-Pokémon World, Ransei, Inner Illusio, in some random forest near a giant tree, Pom-
I sat here on the stump silently contemplating things as I stared at the fire.
“It’s never the physical scars is it?” Looking up at Canard as he took a seat next to me, I sighed. “It’s more the mental ones that’ll stick with you.”
“The reason Dolly hasn’t woken up yet, is definitely because of the mental scars.” That was my answer and I was going to ignore that my own even exist for the time being. That and because Dolly found out she was carrying Dormarch’s heart in her chest and I’m carrying his mind in my head, that’s quite scarring information on its own. Dormach can’t hold himself together without a soul and the only reason why he could do this is because we can synchronize with one another and hold together the parts of himself that he gave to us. “Come peril or happiness, Dolly is sticking to my side like glue and I can’t break the bond between us. Not that I would want to now, but Dolly knows what her choice entails because I’ve been reminding her and she’s been nothing if not optimistic. This, her being attacked in her sleep, I couldn’t do anything to protect her from Gilgamesh. Goodness knows who Gilgamesh will attack next once he recovers from the damage we dealt to him.”
I definitely wouldn’t break our bond before, but I wasn’t certainly going to let someone else do it now. Not with what I knew about having a part of Dormarch just sitting around inside of me. Dolly and I barely dealt him any damage, but Dormarch… I he actually really hurt Gilgamesh. We kind of need Gilgamesh to be hurting, to be hesitant to use that form of attack on us again.
I doubt I could have as easily repelled him from Shanty, Smolder or Ocellus’s mind. Gilgamesh obviously chose the target that would hurt me most and he was definitely asking for comeuppance quite loudly. He was even basically asking me to come and get him, to stop him from committing atrocities. I was going to try to at least, but even I saw the writing on the wall on this one.
“… What do you have on them?” Canard received a glance from me as everyone meandered about the campsite interacting with one another, he was giving me a well-meaning look that this was an obvious distraction from my thoughts.
I took it for all it was worth and actively swapped to thinking about the people we ended up camping with. Shanty and Favela hanging out, Ocellus was spending time with Smolder, Lit was being protective of Dolly, Dazzle was playing a game with Frizzle by drawing in the dirt. Quetal was glaring at the Ponyta and Cotton with, curiously enough, an amount of distrust. Shine had disappeared off to somewhere. Mundo was just exercising and making loud grunting noises and he flexed his muscles.
None of the people we knew personally were doing anything unusual. What Canard was asking about, was the Ponyta Prowlers and Cotton Murkrow.
“Ponyta Prowlers, been here for about two weeks after the crash they said they’ve been through, look at the ship and how the ground around it has been displaced by the crash. The ship was at one point almost split in two, but the keel held together. They’ve been making good repairs thus far, but there is a reason they are asking us to procure the two things they need and are not doing it themselves. I think something is up with that.” I was murmuring what I’ve noticed about them. “They have somewhat honest intentions involving us, but I’ve noticed they haven’t disclosed the exact thing that brought them to Illusio in the first place. It’s likely something to do with Gilgamesh, but they are trying to get to Cerebrum City and happen to be going our way. Though their dubious intent does have my hackles raised for some reason.”
The leader of the Psychic Type Ponyta was cheerful and friendly, yet there was an underlying something to it. The medic equally so, but more pure in actually being friendly and cheerful, the others were a bit more serious or a little less exuberant and I’m fairly sure none of them were faking their personalities in the least.
Inky Dye was the face of their group, someone to draw attention away from the rest of them once you’ve noticed they’re their. She was the one I suspected of something unusual, but I had no evidence of it… yet.
Lumber Spry was in fact a medic… a combat medic, she has blood on her hooves and that was not in the process of healing others, it probably haunted from what I was reading of her character and how she acted about someone being hurt. She likely had a pathological need to make sure the people around her were okay, she likely didn’t like causing pain unless absolutely necessary.
“And the black bird?” Canard queried after scrutinizing the wooden airship.
“Cotton is in fact a spy as she says she is, but her level of importance is what I believe to be actually vastly understated. I believe she is ‘The Spy’, as in the top one of her kingdom. She absolutely doesn’t care if people knows she’s a spy, so she might have reason to believe she’s just that talented enough to not be worried about anyone knowing who she is. She flew off at some point earlier and I believe she was doing us a small favor for a later payoff. Likely delaying the groups you say that stopped our previous route for getting to Cerebrum City as led by Mentalis.” I glanced at Cotton resting on a branch with a sprig of hay sticking out of her beak her belly full of good soup. I didn’t mind cooking for big groups, I had spent a lot of time making homemade dog food for my familiars as well as fun snacks for myself growing up. Tianhuo also loved my cooking, she might not have had a good home cooked meal in a while since I’ve been gone. “Cotton is actually trying to endear herself to us for some reason. I’m getting the idea she wants to take advantage of us being around and is helping us out so we’ll scratch her back when she needs us. None of them are necessarily good, though I’d give Lumber Spry a fair shake. Cotton has worked something out with the Ponyta, at least within the last three days or so considering how well they seem to know each other and she’s wary of them.”
“Right, I’ll keep that stuff in mind. So what do we do about the help the Ponyta want from us?” Canard was rubbing the underside of his beak as he glanced at our groups and then looked at the Chrysalia Irregular unit that set up a defensive perimeter. Ninjask currently couldn’t fly and even Heal Pulse could fix his damaged wing and it needed time to regenerate.
That would take a few days and we might not have that kind of time.
“I just need to ask them two questions before we do anything, like help them acquire what they need to get that airship back in the air. Since obviously there’s a reason they haven’t done that yet as repairing the main part of their ship would take a week at best from the fall damage… yet they’ve scouted exactly the places where to find the resources they needed and didn’t bother grabbing said resources themselves. They’ve been surviving off the land for the last few days and were ravenous for a cooked meal, so they all have a talent for natural survival, but not civilized survival.” As if that didn’t smell, I saw Shanty look my way and I nodded to her. She nodded back to me that she had in fact noticed something. Good, at least I’m not the only one paying attention since I woke up. “I have my suspicions of a setup, but not what kind of setup. There’s possibly third party stuff going on in Illusio that may have nothing to do with Gilgamesh or the currently forming disorganized rebellion.”
Fleer kind of dropped the hint what with her friend Abby being able to quite literally detect incoming disasters, someone might be doing something behind the scenes to either help or hinder the situation or just doing their own thing which might have a knock-on effect. It is quite unfortunate that I’m going to be, and always will be apparently, dragged into such things.
“So ask your questions, we’ll have the Chrysalia and Violight guys keep an eye on things.” Canard was likely more willing to trust the local militaries we were allied with, they had authority and were here on the idea that something was happening in Illusio that needed to be investigated. I very much agreed with the sentiment that someone needed to watch this oncoming powder keg carefully to make sure that it isn’t set off. They were also quite friendly to us and had right to be wary of the odd happenings in Illusio.
I had an idea as to what Gilgamesh was going to do and he needed to be stopped completely before whatever it was happens. The build-up of psychic energy in the Illusio region was the only clue to that and anything requiring a buildup of so much energy was never going to end well.
“I think I will.” I cleared my throat and looked at the Ponyta, strange fluffy colorful curly hair and a whimsical feel about them. I mentally compared that to the Rapidash called Red Hare that basically tore everyone that went near him. No matter how cutesy they may act, any Pokémon is still dangerous. “Excuse me, I have two questions for your group in particular if you are willing to answer them.”
“Okay, what is it?” Inky came over to me and sat down with a smile on her face.
“First question, you told me about a Pokémon named Inkay and its ink being needed as fuel for your airship. You mentioned that said ship was made of quick burning, if sturdy, wood. So what are you going to use the ink for if it’s not for burning?” That question from me seemed to bring Inky up short as she flinched a bit as her nose crinkled up cutely, probably didn’t expect me to notice that the airship doesn’t have something like a burner. I was taking from what little I knew of airships from Equus and trying to apply it here.
“Well… we definitely won’t need it for burning…” Okay, but what did you need it for Inky? “Any fire applied to Fairy Wood would be really quite bad in any situation as we’ve told you. Wouldn’t use the wood with fire unless you need a small bit of the wood to quickly start up a campfire. In that case I would use other kinds of wood for a longer lasting fire.”
“Elaborate on what the ink you need is for then.” I just stared at her.
“Okay, we specifically need some Inkay ink for its rather unique properties. Normally burning ink would help make a balloon inflate. We don’t need to do that.” Inky seemed a bit shifty about explaining it in full, but she eventually relented under my gaze. “Given Inkay ink can make things float in the air under the right circumstances, it’s actually how Inkay float or fly around. They can’t use their own psychic energy on themselves to levitate like other Psychic Types, because they are partially Dark Types they are functionally incapable of using their psychic energies on themselves. They can still certainly use those energies on other people.”
“So what you’re saying is, you do something and the ink suddenly becomes viable for flying purposes?” Ocellus asked as she came over to us. “So that’s how the ink would fuel the ship to fly?”
“That’s my explanation exactly.” That wasn’t deceit, just nervousness, but Inky was still particularly worried about something all the same. “That’s why it’s needed as fuel, fuel that doesn’t run out unless we lose the mass.”
They lost the entirety of whatever they were using previously for the balloon to their airship, but it might not have been Inkay ink specifically. I wasn’t about to ask what the propulsion was or their previous fuel source happened to be, but I was concerned about finding out.
“Why would you be having problems getting it then?” Shanty stated as she came into the conversation as she came over to sit next to me with Favela. I’ve only asked one question and they were going to help me keep to the two questions by asking their own, nice to know that they’ve caught on to something as well and are going to assist me with this. “You look to be having a fully ‘healthy’ unit and you don’t be seeming to be being that weak to me.”
Hmm… Shanty was getting good at scrutinizing the strength of others, even then she’d still fight even if she was outmatched and thought there was something worth fighting for.
“Before you say anything, you have a healer on hoof, you could have left at least three of you to defend the airship if that was the issue and the other three to go after the Inkay ink on your own at least.” I wasn’t going to say anything about the Leavanny quite yet.
Inky Dye said that the Leavanny that they wanted nearby was surrounded by Pokémon that were either feral or being driven insane by the psychic energy build up in the region. They couldn’t split off three of them, or four if Cotton were to join in being a recent acquaintance of theirs, and still have enough in numbers to safely deal with whatever was going on around the Leavanny. I’m currently making several assumptions here about the situation, aside from already being told the Leavanny is one of the ones being driven insane.
“The Inkay can spray their ink, mostly as defensive maneuver that’s not a Pokémon related move and they can be rather aggressive after they’ve blinded you. Usually they only do that if you’re immune or strong to their mental manipulations. We could use the ink from their evolved form, Malamar, just as well. Inkay are easier to get to… squirt for the lack of a better term, and are far less dangerous. However, there’s a strong chance that an Inkay will turn into a Malamar upon expending an amount of ink that keeps them in the air, we’re quite wary of any Inkay flipping upside down and threatening to evolve into a Malamar on the spot afterwards. Any Inkay that flips upside down has a chance of that happening.” Inky shuddered and gagged as if she was going to throw up, there wasn’t a full explanation as to why they hadn’t succeeded in acquiring this ink yet. “I wouldn’t want to hurt the Inkay anyway, but Malamar are bad news for us. Stronger, larger and most importantly a fairly aggressive partial Dark Type that has some powerful mind manipulating abilities that can even affect Psychic Types, on top of being immune to psychic attacks and only being weak to Bug or Fairy based attacks. Getting into a fight with a Malamar is not something we would ever want to do, there’s a reason why Malamar are considered some of the most dangerous Pokémon to encounter in the Kingdom of Yaksha. Even if we do have Fairy Type Moves, we don’t have many we can actually learn. Also we need the ink to be fresh and unsullied, as in not having touched anyone or the ground and just the container we’re trying to get the ink in. The last few times we tried to fight them, they actively sabotaged the buckets of ink we tried to carry away by touching the ink or incidentally making us do so. I said we need barrels and even a little bit would be getting us started on getting back into the sky.”
“Couldn’t you just ask for their help peaceably?” Thankfully this was becoming an open group discussion as Mundo stopped exercising and decided to join in the circle we had going on here.
The chain reaction of questions from one question was cascading quite soundly and I only needed to ask my other question to confirm things, the question about the Leavanny situation.
“Can we say that we already tried, leave it at that and move on with our lives?” Tried as in attempted to immediately bribe, which sounds like what you were saying Inky. The ponyta looked fairly embarrassed, apparently whatever you tried didn’t go over very well. “The Inkay Ink would be the easier task if you can figure out a way to get away from them with their ink freshly caught. Again, so much as touching or letting the ink hit anything other than a container would ruin it for the purposes we need it for.”
“Sounds like you’re field of expertise Shanty. I’m sure you can handle that well enough by manipulating the liquids into whatever containers the Ponyta provide.” Turning from my addressing of Shanty who could carry out that task tomorrow, it then went back to focusing on the Ponyta Prowlers leader with some hints of suspicion about how they would react when I ask about the Leavanny. “Okay, second question, what are the Pokémon around the Leavanny that are so dangerous that are stopping you from recruiting their help? Aside from the fact that the psychic energy might be driving them insane and we have to presumably knock some sense into them or get them close to the Morpeko unit to bring them back to their senses.”
“Scyther and their relatively hard to achieve evolution… Scizor.” There was a haunted look in all the Ponyta’s eyes, it was almost pure terror. She brought out a scroll and revealed the appearances of large green and red bipedal bugs, one with dangerous looking scythe limbs comparable to Quetals claws and the other with large meaty claws and larger thoraxes. Scizor seemed more streamlined in being built for speed and Scyther seem more built for standing their ground with heavier feet. You could tell their evolutions were related at least. “Those are not the kind of guys you want to mess with while they are berserk, not to mention the Leavanny and their previous evolutions Sewaddle and Swadloon possibly attacking us and them on top of all that.”
Apparently the Ponyta Prowlers unit from Titania, if that’s where they are really from, had images of every nearby Pokémon artfully rendered on a scroll. Leavanny in particular looked like a frail Pokémon on paper with its bug like body wrapped in leaves, but the chart on Leavanny gave me a different idea that Leavanny can get as big as a Scyther or Scizor. Bug and Grass type was an odd combination, then again so was the Inkay being Psychic and Dark.
I’m starting to see why the Ponyta were having problems. They couldn’t use their effective attacks on the Inkay to get the ink from them, as knocking them out or capturing won’t produce said ink. The Scyther looked dangerous already, the Scizor was probably a nightmare in being part steel type and the Leavanny itself must not be too bad in a pitched battle. They were trying to avoid a chaotic free for all battle and capture at least one Leavanny to assist them.
“Hm… Canard, can you take the Companions unit and three of the Morepeko to ask the Leavanny for help, if the Morpeko can generate enough of a field to remove the effects of the psychic energy in the air, then they might be more open to interacting peacefully. If they are in fact being driven insane by the increase in energy of course.” Sound plan, if the opponent is being driven berserk, then solve the issue by taking away what was making them berserk in the first place. “We’ll start tomorrow morning, Dolly should be awake by then. The other three Morpeko stay here to make sure the psychic energy doesn’t cause trouble here. I’m going with Shanty, Dolly, Dodo and Ocellus to retrieve the ink. I want Lumber Spry to show us the way.”
“Do you have some containers we can use available?” Ocellus asked Inky while getting distracted by Smolder playing with her ribbon.
“Yes, we’ll provide the barrels you’ll need to fill and get back here.” Inky answered amiably seeming excited that we were going to help out. It might be my imagination, but something still felt off about her and her group.
“Right, then good evening, we’ll start moving out tomorrow.” I went to my tent and turned in and made sure Dolly was resting peacefully.
-That night, snooping around the grounded airship, Cotton Murkrow-
Hmm… interesting.
I should probably warn my possible allies, but I don’t think they’d believe me at this juncture.
Eh, I can take care of it later. It’ll endear me to them better if I time it right, I like making friends anyway, not enemies.
I was careful not to move anything and carefully snuck my way out while making sure nobody saw me make my exit to check on the Hypno approaching or were already in the forest. We won’t have much time tomorrow, at least the Chrysalia unit will be able to set up a nice defensive perimeter. Violight group might not be the brightest colors around, but they’d likely do their jobs dutifully to keep their allies safe, Queen Ginchiyo was not of the habit of training useless units.
I saw the Hypno on approach forest and saw smoke rising over the hills and mountains to the northwest, Pom had the right idea about that town possibly being attacked.
I had some traps to set up to slow them down, maybe I’ll make some really fun ones with tree sap and some Feather Dance feathers.
-The next morning, after a quick breakfast, southwest of the Power Spot tree, Lobe Lake, Pom-
Lumber Spry was fidgeting nervously as Dodo carried the two barrels we were going to fill up. I worried about Canard, but he arguably had the stronger group and tougher mission.
Dolly was still somewhat out of it, but she seemed to be smiling as she pressed a paw against her chest. She can still honestly say she never lost a puppy, but we could still lose Dormarch if we weren’t careful with the two pieces of him that we did have.
“Remember once we have both the barrels filled, Dodo needs to run back to the tree as fast as he can go.” We’ll be doing a fighting retreat if we couldn’t do this peacefully, speaking of peacefully… “How are you feeling Dolly?”
“Come on Pom, you’ve asked me that at least thirty times, the answer is the same. I’m a bit sore, I have some mental scars, but otherwise like when you try to say it and can’t mean it. I’m fine.” Dolly rolled her eyes and was fully kitted out in her gear, helmet, skateboard and the strangely boomeranging stone bone. “Now let’s go bother some squid things.”
“Is everything alright?” Lumber Spry asked, four of the Ponyta Prowlers were left at the campsite to do some mining of psychic crystals and would be put towards actually getting us near Cerebrum City.
“Everything’s fine, I’m just overly concerned with Dolly’s health.” Honestly, I could see that Dolly was looking healthier and more energetic by the second and yet I was still worried. I was at least expecting some form of adverse effects from being assaulted in her sleep.
“She’s a really healthy looking canine to me, you sound like you take very good care of her.” Complimented Lumber as we stopped at the edge of a lake, where we could see six Inkay floating about.
They were really cute looking, if I didn’t know their little light up spots can manipulate people on sight… there’s also a possible chance of them being capable of causing epilepsy. Unicorns back on Equus had to be careful with how they flashed the lights their magic could create, certain patterns and colors of light can sometimes cause seizures in some people. At least Oleander didn’t seem to be capable of causing that kind of problem being a primarily dark magic using unicorn.
“Hey can we talk to you about something?” Blinking I looked as Charjabug waddled up to the floating squids hanging around the edge of the lake and they all gave him a flat look. I don’t actually recall asking Charjabug to join us on this side mission.
“Sure you can, but we probably won’t gab all day… make it quick, we have important lazy floating about to be doing and all.” Okay first impressions were generally on the odd side, but that was rather abrupt and rude. “Also we are the ‘Splatoon Squid Squad’ and if you’re here for our ink, then think again… because you’ll get it, but probably not in the way you want it!”
“Er… Lieson… we can’t actually use ‘Splatoon’ in the name for our unit.” Another Inkay said with a slight bit of worry.
“Well why not Greg?!” The rude floating squid stated.
“Well there is a particular unit made entirely of Smeargle, called the ‘Splatter Goon’ mercenary unit, said unit might smear us across the landscape if we do going around using the ‘Splatoon’ name.” Greg apparently answered flatly. “Also they have dibs on the branding and one of them knows how to do Draco Meteor, which implies that they survived being hit with a Draco Meteor personally.”
“Can we call ourselves the Squid Beaks unit at least?” While they were distracting themselves, I decided to get things back on track.
“Would you mind giving us some ink?” I asked pleasantly and nicely.
“Nope, not happing, especially not without an epic fight, but we can do this instead!” They all started to light up and I quickly closed my eyes, tensed up my ears and tried to keep their locations in mind in a spatial area around me. I opened my eyes when it sounded like they were done flashing their light patterns. “Darn, your aware of our tricks then. Nothing else for it, let’s do this thing!”
Lieson, apparently that was his name, fired a blast of psychic energy at Charjabug and sent him sprawling. The rest of us had to scatter a bit while having to dodge the five other bolts of energy.
“Are you sure we can’t work this out without us having to hurt you?” I asked with a bit of worry for them. “I’m sure we could do something for you or make a trade of some kind.”
“Nope, as if you could even hurt us, you’d have to move pretty fast to actually hit…” Sighing and not waiting for the Inkay to finish talking, I inhaled, exhaled and flickered to plant my left hoof straight into Lieson’s face and fired a point blank Thousand Spears on impact.
The squid Pokémon slammed bodily into a nearby tree and the bark on it crunched inwards from the impact. I winced at the noise, but they did attack first and started things.
“That fast enough?” I asked sadly while preparing the to fight the other five and have a big row with them, only to find out the others had acted quickly to take out the other Inkay as I had. All the other Inkay were already on the ground groaning in pain. So what I just said came off as more insulting than I could have actually meant it to be. “Sorry about that… but you were asking for it.”
Lumber Spry was checking on Charjabug as I made my way over to the Inkay embedded in the tree and pried them out to carry him over to her.
Shanty used the blunt backside of her cane scythe to smash one of them to the ground.
One Inkay had a highly carbonized bread loaf painfully embedded in their head, Dodo’s favorite form of ranged reprisal since losing his beam blasting capabilities.
Dolly had hit another with a thrown momentum boosted bone, which would explain the bone shaped imprint covering most of their small body. Dolly just leaned against the bone and looked at me, she was wondering if the Ponyta Prowlers seriously actually had problems with these guys and I was starting to wonder myself how these guys could cause them so much trouble.
Surprisingly Ocellus had attacked one as well and it was dazed as if blinking spots out of its eyes and its face was glittering with spots of energy, I raised a questioning brow to the changeling.
“Hearing how Dazzling Gleam works, I just fired what is essentially a glitter spell into its face.” Well it seems Ocellus was looking into replicating Pokémon moves. “It slightly continuously burns until I let up on my magic, but it’s not going to cause any serious harm.”
As for the one lone Inkay that was still floating among the five we took down in an instant, they were shivering quite a bit as Charjabug got up.
“I think they’re done.” Quite right Charjabug, wondered how Canard’s side of things was going?
-At that moment, east of the Power Spot tree in a forested region, Canard-
A hockey stick slapped across the face of the speedy metal red bug and sent it sprawling into a log I prepared myself for the others coming at us.
Quetal leapt into a kick and started using aerial ace after deflecting the Scythers blade with that kick, I had other problems to focus on. Like another Scyther coming for me with its blades raised.
I immediately found myself out of position in a blink and looked around to see Shine smiling as she danced out of the way of the blades and flicked a rock behind her into the Scizor’s eyes causing it to miss smashing her with its claw as it rocketed by. I raised my hockey stick charged forward and brought into the back of the head of the Scyther was facing a second ago.
Lit and the Morpeko blasted lightning into the mob to give us some breathing room. I wondered how easy Pom had it. As more of them came at us out of the wood work from all around us with their blades or claws swinging for the net.
A large swath of them were cleared out by a flaming whip from Dazzle as Frizzle blasted flames into one of the Scizor, they were particularly effective against the ridiculous fast Scizor.
I slung my stick into the claws of an oncoming Scizor, then kicked them in their larger abdomen. I raised my stick up into their chin, once they had doubled over, to knock them down
“Frizzle, Dazzle, keep focusing on the Scizor. Morpeko, Lit, keep hitting those Scyther!” I turned and narrowly avoided taking several bladed leaves to my right eye and even blocked a few before they could hit me.
“Va-vaannnny~!” It seems more trouble has joined the fray as several Leavanny dropped in from above and started adding to the chaos by leaping around, they even began attacking each other as much as us or the Scyther and Scizor.
We need just one of those right? I hoped the Morpeko eventually worked out with calming their madness from the psychic energy in the air.
The other evolutions of Leavanny, Swadloon and Sewaddle, started adding trouble to the mix as well. They weren’t nearly as dangerous as the four to six foot tall dangerous bipedal Pokémon surrounding us.
I can see why the ponyta were reluctant to deal with this mess, speaking of, the one Ponyta Prowler member that came with us was having problems with a Scizor.
The Scyther and Scizor seemed fairly focused despite being mad, none of them have tried talking to us after I tried to reason with them. While they did have madness in their eyes, the Scyther and Scizor had somewhat at least some presence of mind enough to not attack each other and focus on us, now we all had the Leavanny to deal with.
Mundo was even wrestling one of the Scyther physically after body slamming them with his Flying Press move.
“Mr. Thunderbeak, there’s too many of them!” Cleffa whined as she continued to fight alongside us and was hanging in there.
“Sami, can you back up Cleffa?!” I dodge another scything arm, but this time it was the leafy appendage of a Leavanny.
“On it, Canard!” Sami stated as she produced a bomb and prepared to throw it into the thick of numerous Pokémon that were attacking us and each other.
-Pom-
A pillar of smoke rose above the trees, from what little I could see through the thick overhead canopy. I hoped they were doing well.
Why couldn’t the ponyta deal with this? Sure, the Inkay were reluctant, but they still did it and filled the barrels. We even did them a favor by finding them some of their favorite berries to make up for knocking them about.
Dodo was already well on his way back to the airship with the two barrels of ink they wanted. Lumber Spry healed the injuries we caused and nothing too horrible happened.
Where was the issue or the horseshoe dropping this time? I was surprised that we didn’t see a Malamar or were attacked by something else being driven mad by the psychic energy, I’m pretty sure I saw some of the mushrooms around here moving a bit and were probably Pokémon.
There was a lot of movements in the trees and bushes, but nothing came of it.
“You might want to hurry back to the airship, the Hypno are entering the forest and they will be mighty clear on making sure you can’t get your hopes off the ground much less that airship.” I looked up at Cotton reclining on a tree branch and looking at me from under a hat of feathers with a grinning beak. “You’ll want to dig in quite quickly and hold them off from damaging our ride too much.”
I had us pick up our pace, though Cotton didn’t seem too perturbed by what she told us and stayed where she was to watch us as we started hastening our pace.
I was fairly worried that we were about to be hit by Gilgamesh’s hit squad.
“Well this did seem too easy…” Even Dolly acknowledged what I thought, but then added on to it. “Did the Ponyta even try to go after the Inkay, they didn’t seem to recognize Bumble Fly.”
“Her name is Lumber Spry and there might be Ponyta native to Illusio in this forest, the Ponyta Prowlers must have also met a different stronger Inkay.” Though I wasn’t too sure about that or much else as we quickly and quietly made our way back to the Power Spot tree and the campsite. “Just keep that in mind Dolly and watch the Ponyta or Cotton carefully if they are around and inform me if they do anything suspect.”
It was still a concern that was going to have space in the back of my head for a while, but I was willing to give them some benefit of a doubt until stronger evidence came to mind.
“Hey Lumber, I’ve been meaning to ask, why do your hooves smell like blood?” The ponyta flinched at my question and whimpered, but she still looked at me a little bit forlorn.
“We’ve had to deal with some really violent Pokémon in this forest, we… didn’t kill them.” Lumber said as she looked about as her fluffy mane glowed several pretty fluctuating colors, as if reacting to her low mood. “It’s why I know the moves Heal Pulse, Healing Wish and Hypnosis, all of them very useful in the medical field. I really don’t like being forced into combat and just want to be a healer, I really don’t like getting my hooves bloody.”
She didn’t want to elaborate on why they were bloodied from what I could smell and I wasn’t going to push it.
“Mumbler Pry seems alright to me, but eh…” I agree with Dolly, at least Lumber Spry seemed nice enough.
Don’t know about Inky Dye or the other Ponyta, who were apparently stealth experts and that’s adding on to the conflicting information I think I might be getting here. Ugh, Illusio was driving me insane even when I'm trying to resist the paranoia that is naturally inherent to me and the local energies messing with my head somewhat.
I just had to keep my eyes, ears and nose out for anything suspect from our new acquaintances, especially Cotton.
-Inside the entrance to the forest, Head Hypno-
“Our informant tells us they are camping at the Power Spot, they won’t have the ability to run this time as they have to protect the airship.” I pointed my unit forward as did the other Hypno, we had a fugitives to deal with. “Let’s put a stop to them before they can even get their ambitions off the ground!”