//------------------------------// // 345. Chains of Fate: Enuma Elish. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Origin Space, Mew- “Why does the power coming from this Inky Due seem scary?” I asked of father. “That is because they have the ability to easily bind Legendary Pokémon, much less anyone with an amount of divinity. Even I would be bound an unable to help against Gilgamesh if I were to appear there right now.” Say what, how does that kind of power even happen on your watch Arceus?! “However there is not much to worry about. The binding power is fairly weak or nonexistent when facing mortals. The power only suppresses those of divinity.” “Would Inky be able to suppress Pom’s powers?” My question was met with a smile in father’s eyes. “Pom would certainly like her powers suppressed, yes, but unfortunately for her… suppressing them is basically impossible and it would be a bad idea overall anyway even they could be. Even as they push her towards death, her powers are still intrinsic to her. Pom is completely safe from the chains, for she is quite mortal and lacks divinity, though her ancestry certainly has some intrigue to it.” Arceus turned to look at a quiet Tiamat and Bahamut watching the scene of a Psychic Ponyta lighting their horn. “A fairly unusual circumstance I’m sure you two would know more about… hmmm?” “Yes, a version of me has been restrained by those kind of chains before, basically a weaker and paler imitation that are still fairly powerful in their own right.” Tiamat stated with a flat tone. “That version proved to be worthy of my name when they broke said chains.” -Pokemon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Top Tier of Cerebrum City, rebel backline- Inky Due (Enkidu the Psychic Ponyta) vs. anyone nearby that can feasibly try and stop them. Inky Due started the battle by ignited their horn and exhaling flames from her mouth, there was an odd pressure as the mystical flames turned into chains in the air and the psychic energy started to do the same. Following the generation of chains made out of fire and psychic energy, Inky proceed to then generate chains out of energy made of wind from the energy drawn out of their Bounce move. “Something’s quite off with those chains your making… I don’t reckon a normal Psychic Type Ponyta would be able to do what you’re currently showing off.” Cotton stated with a wary tone as her red eyes narrowed as the chains wiggled around the bland faced Inky like tentacles. “How astute, let me show you my power to chain the gods.” Inky stated blankly and a slight madness entered their eyes and their hair blew back with power, more chains of the same types of energy begin to form in the air from concentrating blobs of energy. “Better stay agile Sheddy, this is going to be quite a hootenanny and not the friendly kind of dancing with Hoot-hoots and hollering either.” Cotton then proceed to roll to the left and avoid a chains of psychic energy whipping at her, she started to twist and throw feathers like they were kunai from her wings. A chain of pure flame tore through the feathers before they could even reach Inky. The wind energy chains converged together and deflected a Shadow Ball attack launched from Shedinja who took to being quite a distance further away. One of the flaming chains now hovering around Inky Due lashed out and the Shedinja narrowly avoided being taken out immediately, for a single successful blow with a weakness would always take any Shedinja down. Shedinja were not known for their sustainability in combat when their weaknesses were around. While defending themselves from being assaulted with more feathers and not forgetting their original goal, Inky lashed out with a psychic chain for Pom and Cotton jumped into its path. The chain, being made psychic energy, does exactly nothing to Cotton since she is a Dark Type as it dissipates upon impact with her body. It was necessary for Cotton to block it with her body, unless she wanted the out cold Pom to be hurt. However she could only block the one attack as flaming chain swooped around and threatened to light the wagon on fire. Before the flaming chain could touch the wagon, the flash of a blade knocks the chain away revealing Fleer’s friend Abby having deflected it with a quick jerk of her head to swing the glowing blade growing from it. “So what’s up with this Ponyta with the chain fetish?” Abby asked with a blunt stare. “Inky there is trying to kill Pom for Gilgamesh.” Cotton responded quickly while not taking her eyes off of Inky Due. “That’s all I needed to know!” Fleer fired a Dark Pulse and the various chains of wind around Inky moved to shred the attack to nothing with them, it couldn’t even do any damage. “Woah…” Inky didn’t seem panicked over Abby and Fleer’s arrival in the slightest. In fact, she seemed bored as if they weren’t enough trouble to be bothered about. Fleer started to move Pom away from the wagon by grabbing her by the scruff, Inky immediately sent a Psychic chain straight at her. Only for several feathers from Cotton covered in dark energy to intercept it. “On a scale of one to ten, I’m now reading a thirteen on the disaster scale migraine here!” Abby stated loudly, drawing a panic from everyone present, because Absol’s like Abby were never wrong about incoming disasters. “It actually seems like I will have to stop holding back a little, let me show you the power of what is called a phantasm… Let us restrain the gods: Enuma Elish!” Inky Due stated blandly, the number of elemental chains being generated by her suddenly tripled and they all started taking on a golden glow. Sending a chain that used to have psychic energy for Fleer as multiple other chains swept around and created a wall to prevent Fleer from escaping with Pom’s body. Cotton took the chain attacking Fleer and received several nasty burns to her wings when she did. “Gah, she’s hiding the elements with the glow… that or she can change them in an instant.” Cotton said with a sudden worry about actually taking attacks to the body from the chains now rapidly building in numbers. “Oh, they can do far more than that, you just don’t have the imagination to comprehend the full scope of what you’re actually dealing with here.” Inky Due was facing four Pokémon at once and still wasn’t bother that they could sense more waiting to pitch in. Multiple chains were sent out for Fleer who was grabbing at Pom’s wool with her teeth and she quickly leapt away and almost got skewered if Abby didn’t deflect the multiple chains with several rolling and spinning swings of her head blade. The chains quickly circled back around from the deflection for Fleer who was trying to escape as another wall of chains appeared in her path out of thin air. Abby tried to move after them to do more deflections, only to have a chains bind one of her hind legs and bodily lift her off the ground to slam her down on her back away from her friend. Shedinja tried to knock the chains off course with a Shadow Ball and the remotely detonated explosion delayed them from getting Fleer from behind. In front of Fleer though, a wall of chains pulled in towards her and she barely leapt high enough to clear them and rolled with Pom still clenched in her teeth to avoid a few chains stabbing at her and one impaled straight into the ground and a second later Fleer made another leap as it erupted from the ground threatening to pierce Pom’s back. Gilgamesh said there would be no one around that would be strong enough to stop Inky, he hadn’t been wrong. The nuisances in front of her would only be enough to delay the inevitable of Inky killing Pom. Inky Due hadn’t physically even moved once, why would they even need to when their chains started attacking everyone at once and they were defending themselves from attacks at the same time. Fleer couldn’t sit still or attacking use her mouth, the Shadow Balls from Shedinja weren’t even coming close to hitting and they needed to focus on avoiding taking a single hit at all, the sporadic Dark Pulses from Abby when she could find a moment to stop deflecting the chains with her head blade weren’t getting close either and Cotton’s attempt to fire a Confuse Ray was blocked by the chains solidifying in the path of the beam. “Hmph, enough.” Inky Due slammed down a large number of chains causing Fleer to drop Pom and send everyone else skidding away, it even made the wagon roll back a good ten feet. Inky sent a chain to wrap around Pom’s waist and start squeezing to lift her into the air, the end of the chain was about to stab into Pom when her fleeced exploded with a golden shine throughout her body, except for her wrapped up right leg. The blast of raw force blinded Inky and she suddenly felt something was off as all of her manifested chains dissolved a few seconds later. “Ah, anti-magic, right.” That’s why Inky was going to use a levitated knife to carve out Pom’s heart earlier, said knife was now stuck inside the wagon thanks to Cotton. The god binding chains were mystical in nature and the intended threat from said magic caused an automatic reaction that just saved Pom from being skewered. Following her acknowledgment of having made a mistake in Inky started to actually dodge several attacks from the ones she had recently knocked down. Putting her a small distance away from the target. There was one thing that Inky took note of in the previous interaction. Her chains could actually wrap around Pom without a reaction, but it was only when a threat was intended that her wool activated to destroy all of Inky’s chains in a flash. Pom was functionally immune to offense based phantasms if this was the case, considering all them used magic in some way even if it had an element of divinity to it. It was little wonder that Pom could be considered quite dangerous beyond her strange canine related abilities. It would take a moment for Inky to rebuild her chains. The attack on Pom hadn’t gone unnoticed by Dolly, who was across the entire battlefield and assisting Shine’s group in securing the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion. The Dalmatian immediately alerted them to the problem and used the Digivice to translate what she was saying due in part to the sudden emergency. Closer to the ensuing one sided fight that was in Inky Due’s favor, Ocellus ran in and swept up Pom’s body with her bipedal dragon form and quickly tried to move away from Inky. Inky wasn’t giving off enough malice, or any strong emotion aside from annoyance, to really debilitate Ocellus as she focused on generating chains to defend herself from several attacks. Espurr, who had come to witness the fight with Ocellus, stayed well away from Inky and off to the side and not willing to get into the fight since he was still recovering. Ocellus was retreating with Pom over her shoulder as the others blasted attacks ineffectually at Inky Due as her chains deflected or tore apart the energy that made up the attacks. Inky finally had to start moving because she didn’t want Ocellus to escape with Pom, chains lashed out as she gave chase to the bipedal dragon form of Ocellus. Quickly tossing the mercenaries Fleer and Abby out of the way with little concern using quickly generated sweeping chains, Inky blocked Cotton’s attempt to lodge feathers in her eyes again with a chain circling around her body and made Shedinja back off with a flaming chain before using the move Bounce to launch herself after Ocellus. Ocellus threw herself to the ground and her chin slammed into a sleeping Pom’s wool as Inky shot overhead. Sitting up, Ocellus tried to use her legs to push herself away from Inky as she tried to stand up and the monster unicorn had landed to quickly turn around and use the move Psychic on her and Pom. Both Pom and Ocellus were lifted into the air and Ocellus felt her throat being tightly restricted and Pom too was likely being choked as well. Psychic energy wasn’t magic so Pom’s anti-magic wool wouldn’t save them from this. “Quickly, we need to break her concentration!” Roared out Cotton who started firing as many feathers as she could launch at Inky Due, to very little effect as they were burned away by the chains rotating around her like a saw. Two Shadow Pulses and a Shadow Ball slapped fruitlessly against a barrier made of chains as Inky worked on choking the life out of both Ocellus and Pom. Pom was getting quite close to ultimately suffocating to death and none of the attacks could get through to stop Inky from doing so. “Imprison!” With a sudden shout coming from Lumber Spry and the four other Ponyta Prowlers showing up, Pom and Ocellus summarily dropped onto the ground as energy coming from Lumber coated Inky and stopped her from using the move Psychic. Just because she could no longer utilize the move, it didn’t mean that Inky couldn’t use psychic powers. “Really, you learned Imprison just to stop me from using Psychic?” Inky stated dully as she bounced into the air and angled her horn down for Pom’s prone body. Pom’s body gasped and she swiftly rolled to the side avoiding the glowing horn that buried itself up to the base in the ground as Inky’s skull rammed into the dirt. “Well someone has too, it’s good to see you’re awake Pom!” Lumber Spry stated brightly. “With your help I’m sure we can take on Inky!” “That’s not Pom… Dolly is that you?” Ocellus stated questioningly while looking at Pom. She could tell exactly when Dolly took control of Pom’s body, because Pom doesn’t have an upbeat personality or an impossibly optimistic and energetic outlook on things. Dolly practically radiated it despite how much of a downer Pom can be sometimes. “Sorry, took a bit to convince someone to watch my body for me, but I’m ready and raring to go!” Dolly said in Pom’s body with a cheeky grin, looking into Pom’s eyes one could see there was a different light in them and that light reflected of Dolly’s taking over the driver seat. Also the brave look on Pom’s face was one that was rarely ever seen, mostly because Pom never had a brave look like that for more than five seconds. “It’s a good thing I don’t need to use all of Pom’s senses, because she is in quite a lot of pain… sheesh what did she even do to her right leg to make it feel like this? I’m only getting a muted version of it and it feels like I’m swimming in a vat of lemon juice with a ton of open wounds and there’s possible other nasty stuff in the lemonade too like salt… yuck! I’m getting some serious bad vibes from it.” That was about as much Dolly could say because she immediately entered Fleet Cunning Doe stance and bounded away from several chains made of fire and wind whipping at her while sending a number of golden glowing chains to attack everyone else present. They thankfully seemed to have a limited range, either that or Inky was playing a long game by pretending they had a limited reach. “How well can you fight using Pom’s body?” Ocellus asked as she blasted out some flames to knock back the chains, which were assaulting everyone except Pom’s body, away from her. “Why didn’t she send some of those chains after me?” Dolly asked while keeping her leaping stance and trotted in place lightly in a springy manner. “Also not very well, she’s a lot lighter than she looks and the only thing I can do is control her wool and use Fleet Cunning Doe… but that’s just using her abilities.” “Good, she can’t physically attack Pom with the chains because they are magical in nature even if she can change their elemental outputs, Pom’s basically immune to them if they are used as an attack, but be careful she could still pin you down with them and try to kill Pom in another way that doesn’t rely on the chains.” Ocellus was glad that any attempt to bind Pom would have to be harmless to her, so the fire chains couldn’t trap her and the psychic or golden chains had to be used. It was unknown whether the wind chains would count as an attack or not depending on if the wind was blunt or cutting force. Inky didn’t seem to be able to currently use Psychic chains due to how Lumber Spry rescued Pom and Ocellus. As long as Lumber Spry stayed standing and able, that would last the entire battle. “With this many opponents, I should feel more alive than I currently do.” Inky Due was thinking of binding everyone as much as she could, because otherwise this situation would be dragged out quite badly and Gilgamesh’s forces couldn’t hold all day with the collapse of the defensive lines. Pom’s body being remotely controlled by her familiar wasn’t too much of a surprise, just another slight wrinkle in Inky being able to kill Pom. “I’ll just have to deal with the rest of you before I deal with my target.” Inky started targeting all of the other combatants. “Dolly, run!” Dolly tried to do what Ocellus said, but Dolly only got so far before she skidded to a stop after a deer like leap and try as she might, she couldn’t put another hoof forward or leap away any further. “What are you stopping for?!” “I can’t run any further, I think Pom’s body won’t let me run away knowing you’re all in danger…” Dolly understood how it felt to be Pom in a dangerous situation in this moment, when someone else was in danger her nature to ‘sacrifice for others’ thing was now getting in the way of getting Pom’s body to safety. “Oh right, guess that’s actually far more compulsory for Pom than we previously thought…” Ocellus said before being trapped in a golden chain wrapping around her body, she quickly turned into a cute looking cobra and slipped out of the chains before they could squeeze her painfully and slithered away. “That it is even a thing right now when she’s not aware is complicating things drastically.” Others were not as lucky as Ocellus to have a natural ability to slip out of the chains as Fleer was tied down from her left hind leg to her front right paw and her body was squeezed painfully in the chain threatening to crush her entirely. “Fleer use Cotton Guard!” Abby suggested and immediately Fleer’s fur puffed out and gave her some protection from the constricting force Inky Due was applying onto her. A Furfrou’s ability was Fur Coat, which reduced all forms of physical trauma by a lot. So Fleer could feasibly survive being squeezed for quite a while, others would not be as lucky as her. “So I just need endanger all of you to make sure her body won’t leave the area eh?” Inky Due now had a demented smile on their face. “Makes my mission much simpler.” “Probably shouldn’t have said all that stuff out loud huh… my bad!” Dolly shouted while making Pom’s body wilt in response to the Dalmatians emotions, before she turned towards Inky and dragged Pom’s front left hoof along the ground while trying not to put too much pressure on the right. Dolly activated Flow-motion and was ready to use momentum manipulation to the fullest here, she needed quite a few incredible triangle opportunities. “If I can’t run, then I might as well put up a fight!” “Since Inky would only need one person alive...” Cotton said with a sudden look of horror crossing her beak, she quickly dodged and then did a stylish spin to escape a chain aiming to constrict her throat her feathers became extra slippery as she altered her Feather Dance moves attributes again. “Do not get taken hostage unless you can survive being crushed like Fleer can. Spread out, keep attacking and maybe we’ll find a way around those chains to take her down!” “You call this surviving?!” Whimpered out Fleer as the chains tightened around her body cutting off circulation and threatening to crunch her bodily, one could hear her bones creaking with in the chain wrapped around her torso and two legs. “Hm?” Inky suddenly ducked as something invisible passed overhead and bucked out her right hind leg A Zoroark was sent skidding backwards several feet by the sudden painful blow he had to block with his visibly bruising arms as he appeared out of thin air. “So close… yet so far away.” Zoroark stated with grim look as he quickly backpedaled away from the several chains lashing out for him. “Physically stronger than they look too, there’s something about this Ponyta that isn’t natural...” “Has everyone finally come to the party? If so, then come at me all at once.” Inky stated dully and the five Ponyta Prowlers automatically took her up on it. “You might be able to actually make me sweat a single drop.” The four of the Ponyta Prowlers spread out and charged for Inky and Lumber Spry charged directly forward to blast a psychic out. Abby lashed out with a Shadow Pulse, a Shadow Ball was fired by Shedinja and Zoroark unleashed a shockwave of pure darkness from his mouth. With the use of a single rapidly spiraling chain, all the incoming Ponyta Prowlers were knocked down and all the attacks were deflected and the Shendinja received a chain jabbing into their chest to send them sprawling. Even Zoroarks shockwave was redirected by the single spiraling gold chain among all the other chains Inky Due obviously controlled to spin rapidly and absorb the attack. Shedinja didn’t get up after the blow, it had clearly been super effective and if they were a normally breathing being then it would be quite disconcerting to see them laying still on the ground. “Now you see, that’s why I’m not fighting, still too weak from being tortured in prison.” Espurr stated as he quickly levitated the downed Shedinja over to himself, Ocellus had made her way next to Pom’s body and watched as Espurr turned and started to hurry away. “I’ll take care of Shedinja, keep an eye on the situation until I get back. I’ll bring some medical supplies!” “Aghhh!” The chain wrapped around Fleer increased it’s pressure on her. Inky unleashed a blast of Mystical Fire from her mouth and Lumber Spry barely avoided them as her attack was eaten by the much more powerful flames. She quickly backed away hastily as a bit of her mane caught on fire, forcing her to roll through the dirt to put it out. “Yikes, what kind of freak are we dealing with here?!” Dolly stated with wide eyes as Inky blankly looked her way, making Dolly shiver and tighten Pom’s wool around her frame. The wool around Pom’s right leg remained unresponsive as much as it felt like it was being dipped into boiling acid. Inky suddenly lashed out with her left hoof and a chain wrapped around one of the Ponyta Prowlers and dragged them into the air above Inky to be held next to Fleer. The ponyta was already starting to bleed, Inky certainly didn’t care one bit about her old team as the chain bit into their flesh. “Please actually start struggling for life, Gilgamesh would appreciate the sentiment at least.” Inky said with a faint hint of a smile and half lidded eyes now that she had two hostages in as little as five minutes and had taken out Shedinja. Cotton shivered, but narrowed her eyes and didn’t start fleeing. The bird had some nerves of steel from being in the spy business for so long. Inky Due was incredibly powerful, more so than any other Psychic Ponyta that Cotton had ever seen and that’s with one of her moves being sealed. “Heal Pulse!” Lumber Spry fired a ball of energy and it struck the Ponyta Prowler who just stopped breathing in the chain and they gasped back to life. Inky could have moved them out of the way, but decided not to on a whim. There was something quite endearing about the friendship on display and saving the life of another, Inky could have just as easily caught or stopped that energy. “If you don’t fight me with your best, then they will simply just die.” Inky stated calmly as she whipped out a chain without even looking and the Zoroark with bruised arms quickly appeared out of nowhere and rolled away as the ground cratered under the loud whip like cracks of the chains chasing out after them. “Can she see through my illusions?” Zoroark the black furred fox like Dark Type with long hair and the appearance of a bipedal werewolf with a short tail, just stared warily at the threat. Dark Types like him should have an advantage, but in this case… advantage clearly wasn’t enough. Everyone started launching ranged energy attacks and nothing could get by the single golden spiraling chain, but something did get by it. Dolly leapt forward and sprung around the chains that tried to grapple Pom’s body. With a backflip over a chain that tried sweep Pom’s legs out from under her and tie them up, Dolly saw the bright green triangle as she inflated Pom’s wool and hung in the air for a second. The wool around Pom’s body deflated and Dolly suddenly gained a massive amount of acceleration and all four of her hooves slammed home in Inky’s face with an all hooves flying buck, the sudden surprise in increased momentum and change in direction made Inky stumble back a bit as she had been setting up a net of chains to trap Pom’s form. “Take that you De Ville wannabe!” Dolly shouted out at Inky as she launched away. “Guh?!” Inky shook her dazed head and could see that Dolly had already kicked off to be outside the area the chains were moving around within. The four full hooves to the head didn’t seem to hurt Inky too much, but it had certainly been the first time they took an injury. “Gyeh-heh-heh~! Can you do that again sweetie, but actually make it hurt this time?” Cotton asked and saw Dolly nod as she was standing with her right side facing Inky and the others were waiting for Pom’s body to make a move. “If you see an opening, then go for it anyway, even if you know you’re going to be stopped! Also you, don’t get Pom dead now, you hear me!” They had the numbers here, they shouldn’t be having so much trouble with one Ponyta with multiple supernatural chains swirling around them. “Go!” Dolly decided to spring sideway towards Inky. Inky was making sure that none of her chains accidentally hit Pom’s body with any amount of force as they fended off the four Ponyta Prowlers and the Zoroark. Any chain that attempted to strike Pom’s body with force would cause an anti-magic reaction that would leave Inky exposed to attacks for a short while. Ocellus moved to watch from off to the side while not getting too close to what could loosely be termed a battle, it was more like a one sided massacre in Inky’s favor. Dolly rolled and kicked off the ground while continuing the roll to pass between two of the chains that threatened to wrap around Pom’s torso around the midsection. She proceeded to pull back Pom’s left hoof and swing it out. Inky tried to block with a chain, but there was no impact on the chain, Dolly had inflated Pom’s wool to stop short of the wall of chains that formed and tried to swarm forward like a net. Tumbling under the swarming chains, Dolly went into a sliding on along the ground on Pom’s backside using the frictionless wool to close in. Bringing up Pom’s hind legs, Dolly bucked upwards into Inky’s belly with a devastating amount of force launching her upwards. A pained looking Inky didn’t come down though as several chains raced out and stopped Inky in the air so that she was being lifted off the ground by her own generated chains so Dolly couldn’t do an attack like that again. Another Ponyta Prowler was caught by the hind legs and they were knocked unconscious by having their skull slapped rough against a stone slab in the ground, the chains started to slowly crush their legs as Dolly ducked under and scampered away from the slow moving attempt of several chains to wrap around Pom’s neck or body. It was rather frustrating for Inky that Dolly knew how to use Pom’s body well enough to become an active problem, it was even more frustrating that they couldn’t just lash the chains out at Pom without incurring a huge backlash in losing all her chains at once. With a twitch Inky turned lashed out a chain that took down another of the Ponyta Prowlers and collected their body to hold high up in the air as well with a chain going around their neck and along their spine tightening and threatening to choke the life out them. The Ponyta Prowler barely managed to get a hoof up under the chain to protect their throat, but the chains biting into their body was making blood drip from their back as the lacerations caused by the chains was worsening on all of those captured. Lumber Spry once again had to use Heal Pulse to help the unfortunate victims trapped in the chains. Inky didn’t see this as much of a threat, because once they were trapped they really couldn’t do much to help the fight. An example was that Inky had recently wrapped a bit of chain around Fleer’s muzzle to prevent her from spitting a Dark Pulse out using her mouth. “We’re losing people fast, there has got to be some way to handle those chains aside from forcing them to hit Pom…” Abby trailed off having watched as Lumber Spry fire a heal pulse into the captives as the chains were hurting them quite badly. “The only way is to start putting up a real fight, this paltry resistance is just sad.” The bland tone Inky spoke in brooked no argument, she was currently glaring at Pom’s body. “There’s nothing you can really…” From across the battlefield a small blackened, highly carbonized, bread loaf flew true and struck Inky’s horn earning an actual sound of soul rending agony from her and a dazed cross eyed look. Ocellus glanced out at the hectic battlefield and idly though about how Dodo was getting better at extreme range sniping with the highly carbonized bread loaf even if the fire rate was really slow. “Where… where did that… what… I’m the fairy princess of the midnight ball…” A dazed Inky wobbled about in the chains supporting her, the grip on the chains around the hostages loosened up a bit, it was second later that Inky regained her senses and tightened them back up. Nobody could get in an attack as the chains whipping around her had become quite erratic. Dolly still tried to capitalize on the disorientation but failed to get a hit in as she had to frantically dodge multiple chains trying to entrap Pom’s body when she tried to close in for a strike. Even when disoriented, Inky was proving to be quite a major problem in still being able to perfectly control the chains she generated independent of her mental state. “Fire another Dark Pulse!” Cotton suddenly asked of Abby and she glanced at Cotton before doing so, the pulse of dark energy launched forward and the golden chain rapidly spun to chew apart the attack. “I think I’ve figured it out!” “Well if you have then please tell the rest of us while we can still fight and move!” Abby groused out and lit up the blade coming from the side of her head to deflect several chains assaulting her. Cotton noticed that each chain in the link in the golden chain take some damage, but it was usually made up for by the next chain in the link taking damage. In effect the damage was being spread out over each link in the golden chain Inky was defending herself with, said damage quickly repaired itself over time and they weren’t doing enough to one link all at once. “Absol, get ready to use your most powerful attack and make sure all the damage you deal hits a single chain link on the golden chain!” Cotton was willing to make the gambit and would have to risk being captured while spraying feathers from a Feather Dance at Inky’s face. “Whatever you can do with Pom’s body Dolly, be prepared to start hitting Inky as hard as you can and actively try to get hit by the chains!” “Hmmm…” Inky wondered if Cotton had actually noticed a weak link in her golden chains or was she just bluffing? It would be interesting to see these mortals struggle a little bit longer. Inky was the reason why Legendary Pokémon wouldn’t attack Gilgamesh if he managed to cross the line of the world's order and Arceus had warned all them off of trying to do so, at least directly, having somehow known about the god binding chains prior to Inky having actually used them. The more divinity in a given area close to Inky, the more powerful those chains would get and they would be nigh unstoppable if multiple legendary Pokémon tried to fruitlessly rush down Inky Due. Right now Inky was at their weakest fighting just mortals, which wasn’t saying much considering she was basically walking over all of them in trying to kill a single very annoying target that Gilgamesh wanted dealt with.