Welcome to Gaia! ::

The entire nurse's office, which had been quiet not so long ago when Monique used it as a takeoff platform to reach the courtyard, was now a bustle of activity, all being directed by Pokémon. The Hypno running the show, finding a Dark-type in its midst, issued physical, not verbal cues, to Brixie after relieving her of her Team Star-member cargo.

Brixie, her brain still cross-wired, started to dole out the blankets to the students on various cots. The SNAG, still duly performing its functions, recited Pokédex entries of some of the new Pokémon to Monique's field of vision. Chimecho. Psychic. The Wind Chime Pokémon. Its cries echo inside its hollow body to emerge as beautiful notes for startling and repelling foes. Hypno. Psychic. The Hypnosis Pokémon. There are some Hypno that assist doctors with patients who can't sleep at night in hospitals.

Something curious, though, was happening. Every time the Kirlia turned up, carrying psychic cargo in the form of new patients, the Zoroark started sneezing. It was involuntary and annoying, the girl struggling not to sneeze on her patients. "The air filters in Flower City must be actin' up," Brixie thought to herself, recalling an occasional occurrence in the slowly aging life support systems of her world. The remark, if someone caught it, would be confusing. Would anyone pick up on the fact that Paldea's newest "nurse", who was duly trying to keep up with the various injured students and their non-medical needs, in fact had an affliction of her own? Neither Chimecho, Blissey, nor Indeedee were Fairy-type. And Tsuki wasn't exactly aware of what had happened—indeed, Tsuki hadn't yet seen Monique in any normal visage, let alone Brixie, whose outfit would have fit right in with Iono or any of the copycat streamers that had followed in her footsteps.

As much as she tried to block everything out, just huddling in her mind, she did wind up hearing Reno’s words through her mental walls. That would stop her muttering, at least. Before he teleported off, Aile would take a glance over to him and his teleportation companions, barely getting a once over at the trio before they disappeared. The hybrid would then go back into her mental walls, staring at the ground right afterwards. When Miriam came up to her, she’d find an Espeon curled up at Crystal’s feet, as well as a Sigilyph floating above her, only until recently staring at his trainer.

Crystal wouldn’t initially budge when Miriam put a hand on her, only moving when finally Apolla nudged her leg, head turning enough to just look at the school nurse out of the corner of her eye. Her voice was soft when she finally spoke up, and not exactly filled with any sort of energy one way or the other. “Mm? We’re…” She trailed off early, debating on if or how to explain her situation. Maybe in a general way might not be a bad idea. Don’t get into too many details. “Something we’ve dealt with before showed their… presence again. The last time they showed up, we… it didn't end well for us. Reno, Sol, and Sub already left to go deal with the thing, but… we’re now wondering if we should have gone, too? Are we selfish for not going? Especially after what happened with that Starmobile here, just making things worse and not helping, we don’t want to just show up and make things worse…” She began to tremble again, hugging her knees tight to her chest. Crystal would force herself to take a few deep breaths after Apolla quietly put one of her front paws on the hybrid’s knee. “Sorry. Physically, we’re fine. You probably didn’t need to hear all that, and there are probably others that need more immediate attention than our– than myself. Sorry,” she apologized, finally catching that she had fallen into that verbal tic. Light, had she really gone that long this time without catching it? Heavy handed, too, now that she thought back to what she said.

I stared in confusion for a second as I started to notice the Sheer Cold didn’t fully go off. It stayed there on top of the amalgamation for a moment until a image flashed for a second and the Sheer Cold started to go on a return trip towards me. I went completely wide eyed and as the ball rushed to me; I managed to catch the ball, trying to force it not to detonate on me. But the return force wa starting to get too much. The Ziton was wanting to treat me as if some sort of joke. Unfortunately, with me losing against my own Sheer Cold, even with the power cut down on it as it was, this menace had every right to laugh…if it was capable. The only thing I could do at this point was redirect it, practically lifting the shot and throwing it right behind me, only for the Sheer Cold to explode and not exactly away from harm. The searing ice and the blast wave threw me head over heels, tumbling out of the sky. I flailed, trying to get myself righted before I made the harsh impact against whatever the hell my trajectory was as I fell.

It was fortunate that I managed to right myself, and I managed to get a few hard flaps out of my wings. While I managed to slow myself down, I still made a rather harsh impact to the platform of the Star Fairy base’s Starmobile, indicated by the harsh slam on top of it. I hit the guard rails finally coming to a rather painful stop. “Augggh…son of a…” Didn’t exactly expect any of that to happen at all. I figured something like that would of happened from Celcius himself…not this thing. Noted for next time, I guess. All the same as I tried to nurse where I made impact on the metal platform, I then looked out as the Ziton creeped, crawled, and manipulated everything within its influence and I was severely agitated. “From annoyed to absolutely livid in five seconds…I saw Horus just now, didn’t I? You ended up getting him, didn’t you, you b*****d? The guy is a bit of a p***k, but by no means did he deserve whatever fate you put him through…” I said. The only thing I could think of right off hand was that there was a good chance this literal force of freak nature managed to abduct Horus back in Galar since there were all sorts, Horus amongst many of them. I had intended on actually meeting up with him after I got back on my feet after Eris’s attack, especially since he actually gave me that opportunity to defend myself against her. I probably wouldn’t have been here now if not for that. Regrettably, I never gotten around to it. “I swear, you’re going to die now…”

They were bold words, I admit. But I had no idea as to what to do now. We were effectively unarmed and we couldn’t get any coordinated attack going. The Ziton seemingly being aware of all, and for that matter, capable of manipulating all if it so chooses. If this thing is of Elemental nature like I suspected, then trying to take it out by conventional means was a nigh impossibility. Just to put Celcius in dire straits, I had Hinterbane with me. No one here had any artifact or anything of that sort that could do that sort of damage.

I then perked up, looking up above me. Something that was tripping my senses now, apart from the overwhelming presence that was the Ziton. “Is that…what…I think that is?” I then asked, finally standing up and starting to examine the machine. A chi converter, sure enough. “…how the hell did these guys get one of these?” I said, not aware of what has been happening over the past couple of days. This raised so many questions right now, and more of an excuse to infuriate me further, but then…this was perhaps a blessing in disguise. When I introduced Hinterbane to Celcius, it effectively drained him and left a rather presumably permanent scar. Maybe…this could be our ‘Hinterbane’…shove this thing onto this monstrosity somehow and make its unfathomable amounts of energy bleed out like a hemophiliac. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work…if we can make it retreat again, leave us alone for some time, that’s all we could ask, so that next time we can be ready for sure.

I went to pull the machine off the Starmobile. “Sub! Reno!” I shouted to the two of them. I had an idea…could I get them and everyone else on board?

Aile had a slight smirk on her face, watching the light drain from Malva’s eyes. One less high ranking Flare member gone. She’d pull the blade out and-

—
Here she was again. She made it but… didn’t she do this before? Whatever, it was still done. She pulled out the blade-

—
This time, she jumped back. Malva’s catching on. How was this happening? How is she jumping back? How are they jumping back to the beginning to replay this?

The blade still hit its mark. Good. There would be no smile on her face though as she-

—
Again! Why did she sound winded? What the hell was Malva doing?! She dodged this time. Easy enough to correct. A spin on her heel, trying to keep her momentum and the blade would land again. Something made the admin freeze, though. Not that Aile was worried. Her blade hit her mark, though a scowl would still cross her face-

—
Again. How? Just- doesn’t matter. All that needs to happen here is Malva’s death. The only thing. Once more, she’d throw her blade out, only this time, Malva caught her arm, and was doing her damnedest to hold it back and keep it from piercing any further. The shirt told a story, too, of all the previous attempts. “Just let it end! Accept that you’re not going to-” A gigantic explosion would knock them apart, the (would be?) murderer landing rather ungracefully, thankfully for the Snagems farther away from her initial target.

Aile groaned as she got back up from the explosion, grabbing her head. “Merde…” Tatooine was next to her now, shaking herself off as well. “Tati… What’s that look for? You know who the hell Malva really is, why do you-” She cut herself off as she began to hear new voices, looking around in horror. Chalmers, Xerosic, and even a returned from the dead Lysandre, all of them berating her. “How?... Xerosic, you’re as good as dead thanks to Arkana. Lysandre, you should be dead,” she muttered, looking around at each of the former leadership of Flare. And all she could hear was them calling her broken, useless, and chiding her for thinking a weapon could live their own life. “Weapon. Is that all I am to you all,” she asked to herself, mind drifting back many many years ago, when she had first involved herself with Flare and put herself on their radar.

—
She and her mom had just had yet another fight over how Alysandra was supposed to be the one to take over the family, how she needed to put her silly archery hobby behind her, and how she needed to get a proper bird Pokémon as her partner. Sure, Tatooine could fly now, but she wasn’t a bird Pokémon, and their family was known for using a variety of bird Pokémon. She needed to have a partner suitable for the family.

Arceus, that pissed her off! The freshly graduated teen had found herself over to Lysandre Café, just stewing over how her mother was treating her. While she was enjoying some coffee, someone there had come up to her as an admirer of her in her archery competitions, and said that they were a recruiter and knew how she could continue with her hobby after she inadvertently vented to them. One thing had led to another after that, and she was given a place within Flare, being given a small secretary job in Lysandre Labs as a cover story while they helped her hone her abilities. She still practiced her archery, but more often than not, she wound up pulling infiltration jobs for them, stealing data from any competitors or wherever they might have needed it from. Eventually, her training sessions were starting to become more… realistic, moving training robots she’d have to eliminate, in whatever way she had to, and their motions became more human as time had gone on. All while under the guise of acing the training sessions. During that time, she hadn’t noticed it, but Alysandra was slowly beginning to become the weapon they had recruited her for, only interrupted by-


—
Aile snapped back to the present, returning to the cacophony that was the present Flare administration chiding her, berating her, referring to her as a weapon and not knowing her place. That’s all she was to them, a broken weapon. But, there was a way to fix that, something inside her told her. They wanted a weapon; they didn’t specify where it was supposed to be aimed. The woman took note of the current locations of the Flare hierarchy. There was a Hydreigon near Malva now, that was… weird. She didn’t think any of the admins had one. Whatever, maybe they had gotten new Pokémon. Lysandre had arrived onto the Starmobile, and Chalmers had also arrived to Malva’s aid. So, Malva was out, rather annoyingly, and Lysandre seemed too far to get to quickly. Which left… “Xerosic, you thumb head piece of s**t. You want your weapon, come and get her!” To Aile, she would have been drawing a regular knife to go and stab the scientist in his gut, though reality would have that left arm shifting into a knife blade, with her right hand grabbing it as well, aimed right at Reno’s gut.


Tatooine had hoped something might have changed after that blast, that maybe Aile would have come to her senses. The charge to Reno would prove otherwise, though, and a small, tired sigh would exit her maw before she took flight again and chased after her trainer. This was almost exhausting, watching her trainer see her friends as someone else, and wanting to end their lives for that matter. Hopefully she could catch up this time before that happened.

As Aile approached Reno, or Xerosic in her mind, Sub's Hydreigon fired off its Dark Pulse, the ball of dark energy slamming into the Ziton right as Reno made his move. The Dark Pulse would pass straight through the Ziton and fly off into the horizon but not because it was ineffective but because it blew a hole clean through the blob of Psychic energy, causing it to squirm and writhe around in pain. It was in that moment when Reno took his chance to get through to Aile, while the Ziton was distracted, focused on repairing itself which it was quickly doing. Reno would only get a few seconds however as the Ziton found it bearings again after that sneak attack and instead of focusing on its most recent attacker it instead wanted to focus on the tasty little morsel that was Reno.

Hoping that its influence over Aile would hold and provide enough of a distraction the Ziton made its move on Reno, sending a 'tentacle' at him while Aile attempted to kill 'Xerosic'. There was however a window of opportunity for Aile to snap out of it in time and perhaps save Reno from being subsumed into the Psychic mass or at the very least not aid the Ziton in distracting Reno.

Meanwhile Sub was busy using his vest to try and cover up Aden's wounds, dressing them the best he could in this situation. He really wish he had his bag on him, he carried plenty of bandages but alas this was one of those times where he did not have it with him. When Blizzard called out to him he had just finished tying off the last shred of his vest on Aden, looking from Blizzard to Aden and back before gently lowering the boy and releasing Poe from his ball. "Stay right there, Aden, Poe is going to keep you safe. Protect him for me, Poe." He instructed the Sableye who withheld the snark for once and simply nodded as his trainer rose to his feet, releasing Pallas the Mandibuzz.

Sub would soon arrive next to Blizzard, carried by Pallas. Looking at the machine he was try to remove he immediately had an idea as to what Blizzard was thinking. "Do you think it will work on it? I know it seems to be made of energy and all but..." He said, looking towards where the Ziton was. "Then again you have more experience with elemental abominations than anyone else I know so I'm not about to argue with you." Sub said with a laugh. "What do you need me to do?"

Dammit, again? Somehow Malva was cheating death, and now the lazy a*****e was dodging her with ease! How was this going on? Aile spun on the ball of foot to try and catch the scientist, and while she managed to catch his arm, he seemed unphased by it at all. “Do you not care if your arm gets…” She trailed off, continuing to go on the offensive, but not nearly as hard. Something was trying to click. Inconsistencies were starting to pile up. Malva shouldn’t have been able to cheat death that many times. How was Lysandre in the air without any assistance? Xerosic was managing to dodge her attacks, despite him not being athletic in any way. “Dammit all,” she screamed, showing her frustration. “What the hell is going on?! How are you so agile?!” Something was trying to click. But the spark was being blocked from igniting the ideas by something, and she was only just realizing that.

She was about to take another step forward when a sandstorm whipped up, and the melodic humming from Tatooine’s wings as the Flygon hovered filled the air. The humming, growing more and more rhythmic, seemed to catch her off guard, with Aile’s eyes widening as-

—
She was on the back of Tatooine, flying over the Lumiose Badlands during a sandstorm. Tatooine had forced her to play hookie for work, by playing sick and getting her to call off, then managing to coerce Alysandra to go to the Badlands when she looked better. Alysandra had been changing her attitude by now, and the Flygon had watched this. Their flights had been getting fewer and fewer, and the ones they were on were getting pretty short as well, pretty much only from place to place. Never flying just to fly. Tatooine was changing that.

Alysandra was trying to figure out why Tatooine was doing this. She had felt everything was going fine, her work was going well, her training was going great, her mom had been off her back, so why was Tati getting antsy?

“Tatooine. What’s gotten into you? You’ve never tried to hijack the ride and where we’ve gone before.”

“Gon. Fly fwy.” The Flygon would motion to her head as best as she could, implying that she should think about it. Her trainer would tilt her head, sighing and closing her eyes.

“Is it about the amount of flights? You know work’s been chaotic.”

“Goon.”

“What else, then? I can’t think of it, and-” A gigantic sigh would interrupt Tatooine, and Alysandra would open her eyes again, giving a bewildered look to her Flygon. “Tatooine?” She wouldn’t get another response until they got close to a cliffside cave, landing inside before the dragon practically shook off her trainer. “Tatooine, what the hell?! You can’t just shake me off, what’s gotten into you?” Alysandra would pick herself back up and dust herself off, staring in frustrated confusion immediately afterwards.

“Gon!” Tatooine would point at her trainer, frustrated. “Fly fwy gon! Fwygon fwy gyon! Fwygon flygon fly!” The Flygon did her best to motion as well, that she was getting colder, she seemed to not care about anything other than work, and that she would be back. The humming would start again as Tatooine would take off, clearly frustrated that her trainer wasn’t getting the hint, and was flying to vent her frustration. Leaving Alysandra behind to think on her Pokémon’s words. She was colder? How? She hadn’t changed, really. Maybe more focused… Focused on work. Well, work and training, but Tatooine wasn’t privy to that part. She enjoyed the work. It showed her she had a bit of a knack with certain areas of skulduggery, and it was fun and exhilarating to be able to get away without anyone knowing she was there, avoiding all the patrols. The training was… interesting. It kept getting harder and harder, the patrols getting more and more complex. Some of them even… Now that she thought about it, some of them were rather familiar. Like, they acted almost exactly like some of the patrols she encountered on her job. And instead of avoiding them, her training was on eliminating them? …Just what was her training doing to her that she hadn’t noticed? Now that she thought about it, she was just focused on her work, and did nothing for fun on her own. Even the fun she did have, she was still working. Add that along with what she was doing in her training, and pieces were starting to fall into place for her. She was a sharpshooter already. It seemed relatively easy enough to hone that capability into assassination. Just teach her a few other abilities along the way as well. Put her on a workload that isolates her and keeps her from remembering how to be a human… Damn. Maybe Tati was right. She was the one changing, and not for the better. She was… They were making her into a weapon. She was letting them, too, not paying any sort of attention to it! What was she going to do about it, though? She was in fairly deep with Flare at this point, and she knew that if she up and left them, it might not be great for her, or her family. At that point, Tatooine had returned, looking at Alysandra once again.

“Hey… Sorry, Tati. You were right.” Alysandra would reach up to rub her Flygon’s snout. “Sorry I’m so dense.”

“Gooon!” Tati’s tail thumped on the ground as Alys pet her. She was happy to finally see the old Alys that befriended her all those years ago starting to shine through again.

“Glad you’re happy, Tati. Though, we’re only at step one. Now, what do we- I, I guess- do about the situation I’ve gotten myself in? That’s the next problem to be solved…”

—
Think. Tati wanted her to do that back then, and that’s probably why she kickstarted the sandstorm now. She closed her eyes, letting the humming be what she listened to as she thought. Xerosic was never that agile. Yet, he was dodging like he’d worked out, or was used to playing dodgeball at least. Lysandre flying… The man was dead, frozen by Blizzard back in Black City if she remembered right. He couldn’t have been here. Chalmers assisting Malva made enough sense, but neither of them, to her knowledge, had a Hydreigon, especially since Malva was the fire type Elite Four member of Kalos. Her having a non typal Pokémon didn’t make any sense. Speaking of her, how did she come back to life those four other times? She shouldn't have any sort of ability to do that. And it was almost like they had… jumped back in time…


Click.


That wasn’t Malva. That was Aden. She had killed Aden on four different occasions. And nearly succeeded a fifth time.

Her eyes snapped open with that realization, taking in the actual lay of the land near her. Reno was in front of her now, instead of the scientist that tormented her the second time she was associated with Flare. Looking over out of the corner of her eye, she would see Sol and Aden instead of Chalmers and Malva, with Aden now wrapped up in someone’s vest it looked like. Further back, she caught sight of Blizz, which would explain the flying Lysandre. Huh. That was a pairing of who turned into who. And then someone she wasn’t expecting to see, Sub. though, that explained the Hydreigon as well. Finally, she looked up to see the culprit of it all, the ping energy blob. Who was now launching out to attack or grab Reno. s**t. Unpacking any trauma would have to wait with that thing here. She looked down at her arms, noting that she did have two of them, and one of them was notably darker than the other. And was knife shaped, probably after how she envisioned herself attacking Xerosic. Wait a minute…

She knelt down, thinking about what she wanted her new arm to do. Aiming her left arm with her right, she pointed it squarely at Reno’s chest, the blade shifting into a sort of bar going horizontal across the arm. With barely a second thought of what she would do if this didn’t work, she willed it to launch, along with a command. “Tati, Earth Power!”

Anyone who would see the Flygon might be able to tell through the sandstorm that she had a smirk on her face. Her trainer was back again, and she couldn’t be happier. As her trainer launched the sand bar at her friend, Tatooine would launch another barrage of earth chi at the b*****d of an entity. It had warped her best friend’s mind, and she was more than happy to get payback on it.

“Unfortunately, these things aren’t created equal it feels like. This is a whole other b*****d of a beast unlike Celcius. But this is the best shot we got on hand. I need this thing on that monstrosity, set this thing to disperse its energy, maybe to something else just so it can’t recollect itself, make it bleed out. I need…I don’t know…I want to say a distraction or something, but considering this thing is all things psychic makes things absurdly difficult.” I said to both of them. I then realized, staring at the Metagross. “…how the hell are you free from Ziton right now? You know…never mind, I’ll take whatever miracle I can get." I then perked up, seeing Aile unleash all manner of fury of the earth upon the eldritch horror. “Aile and I will try to keep this thing pinned down, though I can’t give any guarantees considering it swatted a Sheer Cold back to me. We need this converter tangled in that mess and have it to…I don’t know, make the dispersing energy into Dark typing. Make it where it can’t pull it off that easily. Sub, can you take care of that? And Reno has probably the most important job; make sure that none of us get taken over by that Ziton thing while we do this. It’s not much, and if I am being honest? Probably high chance of failure…” I then looked over towards Sub. “But when has that ever really stopped us?”

"Whoa!" I shouted, having to jump back to avoid the bubble monstrosity's grasp. I was standing beside Reno, between it and that creature - a fact I didn't realize until I saw it reach in my direction in my peripheral vision. Reno got knocked back by Aile, so he wasn't grabbed, either. I looked back at Aile but noticed she seemed different somehow. Between that and her protecting Reno from the enemy, I decided it might be best to leave her be for now. I could focus on her again if she gave me a reason to.

"Come back, Sparrow," I called, motioning for the Talonflame to come to my side. "Let's focus on the big problem for now. Use Heat Wave!" I ordered. Flapping her wings a couple of times, Sparrow launched a wave of intense heat at the bubble monstrosity, with the hopes of burning it into submission.