- Location
- SW Florida
Oh no, she's tempted Murphy!
A Shadow, an Eon, and a Worm (Worm/Pokemon)
- Thread starter ShadowPixelle
- Start date
- Crossover
Oh no, she's tempted Murphy!
- Location
- Internet, The
I wonder if Aquamarina will become important later. She interacts with the cast a lot.
supposed it could always be
short
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
It will come up, yes. Soon, too, though there won't necessarily be an impact to it for longer than that.
This was actually an accident. I didn't intend to have her become a reoccurring character, she just started to keep popping up.
Fixed both of these.
On a sidenote, I'm actually vaguely surprised no-one's gone off at me for my lazy solution to a certain problem. Then again, it was easy to miss in chapter 12, and I guess in this one there's more interesting stuff to read about right after.
I think I'll take it as a win, then.
banjo2E
Has left the planet
- Location
- Mafia Town
You mean having Shadow Stalker get rekt by Leviathan?
I've seen worse solutions to that mess.
Chapter 16- Stories, musings, and Scream
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
I do not own the tale of the selfish human, nor the one about the Burned Tower. The thing to do with the netherworld is partially my own.
A good half an hour later, both the conversation and the late-ish breakfast was over, and the group went their separate ways. Aquamarina had made her way towards the teleporters, having decided that there wasn't really anything else she could do in the Bay, so she was going back to LA, but have slipped a phone number to Swarm with the offer of keeping in touch and helping out if they needed it- an offer that touched both girls. Vicky was heading back into the field, planning on seeing if she could help out with moving some of the rubble out of the way, and Amy was going to be making rounds to check on some of the people that were still recovering from things she couldn't heal entirely.
Shadow had offered to go and help, but the healer had firmly rebuffed her, telling her that she was healing herself, so she shouldn't need to worry about doing anything right now.
Vista had wandered off to try and find her remaining team mates, seeming in a much better mood than she had been when Shadow found her, and the two members of Team Inari were heading back to the recovery room, where Eon was still sleeping off his injury.
Shadow was incredibly surprised that he was still unconscious, but according to Aquamarina, he'd been thrown by Leviathan head-first into a wall after the impact he'd landed, when he'd seemed a little disoriented, which had lead to Shadow changing her opinion.
As far as she knew, unless Eon had picked something up without telling her, he didn't have any decent Defence boosting Moves, so an impact like that would've hurt, even with the fact that she knew they were tougher than the norm for this world.
Though the titbit that Leviathan had used all nine of Eon's tails for leverage in his throw made her curious as to what sort of curse would've been placed on the creature. Hopefully, it was something that would lead to the Endbringer losing the next time he tried to attack.
"Hey, Shadow." The Vulpix looked up, tilting her head back to meet the orange eyes of Swarm's mask. "That story you were telling Vista earlier on... is that actually a story you know?"
"Yeah, it is." She nodded. "And the other ones I was telling earlier are as well. I just adjusted them to remove the mentions of Pokemon, is all."
"Oh. Would you mind telling me the real ones?"
"Sure." Swarm briefly took one hand out from under Shadow's forepaws to open the door, then deposited her team mate on the bed before closing it again. Shadow dropped her bag on the floor next to her, having picked it up telekinetically on the way in, and settled down. "So, that first one, the one I was telling Vista, is actually called the Selfish Human, though it's not really a cautioning tale, it's something that actually happened in the past of our world. It was before I was born, and before Momma was as well. Grandma Ninetails was alive, though, she was about forty or fifty- that's really young for our kind, by the way. Ninetails can live up to about a thousand- and it was during her travelling years. She was in another region of the world when the meteor came down, and hurried to ask around the nearest cities and towns for information, eventually being given the entire story by the pair of Pokemon that were central to it.
"Basically, a human was travelling with a Pokemon called Gardevoir, and they encountered a Ninetails on the way. It's thought that the Ninetails might've been Inari himself, but we don't know. The human offended the Ninetails somehow, probably by pulling his tails, so the Ninetails cursed the human. But the Gardevoir, who was extremely loyal to her human partner, took the curse herself to save him. The human abandoned the Gardevoir, since she was now cursed and would've been a problem, and this further enraged the Ninetails, who prophesied that the human would be reborn as a Pokemon, and the appearance of that Pokemon in the world would doom the balance of nature in the world. This happened many years ago, and Grandma thought it might be the reason why Inari is rarely seen by humans or Pokemon; he was disgusted at the show of selfishness that the human made, so he avoids both species to stop himself seeing people like that again.
"Anyway, years and years later, a human is reborn as a Pokemon. They became a Totodile, and were found in the woods by their partner Pokemon, who was a Pikachu. They formed a Rescue Team, like Eon and I, because the balance of the world had been disturbed and things were becoming more dangerous for normal Pokemon. The human had lost all their memories of before, only knowing that they were once human and their name, but they worked with the Pikachu to help Pokemon.
"One day, they spoke to a Pokemon called Xatu, who were known for telling the future, in hopes of finding out why the Totodile had become a Pokemon. The Xatu told them this story, but another Pokemon, a Gengar, overheard and spread the rumour that the Totodile was the human in the legend, and that they needed to be killed to return the world's balance. The two of them were chased out of town and eventually found their way to the top of a mountain, assisted by an Absol who could sense disasters and knew the two needed help, where they met the Ninetails of the legend and learned that the Totodile wasn't the human of the legend, but the human was alive.
"The two return home and tell the story, and Gengar and his team are chased away in turn. They continued doing missions to help people, when one day Xatu told them that a falling star was heading towards the planet, and that that was causing the imbalance in nature. A Gardevoir then visited the human in a dream, explaining that their role was to save the Pokemon world, and they'd allowed themselves to be transformed into a Pokemon and lose their memories, but the dream ended before they found out how.
"Totodile and Pikachu journeyed to the top of the Sky Tower, where Rayquaza lives, and asked him to help destroy the meteor, which is his job. The explosion caused Totodile's spirit to end up in the netherworld, which is a sort of a between world where gravity is all wrong and twisted, and nothing can be found. Gengar leads them back to the Pokemon world, where the group celebrate saving the world.
"A few months passed, and the Gengar reappears, having left his team and vanished. One of his team mates, a Medicham, revealed that he was trying to climb Mount Freeze, which is where the Totodile and Pikachu had found the Ninetails from the legend. They go after him at the request of Medicham and Ekans, and the Gengar apologises for his actions towards them. He reveals that he was the selfish human the Ninetails cursed, and he wanted to ask the Ninetails to help him apologise to Gardevoir. They found Ninetails, who sent them to a place called Murky Cave, where Gardevoir was living as a half-there spirit, the curse having sent her partly into the netherworld, allowing her to visit dreams, but leaving her anchored to the cave forever. She had also lost all memory of her human partner, only knowing that she'd been cursed by a Ninetails long ago. Gengar still apologised, and decided to remain in the cave with Gardevoir until the curse ended or she regained her memories."
Shadow shook her head slightly, her voice having become more and more introspective as she spoke, and dismissed the faint illusions she'd been using to illustrate her story as she did. "Grandma met the Totodile and Pikachu months after this, and as far as they knew Gengar and Gardevoir were still waiting together in the cave."
"That's... wow." Swarm muttered, a frown in her voice. "It's kind of strange... then again, I've heard a lot of mythology from my world, so something like that really happening isn't that odd." She rested a hand on Eon's back. "Could you tell me more about that netherworld?"
"Sure." Shadow nodded. "I don't know as much about this, but the netherworld is a place where gravity is wrong and nothing much exists. There's no Pokemon and no humans, though apparently fruited trees can grow there, and you can find both human and Pokemon settlements there. It's made up of floating platforms, and as you go between them gravity shifts so you can't really fall unless you jump away from everything, and there's no ground either, just a bottomless pit of swirling blues and purple. It's also closely related to the dream world, or might be the dream world, no-one's quite sure. According to some of the Pokemon that've migrated to our side of the world from the human world, the humans sometimes refer to it as the Distortion World, on account of how everything's twisted and distorted there, with buildings and stuff looking like they're in a warped mirror. The Mythical Shaymin can open portals to the netherworld with their Seed Flare Move, and Giratina is apparently the keeper of that world who can open portals on any reflective surface, allowing them to pass between the 'real' and distorted worlds."
"So it's like an afterlife?"
"Oh, no." Shadow shook her head rapidly. "Not at all. It's just another world, that you could theoretically go to, but you'd need a Shaymin or Giratina to open the portal there."
"I see." Swarm paused for a minute, taking that in, before cocking her head. "I've heard the name Giratina before somewhere..."
"I sorta mentioned that earlier, in the story about the serpent being sealed in a golden stone. I don't think that one's real, but it might be. Giratina is the serpent-like Pokemon that was sealed away due to fighting with their siblings, Dialga and Palkia, and causing disruption in the world. They only look like a serpent in the netherworld, though. In our world, they have six legs and the six wings become two, like this." She formed an illusion of the two forms, much smaller than they really were, and let Swarm inspect them. "I slipped up a bit telling the story and used the name Giratina, but I don't think anyone else noticed."
"Which is good, I guess." The bug user commented. "What about the story about the burning tower?"
"That one's real, but it's actually more of a human one, about the creation of the three Legendary Beasts. The Pokemon one is a bit different, though since there's a lot of different versions of them- not as many as common Pokemon, but more than one trio- this one's true of one of them, but not all." Settling back down, having sat forward to form her illusions properly, Shadow rested her head on her two front paws and curled her tails close to her body, shuffling slightly to position herself comfortably. "See, that one started in a city called Ecruteak, a human city, which had two tall towers..."
"Vicky!"
The unexpected shout made the flying Brute blink, but she ignored it for a moment to remain focused on holding the segment of building she was under upright, waiting for the Cape underneath it to finish pulling out the body of the unfortunate other Cape that had been standing in the wrong place when it fell. That Cape, some out-of-towner that hadn't left yet and was sticking around to try and help find any more bodies- she thought they might be PRT affiliated in some way, but Vicky would be the first to admit that she'd never really paid as much attention to that as she should- gave her a signal and she slowly floated out from under the brickwork, letting it fall to the ground as she did.
That job done, she looked around and up towards the shout.
"Hey, Eric!" She called back, lifting a few more feet off the ground to close the distance with her cousin, floating on a shield. "What's up?"
"Mom's trying to call New Wave together, as much as she can." He explained. "I volunteered to come find you, and Dad went to go get Amy from the medical place- though I'd think there'd be no-one left in there, with how she and Shadow went through everyone." Vicky chuckled.
"Yeah, they did a really great job. Anyway, just gimme a minute, and I'll be along." Her cousin nodded, so she dropped back down a bit to speak with the Cape she'd been working with, who quickly waved her off to go be with her family.
Suppressing a wince at the slight reminder of the situation, she started following Eric back to where her aunt was waiting.
"How's Crystal doing?" She asked, as a way to fill the silence.
"She's alright now, just a bit shocked is all." He replied. "But Amy and Shadow did really good work, so she's ok physically." Vicky nodded thoughtfully.
Crystal had ended up caught in the massive tsunami that had come some time after Shadow had knocked her out, which Amy had filled her in on during the intervening downtime between her ending her round of healing and the pair of them going to find somewhere to get some food. The invincible Cape definitely felt sorry for her other cousin, given that she wasn't invulnerable and her shields weren't as strong as her brother's, so being stuck just far away from the safe zones and just too low for her to fly out of the way would've been terrifying. Luckily, she'd managed to escape mostly alright, if one considered having both arms broken and a couple of ribs cracked 'alright'- which Vicky did, given that the wave came from Leviathan and probably should've been much worse.
Amy had fixed that, and Shadow had dealt with the concussion she'd also been given, then a couple of PRT folk had handed her over to her mother at the earliest opportunity.
"That's good. I was kinda worried when I heard what happened to her." Eric shot her a sideways glance, and Vicky blushed. "I had a bit of a bitch fit when I heard about Mom, so Shadow put me to sleep. I slept through the entire rest of the battle, and a good bit of the early aftermath stuff as well. I only woke up about six."
"Damn, you really did miss a lot." He chuckled. "I guess Amy filled you in?"
"Yeah, between her healing and getting some breakfast." Vicky nodded. "So, what's Aunt Sarah want to talk to us about?"
"I don't know, she just wanted to get everyone together." He gave her an apologetic look, then continued, "I think it might be something to do with Aunt Carol." Vicky winced and bit her lip, but nodded again, and the two continued to fly in silence towards their destination, which turned out to be one of the spare medical tents that hadn't been taken down yet.
Amy was already waiting there with their dad, and Vicky hurried over to hug both of them before drifting to gently wrap her arms around Crystal as well. She greeted her aunt and uncle just as quickly, before settling down to listen to what her aunt wanted to say.
"I'm glad you're ok, Vicky." Neil said, before they began. "We heard you go down from the armbands, and since we didn't see you come back out for a while we were worried about you." Vicky blushed again.
"I'm fine, I didn't even get hurt. Shadow knocked me out 'cause I went a bit mental after hearing about Mom." The entire group winced, and Sarah cleared her throat slightly.
"I suppose that brings me to what I wanted to ask, how you three were coping with it." She grimaced. "Though I also suppose that gives me an answer for Vicky…"
"I'm actually doing ok." Vicky butted in. "Shadow and I had a bit of a chat-"
"After you went off at her for putting you to sleep in the first place." Amy snarked.
"She forgave me, and admitted that it probably wasn't the best thing, even if it was the only option." She countered. "Anyway, we had a chat, and she helped me out a bit. I still feel bad, sure, but I've got better ways of spending my time than brooding, or attempting to go on self-righteous quests to punch Leviathan in the face for vengeance." Amy snorted at that.
"I'm… fairly ok too." She agreed. "I didn't really have the time to talk to Shadow like you did- during the battle we were either running about healing, or I was comforting her when Swarm and Eon went down- but we spoke a little afterwards about it all. She's pretty good at being comforting."
"Must be all the fuzzies." Crystal put it, making them all chuckle.
"Probably. She's adorable at the best of times, and she doesn't mind you hugging her for comfort- it's like holding a giant hot water bottle, at least when she's not running out of energy. She said it's something to do with her inner flame and aura, which I think I'd like to ask more about- but she's also pretty good at giving advice about things." Amy smiled. "But yeah, I'm not too bad. I mean, I'll miss her, sure, but Carol… wasn't always the nicest to me."
Vicky grimaced, leaning over and squeezing her sister's arm, before throwing her own around her shoulders and pulling Amy to her side.
Mark merely shrugged, apparently not wanting to talk about it.
Amy paused for a moment, frowning deeply and chewing her lip as she thought, then her eyes widened. "I think I need to go talk to Shadow."
"Why?" Sarah asked. "Is something wrong?"
"No, not wrong, but I need to check something about how her powers work, because I think I might've just had an absolute breakthrough on the medical side of things if it works like I hope it does." Amy said hurriedly, shifting out from under Vicky's arm and going to stand. The blonde pulled her back down with a slight smile.
"Hey, running off out of nowhere's my thing, remember?" She joked. "C'mon, Ames, explain!"
"Shadow's healing power is really fucking weird." The other girl told them bluntly. "The 'Heal Bell' part of it especially."
"Excuse me?"
"Shadow describes her power in two ways; Heal Pulse, which is what does the injuries and energy restoring thing, and then Heal Bell, which is the weird part." Amy replied to her uncle. "We've talked about it a couple of times after clearing out the hospital, and according the her, the Heal Bell version is what deals with a lot of other things, mostly mental stuff like concussions, but it'll also heal burns, poisoning since the Pulse thing misses that for some reason, most forms of artificial sleep though it doesn't work on everything, stuff like that. I'm not sure which of the two is the thing healing brain injuries, but maybe it's a mix of both. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it'll be able to do something to Master effects, which I think might be something to talk to the PRT about testing, and I'm almost certain it'd do something to chemical imbalances too." The healer was almost bouncing in her seat, something so unusual for the quiet girl that her cousin commented on it.
"Why's that so interesting, Ames?"
"Because, Crystal, mental illnesses like depression are because of chemical imbalances, which I can't fix because it's to do with the brain-"
"But Shadow's power does." Vicky suddenly realised.
"Wait, go back a minute, what's that about Master effects?" Sarah interrupted.
"Oh, since Shadow's power can target and cure mental afflictions, I figured she might be able to do something about Master effects that target a person's brain." Amy replied quickly. "I figured we'd need the help of the PRT for something like that, since they'd probably be able to get their hands on someone suffering from a Master effect a lot easier than a couple of independents would, but if it worked then who knows?" The healer grinned. "Do you think we'd be able to arrange that, Aunt Sarah?"
Neil answered for her. "If you and your friend have a way to clear up Master effects, I doubt they'll be saying no to your request for help." Sarah nodded absently.
"Do you mind if I go see if I can get Shadow, so we can talk about that?"
"Go ahead." Sarah nodded again, apparently thinking hard. "We'd probably have to call the Director and explain all this to her, but when it comes to important things like this she's normally fairly reasonable…" The team leader was still muttering to herself as Vicky and Amy left, the blonde taking her sister in her arms to fly the two of them over to the medical area Team Inari would likely be in.
"Why do I feel like you're leaving something out there?" Vicky accused lightly, drifting slowly towards their destination.
"Because you're you, and you're nosey." Amy snarked back, glancing up with a grin. "But yeah, I kinda was. I'm almost certain Shadow's power deals with depression, given that it's apparently gotten rid of mine."
Vicky froze in mid air for a moment, staring.
"…Huh." She finally managed, dropping back towards the ground. "I guess you have been a lot less grumpy lately. Ever since you and Shadow first started doing hospital rounds together, actually."
"That's when I've pinned it down to too." Amy nodded. "Though…" She looked around a bit, then lowered her voice, "I also only noticed it when I realised something had happened to your aura."
"Pardon?"
"Your aura's seemed a lot stronger than normal to me recently. I figured I was just imagining things, since no-one else noticed, but then I realised that I'd been caught in Shadow's healing blast a lot since that first started happening."
"Are you saying…" Vicky tried, dropping heavily onto the ground.
"I don't know for sure," Amy stressed, "And honestly I doubt it really is, but if your power acts like something of a Master effect, even if it just prompts a person's brain to produce more of a certain chemical, then that means that Shadow's power most likely does work on those sorts of power." The brunette bit her lip. "Then again, I don't really know if that counts as a Master power, since it's still kinda a Shaker…"
"No… no, it does sound more like a Master power when you put it that way." Vicky admitted, leaning against the wall. "Fucking… no wonder Mom was always so forceful about calling it a Shaker field, the PR nightmare from being known as a Master publicly…"
"Yeah, you'd've been fucked, and so would New Wave for having a Master that makes people like her, and that couldn't happen." Amy sighed bitterly, and Vicky joined her.
"Dammit, Ames, I wish you hadn't brought that up." The Brute grimaced. "Knowing that my power's technically probably a Master effect isn't the greatest thing to be adding to my pile of shit today."
"Sorry, Vicky." Amy winced sympathetically. "But I guess it's one more reason to keep control over your aura? Besides, at least Shadow can fix pretty much any damage done by it."
"Yeah." She pushed off the wall again and floated after her sister, into the medical tent. "C'mon, let's just go get Shadow so I can stop thinking about it." Amy nodded, making a beeline for the area on the other side of the tent, which was blocked off with a hastily created wall and door, while Vicky floated after her, deep in thought.
Amy knocked on the door, and a few seconds later Inari's insect controller- Swarm- opened the door, her head tilted slightly to one side. "Hello, Panacea." She greeted warmly, a hint of insect buzz in her voice. "Is there something you needed?"
"Is Shadow still awake? We were hoping to borrow her for something." Amy replied, smiling at her. Vicky floated over her shoulder to look slightly into the room, seeing the sleeping form of Eon still lying along a bed, while Shadow was lying next to him on a separate bed, looking up towards the door. A couple of strangely shaped illusions were in the middle of dispelling themselves in the centre of the room, making Vicky curious as to what they were, but the small fox jumped down and trotted over to the door.
"What's up, Amy?" She asked. "Do you need my help healing someone?"
"Sort of." Vicky's sister waved a hand towards her. "I was speculating on some stuff during a bit of a New Wave meeting, and I wanted to see if you would be ok talking to my Aunt Sarah about some of your healing powers?"
Shadow glanced up at Swarm, then shrugged. "Sure, no problem. Swarm, can you stay with Eon? Just in case he wakes up."
"No problem, Shadow." Swarm nodded, crouching down and running a hand down her back. "You go help out, I'm sure Eon'll be fine."
"Thanks." Following Amy and Vicky out of the tent, Swarm closing the door behind them, Shadow continued, "So what's the situation, exactly?"
"It's mostly to do with some of the stuff you've said about how your Heal Bell works, since it got me thinking about a couple of things, mostly just wondering how it might interact with some other stuff." Amy half-explained, kneeling and holding out her arms for Shadow to climb into. The brunette was promptly picked up by Vicky, who started flying them back towards the tent New Wave had commandeered. "We're back!" She called, as Vicky landed and let the two out of her arms. Brushing aside the entrance to the tent, the five Capes inside looked over to them with smiles, and Amy put Shadow back onto the floor. "Shadow, this is our family. That's Dad, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil are over there, and those're our cousins, Crystal and Eric. Everyone, this is Shadow."
"Nice to meet you all." Shadow grinned, ducking her head slightly in an approximation of a bow. "Now, Amy's being all mysterious, so what did you need me for?"
"Amy said that your healing abilities have a thing for mental issues?" Mark asked in return, quietly.
"Oh, sort of." Shadow acknowledged, as the three sat down. "Heal Bell works strangely, but for the most part it'll work on mental stuff. Amy's watched it before, something to do with chemicals?"
"Would you mind giving a demonstration, Shadow?" Sarah requested, as Amy sidled along and took her dad's hand.
"Sure, no problem." Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, there was a moment's pause before she howled, a barely-there wave of energy following.
Amy's eyes widened as she saw the slight shifts happening in Mark's biology.
"And that works on most things?" Neil questioned.
"When they're combined, yeah. Not so much on their own, it's a bit fiddly." Shadow shrugged.
"Do you think it'd work on Master effects?" Vicky put in, interested. Shadow paused, thinking.
"I'm... not sure." She admitted. "It doesn't do anything to Swarm when she's caught in them, after all, and that's a Master power, but maybe it's only certain types?"
"Amy came up with the idea." Sarah explained. "I'd like to offer to contact the PRT on Team Inari's behalf, in an attempt to get some Master victims that could be used for you to test that."
"If you could cure Master victims, that'd be awesome." Crystal put in, grinning widely. "I mean, there's loads of different Master victims in the world, an no-one can figure out how to get rid of the effects, aside from finding the Master."
"Thank you, Lady Photon." Shadow smiled widely, again giving one of those slight bows. "That'd be great, I'd love to be able to help more people that way."
"I'll make contact with the PRT as soon as I can. Would I be able to contact you through Amy at some point?"
"No problem, assuming Amy doesn't mind. We'll probably end up meeting up to do more healing pretty soon anyway, so we'll end up being near each other." Shadow glanced up at the healer, who nodded.
"I don't have any problems with that." Amy agreed.
"I don't know when I'll be able to make contact with them for you, given the entire clean up operation from the aftermath of this attack." Sarah added. "But I'll do my best to put this forward as soon as possible. Being able to cure Master victims isn't something that should be put off for long."
"Don't try rushing it on my behalf." Shadow objected. "The PRT and Protectorate are gonna have more stuff to do than deal with a random independent for a while, because other things should definitely take priority over it. Still, just passing it on for us is great, thank you."
"You've been helping take a lot off of Amy's workload in the last few weeks." Neil replied. "It's the least New Wave can do to thank you for that." Shadow nodded, though Vicky got the impression that she was discreetly rolling her eyes at them.
"Amy and I have a lot in common in terms of wanting to help people. The fact that she volunteered to help me get in touch with the hospital to help out means enough to me as-is." The fox assured them, before glancing back out of the tent. "And, pardon me, but is it ok if I go? I want to stay near Eon."
"Of course, your team mate's injured, you should be with him." Mark said. "Vicky, would you mind...?"
"I'll drop her back." The blonde nodded, standing. Shadow smiled again at the rest of the room, shook Sarah's hand when it was offered, and pattered out with Vicky.
Somewhat warily, she lifted the fox into her arms, and Shadow laughed. "I won't bite, you know." Vicky giggled slightly and took off, leisurely drifting towards the tent Eon was in.
"I know, I know." She smiled. "Hey, out of curiosity, what was with the little bow-thing you were doing? It's not like it was a formal thing, I've seen you doing it when talking to the Wards or the Protectorate on patrol, and I've seen you give Amy or the hospital staff one as well a couple of times."
"Bowing in our... culture... is a bit weird." Shadow answered carefully. "Bowing deeply to someone is a sign on respect, and it's normally pretty formal; I'd bow to a Kyuubi normally, though I don't do it with Eon because he's my team leader, so I only do that when he's pulling rank, so to speak, or I'd bow to someone high up like the Director or Chief Director, or Legend, because they're powerful leaders. Little bows are more like acknowledgements of advice or gifts, like the fact that your Aunt is offering to contact the PRT in my name to request that help with the Master thing. With a lot of the other stuff, it's because they gave advice in terms of how to handle being a Cape team here on Bet, things like that."
"Weird."
"It is a bit. Technically I should've bowed deeper to your Aunt, since Lady Photon's the team leader and she has more power than me, being older and with more influence, but she's also got no real influence over me, whereas someone like Legend... they have a lot more direct power over what I'd do, because they have the power to declare me or Inari a real threat, so they have to be bowed to that way." Vicky blinked.
"I see." She said, thinking. "What about with Lung? Apparently you and Eon bowed there."
"Respect of his abilities and returning the respect he was giving us." She explained. "And in my case, following the lead of my superior before staying out of the way, because he clearly wanted to talk to Eon and not me."
"Huh."
"Our culture has a lot of weird things like that. We've been teaching Swarm some, since she's our team mate, but for the most part she'd never need to know it because it's unlikely she'll run into them." Shadow chuckled. "I mean, what's the use in knowing that if you meet a Uxie you should bow deeply in respect to a higher superior, then keep your head lowered and eyes down in deference, if you're never going to meet a Uxie?" Vicky raised an eyebrow as she descended, but Shadow didn't elaborate, so she made a quiet promise to herself to do some searching around as soon as she could to try and find out what a Uxie was.
Vicky knelt down to let Shadow out of her arms, stretching slightly as she did so. "Thanks for the lift back, and thanks to your family for offering that." Shadow shook herself out slightly as Vicky smiled.
"No problem. Hope Eon gets better soon, and say hello to Swarm for me as well." She waved, and Shadow lifted a paw in response as the blonde flew off back towards her family, and the fox went inside to sit with her team again.
"What on earth happened there?" Alexandria, also known as Rebecca Costa-Brown, demanded, rubbing her arm irately. "How did that even happen?"
"How did that little fox thing have the power to do that?" David added. "And since when could either of them shoot lightning, anyway?"
"No idea." Paul shrugged, leaning against the wall. He was suspiciously calm about the entire situation, all things considered, but he'd been well out of the way of the lightning strike and therefore hadn't really gotten much of the effect.
David had been somewhat closer, and had felt the electricity booming past, while Rebecca had taken it head on.
A couple of bandages wrapped around the upper part of her arm under her costume told the story of how that went.
"It's more interesting that it managed to scare away Leviathan, I think." He continued with a shrug. "If those two happen to have a way to do something similar to Behemoth and Simurgh, we might be able to start ending the attacks far quicker by just aiming either Shadow or Eon at them."
"We need to find out more about them." The Doctor said, from her place on the other end of the room. "They're far more powerful than any normal Trigger I've ever seen, and neither of them are one of ours. I want to know where they came from, and if we can duplicate it."
"What about their team mate? Swarm?"
"She's nothing special, just an insect controller." She dismissed. "There's no reason to try looking into her at all. We should focus on Shadow and Eon." Paul looked somewhat uncertain about that, but said nothing.
The meeting continued in the background, but Contessa didn't bother to pay attention to it. If she needed to know something, the Path would tell her where to find it out.
Instead, she focused on a new issue.
Path to finding out more about Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to locating Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to discovering Eon's past.
Entity not found.
Path to discovering Shadow's past.
Entity not found.
This pattern continued every time either of their names came up in the Path request. Even using them as a secondary, for example Path to using Swarm to get information on Shadow and Eon came out with the same failure.
It was unsettling.
Especially as Contessa never normally got an error like that, even from her blind spots like the Entities, Endbringers and Eidolon. With them, things just blanked out silently into nothing, forcing her to reset the Path to get around it.
Having a pair of Capes that just outright blocked her abilities in a way that seemed to give her no way around it was… unnerving, for someone who needed the Path to make sure the world didn't end, and wanted to try using the targets to help save it.
Ocean swirled around them, rain pounding on it from above and joining the shifting of the tides. Debris from the slowly-sinking islands started forcing waves to form, but with a moments thought they were frozen, lowered back into the water to join the shifting.
Their eyes flickered back and forth through the water, the dust and blood and bodies having no effect on their vision, searching for the thing they had been tracking, the thing that had led them to here…
There. A faint ripple in the water, invisible to normal eyes yet painfully obvious to them, and they shifted to trace it, darting towards it with no regard for anything else and circling once.
A shield, overlaid over the city and hiding it from view. It had drifted here with the currents, but now with them there, the currents were shifting too fast to follow, leaving it trapped.
The ocean began to compress, pressing down on the shield with all the force they could manage, pulling with it all the debris in the area and forcing them down too. Things impacted their back, but they ignored it, too focused on their goal to care- and beyond the ability to care in themselves.
A flash of yellow. The shield broke, water and pieces of island rushing in, down on top of it, and the sound of shattering. Crystal shapes floated out of the ruins, and they waited for a moment before forcing more water around them, shattering them.
Something floated out of the ruins after them, a small oval shape, and after a moment they decided that it was merely another piece of rubble, drifting off into the ocean.
They relaxed, their orders complete, and then something else impacted their back.
Another instinct took over, orders to fight, and so they did, lunging out of the ocean and towards the source of the great roar that echoed around them, their tail impacting the rubble behind them and sending it flying out into further waters, away from them.
Beneath them, the island continued to sink, and the waves continued to be suppressed, used instead for the sole purpose of pushing the evidence of the main target away.
Red and yellow flickered, the area of water shining, and then there was nothing.
Not even them.
A good half an hour later, both the conversation and the late-ish breakfast was over, and the group went their separate ways. Aquamarina had made her way towards the teleporters, having decided that there wasn't really anything else she could do in the Bay, so she was going back to LA, but have slipped a phone number to Swarm with the offer of keeping in touch and helping out if they needed it- an offer that touched both girls. Vicky was heading back into the field, planning on seeing if she could help out with moving some of the rubble out of the way, and Amy was going to be making rounds to check on some of the people that were still recovering from things she couldn't heal entirely.
Shadow had offered to go and help, but the healer had firmly rebuffed her, telling her that she was healing herself, so she shouldn't need to worry about doing anything right now.
Vista had wandered off to try and find her remaining team mates, seeming in a much better mood than she had been when Shadow found her, and the two members of Team Inari were heading back to the recovery room, where Eon was still sleeping off his injury.
Shadow was incredibly surprised that he was still unconscious, but according to Aquamarina, he'd been thrown by Leviathan head-first into a wall after the impact he'd landed, when he'd seemed a little disoriented, which had lead to Shadow changing her opinion.
As far as she knew, unless Eon had picked something up without telling her, he didn't have any decent Defence boosting Moves, so an impact like that would've hurt, even with the fact that she knew they were tougher than the norm for this world.
Though the titbit that Leviathan had used all nine of Eon's tails for leverage in his throw made her curious as to what sort of curse would've been placed on the creature. Hopefully, it was something that would lead to the Endbringer losing the next time he tried to attack.
"Hey, Shadow." The Vulpix looked up, tilting her head back to meet the orange eyes of Swarm's mask. "That story you were telling Vista earlier on... is that actually a story you know?"
"Yeah, it is." She nodded. "And the other ones I was telling earlier are as well. I just adjusted them to remove the mentions of Pokemon, is all."
"Oh. Would you mind telling me the real ones?"
"Sure." Swarm briefly took one hand out from under Shadow's forepaws to open the door, then deposited her team mate on the bed before closing it again. Shadow dropped her bag on the floor next to her, having picked it up telekinetically on the way in, and settled down. "So, that first one, the one I was telling Vista, is actually called the Selfish Human, though it's not really a cautioning tale, it's something that actually happened in the past of our world. It was before I was born, and before Momma was as well. Grandma Ninetails was alive, though, she was about forty or fifty- that's really young for our kind, by the way. Ninetails can live up to about a thousand- and it was during her travelling years. She was in another region of the world when the meteor came down, and hurried to ask around the nearest cities and towns for information, eventually being given the entire story by the pair of Pokemon that were central to it.
"Basically, a human was travelling with a Pokemon called Gardevoir, and they encountered a Ninetails on the way. It's thought that the Ninetails might've been Inari himself, but we don't know. The human offended the Ninetails somehow, probably by pulling his tails, so the Ninetails cursed the human. But the Gardevoir, who was extremely loyal to her human partner, took the curse herself to save him. The human abandoned the Gardevoir, since she was now cursed and would've been a problem, and this further enraged the Ninetails, who prophesied that the human would be reborn as a Pokemon, and the appearance of that Pokemon in the world would doom the balance of nature in the world. This happened many years ago, and Grandma thought it might be the reason why Inari is rarely seen by humans or Pokemon; he was disgusted at the show of selfishness that the human made, so he avoids both species to stop himself seeing people like that again.
"Anyway, years and years later, a human is reborn as a Pokemon. They became a Totodile, and were found in the woods by their partner Pokemon, who was a Pikachu. They formed a Rescue Team, like Eon and I, because the balance of the world had been disturbed and things were becoming more dangerous for normal Pokemon. The human had lost all their memories of before, only knowing that they were once human and their name, but they worked with the Pikachu to help Pokemon.
"One day, they spoke to a Pokemon called Xatu, who were known for telling the future, in hopes of finding out why the Totodile had become a Pokemon. The Xatu told them this story, but another Pokemon, a Gengar, overheard and spread the rumour that the Totodile was the human in the legend, and that they needed to be killed to return the world's balance. The two of them were chased out of town and eventually found their way to the top of a mountain, assisted by an Absol who could sense disasters and knew the two needed help, where they met the Ninetails of the legend and learned that the Totodile wasn't the human of the legend, but the human was alive.
"The two return home and tell the story, and Gengar and his team are chased away in turn. They continued doing missions to help people, when one day Xatu told them that a falling star was heading towards the planet, and that that was causing the imbalance in nature. A Gardevoir then visited the human in a dream, explaining that their role was to save the Pokemon world, and they'd allowed themselves to be transformed into a Pokemon and lose their memories, but the dream ended before they found out how.
"Totodile and Pikachu journeyed to the top of the Sky Tower, where Rayquaza lives, and asked him to help destroy the meteor, which is his job. The explosion caused Totodile's spirit to end up in the netherworld, which is a sort of a between world where gravity is all wrong and twisted, and nothing can be found. Gengar leads them back to the Pokemon world, where the group celebrate saving the world.
"A few months passed, and the Gengar reappears, having left his team and vanished. One of his team mates, a Medicham, revealed that he was trying to climb Mount Freeze, which is where the Totodile and Pikachu had found the Ninetails from the legend. They go after him at the request of Medicham and Ekans, and the Gengar apologises for his actions towards them. He reveals that he was the selfish human the Ninetails cursed, and he wanted to ask the Ninetails to help him apologise to Gardevoir. They found Ninetails, who sent them to a place called Murky Cave, where Gardevoir was living as a half-there spirit, the curse having sent her partly into the netherworld, allowing her to visit dreams, but leaving her anchored to the cave forever. She had also lost all memory of her human partner, only knowing that she'd been cursed by a Ninetails long ago. Gengar still apologised, and decided to remain in the cave with Gardevoir until the curse ended or she regained her memories."
Shadow shook her head slightly, her voice having become more and more introspective as she spoke, and dismissed the faint illusions she'd been using to illustrate her story as she did. "Grandma met the Totodile and Pikachu months after this, and as far as they knew Gengar and Gardevoir were still waiting together in the cave."
"That's... wow." Swarm muttered, a frown in her voice. "It's kind of strange... then again, I've heard a lot of mythology from my world, so something like that really happening isn't that odd." She rested a hand on Eon's back. "Could you tell me more about that netherworld?"
"Sure." Shadow nodded. "I don't know as much about this, but the netherworld is a place where gravity is wrong and nothing much exists. There's no Pokemon and no humans, though apparently fruited trees can grow there, and you can find both human and Pokemon settlements there. It's made up of floating platforms, and as you go between them gravity shifts so you can't really fall unless you jump away from everything, and there's no ground either, just a bottomless pit of swirling blues and purple. It's also closely related to the dream world, or might be the dream world, no-one's quite sure. According to some of the Pokemon that've migrated to our side of the world from the human world, the humans sometimes refer to it as the Distortion World, on account of how everything's twisted and distorted there, with buildings and stuff looking like they're in a warped mirror. The Mythical Shaymin can open portals to the netherworld with their Seed Flare Move, and Giratina is apparently the keeper of that world who can open portals on any reflective surface, allowing them to pass between the 'real' and distorted worlds."
"So it's like an afterlife?"
"Oh, no." Shadow shook her head rapidly. "Not at all. It's just another world, that you could theoretically go to, but you'd need a Shaymin or Giratina to open the portal there."
"I see." Swarm paused for a minute, taking that in, before cocking her head. "I've heard the name Giratina before somewhere..."
"I sorta mentioned that earlier, in the story about the serpent being sealed in a golden stone. I don't think that one's real, but it might be. Giratina is the serpent-like Pokemon that was sealed away due to fighting with their siblings, Dialga and Palkia, and causing disruption in the world. They only look like a serpent in the netherworld, though. In our world, they have six legs and the six wings become two, like this." She formed an illusion of the two forms, much smaller than they really were, and let Swarm inspect them. "I slipped up a bit telling the story and used the name Giratina, but I don't think anyone else noticed."
"Which is good, I guess." The bug user commented. "What about the story about the burning tower?"
"That one's real, but it's actually more of a human one, about the creation of the three Legendary Beasts. The Pokemon one is a bit different, though since there's a lot of different versions of them- not as many as common Pokemon, but more than one trio- this one's true of one of them, but not all." Settling back down, having sat forward to form her illusions properly, Shadow rested her head on her two front paws and curled her tails close to her body, shuffling slightly to position herself comfortably. "See, that one started in a city called Ecruteak, a human city, which had two tall towers..."
"Vicky!"
The unexpected shout made the flying Brute blink, but she ignored it for a moment to remain focused on holding the segment of building she was under upright, waiting for the Cape underneath it to finish pulling out the body of the unfortunate other Cape that had been standing in the wrong place when it fell. That Cape, some out-of-towner that hadn't left yet and was sticking around to try and help find any more bodies- she thought they might be PRT affiliated in some way, but Vicky would be the first to admit that she'd never really paid as much attention to that as she should- gave her a signal and she slowly floated out from under the brickwork, letting it fall to the ground as she did.
That job done, she looked around and up towards the shout.
"Hey, Eric!" She called back, lifting a few more feet off the ground to close the distance with her cousin, floating on a shield. "What's up?"
"Mom's trying to call New Wave together, as much as she can." He explained. "I volunteered to come find you, and Dad went to go get Amy from the medical place- though I'd think there'd be no-one left in there, with how she and Shadow went through everyone." Vicky chuckled.
"Yeah, they did a really great job. Anyway, just gimme a minute, and I'll be along." Her cousin nodded, so she dropped back down a bit to speak with the Cape she'd been working with, who quickly waved her off to go be with her family.
Suppressing a wince at the slight reminder of the situation, she started following Eric back to where her aunt was waiting.
"How's Crystal doing?" She asked, as a way to fill the silence.
"She's alright now, just a bit shocked is all." He replied. "But Amy and Shadow did really good work, so she's ok physically." Vicky nodded thoughtfully.
Crystal had ended up caught in the massive tsunami that had come some time after Shadow had knocked her out, which Amy had filled her in on during the intervening downtime between her ending her round of healing and the pair of them going to find somewhere to get some food. The invincible Cape definitely felt sorry for her other cousin, given that she wasn't invulnerable and her shields weren't as strong as her brother's, so being stuck just far away from the safe zones and just too low for her to fly out of the way would've been terrifying. Luckily, she'd managed to escape mostly alright, if one considered having both arms broken and a couple of ribs cracked 'alright'- which Vicky did, given that the wave came from Leviathan and probably should've been much worse.
Amy had fixed that, and Shadow had dealt with the concussion she'd also been given, then a couple of PRT folk had handed her over to her mother at the earliest opportunity.
"That's good. I was kinda worried when I heard what happened to her." Eric shot her a sideways glance, and Vicky blushed. "I had a bit of a bitch fit when I heard about Mom, so Shadow put me to sleep. I slept through the entire rest of the battle, and a good bit of the early aftermath stuff as well. I only woke up about six."
"Damn, you really did miss a lot." He chuckled. "I guess Amy filled you in?"
"Yeah, between her healing and getting some breakfast." Vicky nodded. "So, what's Aunt Sarah want to talk to us about?"
"I don't know, she just wanted to get everyone together." He gave her an apologetic look, then continued, "I think it might be something to do with Aunt Carol." Vicky winced and bit her lip, but nodded again, and the two continued to fly in silence towards their destination, which turned out to be one of the spare medical tents that hadn't been taken down yet.
Amy was already waiting there with their dad, and Vicky hurried over to hug both of them before drifting to gently wrap her arms around Crystal as well. She greeted her aunt and uncle just as quickly, before settling down to listen to what her aunt wanted to say.
"I'm glad you're ok, Vicky." Neil said, before they began. "We heard you go down from the armbands, and since we didn't see you come back out for a while we were worried about you." Vicky blushed again.
"I'm fine, I didn't even get hurt. Shadow knocked me out 'cause I went a bit mental after hearing about Mom." The entire group winced, and Sarah cleared her throat slightly.
"I suppose that brings me to what I wanted to ask, how you three were coping with it." She grimaced. "Though I also suppose that gives me an answer for Vicky…"
"I'm actually doing ok." Vicky butted in. "Shadow and I had a bit of a chat-"
"After you went off at her for putting you to sleep in the first place." Amy snarked.
"She forgave me, and admitted that it probably wasn't the best thing, even if it was the only option." She countered. "Anyway, we had a chat, and she helped me out a bit. I still feel bad, sure, but I've got better ways of spending my time than brooding, or attempting to go on self-righteous quests to punch Leviathan in the face for vengeance." Amy snorted at that.
"I'm… fairly ok too." She agreed. "I didn't really have the time to talk to Shadow like you did- during the battle we were either running about healing, or I was comforting her when Swarm and Eon went down- but we spoke a little afterwards about it all. She's pretty good at being comforting."
"Must be all the fuzzies." Crystal put it, making them all chuckle.
"Probably. She's adorable at the best of times, and she doesn't mind you hugging her for comfort- it's like holding a giant hot water bottle, at least when she's not running out of energy. She said it's something to do with her inner flame and aura, which I think I'd like to ask more about- but she's also pretty good at giving advice about things." Amy smiled. "But yeah, I'm not too bad. I mean, I'll miss her, sure, but Carol… wasn't always the nicest to me."
Vicky grimaced, leaning over and squeezing her sister's arm, before throwing her own around her shoulders and pulling Amy to her side.
Mark merely shrugged, apparently not wanting to talk about it.
Amy paused for a moment, frowning deeply and chewing her lip as she thought, then her eyes widened. "I think I need to go talk to Shadow."
"Why?" Sarah asked. "Is something wrong?"
"No, not wrong, but I need to check something about how her powers work, because I think I might've just had an absolute breakthrough on the medical side of things if it works like I hope it does." Amy said hurriedly, shifting out from under Vicky's arm and going to stand. The blonde pulled her back down with a slight smile.
"Hey, running off out of nowhere's my thing, remember?" She joked. "C'mon, Ames, explain!"
"Shadow's healing power is really fucking weird." The other girl told them bluntly. "The 'Heal Bell' part of it especially."
"Excuse me?"
"Shadow describes her power in two ways; Heal Pulse, which is what does the injuries and energy restoring thing, and then Heal Bell, which is the weird part." Amy replied to her uncle. "We've talked about it a couple of times after clearing out the hospital, and according the her, the Heal Bell version is what deals with a lot of other things, mostly mental stuff like concussions, but it'll also heal burns, poisoning since the Pulse thing misses that for some reason, most forms of artificial sleep though it doesn't work on everything, stuff like that. I'm not sure which of the two is the thing healing brain injuries, but maybe it's a mix of both. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it'll be able to do something to Master effects, which I think might be something to talk to the PRT about testing, and I'm almost certain it'd do something to chemical imbalances too." The healer was almost bouncing in her seat, something so unusual for the quiet girl that her cousin commented on it.
"Why's that so interesting, Ames?"
"Because, Crystal, mental illnesses like depression are because of chemical imbalances, which I can't fix because it's to do with the brain-"
"But Shadow's power does." Vicky suddenly realised.
"Wait, go back a minute, what's that about Master effects?" Sarah interrupted.
"Oh, since Shadow's power can target and cure mental afflictions, I figured she might be able to do something about Master effects that target a person's brain." Amy replied quickly. "I figured we'd need the help of the PRT for something like that, since they'd probably be able to get their hands on someone suffering from a Master effect a lot easier than a couple of independents would, but if it worked then who knows?" The healer grinned. "Do you think we'd be able to arrange that, Aunt Sarah?"
Neil answered for her. "If you and your friend have a way to clear up Master effects, I doubt they'll be saying no to your request for help." Sarah nodded absently.
"Do you mind if I go see if I can get Shadow, so we can talk about that?"
"Go ahead." Sarah nodded again, apparently thinking hard. "We'd probably have to call the Director and explain all this to her, but when it comes to important things like this she's normally fairly reasonable…" The team leader was still muttering to herself as Vicky and Amy left, the blonde taking her sister in her arms to fly the two of them over to the medical area Team Inari would likely be in.
"Why do I feel like you're leaving something out there?" Vicky accused lightly, drifting slowly towards their destination.
"Because you're you, and you're nosey." Amy snarked back, glancing up with a grin. "But yeah, I kinda was. I'm almost certain Shadow's power deals with depression, given that it's apparently gotten rid of mine."
Vicky froze in mid air for a moment, staring.
"…Huh." She finally managed, dropping back towards the ground. "I guess you have been a lot less grumpy lately. Ever since you and Shadow first started doing hospital rounds together, actually."
"That's when I've pinned it down to too." Amy nodded. "Though…" She looked around a bit, then lowered her voice, "I also only noticed it when I realised something had happened to your aura."
"Pardon?"
"Your aura's seemed a lot stronger than normal to me recently. I figured I was just imagining things, since no-one else noticed, but then I realised that I'd been caught in Shadow's healing blast a lot since that first started happening."
"Are you saying…" Vicky tried, dropping heavily onto the ground.
"I don't know for sure," Amy stressed, "And honestly I doubt it really is, but if your power acts like something of a Master effect, even if it just prompts a person's brain to produce more of a certain chemical, then that means that Shadow's power most likely does work on those sorts of power." The brunette bit her lip. "Then again, I don't really know if that counts as a Master power, since it's still kinda a Shaker…"
"No… no, it does sound more like a Master power when you put it that way." Vicky admitted, leaning against the wall. "Fucking… no wonder Mom was always so forceful about calling it a Shaker field, the PR nightmare from being known as a Master publicly…"
"Yeah, you'd've been fucked, and so would New Wave for having a Master that makes people like her, and that couldn't happen." Amy sighed bitterly, and Vicky joined her.
"Dammit, Ames, I wish you hadn't brought that up." The Brute grimaced. "Knowing that my power's technically probably a Master effect isn't the greatest thing to be adding to my pile of shit today."
"Sorry, Vicky." Amy winced sympathetically. "But I guess it's one more reason to keep control over your aura? Besides, at least Shadow can fix pretty much any damage done by it."
"Yeah." She pushed off the wall again and floated after her sister, into the medical tent. "C'mon, let's just go get Shadow so I can stop thinking about it." Amy nodded, making a beeline for the area on the other side of the tent, which was blocked off with a hastily created wall and door, while Vicky floated after her, deep in thought.
Amy knocked on the door, and a few seconds later Inari's insect controller- Swarm- opened the door, her head tilted slightly to one side. "Hello, Panacea." She greeted warmly, a hint of insect buzz in her voice. "Is there something you needed?"
"Is Shadow still awake? We were hoping to borrow her for something." Amy replied, smiling at her. Vicky floated over her shoulder to look slightly into the room, seeing the sleeping form of Eon still lying along a bed, while Shadow was lying next to him on a separate bed, looking up towards the door. A couple of strangely shaped illusions were in the middle of dispelling themselves in the centre of the room, making Vicky curious as to what they were, but the small fox jumped down and trotted over to the door.
"What's up, Amy?" She asked. "Do you need my help healing someone?"
"Sort of." Vicky's sister waved a hand towards her. "I was speculating on some stuff during a bit of a New Wave meeting, and I wanted to see if you would be ok talking to my Aunt Sarah about some of your healing powers?"
Shadow glanced up at Swarm, then shrugged. "Sure, no problem. Swarm, can you stay with Eon? Just in case he wakes up."
"No problem, Shadow." Swarm nodded, crouching down and running a hand down her back. "You go help out, I'm sure Eon'll be fine."
"Thanks." Following Amy and Vicky out of the tent, Swarm closing the door behind them, Shadow continued, "So what's the situation, exactly?"
"It's mostly to do with some of the stuff you've said about how your Heal Bell works, since it got me thinking about a couple of things, mostly just wondering how it might interact with some other stuff." Amy half-explained, kneeling and holding out her arms for Shadow to climb into. The brunette was promptly picked up by Vicky, who started flying them back towards the tent New Wave had commandeered. "We're back!" She called, as Vicky landed and let the two out of her arms. Brushing aside the entrance to the tent, the five Capes inside looked over to them with smiles, and Amy put Shadow back onto the floor. "Shadow, this is our family. That's Dad, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil are over there, and those're our cousins, Crystal and Eric. Everyone, this is Shadow."
"Nice to meet you all." Shadow grinned, ducking her head slightly in an approximation of a bow. "Now, Amy's being all mysterious, so what did you need me for?"
"Amy said that your healing abilities have a thing for mental issues?" Mark asked in return, quietly.
"Oh, sort of." Shadow acknowledged, as the three sat down. "Heal Bell works strangely, but for the most part it'll work on mental stuff. Amy's watched it before, something to do with chemicals?"
"Would you mind giving a demonstration, Shadow?" Sarah requested, as Amy sidled along and took her dad's hand.
"Sure, no problem." Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, there was a moment's pause before she howled, a barely-there wave of energy following.
Amy's eyes widened as she saw the slight shifts happening in Mark's biology.
"And that works on most things?" Neil questioned.
"When they're combined, yeah. Not so much on their own, it's a bit fiddly." Shadow shrugged.
"Do you think it'd work on Master effects?" Vicky put in, interested. Shadow paused, thinking.
"I'm... not sure." She admitted. "It doesn't do anything to Swarm when she's caught in them, after all, and that's a Master power, but maybe it's only certain types?"
"Amy came up with the idea." Sarah explained. "I'd like to offer to contact the PRT on Team Inari's behalf, in an attempt to get some Master victims that could be used for you to test that."
"If you could cure Master victims, that'd be awesome." Crystal put in, grinning widely. "I mean, there's loads of different Master victims in the world, an no-one can figure out how to get rid of the effects, aside from finding the Master."
"Thank you, Lady Photon." Shadow smiled widely, again giving one of those slight bows. "That'd be great, I'd love to be able to help more people that way."
"I'll make contact with the PRT as soon as I can. Would I be able to contact you through Amy at some point?"
"No problem, assuming Amy doesn't mind. We'll probably end up meeting up to do more healing pretty soon anyway, so we'll end up being near each other." Shadow glanced up at the healer, who nodded.
"I don't have any problems with that." Amy agreed.
"I don't know when I'll be able to make contact with them for you, given the entire clean up operation from the aftermath of this attack." Sarah added. "But I'll do my best to put this forward as soon as possible. Being able to cure Master victims isn't something that should be put off for long."
"Don't try rushing it on my behalf." Shadow objected. "The PRT and Protectorate are gonna have more stuff to do than deal with a random independent for a while, because other things should definitely take priority over it. Still, just passing it on for us is great, thank you."
"You've been helping take a lot off of Amy's workload in the last few weeks." Neil replied. "It's the least New Wave can do to thank you for that." Shadow nodded, though Vicky got the impression that she was discreetly rolling her eyes at them.
"Amy and I have a lot in common in terms of wanting to help people. The fact that she volunteered to help me get in touch with the hospital to help out means enough to me as-is." The fox assured them, before glancing back out of the tent. "And, pardon me, but is it ok if I go? I want to stay near Eon."
"Of course, your team mate's injured, you should be with him." Mark said. "Vicky, would you mind...?"
"I'll drop her back." The blonde nodded, standing. Shadow smiled again at the rest of the room, shook Sarah's hand when it was offered, and pattered out with Vicky.
Somewhat warily, she lifted the fox into her arms, and Shadow laughed. "I won't bite, you know." Vicky giggled slightly and took off, leisurely drifting towards the tent Eon was in.
"I know, I know." She smiled. "Hey, out of curiosity, what was with the little bow-thing you were doing? It's not like it was a formal thing, I've seen you doing it when talking to the Wards or the Protectorate on patrol, and I've seen you give Amy or the hospital staff one as well a couple of times."
"Bowing in our... culture... is a bit weird." Shadow answered carefully. "Bowing deeply to someone is a sign on respect, and it's normally pretty formal; I'd bow to a Kyuubi normally, though I don't do it with Eon because he's my team leader, so I only do that when he's pulling rank, so to speak, or I'd bow to someone high up like the Director or Chief Director, or Legend, because they're powerful leaders. Little bows are more like acknowledgements of advice or gifts, like the fact that your Aunt is offering to contact the PRT in my name to request that help with the Master thing. With a lot of the other stuff, it's because they gave advice in terms of how to handle being a Cape team here on Bet, things like that."
"Weird."
"It is a bit. Technically I should've bowed deeper to your Aunt, since Lady Photon's the team leader and she has more power than me, being older and with more influence, but she's also got no real influence over me, whereas someone like Legend... they have a lot more direct power over what I'd do, because they have the power to declare me or Inari a real threat, so they have to be bowed to that way." Vicky blinked.
"I see." She said, thinking. "What about with Lung? Apparently you and Eon bowed there."
"Respect of his abilities and returning the respect he was giving us." She explained. "And in my case, following the lead of my superior before staying out of the way, because he clearly wanted to talk to Eon and not me."
"Huh."
"Our culture has a lot of weird things like that. We've been teaching Swarm some, since she's our team mate, but for the most part she'd never need to know it because it's unlikely she'll run into them." Shadow chuckled. "I mean, what's the use in knowing that if you meet a Uxie you should bow deeply in respect to a higher superior, then keep your head lowered and eyes down in deference, if you're never going to meet a Uxie?" Vicky raised an eyebrow as she descended, but Shadow didn't elaborate, so she made a quiet promise to herself to do some searching around as soon as she could to try and find out what a Uxie was.
Vicky knelt down to let Shadow out of her arms, stretching slightly as she did so. "Thanks for the lift back, and thanks to your family for offering that." Shadow shook herself out slightly as Vicky smiled.
"No problem. Hope Eon gets better soon, and say hello to Swarm for me as well." She waved, and Shadow lifted a paw in response as the blonde flew off back towards her family, and the fox went inside to sit with her team again.
"What on earth happened there?" Alexandria, also known as Rebecca Costa-Brown, demanded, rubbing her arm irately. "How did that even happen?"
"How did that little fox thing have the power to do that?" David added. "And since when could either of them shoot lightning, anyway?"
"No idea." Paul shrugged, leaning against the wall. He was suspiciously calm about the entire situation, all things considered, but he'd been well out of the way of the lightning strike and therefore hadn't really gotten much of the effect.
David had been somewhat closer, and had felt the electricity booming past, while Rebecca had taken it head on.
A couple of bandages wrapped around the upper part of her arm under her costume told the story of how that went.
"It's more interesting that it managed to scare away Leviathan, I think." He continued with a shrug. "If those two happen to have a way to do something similar to Behemoth and Simurgh, we might be able to start ending the attacks far quicker by just aiming either Shadow or Eon at them."
"We need to find out more about them." The Doctor said, from her place on the other end of the room. "They're far more powerful than any normal Trigger I've ever seen, and neither of them are one of ours. I want to know where they came from, and if we can duplicate it."
"What about their team mate? Swarm?"
"She's nothing special, just an insect controller." She dismissed. "There's no reason to try looking into her at all. We should focus on Shadow and Eon." Paul looked somewhat uncertain about that, but said nothing.
The meeting continued in the background, but Contessa didn't bother to pay attention to it. If she needed to know something, the Path would tell her where to find it out.
Instead, she focused on a new issue.
Path to finding out more about Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to locating Shadow and Eon.
Entities not found.
Path to discovering Eon's past.
Entity not found.
Path to discovering Shadow's past.
Entity not found.
This pattern continued every time either of their names came up in the Path request. Even using them as a secondary, for example Path to using Swarm to get information on Shadow and Eon came out with the same failure.
It was unsettling.
Especially as Contessa never normally got an error like that, even from her blind spots like the Entities, Endbringers and Eidolon. With them, things just blanked out silently into nothing, forcing her to reset the Path to get around it.
Having a pair of Capes that just outright blocked her abilities in a way that seemed to give her no way around it was… unnerving, for someone who needed the Path to make sure the world didn't end, and wanted to try using the targets to help save it.
Ocean swirled around them, rain pounding on it from above and joining the shifting of the tides. Debris from the slowly-sinking islands started forcing waves to form, but with a moments thought they were frozen, lowered back into the water to join the shifting.
Their eyes flickered back and forth through the water, the dust and blood and bodies having no effect on their vision, searching for the thing they had been tracking, the thing that had led them to here…
There. A faint ripple in the water, invisible to normal eyes yet painfully obvious to them, and they shifted to trace it, darting towards it with no regard for anything else and circling once.
A shield, overlaid over the city and hiding it from view. It had drifted here with the currents, but now with them there, the currents were shifting too fast to follow, leaving it trapped.
The ocean began to compress, pressing down on the shield with all the force they could manage, pulling with it all the debris in the area and forcing them down too. Things impacted their back, but they ignored it, too focused on their goal to care- and beyond the ability to care in themselves.
A flash of yellow. The shield broke, water and pieces of island rushing in, down on top of it, and the sound of shattering. Crystal shapes floated out of the ruins, and they waited for a moment before forcing more water around them, shattering them.
Something floated out of the ruins after them, a small oval shape, and after a moment they decided that it was merely another piece of rubble, drifting off into the ocean.
They relaxed, their orders complete, and then something else impacted their back.
Another instinct took over, orders to fight, and so they did, lunging out of the ocean and towards the source of the great roar that echoed around them, their tail impacting the rubble behind them and sending it flying out into further waters, away from them.
Beneath them, the island continued to sink, and the waves continued to be suppressed, used instead for the sole purpose of pushing the evidence of the main target away.
Red and yellow flickered, the area of water shining, and then there was nothing.
Not even them.
lockingbane
If you're crazy and you know it clap your hands!
- Location
- Waxahachie tx
Just want to point out Inari is a goddess, not a god. She is female.
- Location
- Russia
Nah. Mythological Inari is both. And neither. They seem to be actually, really genderfluid, based on how they appear as both male and female at complete random.
lockingbane
If you're crazy and you know it clap your hands!
- Location
- Waxahachie tx
Generally she is viewed as a female though.
- Location
- Russia
From all of my studies, from all of my exposure to Japanese pop culture, and from the one-and-a-half years of Japanology courses, I ended up with an impression that generally they're viewed as "they change all the bloody time, so we consider them either as three separate kami, one male, one female, one androgynous, or as a single kami that changes all the bloody time". No specific gender is pin-pointed like this, there's no general consensus towards which is the "true" one other than "they change all the time".
Hell, if nothing else, from my observations, most settings that use Inari as an idea/character, they've been explicitly androgynous and no mention was made of what their gender or sex might be.
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lockingbane
If you're crazy and you know it clap your hands!
- Location
- Waxahachie tx
Most of the paintings seem to show them as a woman though?
- Location
- Russia
I'm fairly certain that the most common painted/sculpted representation of Inari is, well, a white fox. No gender attached.
And in terms of classical paintings, most of them seem to be either male-ish, or androgynous, based on the style that is common for classical Japanese paintings of that period of time. Not even manner of clothing seems to point towards one or the other. And modern representations likely fall into the trap of modern tendency of turning everything and everybody into a waifu, so I wouldn't use that for how they are seen in cultural terms.
lockingbane
If you're crazy and you know it clap your hands!
- Location
- Waxahachie tx
I find it hard to think androgynous had breasts but whatever man. *Shrugs* I will concede that most depictions are of a white fox though. Although, when you consider that most male sculptures have their junk sculpted as well while female ones do not (for animals at least) it might be that they are female? Eh, just idle musings on that last bit.
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
laughs in author
There has been no dimensional shenanigans in this chapter, aside from the one coming from PokeTeam Inari being on Bet.
I've actually been referring to Inari as both male and genderless pretty consistently through this, I've noticed now. I'll have to rectify that...
Anyway, main reason is that the Ninetales I'm using is (from memory) a male in the game (Blue Rescue Team), but let's just go with 'Inari changes gender based on region, story, day of the week and number of Pidgey to migrate east in the last month' and move along with it.
- Location
- A room?
Yeah, the fallout from:
is going to be interesting. I wonder what sort of wedge it will drive between Team Inari, New Wave, and the PRT. Remember, that New Wave is all about accountability, and what happened with SS is anathema to them.
There is another interesting death worth noting:
Trickster was one of the stabilizing forces for Noelle. I think we may be on a countdown until Echidna.
is going to be interesting. I wonder what sort of wedge it will drive between Team Inari, New Wave, and the PRT. Remember, that New Wave is all about accountability, and what happened with SS is anathema to them.
There is another interesting death worth noting:
Trickster was one of the stabilizing forces for Noelle. I think we may be on a countdown until Echidna.
Shadow's Family Tree
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
So, while writing chapter 19 of this (yes, there's a bit of a buffer) I ran across something. It's become a bit of a running joke that Shadow has a weird family tree, which allows her access to a lot of lineage Moves. For those who don't remember, that means she has the Move in her family tree, making it easier for her to learn Moves, though she still needs to learn them.
Anyway, while writing, I made a reference to another family member, and decided 'Hey, I should probably make a family tree to keep track of all this so I don't make mistakes! That shouldn't be too hard, right?'
That was yesterday afternoon, and given that while writing this post I realised I'd made a mistake and had to fix it... yeah.
Anyway, it goes back only five generations, six if you count Shadow's, and doesn't include all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings that would inevitably also be on this. Honestly, this is just to give an idea of how weird the tree is, and let me keep track of things without going mad.
In other news, the Field egg group works really well for chain breeding Moves.
I'm also working on a different idea to the game mechanics of 'only eggs of the female Pokemon, or the non-Ditto'. The groups of eggs are a mix of both, though some species naturally have less in a group. The dragons are one, Vulpix are another, etc... mostly Pokemon known to have really long lives or be really rare.
EDIT: For easier viewing, look at the next info threadmark along, Alex's looks a lot cleaner with the same information.
Anyway, while writing, I made a reference to another family member, and decided 'Hey, I should probably make a family tree to keep track of all this so I don't make mistakes! That shouldn't be too hard, right?'
That was yesterday afternoon, and given that while writing this post I realised I'd made a mistake and had to fix it... yeah.
Anyway, it goes back only five generations, six if you count Shadow's, and doesn't include all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings that would inevitably also be on this. Honestly, this is just to give an idea of how weird the tree is, and let me keep track of things without going mad.
In other news, the Field egg group works really well for chain breeding Moves.
I'm also working on a different idea to the game mechanics of 'only eggs of the female Pokemon, or the non-Ditto'. The groups of eggs are a mix of both, though some species naturally have less in a group. The dragons are one, Vulpix are another, etc... mostly Pokemon known to have really long lives or be really rare.
EDIT: For easier viewing, look at the next info threadmark along, Alex's looks a lot cleaner with the same information.
Tree! It's a mess. It's also bloody massive, sorry.
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A better looking version of the family tree.
- Location
- Norway. Mid-Norway. Møre og Romsdal.
Here is my contribution. Dusted of my skills and used a program i last used in august.
Just stopped fidling with since i have no idea how to spoiler it and keep the image showing.
Just stopped fidling with since i have no idea how to spoiler it and keep the image showing.
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Chapter 17- Awakening, recollections, and elsewheres
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
The world was spinning.
Given that, as far as he could tell, he was stationary, Eon was pretty sure the world wasn't supposed to be spinning.
Unless he'd been put on some kind of spinning ride, like the cup thing Shadow had spent a lot of time on that one time they'd been to a park after completing a mission in one of the further away cities. She'd spent a lot of time on there, and she'd gone all dizzy afterwards, so he'd had to carry her back to the place they were staying and wait for her to get better.
That would make the world spinning make sense, but Eon was still pretty sure he was lying still, and he'd probably notice if he was in a moving cup being spun around.
Hesitantly, he cracked open an eye, then immediately groaned when the lights seemed far too bright for wherever he was.
"Eon's awake!" A familiar voice said, too loudly. He whined slightly.
"Eon." Another familiar voice spoke, accompanied by a poke in the side. "Eon, open your eyes." He did, finding that it was still slightly too bright, but his face was being shadowed by the blurry form of...
"Shadow?" He tried quietly, coughing as his voice rasped out and his ears rebelled slightly at the sound.
"Oh, good. Here, you should drink this." Spotting the familiar shade of Shadow's Extrasensory attack lifting a bowl over to him, he let Swarm help him lift his head and drank, feeling some of the headache leave him, though it was still too bright and loud. "You ok now?"
"Bit better." He grumbled, slumping back and closing his eyes. "What happened?"
"You overboosted yourself and dive-bombed Leviathan." Shadow reminded him bluntly. "The damn thing caught your tails and sent you flying, broke way too many bones... you had to be dragged in by one of the fliers to be healed. You've been unconscious since."
"The battle's over." Swarm added, carefully resting a hand on his side. "Shadow went out and dropped lightning on him, with some help from Aquamarina- she's the Cape that brought you in, and she helped rescue and get me back for healing as well."
"You got hurt?"
"The wave." Eon's eyes snapped open again, and he twisted his head as much as he could to see Swarm flexing her arm. "Knocked a building on me. Most the rubble ended up around me, but my arm got crushed. I got really lucky; the weight of the bricks stopped me bleeding out, Shadow gave me enough of a heal to keep that up, then Panacea was able to regrow my arm for me." He looked over her arm, which was missing chunks of the sleeve of her costume. "We had to cut a lot of it off, some of it was stuck in my arm. I'll repair it later, but Shadow's been putting an illusion over it whenever we leave the room."
"You drove off Leviathan?" He asked, nodding slowly and turning back to Shadow, who was sitting in a chair with her tails around her paws.
"Yeah. Boosted with Calm Mind, and I got pretty lucky with my Charge- picked the right one pretty much by accident, and there was a lot of charge in it- and not much drifted into the rain. He got hit by something about twice the strength I'd expected." Shadow winced a little. "Luckily I'd compressed it as much as I could, so it didn't scatter too much. Still don't think Lung appreciated it, and I think we're lucky that Alexandria's so invincible, but most the power went straight into Leviathan."
"You hit Lung?"
"Only a little bit. He was pinning him down; I got Amy to send a message to Dragon, and Dragon gave the warning for everyone who isn't enough of a Brute to take a lightning strike to back away, and for the ones that could and the Blasters to keep him pinned." She chuckled. "Lung took that pretty literally, he was holding him down as much as he could. He dropped by after he finished ramping down again."
"It was ok?"
"He was fine, he just wanted to compliment me on the power of my attack." Shadow waved off.
Eon shook his head slightly, feeling like he was playing a massive game of catch-up. I hate when I get knocked out and my team ends up doing ridiculous things without me... Arceus, it's like Trikani Meadow all over again. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and leaned back again. "Alright, I'm going to need a full review of this, aren't I."
"Later, Eon." Shadow admonished. "You need to rest. Persim berries help with the confusion from overboosting, but the only thing that's gonna fix your brain is rest."
Grumbling good-naturedly about overbearing team healers, Eon stifled a yawn and relaxed.
"Would you mind telling me more stories, Shadow?" Swarm asked.
"Umm... sure, but I think I might be out of myths and legends... at least, ones that have some kind of backing in the real world." She hummed, tapping a paw. "I could tell you some of the ones we've heard from migrating birds, I guess. Not sure how true those are, or if I'll get them right, but I can have a go at it."
"Sure."
"Alright..." As Eon started to drift off again, he heard Shadow start talking about one of the more recently-heard legends, one about a Lucario, and a man called Sir Aaron...
Lung sat down carefully behind his desk, looking around appreciatively. The building was reasonably undamaged, considering that there had been an Endbringer in the city causing tsunamis, but it was quite far away from the main area where the Island-Sinker had been rampaging, so perhaps it wasn't that much of a surprise.
"Go." He commanded Lee, who was standing in the doorway. "Check on our warehouses, as many as you can. Do not start any fights."
"I will, Lung-sama." Lee nodded, before dissolving into ash. Now alone, Lung leaned back in his seat to think.
The recent battle against Leviathan had been an interesting one, and not only because it was likely to go down in history as the shortest Endbringer battle against the ocean beast. The first major bit of surprise was the Kyuubi, Eon, near the very beginning.
Before he'd headed into the rout to try and ramp up enough to be useful, he'd spent his time watching the team of Inari. Swarm had been pulled down by the teleport outside, landing on one of Eon's tails from what he'd seen, but all three of them had recovered well from the unexpected jolt. Indeed, Eon and Shadow had recovered so well that it made him suspicious of whether they had practise at dealing with unexpected movement. Nevertheless, Eon had quickly moved to check on his two team mates, making sure they were alright, before sending Shadow off with Panacea and her sister to go healing.
He and Swarm had stayed behind, Eon firing a beam of fire at the water echo of Leviathan as the battle began, at which point Lung had lost track of them both in the frantic nature of the battle. The next time he'd seen Eon, the silver Kyuubi had been alone, catching him after a mistimed swipe at Leviathan had sent him flying.
And then the second oddity had come to light.
Absently touching his side, he remembered the feeling of Eon's claws digging into his scales, a slight but sharp pain that made him wince.
Somehow, the noble being had the ability to injure him even as he ramped up, and was perfectly capable of matching him in straight combat- as the mock battle against him showed. Knowing that, his power seemed to transform him quicker than ever before, taking barely fifteen minutes to bring him up to the size he had been when he fought Leviathan at Kyushu, and burning with a flame hotter than he'd used since that day. The next five or so minutes had been spent in close combat with the Endbringer, allowing the rest of the Capes to back away and recover while he burned away the water echo and tore wounds at the beast below.
It had only been when he'd heard the quiet sound of the armband chiming, a tone he knew well, and seen the wave beginning to build on the edge of the horizon, that he'd left the Endbringer he'd thrown away to his own devises, stifled his flames, and headed for the silver Kyuubi to offer his aid in getting the Capes that were near out of the wave.
Seeing Eon fire ice from his muzzle had surprised him, given that he seemed to specialise in fire, but knowing that kitsune were tricky creatures he had brushed it aside, assuming that the being had merely been withholding some of his power for the sake of the rest of the world.
Especially as it was nothing to the surprise that followed the Kyuubi's movement to his free hand, with the shouted command to throw him.
Lung snorted at the memory. "For any being to wish to be thrown at an Endbringer, even a Kyuubi... ridiculous."
Though it certainly worked. He mused internally. Turning all nine of his tails to metal and smashing them against his head... Leviathan will be feeling that for some time, I am sure.
Unfortunately it had come at the cost of Eon being flung away and knocked out, but the Endbringer had withdrawn the water from the wave, allowing him to place the Capes he was holding to be placed back on the ground so that he could rejoin the combat.
Not that it had lasted long.
This time, the only warning anyone had had was the voice of Dragon sounding over the armbands, warning any Cape who didn't feel confident taking a powerful lightning strike to back away, and those that could to try and hold Leviathan in one place. Lung had guessed that it was something else to do with Inari, and so he had gone forward and done his best to pin Leviathan to the ground, leaving him struggling in his arms and giving the attacker a clear shot.
The feminine voice, despite being far louder than normal- echoing above everything, even the roar of water from Leviathan as it tried to drown him into letting him go- had surprised him, but not anywhere near as much as the large lightning bolt, almost white, that had lanced down from the sky for the briefest second before impacting.
Wincing again, Lung rubbed his side in remembered pain, the slight tingling from the electrical shock still there despite everything, and a shallow fragment of the true pain he had felt upon the hit. He was fairly sure he had heard even Alexandria shout, though that was more from surprise than pain, he knew. A second later, though, and it had been over, Leviathan darting from his loosened grasp and retreating to the ocean with all of the water behind him.
It'd taken a few moments to blink the spots out of his eyes, at which point he'd looked up to see a Cape with blue wings steadily dropping back towards the medical centre, with a familiar brown-red spot in their arms, and chuckled.
Now, though, he merely frowned, curious. Shadow was put onto healing, and not into combat. She said she was good, but I did not realise she was that good. I would expect that sort of power from the Kyuubi, but not from a six-tails. Admittedly, she said she had no idea how much would work on Leviathan, but then why would she be willing to come out into the battle instead of healing when she was doing so well...?
Humming to himself, he rubbed his side again, thinking back to the short conversation they had had in the medical room during a quiet moment, after he'd finished ramping down.
Lung walked into the medical bay, holding back a twitch as he looked around.
"Hello, Lung." Panacea greeted neutrally, coming over to him. In the background, a number of PRT troopers were lifting a Cape into a side room. "What brings you here?"
"I was looking for the little kitsune." He rumbled. "Shadow."
"She's just next door." The teen told him. "She'll probably be out in a moment, she's just finished a heal and I think she's due another top up on her powers, or whatever it is she's actually doing when she takes a break. I can go get her for you, if you want."
"There is no need." He shook his head, turning towards the door she'd indicated. "I will wait for her here."
He'd only waited a moment before the young kitsune walked out, originally heading for a bag sitting on one side before she'd noticed him and changed her course.
"Greetings, dragon." Shadow said softly, giving a low half-bow before settling into a relaxed but ready stance. "What can I do for you?"
"I merely wished to compliment you on your addition to the battle." He replied, inclining his head. "It was a powerful finishing blow, and I am glad for that. I have no wish for any more lands to go the way of Kyushu or Newfoundland." Shadow lowered her head again, scuffing the floor with a paw.
"It was a pleasure to be of help." She murmured. "It took a lot of power, but I think I'd pay just about any price to get rid of something like that. It's an offense to powerful beings, and to hydrokinetics." She looked up again at him, and he carefully crushed the smirk that was threatening to appear. "Are you alright, by the way? I know you were right next to Leviathan, and that Thunder was actually a bit more powerful than I'd expected. You have a regen normally, right?"
"I do." He nodded, absently touching his side where the bolt had screamed past. "And for the most part, I am well."
"That's good. Would you have a problem if I healed you anyway, just in case? I wouldn't want something getting stuck by accident, and it was a lot of electricity. I… might've overpowered that too much."
Lung stared at her for a moment- More powerful than she expected?- and knelt down, offering a hand to her. "You may make sure, if you wish."
"Alright, just a second then…" She placed her paw on his palm, closed her eyes, and barked sharply once. A rush of energy flowed through him, and the slight numbness in his side faded away, as did the twitching feeling of the shock in his muscles.
"Thank you."
"No problem, it's my own fault you were hurt by it, since I used it." Shadow shrugged, removing her paw. Her ears twitched slightly and she turned around to look over to the door she came out of, as a trooper stuck his head around the edge and beckoned to her. "Oh, I'm needed again. If that's all…?"
"It is." Lung bowed slightly to her, and she returned it. "Give my thanks to Kyuubi Eon when he recovers."
"I will."
Lung shook his head. "There is no way to know for certain what they planned, without asking." He decided, reaching for the paper and pen that he always kept on his desk and opening to a clear page. "Perhaps it is time to do so. I may even get answers to some of the other questions I have…"
Carefully focusing on phrasing his missive, not wanting to offend the two kitsune or their team mate, Lung began to write.
"Ready to go?"
Aquamarina jolted out of her thoughts, wings tinkling as she moved, turning around and looking at the PRT trooper who had approached without her notice.
"I think so." She nodded, glancing back over the city. "I don't think there's anything else I can do here, anyway. Not really enough of a Brute to help with moving the buildings around, and I'm pretty sure we don't have anything more to do in search and rescue."
"Strider's coming back in a minute, and it's the LA group next." He told her. "So if you're going, might want to get set."
"Thanks." The trooper walked away, leaving her to her thoughts again as she stared back over the area.
This being the first Endbringer attack she'd ever personally been to, she didn't really have anything to compare it to, but she'd seen the pictures of the aftermath of a number of them, and she'd been to Canada once with her parents when she was younger and seen the devastation that had been left behind by Leviathan's attack on Newfoundland, even half a decade later.
To be able to look out over the city and see that, for the most part, it had been pretty untouched by the raging battle was incredible. Of course, there was lingering damage from the sole tsunami that had come in, and a number of places where attacks thrown about by the swarm of Capes on the field had missed and landed elsewhere, but aside from the obvious wreckage that made up the main 'arena' of the battle, Brockton Bay had managed to escape fairly unscathed.
And most of that seemed to be because of Shadow and Eon, and the fact that they were powerful enough to take on the Leviathan practically on their own, leading to the Endbringer being driven away in record time. Between them, they'd probably dealt more damage to the monster than had ever happened before, certainly enough that he felt that it was better to retreat than continue his rampage of destruction and death.
Speaking of death, though they didn't yet have completely accurate results- there were bound to be some more bodies in the rubble somewhere, in the end, and even so the death tolls weren't released for about a week or so after the attack- Aquamarina was pretty sure that this attack also had the lowest casualties of any, save the times where countries refused outside help in dealing with the attack.
The Simurgh didn't count, in her opinion. Mastering people wasn't killing them, and she seemed to do a lot more of that than the killing.
And, once again, that was likely due to Shadow's help in healing the number of lesser injured people, freeing up Amy to deal with the more seriously wounded, saving a number of the Capes that would've no doubt died if they'd had to wait for healing.
Those two saved a lot of lives, I'm sure. Aquamarina mused. Actually, make that three, given Swarm. A girl with insect control didn't seem like they would be the most effective at search and rescue when there was heavy rain and rivers everywhere, but somehow she'd managed to figure out a way around that weakness and still manage to do quite well at finding people who were injured. Team Inari, powerhouses of the attack, she chuckled to herself, before hearing the slight sound of Strider teleporting and turning around.
"Folks for LA?" He asked about, making a few others glance up. Aquamarina recognised them as mostly being LA Protectorate members, plus the twin villains that she occasionally clashed with when she went on patrols downtown. Despite the fact that they were normally enemies, she still offered them a nod of greeting which they returned.
The slight disorientation of Strider's teleport followed a moment later, when he was sure that no-one else was coming to join them, and Aquamarina shuffled her wings behind her to keep her balance. The room they landed in was quiet for a minute as Strider left again, before the two villains made their excuses and hurried away. She decided to follow their lead on that, making her way out of the room and through the corridors to the clearly marked out exit, taking to the air as soon as she could.
Using the more offensive part of her power, she did her best to silence the crystals in her wings as she made her way down into an alleyway, criss-crossing across the various paths as she did to make sure people lost track of her.
Triggering her Changer ability, Aquamarina waited in a dark corner for a few seconds to let her wings vanish back into her skin, wincing a little as they did, then pulled off the domino mask she was wearing and sighed.
"God, that was exhausting." She grumbled, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. "I just want to sleep for a week… ah crap, I still have dinner with my parents tonight, don't I." She shook her head, looking around. Nearly back home, though. Back to the apartment, shower, set an alarm and take a nap. She decided quickly, making her way out of the alley carefully. She'd chosen her apartment to be in a quiet part of the city, making it a lot easier to sneak in and out during the day if she was in costume, which was helpful now as she slipped down a side road and into the practically abandoned building. The downstairs was empty, as usual for that time of day, so she made her way to the elevator and went up to the second floor.
Pulling the spare key from under the rug, she unlocked the door and hurried inside, mentally making a note to return the key to its spot when she left to see her parents.
A half an hour later, she was drifting off to sleep with her phone on one side, trying to figure out exactly what about the attack she could tell her parents…
Eon grumbled quietly as he accepted the plate Swarm handed to him. Next to him, another plate was placed down as Shadow made a leap up to the bed she'd claimed in the medical room, taking hers back a second later, while Swarm sat down and pulled up her mask to allow her to eat.
The world was no longer spinning, which was nice, but it was more than a little annoying that his two team mates were babying him so much.
Then again, he had been thrown head-first into a wall after using most of his energy in attempting a move he'd never used and only knew the theory of…
Maybe they were right to be fussing a little.
"What time is it right now?" He asked, pushing his mental grumblings away and lifting the plate over to him. At least there was bacon.
"It's just after half two." Swarm replied, starting on her own plate and looking at him through the orange-tinted goggles. "The attack's been over for about nine hours now, it's probably the shortest one on record to have this little damage, and most of the Capes that came in from other cities and countries seem to have left for home. Pretty sure all these emergency building's are gonna be taken down soon, but the den's bound to be fine and my house looks like it is too, though the water's probably not going to work for a while because of Leviathan."
"I interviewed Amy a bit on what to expect, she said that there's probably going to be a lot of emergency stuff set up in the city for the people that lost their homes in the attack, and there's also bound to be a few people doing stupid things and needing healing, like drinking water that's not properly purified or getting into fights because they're angry, so I might end up heading into the hospital and seeing what I can do for them." Shadow added. "Though Amy said she'll do her best to keep up with that, since we might be busy."
"Busy?" Eon cut in, cocking his head. "Busy doing what?"
"That's a good question." Swarm agreed, looking down at the smaller fox.
"Oh, I never did say, did I?" Shadow blinked, blushing slightly. "Well, Swarm, you remember a couple of hours ago when Vicky and Amy came over to grab me for something?"
"Yeah…?"
"Well, basically, Amy had had the idea that maybe my Heal Bell could cure Master effects, since I'd mentioned it works on mental statuses." She explained. "I meant the Confused status, and I guess in some ways Sleep counts as one as well, but I guess Amy took it to mean mental Masters, and she wanted to test it. Lady Photon said she would get into contact with the PRT on my behalf once things have died down a bit, to see if they have access to a mental Master that we could use to test it on, or if they can help us get some victims for the same test."
There was silence. In the back of his mind, Eon fancied he could hear Kricketot.
"Swarm, where'd you get the crickets from?"
"Found them." The bug-user grinned shamelessly, putting the two crickets on the floor and making them run off.
"Alright then." Shadow looked at her team mate for a moment longer, then rolled her eyes. "Anyway, Lady Photon said that she wasn't sure how long it'd take to get things set up for me, but she'd send a message through Amy the next time we had a shift together to confirm it. Then it'd be up to us to do the rest with the PRT and Protectorate."
"That's… great." Eon tried, still thinking about it. "Really great, actually."
"Yeah, no-one's figured out a way to break Master effects on people without finding a way of getting the Master in question to reverse it, and when it comes to villains that's pretty hard." Swarm said, running a hand down Shadow's back. "Having access to the only person in the world- minus something we haven't heard of yet- that can break them…"
"That's a lot of power in one Pokemon's paws." Eon finished, blinking and shaking himself from his mind. "One heck of a lot."
"I'll be careful, Eon." Shadow rolled her eyes again at her leader. "I'm not stupid, I know that that gives Inari a lot of potential power with the Capes around here. I'll be careful with it."
"Good."
The three settled into companionable quiet for a little while, going back to eating, before Swarm paused.
"Hey, if your power can disrupt mental Master effects, why doesn't it do anything to me?"
"I don't know." Shadow admitted. "I figured that maybe it only works on certain types. Or maybe it's the Badge rule."
"Badge rule?"
"It's the nickname a lot of people back home use to talk about Move interactions." The Vulpix told her. "Some Moves are area of effect, focused on a room, like my Heal Pulse or Heal Bell, but they only affect people on my team, and they don't do anything to the dungeon Pokemon. It's the same with Moves that damage an entire room of Pokemon, too; they won't hurt anyone with a badge. No-one actually knows why, but as long as you're considering the other team a friendly one, nothing you do would hurt them, and vice versa. I wouldn't think that it'd work here, given that we're not in a dungeon, but I guess it's counting anyway?" She shrugged.
"Have I mentioned that your world is weird?" Swarm checked.
"You have, yeah." Shadow laughed. "And yeah, it is, we know. But anyway, if my power really does work on Master effects, even only certain types, it'll be really helpful to people."
Again they lapsed into silence, thinking about the recent events, until they all finished eating and Swarm collected the plates, offering to take them back. Shadow stayed in her seat, watching her leave, then turned to look at Eon.
"What actually happened with Leviathan, Eon?" She asked softly.
"What do you mean by that?" He asked in return, cocking his head slightly.
"I know you, Eon." Shadow sighed. "We've been in a team for more than a year and a half now, we've been in a lot of scraps, and I've seen you take hits larger than nine simultaneous Iron Tails to a practically immovable surface. I know how you work; if you weren't expecting to hit Leviathan with that Iron Tail, you would've had something else ready and waiting to hit him with; heck, normally you would've had something ready anyway as a follow-up attack, or would've been ready with something weaker to use the second you were in close. Even overboosted to the point you were at, and exhausted as much as you were, I know you would've had that ready." The second-in-command of Inari straightened and stared him in the eye. "What actually happened there, that made you stop for long enough to get grabbed by him?"
Eon held her demanding gaze for a few moments, thinking, then blinked and shook his head. "You're right about something else happening, little pix." He admitted lowly. "I got a Dimensional Scream when I hit him."
Shadow's eyes widened. "Another one?" Her voice dropped to near-nothing as well, and he strained to hear it. "What did you see?"
Dimensional Screams were weird situations for both of them. It happened with no apparent pattern, the only indication that either of them got was the sudden feeling of dizziness from Eon, and the number of times it'd caused trouble for them was pretty high given the rarity. They'd only ever met one Pokemon that could do it, and it was from them that Inari had gotten most of their information on them in the first place. Most the time, though, Shadow had found herself covering for Eon when the Scream occurred- like back with Tattletale, or Taylor.
"Past, I would think, but I don't really know." Eon shrugged, two tails winding around each other. "I don't know enough about Leviathan's attacks to make a guess… he was sinking islands, or an island, I'm not sure, but that was just to distract the Capes. He was hunting something under the water… a city covered by a shield, it made it invisible, but because it was in the water he could sense it. Leviathan used the water and the debris to smash the shield in, and break down the city into rubble. There were crystals in it, and some kind of oval thing, he thought it was just rubble but I don't think so."
"Why would Leviathan attack an underwater city?" Shadow murmured, her own tails twirling. "Was there something there he wanted, or was it just in the way?"
Eon frowned, trying to recall as much of that slowly-fading vision as he could. "I… don't think so. About it being in the way, that is. I think he had a reason for attacking that place."
"Why?" She asked the air. "If it was our world with this stuff, I can think of about a dozen reasons why he'd want to hunt down undersea cities; the Whirl Islands Lugia nest, the Shamouti border shrine, the Murky Ocean temple to Kyogre, the Temple of the Sea that belonged to the People of the Water, the Surrounded and Miracle Sea's, Crystal Waterfall, though that's more related to Suicune and I guess it's not really underwater, behind a waterfall and all…" Shadow shook her head to clear it, tapping a paw. "Momma probably knows more than that, and Gram even more, they're proper Talekeepers after all-"
"You're a perfectly good one as well, Shadow. Leaving to start a Rescue Team doesn't change that, and with how long your kind live you'll have plenty of time to catch up once rescuing gets boring for you."
"Our kind, Eon." Shadow reminded him, smiling slightly at his little pep talk even so. "But yeah, I know. Still wish I'd taken the time to learn more, might've helped us in some of the dungeons… but yeah, I don't suppose that's relevant here, they're all Pokemon stories after all. Maybe Swarm knows some human ones that might be related."
"We'll wait for her to get back and ask her."
"Ask me what?" Both Pokemon startled, twisting in midair towards the door to see Swarm had entered without them noticing, and was now closing it behind her and going back to the seat she'd claimed. "What's wrong, you two?"
"Long story, probably better waiting until we can head back to the Den before we tell you all of it, Swarm, but we were wondering what sort of stories your world has about underwater cities?" Shadow asked her, tails curving around her paws.
"Underwater cities?" She repeated, sounding confused. "Off the top of my head, only the one. Atlantis, a city that apparently sank under the ocean. There's probably more- definitely more, but I don't really know them. We could look them up, if we can find a place we can get internet from that's not the crap at my house."
"Atlantis…" Eon mused aloud, testing the word.
"That reminds me of one of the other human stories, though I don't think that one sank. Pretty sure Ho-oh burned it, though maybe that was the other one." Swarm and Eon both looked at her with raised eyebrows, and she blushed. "I went through an ocean faze as a kit, ok? Momma and Gram told me loads of stories about places like that."
"Of course you did." He chuckled. "Thanks, Swarm, that gives at least one likely option."
"No problem, but now I want to get back to the Den so you two tell me what the hell's going on." Swarm snarked back.
"It's two thirty-five, so sleep for a bit longer, then you'll probably be recovered enough for us to make our farewells and vanish back home." Shadow recommended. "Swarm and I might leave you on your own for a while to go take a look-see around, maybe see if they're letting people out of the shelters yet."
"They should be, from what I've heard in the past." Swarm put in. "They don't normally keep people in there for that long, and this Leviathan attack's been pretty light in terms of damage, so they'll want people out and back to doing things as soon as they can."
"Then we'll go and see if we can find your dad anywhere, and I can take the both of us back to your house invisibly. Depending on how your house is, you two can stay there or we can try to figure something else out with the Den." Shadow offered. "It wouldn't be too hard to expand out the camping area a bit, even if it's just me working on it, and you and Danny could just bring some stuff from your house to sleep over until things are better."
"That'd be nice."
"Then off you go, you two. I'll be fine here on my own, just don't leave it too late, ok?" The team leader said. Both females nodded and stood from their seats, Swarm offering her arms to Shadow as they left. Eon shifted on the bed, lowering himself onto his stomach before curling up slightly, resting his head on his tails and paws, and let himself drift back off to sleep.
Given that, as far as he could tell, he was stationary, Eon was pretty sure the world wasn't supposed to be spinning.
Unless he'd been put on some kind of spinning ride, like the cup thing Shadow had spent a lot of time on that one time they'd been to a park after completing a mission in one of the further away cities. She'd spent a lot of time on there, and she'd gone all dizzy afterwards, so he'd had to carry her back to the place they were staying and wait for her to get better.
That would make the world spinning make sense, but Eon was still pretty sure he was lying still, and he'd probably notice if he was in a moving cup being spun around.
Hesitantly, he cracked open an eye, then immediately groaned when the lights seemed far too bright for wherever he was.
"Eon's awake!" A familiar voice said, too loudly. He whined slightly.
"Eon." Another familiar voice spoke, accompanied by a poke in the side. "Eon, open your eyes." He did, finding that it was still slightly too bright, but his face was being shadowed by the blurry form of...
"Shadow?" He tried quietly, coughing as his voice rasped out and his ears rebelled slightly at the sound.
"Oh, good. Here, you should drink this." Spotting the familiar shade of Shadow's Extrasensory attack lifting a bowl over to him, he let Swarm help him lift his head and drank, feeling some of the headache leave him, though it was still too bright and loud. "You ok now?"
"Bit better." He grumbled, slumping back and closing his eyes. "What happened?"
"You overboosted yourself and dive-bombed Leviathan." Shadow reminded him bluntly. "The damn thing caught your tails and sent you flying, broke way too many bones... you had to be dragged in by one of the fliers to be healed. You've been unconscious since."
"The battle's over." Swarm added, carefully resting a hand on his side. "Shadow went out and dropped lightning on him, with some help from Aquamarina- she's the Cape that brought you in, and she helped rescue and get me back for healing as well."
"You got hurt?"
"The wave." Eon's eyes snapped open again, and he twisted his head as much as he could to see Swarm flexing her arm. "Knocked a building on me. Most the rubble ended up around me, but my arm got crushed. I got really lucky; the weight of the bricks stopped me bleeding out, Shadow gave me enough of a heal to keep that up, then Panacea was able to regrow my arm for me." He looked over her arm, which was missing chunks of the sleeve of her costume. "We had to cut a lot of it off, some of it was stuck in my arm. I'll repair it later, but Shadow's been putting an illusion over it whenever we leave the room."
"You drove off Leviathan?" He asked, nodding slowly and turning back to Shadow, who was sitting in a chair with her tails around her paws.
"Yeah. Boosted with Calm Mind, and I got pretty lucky with my Charge- picked the right one pretty much by accident, and there was a lot of charge in it- and not much drifted into the rain. He got hit by something about twice the strength I'd expected." Shadow winced a little. "Luckily I'd compressed it as much as I could, so it didn't scatter too much. Still don't think Lung appreciated it, and I think we're lucky that Alexandria's so invincible, but most the power went straight into Leviathan."
"You hit Lung?"
"Only a little bit. He was pinning him down; I got Amy to send a message to Dragon, and Dragon gave the warning for everyone who isn't enough of a Brute to take a lightning strike to back away, and for the ones that could and the Blasters to keep him pinned." She chuckled. "Lung took that pretty literally, he was holding him down as much as he could. He dropped by after he finished ramping down again."
"It was ok?"
"He was fine, he just wanted to compliment me on the power of my attack." Shadow waved off.
Eon shook his head slightly, feeling like he was playing a massive game of catch-up. I hate when I get knocked out and my team ends up doing ridiculous things without me... Arceus, it's like Trikani Meadow all over again. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and leaned back again. "Alright, I'm going to need a full review of this, aren't I."
"Later, Eon." Shadow admonished. "You need to rest. Persim berries help with the confusion from overboosting, but the only thing that's gonna fix your brain is rest."
Grumbling good-naturedly about overbearing team healers, Eon stifled a yawn and relaxed.
"Would you mind telling me more stories, Shadow?" Swarm asked.
"Umm... sure, but I think I might be out of myths and legends... at least, ones that have some kind of backing in the real world." She hummed, tapping a paw. "I could tell you some of the ones we've heard from migrating birds, I guess. Not sure how true those are, or if I'll get them right, but I can have a go at it."
"Sure."
"Alright..." As Eon started to drift off again, he heard Shadow start talking about one of the more recently-heard legends, one about a Lucario, and a man called Sir Aaron...
Lung sat down carefully behind his desk, looking around appreciatively. The building was reasonably undamaged, considering that there had been an Endbringer in the city causing tsunamis, but it was quite far away from the main area where the Island-Sinker had been rampaging, so perhaps it wasn't that much of a surprise.
"Go." He commanded Lee, who was standing in the doorway. "Check on our warehouses, as many as you can. Do not start any fights."
"I will, Lung-sama." Lee nodded, before dissolving into ash. Now alone, Lung leaned back in his seat to think.
The recent battle against Leviathan had been an interesting one, and not only because it was likely to go down in history as the shortest Endbringer battle against the ocean beast. The first major bit of surprise was the Kyuubi, Eon, near the very beginning.
Before he'd headed into the rout to try and ramp up enough to be useful, he'd spent his time watching the team of Inari. Swarm had been pulled down by the teleport outside, landing on one of Eon's tails from what he'd seen, but all three of them had recovered well from the unexpected jolt. Indeed, Eon and Shadow had recovered so well that it made him suspicious of whether they had practise at dealing with unexpected movement. Nevertheless, Eon had quickly moved to check on his two team mates, making sure they were alright, before sending Shadow off with Panacea and her sister to go healing.
He and Swarm had stayed behind, Eon firing a beam of fire at the water echo of Leviathan as the battle began, at which point Lung had lost track of them both in the frantic nature of the battle. The next time he'd seen Eon, the silver Kyuubi had been alone, catching him after a mistimed swipe at Leviathan had sent him flying.
And then the second oddity had come to light.
Absently touching his side, he remembered the feeling of Eon's claws digging into his scales, a slight but sharp pain that made him wince.
Somehow, the noble being had the ability to injure him even as he ramped up, and was perfectly capable of matching him in straight combat- as the mock battle against him showed. Knowing that, his power seemed to transform him quicker than ever before, taking barely fifteen minutes to bring him up to the size he had been when he fought Leviathan at Kyushu, and burning with a flame hotter than he'd used since that day. The next five or so minutes had been spent in close combat with the Endbringer, allowing the rest of the Capes to back away and recover while he burned away the water echo and tore wounds at the beast below.
It had only been when he'd heard the quiet sound of the armband chiming, a tone he knew well, and seen the wave beginning to build on the edge of the horizon, that he'd left the Endbringer he'd thrown away to his own devises, stifled his flames, and headed for the silver Kyuubi to offer his aid in getting the Capes that were near out of the wave.
Seeing Eon fire ice from his muzzle had surprised him, given that he seemed to specialise in fire, but knowing that kitsune were tricky creatures he had brushed it aside, assuming that the being had merely been withholding some of his power for the sake of the rest of the world.
Especially as it was nothing to the surprise that followed the Kyuubi's movement to his free hand, with the shouted command to throw him.
Lung snorted at the memory. "For any being to wish to be thrown at an Endbringer, even a Kyuubi... ridiculous."
Though it certainly worked. He mused internally. Turning all nine of his tails to metal and smashing them against his head... Leviathan will be feeling that for some time, I am sure.
Unfortunately it had come at the cost of Eon being flung away and knocked out, but the Endbringer had withdrawn the water from the wave, allowing him to place the Capes he was holding to be placed back on the ground so that he could rejoin the combat.
Not that it had lasted long.
This time, the only warning anyone had had was the voice of Dragon sounding over the armbands, warning any Cape who didn't feel confident taking a powerful lightning strike to back away, and those that could to try and hold Leviathan in one place. Lung had guessed that it was something else to do with Inari, and so he had gone forward and done his best to pin Leviathan to the ground, leaving him struggling in his arms and giving the attacker a clear shot.
The feminine voice, despite being far louder than normal- echoing above everything, even the roar of water from Leviathan as it tried to drown him into letting him go- had surprised him, but not anywhere near as much as the large lightning bolt, almost white, that had lanced down from the sky for the briefest second before impacting.
Wincing again, Lung rubbed his side in remembered pain, the slight tingling from the electrical shock still there despite everything, and a shallow fragment of the true pain he had felt upon the hit. He was fairly sure he had heard even Alexandria shout, though that was more from surprise than pain, he knew. A second later, though, and it had been over, Leviathan darting from his loosened grasp and retreating to the ocean with all of the water behind him.
It'd taken a few moments to blink the spots out of his eyes, at which point he'd looked up to see a Cape with blue wings steadily dropping back towards the medical centre, with a familiar brown-red spot in their arms, and chuckled.
Now, though, he merely frowned, curious. Shadow was put onto healing, and not into combat. She said she was good, but I did not realise she was that good. I would expect that sort of power from the Kyuubi, but not from a six-tails. Admittedly, she said she had no idea how much would work on Leviathan, but then why would she be willing to come out into the battle instead of healing when she was doing so well...?
Humming to himself, he rubbed his side again, thinking back to the short conversation they had had in the medical room during a quiet moment, after he'd finished ramping down.
Lung walked into the medical bay, holding back a twitch as he looked around.
"Hello, Lung." Panacea greeted neutrally, coming over to him. In the background, a number of PRT troopers were lifting a Cape into a side room. "What brings you here?"
"I was looking for the little kitsune." He rumbled. "Shadow."
"She's just next door." The teen told him. "She'll probably be out in a moment, she's just finished a heal and I think she's due another top up on her powers, or whatever it is she's actually doing when she takes a break. I can go get her for you, if you want."
"There is no need." He shook his head, turning towards the door she'd indicated. "I will wait for her here."
He'd only waited a moment before the young kitsune walked out, originally heading for a bag sitting on one side before she'd noticed him and changed her course.
"Greetings, dragon." Shadow said softly, giving a low half-bow before settling into a relaxed but ready stance. "What can I do for you?"
"I merely wished to compliment you on your addition to the battle." He replied, inclining his head. "It was a powerful finishing blow, and I am glad for that. I have no wish for any more lands to go the way of Kyushu or Newfoundland." Shadow lowered her head again, scuffing the floor with a paw.
"It was a pleasure to be of help." She murmured. "It took a lot of power, but I think I'd pay just about any price to get rid of something like that. It's an offense to powerful beings, and to hydrokinetics." She looked up again at him, and he carefully crushed the smirk that was threatening to appear. "Are you alright, by the way? I know you were right next to Leviathan, and that Thunder was actually a bit more powerful than I'd expected. You have a regen normally, right?"
"I do." He nodded, absently touching his side where the bolt had screamed past. "And for the most part, I am well."
"That's good. Would you have a problem if I healed you anyway, just in case? I wouldn't want something getting stuck by accident, and it was a lot of electricity. I… might've overpowered that too much."
Lung stared at her for a moment- More powerful than she expected?- and knelt down, offering a hand to her. "You may make sure, if you wish."
"Alright, just a second then…" She placed her paw on his palm, closed her eyes, and barked sharply once. A rush of energy flowed through him, and the slight numbness in his side faded away, as did the twitching feeling of the shock in his muscles.
"Thank you."
"No problem, it's my own fault you were hurt by it, since I used it." Shadow shrugged, removing her paw. Her ears twitched slightly and she turned around to look over to the door she came out of, as a trooper stuck his head around the edge and beckoned to her. "Oh, I'm needed again. If that's all…?"
"It is." Lung bowed slightly to her, and she returned it. "Give my thanks to Kyuubi Eon when he recovers."
"I will."
Lung shook his head. "There is no way to know for certain what they planned, without asking." He decided, reaching for the paper and pen that he always kept on his desk and opening to a clear page. "Perhaps it is time to do so. I may even get answers to some of the other questions I have…"
Carefully focusing on phrasing his missive, not wanting to offend the two kitsune or their team mate, Lung began to write.
"Ready to go?"
Aquamarina jolted out of her thoughts, wings tinkling as she moved, turning around and looking at the PRT trooper who had approached without her notice.
"I think so." She nodded, glancing back over the city. "I don't think there's anything else I can do here, anyway. Not really enough of a Brute to help with moving the buildings around, and I'm pretty sure we don't have anything more to do in search and rescue."
"Strider's coming back in a minute, and it's the LA group next." He told her. "So if you're going, might want to get set."
"Thanks." The trooper walked away, leaving her to her thoughts again as she stared back over the area.
This being the first Endbringer attack she'd ever personally been to, she didn't really have anything to compare it to, but she'd seen the pictures of the aftermath of a number of them, and she'd been to Canada once with her parents when she was younger and seen the devastation that had been left behind by Leviathan's attack on Newfoundland, even half a decade later.
To be able to look out over the city and see that, for the most part, it had been pretty untouched by the raging battle was incredible. Of course, there was lingering damage from the sole tsunami that had come in, and a number of places where attacks thrown about by the swarm of Capes on the field had missed and landed elsewhere, but aside from the obvious wreckage that made up the main 'arena' of the battle, Brockton Bay had managed to escape fairly unscathed.
And most of that seemed to be because of Shadow and Eon, and the fact that they were powerful enough to take on the Leviathan practically on their own, leading to the Endbringer being driven away in record time. Between them, they'd probably dealt more damage to the monster than had ever happened before, certainly enough that he felt that it was better to retreat than continue his rampage of destruction and death.
Speaking of death, though they didn't yet have completely accurate results- there were bound to be some more bodies in the rubble somewhere, in the end, and even so the death tolls weren't released for about a week or so after the attack- Aquamarina was pretty sure that this attack also had the lowest casualties of any, save the times where countries refused outside help in dealing with the attack.
The Simurgh didn't count, in her opinion. Mastering people wasn't killing them, and she seemed to do a lot more of that than the killing.
And, once again, that was likely due to Shadow's help in healing the number of lesser injured people, freeing up Amy to deal with the more seriously wounded, saving a number of the Capes that would've no doubt died if they'd had to wait for healing.
Those two saved a lot of lives, I'm sure. Aquamarina mused. Actually, make that three, given Swarm. A girl with insect control didn't seem like they would be the most effective at search and rescue when there was heavy rain and rivers everywhere, but somehow she'd managed to figure out a way around that weakness and still manage to do quite well at finding people who were injured. Team Inari, powerhouses of the attack, she chuckled to herself, before hearing the slight sound of Strider teleporting and turning around.
"Folks for LA?" He asked about, making a few others glance up. Aquamarina recognised them as mostly being LA Protectorate members, plus the twin villains that she occasionally clashed with when she went on patrols downtown. Despite the fact that they were normally enemies, she still offered them a nod of greeting which they returned.
The slight disorientation of Strider's teleport followed a moment later, when he was sure that no-one else was coming to join them, and Aquamarina shuffled her wings behind her to keep her balance. The room they landed in was quiet for a minute as Strider left again, before the two villains made their excuses and hurried away. She decided to follow their lead on that, making her way out of the room and through the corridors to the clearly marked out exit, taking to the air as soon as she could.
Using the more offensive part of her power, she did her best to silence the crystals in her wings as she made her way down into an alleyway, criss-crossing across the various paths as she did to make sure people lost track of her.
Triggering her Changer ability, Aquamarina waited in a dark corner for a few seconds to let her wings vanish back into her skin, wincing a little as they did, then pulled off the domino mask she was wearing and sighed.
"God, that was exhausting." She grumbled, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. "I just want to sleep for a week… ah crap, I still have dinner with my parents tonight, don't I." She shook her head, looking around. Nearly back home, though. Back to the apartment, shower, set an alarm and take a nap. She decided quickly, making her way out of the alley carefully. She'd chosen her apartment to be in a quiet part of the city, making it a lot easier to sneak in and out during the day if she was in costume, which was helpful now as she slipped down a side road and into the practically abandoned building. The downstairs was empty, as usual for that time of day, so she made her way to the elevator and went up to the second floor.
Pulling the spare key from under the rug, she unlocked the door and hurried inside, mentally making a note to return the key to its spot when she left to see her parents.
A half an hour later, she was drifting off to sleep with her phone on one side, trying to figure out exactly what about the attack she could tell her parents…
Eon grumbled quietly as he accepted the plate Swarm handed to him. Next to him, another plate was placed down as Shadow made a leap up to the bed she'd claimed in the medical room, taking hers back a second later, while Swarm sat down and pulled up her mask to allow her to eat.
The world was no longer spinning, which was nice, but it was more than a little annoying that his two team mates were babying him so much.
Then again, he had been thrown head-first into a wall after using most of his energy in attempting a move he'd never used and only knew the theory of…
Maybe they were right to be fussing a little.
"What time is it right now?" He asked, pushing his mental grumblings away and lifting the plate over to him. At least there was bacon.
"It's just after half two." Swarm replied, starting on her own plate and looking at him through the orange-tinted goggles. "The attack's been over for about nine hours now, it's probably the shortest one on record to have this little damage, and most of the Capes that came in from other cities and countries seem to have left for home. Pretty sure all these emergency building's are gonna be taken down soon, but the den's bound to be fine and my house looks like it is too, though the water's probably not going to work for a while because of Leviathan."
"I interviewed Amy a bit on what to expect, she said that there's probably going to be a lot of emergency stuff set up in the city for the people that lost their homes in the attack, and there's also bound to be a few people doing stupid things and needing healing, like drinking water that's not properly purified or getting into fights because they're angry, so I might end up heading into the hospital and seeing what I can do for them." Shadow added. "Though Amy said she'll do her best to keep up with that, since we might be busy."
"Busy?" Eon cut in, cocking his head. "Busy doing what?"
"That's a good question." Swarm agreed, looking down at the smaller fox.
"Oh, I never did say, did I?" Shadow blinked, blushing slightly. "Well, Swarm, you remember a couple of hours ago when Vicky and Amy came over to grab me for something?"
"Yeah…?"
"Well, basically, Amy had had the idea that maybe my Heal Bell could cure Master effects, since I'd mentioned it works on mental statuses." She explained. "I meant the Confused status, and I guess in some ways Sleep counts as one as well, but I guess Amy took it to mean mental Masters, and she wanted to test it. Lady Photon said she would get into contact with the PRT on my behalf once things have died down a bit, to see if they have access to a mental Master that we could use to test it on, or if they can help us get some victims for the same test."
There was silence. In the back of his mind, Eon fancied he could hear Kricketot.
"Swarm, where'd you get the crickets from?"
"Found them." The bug-user grinned shamelessly, putting the two crickets on the floor and making them run off.
"Alright then." Shadow looked at her team mate for a moment longer, then rolled her eyes. "Anyway, Lady Photon said that she wasn't sure how long it'd take to get things set up for me, but she'd send a message through Amy the next time we had a shift together to confirm it. Then it'd be up to us to do the rest with the PRT and Protectorate."
"That's… great." Eon tried, still thinking about it. "Really great, actually."
"Yeah, no-one's figured out a way to break Master effects on people without finding a way of getting the Master in question to reverse it, and when it comes to villains that's pretty hard." Swarm said, running a hand down Shadow's back. "Having access to the only person in the world- minus something we haven't heard of yet- that can break them…"
"That's a lot of power in one Pokemon's paws." Eon finished, blinking and shaking himself from his mind. "One heck of a lot."
"I'll be careful, Eon." Shadow rolled her eyes again at her leader. "I'm not stupid, I know that that gives Inari a lot of potential power with the Capes around here. I'll be careful with it."
"Good."
The three settled into companionable quiet for a little while, going back to eating, before Swarm paused.
"Hey, if your power can disrupt mental Master effects, why doesn't it do anything to me?"
"I don't know." Shadow admitted. "I figured that maybe it only works on certain types. Or maybe it's the Badge rule."
"Badge rule?"
"It's the nickname a lot of people back home use to talk about Move interactions." The Vulpix told her. "Some Moves are area of effect, focused on a room, like my Heal Pulse or Heal Bell, but they only affect people on my team, and they don't do anything to the dungeon Pokemon. It's the same with Moves that damage an entire room of Pokemon, too; they won't hurt anyone with a badge. No-one actually knows why, but as long as you're considering the other team a friendly one, nothing you do would hurt them, and vice versa. I wouldn't think that it'd work here, given that we're not in a dungeon, but I guess it's counting anyway?" She shrugged.
"Have I mentioned that your world is weird?" Swarm checked.
"You have, yeah." Shadow laughed. "And yeah, it is, we know. But anyway, if my power really does work on Master effects, even only certain types, it'll be really helpful to people."
Again they lapsed into silence, thinking about the recent events, until they all finished eating and Swarm collected the plates, offering to take them back. Shadow stayed in her seat, watching her leave, then turned to look at Eon.
"What actually happened with Leviathan, Eon?" She asked softly.
"What do you mean by that?" He asked in return, cocking his head slightly.
"I know you, Eon." Shadow sighed. "We've been in a team for more than a year and a half now, we've been in a lot of scraps, and I've seen you take hits larger than nine simultaneous Iron Tails to a practically immovable surface. I know how you work; if you weren't expecting to hit Leviathan with that Iron Tail, you would've had something else ready and waiting to hit him with; heck, normally you would've had something ready anyway as a follow-up attack, or would've been ready with something weaker to use the second you were in close. Even overboosted to the point you were at, and exhausted as much as you were, I know you would've had that ready." The second-in-command of Inari straightened and stared him in the eye. "What actually happened there, that made you stop for long enough to get grabbed by him?"
Eon held her demanding gaze for a few moments, thinking, then blinked and shook his head. "You're right about something else happening, little pix." He admitted lowly. "I got a Dimensional Scream when I hit him."
Shadow's eyes widened. "Another one?" Her voice dropped to near-nothing as well, and he strained to hear it. "What did you see?"
Dimensional Screams were weird situations for both of them. It happened with no apparent pattern, the only indication that either of them got was the sudden feeling of dizziness from Eon, and the number of times it'd caused trouble for them was pretty high given the rarity. They'd only ever met one Pokemon that could do it, and it was from them that Inari had gotten most of their information on them in the first place. Most the time, though, Shadow had found herself covering for Eon when the Scream occurred- like back with Tattletale, or Taylor.
"Past, I would think, but I don't really know." Eon shrugged, two tails winding around each other. "I don't know enough about Leviathan's attacks to make a guess… he was sinking islands, or an island, I'm not sure, but that was just to distract the Capes. He was hunting something under the water… a city covered by a shield, it made it invisible, but because it was in the water he could sense it. Leviathan used the water and the debris to smash the shield in, and break down the city into rubble. There were crystals in it, and some kind of oval thing, he thought it was just rubble but I don't think so."
"Why would Leviathan attack an underwater city?" Shadow murmured, her own tails twirling. "Was there something there he wanted, or was it just in the way?"
Eon frowned, trying to recall as much of that slowly-fading vision as he could. "I… don't think so. About it being in the way, that is. I think he had a reason for attacking that place."
"Why?" She asked the air. "If it was our world with this stuff, I can think of about a dozen reasons why he'd want to hunt down undersea cities; the Whirl Islands Lugia nest, the Shamouti border shrine, the Murky Ocean temple to Kyogre, the Temple of the Sea that belonged to the People of the Water, the Surrounded and Miracle Sea's, Crystal Waterfall, though that's more related to Suicune and I guess it's not really underwater, behind a waterfall and all…" Shadow shook her head to clear it, tapping a paw. "Momma probably knows more than that, and Gram even more, they're proper Talekeepers after all-"
"You're a perfectly good one as well, Shadow. Leaving to start a Rescue Team doesn't change that, and with how long your kind live you'll have plenty of time to catch up once rescuing gets boring for you."
"Our kind, Eon." Shadow reminded him, smiling slightly at his little pep talk even so. "But yeah, I know. Still wish I'd taken the time to learn more, might've helped us in some of the dungeons… but yeah, I don't suppose that's relevant here, they're all Pokemon stories after all. Maybe Swarm knows some human ones that might be related."
"We'll wait for her to get back and ask her."
"Ask me what?" Both Pokemon startled, twisting in midair towards the door to see Swarm had entered without them noticing, and was now closing it behind her and going back to the seat she'd claimed. "What's wrong, you two?"
"Long story, probably better waiting until we can head back to the Den before we tell you all of it, Swarm, but we were wondering what sort of stories your world has about underwater cities?" Shadow asked her, tails curving around her paws.
"Underwater cities?" She repeated, sounding confused. "Off the top of my head, only the one. Atlantis, a city that apparently sank under the ocean. There's probably more- definitely more, but I don't really know them. We could look them up, if we can find a place we can get internet from that's not the crap at my house."
"Atlantis…" Eon mused aloud, testing the word.
"That reminds me of one of the other human stories, though I don't think that one sank. Pretty sure Ho-oh burned it, though maybe that was the other one." Swarm and Eon both looked at her with raised eyebrows, and she blushed. "I went through an ocean faze as a kit, ok? Momma and Gram told me loads of stories about places like that."
"Of course you did." He chuckled. "Thanks, Swarm, that gives at least one likely option."
"No problem, but now I want to get back to the Den so you two tell me what the hell's going on." Swarm snarked back.
"It's two thirty-five, so sleep for a bit longer, then you'll probably be recovered enough for us to make our farewells and vanish back home." Shadow recommended. "Swarm and I might leave you on your own for a while to go take a look-see around, maybe see if they're letting people out of the shelters yet."
"They should be, from what I've heard in the past." Swarm put in. "They don't normally keep people in there for that long, and this Leviathan attack's been pretty light in terms of damage, so they'll want people out and back to doing things as soon as they can."
"Then we'll go and see if we can find your dad anywhere, and I can take the both of us back to your house invisibly. Depending on how your house is, you two can stay there or we can try to figure something else out with the Den." Shadow offered. "It wouldn't be too hard to expand out the camping area a bit, even if it's just me working on it, and you and Danny could just bring some stuff from your house to sleep over until things are better."
"That'd be nice."
"Then off you go, you two. I'll be fine here on my own, just don't leave it too late, ok?" The team leader said. Both females nodded and stood from their seats, Swarm offering her arms to Shadow as they left. Eon shifted on the bed, lowering himself onto his stomach before curling up slightly, resting his head on his tails and paws, and let himself drift back off to sleep.
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- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Alright, quick sanity warning.
I appear to have run out of buffer.
This is mostly due to minor writers block, school kicking my ass (I'm writing a novel for a project, and that was a horrible idea) and mild spouts of kinda-depression. Also, I got a new phone, now have Pokemon Go, and as such have spent some more time outside. I'll do my best to keep things normal, but if I vanishunder suspicious circumstances for no reason, it's because the buffer died. Sorry.
And sorry about this being a little late. Shit happened.
I appear to have run out of buffer.
This is mostly due to minor writers block, school kicking my ass (I'm writing a novel for a project, and that was a horrible idea) and mild spouts of kinda-depression. Also, I got a new phone, now have Pokemon Go, and as such have spent some more time outside. I'll do my best to keep things normal, but if I vanish
And sorry about this being a little late. Shit happened.
- Location
- Internet, The
Making cricket sounds, Taylor, really?
Curious about the underwater city. Maybe the characters will now realize that the worlds have been connected longer than they know. Eon can show the scene to the others with illusions, right? Should be relatively easy to find out where it was.
Curious about the underwater city. Maybe the characters will now realize that the worlds have been connected longer than they know. Eon can show the scene to the others with illusions, right? Should be relatively easy to find out where it was.
below