-Ransei, forest wetlands road to the crossroads, Shine-
“I’m seeing a Skitty unit with an Oshawott, should I be worried?” I was pulling the cart towards the crossroads and watched as Pom and her small group were suddenly capable of getting closer due to the sudden Skitty ambush.
“Is one of them wearing a white hat over their left ear?” Geoff asked with a slightly lilt in his voice. “Also can I say your hair is quite a lovely shade of pink and that you have nice hips?”
“One of the Skitty is wearing a hat like that.” I wasn’t going to comment on Geoff making a passes at me, if he was going to be my friend I would just suffer advances from him like Pom does.
“That has to be Captain Skeeball’s unit! We’re either saved or doomed… it’s kind of hard to tell with Skitty sometimes.” Wait, what did you mean by doomed Geoff?! “We have to make sure they follow us back to Aurora so they can report on what’s happening in Fontaine! Hopefully they don’t get too distracted by a butterfly or a small bug and run off to who knows where.”
-Dolly-
“Are we seriously getting help from some really weird looking cats?” I’m not exactly a full out cat hater, dogs and cats can mix as a family very well sometimes too, but I didn’t know what to think of these cats.
Seeing five pink and cream weirdoes show up out of nowhere to halt the bombardment on us, along with a blue bodied otter, suddenly moving to attack the psycho ducks and taking them by surprise was a nice distraction for us to get through the crossroads. The bridge was still going to be an issue though with the bigger ducks.
“I wouldn’t underestimate them considering they are actively knocking out the Psyducks in our way and that they froze half their bodies has stopped their ability to effectively bombard us.” Pom wasn’t wrong the five cats had already taken out a unit of the psycho ducks on the far right corner from us, it’s just how they were fighting that greatly concerns me. “Focus on trying to take out those blue ducks holding the bridge!”
The cats looked to be easily distracted, they weren’t actively dodging sword strikes and they weren’t actively attacking with ferocity, they just seemed to be wandering in and out of danger while doing damage by accident. They just looked to be frolicking and playing among the half frozen ducks and were successfully avoiding injury while having knocked six of them unconscious by accident.
The only one taking the ducks seriously was the otter with the shell that had energy extending from it like a blade. He was injuring them to the point they weren’t able to attack with their swords of block with their shields, he was actively focused on knocking them out to the best of his abilities.
They clearly had the yellow ducks on lockdown as we were almost at the crossroads. Once we made it there we immediately turned towards the bridge to the north staying on the path and not running through the muck. Not many places to ride my skateboard around here where it wouldn’t sink into mud. Gives my paws a work out at least.
It took me a moment to realize it, but Pom had veered off from us as Shanty, Favela and I moved to the bridge.
Pom mentally told me to keep going and to keep Favela and Shanty safe.
-Pom-
“Who are you and what exactly is going on in this country?!” I had decided to get information from the source that seemed like it was aware of its surroundings because the cats… they were causing chaos and… there were now ten of them wandering around all the psyducks? Did they just multiply?!
I hopped over a horizontal swipe and threw a left hoof hook into a psyducks skull, knocking it clean out.
Quetal warned us about attacking them in the heads possibly making those pink energy attacks stronger, but they wouldn’t be able to use them if they were half frozen or knocked unconscious.
“Long story and we don’t have exactly much time for a meet and greet here lady, short version is things went to Distortion World levels of bad around here and it’s really throwing off the rhythm of everything. It’s been quite a nightmare for me! At least there’s a limit on the range to the power controlling these troops, if we can cross the bridge they won’t be able to follow us without the one behind this losing control of them. Whoever they are, they are going to try to retain as much power as they can hold onto.” The otter deflected a sword with his shell blade and launched a painful kicked into the psyduck’s skull, he deflected another blade as he did this with his shell as he jumped into the air, the duck he struck rocked backwards and then its upper torso fell forward limply. He landed and rammed his right shoulder into the chest of the psyduck that just took a swing at him, it gasped and looked to be having troubles breathing as the otter took its head in his left paw and slammed the back of it into the ice. “Your friends are already beginning to engage the Golducks, we need those guys out of the way pronto, but they are Fontaine elites for a reason. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m joining up with your group! Help me take out the rest of these psyducks soldiers before they can free themselves and get the ability to concentrate on doing more of those psyshock attacks, then we’ll focus all our efforts on breaking the bridge blockade.”
“What about those cats?” I slammed a hoof forwards into the skull of another psyduck before it could get its round blue shield up in time.
“Oh the Skitty? They’ll be fine, they’re the best military unit of Aurora after all and they’ve proven that to me time and again despite how odd their fighting looks!” The otter wasn’t wrong, the cats were fighting playfully and didn’t appear to be taking the psyducks seriously, but I noticed some things in their actions.
There were subtle movements to avoid injury that looked like playful antics. One just stopped to yawn and randomly lay down on their belly, the Psyduck that swung their down sword at where they would have been got their sword stuck in the ice. The cat just rolled onto their back and stretched out lazily, resulting in another sword was stuck in the ice just having missed them. Their tail wagged a little, until it swatted the next stuck Psyduck that was going to attack them in the face knocking them out with a ridiculously powerful and painful looking smack.
It was very little things, but if one was paying close attention to them… then those cats knew exactly what they were doing in this fight despite putting on a show of looking entirely scatterbrained or taking seemingly random actions that would have a drunken hoof master guessing if they were doing it on purpose or not.
I was of the opinion it was definitely on purpose.
Despite the dire situation that smile that the hat wearing Skitty sent me meant that everything would be okay and I could almost believe it too, but anxiety and the fact that she was trying to disarm my nervousness or anxiety about getting too close to the soldiers had me on edge as I dodge to the left and launched a straight left into the center of a psyducks skull knocking it out.
That’s when the hat where cat came up to me.
“Hi there, I’m Captain Skeeball and we’re the Skitty Squad of Aurora, it’s nice to meet you!” This Skeeball, the smiling eyed kitty, sounded like a bucket of sunshine despite the desperate fighting going on. Her grin was almost infectious as she directed at me. “Skitty Squad, fall into formation, we’re going to focus our attack, so get a move on right now~!”
They all started to move back to the south of the psyducks and we did so to, me and the odd otter.
“We hear you, moving into formation, we’re ready to take them all out and with a lot of knowhow~!” The ten Skitty moved into a rectangular formation and started moving with Skeeball’s marching steps. In fact there were two Skeeball’s at the center of the formation as they pranced forward.
I moved behind them feeling the flow of a heart song, so they had those here too? I looked at the otter and he nodded to me with a serious expression, we both got just caught in the rhythm that Skeeball just started.
“Skitty Squad, take note and spread out, we’re all helping that medicine cart and getting it right on through~!” Skeeball announced as she marched in place.
“Just so you know that we all love you, there’s no other mother quite that is quite exactly like you~!” The eight male Skitty sang as they marched in place with serious expressions on their face.
Wait… did they say mother, these were her children she was bringing into this fight?!
“That’s right, Skitty will always make it through, regardless of the dangers or whatever we need to do~!” The ten Skitty, of which I realized five were substitutes, marched forwards and we followed behind them.
“We Skitty all came here, and we were always going to be bound to seriously help you~!” They sang as the looked towards us and started moving forward taking out the still conscious Psyducks from two left outer units from a southwards facing. They were trying to free themselves with their sword and shields, but they weren’t able to do so before being swarmed by slapping tails and small paws scratching them up until they were out cold. “Skitty, cat scratch, we’re all in on the one most important points of view~!”
“That is if you know what you should do~.” Skeeball sang as she and her clone turned towards me and their tails knocking four Psyducks unconscious with one swing. The Skitty, having finish most of the three units surrounding the central unit all turned towards it at the same time and moved forward with the beat in a peppy manner. “Now tell them about the great Skeeball~!”
“Skeeball is the name of love~!” One of the Skitty stated as he rushed into the middle six Pokémon’s formation and smashed his head against one of the psyducks and their eyes whited out.
“Skeeball gives out a lot of great hugs~!” Another Skitty sang as he duck under a blade and then hopped up to hug it, he opened his mouth to fire a beam point blank into the psyducks head and froze its head and helmet solid.
“She puts us to beds, and helps us rest up our heads, she also helps a lot of other Pokémon too~!” The boys were quite proud of their mother. One quickly one deflected a blade from the otter with a tail that gleamed like metal and then proceeded to not only break the sword in half, but also smashing the helmet apart while knocking the Psyduck unconscious.
“She’s our mother, don’t you know~!” Another Skitty sang as they just about finished knocking out the ducks with more focus than they had when they looked like they were running around all scatterbrained. As they scratched and slapped with their paws or slammed glowing metallic tails home into the stuck psyducks.
“The brightness in the darkest hour, that goes with her own flow~!” The four male Skitty sang, as Captain Skeeball and her clone rushed the final corner unit at the northeast of the crossroads and that had almost freed themselves.
They just saw there and watched as their mother went into a break dance maneuvers that a little cat like that shouldn’t be capable of. She even made a head spin double as an attack as the two tails of metallic glow tore the remaining six Psyducks from the ice and sent them flying. They were all groaning and weren’t getting back up anytime soon.
“She’s a manic attack, a power pack, that takes no guff and gives plenty right on back~!” Didn’t know whether it was the substitutes or the originals that started running towards the bridge, but the four Skitty sat singing with the cheerful beat that their tails started slapping out on the ground.
The four substitutes sacrificed themselves for Shanty, Dolly and Favela in short order and did damage to all the golducks by exploding with blasts of lightning on impact as they warped and revealed themselves to be just smiling faced dolls.
“I’m a hero of Aurora, of which I’m quite proud, so I’m going to state this out loud… that there’s nobody quite like me, as you will soon see, so please just let me move forward and take up the lead~!” The substitute covered itself in electricity as did Skeeball and they charged forward and took down two Golducks with one blow.
One of the Skeeballs got skewered and it reveal that it was a plushy and the other one was smiling cheerfully at the remaining four Golducks as she took up position between Favela and Shanty while licking at a paw and rubbing at her face.
Skeeball’s mood changed as she hopped backwards and looked to the west, a slight frown before a giant toothy grin formed on her face and a green glow came off her but nothing seemed to happen.
I moved forward, picked up a spear in my hoof and deflected a thrust going for Shanty as Dolly blocked one of the opposite side giving Favela enough room to whip a vine into one of the large blue ducks leg as another disarmed him of his weapon.
Skeeball ran up and fired a beam from her mouth at the bridge for a split second before going on a belly slide under a spear stab. Her tail lit up with a metallic color that slammed a Golduck between the legs dropping it immediately, it wasn't out of the fight though as it slowly tried to stand back up.
We might actually have a chance of crossing the bridge safely with Skeeball and her kids on our side. They may have lost their substitutes, but I don’t think we were going have a problem.
“Unit command, Iron Tail!” The four Skitty moves up, two to the left and two to the right of their mother and then all their tails started glowing as they crouched and the burst forward as one.
-Jiri-
“They’re catching up, how good is this Captain Skeeball exactly?” I heard something and looked back to see a green glowing knot of grass pop up out of the ground.
One of the Psyduck firing on us tripped with his forehead glowing with energy, as soon as his head struck the ground at least a unit and halfs worth of Psyduck were wiped out in the resulting psychic attack exploding violently among their ranks.
“That good.” Geoff stated plainly, looking visibly upset that other Pokémon had to be hurt for us to escape.
“That’s why you don’t attack Psyducks in the heads while they are still capable of psychic attacks!” Quetal stated as we kept the cart moving and were turning the corner at the crossroads to head to the bridge. “Now keep pushing!”
“What kind of attack was that?” I asked, never having seen an attack quite like that before.
“That move is rated for taking down Snorlax’s or other heavy pokemon. Grass Knot is a move that causes a Pokémon trip and is to be used against big pokemon, the heavier the pokemon the more damaging that attack.” Quetal has apparently seen it before. “While it didn’t do much damage to the Psyduck personally…”
Quetal trailed off to let me figure out the rest, the tripping effect notably caused a disastrous chain reaction.
When we reached the bridge we saw something a little heart wrenching. Four of the Skitty were down and the one with the hat, Captain Skeeball, she was standing back up and I noticed how tired she looked despite all the antics we saw as we came up to the crossroads.
-Captain Skeeball-
“Okay… maybe a solid week of constant fighting has finally taken its toll on us and I probably shouldn’t have insisted that we stop to deal with that Blastoise… but those civilians needed our help. Also probably shouldn't have done a musical number...” I struggled to stand up and my boys were down for the count. “I’m Captain Skeeball, do you hear me!”
We still had the four Golducks to deal with, but we wore them down quite well and our VIP Oshawott companion was still fresh for a fight.
It’s just that we were finally out of steam after having come so far, wish I knew a fire type attack so I could boil some water and just make more.
A pair of vines slammed into the face of a Golduck preparing a Psychic attack and then they wrapped around his legs and heaved him over the railing so that his head slapped against the side of the bridge before being letting go to fall into the river.
Make that three Golducks, I still had some fight left in me! For great justice, for happy cuddles and for my loving gigantic hubby who was currently one of the victims of all this!
A spear was thrust for my face and I frowned in defiance.
“No you don’t!” With a clang, the Oshawott pinned the spears point against the bridge with the shining blade that erupted from his shell, he turned and pulled back his right fist while his left held the spear in place. He thrust it forward and disappeared from sight in a rocketing blast of water to ram his fist straight into the Golducks forehead pushing it back. “I’m not letting a true hero down on my watch, not after she got me this far!”
He took position against that Golduck, on my right was the off brand Wooloo, the canine with the odd weapon, the Skiddo and the sea goat.
That left the one on the left to me, I turned and marched forward the remaining spear wielding Golduck alone.
-Pom-
Skeeball’s unit did a lot of damage to the Golducks and after having knocked out all the psyducks in the crossroads to prevent them from firing on the cart from behind. It still seemed they hit some limits, also I heard Skeeball muttering something about a week of constant fighting and a Blastoise, whatever that was.
We needed to finish knocking these Golducks out of the way, because I looked to the right off the right side of the bridge and saw thirty Psyducks marching in this directions from the east. Who knows how many were coming from the west.
We had to hurry as the cart was already at the bridge and waiting.
We… were having trouble taking down just one of the remaining Golduck. The one we were ganging up on was defending against Dolly, Favela, Shanty and me all at once with ridiculous efficiency.
I was even helping with a spear, a weapon I was only somewhat competent with, and could see how not using Dancing Flame was hindering a quick resolution.
I refused to use Dancing Flame and we needed an opening to bring this one Golduck down as the other two were currently being battled and distracted by a tired kitty and an otter with a shell that acts like a sword.
This world was weird and I absolutely knew this was only the beginning of things, we've only been here for barely two days after all.
When Shanty got knocked back, I quickly moved forward and knocked the Golducks spear downwards with my own and pinned it.
Stepping onto the spear with my right rear hoof and grappling it with my wool I launched my left hind leg for the Golduck’s face, he stopped my attack with his right clammy webbed claw.
Favela fire some leaves at the Golduck and he blasts them out of the air with water from his beak, that’s when Dolly came with the edge of her board fromt he left. The Golduck pushed my leg back and chopped his arm outwards to block Dolly’s board with some kind of fighting type attack, Dolly was sent flipping backwards in the air where she caught herself went into glide and swung around to land to my left on her hind legs.
Seeing as our unspoken plan was working, I opened my mouth and barked blasted. Catching the Golduck in the left side of his face. He quickly let go of his weapon and stumbled back and glared at us with his red glowing eyes.
“Now!” The Golduck looked confused when I didn’t do anything except held the spear in my hooves at the ready in case this failed, neither did Dolly or Favela who took up defensive stances. The Golduck itself took up a defensive posture with it's claws.
Thankfully the mind controlled monster forgot his fourth opponent. For after Shanty was knocked back, she had rolled forward and got around behind our opponent while we all held their attention.
Shanty leapt up and slammed the Golduck across the back of the skull with the butt of her weapon and he toppled forward unconscious.
We turned too looked to the remaining two to see the otter was overpowering his opponent. It made me wonder who he was, because he used his little shell with an insane expertise to send the spear flying from the Golducks claws.
It brought its claws together and then fire a vibrant beam of energy from its head, only for Jiri to suddenly intercept it holding one of the shields the Psyducks had been wielding.
“We can’t wait any longer, we’re moving now!” Jiri yelled as she flashed white and sped forward to ram the shield into the Golduck.
Said duck caught the edges of the blue round shield and was pushed back, It tried to form a beam from the red gem on its head to take out Jiri.
“Aerial Ace!” Only for the otter to come in, pushing off the top of the shield, flashing by with a slash from the ducks right shoulder to its left hip, the Golduck finally toppled backwards bleeding badly. After landing the otter quickly pushed them off to the side with a look of sadness on his face, it had been cut up one too many times by the smaller otter to really keep going. “Get their weapons and put all the Skitty on the cart!”
I looked back to see Shine pulling the cart up onto the bridge and Quetal was up on the bridges edge firing those stars off toward the west. As the psyducks from the east and west were on approach there were about forty of them, meaning five full units from the east and one unit from the west with four remainder.
I went back and picked up two of the small cats and put them on top of the cart, Favela lent assistance with her vines with Ocellus securing them. I looked over to see Captain Skeeball was still holding that Golduck as the cart started to move across the bridge, the otter ran in to help her and he deflected an attack allowing her to hit the Golduck in the leg with a metallic tail.
It stayed standing despite the pain it must have been in.
“I’ve got this, go, get that cart to the other end! I’ll hold the rear... I’ve got one last thing left in me to do.” Stating this as she deflected the spear stabbing at her into the bridge, she fired a beam that stuck the spear to the bridge with ice and angled it along to going across the Golducks feet.
The Golduck was was now trapped in place, it tried to shoot a blast of pink energy which she avoid by hopping back.
“If you’re sure…” The otter turned to me and motioned to follow the cart as he ran past, I turned to follow him and looked back to see the Skitty walking backwards behind us her ears and tail erect.
She was hissing quite loudly as the Psyducks finally made it to the bridge and I noticed something sparkling from the base of the big round portion of her raised tail as she avoided another attack from the Golduck.
-Skeeball-
“Let me show you exactly why there are beware of Skitty signs in Aurora, because whoever you are that’s controlling all these poor Pokémon, this is exactly what’s coming for you when I come for my captured husband!” Standing on my hind legs, my front legs went through the motions and my fur started standing on end as I held the pose. My body suddenly lit up with lightning and I could barely control the energy of the forming attack very well in my poor state, but I was Captain Skeeball! “Z-MOVE… GIGAVOLT HAVOC NYYYYAAARAAAARGHHH!”
The darkening evening sky was lit up by the brilliant lightning coming off of me, for I have always shined this brilliantly!
-Pom-
The torrent of unrestrained power Skeeball unleashed was mind boggling and terrifying, that it was coming from someone so small will make it even harder for me to gauge the strength of a Pokémon just by appearance.
After several seconds of blasting thick masses of lightning in a beam far more than anything Ocellus could ever hope to do and in an almost controlled manner. The still standing Golduck and every Psyduck in the path of the attack that was trying to come onto the bridge were all fried and… it just ended in a blink like it had been some kind of ephemeral dream.
Captain Skeeball’s body sparked a bit as she stood there and slowly she sat down…
“I’m… spent…” She whispered in a weak and incredibly pained voice as she slowly flopped onto her side.
I quickly ran up collected her with my hooves as there were still quite a few Psyduck that hadn’t been hit by another new eye opener to what Pokémon were capable of, because that had been far bigger than the solar beam I saw after lunch.
These were the kinds of things we were going to be seeing in this world?!
I started speeding for the cart on my hind legs cradling the kitty as pink energy attacks fell around me, but Quetal started leaping into the way of the attacks as they apparently did nothing to him as the energy dispersed wildly off his body. It was self explanatory why he didn't do that to defend the cart as the deflection was wild and he could only stop them from hitting a small target.
Having made it across the bridge unscathed with Captain Skeeball in tow, I sighed with relief.
We had made it back into Aurora and according to the otter, which was an Oshawott, we were all safely outside of the control range which encompassed most of southern Fontaine.
Only eastern and north eastern Fontaine, the coastal area east of Aurora with almost no connections to the other kingdoms aside from one tiny area where one can enter eastern Ignis, remained safe from the machinations of the evil that befell the Fontaine kingdom.
We approached Aurora castle as the stars started shining in the sky feeling completely awful about not being able to do more, we felt beaten... but we were successful in getting the medicine to Aurora at least.
Once we get to the castle, then maybe we could get some medical aid for Captain Skeeball and think about how to move forward from here. Doing that attack hurt her as much as it had the Pokémon she faced.