Quarry woke up and found he was tied to a chair, on the ground, and with a pokemon snarling in his face.
“Why did you dare come here!” Linoone growled.
“Lea’s gone if you were trying to come get her.” Matrix said from the sidelines. Linoone was better at intimidating others than he was.
“Leave him alone you two.” said Angela.
“Angela, are you alright? You do realize this was one of the ponies who wanted to capture Lea and controlled you.” Matrix told her.
“He wasn’t controlling me!”
“What do you mean?” Linoone asked, not letting his gaze break from Quarry.
“She means that she and I were in the same boat. The only difference is that I wasn’t at the very start.”
“Care to explain Angela?” Matrix asked.
“Pokemon weren’t the only thing Grumpig was controlling. She was affecting him too.”
“And you know this, how?!”
“When we’re being controlled, it creates a psychic link between everyone else that is being controlled as well. It was fuzzy for me since I’m a dark type and I was connected differently, but other than that, I could tell who was in that link.”
“And he was in it?” Linoone asked.
“Yes, he wa-” Angela started, before a mightyena burst in on them.
“Let… him… go…” it growled.
From the chair, Quarry rolled his eyes. “Sit down and stay. Don’t attack them. I came to talk and they misunderstood.”
The mightyena sat down, following his orders.
“So just why did you come to talk to us?” Linoone growled at him.
“Because my wife made a terrible mistake.”
“I want you to come out right now!”
Ire walked out, revealing herself to her summoner. “Really? After everything that happened last night, you still decided to come back? I guess you’re as stupid as I though.”
“Shut up!” Lea yelled at her. “It’s because of you Kya is almost dead if she isn’t dead already!”
Ire slightly flinched at this. “Wh-who was she?”
“She was the fire one! She’s also a mother and my daughter! That’s the reason I came back! Because I didn’t realize how heartless you actually were!”
“Well I don’t think it’s that much of a loss. If you were the one who raised her, it makes sense she wouldn’t last long.” Grumpig had started to reveal herself as well. “Now Ire… wasn’t there something you wanted to do with her.”
Ire seemed a little nervous at first, but after a slight glow from Grumpig’s eyes and pearls, her horn lit up followed by Lea starting to levitate slightly in the air.
“You continue with that Ire. It seems we have a traitor on our hands…” Grumpig turned to face Quarry.
“The next thing I remember is that they were gone and all they left behind was your friend’s belt. I put the belt where a guard would find it and eventually decided to come here to tell you.”
Linoone, Matrix and Angela looked at each other, unsure if they could trust him.
“Should we see if we can find Silver and get him to check if he’s telling the truth?” Linoone asked.
“That might make it worse.” Angela answered. “Besides, I doubt he’s good enough to manage that.”
“I say we trust him.” Matrix spoke up. “His story make sense, and I wouldn’t put it past that grumpig to do something like this. Part of me wonders if the whole reason she made it over here was because her mind was too broken and crazed to be seen as evil by Arceus.”
“Fine! You’re off the hook.” Linoone said to Quarry. “For now…”
“Wait! We still don’t know if Lea is even still alive!” Angela realized.
“Believe me,” Quarry replied. “The whole reason we even started working with Grumpig was because Ire wanted her revenge to but super horrible for Lea, while still keeping her alive for later.”
“Okay, listen…” Angela said to Quarry. “We’re going to let you out of the chair, but you have to stay in the bui-”
Quarry didn’t let her finish. “No! For all I know that pokemon is still messing with me! Keep me tied up! But, if you could, can you at least stand this chair up? It’s getting a little uncomfortable with my head on the floor.”
“Oh! Sure!” Matrix told him before helping to pull the chair upright. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I still have to stay sitting here?” Mightyena asked.
“As long as you stay in the building and don’t try and hurt anyone, you’re allowed to explore. If I learn you left or hurt someone, I will have to punish you in some way.”
“Yes master…” Mightyena said as he got up, sounding disappointed.
“He acts more like a dog than a pony.” Quarry said rolling his eyes. “The only way I can think to treat him is like how he acts. It feels confusing to train a dog you can understand.”
Matrix glared at Quarry until he finally said, “It’s only fine because he acts like a dog… not a pony.”
“Okay! Yes! I get that what we did was wrong! You don’t have to keep bringing it up.”
“I’m only bringing it up so you’ll never forget.” Matrix said with a slight snarl.
“Will you stop fighting! This isn’t helping us find Lea.” Angela yelled. “Since she doesn’t have the key stone with her, using my new mega stone to try and get that rare occurrence where it will lead me to her has no chance of working. We do however know that’s she’s still alive, and I’m betting that Lea’s still somewhere in town since Quarry is and Ire’s his wife. I say we start looking for her, especially since I heard that two of the guards were heading back to Canterlot because they think defending the princesses at this contest coming up is more important. That being said, in other news, about half a dozen of the Hoofington officers that were off duty seem to be back in action.”
“Well it’s good we’ve got some more help.” Linoone said. “Saaay… did we ever think about telling the mayor of this town about what’s been going on?”
The three pokemon all internally facepalmed before Quarry spoke up. “You’ve already told the mayor. A few years back, Hoofington decided to try a year with the chief of police as mayor and it happened to stick. So technically, since your thestral friend is taking over as chief, he’s also currently the mayor. I even heard from a friend out of town that another city recently did the same thing, at least temporarily.”
“Okay… we really need to learn more about this town…” Linoone said.
“We can do that while we look for Lea.” Angela replied. “Let’s get Ben and go find her.”
At the mention of their friend Matrix spoke up. “When was the last time anyone actually saw him.”
The group went around asking if anyone had seen Ben recently. They only finally got an answer when they talked to Pryce.
“Was he that nice hitmonlee I met earlier? I think he left after I asked to see Lea when we first arrived and she wasn’t here at the time.”
“Great, now we have to find both Lea and him.” Angela mumbled. “Linoone, you’re still recovering, so you should just do what Kya had wanted. Matrix and I will go out looking for them. Pryce…” She looked at the gym leader. “Make sure Kya doesn’t try to burn our guest tie to a chair in the other room to a crisp.”
And with that, the three pokemon left Pryce behind right before he could say, “Okay… I guess…”