway, done. Come on, let's go and look up what we need."
"Sure." Shadow, now under the illusion of a fairly nondescript teenage girl, nodded. Eon was using the form of a just as stereotypical teenage boy, both of the illusions made up of different people they'd come across while wandering around invisibly. The Vulpix made her way back out of the alley, the illusion duly following her path while Eon and his illusions did the same. Both of them quietly made their way into the library, greeting the human on the desk with a low voice before heading over to the computers. Eon's illusion sat down while the Ninetales himself jumped into the chair and peered at the unfamiliar screen, while Shadow went to sniff at the bookshelves with her illusion in tow. "Some of these look really interesting, I might have to figure out some way of borrowing some."
"Be careful what you say, Shadow." Eon muttered, pushing a button on the monitor and smiling to himself when it turned on. "Remember the illusions."
"Sorry." She winced, coming back over to look over his shoulder as he carefully moved the mouse about, trying to figure out how it all worked.
"And don't forget that you don't actually exist as a person here."
"I know." Shadow hummed, while Eon made his way onto the internet and waited for it to load. "Hey, maybe Bug Girl could help us."
"Maybe, Shadow." Eon grimaced, typing his search into the bar and pushing the button labelled enter, then sighing softly when he was rewarded with more loading. "These things are more complicated than I realised."
"Didn't Tattletale say we should get phones?" She checked idly. "We'd probably have to ask for help there too, unless these Capes can normally go and buy things from shops."
"I somehow doubt it is, Shadow." Eon muttered, as the screen popped up with his search results. "Since Capes apparently rely on a secret identity so much, I doubt many of them go shopping in those identities."
"It's still really silly, though." She huffed, resting her front paws on the desk so she could see the computer screen.
"You've said." Eon sighed, frowning at the results before shrugging and picking the first one on the screen to click. "Now, let's see what Tattletale was implying earlier…"
Nearly an hour of reading later, the two Pokemon wandered out of the library again, sparing a distracted nod for the librarian before heading a little ways down the slightly clearer road and slipping into an alley. It only took a few moments for Eon to reset all of the illusions to the original invisible-inaudible combination the two had been using before they'd found the library.
"Well then." He tried to begin, before pausing.
"That was something." Shadow attempted, also falling silent. For a little while, the two of them just sat there, looking up at the slowly darkening sky- it was about four in the afternoon if he had to guess, and being April the sun was going down fairly slowly, so they still had plenty of time to burn before night came around- and thinking.
"I believe I understand what Tattletale meant about our team name. And what she was smirking about when she recommended that we go and do some research into things surrounding kitsune and Inari in this world." Eon finally managed, some three minutes later. "And I also get the feeling that Tattletale finds this sort of thing far more amusing than most should."
"Yeah." Shadow sighed. "Sorta getting that impression as well, Eon." She suddenly giggled, making Eon raise an eyebrow and look at her in confusion. "Hey, think of it this way; we kinda are messengers from a god, right? I mean, Hoopa kinda counts… I think. He's a Mythical Pokemon, anyway, so it's probably close enough." Eon stared at her for a moment, then started laughing.
"Oh, this will be fun." He grinned widely. Shadow cocked her head.
"What?"
"The world thinks- or will think, once people start seeing us without getting the full story- that the both of us are messengers of a god, right?" His eyes sparkled slightly as all nine tails swept back and forth. "Why don't we give them exactly that impression?"
"And pretend to be god messengers?" Shadow asked. "Huh. Could be fun."
"As you said, it's not like it's exactly a lie, is it?" Eon chuckled. "So why not play along with it? It's what we do, after all."
"I guess, yeah." Shadow grinned back at the elder fox. "Tattletale knows the truth, though, and she's probably told her team about it as well."
"And we'll have to tell the Bug Girl if she wants to join the team." Eon agreed. "But other than that, it's probably not gonna get anywhere. And from what Tattletale said about this PHO thing, people'll probably start to speculate the second we get brought into the public eye." Eon huffed slightly. "It'll be the old days all over again." Shadow nuzzled against his chest.
"Hey, it won't get that bad, I'm sure." The Vulpix assured.
"The reactions are likely to be either awe or fear." Eon countered. "Which is near enough the same as last time."
"To be fair, though, I'm pretty sure the awe outweighed the fear by kinda a bit." She smiled. "C'mon, it'll be fine. Besides, if people end up worshipping us, or it gets too bad, we'll just come out with the truth, right?"
"Sure thing, little pix." The shiny Ninetales nodded. "If it all goes well, we'll just bring it up some other time, but for now we let people think what they like."
"Yup!" Shadow bounced, glad her friend had cheered up slightly. "Now c'mon, let's go back to the den! We should take a nap before we go find Bug Girl later tonight."
"We really should've tried to set up some sort of meeting point for her." Eon sighed, partly at the short-sightedness of not doing so, and partly at his teammate's enthusiasm. I swear, she can bounce back from the oddest situations like it's nothing.
"Eh, I'm sure we'll find her." She shrugged, hopping back and forth near the entrance of the alley. "Now come on, Eon."
"Alright, alright." He sighed again, following his little friend. "Let's get back."
Taylor stood alone on a rooftop, carefully directing her bugs to scan the area. She wasn't far from where the two vulpines had been earlier today, when they'd spoken to her bugs in the alleyway, but she was still using every bug in her range to scan the area in an attempt to find them, simply because she wasn't entirely sure they would be able to find their way back.
She wouldn't say that they definitely couldn't, given that they'd managed to figure out that she was controlling and use them to talk to her- if only barely, given how hard it was to listen or see using insect senses. Still, though, Taylor wanted to make sure she found them if they came anywhere near her, so she could guide them over and talk with them.
Naturally, Taylor was curious about the sudden appearance of the pair, since they'd just shown up in the middle of her fight, and right now she couldn't help but want to see them again. Partly to thank them, and partly just because things had been eating at her all day that she really wanted answering.
Like the whole god thing, for one.
Pausing as she noticed something with one of her bugs, Taylor carefully scanned that area, bringing a small army of cockroaches out from under a nearby dumpster to help her build a picture of the area her spider was in.
"Hello?" A quiet and familiar voice called. Taylor brightened slightly, moving her bugs in response.
Hello.
"Hi there Bug Girl." Shadow greeted lowly, suddenly appearing in front of them. Despite herself, she twitched in surprise. "How're you doing?" Taylor raised an eyebrow.
Alright why.
"Just wondering." The blurry shape looked up and sniffed the air. "Where are you? Eon's trying to find you with the smell right now, but it's kinda hard with all the bugs copying it." Slightly confused as to what the littler fox meant, Taylor began moving the single firefly she had in her possession towards the two of them.
Bringing firefly follow when there.
"Ok, no problem." Shadow nodded. "Hey Eon, Bug Girl's bringing a firefly over to us so she can guide us to her, so you can stop trying to figure out her scent now."
"Alright, Shadow." A larger grey form walked into view as well, seating himself on the ground and brushing all nine tails around his paws, while he seemed to look down his nose at her bugs. "Hello. How're you doing right now? Recovering well from last night?"
Yes much better didnt get hurt much anyway. Thank you.
"You're welcome." Eon seemed to smile- Taylor couldn't really tell, given how blurry the view was- before flicking an ear. "Out of curiosity, what made you think it would be a good idea to fight that Lung guy, anyway?"
"Yeah, seems a bit silly to fight a fire user with bugs." Shadow opined. "I mean, I'm sure you could do it, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to." Taylor paused, thinking for a moment, then took notice of where the firefly she was guiding was.
Follow fly talk in person.
"Alright, no biggy." Shadow smiled. She looked around, obviously spotting the bug as she stood, shaking out her fur and tails, before pattering over to it. Eon followed after, and Taylor led them silently towards her position on the rooftop, the two foxes managing to make themselves go unnoticed by the people still wandering the streets- even this late, and even in Brockton Bay, there were a few.
A Stranger effect of some kind? Taylor thought.
It was only a few minutes later when the sound of claws on brick caught her attention, making Taylor turn around to greet the two, her firefly landing on her hair before going dark and burrowing in among the other bugs she'd placed there for quick access.
"Hiya!" Shadow greeted, shaking her head as she reached the top of the building. "Nice to see ya again, Bug Girl!"
"Like Shadow said." Eon nodded, bounding up next to her in a much more graceful fashion, grey fur blending in surprisingly well against the night yet still shimmering in the starlight. "It's nice to see you on better terms, however." He sniffed at the air, Shadow inching slightly closer and doing the same. "You're healing well, though. That's good, we were worried we'd gotten to you a bit late."
"No, you got there on time. I mainly stepped in because I thought he was trying to kill kids, but I probably should've thought more." Taylor smiled, before realising that the mask would hide her facial expressions, need to remember that, "And thank you for stepping in to help me." Even if I don't understand why.
"No problem!" Shadow grinned in return, small, pointed teeth glinting, while Eon peered at her down his nose. "We're a Rescue Team, so it's our job to help people!"
"A Rescue Team?" Taylor frowned. "What do you mean?" Eon sighed.
"That's part of what we want to talk to you about." The two moved closer, Eon sitting down and sweeping his tails around his paws while Shadow just lay on her stomach, stretching out a bit as she did. "We figured we owed you an explanation after last night. We gave one to Tattletale this morning as well, so we thought we should do the same for you."
"Y'know, since you're probably a bit confused about us jumping in to save you and all." Shadow added.
"I am a bit." She admitted, slowly sinking down to their level. Even sitting, she was somewhat taller than Eon, though both of the foxes had a sort of presence about them that made them seem much larger than they were. "I… did do a bit of research, though. While I was at school." She chewed her lip, reluctant to continue, then spat it out. "Are you really kitsune? Like, Inari kitsune?" For some odd reason, this made Eon bark out a laugh, while Shadow's eyes lit up as she stared at her friend.
"Huh." She muttered. "Guess you weren't wrong about what people'd think."
"Well, they don't know." Eon smirked, shooting a glance at her before looking back at Taylor. "Not quite. Let us explain, it'll make sense then." Taylor looked between the two vulpines, focusing on the grey one as he began talking.
It went on for quite some time.
Taylor gaped between them.
"Huh."
"Yeah, it is that." Shadow snickered, apparently finding her moment of mental incomprehension amusing.
"I mean… huh." She tried again, then shook herself, absently pushing her confusion into her bugs and making them run about in her hair. "I don't know if 'creatures from another world who came here for an unknown reason and happened to find me' is better or worse than 'messengers from a Japanese god showed up and interrupted my fight and saved my life to leave a message for me and-or my opponent.'"She said, making the others snort.
"When you put it like that, I'm not sure either." Eon murmured, avidly watching her hair. "I wonder what you happen if you got close to an Ariados or something similar…"
"Pardon?"
"Oh, nothing. Just a thought." He shook his head, Shadow smiling slightly, and gave Taylor a look-over. "So, any other questions?"
"No, I think we got them all." She decided. "I might think of some new ones later, but for now I'm good."
"Alright." Eon smiled at her. "Now, I know Shadow had something she wanted to ask you…"
"Hm? Oh, yeah!" Shadow grinned, leaping up from the roof and shaking herself. "Bleh, dust."
"Should've thought of that before you lay down." She stuck her tongue out at him, making Taylor giggle, before looking back up at the masked girl.
"Wanna join our team?" She asked. Taylor spluttered, then gaped.
"Sorry, what?"
"Want to join the team?" She asked again, sitting down and raising a paw to her badge. "I'm not sure where we'd get a badge like this one, but I don't think it works here anyway, since we're not exactly at home, but we could think of something. Then we could work together, like the Undersiders did, or like the Wards people apparently do." Taylor nodded faintly, still surprised.
"Why me, though?" She said, bewildered.
"Why not you?" Shadow returned, cocking her head in honest confusion. "I mean, you're the only other one who knows all this, and we couldn't really go poach Tattletale from her team, that'd be a bit rude and they're friends anyway. Most of our team is back home, and while we might be able to ask Hoopla-"
"Hoopa!"
"To bring them over, they're all busy with their own lives and probably taking missions on behalf of our team during our trip." Shadow finished, completely ignoring Eon's exasperated bark. "So I spoke to Eon, and he agreed. It takes a lot of courage to try and fight a dragon, especially when you're not very strong against their abilities…" She trailed off for a moment, muttering angrily under her breath about Druddigon and angry Gible, much to Taylor's confusion, before smiling again. "So we could be a team, and work together to fight crime and outlaws, and maybe we could try and set up something silly with the Undersiders. Tattletale suggested that bit, since she thought it might be helpful for us to get a reputation with the local heroes in a bit more of a public fashion."
"I'm almost certain she's only suggesting it because it would give her some leverage over us that she could use." Eon said drily, flicking his tails slightly.
"Eh, whatever, it'd probably work." Shadow waved him off, pawing at her scarf again. "So, whaddya say, Bug Girl? Fancy joining Team Inari and trolling the world with us?" Taylor looked down at her for a moment, then across at Eon, waiting patiently with a red-eyed gaze.
I could say no, she thought. Say no, and just do the solo hero thing I was sort of planning on doing. The idea wasn't too off-putting; she'd already been resigned to doing it anyway, unless she could get into the Wards. But it would also mean a bigger risk; no team mates to watch her back or help her if she got injured, a bigger chance of being forcibly 'recruited' by one of the gangs, and she'd be on her own.
She'd honestly had enough of being on her own, after Winslow.
Taylor was pretty sure she'd already made her mind up the second she'd been asked, and held out her hand. "Sure. Let's work together and mess with people. Should be fun."
"Great." Shadow beamed, placing her paw on her palm. "My name's Shadow, the second-in-command of Team Inari."
"And I'm Eon, team leader." The grey Ninetales added, shaking her hand with a paw as well. "What's your name?" Taylor grinned widely.
"I'll tell you my real name later, somewhere more private," she replied, "But you can call me Swarm."
Eon sighed. "Yes, Shadow?"
"I'm bboooorrrreeeddd." The little Vulpix whined. "Where the hell are the library's in this city?"
"I don't know, Shadow." Eon sighed again, casually tugging her closer to his side to make sure she didn't run into the person they were passing in the other direction. "I don't know the layout of this city either, remember?"
"I know..." She huffed. "But still, how could we get through this much of the city and not run into a single library?"
"...Yeah, that is a little ridiculous." He nodded. "You don't smell anything?"
"Nope, and I know you don't either, Eon." Shadow grumped, looking around again. "There's just humans everywhere. Some of the shops look pretty cool, though." Eon glanced over, seeing her looking into a window of a nearby building, one filled with colourful clothes.
"I suppose." The Ninetales sighed. "Though I dunno why you're looking."
"Use them for illusions." She explained, moving along. "We might need 'em." Eon raised an eyebrow at her, then shot a speculative look at the window again and following her.
"Fair enough." Eon nodded. "Anything interesting?"
"Eh, some of it." Shadow shrugged. "Looks cool and all, but I don't really see the point in a lot of it."
"Hm..." Eon said non-commentally. "How're your illusions doing?" He asked instead.
"Ok, I think." She grinned. "I've been working pretty hard at them." Looking around, Eon nodded towards an alley that smelt abandoned.
"Want to show me?"
"Sure!" Shadow pattered down the alley, her tails waving in anticipation, while Eon padded after her in curiosity. "Alright," she turned, looking at him. "Whaddya want to see first?"
"Anything you want." He shrugged. Shadow nodded, chewing her lip.
"Right." Closing her eyes, she waved her tails back and forth, focusing. A second Ninetales, one the normal golden colour, flickered into being next to her, breathing steadily as it looked at Eon. The shiny Ninetales' eyes widened, and he carefully circled it, watching the illusion move to track him with its eyes.
"...Impressive." He said slowly. "Very impressive." Shadow blushed, pawing at her neck.
"I've been watching how you move a lot." She explained. "It's one I've been working on for ages."
"You do all this through observation?" He asked.
"Mhm. I've done it with some of the others in the Guild and around town, too. It's... difficult," Shadow admitted, "Even Pokemon you'd expect to move the same like Stantler and Sawsbuck have loads of little differences to follow." She waved her tails again, the Ninetales copy moved its jaw for a moment.
"This was the hardest part, though." It said, in Shadow's voice. Eon gaped.
"Sounds too?" He stared, eyes wide.
"Yeah." The Vulpix coughed, her illusion stilling aside from its breathing. "Trying to throw my voice was hard at first. Then I figured out how to make the illusion of my voice. It's weird, and it took a while to make it sound right- I had Chatot help me with it- but I've got it now." She looked down. "Can't make it sound any different, though."
"Shadow, that's still very impressive." Eon smiled proudly. "What else can you do?" The Ninetales vanished into the air, and Shadow's fur changed to a dark purple, with the fur on her tail turning black and her feet grey.
"Colour changing as well." She grinned, stepping backwards into the shadow of a dumpster. "Figured it'd be useful to hide with, now we're somewhere else." Eon nodded, focusing his own illusion. His grey fur went completely black, with dark grey tail tips, and smiled.
"Yeah, it probably would be a good idea." Eon replied, stepping out and dropping the illusion again. He quickly checked the invisibility one, as well as the one that was keeping them from being heard, while Shadow moved out.
"Mhm." She pawed at the edge of her scarf again, messing with the Rescue Badge proudly pinned there. "I've been messing with projections, mostly. Figured that if we can scare people off, we can avoid fighting too much here."
"Good idea, little kit." Eon stretched. "Now, want to keep going?"
"Sure." Shadow took a step forward, then froze, sniffing. "Huh?"
"What's up?" The Ninetales took a step forward.
"Shush!" Shadow snapped, sniffing around. "Something's weird."
"How?" Eon didn't move as the little Vulpix walked slowly around the area, focusing on a small spider on the wall.
"This spider." She said softly, careful not to startle it. "Something's wrong with it."
"What?" Eon shifted, leaning closer.
"I'm... not sure." She admitted. "It smells... wrong, though." Eon raised an eyebrow, then sniffed.
"Huh." He frowned. "You're right." Sniffing at the bug again, he noted the scent that seemed to cling to it below the normal smell that bugs had. That smells oddly familiar... he mused to himself.
"It smells kinda like..." Shadow paused, eyes suddenly wide. "The Bug Girl from last night." Eon's eyes widened as well, and he sniffed again.
"It is!" The Ninetales barked, surprised.
"Is she nearby, do you think?"
"Probably." Eon nodded. "We don't know how far her powers can stretch, but then again she could've just come through here."
"I don't think so." Shadow frowned. "The smell's too recent. It's kinda like she's exactly here, not just been here before." The little Vulpix brightened. "Hey, let's go find her and say hello!"
"Shadow, wait!" Eon sighed loudly. "Remember what Tattletale said about the Rules."
"Don't say hi to the Capes if they're not in costume, even if you know them." She nodded. "I know. I just wanna see if she's around."
"Alright." He sighed again at his younger partner, then followed her out of the alley. "But no interacting with her if she's out of costume."
"I know, Eon." Shadow grumbled, exasperated.
"Just making sure." The larger vulpine shook himself carefully. "Now, second point. Any idea how to find her?" She paused, thinking.
"No idea." Shadow admitted. Eon snorted.
"Thought not."
Taylor sighed miserably as she glanced at the nearest window. Mentally, she noticed a few of the bugs in her range skittering about strangely as something passed them by, but the vision on her bugs was still too blurry for her to properly make anything out, so she ignored it and continued walking.
She wanted to go out in costume again.
She'd enjoyed the night before, once the absolute terror of fighting against Lung had worn off. The feeling of doing something, even just patrolling the rooftops, after that shitty day at school, had been great. She wanted to do it again.
And maybe she'd get lucky enough to run into the Undersiders again. They'd seemed nice, even if they were villains, and she wouldn't mind talking with them again.
Even Tattletale. She'd seemed like she was alright, though Taylor knew that their interaction had been shaded a bit by everything that'd gone on before, but she seemed like she'd be alright to talk to on occasion.
And then there were the foxes.
Taylor frowned, pausing at a display to think. The foxes had been... strange, to say the very least. Shadow and Eon. A pair of kitsune, apparently, one with six tails and one white one with nine. From what she'd read- assuming that she did her best to ignore the contradicting stories she'd found while looking- that meant that Shadow was the younger one, but still about six hundred years old and would be incredibly powerful, while Eon was a lot older, at least a millennium at a guess, and even more powerful.
She wondered why they'd never intervened with the Endbringers before. Maybe they hadn't been able to leave; given that she'd seen that they were apparently messengers of Inari, a Japanese God, she wouldn't be too surprised.
Taylor hoped to see them again as well. It'd be interesting to ask them to tell her stories, and maybe she could confirm that they were actually godly messengers of some kind.
And of course, ask them why they'd intervened against Lung for her.
That, in particular, was something that'd been creeping in the back of her mind since she'd read about it earlier that day. Even the actions of the Trio hadn't been able to knock the foxes from her thoughts. The fact that the two had fought against Lung for her- well, that Shadow had put Lung down for her, was incredible to her. She was just Taylor, and they were- probably- god-level creatures. Why would they fight for her?
Taylor shook her head. There's no way they were actually fighting for me. They'd probably come to deliver some kind of message to Lung by defeating him, and saving my life was just a side effect of it all. She began walking back towards her house, planning to get as much of her homework done as possible so she'd be able to go out later and patrol again.
Looking around last second before she crossed a road, she frowned deeply when one of her bugs was shifted around by some unseen force in the alley nearby. Carefully, she moved a few more spiders and roaches into the area, trying to get a better image of what was there. There was a few minutes of shuffling, then a quiet cough.
"Hey, Bug Girl?" Taylor stiffened slightly, biting her lip to stop a shout, as the comparatively large fox rippled into view from nowhere. "Can you hear me?"
"Probably not, Pix." The other fox from the previous night put in, also appearing from nowhere. "Pretty sure bugs aren't as good with their senses as any of us are."
"Dangit." Shadow cursed lightly. "I was hoping to talk to her." Slowly, Taylor started moving her bugs about to get a better look at the two, drawing more and more bugs into the area, before arranging them into words.
Yes I can hear you.
"Oh!" Shadow barked. "You can hear us. Sweet! Hey Bug Girl, could we talk to you?" Taylor blinked.
Will patrol tonight. Meet then.
"Sure!" She got the impression that the fox was grinning. "Seeya then!" The two vanished, making Taylor raise an eyebrow before shrugging and continuing to walk towards her home.
She was still pretty confused by the foxes, but at least she was likely to get some answers now.
"That was a bit mean, Pix." Eon scolded lightly as they left the alley. "You've probably confused her."
"I just want to talk with her later, Eon." She grinned, bouncing about. "We'll still have to find her later too." The Vulpix went contemplative. "Maybe we should try and find where she tends to hang about, so we could set up meeting places there." Eon sighed.
"Shadow, did you even listen to Tattletale's lecture on the Unwritten Rules?"
"Of course I did." She looked back at him, offended. "But they're unwritten, so they're unofficial, and besides if we end up working with Bug Girl then we'd need places we could meet up in the city to save her having to walk to our base all the time." Eon blinked, then nodded.
"Makes sense. Sorry, thought you meant before we see if she wants to work with us." Shadow snorted.
"Heh. Nah, I wouldn't do that. Those rules're obviously there for a reason, so we should probably follow them." She snorted again. "Even if they're really stupid. I mean, this entire world relies on a mask and people's unwillingness to 'out' the person behind it to function right. All it'd take is one guy with too much knowledge in stuff they shouldn't know, and everyone'd be screwed." She looked up at the sky for a moment, sighing. "Everything's way simpler back home. Famous people are famous, and teams get mission requests. Unless there's a stupid crisis, no-one's really in that much danger."
"I know what you mean, Pix." Eon patted her head gently. "C'mon, let's see if we can find one of those dang libraries about."
"Alright." The two of them pattered off, Shadow staying quite close to Eon as they made their way through the crowd on what seemed to be the main street of the city.
"Found one!" Shadow called, pushing off of the wall and away from the building she'd been sniffing at.
"Finally." Eon growled. "Seriously, how was it so hard to find a library in this city?"
"Dunno. Maybe there's just not that many libraries?" Shadow shrugged. "Or we just got really unlucky and started on the exact opposite side of the city to where they all are?"
"One of them, sure." Eon tapped her side, herding her towards an alleyway. "Let's go put up some sort of human illusion so we can go in."
"Sure." Shadow yawned slightly. "Urgh. Tired."
"Really?"
"A bit, yeah." She yawned again, shaking herself. "No idea why. Anyway, can you do human as an illusion for a long time?"
"Well, I can do Lucario and Gardevoir, and I doubt it's much different to that." Eon shrugged, flicking his tails. "So let me put this one up, then I'll drop the other illusions we need to get rid of."
"I really want to learn how to layer illusions like that." Shadow muttered jealously.
"You'll get there in time, little Pix." Eon grinned. "Anyway, done. Come on, let's go and look up what we need."
"Sure." Shadow, now under the illusion of a fairly nondescript teenage girl, nodded. Eon was using the form of a just as stereotypical teenage boy, both of the illusions made up of different people they'd come across while wandering around invisibly. The Vulpix made her way back out of the alley, the illusion duly following her path while Eon and his illusions did the same. Both of them quietly made their way into the library, greeting the human on the desk with a low voice before heading over to the computers. Eon's illusion sat down while the Ninetales himself jumped into the chair and peered at the unfamiliar screen, while Shadow went to sniff at the bookshelves with her illusion in tow. "Some of these look really interesting, I might have to figure out some way of borrowing some."
"Be careful what you say, Shadow." Eon muttered, pushing a button on the monitor and smiling to himself when it turned on. "Remember the illusions."
"Sorry." She winced, coming back over to look over his shoulder as he carefully moved the mouse about, trying to figure out how it all worked.
"And don't forget that you don't actually exist as a person here."
"I know." Shadow hummed, while Eon made his way onto the internet and waited for it to load. "Hey, maybe Bug Girl could help us."
"Maybe, Shadow." Eon grimaced, typing his search into the bar and pushing the button labelled enter, then sighing softly when he was rewarded with more loading. "These things are more complicated than I realised."
"Didn't Tattletale say we should get phones?" She checked idly. "We'd probably have to ask for help there too, unless these Capes can normally go and buy things from shops."
"I somehow doubt it is, Shadow." Eon muttered, as the screen popped up with his search results. "Since Capes apparently rely on a secret identity so much, I doubt many of them go shopping in those identities."
"It's still really silly, though." She huffed, resting her front paws on the desk so she could see the computer screen.
"You've said." Eon sighed, frowning at the results before shrugging and picking the first one on the screen to click. "Now, let's see what Tattletale was implying earlier…"
Nearly an hour of reading later, the two Pokemon wandered out of the library again, sparing a distracted nod for the librarian before heading a little ways down the slightly clearer road and slipping into an alley. It only took a few moments for Eon to reset all of the illusions to the original invisible-inaudible combination the two had been using before they'd found the library.
"Well then." He tried to begin, before pausing.
"That was something." Shadow attempted, also falling silent. For a little while, the two of them just sat there, looking up at the slowly darkening sky- it was about four in the afternoon if he had to guess, and being April the sun was going down fairly slowly, so they still had plenty of time to burn before night came around- and thinking.
"I believe I understand what Tattletale meant about our team name. And what she was smirking about when she recommended that we go and do some research into things surrounding kitsune and Inari in this world." Eon finally managed, some three minutes later. "And I also get the feeling that Tattletale finds this sort of thing far more amusing than most should."
"Yeah." Shadow sighed. "Sorta getting that impression as well, Eon." She suddenly giggled, making Eon raise an eyebrow and look at her in confusion. "Hey, think of it this way; we kinda are messengers from a god, right? I mean, Hoopa kinda counts… I think. He's a Mythical Pokemon, anyway, so it's probably close enough." Eon stared at her for a moment, then started laughing.
"Oh, this will be fun." He grinned widely. Shadow cocked her head.
"What?"
"The world thinks- or will think, once people start seeing us without getting the full story- that the both of us are messengers of a god, right?" His eyes sparkled slightly as all nine tails swept back and forth. "Why don't we give them exactly that impression?"
"And pretend to be god messengers?" Shadow asked. "Huh. Could be fun."
"As you said, it's not like it's exactly a lie, is it?" Eon chuckled. "So why not play along with it? It's what we do, after all."
"I guess, yeah." Shadow grinned back at the elder fox. "Tattletale knows the truth, though, and she's probably told her team about it as well."
"And we'll have to tell the Bug Girl if she wants to join the team." Eon agreed. "But other than that, it's probably not gonna get anywhere. And from what Tattletale said about this PHO thing, people'll probably start to speculate the second we get brought into the public eye." Eon huffed slightly. "It'll be the old days all over again." Shadow nuzzled against his chest.
"Hey, it won't get that bad, I'm sure." The Vulpix assured.
"The reactions are likely to be either awe or fear." Eon countered. "Which is near enough the same as last time."
"To be fair, though, I'm pretty sure the awe outweighed the fear by kinda a bit." She smiled. "C'mon, it'll be fine. Besides, if people end up worshipping us, or it gets too bad, we'll just come out with the truth, right?"
"Sure thing, little pix." The shiny Ninetales nodded. "If it all goes well, we'll just bring it up some other time, but for now we let people think what they like."
"Yup!" Shadow bounced, glad her friend had cheered up slightly. "Now c'mon, let's go back to the den! We should take a nap before we go find Bug Girl later tonight."
"We really should've tried to set up some sort of meeting point for her." Eon sighed, partly at the short-sightedness of not doing so, and partly at his teammate's enthusiasm. I swear, she can bounce back from the oddest situations like it's nothing.
"Eh, I'm sure we'll find her." She shrugged, hopping back and forth near the entrance of the alley. "Now come on, Eon."
"Alright, alright." He sighed again, following his little friend. "Let's get back."
Taylor stood alone on a rooftop, carefully directing her bugs to scan the area. She wasn't far from where the two vulpines had been earlier today, when they'd spoken to her bugs in the alleyway, but she was still using every bug in her range to scan the area in an attempt to find them, simply because she wasn't entirely sure they would be able to find their way back.
She wouldn't say that they definitely couldn't, given that they'd managed to figure out that she was controlling and use them to talk to her- if only barely, given how hard it was to listen or see using insect senses. Still, though, Taylor wanted to make sure she found them if they came anywhere near her, so she could guide them over and talk with them.
Naturally, Taylor was curious about the sudden appearance of the pair, since they'd just shown up in the middle of her fight, and right now she couldn't help but want to see them again. Partly to thank them, and partly just because things had been eating at her all day that she really wanted answering.
Like the whole god thing, for one.
Pausing as she noticed something with one of her bugs, Taylor carefully scanned that area, bringing a small army of cockroaches out from under a nearby dumpster to help her build a picture of the area her spider was in.
"Hello?" A quiet and familiar voice called. Taylor brightened slightly, moving her bugs in response.
Hello.
"Hi there Bug Girl." Shadow greeted lowly, suddenly appearing in front of them. Despite herself, she twitched in surprise. "How're you doing?" Taylor raised an eyebrow.
Alright why.
"Just wondering." The blurry shape looked up and sniffed the air. "Where are you? Eon's trying to find you with the smell right now, but it's kinda hard with all the bugs copying it." Slightly confused as to what the littler fox meant, Taylor began moving the single firefly she had in her possession towards the two of them.
Bringing firefly follow when there.
"Ok, no problem." Shadow nodded. "Hey Eon, Bug Girl's bringing a firefly over to us so she can guide us to her, so you can stop trying to figure out her scent now."
"Alright, Shadow." A larger grey form walked into view as well, seating himself on the ground and brushing all nine tails around his paws, while he seemed to look down his nose at her bugs. "Hello. How're you doing right now? Recovering well from last night?"
Yes much better didnt get hurt much anyway. Thank you.
"You're welcome." Eon seemed to smile- Taylor couldn't really tell, given how blurry the view was- before flicking an ear. "Out of curiosity, what made you think it would be a good idea to fight that Lung guy, anyway?"
"Yeah, seems a bit silly to fight a fire user with bugs." Shadow opined. "I mean, I'm sure you could do it, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to." Taylor paused, thinking for a moment, then took notice of where the firefly she was guiding was.
Follow fly talk in person.
"Alright, no biggy." Shadow smiled. She looked around, obviously spotting the bug as she stood, shaking out her fur and tails, before pattering over to it. Eon followed after, and Taylor led them silently towards her position on the rooftop, the two foxes managing to make themselves go unnoticed by the people still wandering the streets- even this late, and even in Brockton Bay, there were a few.
A Stranger effect of some kind? Taylor thought.
It was only a few minutes later when the sound of claws on brick caught her attention, making Taylor turn around to greet the two, her firefly landing on her hair before going dark and burrowing in among the other bugs she'd placed there for quick access.
"Hiya!" Shadow greeted, shaking her head as she reached the top of the building. "Nice to see ya again, Bug Girl!"
"Like Shadow said." Eon nodded, bounding up next to her in a much more graceful fashion, grey fur blending in surprisingly well against the night yet still shimmering in the starlight. "It's nice to see you on better terms, however." He sniffed at the air, Shadow inching slightly closer and doing the same. "You're healing well, though. That's good, we were worried we'd gotten to you a bit late."
"No, you got there on time. I mainly stepped in because I thought he was trying to kill kids, but I probably should've thought more." Taylor smiled, before realising that the mask would hide her facial expressions, need to remember that, "And thank you for stepping in to help me." Even if I don't understand why.
"No problem!" Shadow grinned in return, small, pointed teeth glinting, while Eon peered at her down his nose. "We're a Rescue Team, so it's our job to help people!"
"A Rescue Team?" Taylor frowned. "What do you mean?" Eon sighed.
"That's part of what we want to talk to you about." The two moved closer, Eon sitting down and sweeping his tails around his paws while Shadow just lay on her stomach, stretching out a bit as she did. "We figured we owed you an explanation after last night. We gave one to Tattletale this morning as well, so we thought we should do the same for you."
"Y'know, since you're probably a bit confused about us jumping in to save you and all." Shadow added.
"I am a bit." She admitted, slowly sinking down to their level. Even sitting, she was somewhat taller than Eon, though both of the foxes had a sort of presence about them that made them seem much larger than they were. "I… did do a bit of research, though. While I was at school." She chewed her lip, reluctant to continue, then spat it out. "Are you really kitsune? Like, Inari kitsune?" For some odd reason, this made Eon bark out a laugh, while Shadow's eyes lit up as she stared at her friend.
"Huh." She muttered. "Guess you weren't wrong about what people'd think."
"Well, they don't know." Eon smirked, shooting a glance at her before looking back at Taylor. "Not quite. Let us explain, it'll make sense then." Taylor looked between the two vulpines, focusing on the grey one as he began talking.
It went on for quite some time.
Taylor gaped between them.
"Huh."
"Yeah, it is that." Shadow snickered, apparently finding her moment of mental incomprehension amusing.
"I mean… huh." She tried again, then shook herself, absently pushing her confusion into her bugs and making them run about in her hair. "I don't know if 'creatures from another world who came here for an unknown reason and happened to find me' is better or worse than 'messengers from a Japanese god showed up and interrupted my fight and saved my life to leave a message for me and-or my opponent.'"She said, making the others snort.
"When you put it like that, I'm not sure either." Eon murmured, avidly watching her hair. "I wonder what you happen if you got close to an Ariados or something similar…"
"Pardon?"
"Oh, nothing. Just a thought." He shook his head, Shadow smiling slightly, and gave Taylor a look-over. "So, any other questions?"
"No, I think we got them all." She decided. "I might think of some new ones later, but for now I'm good."
"Alright." Eon smiled at her. "Now, I know Shadow had something she wanted to ask you…"
"Hm? Oh, yeah!" Shadow grinned, leaping up from the roof and shaking herself. "Bleh, dust."
"Should've thought of that before you lay down." She stuck her tongue out at him, making Taylor giggle, before looking back up at the masked girl.
"Wanna join our team?" She asked. Taylor spluttered, then gaped.
"Sorry, what?"
"Want to join the team?" She asked again, sitting down and raising a paw to her badge. "I'm not sure where we'd get a badge like this one, but I don't think it works here anyway, since we're not exactly at home, but we could think of something. Then we could work together, like the Undersiders did, or like the Wards people apparently do." Taylor nodded faintly, still surprised.
"Why me, though?" She said, bewildered.
"Why not you?" Shadow returned, cocking her head in honest confusion. "I mean, you're the only other one who knows all this, and we couldn't really go poach Tattletale from her team, that'd be a bit rude and they're friends anyway. Most of our team is back home, and while we might be able to ask Hoopla-"
"Hoopa!"
"To bring them over, they're all busy with their own lives and probably taking missions on behalf of our team during our trip." Shadow finished, completely ignoring Eon's exasperated bark. "So I spoke to Eon, and he agreed. It takes a lot of courage to try and fight a dragon, especially when you're not very strong against their abilities…" She trailed off for a moment, muttering angrily under her breath about Druddigon and angry Gible, much to Taylor's confusion, before smiling again. "So we could be a team, and work together to fight crime and outlaws, and maybe we could try and set up something silly with the Undersiders. Tattletale suggested that bit, since she thought it might be helpful for us to get a reputation with the local heroes in a bit more of a public fashion."
"I'm almost certain she's only suggesting it because it would give her some leverage over us that she could use." Eon said drily, flicking his tails slightly.
"Eh, whatever, it'd probably work." Shadow waved him off, pawing at her scarf again. "So, whaddya say, Bug Girl? Fancy joining Team Inari and trolling the world with us?" Taylor looked down at her for a moment, then across at Eon, waiting patiently with a red-eyed gaze.
I could say no, she thought. Say no, and just do the solo hero thing I was sort of planning on doing. The idea wasn't too off-putting; she'd already been resigned to doing it anyway, unless she could get into the Wards. But it would also mean a bigger risk; no team mates to watch her back or help her if she got injured, a bigger chance of being forcibly 'recruited' by one of the gangs, and she'd be on her own.
She'd honestly had enough of being on her own, after Winslow.
Taylor was pretty sure she'd already made her mind up the second she'd been asked, and held out her hand. "Sure. Let's work together and mess with people. Should be fun."
"Great." Shadow beamed, placing her paw on her palm. "My name's Shadow, the second-in-command of Team Inari."
"And I'm Eon, team leader." The grey Ninetales added, shaking her hand with a paw as well. "What's your name?" Taylor grinned widely.
"I'll tell you my real name later, somewhere more private," she replied, "But you can call me Swarm."
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Hi, I'm back! Sorry I'm late, real life decided to remind me that I needed to go do stuff, so I went and did stuff. Here's a bit of a longer chapter than the previous ones as payment.
I'm going to be referring to Taylor as Swarm whenever she's in costume from now on, no matter to perspective it's coming from. It's just for simplicity's sake, to be honest.
I'm going to be referring to Taylor as Swarm whenever she's in costume from now on, no matter to perspective it's coming from. It's just for simplicity's sake, to be honest.
- Location
- Maldives
Yaayyy its back!
A great chapter. Swarm has joined the Team! How is lung gonna react when he finds out the bug girls is now working with "God's Messengers(lol)"? More importantly, how will the world react?
Cant wait for the shenanigans to begin.
A great chapter. Swarm has joined the Team! How is lung gonna react when he finds out the bug girls is now working with "God's Messengers(lol)"? More importantly, how will the world react?
Cant wait for the shenanigans to begin.
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Soontm. Soon it shall begin.
Oh good, someone else remembers that! Most the people I've mentioned it too have no idea about it. Yes, the PMD Ninetales can cast curses, and it'll play it's part.
This fic has somehow become a lot more serious than originally intended. Which is good, because I'm having fun, and I keep coming up with ideas to keep writing.
lockingbane
If you're crazy and you know it clap your hands!
- Location
- Waxahachie tx
Just found this and it looks really interesting. Watched
- Location
- Portland
A story where the protags are going to play up the resemblance to godlings... This looks promising. Seems kinda like the equal and opposite of what happened in constellations.
FailLord
2050 lb bombs?
- Location
- very high up
One of the said protags could cast Baleful Polymorph along with other nasty curses on you if you piss it off.
- Location
- North America
As a long time pokémon fan, I got a giggle reading this reply; I do remember it, quite well... doesn't help I'm reading a PMD comic (Victory Fire) with every update it releases...
Also, several main-game dex entries make references to legends of them laying curses on others, and PMD Rescue did have that curse-giving Ninetales (I think the dialogue lines in Rescue and Explorers both also bring up comments about the curse legend, but it's been quite a while since I played either, and I don't know if I befriended a pix or tales in either series)
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Yeah, Red/Blue Rescue Team has a cursing Ninetales, though the befriended Vulpix and Ninetales don't seem to make any reference to the story. I think that's a bit of a shame, to be honest. It was a really cool tale, I thought, and I would've liked to see more of it.
Ah well, that's what fanfiction's for, amiright?
Ninetales does seem to make a number of references to '1000 year legacy' though, in Red/Blue...
Bulbapedia said:
Kinda cool, I think. Makes reference to the kitsune legends, which is nice.
Chapter 5- Chatting, patrolling, and raiding
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
"Well then, Swarm," Eon smiled lightly, "What do Capes normally do on this world?"
"Patrols, I think." She replied, standing and stretching. "Just wander around and look for crimes to stop."
"Hmm." The Ninetales huffed, standing as well and shaking himself, fur rippling in the movement. "Well, I think it's a bit late for that, don't you?" He turned his head skyward, looking at the moon. "We've been talking for something like three hours, I reckon."
"Oh, hell." Swarm muttered. "It must be what, two in the morning?"
"Something like that." Shadow nodded, shaking herself out. "Do you want to try for a patrol of some kind?"
"No… no, I think it's best we don't." She decided, after a moment. "To be honest, I'm still a bit distracted from everything you've told me. I wouldn't really want to risk that on trying to fight someone."
"Makes sense." Eon nodded. "So, we should try and do another couple of things instead."
"Like what?"
"Well, a meeting place, for one." Shadow told her. "A team needs a place they can meet up, either to share information or go out together."
"That makes sense." The Cape admitted. "It'd be a bit annoying trying to find each other all the time."
"We have got a base set up," Eon said, "But it's quite a ways out of the city, so it might be a bit awkward trying to meet up there."
"How far?"
"I'm not exactly sure, we didn't really measure, but there's a nice grove a ways away. There's a few willow trees, and we used them to make a hideout."
"Could we go there now, do you think?" Swarm asked. "I'll need to be back home sort of soon, because it's Tuesday and I have school tomorrow, but I can go until four or so."
"Is that enough sleep?" Shadow seemed a little sceptical. "I mean, that can't be very much."
"It's about three hours, I'll cope." She shrugged. "Besides, school's a bit of a wreck at the best of times, so I don't really care anyway." Eon and Shadow traded glances, then shrugged as well.
"Alright. We'll head back down to ground level, and I'll put the invisibility and inaudibility illusions back up. It'll be easier to avoid people then, especially since we're not really looking for trouble tonight." The elder explained. "Though if we run into something we should help."
"No argument there." Swarm muttered.
"Tattletale filled us in on a lot of the situation in the city right now," he continued, pretending he hadn't heard her, "So we know a lot of what to expect. Hopefully we don't run into anyone too dangerous on the way over."
"Famous last words." She snorted, going over to a fire ladder on the side of the building, both Pokemon following her. "This is Brockton Bay, something always goes dangerous here." Shadow snickered.
"Oh, have we got some stories for you, Swarm." She said, crouching down in preparation to jump. "Trust me, we've had some experiences with danger." Swarm seemed to smile, swinging herself onto the ladder.
"I'm looking forward to it."
"This is where we've set up our base." Eon announced, stepping into the clearing through one of the willows. Long tails kept the branches out of the way, letting his two partners through as well, and he smiled up at the only masked member of the group. "There's no-one anywhere nearby, and I'm gonna be setting a bunch of illusions up over the next few days, so no-one can find it even when we're gone. At the moment, it's only invisible and only when I'm here, but the prep kit has some stuff I can use."
"Pardon?" Swarm asked, confused. Eon barked out a laugh.
"It's a trick I learned from a Zoroark, a few months back. He used little gems to anchor illusions too, and he ended up teaching me how to do it. It's his signature move, but mostly because he's never found someone else with the potential to learn it."
"And it took you the better part of the time we were at home, too." Shadow put in. "He basically went on vacation from missions for a while to try getting it down."
"It's a useful trick, though." Eon retorted, tapping her head. "When I've got it all set up here, no-one's ever gonna find this place."
"What will they do?" Swarm questioned, interrupting the mini argument.
"Invisibility, inaudibility, which is mostly useful when we're here, a few fake Pokemon that'll appear to attack to drive people off if they get too close, some actual animals, and an automatic avoidance field." Eon listed. "I've tested that last one a lot, and as long as you don't know it's there, you won't resist it." Shadow snorted, muttering lowly.
"He tested it with me." She grumbled softly. "I was refusing to go anywhere near the base all day because of it."
"Once she knew it was there, though, she could fight back against the feelings." Eon told her. "I'll make sure anyone who needs to get near knows, just so they can do the same."
"That's really impressive." The Cape muttered. "A sort of Master-Shaker field… I don't know of anyone who can do something like that." Eon smiled.
"Well, anyway," he said, gaining her attention again, "We're in a perfectly private place, and no-one's going to find us, Swarm, so what's your actual name?" The girl hesitated slightly, then reached up and pulled off her mask, revealing a somewhat plain girl with brown eyes and a wide mouth.
"Taylor." She said quietly. "Taylor Hebert."
"Nice to have you with us, Taylor." Eon smiled again, offering his paw once more. She took it in her off hand-
Trudging through a building, head down, looking at the floor through black glasses.
Three girls, laughing and teasing, while the rest of the school watched on.
Approaching a locker, a foul smell, opening it.
Seeing the mess inside, retching, being pushed, the slam of metal on metal, the click of a lock.
Screaming for help as things crawled about her.
Blackness.
-and shook again.
"Thank you for offering to let me join." She replied quietly.
"Hey, you were really cool last night, and I'm sure you'll be super helpful at super-heroing." Shadow beamed, tapping her paw on top of their joined hands. "I mean, what sort of stuff can you do with bugs, anyway? I know Vespiquen commands a little bug horde, but I'm not really sure what she does, aside from healing and some defence."
"I normally use stinging insects," Taylor explained, squinting a little. "I have Epi-pens and stuff in case of allergies, since I use spiders and wasps a lot."
"Epi-pens?" Shadow asked, turning her head.
"They stop allergic reactions to things. Some sort of injection. I don't really know much more, sorry." She shrugged. "Anyway, it's what I was doing against Lung; using poisonous spiders to try and overcome his regeneration."
"That's pretty good." Eon told her, recovering from the sudden vision. "And we saw earlier you can hear through them-"
"Only when I have a lot of bugs in one area." She corrected. "Bug senses are really bad, so I can't see or hear anything unless I've got tons of bugs to use."
"Can you make illusions with them?" Eon and Taylor both looked down at Shadow, confused. "It's something I saw before, working with another team." She explained herself, sitting down. "Remember, back when the Guild was putting together that expedition, and wanted a few more experienced outsiders to join?"
"Yeah, I remember." Eon nodded. "Taylor, I'll tell you that story later on."
"Alright." Taylor agreed, sitting down next to her.
"Well, I ended up working with one of the other teams, while Eon was chattering away with a few people." She smirked at Eon, who groaned. "And there was a Vespiquen there, too. She used to use her mini hive to make shapes in the air, like we do with our illusions, to trick other Pokemon into going after them instead of her and her team."
"That's… huh." Taylor pursed her lips. "I didn't think of doing that. I mean, I've thought of using bugs as a distraction, but not to mimic someone as bait."
"I can do something similar." Shadow told her. With a frown of focus, a golden Ninetales appeared next to them, and she replicated the trick she'd shown Eon the day before.
"I make them talk too, but it's difficult." The Ninetales said. "It's sort of similar to the inaudibility illusion, but I'm almost moving the sound I make to the illusion." Shadow made the illusion vanish, coughing again.
"But it's kinda difficult, and I can't keep it up for long." She added. "It's something I only learned to do very recently- like, about a week before we came here. I'm gonna keep practising, though, it might be useful now that we're in another world. Still, maybe you could do something with your bugs, like make them in the shape of people to lure bad guys around?"
"I could probably manage…" Taylor chewed her lip for a moment, seeming introspective. A moment later, bugs began crawling out from the trees and into the clearing, making a pool near to Taylor, before suddenly rising up from the ground and creating a loose shape of a person. "I don't really have enough bugs to do anything more than that." She frowned.
"But you could." Eon smirked. "We get more bugs, make the clouds a lot darker… people would never know if it's you or a fake. That'll help keep you safe when we work."
"You think I'd be in danger?"
"We're fighting criminals, we're always in danger." Shadow remarked. "Better to trick the crap out of them and stay safe, right?"
"I guess, yeah." She sighed. "Wish I'd thought of this last night…"
"Eh, you're alive, which is all that matters." Eon assured her. "What else… right, we need to see about getting you a badge."
"What?"
"A badge, like this one." Shadow pointed at the pin on her scarf. "All Rescue Teams and Exploration Teams back home have one, and we use it to send the people we've been sent to rescue home, the criminals back to a base for the authorities, and get ourselves out of dungeons if we're having trouble." She smiled. "Of course, that won't work here, but it'll work well as a group identifier for other people in the city."
"That… makes sense." Taylor said softly. "But I wouldn't have the money to get one, and I know you don't. You've only been here a few days, after all."
"Just over a day, yes." Eon nodded. "But here's the thing; while you have school, we can be out roaming the city. We don't have a human civilian identity, so there'd be no paper trails to one of us getting the badge made, and we can probably sniff out gang hideouts and rob them invisibly." Eon nodded towards the hideout, where the Treasure Bag was hidden. "The bag we take on dungeon explorations is strangely large. We could take and hide money in there, bring it back to the base, then use it as we need it. Since we can just use illusions to hide what we really look like, we can do any sort of shopping with a different face each time, which will help."
"That… yeah." Taylor nodded in turn. "That makes sense." Quietly, she yawned.
"Would you like us to walk you back to your house?" Eon offered, seeing that the girl was tired.
"Sure, but we need to be careful." She warned, standing. "My dad doesn't know I'm a Cape."
"Why wouldn't you tell him?" Shadow asked. "Or your mom?"
"My mom died two years ago. Nearly three, now." Taylor said quietly. "Dad and I drifted apart since then."
"I'm sorry." Eon softly apologised. Taylor shrugged.
"Nothing for you to be sorry for." She pulled her mask back over her face, tugging her brown, wavy hair out of the back and swarming it with bugs again.
"Hey, while we walk, let me tell you about that thing on the expedition!" Shadow cheered, trying to bring the atmosphere back up. 'Swarm' looked down, interested, while Eon groaned.
"No, Shadow!" He pleaded. "Please!"
"Nuh-uh." She smirked, trotting alongside their new teammate. "Anyway, while we were on the trip, one of the Vespiquen's teammates, a Delcatty- it looks like this," Shadow formed an illusion of the purple and tan cat, letting it wander next to them for a moment before fading, "Caught Eon's eye. So, for practically the whole trip, Eon's mooning over this pretty little cat…"
Taylor slipped in through the back door, carefully locking it behind her and making her way upstairs. Reaching her room, she slipped out of her costume and hid it in the bottom of her wardrobe, before looking out of her window and over to the back yard. The white-grey form of Eon caught her eye for a moment, and he waved a blue-tipped tail at her before shimmering out of sight. Taylor spent a few minutes looking still, hoping to spot Shadow as well, before giving up and closing the blind, lying flat on the bed and staring at the ceiling in deep thought.
During their walk back, Taylor had ended up telling Shadow and Eon where her school was, among the general chat of the slow pace, which they'd set in order to avoid disturbing the illusion. Eventually they'd had to quieten down to near silence as well, to make sure no-one could hear them, but they'd still spoken slightly with each other, making plans to meet up the next night and go on a proper patrol. They'd even had the idea of doing a few afternoon ones, once they had a bit more time on their hands, or perhaps doing them on weekends and roaming the city all day. Taylor had liked both ideas, and they'd set up their meeting point at a clothing store very near to Taylor's house, which they'd passed on the way. It was a very nice place, despite not being on the ever-popular Boardwalk, and Taylor had often wished she could afford to go in there.
She made a mental note to drop by the shops and pick up some burner phones the next day as well. She had the money for it- barely- and she'd been planning to do it anyway so that she could call in crimes when necessary.
Stifling a yawn, Taylor took out her contact lenses- she was glad she'd been able to afford them recently so she could go out in costume more easily, even though she still preferred her glasses most of the time- and rolled over to try and get some sleep before school the next day.
"What was it like this time, Eon?" Shadow asked softly as they stealthy made their way through an alley. The little Vulpix had noticed Eon going through another one of his visions when he'd taken Taylor's hand in the clearing, and had moved quickly to distract the girl while her friend and partner recovered from the dizzy spell that always came with the visions.
"I'm… not sure." Eon muttered, thinking back. The vision had been a little distorted, especially towards the end of it, which was different to the usual clarity of his flashes into the future or the past of whatever triggered them. Eon had a good memory, however, and he always made it a point to commit whatever he saw to his mind, which gave him time to think later on. "You remember how Tattletale said Triggers are always traumatic?"
"Yeah." Shadow nodded, looking miserable. "I hate to think that Ta- Swarm when through one."
"I think I saw her Trigger." He told her. "She… she was shoved in a locker full of waste. I'm not sure how long she was in there, I think she passed out after a while."
"Or you only saw up to her Trigger. Tattletale said people pass out when it happens." Shadow pointed out with a scowl. "Damn. How the hell could that happen? I would've thought schools would be better than that."
"I'd assume so as well." Eon growled. "It's not like we could bring it up, though. People don't talk about their Triggers."
"Invisibility." Eon paused mid-step, looking down at his friend. "We can make ourselves invisible and sneak about the school tomorrow, try and see what's going on."
"We're not going to be able to look at records, you know." Shadow scoffed.
"Of course I know that. If we had Porygon here, I might try for it, or Rotom, but not as us. But we can still sneak around the school a bit and see what's going on in there, and what it's like for Swarm." Shadow huffed angrily. "I don't like that she's so dismissive of her work."
"Neither do I." Eon admitted. "Fine. Would you be alright to go in on your own, Shadow? You're smaller than me, so you could slip around easier. Not to mention the tails."
"Yeah, we probably don't want to accidentally curse most the school by them stepping on your tails." Shadow snorted. "Or trip them up, or something. But yeah, I can do it. Not sure if I can hold an invisibility-inaudibility cloak for that long, but I can do camouflage and stay in the shadows or something."
"Either way, maybe don't stop about for too long, so that you don't end up straining yourself and losing the cloak." Eon suggested. "We don't want to get caught."
"No, I'd rather our public debut was doing something cool, thanks." Shadow agreed. "I'll slip in a bit after the big morning rush- there's gotta be one of those, right?- and snoop around for a bit. I'm sure I can find something."
"Give it a bit more time, maybe in a couple of days. We need to set up first. After that, then as long as you're careful you can go." He sighed. "Now c'mon, let's get back and catch a few hours of sleep before tomorrow."
"Alright." They walked in silence until they were almost in the clearing. "Hey Eon?"
"Mh?"
"Are you alright? You don't normally have many visions super-close, do you? Has something happened?"
"Maybe it's just because we're on another world, Shadow." Eon shrugged, the movement rippling, and ducked under the branches. "Remember we were told that the Scream worked more often in the past than in the future, so maybe it's something similar."
"I hope so. They're useful, but they can be a pain and really distracting."
"Don't I know it, little pix."
Later that afternoon, around seven, Taylor met up with the two of them outside the shop. She was in costume, and had slipped carefully into an alleyway a few minutes before, waiting for her teammates to show up. Both of them arrived after about ten minutes, Eon under an invisibility-inaudibility illusion set and Shadow hidden by a change in colour to something far darker than her normal orange-red-and-cream colour scheme.
"Ready to go, Swarm?" Shadow grinned, patting her leg in greeting.
"As ready as I can be." She nodded with a slight smile. "What's the plan?"
"Mostly just run about, see if we can catch anything." Eon explained, curling his tails over his back with an unhappy look at the ground. "I'd like to see if we can find a few of these gang hideouts too, maybe some of those… heck, what're they called? The one Lung ran."
"ABB?"
"Yeah, ABB. They don't have their dragon around, so now would be a good time to hit them, I think."
"Maybe." Swarm nodded. "What's that?" She pointed. Eon looked backwards at the brown bag he had attached carefully to his back.
"Treasure Bag." He told her. "Anything we might grab from gang dens can go in here. That's the normal rules of engagement back home when dealing with criminals. I've got paper in here too, I brought some with us when we came, so we can write a note to the local police if we find anything that needs to be handed in."
"That's fair." She bit her lip. "I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about just… taking the money, though. I mean… a lot of it's probably stolen, or drug money, or something."
"True, but we can't really trace any paper or coin back to people, can we?" Eon reasoned. "We'll make sure any of those plastic things make their way to the police as well, I'm sure they can find the owners of the things."
"Yeah, probably." Swarm inhaled deeply, then let out a sharp breath. "So, are we going undercover, or what?"
"Invisible." Eon told her. "I figured you wouldn't want people staring at us while we're running around."
"It'll happen eventually, but thank you." She said sincerely. "What do I need to do?"
"Just stay close and quiet, that's all. It's not too difficult to cloak more than one person, I do it with Shadow all the time, but it is a bit of a strain if I need to keep adjusting things to make sure no-one notices."
"What about you, Shadow?" The Cape asked the Vulpix, who was wandering the alley and sniffing the air.
"I'm going camouflage, so I'll be in charge of scouting in front of us a bit." She explained, fiddling with her illusion slightly as she did so and coming out at a slightly better blend of black and grey that hid her better in the still fading twilight. "When you're able to see and hear more with your bugs, I'll hand that job over to you, but right now it's easier for me to do it."
"That's fair. Be careful." Swarm reached behind her into the compartment she'd fashion into the back of her costume, taking out a pair of burner phones. "Here, I went and grabbed a few today after school. Cost a bit, but I can handle it." Eon smiled, taking the phone gently in a psychic grip- which made Taylor flinch, having forgotten that particular power- and looking at it for a moment before putting it in his bag.
"Thank you, Swarm. That's helpful, I'd forgotten that we might need these and don't have any money to get them right now anyway." Eon said. "We'll pay you back soon enough, I'm sure."
"Yeah." Swarm nodded. "I hope so."
"Come on." Eon straightened, waving his tails. "We're cloaked. Shadow, off you go. We'll be right behind you."
"Got it, Eon." The camouflaged form of the Vulpix nodded in the fading light, then vanished out of the alleyway in a blur. Eon and Swarm followed soon after, completely invisible, watching the dark form dart in and out of shadows, never staying in one place for very long and avoiding every beam of light with careful expertise. Swarm kept watching with her bugs, twitching every time someone got too close to Shadow, and only relaxing when they moved away.
"Calm down." Eon murmured. "Shadow's trained for this sort of stuff. She's good enough even normally, let along in black and grey. She'll be fine."
"I have to admit, I wouldn't expect her to be good at stealth," Swarm admitted lowly. "Given how enthusiastic she is."
"She always claims it's a good way to throw opponents off. If you're loud and bouncy, you couldn't possibly be a spy of any kind, because she draws too much attention." Eon chuckled. "I think she just wanted to prove to me that she could be serious if she wanted to be."
"Well, she does it really well." She smiled. "I wonder if we'll find something."
"Somehow I don't doubt it."
In the end, it only took a half an hour for them to stumble across trouble.
"A mugging." Shadow explained lowly, having spotted it in the alleyway and darted back to where she knew they were to explain. "Only one person, with a knife. The girl he's after is on the ground right now, and the guy smells kinda funny."
"He might be a Merchant, they're normally drugged up on something." Swarm advised.
"How do we handle this?" Eon asked.
"Swarm can distract him with bugs. Try not to have him close his eyes, I'm gonna try and Hypnosis him. Then we can call it in." Shadow explained.
"Can you manage that, Swarm?"
"Yeah, I can." The bug user straightened. "Not as bad as Lung, at least." Eon snorted.
"No, I suppose not. Go on, begin. I'll drop our illusions once we get into the alley more." Swarm nodded, gathering her bugs, while Shadow darted back into the mouth of the alleyway, where the mugging was taking place. A moment later, a spider crawled up his leg and bit down, making him yelp loudly and jump, holding his leg and nearly stabbing himself in the process. A small army of bugs appeared and swarmed him, keeping the man distracted while the woman carefully stood and backed away. Shadow crept forwards, dropping her illusion of dark colours, and grinned widely, setting up her attack.
"Hi there!"
"Gah!" The man jumped, eyes suddenly wide, as the bugs backed off. "Oh fuck, a… Cape…" Shadow kept eye contact with the would-be mugger as he began swaying, then fell over asleep. Swarm moved her bugs away, back into the shade of the alley, and Shadow leaned forward, cancelling her attack.
"Huh. That was easier than I expected. Normally takes longer than that." She mused.
"It was well done, though." Eon complemented, both of her teammates arriving and dropping into view. "Good job working together." The Ninetales stepped around the man towards the woman he'd tried to mug. "Are you alright, ma'am?"
"I'll be fine." She said, looking somewhat shaky and gripping her purse. "Thank you for your help."
"We were in the area, and it's what we do." Eon smiled, offering her his paw. "I'm Eon, the little one in Shadow and that's Swarm back there." He turned his head, nodding to each of them in turn. "Swarm, you calling this in?"
"Will do, Eon." The bug Cape nodded, taking out her phone. Eon and Shadow both ignored her quiet report into the device, instead giving the woman an once-over.
"He didn't hurt you at all, did he?" Shadow asked quickly, padding over.
"No, I'm fine." She repeated. "Thank you for your help."
"Like Eon said, it's no trouble." The little Vulpix grinned. "Hey, Eon, Swarm, what's actually the procedure for this? We stick around and talk to the police, right?"
"Presumably."
"We'll all have to give statements, most likely." The woman put in. "Whenever they get here."
"They're on their way, they said." Swarm told them, closing the phone and storing it. "I'll keep an eye out, though."
"Thank you, Swarm." Eon nodded. He glanced down at the mugger, sniffing a few times. "I think you were right, by the way. He's definitely on something. Several somethings, if I had to guess."
"Merchants." The bug user sighed. "They're annoying."
"From what you've said, all of the gangs can be annoying."
"True." She snorted. All four of them milled around for a moment, Eon and Swarm idly talking while Shadow and the woman stayed quiet, until Swarm looked towards the entrance of the alley. "They're here, or they will be in a moment." The sharp ears of both vulpines picked up the whine of the engine and sirens, and Eon lead the way out. Shadow lingered at the very back, watching the Merchant carefully, while the police stepped out of the car. They immediately stared at Eon, who seated himself carefully on the ground and swept his tails around his paws, but professionalism quickly took over and they started interviewing the four. Swarm lead them over to the knocked out mugger, who was quickly woken and arrested. Everyone went their own ways minutes later, the trio of heroes ducking back into the alleyway to set everything back up.
"That was surprisingly quick." Eon noted, shaking his head.
"Yeah, back home the officers practically ask for a step by step tour of the entire dungeon chase." Shadow grumbled.
"A lot of the officers here are kind of overworked." Swarm told them. "And it's just one mugger, so they probably weren't too interested in getting a step by step. Besides, I think the four of us covered things pretty well, don't you?"
"Yeah, I guess." Eon gave Swarm a long look. "You did very well there, given that it was your first time really working with us." She shrugged.
"I just followed Shadow's plan." She demurred, embarrassed.
"Either way, you did well." Eon looked back at Shadow, whose fur was now dark again. "Come on, let's get moving again. Maybe we can hit a supply and get your money for pay back."
"That'd be nice. Thank you."
"You're our teammate now, it's our job." Shadow grinned, before fading into the background and making her way out of the alley.
In total, the group found another two muggings and a gang house that they were fairly sure belonged to the ABB in the four hours they decided to patrol.
"What do we do about the gang building?" Swarm asked softly, as all three perched on a rooftop overlooking it.
"Can you tell how many people are in there right now?" Eon asked in response. "We can decide then." Swarm went silent for a few minutes directing her bugs around, then nodded.
"There's seven guys in there, all of them are in one room, except for one, who's in the same room as the money, drugs and weapons." She told him. "The rest are in the next room over."
"Shadow, could you slip into there, grab things and get out again?"
"I could do that, no problem. The main thing would be carrying stuff, I don't think I can managed properly with the bag." She gave the building another look. "Let's see…"
"I could go in, I suppose." Eon mused idly. "You two could stay hidden well enough, and I can do my double-cloak trick and avoid just about everyone."
"Or we could just leave it." Swarm suggested nervously. "I mean, I know Lung's not around, but they still have Oni Lee, and he's pretty dangerous." Eon looked up at her, slowly moving his tails.
"No-one would notice me." He promised. "We'd be safe." All three of them stayed still for a moment, then Shadow stepped back, acknowledging that this argument was between the two others.
"Be safe, and be quick, please." She finally requested, backing down and crouching next to Shadow.
"I will." Eon flicked his tails, vanishing from sight, and silently made his way down to ground level. Sneaking around the corner of the building and finding a locked door, he sniffed around for a moment before frowning. Picking up a can with some mental effort, he threw it, making it clatter on the ground. There was the vague sound of voices talking within, before two of the gang members came outside, guns held at the ready. They walked straight out of the building, right past the cloaked Eon, who slipped inside with a suppressed snort. Honestly, he thought to himself, quickly making his way through the building- apparently a remodelled warehouse, and almost definitely not what the plans for the building would say it looked like- towards the money, you didn't even think to leave someone standing in the doorway to make sure no-one could slip in? I mean, wouldn't have really worked with me anyway, but you'd think that people guarding the money stash would be a bit more vigilant, especially since their boss just got taken out.
Ignoring the idiocy of the ABB members, since all it was doing was making things easier for him, Eon sniffed the air as he walked, keeping to the walls and carefully curling his tails to make it less likely that someone would trip over him. Luckily, it appeared that the only two alert guards in the building had gone out of the door after Eon's distraction, since the Ninetales could hear people talking in one of the other rooms nearby. Nudging open the door that had the smell of paper money behind it, as well as similar drugs to the one the Merchants had apparently been on and a mess of unfamiliar scents, Eon put up another illusion that made the door appear shut, then pushed the door almost closed anyway just to be safe.
Then he turned around.
Wow. Eon thought, slowly pacing around the outskirts of the pile. That's an awful lot of money. Deciding not to waste any more time, since he didn't think the guards would be distracted much longer, he began heaping some of the money into his bag, careful not to take enough to be noticed. A few times he stepped back, evaluating the pile, before he decided on the third time that he had enough money and that it wouldn't be quickly noticed. Closing the Bag psychically, Eon crept out of the room again, barely managing to close the door properly and dispel the illusion over it when a pair of males, quite young and obviously of Asian descent, came around the corner talking lowly in a language Eon didn't recognise. He pressed himself against the wall and moved along, sliding past the two, and bolted for the exit, making as little noise as possible so as not to strain the illusion too much.
The front door was closed, but not properly locked, Eon discovered, and after a few moments of messing with the handle the door opened, letting Eon make his way out. He pushed it closed behind him and ran back to the building his teammates were hiding on, dropping the illusion and putting back a much wider version once he was next to them.
"Did it go ok?" Shadow asked. "Swarm said she saw a couple of people leaving for a little while around the other side." Eon nodded.
"I caused a distraction to get in. They're really idiots, it looks like. I didn't count how much I got, but it was quite a lot. We'll have a proper look when we get back to the base." Swarm nodded, visibly relaxing, and glanced skywards.
"It's about midnight, I think, so do you want to head back or keep going?"
"Head back." Shadow decided, before Eon could even get a word in. "You didn't get much sleep last night anyway, I can tell, and while Eon and I are used to it from our explorations, you're not yet." Eon glared slightly at Shadow, making her shut up, before chuckling and nodding.
"I was thinking the same. We'll walk you back again tonight, then head back to the base ourselves and hide everything. I'll do a proper inventory tomorrow morning, then we can meet up tomorrow night for another patrol."
"Ok." Swarm agreed. All three of them stood and stretched, before heading back to the ground and making their way through the alleyways under the cover of the illusions. They didn't run into any more trouble, but a few blocks from her house Swarm stopped them. "I need to take the battery out of this phone, make sure it can't be tracked." She explained, pulling it from her pocket.
"We'll take it back to base with us as well. I'm hiding our stuff a little ways away, or at least some of it. Phones and stuff can go in one place, so even if they do get tracked no-one will find the rest of it, some of our money and stuff in another place, and the rest of it in a third." Eon told her. Swarm nodded, handing the pieces to him.
"That's clever."
"It's not exactly our first time roughing it, though we normally have access to the storage back home, which no-one in their right or wrong minds would try and steal from. Same with the bank, but we can't access that on the field, so we hide things in camp when we have to." Eon smiled, putting them away. "Now come on, let's get back into your house. You need to get in before changing, right?"
"Yeah, but we have a little shed at the bottom of the garden that I've hidden a change of clothes in for absolute emergencies, just in case I get back and dad's still awake."
"You might want to leave a change of clothes with us as well, in case there's an emergency and you can't get home to change at all." Shadow opined. "Maybe you could make a spare costume too, and leave that at the base as well so if you need to costume up during the day you can just come to us. Or if this one gets damaged you have a spare that's easy enough to get to."
"It took me four months to make this costume, though."
"A lot of that was probably designing it, right? You know what you're doing this time, so it could be a lot faster." Swarm nodded.
"Yeah, that's true." She smiled at Shadow. "Alright, I'll start work on that… probably tomorrow. Thank you, and goodnight."
"Goodnight, Swarm." The trio parted, Shadow and Eon making their way back and watching as the Cape slipped through the fence and made her way into her house. They listened for a while, trying to see if anyone spoke from inside, but after hearing nothing for about five minutes they set off towards their own base, walking silently and carefully until they reached the city limits.
"That was… kinda fun." Shadow stated, looking up and left at Eon. "Don'tcha think?"
"It was." Eon agreed. "Different to our normal duties, that's for certain. And this city… it's a mess, sure, but it's an interesting mess. It might even be one we can clear up, at least a little."
"I'd like some help from our other team members if we went against some of the big ones, though." She said nervously. "Not just Swarm, but some of the ones from home too, like Vespiquen and Dragonite, or maybe someone like Mesprit and Uxie and Azelf if they were willing. Some of these guys are scary, and we're not really best suited for direct attack on our own."
"We can do it, though." Eon smirked. "Especially given your… eccentric family tree." Shadow chuckled.
"I suppose, yeah." The little vulpine yawned, blinking. "Huh. That illusion must've took more energy than I realised."
"C'mon, pix." Eon said. "Let's get back and rest."
"No argument from me." She nodded, trotting beside him.
"Patrols, I think." She replied, standing and stretching. "Just wander around and look for crimes to stop."
"Hmm." The Ninetales huffed, standing as well and shaking himself, fur rippling in the movement. "Well, I think it's a bit late for that, don't you?" He turned his head skyward, looking at the moon. "We've been talking for something like three hours, I reckon."
"Oh, hell." Swarm muttered. "It must be what, two in the morning?"
"Something like that." Shadow nodded, shaking herself out. "Do you want to try for a patrol of some kind?"
"No… no, I think it's best we don't." She decided, after a moment. "To be honest, I'm still a bit distracted from everything you've told me. I wouldn't really want to risk that on trying to fight someone."
"Makes sense." Eon nodded. "So, we should try and do another couple of things instead."
"Like what?"
"Well, a meeting place, for one." Shadow told her. "A team needs a place they can meet up, either to share information or go out together."
"That makes sense." The Cape admitted. "It'd be a bit annoying trying to find each other all the time."
"We have got a base set up," Eon said, "But it's quite a ways out of the city, so it might be a bit awkward trying to meet up there."
"How far?"
"I'm not exactly sure, we didn't really measure, but there's a nice grove a ways away. There's a few willow trees, and we used them to make a hideout."
"Could we go there now, do you think?" Swarm asked. "I'll need to be back home sort of soon, because it's Tuesday and I have school tomorrow, but I can go until four or so."
"Is that enough sleep?" Shadow seemed a little sceptical. "I mean, that can't be very much."
"It's about three hours, I'll cope." She shrugged. "Besides, school's a bit of a wreck at the best of times, so I don't really care anyway." Eon and Shadow traded glances, then shrugged as well.
"Alright. We'll head back down to ground level, and I'll put the invisibility and inaudibility illusions back up. It'll be easier to avoid people then, especially since we're not really looking for trouble tonight." The elder explained. "Though if we run into something we should help."
"No argument there." Swarm muttered.
"Tattletale filled us in on a lot of the situation in the city right now," he continued, pretending he hadn't heard her, "So we know a lot of what to expect. Hopefully we don't run into anyone too dangerous on the way over."
"Famous last words." She snorted, going over to a fire ladder on the side of the building, both Pokemon following her. "This is Brockton Bay, something always goes dangerous here." Shadow snickered.
"Oh, have we got some stories for you, Swarm." She said, crouching down in preparation to jump. "Trust me, we've had some experiences with danger." Swarm seemed to smile, swinging herself onto the ladder.
"I'm looking forward to it."
"This is where we've set up our base." Eon announced, stepping into the clearing through one of the willows. Long tails kept the branches out of the way, letting his two partners through as well, and he smiled up at the only masked member of the group. "There's no-one anywhere nearby, and I'm gonna be setting a bunch of illusions up over the next few days, so no-one can find it even when we're gone. At the moment, it's only invisible and only when I'm here, but the prep kit has some stuff I can use."
"Pardon?" Swarm asked, confused. Eon barked out a laugh.
"It's a trick I learned from a Zoroark, a few months back. He used little gems to anchor illusions too, and he ended up teaching me how to do it. It's his signature move, but mostly because he's never found someone else with the potential to learn it."
"And it took you the better part of the time we were at home, too." Shadow put in. "He basically went on vacation from missions for a while to try getting it down."
"It's a useful trick, though." Eon retorted, tapping her head. "When I've got it all set up here, no-one's ever gonna find this place."
"What will they do?" Swarm questioned, interrupting the mini argument.
"Invisibility, inaudibility, which is mostly useful when we're here, a few fake Pokemon that'll appear to attack to drive people off if they get too close, some actual animals, and an automatic avoidance field." Eon listed. "I've tested that last one a lot, and as long as you don't know it's there, you won't resist it." Shadow snorted, muttering lowly.
"He tested it with me." She grumbled softly. "I was refusing to go anywhere near the base all day because of it."
"Once she knew it was there, though, she could fight back against the feelings." Eon told her. "I'll make sure anyone who needs to get near knows, just so they can do the same."
"That's really impressive." The Cape muttered. "A sort of Master-Shaker field… I don't know of anyone who can do something like that." Eon smiled.
"Well, anyway," he said, gaining her attention again, "We're in a perfectly private place, and no-one's going to find us, Swarm, so what's your actual name?" The girl hesitated slightly, then reached up and pulled off her mask, revealing a somewhat plain girl with brown eyes and a wide mouth.
"Taylor." She said quietly. "Taylor Hebert."
"Nice to have you with us, Taylor." Eon smiled again, offering his paw once more. She took it in her off hand-
Trudging through a building, head down, looking at the floor through black glasses.
Three girls, laughing and teasing, while the rest of the school watched on.
Approaching a locker, a foul smell, opening it.
Seeing the mess inside, retching, being pushed, the slam of metal on metal, the click of a lock.
Screaming for help as things crawled about her.
Blackness.
-and shook again.
"Thank you for offering to let me join." She replied quietly.
"Hey, you were really cool last night, and I'm sure you'll be super helpful at super-heroing." Shadow beamed, tapping her paw on top of their joined hands. "I mean, what sort of stuff can you do with bugs, anyway? I know Vespiquen commands a little bug horde, but I'm not really sure what she does, aside from healing and some defence."
"I normally use stinging insects," Taylor explained, squinting a little. "I have Epi-pens and stuff in case of allergies, since I use spiders and wasps a lot."
"Epi-pens?" Shadow asked, turning her head.
"They stop allergic reactions to things. Some sort of injection. I don't really know much more, sorry." She shrugged. "Anyway, it's what I was doing against Lung; using poisonous spiders to try and overcome his regeneration."
"That's pretty good." Eon told her, recovering from the sudden vision. "And we saw earlier you can hear through them-"
"Only when I have a lot of bugs in one area." She corrected. "Bug senses are really bad, so I can't see or hear anything unless I've got tons of bugs to use."
"Can you make illusions with them?" Eon and Taylor both looked down at Shadow, confused. "It's something I saw before, working with another team." She explained herself, sitting down. "Remember, back when the Guild was putting together that expedition, and wanted a few more experienced outsiders to join?"
"Yeah, I remember." Eon nodded. "Taylor, I'll tell you that story later on."
"Alright." Taylor agreed, sitting down next to her.
"Well, I ended up working with one of the other teams, while Eon was chattering away with a few people." She smirked at Eon, who groaned. "And there was a Vespiquen there, too. She used to use her mini hive to make shapes in the air, like we do with our illusions, to trick other Pokemon into going after them instead of her and her team."
"That's… huh." Taylor pursed her lips. "I didn't think of doing that. I mean, I've thought of using bugs as a distraction, but not to mimic someone as bait."
"I can do something similar." Shadow told her. With a frown of focus, a golden Ninetales appeared next to them, and she replicated the trick she'd shown Eon the day before.
"I make them talk too, but it's difficult." The Ninetales said. "It's sort of similar to the inaudibility illusion, but I'm almost moving the sound I make to the illusion." Shadow made the illusion vanish, coughing again.
"But it's kinda difficult, and I can't keep it up for long." She added. "It's something I only learned to do very recently- like, about a week before we came here. I'm gonna keep practising, though, it might be useful now that we're in another world. Still, maybe you could do something with your bugs, like make them in the shape of people to lure bad guys around?"
"I could probably manage…" Taylor chewed her lip for a moment, seeming introspective. A moment later, bugs began crawling out from the trees and into the clearing, making a pool near to Taylor, before suddenly rising up from the ground and creating a loose shape of a person. "I don't really have enough bugs to do anything more than that." She frowned.
"But you could." Eon smirked. "We get more bugs, make the clouds a lot darker… people would never know if it's you or a fake. That'll help keep you safe when we work."
"You think I'd be in danger?"
"We're fighting criminals, we're always in danger." Shadow remarked. "Better to trick the crap out of them and stay safe, right?"
"I guess, yeah." She sighed. "Wish I'd thought of this last night…"
"Eh, you're alive, which is all that matters." Eon assured her. "What else… right, we need to see about getting you a badge."
"What?"
"A badge, like this one." Shadow pointed at the pin on her scarf. "All Rescue Teams and Exploration Teams back home have one, and we use it to send the people we've been sent to rescue home, the criminals back to a base for the authorities, and get ourselves out of dungeons if we're having trouble." She smiled. "Of course, that won't work here, but it'll work well as a group identifier for other people in the city."
"That… makes sense." Taylor said softly. "But I wouldn't have the money to get one, and I know you don't. You've only been here a few days, after all."
"Just over a day, yes." Eon nodded. "But here's the thing; while you have school, we can be out roaming the city. We don't have a human civilian identity, so there'd be no paper trails to one of us getting the badge made, and we can probably sniff out gang hideouts and rob them invisibly." Eon nodded towards the hideout, where the Treasure Bag was hidden. "The bag we take on dungeon explorations is strangely large. We could take and hide money in there, bring it back to the base, then use it as we need it. Since we can just use illusions to hide what we really look like, we can do any sort of shopping with a different face each time, which will help."
"That… yeah." Taylor nodded in turn. "That makes sense." Quietly, she yawned.
"Would you like us to walk you back to your house?" Eon offered, seeing that the girl was tired.
"Sure, but we need to be careful." She warned, standing. "My dad doesn't know I'm a Cape."
"Why wouldn't you tell him?" Shadow asked. "Or your mom?"
"My mom died two years ago. Nearly three, now." Taylor said quietly. "Dad and I drifted apart since then."
"I'm sorry." Eon softly apologised. Taylor shrugged.
"Nothing for you to be sorry for." She pulled her mask back over her face, tugging her brown, wavy hair out of the back and swarming it with bugs again.
"Hey, while we walk, let me tell you about that thing on the expedition!" Shadow cheered, trying to bring the atmosphere back up. 'Swarm' looked down, interested, while Eon groaned.
"No, Shadow!" He pleaded. "Please!"
"Nuh-uh." She smirked, trotting alongside their new teammate. "Anyway, while we were on the trip, one of the Vespiquen's teammates, a Delcatty- it looks like this," Shadow formed an illusion of the purple and tan cat, letting it wander next to them for a moment before fading, "Caught Eon's eye. So, for practically the whole trip, Eon's mooning over this pretty little cat…"
Taylor slipped in through the back door, carefully locking it behind her and making her way upstairs. Reaching her room, she slipped out of her costume and hid it in the bottom of her wardrobe, before looking out of her window and over to the back yard. The white-grey form of Eon caught her eye for a moment, and he waved a blue-tipped tail at her before shimmering out of sight. Taylor spent a few minutes looking still, hoping to spot Shadow as well, before giving up and closing the blind, lying flat on the bed and staring at the ceiling in deep thought.
During their walk back, Taylor had ended up telling Shadow and Eon where her school was, among the general chat of the slow pace, which they'd set in order to avoid disturbing the illusion. Eventually they'd had to quieten down to near silence as well, to make sure no-one could hear them, but they'd still spoken slightly with each other, making plans to meet up the next night and go on a proper patrol. They'd even had the idea of doing a few afternoon ones, once they had a bit more time on their hands, or perhaps doing them on weekends and roaming the city all day. Taylor had liked both ideas, and they'd set up their meeting point at a clothing store very near to Taylor's house, which they'd passed on the way. It was a very nice place, despite not being on the ever-popular Boardwalk, and Taylor had often wished she could afford to go in there.
She made a mental note to drop by the shops and pick up some burner phones the next day as well. She had the money for it- barely- and she'd been planning to do it anyway so that she could call in crimes when necessary.
Stifling a yawn, Taylor took out her contact lenses- she was glad she'd been able to afford them recently so she could go out in costume more easily, even though she still preferred her glasses most of the time- and rolled over to try and get some sleep before school the next day.
"What was it like this time, Eon?" Shadow asked softly as they stealthy made their way through an alley. The little Vulpix had noticed Eon going through another one of his visions when he'd taken Taylor's hand in the clearing, and had moved quickly to distract the girl while her friend and partner recovered from the dizzy spell that always came with the visions.
"I'm… not sure." Eon muttered, thinking back. The vision had been a little distorted, especially towards the end of it, which was different to the usual clarity of his flashes into the future or the past of whatever triggered them. Eon had a good memory, however, and he always made it a point to commit whatever he saw to his mind, which gave him time to think later on. "You remember how Tattletale said Triggers are always traumatic?"
"Yeah." Shadow nodded, looking miserable. "I hate to think that Ta- Swarm when through one."
"I think I saw her Trigger." He told her. "She… she was shoved in a locker full of waste. I'm not sure how long she was in there, I think she passed out after a while."
"Or you only saw up to her Trigger. Tattletale said people pass out when it happens." Shadow pointed out with a scowl. "Damn. How the hell could that happen? I would've thought schools would be better than that."
"I'd assume so as well." Eon growled. "It's not like we could bring it up, though. People don't talk about their Triggers."
"Invisibility." Eon paused mid-step, looking down at his friend. "We can make ourselves invisible and sneak about the school tomorrow, try and see what's going on."
"We're not going to be able to look at records, you know." Shadow scoffed.
"Of course I know that. If we had Porygon here, I might try for it, or Rotom, but not as us. But we can still sneak around the school a bit and see what's going on in there, and what it's like for Swarm." Shadow huffed angrily. "I don't like that she's so dismissive of her work."
"Neither do I." Eon admitted. "Fine. Would you be alright to go in on your own, Shadow? You're smaller than me, so you could slip around easier. Not to mention the tails."
"Yeah, we probably don't want to accidentally curse most the school by them stepping on your tails." Shadow snorted. "Or trip them up, or something. But yeah, I can do it. Not sure if I can hold an invisibility-inaudibility cloak for that long, but I can do camouflage and stay in the shadows or something."
"Either way, maybe don't stop about for too long, so that you don't end up straining yourself and losing the cloak." Eon suggested. "We don't want to get caught."
"No, I'd rather our public debut was doing something cool, thanks." Shadow agreed. "I'll slip in a bit after the big morning rush- there's gotta be one of those, right?- and snoop around for a bit. I'm sure I can find something."
"Give it a bit more time, maybe in a couple of days. We need to set up first. After that, then as long as you're careful you can go." He sighed. "Now c'mon, let's get back and catch a few hours of sleep before tomorrow."
"Alright." They walked in silence until they were almost in the clearing. "Hey Eon?"
"Mh?"
"Are you alright? You don't normally have many visions super-close, do you? Has something happened?"
"Maybe it's just because we're on another world, Shadow." Eon shrugged, the movement rippling, and ducked under the branches. "Remember we were told that the Scream worked more often in the past than in the future, so maybe it's something similar."
"I hope so. They're useful, but they can be a pain and really distracting."
"Don't I know it, little pix."
Later that afternoon, around seven, Taylor met up with the two of them outside the shop. She was in costume, and had slipped carefully into an alleyway a few minutes before, waiting for her teammates to show up. Both of them arrived after about ten minutes, Eon under an invisibility-inaudibility illusion set and Shadow hidden by a change in colour to something far darker than her normal orange-red-and-cream colour scheme.
"Ready to go, Swarm?" Shadow grinned, patting her leg in greeting.
"As ready as I can be." She nodded with a slight smile. "What's the plan?"
"Mostly just run about, see if we can catch anything." Eon explained, curling his tails over his back with an unhappy look at the ground. "I'd like to see if we can find a few of these gang hideouts too, maybe some of those… heck, what're they called? The one Lung ran."
"ABB?"
"Yeah, ABB. They don't have their dragon around, so now would be a good time to hit them, I think."
"Maybe." Swarm nodded. "What's that?" She pointed. Eon looked backwards at the brown bag he had attached carefully to his back.
"Treasure Bag." He told her. "Anything we might grab from gang dens can go in here. That's the normal rules of engagement back home when dealing with criminals. I've got paper in here too, I brought some with us when we came, so we can write a note to the local police if we find anything that needs to be handed in."
"That's fair." She bit her lip. "I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about just… taking the money, though. I mean… a lot of it's probably stolen, or drug money, or something."
"True, but we can't really trace any paper or coin back to people, can we?" Eon reasoned. "We'll make sure any of those plastic things make their way to the police as well, I'm sure they can find the owners of the things."
"Yeah, probably." Swarm inhaled deeply, then let out a sharp breath. "So, are we going undercover, or what?"
"Invisible." Eon told her. "I figured you wouldn't want people staring at us while we're running around."
"It'll happen eventually, but thank you." She said sincerely. "What do I need to do?"
"Just stay close and quiet, that's all. It's not too difficult to cloak more than one person, I do it with Shadow all the time, but it is a bit of a strain if I need to keep adjusting things to make sure no-one notices."
"What about you, Shadow?" The Cape asked the Vulpix, who was wandering the alley and sniffing the air.
"I'm going camouflage, so I'll be in charge of scouting in front of us a bit." She explained, fiddling with her illusion slightly as she did so and coming out at a slightly better blend of black and grey that hid her better in the still fading twilight. "When you're able to see and hear more with your bugs, I'll hand that job over to you, but right now it's easier for me to do it."
"That's fair. Be careful." Swarm reached behind her into the compartment she'd fashion into the back of her costume, taking out a pair of burner phones. "Here, I went and grabbed a few today after school. Cost a bit, but I can handle it." Eon smiled, taking the phone gently in a psychic grip- which made Taylor flinch, having forgotten that particular power- and looking at it for a moment before putting it in his bag.
"Thank you, Swarm. That's helpful, I'd forgotten that we might need these and don't have any money to get them right now anyway." Eon said. "We'll pay you back soon enough, I'm sure."
"Yeah." Swarm nodded. "I hope so."
"Come on." Eon straightened, waving his tails. "We're cloaked. Shadow, off you go. We'll be right behind you."
"Got it, Eon." The camouflaged form of the Vulpix nodded in the fading light, then vanished out of the alleyway in a blur. Eon and Swarm followed soon after, completely invisible, watching the dark form dart in and out of shadows, never staying in one place for very long and avoiding every beam of light with careful expertise. Swarm kept watching with her bugs, twitching every time someone got too close to Shadow, and only relaxing when they moved away.
"Calm down." Eon murmured. "Shadow's trained for this sort of stuff. She's good enough even normally, let along in black and grey. She'll be fine."
"I have to admit, I wouldn't expect her to be good at stealth," Swarm admitted lowly. "Given how enthusiastic she is."
"She always claims it's a good way to throw opponents off. If you're loud and bouncy, you couldn't possibly be a spy of any kind, because she draws too much attention." Eon chuckled. "I think she just wanted to prove to me that she could be serious if she wanted to be."
"Well, she does it really well." She smiled. "I wonder if we'll find something."
"Somehow I don't doubt it."
In the end, it only took a half an hour for them to stumble across trouble.
"A mugging." Shadow explained lowly, having spotted it in the alleyway and darted back to where she knew they were to explain. "Only one person, with a knife. The girl he's after is on the ground right now, and the guy smells kinda funny."
"He might be a Merchant, they're normally drugged up on something." Swarm advised.
"How do we handle this?" Eon asked.
"Swarm can distract him with bugs. Try not to have him close his eyes, I'm gonna try and Hypnosis him. Then we can call it in." Shadow explained.
"Can you manage that, Swarm?"
"Yeah, I can." The bug user straightened. "Not as bad as Lung, at least." Eon snorted.
"No, I suppose not. Go on, begin. I'll drop our illusions once we get into the alley more." Swarm nodded, gathering her bugs, while Shadow darted back into the mouth of the alleyway, where the mugging was taking place. A moment later, a spider crawled up his leg and bit down, making him yelp loudly and jump, holding his leg and nearly stabbing himself in the process. A small army of bugs appeared and swarmed him, keeping the man distracted while the woman carefully stood and backed away. Shadow crept forwards, dropping her illusion of dark colours, and grinned widely, setting up her attack.
"Hi there!"
"Gah!" The man jumped, eyes suddenly wide, as the bugs backed off. "Oh fuck, a… Cape…" Shadow kept eye contact with the would-be mugger as he began swaying, then fell over asleep. Swarm moved her bugs away, back into the shade of the alley, and Shadow leaned forward, cancelling her attack.
"Huh. That was easier than I expected. Normally takes longer than that." She mused.
"It was well done, though." Eon complemented, both of her teammates arriving and dropping into view. "Good job working together." The Ninetales stepped around the man towards the woman he'd tried to mug. "Are you alright, ma'am?"
"I'll be fine." She said, looking somewhat shaky and gripping her purse. "Thank you for your help."
"We were in the area, and it's what we do." Eon smiled, offering her his paw. "I'm Eon, the little one in Shadow and that's Swarm back there." He turned his head, nodding to each of them in turn. "Swarm, you calling this in?"
"Will do, Eon." The bug Cape nodded, taking out her phone. Eon and Shadow both ignored her quiet report into the device, instead giving the woman an once-over.
"He didn't hurt you at all, did he?" Shadow asked quickly, padding over.
"No, I'm fine." She repeated. "Thank you for your help."
"Like Eon said, it's no trouble." The little Vulpix grinned. "Hey, Eon, Swarm, what's actually the procedure for this? We stick around and talk to the police, right?"
"Presumably."
"We'll all have to give statements, most likely." The woman put in. "Whenever they get here."
"They're on their way, they said." Swarm told them, closing the phone and storing it. "I'll keep an eye out, though."
"Thank you, Swarm." Eon nodded. He glanced down at the mugger, sniffing a few times. "I think you were right, by the way. He's definitely on something. Several somethings, if I had to guess."
"Merchants." The bug user sighed. "They're annoying."
"From what you've said, all of the gangs can be annoying."
"True." She snorted. All four of them milled around for a moment, Eon and Swarm idly talking while Shadow and the woman stayed quiet, until Swarm looked towards the entrance of the alley. "They're here, or they will be in a moment." The sharp ears of both vulpines picked up the whine of the engine and sirens, and Eon lead the way out. Shadow lingered at the very back, watching the Merchant carefully, while the police stepped out of the car. They immediately stared at Eon, who seated himself carefully on the ground and swept his tails around his paws, but professionalism quickly took over and they started interviewing the four. Swarm lead them over to the knocked out mugger, who was quickly woken and arrested. Everyone went their own ways minutes later, the trio of heroes ducking back into the alleyway to set everything back up.
"That was surprisingly quick." Eon noted, shaking his head.
"Yeah, back home the officers practically ask for a step by step tour of the entire dungeon chase." Shadow grumbled.
"A lot of the officers here are kind of overworked." Swarm told them. "And it's just one mugger, so they probably weren't too interested in getting a step by step. Besides, I think the four of us covered things pretty well, don't you?"
"Yeah, I guess." Eon gave Swarm a long look. "You did very well there, given that it was your first time really working with us." She shrugged.
"I just followed Shadow's plan." She demurred, embarrassed.
"Either way, you did well." Eon looked back at Shadow, whose fur was now dark again. "Come on, let's get moving again. Maybe we can hit a supply and get your money for pay back."
"That'd be nice. Thank you."
"You're our teammate now, it's our job." Shadow grinned, before fading into the background and making her way out of the alley.
In total, the group found another two muggings and a gang house that they were fairly sure belonged to the ABB in the four hours they decided to patrol.
"What do we do about the gang building?" Swarm asked softly, as all three perched on a rooftop overlooking it.
"Can you tell how many people are in there right now?" Eon asked in response. "We can decide then." Swarm went silent for a few minutes directing her bugs around, then nodded.
"There's seven guys in there, all of them are in one room, except for one, who's in the same room as the money, drugs and weapons." She told him. "The rest are in the next room over."
"Shadow, could you slip into there, grab things and get out again?"
"I could do that, no problem. The main thing would be carrying stuff, I don't think I can managed properly with the bag." She gave the building another look. "Let's see…"
"I could go in, I suppose." Eon mused idly. "You two could stay hidden well enough, and I can do my double-cloak trick and avoid just about everyone."
"Or we could just leave it." Swarm suggested nervously. "I mean, I know Lung's not around, but they still have Oni Lee, and he's pretty dangerous." Eon looked up at her, slowly moving his tails.
"No-one would notice me." He promised. "We'd be safe." All three of them stayed still for a moment, then Shadow stepped back, acknowledging that this argument was between the two others.
"Be safe, and be quick, please." She finally requested, backing down and crouching next to Shadow.
"I will." Eon flicked his tails, vanishing from sight, and silently made his way down to ground level. Sneaking around the corner of the building and finding a locked door, he sniffed around for a moment before frowning. Picking up a can with some mental effort, he threw it, making it clatter on the ground. There was the vague sound of voices talking within, before two of the gang members came outside, guns held at the ready. They walked straight out of the building, right past the cloaked Eon, who slipped inside with a suppressed snort. Honestly, he thought to himself, quickly making his way through the building- apparently a remodelled warehouse, and almost definitely not what the plans for the building would say it looked like- towards the money, you didn't even think to leave someone standing in the doorway to make sure no-one could slip in? I mean, wouldn't have really worked with me anyway, but you'd think that people guarding the money stash would be a bit more vigilant, especially since their boss just got taken out.
Ignoring the idiocy of the ABB members, since all it was doing was making things easier for him, Eon sniffed the air as he walked, keeping to the walls and carefully curling his tails to make it less likely that someone would trip over him. Luckily, it appeared that the only two alert guards in the building had gone out of the door after Eon's distraction, since the Ninetales could hear people talking in one of the other rooms nearby. Nudging open the door that had the smell of paper money behind it, as well as similar drugs to the one the Merchants had apparently been on and a mess of unfamiliar scents, Eon put up another illusion that made the door appear shut, then pushed the door almost closed anyway just to be safe.
Then he turned around.
Wow. Eon thought, slowly pacing around the outskirts of the pile. That's an awful lot of money. Deciding not to waste any more time, since he didn't think the guards would be distracted much longer, he began heaping some of the money into his bag, careful not to take enough to be noticed. A few times he stepped back, evaluating the pile, before he decided on the third time that he had enough money and that it wouldn't be quickly noticed. Closing the Bag psychically, Eon crept out of the room again, barely managing to close the door properly and dispel the illusion over it when a pair of males, quite young and obviously of Asian descent, came around the corner talking lowly in a language Eon didn't recognise. He pressed himself against the wall and moved along, sliding past the two, and bolted for the exit, making as little noise as possible so as not to strain the illusion too much.
The front door was closed, but not properly locked, Eon discovered, and after a few moments of messing with the handle the door opened, letting Eon make his way out. He pushed it closed behind him and ran back to the building his teammates were hiding on, dropping the illusion and putting back a much wider version once he was next to them.
"Did it go ok?" Shadow asked. "Swarm said she saw a couple of people leaving for a little while around the other side." Eon nodded.
"I caused a distraction to get in. They're really idiots, it looks like. I didn't count how much I got, but it was quite a lot. We'll have a proper look when we get back to the base." Swarm nodded, visibly relaxing, and glanced skywards.
"It's about midnight, I think, so do you want to head back or keep going?"
"Head back." Shadow decided, before Eon could even get a word in. "You didn't get much sleep last night anyway, I can tell, and while Eon and I are used to it from our explorations, you're not yet." Eon glared slightly at Shadow, making her shut up, before chuckling and nodding.
"I was thinking the same. We'll walk you back again tonight, then head back to the base ourselves and hide everything. I'll do a proper inventory tomorrow morning, then we can meet up tomorrow night for another patrol."
"Ok." Swarm agreed. All three of them stood and stretched, before heading back to the ground and making their way through the alleyways under the cover of the illusions. They didn't run into any more trouble, but a few blocks from her house Swarm stopped them. "I need to take the battery out of this phone, make sure it can't be tracked." She explained, pulling it from her pocket.
"We'll take it back to base with us as well. I'm hiding our stuff a little ways away, or at least some of it. Phones and stuff can go in one place, so even if they do get tracked no-one will find the rest of it, some of our money and stuff in another place, and the rest of it in a third." Eon told her. Swarm nodded, handing the pieces to him.
"That's clever."
"It's not exactly our first time roughing it, though we normally have access to the storage back home, which no-one in their right or wrong minds would try and steal from. Same with the bank, but we can't access that on the field, so we hide things in camp when we have to." Eon smiled, putting them away. "Now come on, let's get back into your house. You need to get in before changing, right?"
"Yeah, but we have a little shed at the bottom of the garden that I've hidden a change of clothes in for absolute emergencies, just in case I get back and dad's still awake."
"You might want to leave a change of clothes with us as well, in case there's an emergency and you can't get home to change at all." Shadow opined. "Maybe you could make a spare costume too, and leave that at the base as well so if you need to costume up during the day you can just come to us. Or if this one gets damaged you have a spare that's easy enough to get to."
"It took me four months to make this costume, though."
"A lot of that was probably designing it, right? You know what you're doing this time, so it could be a lot faster." Swarm nodded.
"Yeah, that's true." She smiled at Shadow. "Alright, I'll start work on that… probably tomorrow. Thank you, and goodnight."
"Goodnight, Swarm." The trio parted, Shadow and Eon making their way back and watching as the Cape slipped through the fence and made her way into her house. They listened for a while, trying to see if anyone spoke from inside, but after hearing nothing for about five minutes they set off towards their own base, walking silently and carefully until they reached the city limits.
"That was… kinda fun." Shadow stated, looking up and left at Eon. "Don'tcha think?"
"It was." Eon agreed. "Different to our normal duties, that's for certain. And this city… it's a mess, sure, but it's an interesting mess. It might even be one we can clear up, at least a little."
"I'd like some help from our other team members if we went against some of the big ones, though." She said nervously. "Not just Swarm, but some of the ones from home too, like Vespiquen and Dragonite, or maybe someone like Mesprit and Uxie and Azelf if they were willing. Some of these guys are scary, and we're not really best suited for direct attack on our own."
"We can do it, though." Eon smirked. "Especially given your… eccentric family tree." Shadow chuckled.
"I suppose, yeah." The little vulpine yawned, blinking. "Huh. That illusion must've took more energy than I realised."
"C'mon, pix." Eon said. "Let's get back and rest."
"No argument from me." She nodded, trotting beside him.
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Good question! I've actually been working on the part of the story that has pretty much the entire info dump for that, but since it's kinda far away at a guess, might as well answer now.
The Pokemon world in this is a mix of the Red/Blue and Time/Darkness/Sky Mystery Dungeon worlds, as well as the anime and an original PMD area for the sake of Shadow and Eon's homeland. Things are a bit meshed up- I'm working from something like nine canon maps at minimum, since I'm not including any of the other spinoffs that I could use, plus the original area- but I've got it pretty much worked out either way.
The anime and PMD 'worlds', as it were, are essentially two parts of a whole that don't really interact with each other, at least for the sake of this story. Things like the Distortion World and the Space/Time realms are different dimensions of the same world, as well.
Chapter 6- Schooling, sneaking, and speaking
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Shadow slowly crept along the side of the building, keeping to the shadows as she did. She had an illusion up to change her colouring to a grey-black, making it much harder to see her through the darkness, and was being careful not to knock anyone or make too much noise.
"That's the place?" She muttered to herself, disgusted. "What a dump."
She'd managed to persuade Eon that she could handle the building herself, so he had stayed at their new base and worked on setting up the guards for it to keep it safe while they were gone. As a trade-off, Shadow was also going to try and get a bit of insight into the security of the place, so that she and Eon could sneak back in during one of the nights where they could have Taylor take a day off and snoop about to find something interesting.
Shadow's extremely good senses picked up the shrill ringing of a bell from inside the mess of a place across the street, and she paused, picking a moment where nothing was going on on the road to cloak herself and make a run for it. Stopping in the shadows of the building, she dropped the cloak and went back to the dark colour scheme, watching with interest as people began making their way in. From their talk with Tattletale the day before, she recognised that a number of them wore gang signs, and sighed softly at the obvious divide between groups.
Spotting a tall figure with long brown hair, Shadow immediately began tracking her movements, slowly inching her way around as she did. Taylor was wearing glasses now, the difference surprising but not incredible, and had her head down towards the floor. As she passed, Shadow listened closely, hearing jeers from just about every person, along with the high pitched giggling of a group of girls. One with red hair stepped from the group, and Taylor stiffened. A black skinned girl stepped up as well, and both of them began speaking to Taylor, the red head's body language mocking and the black girl's irate.
Cursing softly that she couldn't hear what was being said, Shadow weighed up her options for a moment, then cloaked fully and tracked closer to them.
"Honestly, Hebert, you shouldn't even be here." The red head smirked. "Just go away like the little girl you are."
"Fuck off, Emma." Taylor snapped, making Shadow's eyes widen. Apparently the girls were just as taken aback, and the group let Taylor pass by them. For a moment, Shadow thought that would be everything, but the black girl suddenly charged Taylor, aiming a punch at her back. Her new friend hit the ground hard, though her glasses seemed alright, and Shadow stifled a gasp.
"Watch your mouth, bitch." The black girl snarled, before turning to the crowd. "The fuck you all looking at?" The crowd quickly moved along, and Shadow had to do some careful dodging around them as they left. The red head, Emma, put her hand on the other's shoulder.
"Come on, Sophia, let's let Taylor cry in peace." She requested. "We might as well leave her with a little bit of dignity."
"Fine." Sophia and Emma wandered into the school, soon leaving the entire yard empty, aside from Taylor herself. Shadow looked around the area, then crept forwards and dropped her cloak.
"Taylor?" Shadow asked softly.
"Shadow?" The bug user seemed surprised. "What're you doing here? Where's Eon?"
"I was sneaking about, having a look around, and I spotted what was going on." She explained. "Eon's at the base, adding to the protections. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." She muttered, pushing herself up and rubbing her arms, where she'd scraped them in the fall. "I've had worse."
"Do you want to come back to base with me? You could skip today if you wanted." Shadow offered, stepping back a little and looking around again. Taylor looked down at her, then up at the school, biting her lip.
"You know what? Sure." She stood, fiddling with her backpack for a moment. "Let me go home first, dad'll have gone by now, and I'll grab some stuff. Fuck this place." She turned sharply, a few flies buzzing around her with irritation, and started off down the street. Shadow followed silently, cloaking herself as they hit the brighter main street and dropping into the alleyways as soon as she could.
"I'll meet you there." Shadow whispered, knowing Taylor would hear it. The brunette nodded, letting Shadow take off through the back streets towards Taylor's house, while the Cape herself stayed mostly on the better roads while going the same way.
Shadow ended up taking slightly longer than Taylor to get to the building; while the alleyways were faster, it was also easier for her to get lost and she'd ended up having to turn around a few times. She'd also had to be careful to stay in the shadows of the alley, keeping hidden and quiet to avoid people finding her, which made her own trip take a little while longer than Taylor's did. When she arrived, she found the back gate slightly ajar, so she slipped through there and nudged it closed behind her. The back door was almost wide open, and Shadow could hear the sounds of a single person moving within. Entering the house, she looked around curiously, smelling the scent of Taylor all over the place, as well as someone else who smelled similar to Taylor.
Shadow assumed that was her dad.
"Up here, Shadow!" Taylor called down the stairs. "Come on, no-one else is here."
"Coming!" She replied quietly, dropping her colour illusion fully as she bounced her way up the steps. "What's up?" She asked.
"I set some of my spiders to work on my second costume this morning." She explained. "Well, last night, technically. I made a little flap on my main costume for the badge, we can pin it on there and I don't think it'll come off if we do, so I did that this morning before I left, then put them back onto the costume." Taylor lifted her full costume, now with a little flap on the front as she'd said, then folded it up and put it to one side. "They managed to do a lot of it overnight, but there's not much more on there now." She lifted up a piece of yellow-grey material, very different to the grey of her actual costume, and pulled at it a little while the spiders crawled across it, weaving. "I'll bring it with me and have them keep working on it, if that's ok." Taylor glanced over her shoulder at Shadow, who was sitting to one side and keenly watching the spiders move about.
"Yeah, that's fine." She smiled slightly. "Eon won't mind, and I don't either. Maybe you'll be able to pick up more spiders in the woods that you can use to weave it."
"Maybe, it was kind of good luck that I even found this many in the first place. It was winter when I got my powers, so spiders and other bugs were a bit hard to find and collect."
"Where do you put them, in those boxes?"
"The spiders, yeah. The other bugs go into jars and stuff, or I leave them outside but nearby. I mostly use them to feed the spiders, though. I let the bees and wasps and all them do whatever they want, and just call them to use when I go out."
"That makes sense. No need to mess with the ecosystem any more than people's powers seem to already." Shadow smiled. "Are you using that bag, by the way?" Taylor nodded.
"Yeah. I'll just take all my stuff out of it and put some clothes and things in to bring with me. Am I putting on my costume?"
"If you want. Just I can't do invisibility for us both for a long time, so we'll be walking out of the city in plain view."
"No costume, then." Taylor decided. She went over to her bed and turned the back over, letting all her books fall into a pile, before folding the costume and putting it in. The rest of the clothes she was bringing went on top of it, and the piece of the new costume went over that, spiders still crawling back and forth on it. "Alright, let's go." Shadow stood and turned, heading quickly down the stairs and out of the door.
"Once Eon's done with everything back at base, we'll have to try and persuade him to do another patrol." She said.
"What, now?"
"Yeah." She flicked her tails back and forth while Taylor locked the door behind them. "I mean, Eon can do the cloak for you and him just as well in the day as he can in the night, though my normal scouting cloak would be a bit awkward since it's brighter, but I can make do. Don't think I can hold a full invisibility-inaudibility cloak for that long, but I can definitely fiddle with my normal stuff enough to hide pretty well." As she spoke, Shadow rippled back into the mentioned colours, hidden surprisingly well even in the daylight, and the two stepped out of the back yard together.
"Out of curiosity, Shadow, why were you even at Winslow?" Taylor asked quietly as they walked.
"Curious about the school, wanted to have a look round." She shrugged. "You seemed bored with the place and didn't care much the other night, so I wanted to know a bit more. Eon wanted to take a look-see too, but I was gonna go first and look during the day, since I'm smaller so it's less likely someone would notice me. Plus Eon's tails are kinda long, so it'd be harder for him to get around people without them stepping on them. I was gonna get a handle on the security and all that-" Taylor barked out a laugh.
"What security? I don't think any of the cameras in that building have worked since Scion showed up. They probably didn't work before then, either."
"It's that bad?" Shadow raised an eyebrow at her, peering out of the shadows of the building she was next to.
"It's pretty bad. I don't even think they lock the doors at night, it's that bad." She snorted. "Then again, there's nothing in the damn place that'd be worth stealing anyway, so they probably feel secure enough not to bother."
"That's... sad." She mused. "Is this city really that big of a mess?"
"There's gangs everywhere, the PRT and Protectorate barely help out with it all where it matters, and the city's too poor to really try and fix it up." Taylor said bluntly. "Yes, it's that much of a mess."
"Then I guess we've gotta clean it up, then, haven't we?" Shadow smirked. "Pretty sure we can do that. We're powerful, after all." Taylor laughed quietly, turning into an alleyway they both knew was abandoned and cutting across the city.
"Yeah. I suppose we are, aren't we?" She smiled slightly at the Vulpix. "Thanks, Shadow."
"No problem, Taylor." They walked quietly together for a half hour longer, before ducking into the woods near the base. "Y'know, we're gonna need to tell Eon why you're here."
"Mm."
"Want me to do it?"
"No, it's ok. I should probably tell you what's going on there anyway. You're my teammates- and besides, if I end up skipping out again, I'd be coming to you anyway." Taylor shrugged, mindful of the bag on her back, as Shadow dropped out of her darkening illusion, going back to her normal orange-red-cream colouring and shaking herself.
"That always feels weird to do, like ink... anyway, that's fine. I don't mind, and Eon won't either, I don't think. We can do some daytime patrols when you're not at school, after all."
"That... could be fun." She said slowly. "Won't it be awkward for you, though? I mean, everyone'd stare at you, wouldn't they?"
"Eh, 'snot like we aren't used to it." Shadow shrugged, flicking her tails. "Eon especially, since he's shiny and was new and was kinda weird because of the whole amnesia thing, but I got a few as well for being his teammate. Then we got kinda famous, and it got a bit more looks from people." She spotted Taylor's confusion, and grinned. "I don't look all that powerful, in the end. I'm mostly good because of my family tree- it's a bit of a weird mess, to be honest. I have a lot of different Pokemon lines in my family, and it gives me access to some kinda cool stuff. Which is good, 'cause it means I can hold my own in trouble, and I've been tutoring Eon in some of them as well. They can be really powerful, Ninetales, but a Vulpix is just as good, at least when you've got a lot of stuff to use."
"And you're a lot smaller, which helps with things like just now, I suppose." Taylor mused, before flinching heavily. "Um, Shadow, maybe we should go a different way. Like back to the city. We could wait for Eon there, right?"
"I mean, I guess, but why?" She asked, cocking her head. "The base is just this way, it's not that far, we can just go there and wait with Eon." She trotted past Taylor, then recoiled. "Whoa! That..."
"Yeah. Can we just go another way, please?" Taylor asked nervously, the bugs in the air around her buzzing aggravatedly.
"Taylor, it's just the repulsion illusion. Y'know, the one Eon mentioned yesterday?" As she spoke, Shadow could feel the effects of the illusion lessening, not able to take proper effect now that she recognised what it was. "There's nothing dangerous actually here... well, aside from us, I suppose. C'mon, let's just go get to Eon, then we can chat for a bit and go on patrol later this afternoon or something." Shadow meandered at the border of the illusion for a few moments, while Taylor gathered up her courage to pass by.
"Whoa." She muttered, shivering. "That's... really weird. Like... I didn't want to pass until you told me what it is." She glanced around, her bugs moving as she did. "It still feels like something's waiting to jump out at me."
"Yeah, that's the effects of the field." Shadow grinned. "You get used to it after a while in them. Plus once we get farther in, the feeling goes away."
"Why?" Taylor asked, braving another few steps. "Wouldn't it make sense for the feeling of doom to get stronger the closer you get to the base?"
"Eon does set it up like that. He'll do it later, probably, but he always keys me into things like this."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that I'm immune to the effects after a certain distance." She explained, smiling up. "He'll add you as well, obviously. It's a bonus of the keystone thing he does. Most of the times illusions don't work like that. I think it's a Ninetales thing, and Zoroark have the ability to put only one person under a full illusion." Shadow shrugged. "I dunno how it works. I just learn my illusions from Eon, and I'll mess with them as I need to."
"That's fair enough, I guess." Taylor nodded. "I mean, I don't exactly know how my powers work, after all, and I doubt most people do."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you should definitely try and learn as much about your abilities as possible so you can use them well." Eon put in, appearing from the trees with a slight rustle of leaves. "Otherwise you might end up using your powers ineffectively, which can really suck when it comes down to it."
"Hey Eon!" Shadow grinned, bouncing over to him. "Where'd you come from? Why're you here?"
"I was just setting some of the other things up, and heard both of you run into the repulsion illusion." He shrugged. "I thought that I'd come say hello." He curled a tail around Shadow, tapping her on the nose. "Y'know, when I said 'look around the school for cameras and interesting things' I didn't mean 'find and kidnap Taylor from school', Shadow."
"I didn't mean to!" She defended sharply. "Taylor was getting picked on, so I went and asked if she was ok, then asked if she wanted to skip. She said yeah." Eon looked up at Taylor, who fidgeted. There were a few red scrapes along the side of her face from her fall, and a couple on the palms of her hands, and he nodded.
"That's fine. I was just wondering." He grinned. "So, what's the plan now that you've borrowed Taylor for the day, Shadow?"
"I dunno." Shadow shrugged. "Taylor's gonna work more on her costume, I think. And she brought some stuff to leave here with us."
"Then I guess we'll be making some storage places for them, won't we?" The Ninetales said, turning. "I've just finished fine tuning everything on the illusion front. I borrowed a few Zoroark methods, so I don't need to be too close to the illusions to be powering them, which is good."
"Cool. I didn't know you could do that." The Vulpix looked up at him with some awe. "You are going to teach me to do that, right?"
"Eventually, when you're got some more skill with your illusions." Eon's tone turned slightly teasing. "After all, you can't do invisibility right yet, and that's fairly simple."
"I can do it!" Shadow replied sharply. "Just not for very long. It's hard." Eon patted her head.
"You'll get there, Shadow." He told her. "Just keep practising." Shadow frowned, and a moment later the air rippled slightly.
"Ok!" The apparently empty space where she had been said cheerfully. Eon sighed, looking up at Taylor, who hid a grin behind her hand and looked away.
"Why yes, she is like this often." He groaned tiredly. "I swear, after a year and a half you'd think I'd've either gotten used to it or she'd've grown out of it, but nope!"
"I like it." Taylor said quietly. "It's funny. Nice, considering…" She trailed off. Eon waited politely for a moment to see if she was going to continue, then coughed.
"Well, it'll probably get annoying eventually. I'm not sure when that happened for me, but possibly it was after Shadow walked blindly into the end of a dungeon after we'd just fought through multiple floors, making jokes about it not getting worse, before making a rather rude one and causing the Mightyena that'd made the place their territory to get offended and jump us." He groaned. "And Mightyena look like this, and there were about six of them." The illusion of the large-ish black-and-grey hyena Pokemon flickered into being, making Taylor glance over it and wince.
"Yeah, that looks a bit scary."
"I said I was sorry!" Shadow barked, reappearing and slashing at the Mightyena illusion with a claw. "You're the one who keeps bringing it up!"
"Because you started it, silly!" He grumbled, swiping playfully at her. "Anyway, come on, we're here. Let Taylor settle down, you're coming to help me grab some stuff to make some boxes for Taylor to leave her things in."
"No problem." Shadow grinned up at the much taller girl. "You'll be ok on your own, right?"
"I'll be fine." Taylor said awkwardly, looking around the clearing they'd just entered. "You've said no-one can get in here, and I've got my bugs if something does happen. I'll just keep my spiders working on my costume."
"Don't forget that you can call us if you need help with something, Taylor." Eon reminded her, watching her carefully as she moved to sit next to the willow tree that the base they'd created was hidden under, putting her bag on the ground next to her and pulling out the spider-covered cloth.
"I- right." She smiled. "Sure. I'll keep some flying bugs around that I can use to get you if you're needed. There's enough bugs in the area that I should be able to find you easily." Eon nodded, then followed Shadow, who'd already run off into the forest to find some bits that they could use.
"Think this is enough?" Shadow asked, dropping a few more branches of willowy wood onto the pile the two had been building.
"Probably." Eon shrugged. "We don't really need that much space, so this should be fine after a bit of work."
"Should we take it back, then? We could work on it in the base, or near it." Eon gazed at Shadow, evaluative.
"You just want to be close to Taylor, don't you?" He asked gently. She chuckled, pawing at the ground.
"A bit, yeah. I'm pretty sure she's been getting picked on a lot worse than I saw earlier. I don't really want her to be on her own." Eon huffed.
"I doubt she'd be in trouble out here, it's pretty safe and remote, but I get your meaning. C'mon, pix, let's get moving." Carefully, the two of them lifted the entire pile of wood with a psychic grip, moving it in the direction of the den they'd made.
"Wow, that's a lot of branches." Taylor mused, looking up from the work her spiders were doing. It was a little larger than it had been before, which made sense given how few spiders she had to work with, but looked like it was doing well.
"We're hoping it'll be enough to make a fairly large storage box for you to leave your clothes and stuff in." Eon told her. "I'll grab more and make a safety box as well, so I can hide the money and other stuff a little farther away from here, which should let me drop some more protections on it that I can't really do around the base, unless I don't want anyone to find it ever."
"… You know, that still makes it sound like some kind of weird fantasy book." Taylor said softly, after a few moments of private thought. "You can cast illusion spells and make protections out of them… it's not really what I would've expected with illusions. I'd've thought that you could only make them close to you." She snorted. "Then again, this isn't exactly how I thought I'd begin my superhero career, either."
"I suppose not." Eon grinned. "And you'd be right about the illusion thing. While I don't really know how the stones work, they basically act as a repeater for the illusion. I create the illusion while I'm here, and these stones repeat the illusion again and again, even when I'm not around, to basically make it as permanent as they can hold a charge for."
"Zoroark are weird." Shadow observed, to nods. Taylor sighed slightly, then glanced upwards through a gap in the trees.
"I think it's about… ten, eleven o'clock right now?" She guessed. "So I'd like to go and get some food soon enough, then maybe we could all patrol together a bit after that?" Her voice had a hopeful tinge to it in the end, and Eon thought it over for a minute before nodding.
"Sure, we can do that. I never did get around to counting that money we… 'acquired' yesterday, but you can take some of that and get… well, whatever you want, to be honest." Eon licked his lips. "Maybe get us something as well. Dunno what's sold in this city, but we could probably find something."
"I could do that, sure." Taylor smiled a little. "Where's the money? I'll take a look at that for you if you'd like. I'm not doing much aside from staring at the spiders, and they can direct themselves."
"I left it in the den for now." Eon explained, lifting two branches in his grasp and knotting them together. Shadow did the same, making the frame of a base to their box, and frowned heavily as she fiddled with it to let her grasp a third, weaving it in. "It's safe enough in there, after all, since no-one but us can find it. I'm... pretty sure the phones can't be tracked, they're both off and I took the batteries out, but I put them a little further away from here just in case."
"Alright." Taylor pushed herself off the ground, stretching, before ducking under the willow tree Eon gestured to and crawling into the elegantly woven box-house. "It's nice in here," she called out to them, looking around.
It hadn't exactly been made with the almost six foot tall human in mind, so Taylor found herself ducking somewhat to make her way around, but it was still over five feet high, reaching a little over six in the centre of the domed top. It was very large too, surprisingly so given that it was hidden under a tree, but Taylor had the suspicion that it was mostly, or at the very least partly, underground, which would make sense. There was a bit at the back that was lower down than the rest, which held a large tangle of leaves and fluff of some kind. Taylor poked it experimentally, finding that it felt a bit like wool, which she thought was odd, but didn't question. The rest of the upper part of the room was made up of empty space, and a trio of boxes along the left-hand wall. It felt a little sad, but Eon and Shadow had only been there for a few days.
Taylor privately contemplated making a blanket or something to put in the room so that it didn't look so empty.
Going over to the boxes on the side, she carefully lifted the first one, peering inside it with the light streaming from the gaps in the walls and the doorway, spotting after a moment the paper money bundled in there.
"Is this all of it?" She shouted out, closing the lid on the box and looking speculatively at it for a moment.
"It's all in one box, yes!" Eon called back. "Do you need help bringing it out?"
"I think I can manage!" Taylor told him, grabbing the sides of the boxes using the slightly stuck-out handles on there and half carrying, half dragging it out of the den and into the clearing proper. "That's a bit heavier than I was expecting."
"I did pick up quite a lot of money, though I'm not sure exactly how many of the bundles, or how much those bundles were. I just picked a few with different numbers on them and tried not to make it look obvious that they'd been robbed." Eon told her, carefully continuing the weaving with Shadow. The thing had already become a small tray, which impressed Taylor for a few moments as she stopped to watch.
"You know, there's the new Cape in the Bay called Parian." Taylor said idly. "She'd probably find what you do quite interesting."
"Oh?" Shadow cocked her head, then froze as it caused the structure to wobble. "Why's that?"
"She's apparently some kind of cloth kinetic. Her debut involved giant teddy bears, I heard."
"That is neat." Shadow said approvingly, wagging her tails. "I want to go see that. Does she do shows?"
"I think she makes costumes for Parahumans…" Taylor facepalmed. "Which I could do for this second one rather than do it myself. Stupid." Eon and Shadow barked out a laugh.
"Doing it yourself has an element of secrecy to it, though." Eon pointed out. "But we could go and talk to her sometime, I think. Perhaps she'd be willing to buy some spider silk at a very cheap price, compared to the normal market?"
"Is that legal?"
"Does it matter?" Shadow retorted. "We nicked that money from the ABB, so selling spider silk to this Parian Cape is at least more legal than that, right?"
"True." Taylor accepted. "I'll have to see if I can find her contact information somewhere. We can make an offer that way." She looked down at the box, pulling the lid off again. "Not that we'll need the money for a while, at least. Nice to have it legally, but eh." Pulling the bundles out in large stacks, she paused for a moment. "This might take a while to count."
A few hours later, Taylor had finished totalling up the money they'd acquired, and the two foxes had completed the box. They'd carefully left it by the side of the den under the willow tree, Eon explaining to Taylor that they'd move it in later when she'd given them a curious look.
"Christ." The bug controller sighed sharply, staring at the pile of money. "That's a little more than ten thousand dollars there."
"That's… a lot." Shadow blinked. "Huh."
"Yeah." Taylor shook her head, piling it back into the wooden box again, keeping about fifty dollars on the side, and hefted the lid back onto the top again. "Well, at least we have a fair bit on money to use. Want to go and get lunch? There's a burger place that's quite nice, and fairly cheap as well, I've been a few times before."
"Sounds like a good idea." Eon nodded. "Let's put the box back in the den, and move your one in while we're at it. Can you sort your clothes and things yourself?"
"Sure." Taylor lifted her backpack from where it had been sitting for the last five or so hours, heading over to the box and taking the lid off. For a minute she just looked, then pulled everything out of her bag and dropped it in there, only pausing to make sure it stayed folded and somewhat neat. "I'll fix that later, after we get those burgers. How are you two coming?"
"We'll be in human illusions." Eon explained. "Invisible, some inaudibility, since we'll still need to talk to you and others at some point, but we'll have human images walking next to you that we can use to look normal."
"And eating?"
"We'll just slip into some corner somewhere and eat it, of course." Eon smiled at her. "Don't worry, it'll go fine. Bring your costume too, we could slip out on a patrol too if you'd like." Taylor smiled a bit wider at that.
"Sure. I'm a bit worried about doing it in daylight, but we've already debuted yesterday night, so I'm sure we're online already. I was going to look in Computer Science, but…" She shrugged, unbothered. "But it's not like it wouldn't be interesting."
"We'll be stared at quite a bit." Eon warned.
"I get stared at all the time in school, along with the accompanying gossip. I'm used to it." Taylor turned and started to pull the box of money back into the den, which Eon moved to help with after a moment of startled contemplation, while Shadow carefully used her own budding power to take Taylor's things in for her.
"When we go on patrol, we'll arrange to leave your bag somewhere we can find it again." Eon said, after they'd put the box back on the side and placed Taylor's own next to it. "If you want to try the more dangerous method, we can go invisible and leave it in your back yard before we patrol, but it might get spotted if your father get's back before you do."
"I… think that might be the best option, still." She decided slowly. "Dad… tends to work late. The Docks are a mess, and he's always trying really hard to keep his people in jobs… and he never really got over mom dying, either." Her voice was a lot quieter at the end, and Shadow nuzzled into her hip in sympathy.
"I see…" Eon quietly muttered, plotting mentally. "So, burgers and a patrol, then?" He continued, changing the subject.
"Sure." Taylor smiled, picking up her bag again and checking on her costume, before looking at the spiders. "I'll take these with me as well, so they can keep working, and I'll stop into my house and put them away when we leave for patrol."
"Alright." The three of them made their way back out, then paused, looking at the money.
"Huh."
"Huh indeed, Shadow." Eon frowned.
"Aren't those the same type of badges you have, Eon?" Taylor checked, pulling a couple of flies from the area and having them lift up one of said badges. "It looks the same, anyway."
"It is the same. Turn it?" The badge was turned, and Eon took it carefully in his psychic grasp, letting the flies fly away. "See, it's got Inari carved into the back, here. It's in footprint runes, which is the traditional sort of written language for us, but it's the same as the symbols on ours." To prove it, Shadow took her badge off her scarf and held it up next to it, letting Taylor see that they were identical. "I assume it's for you."
"Why's there two, then?"
"One for each costume?" Shadow suggested, pinning hers back on. "Would make sense. One on the costume you keep at home, one for the costume you leave here. Then you wouldn't have to worry about taking it off to put it on the other costume, or putting it in your pocket and forgetting about it and getting outed."
"Yeah, that makes sense." Taylor nodded. "Hang on, let me pin one on this… should I leave the other here?"
"I'll put it in with your other stuff for you." Shadow offered, picking it up and trotting back into the base. Taylor crouched down, opening her bag again and unfolding her costume to pin the badge onto the flap she'd made, before putting it all away along with the money that Eon handed her a moment after and calling her spiders and their weaving to her.
"Right. Let's go get burgers, then we'll go have some fun." Taylor grinned, letting Eon lead the way.
"That's the place?" She muttered to herself, disgusted. "What a dump."
She'd managed to persuade Eon that she could handle the building herself, so he had stayed at their new base and worked on setting up the guards for it to keep it safe while they were gone. As a trade-off, Shadow was also going to try and get a bit of insight into the security of the place, so that she and Eon could sneak back in during one of the nights where they could have Taylor take a day off and snoop about to find something interesting.
Shadow's extremely good senses picked up the shrill ringing of a bell from inside the mess of a place across the street, and she paused, picking a moment where nothing was going on on the road to cloak herself and make a run for it. Stopping in the shadows of the building, she dropped the cloak and went back to the dark colour scheme, watching with interest as people began making their way in. From their talk with Tattletale the day before, she recognised that a number of them wore gang signs, and sighed softly at the obvious divide between groups.
Spotting a tall figure with long brown hair, Shadow immediately began tracking her movements, slowly inching her way around as she did. Taylor was wearing glasses now, the difference surprising but not incredible, and had her head down towards the floor. As she passed, Shadow listened closely, hearing jeers from just about every person, along with the high pitched giggling of a group of girls. One with red hair stepped from the group, and Taylor stiffened. A black skinned girl stepped up as well, and both of them began speaking to Taylor, the red head's body language mocking and the black girl's irate.
Cursing softly that she couldn't hear what was being said, Shadow weighed up her options for a moment, then cloaked fully and tracked closer to them.
"Honestly, Hebert, you shouldn't even be here." The red head smirked. "Just go away like the little girl you are."
"Fuck off, Emma." Taylor snapped, making Shadow's eyes widen. Apparently the girls were just as taken aback, and the group let Taylor pass by them. For a moment, Shadow thought that would be everything, but the black girl suddenly charged Taylor, aiming a punch at her back. Her new friend hit the ground hard, though her glasses seemed alright, and Shadow stifled a gasp.
"Watch your mouth, bitch." The black girl snarled, before turning to the crowd. "The fuck you all looking at?" The crowd quickly moved along, and Shadow had to do some careful dodging around them as they left. The red head, Emma, put her hand on the other's shoulder.
"Come on, Sophia, let's let Taylor cry in peace." She requested. "We might as well leave her with a little bit of dignity."
"Fine." Sophia and Emma wandered into the school, soon leaving the entire yard empty, aside from Taylor herself. Shadow looked around the area, then crept forwards and dropped her cloak.
"Taylor?" Shadow asked softly.
"Shadow?" The bug user seemed surprised. "What're you doing here? Where's Eon?"
"I was sneaking about, having a look around, and I spotted what was going on." She explained. "Eon's at the base, adding to the protections. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." She muttered, pushing herself up and rubbing her arms, where she'd scraped them in the fall. "I've had worse."
"Do you want to come back to base with me? You could skip today if you wanted." Shadow offered, stepping back a little and looking around again. Taylor looked down at her, then up at the school, biting her lip.
"You know what? Sure." She stood, fiddling with her backpack for a moment. "Let me go home first, dad'll have gone by now, and I'll grab some stuff. Fuck this place." She turned sharply, a few flies buzzing around her with irritation, and started off down the street. Shadow followed silently, cloaking herself as they hit the brighter main street and dropping into the alleyways as soon as she could.
"I'll meet you there." Shadow whispered, knowing Taylor would hear it. The brunette nodded, letting Shadow take off through the back streets towards Taylor's house, while the Cape herself stayed mostly on the better roads while going the same way.
Shadow ended up taking slightly longer than Taylor to get to the building; while the alleyways were faster, it was also easier for her to get lost and she'd ended up having to turn around a few times. She'd also had to be careful to stay in the shadows of the alley, keeping hidden and quiet to avoid people finding her, which made her own trip take a little while longer than Taylor's did. When she arrived, she found the back gate slightly ajar, so she slipped through there and nudged it closed behind her. The back door was almost wide open, and Shadow could hear the sounds of a single person moving within. Entering the house, she looked around curiously, smelling the scent of Taylor all over the place, as well as someone else who smelled similar to Taylor.
Shadow assumed that was her dad.
"Up here, Shadow!" Taylor called down the stairs. "Come on, no-one else is here."
"Coming!" She replied quietly, dropping her colour illusion fully as she bounced her way up the steps. "What's up?" She asked.
"I set some of my spiders to work on my second costume this morning." She explained. "Well, last night, technically. I made a little flap on my main costume for the badge, we can pin it on there and I don't think it'll come off if we do, so I did that this morning before I left, then put them back onto the costume." Taylor lifted her full costume, now with a little flap on the front as she'd said, then folded it up and put it to one side. "They managed to do a lot of it overnight, but there's not much more on there now." She lifted up a piece of yellow-grey material, very different to the grey of her actual costume, and pulled at it a little while the spiders crawled across it, weaving. "I'll bring it with me and have them keep working on it, if that's ok." Taylor glanced over her shoulder at Shadow, who was sitting to one side and keenly watching the spiders move about.
"Yeah, that's fine." She smiled slightly. "Eon won't mind, and I don't either. Maybe you'll be able to pick up more spiders in the woods that you can use to weave it."
"Maybe, it was kind of good luck that I even found this many in the first place. It was winter when I got my powers, so spiders and other bugs were a bit hard to find and collect."
"Where do you put them, in those boxes?"
"The spiders, yeah. The other bugs go into jars and stuff, or I leave them outside but nearby. I mostly use them to feed the spiders, though. I let the bees and wasps and all them do whatever they want, and just call them to use when I go out."
"That makes sense. No need to mess with the ecosystem any more than people's powers seem to already." Shadow smiled. "Are you using that bag, by the way?" Taylor nodded.
"Yeah. I'll just take all my stuff out of it and put some clothes and things in to bring with me. Am I putting on my costume?"
"If you want. Just I can't do invisibility for us both for a long time, so we'll be walking out of the city in plain view."
"No costume, then." Taylor decided. She went over to her bed and turned the back over, letting all her books fall into a pile, before folding the costume and putting it in. The rest of the clothes she was bringing went on top of it, and the piece of the new costume went over that, spiders still crawling back and forth on it. "Alright, let's go." Shadow stood and turned, heading quickly down the stairs and out of the door.
"Once Eon's done with everything back at base, we'll have to try and persuade him to do another patrol." She said.
"What, now?"
"Yeah." She flicked her tails back and forth while Taylor locked the door behind them. "I mean, Eon can do the cloak for you and him just as well in the day as he can in the night, though my normal scouting cloak would be a bit awkward since it's brighter, but I can make do. Don't think I can hold a full invisibility-inaudibility cloak for that long, but I can definitely fiddle with my normal stuff enough to hide pretty well." As she spoke, Shadow rippled back into the mentioned colours, hidden surprisingly well even in the daylight, and the two stepped out of the back yard together.
"Out of curiosity, Shadow, why were you even at Winslow?" Taylor asked quietly as they walked.
"Curious about the school, wanted to have a look round." She shrugged. "You seemed bored with the place and didn't care much the other night, so I wanted to know a bit more. Eon wanted to take a look-see too, but I was gonna go first and look during the day, since I'm smaller so it's less likely someone would notice me. Plus Eon's tails are kinda long, so it'd be harder for him to get around people without them stepping on them. I was gonna get a handle on the security and all that-" Taylor barked out a laugh.
"What security? I don't think any of the cameras in that building have worked since Scion showed up. They probably didn't work before then, either."
"It's that bad?" Shadow raised an eyebrow at her, peering out of the shadows of the building she was next to.
"It's pretty bad. I don't even think they lock the doors at night, it's that bad." She snorted. "Then again, there's nothing in the damn place that'd be worth stealing anyway, so they probably feel secure enough not to bother."
"That's... sad." She mused. "Is this city really that big of a mess?"
"There's gangs everywhere, the PRT and Protectorate barely help out with it all where it matters, and the city's too poor to really try and fix it up." Taylor said bluntly. "Yes, it's that much of a mess."
"Then I guess we've gotta clean it up, then, haven't we?" Shadow smirked. "Pretty sure we can do that. We're powerful, after all." Taylor laughed quietly, turning into an alleyway they both knew was abandoned and cutting across the city.
"Yeah. I suppose we are, aren't we?" She smiled slightly at the Vulpix. "Thanks, Shadow."
"No problem, Taylor." They walked quietly together for a half hour longer, before ducking into the woods near the base. "Y'know, we're gonna need to tell Eon why you're here."
"Mm."
"Want me to do it?"
"No, it's ok. I should probably tell you what's going on there anyway. You're my teammates- and besides, if I end up skipping out again, I'd be coming to you anyway." Taylor shrugged, mindful of the bag on her back, as Shadow dropped out of her darkening illusion, going back to her normal orange-red-cream colouring and shaking herself.
"That always feels weird to do, like ink... anyway, that's fine. I don't mind, and Eon won't either, I don't think. We can do some daytime patrols when you're not at school, after all."
"That... could be fun." She said slowly. "Won't it be awkward for you, though? I mean, everyone'd stare at you, wouldn't they?"
"Eh, 'snot like we aren't used to it." Shadow shrugged, flicking her tails. "Eon especially, since he's shiny and was new and was kinda weird because of the whole amnesia thing, but I got a few as well for being his teammate. Then we got kinda famous, and it got a bit more looks from people." She spotted Taylor's confusion, and grinned. "I don't look all that powerful, in the end. I'm mostly good because of my family tree- it's a bit of a weird mess, to be honest. I have a lot of different Pokemon lines in my family, and it gives me access to some kinda cool stuff. Which is good, 'cause it means I can hold my own in trouble, and I've been tutoring Eon in some of them as well. They can be really powerful, Ninetales, but a Vulpix is just as good, at least when you've got a lot of stuff to use."
"And you're a lot smaller, which helps with things like just now, I suppose." Taylor mused, before flinching heavily. "Um, Shadow, maybe we should go a different way. Like back to the city. We could wait for Eon there, right?"
"I mean, I guess, but why?" She asked, cocking her head. "The base is just this way, it's not that far, we can just go there and wait with Eon." She trotted past Taylor, then recoiled. "Whoa! That..."
"Yeah. Can we just go another way, please?" Taylor asked nervously, the bugs in the air around her buzzing aggravatedly.
"Taylor, it's just the repulsion illusion. Y'know, the one Eon mentioned yesterday?" As she spoke, Shadow could feel the effects of the illusion lessening, not able to take proper effect now that she recognised what it was. "There's nothing dangerous actually here... well, aside from us, I suppose. C'mon, let's just go get to Eon, then we can chat for a bit and go on patrol later this afternoon or something." Shadow meandered at the border of the illusion for a few moments, while Taylor gathered up her courage to pass by.
"Whoa." She muttered, shivering. "That's... really weird. Like... I didn't want to pass until you told me what it is." She glanced around, her bugs moving as she did. "It still feels like something's waiting to jump out at me."
"Yeah, that's the effects of the field." Shadow grinned. "You get used to it after a while in them. Plus once we get farther in, the feeling goes away."
"Why?" Taylor asked, braving another few steps. "Wouldn't it make sense for the feeling of doom to get stronger the closer you get to the base?"
"Eon does set it up like that. He'll do it later, probably, but he always keys me into things like this."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that I'm immune to the effects after a certain distance." She explained, smiling up. "He'll add you as well, obviously. It's a bonus of the keystone thing he does. Most of the times illusions don't work like that. I think it's a Ninetales thing, and Zoroark have the ability to put only one person under a full illusion." Shadow shrugged. "I dunno how it works. I just learn my illusions from Eon, and I'll mess with them as I need to."
"That's fair enough, I guess." Taylor nodded. "I mean, I don't exactly know how my powers work, after all, and I doubt most people do."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you should definitely try and learn as much about your abilities as possible so you can use them well." Eon put in, appearing from the trees with a slight rustle of leaves. "Otherwise you might end up using your powers ineffectively, which can really suck when it comes down to it."
"Hey Eon!" Shadow grinned, bouncing over to him. "Where'd you come from? Why're you here?"
"I was just setting some of the other things up, and heard both of you run into the repulsion illusion." He shrugged. "I thought that I'd come say hello." He curled a tail around Shadow, tapping her on the nose. "Y'know, when I said 'look around the school for cameras and interesting things' I didn't mean 'find and kidnap Taylor from school', Shadow."
"I didn't mean to!" She defended sharply. "Taylor was getting picked on, so I went and asked if she was ok, then asked if she wanted to skip. She said yeah." Eon looked up at Taylor, who fidgeted. There were a few red scrapes along the side of her face from her fall, and a couple on the palms of her hands, and he nodded.
"That's fine. I was just wondering." He grinned. "So, what's the plan now that you've borrowed Taylor for the day, Shadow?"
"I dunno." Shadow shrugged. "Taylor's gonna work more on her costume, I think. And she brought some stuff to leave here with us."
"Then I guess we'll be making some storage places for them, won't we?" The Ninetales said, turning. "I've just finished fine tuning everything on the illusion front. I borrowed a few Zoroark methods, so I don't need to be too close to the illusions to be powering them, which is good."
"Cool. I didn't know you could do that." The Vulpix looked up at him with some awe. "You are going to teach me to do that, right?"
"Eventually, when you're got some more skill with your illusions." Eon's tone turned slightly teasing. "After all, you can't do invisibility right yet, and that's fairly simple."
"I can do it!" Shadow replied sharply. "Just not for very long. It's hard." Eon patted her head.
"You'll get there, Shadow." He told her. "Just keep practising." Shadow frowned, and a moment later the air rippled slightly.
"Ok!" The apparently empty space where she had been said cheerfully. Eon sighed, looking up at Taylor, who hid a grin behind her hand and looked away.
"Why yes, she is like this often." He groaned tiredly. "I swear, after a year and a half you'd think I'd've either gotten used to it or she'd've grown out of it, but nope!"
"I like it." Taylor said quietly. "It's funny. Nice, considering…" She trailed off. Eon waited politely for a moment to see if she was going to continue, then coughed.
"Well, it'll probably get annoying eventually. I'm not sure when that happened for me, but possibly it was after Shadow walked blindly into the end of a dungeon after we'd just fought through multiple floors, making jokes about it not getting worse, before making a rather rude one and causing the Mightyena that'd made the place their territory to get offended and jump us." He groaned. "And Mightyena look like this, and there were about six of them." The illusion of the large-ish black-and-grey hyena Pokemon flickered into being, making Taylor glance over it and wince.
"Yeah, that looks a bit scary."
"I said I was sorry!" Shadow barked, reappearing and slashing at the Mightyena illusion with a claw. "You're the one who keeps bringing it up!"
"Because you started it, silly!" He grumbled, swiping playfully at her. "Anyway, come on, we're here. Let Taylor settle down, you're coming to help me grab some stuff to make some boxes for Taylor to leave her things in."
"No problem." Shadow grinned up at the much taller girl. "You'll be ok on your own, right?"
"I'll be fine." Taylor said awkwardly, looking around the clearing they'd just entered. "You've said no-one can get in here, and I've got my bugs if something does happen. I'll just keep my spiders working on my costume."
"Don't forget that you can call us if you need help with something, Taylor." Eon reminded her, watching her carefully as she moved to sit next to the willow tree that the base they'd created was hidden under, putting her bag on the ground next to her and pulling out the spider-covered cloth.
"I- right." She smiled. "Sure. I'll keep some flying bugs around that I can use to get you if you're needed. There's enough bugs in the area that I should be able to find you easily." Eon nodded, then followed Shadow, who'd already run off into the forest to find some bits that they could use.
"Think this is enough?" Shadow asked, dropping a few more branches of willowy wood onto the pile the two had been building.
"Probably." Eon shrugged. "We don't really need that much space, so this should be fine after a bit of work."
"Should we take it back, then? We could work on it in the base, or near it." Eon gazed at Shadow, evaluative.
"You just want to be close to Taylor, don't you?" He asked gently. She chuckled, pawing at the ground.
"A bit, yeah. I'm pretty sure she's been getting picked on a lot worse than I saw earlier. I don't really want her to be on her own." Eon huffed.
"I doubt she'd be in trouble out here, it's pretty safe and remote, but I get your meaning. C'mon, pix, let's get moving." Carefully, the two of them lifted the entire pile of wood with a psychic grip, moving it in the direction of the den they'd made.
"Wow, that's a lot of branches." Taylor mused, looking up from the work her spiders were doing. It was a little larger than it had been before, which made sense given how few spiders she had to work with, but looked like it was doing well.
"We're hoping it'll be enough to make a fairly large storage box for you to leave your clothes and stuff in." Eon told her. "I'll grab more and make a safety box as well, so I can hide the money and other stuff a little farther away from here, which should let me drop some more protections on it that I can't really do around the base, unless I don't want anyone to find it ever."
"… You know, that still makes it sound like some kind of weird fantasy book." Taylor said softly, after a few moments of private thought. "You can cast illusion spells and make protections out of them… it's not really what I would've expected with illusions. I'd've thought that you could only make them close to you." She snorted. "Then again, this isn't exactly how I thought I'd begin my superhero career, either."
"I suppose not." Eon grinned. "And you'd be right about the illusion thing. While I don't really know how the stones work, they basically act as a repeater for the illusion. I create the illusion while I'm here, and these stones repeat the illusion again and again, even when I'm not around, to basically make it as permanent as they can hold a charge for."
"Zoroark are weird." Shadow observed, to nods. Taylor sighed slightly, then glanced upwards through a gap in the trees.
"I think it's about… ten, eleven o'clock right now?" She guessed. "So I'd like to go and get some food soon enough, then maybe we could all patrol together a bit after that?" Her voice had a hopeful tinge to it in the end, and Eon thought it over for a minute before nodding.
"Sure, we can do that. I never did get around to counting that money we… 'acquired' yesterday, but you can take some of that and get… well, whatever you want, to be honest." Eon licked his lips. "Maybe get us something as well. Dunno what's sold in this city, but we could probably find something."
"I could do that, sure." Taylor smiled a little. "Where's the money? I'll take a look at that for you if you'd like. I'm not doing much aside from staring at the spiders, and they can direct themselves."
"I left it in the den for now." Eon explained, lifting two branches in his grasp and knotting them together. Shadow did the same, making the frame of a base to their box, and frowned heavily as she fiddled with it to let her grasp a third, weaving it in. "It's safe enough in there, after all, since no-one but us can find it. I'm... pretty sure the phones can't be tracked, they're both off and I took the batteries out, but I put them a little further away from here just in case."
"Alright." Taylor pushed herself off the ground, stretching, before ducking under the willow tree Eon gestured to and crawling into the elegantly woven box-house. "It's nice in here," she called out to them, looking around.
It hadn't exactly been made with the almost six foot tall human in mind, so Taylor found herself ducking somewhat to make her way around, but it was still over five feet high, reaching a little over six in the centre of the domed top. It was very large too, surprisingly so given that it was hidden under a tree, but Taylor had the suspicion that it was mostly, or at the very least partly, underground, which would make sense. There was a bit at the back that was lower down than the rest, which held a large tangle of leaves and fluff of some kind. Taylor poked it experimentally, finding that it felt a bit like wool, which she thought was odd, but didn't question. The rest of the upper part of the room was made up of empty space, and a trio of boxes along the left-hand wall. It felt a little sad, but Eon and Shadow had only been there for a few days.
Taylor privately contemplated making a blanket or something to put in the room so that it didn't look so empty.
Going over to the boxes on the side, she carefully lifted the first one, peering inside it with the light streaming from the gaps in the walls and the doorway, spotting after a moment the paper money bundled in there.
"Is this all of it?" She shouted out, closing the lid on the box and looking speculatively at it for a moment.
"It's all in one box, yes!" Eon called back. "Do you need help bringing it out?"
"I think I can manage!" Taylor told him, grabbing the sides of the boxes using the slightly stuck-out handles on there and half carrying, half dragging it out of the den and into the clearing proper. "That's a bit heavier than I was expecting."
"I did pick up quite a lot of money, though I'm not sure exactly how many of the bundles, or how much those bundles were. I just picked a few with different numbers on them and tried not to make it look obvious that they'd been robbed." Eon told her, carefully continuing the weaving with Shadow. The thing had already become a small tray, which impressed Taylor for a few moments as she stopped to watch.
"You know, there's the new Cape in the Bay called Parian." Taylor said idly. "She'd probably find what you do quite interesting."
"Oh?" Shadow cocked her head, then froze as it caused the structure to wobble. "Why's that?"
"She's apparently some kind of cloth kinetic. Her debut involved giant teddy bears, I heard."
"That is neat." Shadow said approvingly, wagging her tails. "I want to go see that. Does she do shows?"
"I think she makes costumes for Parahumans…" Taylor facepalmed. "Which I could do for this second one rather than do it myself. Stupid." Eon and Shadow barked out a laugh.
"Doing it yourself has an element of secrecy to it, though." Eon pointed out. "But we could go and talk to her sometime, I think. Perhaps she'd be willing to buy some spider silk at a very cheap price, compared to the normal market?"
"Is that legal?"
"Does it matter?" Shadow retorted. "We nicked that money from the ABB, so selling spider silk to this Parian Cape is at least more legal than that, right?"
"True." Taylor accepted. "I'll have to see if I can find her contact information somewhere. We can make an offer that way." She looked down at the box, pulling the lid off again. "Not that we'll need the money for a while, at least. Nice to have it legally, but eh." Pulling the bundles out in large stacks, she paused for a moment. "This might take a while to count."
A few hours later, Taylor had finished totalling up the money they'd acquired, and the two foxes had completed the box. They'd carefully left it by the side of the den under the willow tree, Eon explaining to Taylor that they'd move it in later when she'd given them a curious look.
"Christ." The bug controller sighed sharply, staring at the pile of money. "That's a little more than ten thousand dollars there."
"That's… a lot." Shadow blinked. "Huh."
"Yeah." Taylor shook her head, piling it back into the wooden box again, keeping about fifty dollars on the side, and hefted the lid back onto the top again. "Well, at least we have a fair bit on money to use. Want to go and get lunch? There's a burger place that's quite nice, and fairly cheap as well, I've been a few times before."
"Sounds like a good idea." Eon nodded. "Let's put the box back in the den, and move your one in while we're at it. Can you sort your clothes and things yourself?"
"Sure." Taylor lifted her backpack from where it had been sitting for the last five or so hours, heading over to the box and taking the lid off. For a minute she just looked, then pulled everything out of her bag and dropped it in there, only pausing to make sure it stayed folded and somewhat neat. "I'll fix that later, after we get those burgers. How are you two coming?"
"We'll be in human illusions." Eon explained. "Invisible, some inaudibility, since we'll still need to talk to you and others at some point, but we'll have human images walking next to you that we can use to look normal."
"And eating?"
"We'll just slip into some corner somewhere and eat it, of course." Eon smiled at her. "Don't worry, it'll go fine. Bring your costume too, we could slip out on a patrol too if you'd like." Taylor smiled a bit wider at that.
"Sure. I'm a bit worried about doing it in daylight, but we've already debuted yesterday night, so I'm sure we're online already. I was going to look in Computer Science, but…" She shrugged, unbothered. "But it's not like it wouldn't be interesting."
"We'll be stared at quite a bit." Eon warned.
"I get stared at all the time in school, along with the accompanying gossip. I'm used to it." Taylor turned and started to pull the box of money back into the den, which Eon moved to help with after a moment of startled contemplation, while Shadow carefully used her own budding power to take Taylor's things in for her.
"When we go on patrol, we'll arrange to leave your bag somewhere we can find it again." Eon said, after they'd put the box back on the side and placed Taylor's own next to it. "If you want to try the more dangerous method, we can go invisible and leave it in your back yard before we patrol, but it might get spotted if your father get's back before you do."
"I… think that might be the best option, still." She decided slowly. "Dad… tends to work late. The Docks are a mess, and he's always trying really hard to keep his people in jobs… and he never really got over mom dying, either." Her voice was a lot quieter at the end, and Shadow nuzzled into her hip in sympathy.
"I see…" Eon quietly muttered, plotting mentally. "So, burgers and a patrol, then?" He continued, changing the subject.
"Sure." Taylor smiled, picking up her bag again and checking on her costume, before looking at the spiders. "I'll take these with me as well, so they can keep working, and I'll stop into my house and put them away when we leave for patrol."
"Alright." The three of them made their way back out, then paused, looking at the money.
"Huh."
"Huh indeed, Shadow." Eon frowned.
"Aren't those the same type of badges you have, Eon?" Taylor checked, pulling a couple of flies from the area and having them lift up one of said badges. "It looks the same, anyway."
"It is the same. Turn it?" The badge was turned, and Eon took it carefully in his psychic grasp, letting the flies fly away. "See, it's got Inari carved into the back, here. It's in footprint runes, which is the traditional sort of written language for us, but it's the same as the symbols on ours." To prove it, Shadow took her badge off her scarf and held it up next to it, letting Taylor see that they were identical. "I assume it's for you."
"Why's there two, then?"
"One for each costume?" Shadow suggested, pinning hers back on. "Would make sense. One on the costume you keep at home, one for the costume you leave here. Then you wouldn't have to worry about taking it off to put it on the other costume, or putting it in your pocket and forgetting about it and getting outed."
"Yeah, that makes sense." Taylor nodded. "Hang on, let me pin one on this… should I leave the other here?"
"I'll put it in with your other stuff for you." Shadow offered, picking it up and trotting back into the base. Taylor crouched down, opening her bag again and unfolding her costume to pin the badge onto the flap she'd made, before putting it all away along with the money that Eon handed her a moment after and calling her spiders and their weaving to her.
"Right. Let's go get burgers, then we'll go have some fun." Taylor grinned, letting Eon lead the way.
- Location
- United States
im not sure i understand where those badges came from, I'd assume Eon would have made them but it sounds like they just appeared.