//------------------------------// // 344. Full Disclosure. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Equus, Meadow Hills Outskirts, Picnic, Jaded La Perm- “Hey, can I ask you something related to the marmalade incident?” Since there were no one else around to go into a blind panic, I finally decided to approach Queen Novo and who I assume to be her daughter Princess Skystar who was in the form of a lambkin too. I was going to ignore that Novo still had a similar hairstyle to Fizzy, even when she was currently taking on a lambkin form. “Does everyone in the world know about it now?!” Novo looked pretty good as a lambkin. “Fine, what do you want to know about the incident?” “Well no, not everyone. Also it’s not the incident itself that I’m curious about, it’s the Chrysomallus I want to know more about considering one of my friends is apparently one.” My words had clearly gotten Novo’s attention. Skystar looked curious to hear what Novo had to say. ‘Friends’ was sometimes my term for people I like to annoy… a lot. Whatever I was told, I’d tell Tianhuo everything and I was quite curious myself. -Pokemon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh- “You have your target, there shouldn’t be anyone nearly powerful enough around there to stop you.” With that I closed the portal that allowed me to talk to my 'agent' and continued to gather up energy. -Sky, Northwest of Cerebrum City, Shanty- The Xatu and Natu be taking some injuries from the Woobat and Swoobat during the third leg of their high speed raid without Dolly to cover them, none of them be falling out of the sky though which be a good sign. There is being a lot less Sigilyph in the sky and they couldn’t properly cover the suddenly chaotic battlefield which be turning to entirely favor Kenshin’s forces, hundreds of Pokémon be fighting down there and I am actually rather glad to not be being in the middle of all of it. “Come on Dodo, Dolly!” Just because I didn’t want to be being in the middle of it did not be meaning we couldn’t continue to be helping things along, our break was being up. Skitty Squad being here be a good thing for morale, given that a Wailord was a pretty big ally to have in a fight... still wonder how something so big without wings could be flying this high in the air, but I not be questioning it too much like Skeeball and Wilhelm’s relationship. “Also Dodo, be jumping out a bit before you start flying. Skeeball you can be following us and helping our friends over there!” Skeeball was being up to date with what was going on, Wilhelm was a force of nature that the Woobat and Swoobat should have avoided. Plus the Skitty be firing ice beam broadsides at long ranges to cause problems for the enemy battle line from behind. Dodo nodded to me and I looked to Dolly who was in the middle of slapping her helmet back on her head as she leapt into the seat next to me and barked twice while pointing a single digit of her right paw forward. Dodo lunged off the flying whale and out into the sky, shifted his body about a bit into flight mode and we took off to lend The Companions and my crewmate Favela some much needed aid. -Cerbrum Top Tier, Rebel Backlines, Ocellus- I was trying to piece some things together, for one, why Pom’s leg wouldn’t heal after a third application of Sitrus Berry juice. Everyone has basically stated that three rounds of Sitrus Berry juice would heal practically almost anything short of a permanent crippling injury, which was something like Pom’s front right leg apparently. The bones in her leg was fine, her muscles were… okay… but it’s the magical side of things that had me concerned. “How is she?” Espurr asked after I finished checking on her and moved over to look over Smolder among the other ailing troops of Kenshin’s Rebels in the main backline camp area. “Her leg is still a mess.” I think I had an idea of why though, nothing was physically wrong with it after the third use of Sitrus Berry juice. Magically… yeah… there’s a rub that was technically complicated and why Pom’s power was absolutely dangerous to use in any capacity. “If a Sitrus Berry can’t heal it, then something is significantly wrong with the wound itself.” Espurr stated as he continued to move supplies and helped the injured. The prison he worked for was finished before Gilgamesh took over and he was good at taking care of injured or sleeping bodies. The fighting had really exploded with at least more than half of Gilgamesh’s aerial artillery Sigilyph taken down, the Dark Types were as emboldened and had completely wiped out the Mr. Mime barrier line crumpling it beyond recognition before fighting their way back south to push with Kaoru’s units. Those two things allowed Kenshin’s Rebels to really get into the fight and break the stalemate. It was only the fact that Sigilyph were spread out over a wide area that the Natu and Xatu even succeeded in tearing through them, that and Dolly making sure the Woobats and Swoobats couldn’t retaliate for a bit with Dolly dropping a lot of short lived tornadoes on the enemies side of the field. It appears Dolly got slowed down at some point before their final leg along the northern side of the floating city and without her board absorbing a lot of attacks at the front the Xatu and Natu took some real nasty injuries, but they still managed to carry out and complete their mission successfully. I also saw a familiar whale sized Pokémon to the northwest started to proceed towards Shine and the Claydol unit in the middle of the battlefield on Gilgamesh’s side as reinforcements. Dolly’s familiar bond connection to Pom was coming along ridiculously, it was curious to see just how powerful Dolly actually was. Physically Dolly’s body hadn’t changed much aside from streamlining her already naturally healthy form, magically speaking Dolly really couldn’t increase her magical capacity much either… but the potency of said magic was condensing with her understanding of said magic or else she wouldn’t be able to throw tornadoes like that into the middle of the battlefield. So same amount of magic used, but to a bigger effect, Dolly was becoming much more proficient with what she had. She was quite a curiosity and I assumed she couldn’t change the cost even if she could increase the strength with continued use to a certain degree. Dolly’s ability to derive magical energy from impacts really was an incredible ability for her given her many limitations. Shine’s surprise assault on the teleporter with the Companions and the six Claydol went fairly well, now they were under assault from all sides. The longer they held out with the Claydol, the more surprise attacks from the other Baltoy and Claydol units, the easier it’ll be for them to hold that position. With eventual reinforcements from the Skitty Squad they will definitely hold the area. Pom really couldn’t hurt Smolder until she started using her anti-magic ability on purpose, when before it was just reaction to magic with intent to harm her like the dark magic of the Gedol Empire. Now she had some control of that golden energy in a single leg, the output of raw mystical power was quite outstanding. I’m assuming the Chrysomallus power was only capable of harming Smolder as much as it does because of its anti-magic properties and Pom sacrificing her health and sanity to dangerously increase the output of her attacks. Dragons like Smolder were highly resilient to magic attacks and nearly immune to most physical attacks and many other forms of energy. Aside from Twilight Sparkle being able to do a few things to her little brother and assistant Spike, dragons for all intents and purposes were near impossible to hurt with magic or most forms of energy depending on the kind of dragon they were or evolved into. If they were an ice dragon, hitting them with ice wouldn’t do anything except protect them and recover their injuries. Regular dragons were immune to lava, and could possibly survive on the sun if, so what could regular, magical or otherwise fire really actually do to harm them? From what I had seen, a dragon had absolutely no defense against anti-magic properties like what Pom could use as an offensive ability. Anti-magic stuff was fairly rare on Equus, the most notable use of the stuff in history was during the period where Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy were using it to keep magic users from doing anything, that or the Storm Creatures who had anti-magic armor and shields in the current Storm Queens army. Using anti-magic as an offensive ability was quite stupidly rare, so it would be hard to find anything that could physically defend against a power like it. However actively using it in such a manner seems to harm Pom greatly, so business as usual and hence it being called the ‘power of sacrifice’, whereas when it activates passively it does nothing to Pom. If Pom actively sacrifices to use that ability, her magical power probably receives an insane boost that all magic focused beings wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of due to the anti-magic properties. That’s why Pom managed to tear through Smolder’s scales with relative ease, the drawback was causing serious almost irreparable to heal damage to herself in doing so. Her body is showing signs of magical damage backlash that might have the capacity to kill a unicorn, mostly by an exploding horn overload with the same amount of strength. What I’m trying to effectively wrap my head around is that Pom, our meek and chronically anxiety filled basket case, could effectively fight a dragon and win when pushed. Well… not without injury or repercussions, but she could still fight one effectively and given that dragons mostly breathed magical fire on the planet of Equus, Pom could easily repel the flames with her wool like she did against Smolder. I’m glad Pom was able to rescue Smolder from Gilgamesh, but how much pain was she going to be in when she wakes up? Maybe she was even the only one around that could save Smolder. Would she even have a stable state of mind upon waking given how savage she looked when she defeated Smolder? I would rather Pom not sacrifice herself into the ground for all of us, but even I could see it’s impossible with the odds we kept facing getting worse and worse. At this point we should minimize the damage to Pom as much as we could, because she would otherwise not survive to even get back home to the planet of Equus like Arceus promised he could aid us with. Tambelon was bound to be a death trap world given its history and Grogar the demon sorcerer, but we had to go through it and the healthier Pom was for that, then the better off we would be overall in chances of getting home. It was almost easy to lose sight of why we were doing all these insane things, aside from the fact that Pom really can’t help herself. I’m stuck here on the backlines because I wouldn’t fight, not because I wasn’t capable, but because I really didn’t like the feeling of others being in pain much less causing it. Robots are fine, they don’t have emotions I can feel. Imagine being able to feel an entire battlefields worth of sorrow and being the cause of it directly, thankfully that only happened when I took control of those two large robotic canines and I was trying not to relive the memory of going power mad. It was quite obvious why I preferred the current disconnect, not to mention any increasing amount of hatred sent your way as you defeated more and more of your opponents to help those you were allied with would not give me peace of mind. We changelings used to capture people, but we never killed or caused grievous serious harm for a number of reasons when we were in our hungry starved forms. We can take people being repulsed with us, we can take some fear of us possibly being around, but outright hatred, anger and spite really wasn’t a good thing for an emotivore like me to be forced to swallow. Outright pure malice was terrifyingly poisonous. I kind of wanted to be a therapist, because it wasn’t hard for me to understand how others felts and react to it accordingly to help them. The more positive emotions we were surrounded by or caused, then the better off changelings became overall. We went from just parasites to true symbionts, which is a much better way of living. How much can I really help Pom, I think I practically knew her whole life story and why she’s the way she is, she said the whole Chrysomallus thing would shorten her life expectancy drastically and I could clearly see why. I sat down and sighed as I checked Smolder over, I can even feel a hint of love radiating from her in response to me being around her. Even knocked out cold and viciously torn down to be saved by a rabid rage filled monstrous self-defeating version Pom, she was still my best friend in life. I didn’t take in the love, I left it where it was, I didn’t need it as much as I needed Smolder to be okay. -Rebel backlines, nearing the Team Harmony wagon, ???- As Gilgamesh had stated the security of the backline was quite lax and there was not many here who could stop me from achieving the mission of dealing with the most dangerous threat to Gilgamesh’s plans. All the heroes were on the front lines and were too busy to stop this assassination from being carried out. Nobody here was strong enough to stop me as I calmly made my way towards the one known as Pom Lambchop with a simple smile on my face and a knife in my bag, by the time I was done nobody would know who killed her. The wagon was completely left exposed, no defenses around and the nearest people who could respond with anything approaching a threat were the strange bug outsider and the Espurr prison warden. Even if they did, they weren’t nearly anywhere near my power to prove a problem. I calmly walked forward trying not to draw attention to myself as I drew the knife from my bag and raised it to prepare to strike down on the sheep lying on her back. She was quite helpless in the wagon and entirely unable to fight back. There was no hesitation and I prepared to stab this hidden beast in the heart and end her reign as a queen of mutts, for she had such an aura and spirit that reeked of multiple wild unruly beasts. I swiftly brought the knife down on the heart of this beast… This is when something went horribly wrong. My eyes were blinded in an instant and I felt something kick the levitated knife to the side and I had clearly missed my chance to kill my target without a fight. My eyes were in agony as I started ripping whatever covered them out with my psychic abilities and caught sight of the one who stopped me, after I pulled away what I recognized as a mass of sticky black feathers off my face. “If hadn’t been for me, all of my friends would have been long dead you see~.” The cheeky black bird had the nerve to play a violin while singing this. “Where did I come from, where would I go, nobody knows except Cotton Murkrow~!” “How?” I asked simply, because… of course a Dark Type who’s brilliance certainly shined in being able to predict someone as powerful as Gilgamesh. “Gyeh-heh-heh~, Gilgamesh isn’t as great a planner as he thinks he is in my ex-per-tease based opinion. Don’t be thinking you can be getting one by the Spy Master of Avia now, I’ve been waiting for you to show up… especially after you found out your brand new airship was stolen and you couldn’t find the primary Seer Xatu.” The bird stated as she tossed the violin over her shoulder into the wagon with a smarmy grin I’d like to wipe off of her beak, also the accent and the piece of hay sticking out of it was making me really want to viciously stab her to death. “I was waiting for him to send his assassin to kill my friend here, she makes a mean soup don’t you know.” “Do you think you can really stop me?” Feathers to the eyes notwithstanding, I knew of Cotton, she’s apparently been the major thorn since we got to this city all along. We underestimated her ability to cause trouble. The one thing that everyone knew, Cotton the Spy Master of Avia doesn’t have any moves that can cause damage and she chooses to fight with her brain instead of her body. She has even stated her move set out loud in front of people multiple times to let it be known she wasn’t afraid of people knowing what she was capable of and there was a doubt she’d change it at this point since she thought herself so cunning as to not need a battle move. I’m vaguely surprised that Cotton can actually fight with her body given she kicked my knife out of the way of striking the unconscious targets heart with incredible dexterity. I looked at the knife buried into the wagon, near my target. It was going to take a bit of time to pull it free. “You might have the power side of things sweetie, but don’t you dare think you have the brains to be taking me on.” That Cotton wasn’t raising a ruckus was surprising as she tipped the brim of her feathers hat to me with her left wing, one would think she would call out an assassin managing to sneak into the rebel camp immediately. She wagged a single feather held up on her right wing. “My friend here isn’t going to die today so put that thought out of your head right this instant you hear me! In fact none of my friends will die today if I’m right and I’m optimistic enough to gamble with my very life.” -Cotton- If it hadn’t been for me, Pom would be dead right now, the two Hoopa Prison Bottles would have reached Gilgamesh and he would have been unbound by now, a secret infiltrator wouldn’t have been found, the assassin would have their new ship and the prison wouldn’t have been busted. Yep, it should be quite clear to anyone, I’m obviously having lots of fun here ruining things. I’ve been doing good work lately, especially getting to the Seer Xatu first before they could be kidnapped by someone else. That the seer was a friend of mine didn’t need to be stated, so what if I took a wooden board to his skull… he’s fine where he currently is. Speaking of which, I glanced in the direction of an airship hanging around in the air a fair distance from the battlefield. My eyes may be for nighttime, but they were no less powerful during the day. Good, the seer had his own plans in the works and understood why I got to him first. “So… Inky Dye… how does it feel to fail your friend?” I grinned and chewed on a bit of hay for a bit. “Or should I say… Inky Due. Gilgamesh’s one, and only, true friend.” -Inky Dye (AKA Inky Due/En-ki-du the Psychic Ponyta)- “So, you know…” I stated calmly my voice shifting to the less bubbly tone I had forcefully spoken in for quite a while. It was time to drop all pretenses. “My name is spelled E N K I D U, that is my true name, but Inky Due works just as well. So you’re the one that intercepted the second Prison Bottle as well?” “It wasn’t hard to follow a trail of the second you stole that Prison Bottle from Titania, which led to me blowing up the ship to destroy the first one you were trying to smuggle into Cerebrum while everyone was unaware of it. Even before Pom’s group entered Illusio you left quite a bit of a trail, almost didn’t look into the news of unknown murderer of several Fairy Types in Titania deeper with my informants… turns out to be a good thing that I did.” Cotton responded cheekily while nodding her head and rubbing a feather across the top of her beak and smirking broadly, despite the calm appearance and joking nature she was very much taking me seriously given the narrowed look in her eyes. She was acting like she was open to attack. “Some friend you turned out to be, worst case scenario really for the Ponyta Prowlers. Unfortunately for you, you’re dealing with an Insomniac workaholic. Gyeh-heh-heh~! Wish I were born super lucky like some of my kin, but being able to work more hours before passing out helps too. Even got in some shut eye before you showed up. Pom is really comfortable to sleep on.” She had used both Feather Dance and Confide on me and I hardly noticed until now that my offensive power has been dropped drastically, she is truly a very dangerous individual. I had thought she just randomly threw feathers in my face and confided with me that she knew my true identity, she was already weakening me before a fight even started. She was obviously trying to break my concentration because she knew someone would come to fight me for her… I had to kill her quickly! “Your move.” Cotton crossed her wings and stood there in front of Pom, willing to protect her with her own body. Cotton knows Roost and Confuse Ray so she’d be exceptionally hard to kill before any help she was expecting arrives. “Consider me quite plum surprised that you didn’t murder your Titania team… but then again, you didn’t exactly have the time with me running around driving you ragged right?” “You’re stalling.” I stated simply and went on the attack, only to quickly move back from a Shadow Ball after taking several steps forward. “Awe you moved! Here I was just waiting for a friend to take action, been following you this entire time really.” Cotton waved a wing at the Pokémon that attacked me and I narrowed my eyes. “Friendly spy cooperation has been key to my movements around Cerebrum and I thank Sheddy kindly for the assistance.” It was the Shedinja from the Chrysalia unit! “A Shedinja still won’t be enough to stop me.” It was going to take more than a few units to bring me down. “Yeah, you might want to be wary of Inky, I know that they know the moves Mystical Fire and Bounce.” In response to Cotton’s warning, the Shedinja bobbed in acknowledgment while not taking its direction off of me. “You used Psychic to levitate the knife, so what’s your last move Inky? I’ll likely be dying to know.” “You’ll die before you or anyone else will know it.” I answered calmly, then Cotton grinned as she narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m thinking the move… ‘HEALING WISH’… in case Gilgamesh can’t get enough energy to unbind, then your last act is to sacrifice yourself for him so that he does.” The minute Cotton said that I froze, she had figured out Gilgamesh’s auxiliary plan just from understanding my move set?! She was more dangerous then we could have imagined her being. At first she was just an annoying snooper trying to get into the business of the Ponyta Prowlers with what I thought was no results, but now she was to be considered an outright direct threat to Gilgamesh’s overall plans! “We can’t let Gilgamesh have you back and you need to be put down before you cause us more trouble or be murdering anyone else all fine like. It doesn’t matter how injured one is… Healing Wish always works at full power. So if Gilgamesh manages to retrieve Inky Due here, then we’re in for a world of trouble later. Fight to kill!” The words ‘Fight to Kill’ were rarely used by intelligent, not feral, Pokémon. When it was used… it was rather serious business as most of the time Pokémon fought to incapacitate. “Well let’s be getting to it!” Cotton spread her wings out and took up a stance. “Shed!” Shedinja responded by firing a Shadow Ball at me and I swiftly rolled backwards from the explosion of the attack that likely drew attention I didn’t need. -Rebel Backline Camp, Ocellus- “Huh… Inky Dye?” I looked in the direction of the wagon, I knew there was something off with her and now I could feel her real, quite ugly, emotions as they were no longer muted. “Somethings very wrong.” Espurr stated plainly as he looked up from helping an ailing Kirlia. “I’m sensing a huge disaster level problem in that direction.” Abby the Absol stated and her head horn looked to be vibrating crazily. She and Fleer the Furfrou were hired on as mercenaries by the rebels, well Fleer was hired after she met with her friend here in Cerebrum, which were simply protecting the incoming injured Pokémon who were either healed or sent back to Mentalis on the ground in Central Illusio. It was nice that Fleer found her friend and they had a long talk about Abby leaving Fleer behind to be badly affected by the psychic energy build up. At least we now knew what that energy was going to be used for and the two were still friends. “Well let’s go stop a disaster from happening… wait isn’t Pom in that direction?!” Fleer immediately took off for the wagon. I did too once the implication set in that Pom was currently helpless and there was danger in the given area according to Abby. As I moved forward following after Abby and Fleer, I could hear the sounds of fighting and I looked to Espurr who was following alongside me with a clearly upset expression. -Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Lumber Spry- “So Inky Dye’s name is actually Inky Due and she’s a traitor to Titania?!” Nodding to my associate, the now four Ponyta Prowlers, we continued to climb our way to top tier of Cerebrum as fast as we could gallop. "And our whole mission has been a lie..." “I’m as surprised as you are when Cotton told me about it, she even gave me evidence about the Prison Bottle that was stolen from us.” Said Prison Bottle could be used to quickly unseal a Hoopa’s true power, it’s little wonder that Cotton wrecked the ship in such an explosive manner. We were going to unwittingly end up carrying it straight to Gilgamesh. “I’ve already contacted Lord Oberon and he sends his blessing to deal with this matter when Inky reveals their true colors… unfortunately I think they are doing just that right now.” “This is so not cool, not cool at all, twenty percent less cooler!” Another one of my friends said. It had taken me a while to realize what Inky was setting out to do alone when she said she had some business to take care of. I should have paid more attention to her wandering off alone, because she certainly wasn’t going to the bathroom! She even passed by the one we were next to as she left, I’m so stupid! At least we had a method for tracking her, I at least remembered to do that much. -Sky, airspace west of Cerebrum City, Canard- “So we hold position for now?” I was quite uncomfortable sitting here doing nothing. “Looks like it.” Sami answered as she was crouched and aiming her rifle. “Correct.” The great seer Xatu stated, saw several other Xatu flying around the island the rebels were kicking the regimes backsides. “Trying to help from here?” I asked calmly despite not feeling calm about this at all. “Yep.” With a single pull of the trigger a bullet of energy shot out into the battlefield. “Come on, come on… yes, calculated it right!” -Cerebrum City, Top Tier, Gilgamesh Forces central battle zone, Kenshin- I took down another opponent with a Fury Cutter, the Claydol and Baltoy had caught the enemy entirely flat footed. Not to mention Shine securing and attempting to hold the teleporter. She had caused a massive change in the battlefield, her and Quetal were of great minds for tactics. Just as I finished taking down one of the Mr. Mimes that openly retreated backwards from the Dark Types tearing apart the holding line, a Swoobat was about to hit me when it was struck by a blast of energy to cause it’s swooping form to miss and slam into the ground to my right. I looked at where the shot came from and sent out a psychic feeler, ah I can barely feel Canard’s alien mind, Seer Xatu is much easier to sense by comparison and… that other one that was really hard to detect due in part to her uniqueness. “Units move forwards, we still have time to stop Gilgamesh before he becomes unbound!” It wasn’t noon yet and the power growing above us felt like the sun to all the Psychic Types in the general area. Cheers rose up as we continued to push, sadly leaving broken bodies in our wake. No Sigilyph were going to snipe us and nothing was stopping us from taking the field entirely. -North of Kenshin’s position, Sanosuke- “Ah yeah, the little Gourd lady came through for us, but now she needs help!” I Grinned madly and lunged forward with my great sword. There were still more Sigilyph in this area than any other, but my guys could handle it! “Who cares if we’ve still got a Sigilyph problems, let’s burn through the enemies in our way!” “We’re all going to die!” One of the Meditites yelled as they ducked under a beam from a Sigilyph, despite this, they kept fighting. -South of Kenshin’s position, Kaoru- “Please be careful Kenshin.” I muttered, never had I met a Gallade more noble or sad than he to be back on a field of battle. The Dark Types were tearing large swaths through the enemy Psychic Types and we were supporting them and making sure they didn’t go too crazy or wild, plus they needed our help when a Fairy Type move came up. We were crushing the battlefield according the to the Musharna information relays, so why did it feel like something was wrong? I brought my sword up in a stylish twirl that caused a Woobat to spiraling up in the air. Taking a calm stance, I brought my Bokken up and then slammed it down into the Woobat when they fell into its inevitable path. … “Musharna, how’s our backline?” I turned to the nearest one to ask this. “Most of our encampments seem fine, but there seems to be a disturbance around the Team Harmony wagon’s backline.” I considered things silently, I was needed on the front. “Excuse me, could one of you get Zoroark, I need them for an emergency mission!” -Above Cerebrum City, Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh- A frown marred my face as I silently rubbed at the still oozing scratch on my cheek, something was wrong and it wasn’t the soul damage on my handsome and glorious, moderately itchy, face. No matter, I was gathering enough power and soon… nothing would be wrong, ‘or else’.