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It was time.

It was a bit of a melodramatic way to say it but that was all in the eye of the beholder. Jessica took her missions seriously. Each one was an appropriately chosen task, each one was carefully prepared for. They would choose a mission suited to their skillset, prepare for it thoroughly enough that there would be no scenario unaccounted for and they would depart only to return safely.

And so it was with no insignificant amount of consternation that Jessica stared at Jeremiah as he held the mission flyer in his hand. "We should do this one!"

Jessica stared, blinked slowly and then posed the obvious question. "Why?"

Jeremiah stopped and seemed to be stuck in thought for a moment. "I've... always wanted to go there." It was the best excuse he could muster with an awkward smile to match it.

Jessica sighed under her breath and took the flyer from him to read it over. "You've always wanted to go to a barren, frozen wasteland in the middle of nowhere?"

"Yes?"

Jeremiah, she had quickly come to learn, was not very good at lying. Still, now that the flyer had been practically shoved into her face she might as well take the time to read it.

For weeks my predictions have begun to center on this person. I suspect that they have killed before, but nothing to the extent that I foresee now. Please, I beg of you to help me. This cannot come to pass, for their sake.

...Heavy. And outside of their skillset, for sure. They were "acquisition specialists", they didn't do things like this. But now that she had read the summary, there was nothing stopping her from reading the mission proper.

An Umbreon has been the constant focus of my visions for many weeks. Without fail she has been central to deaths and sickness in the area. There have been senseless deaths as of late and some have been sick... she must have killed before but it pales in comparison to what is yet to come. This Umbreon's poison is a threat to those around her. In my visions, I see many dying. I see reddened flesh riddled with death-marks and rotting skin. I see many coughing, spluttering painfully. It is here that we rest in the ruins and caves 'neath the ice and it is here that we will soon die should we not be helped.

This was outside of their specialty. They were treasure hunters. This was a hit. They weren't particularly well equipped to handle it in any sense. Jessica was swift and effective but not particularly powerful. Tobias was skillful and powerful enough, but he wasn't so strong as to dominate his opponents. Jeremiah was, in his own words, "I don't fight a lot. But I'm good at finding things and hiding from people and a bunch of other stuff!" None of the three were particularly suited for the task. Numbers alone would probably make up for it; that didn't make it particularly appealing. A job where you got injured was a bad one.

...On the other hand, the matter was pressing. It wasn't a small request and however poorly their team was suited for it, it needed to be handled. And no matter how unequipped their team was for it, there was the uncomfortable truth that there probably wasn't any team that was. Many of the other teams were weighed down by psychics who would find themselves a poor match for an Umbreon. It was an uncomfortable question for her to ask herself. Risking her team, and herself, was something she absolutely did not want to do. But now that she had picked up the notice and read the paper, could she force herself to put it back down?

Jessica rubbed her forehead lightly. "Should I pack for four?"

Jeremiah smiled widely. "It, uh, never hurts to pack extra right?"

Besides, something about it bugged her. She wasn't quite sure what it was but something about it all didn't line up. They would prepare, depart, explore, handle the mission and the itch in the back of Jessica's mind would be scratched in the process. The preparation itself was all as to be expected. Some water, but not much as the snow would handle the issue nicely. Some food, but not an excessive amount as the mission wasn't likely to be long. Warm clothing to resist the winds while they were above ground. The one unique thing she brought was a generous supply of a thin, pink paste with a sweet smell. Pecha berries were hollow on the inside and, unaltered, were a poor choice for a trip. And that aside, the paste had a special purpose.

Preparations were complete. Balerd had been stored away in the careful arms of Team Essence. Everything necessary had been retrieved. Jessica and Jeremiah both were prepared with warm coats and Tobias with his fur. Supplies were ready, they ate lightly and left. The ensuing journey was typical, boring and not particularly unpleasant. The temperature began to drop harshly as the wastelands came into view.

The legends went that, a long time ago, a city had stood in the center of the lands. Their guardian diety had kept them safe until the day that an intruder came and the two had to do battle with one another. The unfathomable coldness that each one contained tore through the air and became the endless winds that still graced the land. The once chilly landscape became almost uninhabitable as clash after clash distorted the weather. Their guardian won the battle but in doing so doomed the land. The invader was slain and its corpse would transform the land forever. The guardian looked at what the battle had wrought and fled in sorrow.

At least, that was the legend.

Jessica was not a superstitious pokemon but there was often truth to be found in a myth. She pulled her coat tight around her body, thankful that she was always cautious. The idea of two pokemon being so unfathomably powerful that the truth could fade to legend before the land could heal was, well, unfathomable. What mattered was the sharp cold that dug into her skin. Something was making the wastelands the frigid place they were, not that it mattered what. Only that they were prepared.

They were prepared in body, mind and spirit. "It's so cold!"

Well, most of them were anyways. "I thought you always wanted to visit the frozen wastelands?"

Jessica wrapped her tail around her body and pulled the flame inwards. The snow crunched under her feet and the wind bit at her exposed tail. She resisted the urge to shiver lightly, knowing that doing so would only make her tire quickly. Jeremiah did not resist leaving his teeth to loudly chatter. Tobias, on the other hand, seemed forever unfazed by the impossible weather and simply slipped ahead at random to scout. The wastelands weren't solely endless fields of white, glaring snow. Many peaks and valleys dotted the landscape, which was perhaps all the worse. Good maps were a rarity and the locals were avoiding them, likely due to the flames. A home field advantage did little to prevent skittishness.

She wasn't worried about it, she was well aware that they could turn around and make their way back easily enough. But they would need help if they wanted to complete the mission and it was help that they would eventually receive.

"Fancy meeting you here. What a coincidence."

"Yes. Yes it is." Jessica rolled her eyes internally. Joshua had, in a predictable enough fashion, popped up in the middle of nowhere to greet them. She had had a feeling that this was all a facade and that Joshua would be the one at the end of it. "Which way is inside? It's cold out here."

"This way, come on." Joshua led them around the snowy mountain to a set of his own tracks that had already begun to fade in the wind. Once he reached the base of the mountain, he simply jumped upwards with a surprising amount of grace only to fall back down into the snow and disappear. "Come on."

Jessica stared at the hole, suddenly very glad that the had "chanced" upon Joshua. Tobias slipped in after, then Jeremiah, and then finally Jessica. Underneath the snow was a rocky entrance that she had to roughly feel out through the snow. It melted against the heat of her hands, water ran down the sharp drop and Jessica quickly tumbled down to the fuzzy surface below. %The belt around her waist clanged as it shook in the fall. "Thanks."

"It is no problem." A gentle push and a careful hand had Jessica back on her feet and, with a deep breath, puffed up her tail flame and surveyed their surroundings. It was a cave with few qualities worth speaking of. At a glance, it looked like it stretched out in every direction at varying angles. She could only surmise that the tunnels popped up near the surface for an opening every now and then, as the downward slant of each tunnel and strange opening above her seemed too willful to be natural. It was still cold, but without the wind it was cozy enough.

"So. What's the job?"

Jessica frowned internally, knowing better than to let the loose sense of displeasure shine through. She didn't like that Joshua was inserting himself into her team the way he was, but at this point it was too late to do anything about it. Picking a fight here wouldn't help the mission. The brief possibility that it could have all been an elaborate setup crossed her mind, but she shook the possibility before it could take hold. A quick glance at Tobias showed that he wasn't concerned by Joshua's presence which was enough to supplant any fears. She still didn't understand Tobias, but he was... impulsive enough that she half-expected him to lash out if he thought Joshua was a threat.

"We're expecting a mass-murder." "Oh." "There's an Umbreon here somewhere. Apparently her poison is making people sick... an Absol has prophesized that it's going to kill a lot of people. There has been a few deaths already."

"If it's deaths, I know a few. Not sure about the poison thing." Jessica raised her brow and gestured for Joshua to continue. "You'll see what I mean when we get there, words don't really do it justice."

Joshua took point and led the way with Jessica just behind. Travel was slow and tiresome. She briefly considered leading them back out to the snow and taking the direct route but there was no guarantee they would find their way to where they needed to be. Making their way slowly through the dark tunnels was preferable in comparison, no matter how much effort was necessary to navigate the terrain. Or, necessary for her. Tobias, Jeremiah and Joshua all seemed to be handling it just fine.

Having only two legs sucked sometimes.

"So uh, mass murder huh? That's not exactly what I expected. This your usual kind of work?"

"I, too, was wondering. I do not believe this is the type of work that you would usually do though I may be mistaken." Tobias chimed in after Joshua spoke. Normally she didn't like idle chatter on missions but if both of them were speaking, it was likely safe enough...

"Someone strongly insisted we head here and handed me a mission." Jessica looked over at Jeremiah, who laughed awkwardly. "You're right, this isn't the kind of work I like. I'd rather we were hunting for treasure right now. But I don't like leaving this sort of thing alone. Nobody sends out a request for a job they can do themselves. Leaving the request on the board would be the same as saying 'it's okay if they die'. Maybe someone else would've grabbed it. Maybe someone else would've thought the same thing and then it would've been too late. It's not likely that every team would ignore it, but... if there's enough missions, sooner or later it will." Even if it was only a small chance, it would happen eventually. To take that stance was to let someone, somewhere, die for no reason. "The prophecy said that there would be a catastrophe. I don't like gambling on life."

"Hm~"

"I can't say I feel the same way." Joshua wasn't persuaded by Jessica's resolute speech. "But I get what you mean. As long as we're not doing charity work, right?"

"Of course. We help people, we're not heroes."

The only one who responded with unabashed positivity was Jeremiah, whose awkward smile became a genuine one. "That's really cool!"

Jessica nearly tripped over herself. "Thanks." But she caught herself and kept going. Direct compliments were just a little unusual.

Things would lapse back into silence as the team continued navigating the tunnels. Jeremiah would try to start up another conversation but he wouldn't find the words to speak before the team would arrive. Jessica held her tail up as high as she could to cast a bright-enough light around the area. The meaning of Joshua's words became quickly apparent.

They had stepped out of a tunnel into a larger, flat, open area. There weren't any bodies, since they had been long since cleaned up. But there was blood. Blood had been splattered across the walls and the floors in slick lines. "It was a Nido family, I think. Not too strong, but uh... Yeah. Probably not poison, probably claws, but that's just about half the folks around here."

Joshua was right. That much was evident. The blood spatter was too consistent and smooth to have come from any kind of poison. It was rare for a poison type to be afflicted with poison to begin with and this just made it seem impossible. They could hardly rule out the Umbreon from this alone but at the very least whatever had done it wasn't using poison to do so. They might not have been known for it but they did have claws.

Though, taking a close look at the bloodstains revealed a certain oddity to it. Something had disturbed the blood almost immediately after it had been shed. It didn't look like a footprint or the telltale sign of a tail having been dragged through it, but something else entirely. Jessica resisted the urge to reach down and touch it, knowing far better than to touch the blood of a poison type. It was distinctly possible that the strange disturbance in the splatter was the onus for the murders. But it was also possible that it was something else entirely.

It didn't matter anyways. They needed to find the Umbreon no matter what. The predictions centered on her. The job wouldn't be done until they had found her, everything after that was secondary. "We're moving on, there's nothing we can do here."

And move on they did. They had no choice but to wander. The locals seemed to be avoiding them, they didn't have a map and the scene of the crime was too chaotic to provide any useful information. Joshua said he had a "good enough" idea of how things worked around here after having stayed for a few days. Tobias was confident that he could lead them back down the path they had taken if worst came to worst. Wandering around was the only option. Next time, they would have to make sure they had a proper map.

The first sign that they had grasped a thread was Tobias stopping suddenly and gazing into the darkness intently. The heavy breathing came into earshot for the rest of them one-by-one. The soft sound of foot against stone preceded the form of a Sandslash stepping into the light. Every breath he took was a heavy one, as if being alive was an arduous task. His eyes were narrowed against the harshness of the light. %He was covered in... something? Something like a powder or a liquid had stained his stomach a reddish-brown. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Are you looking for something?"

"Yes," The Sandslash seemed friendly enough. "We're looking for an Umbreon in the area, she's covered in poison."

The Sandslash cocked his head and swiveled slightly before pointing off down a split in the tunnel to the left. "If you go that way you will find her. Goodbye."

Just as suddenly as the Sandslash appeared he disappeared. Jessica quickly beckoned to Jeremiah to step over to her. He leaned in slightly to hear her whisper. "Can you follow him quietly?" Jeremiah nodded. "...Go. Go! Remember the path he takes and then come back. Don't let him know you're there."

Jeremiah nearly spoke his confirmation but he shoved his hands over his mouth and ran off into the darkness. His footsteps were soundless in spite of his awkward, irregular gait. He disappeared into the darkness with ease, more at home behind the veil than not. It would take a good eight minutes for him to double back and return. "He ran off really fast and stopped in a room. I came back when he didn't leave."

Her suspicions had been confirmed instantly. "Jeremiah, take point and guide us there. I'll go last. Joshua, Tobias, whichever one of you has better night vision goes second. Stay low, stay quiet, lets find out what he's hiding."

"I believe it would be Joshua who would handle the darkness better."

"Yep." Joshua shifted his body back and then forward to stretch out the kinks brought on by waiting around in silence. "I can't deal with pitch black, but if there's light I can manage."

The march began. Jeremiah went first to guide and the chain of followers stepped around and over rocks as quietly as they could. Jessica held her tail in her hand, keeping the flame low in intensity and verticality. Her light needed, now, to be hidden or else it would give the group away in little time. Slow, careful steps concealed their passing right up until Jeremiah came to a stop. "We're close, he's just inside."