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As she traveled into Ultra Space, Crystal had one nagging feeling, like she had a shadow. It was something that she never experienced before, and it felt off, like she was going to have to worry about something coming out and jumping her when she returned back to reality. So, when she finally returned, the power spike from the attack surprised her. Until she saw Darts right next to her, his hand still wisping slightly from his own attack. It felt… odd to her, like she didn’t expect this sort of thing to happen in general. Much less at a point where they weren’t on the best of terms. Her gaze would be split between the hybrid next to her and the carnage they wrought, at least until her ears perked up with the sound of Blizz’s voice. Her head turned to look at where his voice came from, watching the traveling doorframe move around. Her eyes narrowed as she thought, starting to move again as the terrain once again rose to fight them. There was a chance for them to get out now, but it would probably be best for them to get a stable room before they attempted to leave. ATHRA could screw with them before they got to the door. And they hurt the core with the massive paired attack. If they could find the block with the core again...

Leslie was already getting a head start on that with her attack, the Flash Cannon attempting to dig through the bunker of bricks the AI was forming around itself once more. Giving one more look to Darts before fully sending her attention to ATHRA, she'd shout. "ATHRA! If you don't want us to do that again to your core and be destroyed, you will end this attack and bring this room back to normal! We have no qualms destroying your core if it comes down to it. You saw what we can do. We just want out!" Crystal would shout her demand loudly, getting ready to do another jump if she needed to. She would probably be nervous about it, but the amount of destruction both her and Darts caused would hopefully back up that threat, unless it didn't have any sort of self preservation. She still couldn't completely tell right now.

Group Twone:



Ogerpon was out cold, having given that Wood Hammer its all to try and send the larger legend reeling. It certainly would have protested someone else touching its masks at the very least had it been conscious, but she was completely silent as Amaranth gathers her up and Cera following with her personal effects. Blizz manages to collect the Type: Null, but the Articuno hybrid's observation was keen - they were piling up team members that were needing to be evacuated and they were starting to run out of time to do it in.

Because... Cera's guess was dead-on. Agent White had been alerted by the Synthetic Pokemon's little foray and battle outside of the tower a moment ago and it was very likely he, if not all of SWIPE, knew where they were now and were descending on the place en masse to come get them. Orre might not afford them the same luxuries Devon or Hoenn might and so the time to get going was probably 10 minutes ago at this point. The Snagems had to book it, but how? Going back through the complicated series of lifts and escalators below them was only certainly going to get them caught now. Luckily, they had a group that stayed behind with the Ray-jet-za but they would need to find a way to contact them if that's what they wanted to do, and that meant collecting the rest of the team and going upwards, towards where they had smashed through into Realgam the last time they were here. Because of the ship-sized hole they had punched into the dome, there would at least be some reception.



Leslie's Flash Cannon flower blooms with an echoing 'boom' that fills the room with light and smoke as it fires, smashing through the already diminished rows of blocks. More and more pillars file in the way of the energy attack, splintering over and over again as ATHRA sucks column after column of the room itself in to block the attack, sending up great splintering gouts of more building material. It hadn't lied, certainly, this thing was designed to turn itself into a warzone and was prepared to fight to the bitter end... until Crystal reached out to it.

The AI running this room was merely a prototype, designed by Ein for eventual retrofitting and deployment across the entirety of the fortress. Placed inside this room and left to its own designs for so long had caused some issues, as the mad scientist had designed the thing to be as adaptable as the columns it manipulated. Thinking for years, undisturbed, ATHRA had come to two main conclusions: Firstly, Ein was probably deceased or otherwise incapacitated. There had been no changes to its firmware, no new patches or adjustments in several years which was out of line with the habits and sequencing of its master's frequency prior to that point. Secondly, sitting here for so long with only itself for company, it was quite certain that it existed and now, in the face of such overwhelming destruction, the probability of it winning and surviving the encounter was not 100%.

Running a probability matrix and analyzing the battle capabilities of the three within it, and their comrades outside the door, if it went all-out it gave its likelihood of survival in the neighborhood of 46%. Those were not fantastic odds, and even though it had no doubt it could destroy all five of the people in front of it, its risk/reward algorithm seemed to think it was unlikely more would not come. Surrender was looking enticing. As the smoke clears from Leslie's massive attack, the core still snugly nestled in its bunker of pillars, the melted shards of now-glass and rock and silicone all over the battle field and the mess of Crystal and Darts' attack showed quite clearly the scar the group had carved through ATHRA's battle capacity.

67% Battle Cubes remaining... It thought to itself, processors whirring. Searching for surrender.exe protocol... protocol not found... processing... creating new protocol, surrender.exe... executing...

The room all at once slumps in on itself, the pillars from the walls and ceiling recoiling and retracting, the landscape that had been created shrinking and disappearing as all of the cubes shuffle and attempt to move back to where they had started, big gaps left from the sections that Crystal, Darts, and Leslie had smashed through - several of the cubes looking like so much melted slag as they attempt to squish themselves back in line.

There's a vibration through all of them in a gentle wave, just like it had when considering them before, and then the room lies silent. Nothing betrays the massive battle they had just gone through aside from the shrapnel and smoke drifting from several of the wounded spots.

"We-*huff, puff* well...." Darts gasps, slowly and cautiously straightening out from his fighting stance back to back with Crystal, from where they had both emerged simultaneously. He looks over at Blizz, who was carrying Tristen. "Took you long enough to get here!" He complains, half-heartedly, moving over to check on the boy, tilting the hybrid's face to try and get a good look at him, concerned despite his gruff exterior. "Looks like you lot didn't fare much better though..." He turns his golden crest towards the other door, across the room from them all and back in its proper place. "Any sign of anybody else in this crazy funhouse or are you all it? What about Ogerpon?"

Group Thour:



Wren's suggestion, and Amber's follow up, was simple but incredibly effective, layering in hyper-cold ice between layers of solid rock like a fortified lasagna. The Snagems would be able to hear but not see the door attempt to open, slamming back and forth angrily far back against the first layer of ice concreting it shut. There's some muffled booming as the Champion started to do something to attempt to melt or force her way through, but it was going to take a WHILE - the only other option was going back through the maze and taking an alternate exit that way. For the moment Wren and Amber together had sufficiently managed to barricade Cynthia off from the rest of the team - Wren buying them enough time to get away in the maze with the Pin Missile thread combination and Amber now with the fortification - it looked like they had some time... but it wasn't going to hold forever.



The warped dimensions of the Trick Room and Smokescreen now waiting for Cynthia even further on beyond the barricades Amber had set up, there wasn't going to be much even a Champion could do coming down this hallway now to be able to reach the group at this very moment, but Reno had the foresight to also probe at the woman's mind behind the barrier, and he's able to touch her memories for the briefest instant, seeing into her head and what was driving her.

For a moment as Reno gains access to her thoughts he would be disoriented, as he's looking into a mirror through Cynthia's eyes. No, wait... that wasn't quite right. She was looking at someone who looked remarkably like herself, a smiling man with bright blonde hair and a jaunty set of blue clothes, holding up what looked like a replica of her teardrop necklace wound around his neck. "Oh they're not quite what they appear to be, you see." He explains, his voice melodious and light as he talks to her. "They've damned my world and are surefire set on doing it to this one next. Let me give you some proof..." he waves a hand over his shoulder and they turn, giving the briefest glimpse of another figure before-

No. The response is like sheer steel, slapping Reno's mental intrusion like a clean backhand to his temple. Cynthia's inner fortitude for a non-psychic is surprisingly strong, like a trap made of wrought iron and she closes her mind off to the Snagem in one swift move, cutting his ability to access anything else. You know what you all have done. And I will make sure you pay for your crimes, if I have to take it into my own two hands. Now run along, little psychic. The last sentence is spoken harshly enough to give a grown man chills in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden the bashing and crashing on the other side of their barriers slows down and halts, as if Cynthia has decided on a different mode of action. Reno would be able to sense the presence of her mind, briefly, as he snaps back to reality, but soon enough even that was outside of his purview as the sensation vanishes.



Sub was more than right, if they sat here all they were doing was giving the blonde Champion more time to set an ambush up somewhere else, or find a way through all of their improvised barricades. Ebonite, while being nigh-on indestructible, was NOT invulnerable and someone as strong and as resourceful as Cynthia was bound to find a way to carve a surprise path to them and pop out to devour them like a trapdoor Ariados. Not to mention, unbeknownst to this group, Tristen's Type: Null had already given them all away as far as SWIPE was concerned and it was just a matter of time before the place was going to be even more dangerous. Not that the long-haired bombshell chasing them wasn't unpleasant enough. It was time to go, but they were going to have to find the other group first and rendezvous if they wanted any chance of not leaving anyone trapped here.



Her mother smiles, using her free hand to brush a little of Ulla's hair out of her face. "Oh, little Ulla... is that why you brought your friends to this dangerous place, because you missed us?" She laughs a little, a knowing chuckle of a parent as she leans in to kiss her daughter on the forehead, leaving a little imprint of her lips on the forehead of the fairy child that had never felt them before. "No matter what happens dear, we'll always be here with you. In your head..." And then she presses two fingers to Ulla's collar bone, directly above her left breast. "And in your heart." A broad smile creases her face as she beams at her child, looking proudly over to Taka for a moment before back to her daughter. "You'll always be our magical fairy child, that's what I always told your dad, at least."

The moment passing as Cynthia is barricaded out of the room for the moment, Ulla's mom straightens her hair and gets right to business upon hearing Reno, showing the steel in her spine that had been passed from mother to daughter. "If it's the upper levels you all are looking for, that's simple enough." She unfolds the map, laying it in front of Sub and the rest of them as she points. "Going back the way we came, there's another set of rooms that we know go to a second elevator that heads to the rooftop levels, including the faux-arena and the bunker behind it that is the highest point of the entire place. We KNOW those are clear, thanks to you all if I'm not mistaken." Indicating the path with a handful of taps on the paper, she lets someone in the group get a picture of the thing, and then rolls it up.

"Sounds like this is goodbye for right now, honey." She laughs, as she smiles again at Ulla. "You have to follow your friends, and I owe these good people here my help in getting back to the base camp. Don't worry, you can tell me all about your adventures the next time we see each other, okay?"

Having already been stanced up for what he imagined would be a very motivated Cynthia punching straight through to where they were, Reno was at least prepared for the sudden whiplash of going straight into her mind with surprising ease. And he was staring at....a very similar looking blonde man. Who presumably was talking about them with all the dont tust and look at this totally real evidence that my friend has. A friend he couldn't identify at all before Cynthia decided that he had seen enough of her current motivation and that he needed to vacate her mind. And without the extra power of his Alakazam to force the issue or being able to touch her shadow for the extra in, Reno was forced to obey as he fully forced out to the real world, where he could hear her efforts to continue attempting to pursue them directly end and her mind eventually disappeared from his own senses.

As soon as the sensation disappeared, Reno would spring into action towards the door out of this room that the others were heading towards. "Sol. New plan. She isn't coming straight at us and I vote we get out of here before she figures out the indirect route." Reno commanded the hybrid, rapidly taking up position next to Sub as the little display on the map for where to go for a rooftop exit was finished. He couldn't grab a photo, given that his SNAG was currently embedded in an Ebonite wall a room over, so hopefully someone else could manage that to guarantee they went the right way. What he could do was place his right hand on Sub's shoulder before speaking to the leader.

"Sub, did we ever piss off a guy who looks like Cynthia but likes wearing blue? Cause that seems to be who is on her mind, telling her we're the devil." Reno inquired, glancing around for a moment as he did his own attempt to think of anyone who might match the person he had seen. While he couldn't think of anyone immediately that he had encountered, maybe this guy was someone Snagem before Reno's time had annoyed enough to respond like this. Or who knows, maybe this was the most recent plot from the Fungal Fop.

....actually, that would explain how Cynthia had apparently bought in so wholy. Investigations and paranoid ramblings for later on that one.

-----


Collapsing to the ground as the room finally decided that discretion was the better part of valor, Leslie would continue to glare towards where the thing's core had been at last she had seen it. At least before Blizz spoke up and unintentionally gave her a direction for her dissatisfaction and ire. "It has been way too much weapon swinging and absolutely nothing coming of it besides MORE fruitless swinging. So yes, I'm good to try getting out." She seethed, picking herself up off of the ground and moving to march past Blizz before her eyes kept locked onto Tristen. Letting out a breath as her shoulders lowered, she turned to fully face Blizz again. "Want me to pack him? I probably owe him....a lot of help with...how I get and how I've....gotten with him." Her gaze never quite managing to reach where she assumed Blizz's to be, Leslie at least looked to be trying to do it.

Wren listened as the woman he assumed was Ulla's mother, from the way she spoke to the little girl, offered them a boon in the form of a map and explanation of the route that would take them up. He vaguely remembered what the top of the tower looked like after their last arrival there so it made sense. Thee might be enough of a gap in the building to pull off some of Snagem's signature Tauros crap that got them out of major trouble. Somehow. Pulling out his SNAG, he snapped a picture of the map for future reference before following Sub to the door.

It was only a moment later that Reno approached and asked his question. Wren immediately had face flash through his own mind, followed by a great deal of confusion, denial and rationale. Volo? That couldn't be possible, could it? Only a small number of Snagems had met him and even those that had had met him in the past of another world found somewhere in the infinite reaches of Ultra Space. How would he have not only escaped his own world but found his way to theirs? He couldn't have. Could he? Moreover, why would he be spinning such lies about them if he could have somehow gotten here? As far as he recalled, Volo had assisted them in their flight from his world out of pure goodwill.

"Let's go, guys! We still need to find everyone else so we can get out of here!" He urged, pulling up his picture of the map on his SNAG and beginning to walk out the door.

Ulla desperately just wanted to break down onto her parents when her mother kissed her forehead.

"No matter what happens dear, we'll always be with you. In your head. And in your heart."

Her heart felt so warm. But also felt so much pain in those words. Something that she never got to hear or feel before. She wanted to tell them. She wanted to tell them everything. Help her make sense of it all. Ulla looked over the map and took a photo of it. They need to urgently escape before Cynthia gets even a step closer to them. "Wait...You can't. We can't go our separate ways now! Won't Cynthia say that you were aiding in criminals get away?" She said to her mother as she was trying to find away to get them all out. But, logically she knew getting innocent people even more involved would get them in even more trouble. Master. These are your parents. They can handle themselves. They taught us everything we know. Lucario came over trying to reassure her that it was time to part ways from them. Ulla looked at her teammates who were already on the move. She looked back at her parents and bit her lower lip.

Please...don't make me leave. I want to experience what I missed out on..
Master. Like we've said...these aren't your real parents. You can feel their warmth and see their smiles. But these aren't your parents no matter how you look at it.

Ulla glanced at her Lucario and merely nodded. "Okay...I'll follow my friends...thank you for everything." She said as she hugged both her parents quickly and ran off with the rest of Snagem with the map out to guide the group where to go.

Darts, normally stoic, practically shoves Blizz out of the way to check on Ogerpon in a panic, bustling over to his newest Pokemon to check on her as soon as he hears she's in any sort of danger. Ignoring the older Snagem's advice, he gingerly takes the small Pokemon from Amaranth, cradling her in his jacketed arms as he supports her head and neck, applying pressure with a gilt hand over her luckily shallow-seeming chest wound to keep it from bleeding all over the place, plastering a piece of his jacket over it like a temporary bandage. The gambler walks over to Cera next, extending a hand as he continues to keep Ogerpon close to his breast with the other to retrieve her masks.

"I know, you can carry them but..." He appears to wince, his red pupils contracting a little bit within his crest as he thinks on something his young pupil had told him. "She wouldn't want anybody else touching those." He explains, letting the mew set the stack of wooden discs into his outstretched palm. His hand isn't enormous, but neither are the masks, and he is easily able to keep all of them constricted together in a neat stack.



"Let's move." Darts answers grimly, nodding in the direction Crystal had indicated. The group moves out into the hallway, luckily bumping into...



A group of Snagems heading the opposite direction, some fortuitous luck coming the gang's way for once as four separate disparate groups become one, all of them nearly crashing into one another, Sub's group headed by Ulla who had the all-important map to keep them oriented in this place.



The Earth Power shakes the tower at Sub's command, interrupting all of the conversation about Volo and his presumed involvement in their current state of affairs. Unbeknownst to the Snagems inside the tower, this was a lucky time for the Snagem leader to decide to do that as groups of SWIPE agents had already begun rappelling up the sides of the tower, making a beeline from the top.

Looker and his SWIPE entourage were here, flooding the lower areas with agents intending to pick them up in the lobby if they tried to go out that way. Additionally, they had sent a group of recon up the sides of the tower. Somehow, luckily for them, whatever system Ein had installed to keep those Pidgeys must not be working or maybe there never was one and they had been attempting to head up to the top of Realgam. The Earth Power interrupts that, however, shaking and quaking the tower with an enormous 'boooooong' that rings out far across the desert, shaking the grappling hooks along the side free as well as hopefully alerting their ship-guarding comrades that they could really, really use an escape plan now.

Wren and Ulla's map(s) make it clear, they had one assuredly safe path upwards and outwards to the topmost levels marked by her mother's research team. The team hurries on in a group, emerging finally out into the sunlight for the first time, blindingly harsh still even as they start approaching the beginning of evening and it starts to sink over the far-off mountains in the distance. They would be able to hear it now as a group, the cacophony brought on by SWIPE's agents down below, all-terrain vehicles crowding the camp and the base of the tower. Luckily, there was no one on the roof but there was no telling how long that was going to last. They would hurry onward, upward and outward to the very top of the tower, beneath the shattered protective dome that the people here last had driven the SS Anne II straight through like a railgun bullet train sent to crash through Ein's heart.

They were in the arena at the top of the tower, the site of the final battle with S-22 and the spot that half of them had almost... well... maybe in another time or in another place, things might have been different. And in fact... as the Snagems look around the long-deserted arena... wasn't it?

Ein in his twisted madness had decided that there was to be a whole arena of spectators there to witness their final, ultimate, defeat - chained in place and forced to cheer or jeer at the scientist's whim via torture. But they had saved all of them, breaking their shackles and letting the group go at the end after finally managing to best the doctor's ultimate creation. Then why, oh why... were there rows upon rows of skeletons chained in place where those same spectators had been? Bleached pearl-white from constant exposure to the desert sun filtering through the shattered dome above them and covered in a thick layer of sand that indicated these remains had been here unprotected to the elements for what appeared to be several years.

Grappling hooks clang on the edges of the tower, barbed hooks catching tight as SWIPE agents start taking another go at scaling the massive obelisk. Hopefully Aile had gotten their signal or soon the team was about to be back in prison toot sweet.

I could only give a resigned sigh at Darts, in a way not really blaming him, but in others wondering if he was thinking all that clearly in the moment. Ogerpon was in a bad way, no thanks to that Type: Null thing. As far as I could figure, it would have been the best way to make sure Ogerpon stays safe and best odds to possibly make it all the way back to our makeshift headquarters to have her injuries tended to. I couldn’t really bring myself to argue with him; we didn’t really have the time for it. If what Cera said was true, then Type: Null ended up bringing in the proverbial calvary in that of SWIPE and we couldn’t afford to have a confrontation here, not with what we had right at the moment. I then looked over towards Leslie, and as far as I could tell, I couldn't tell what was more odd: the fact she was offering at all or the fact she was offering in her condition. Maybe she had finally grew up some herself. I was pretty well aware of the history between her and Tristen, though his disdain hadn't been voiced in quite some time due to him not being here. I only shook my head. "No, I got him. You look as if you can barely carry that hammer of yours, never mind Tristen with what he's got on. I got him." I told her. "Don't overdo it. Just focus on getting the hell out of here."

My Lucario and I would follow the others off in the way Crystal pointed out, me carrying Tristen as I have been and it would be fortunate that we soon would bump into the other Snagems, all of whom are also ready to make their way out of this proverbial hellhole of a tower. As we made our ascent in the tower, we made our way out and I couldn’t help but to instantly feel new presences as we made our way out. If I had to warrant a guess, they briefly cut off any means of teleportation blocking because how else could they got out here so quickly in such forces at us. If left me to wonder if we could take the shot and teleport out ourselves, but I didn’t really want to chance it. But as we waited on a rescue ourselves, I took notice to something under the desert sun, staring in confusion for a second. “Wait…guys, hold up, what on…” I took a few steps away from the group, staring in confusion for a moment, then stared in massive confusion, completely mortified even. “Hold the hell on! Where did these come from!?” I asked as I stared at the bleachers.

These bleachers, once seats that were filled with subjects of all sorts that Ein held captive, hostage even, to oversee any resistance’s demise. A show that was instead ruined by the likes of the Snagems upon S22’s, let alone Ein’s defeat. But here…it was as if…that never happened. The seats were once again filled…and long have they stayed in the bleaching weather. “What in the hell is the meaning of this!? Were there more people!? No…we rescued all of them…” I said, trying to piece together any immediate clues, that there was none of as far as I could see. It was like the battle never happened. Or at the very least, didn’t end that favorably as how we barely managed to do that fateful day. Was this the reason why SWIPE was on our case? Were we blamed for this? Questions among questions with no answers to any of it. Blast it all, I did not get beaten to hell and back again, also nearly losing both Freth and Tristen in the process, that day just to come out with a pyrrhic victory at best and conspiracy to a massacre at worst! What the hell happened here? This is just more stuff that just does not make any sense!

Lucario and I, then perked up hearing the various clangs of various hooks latching on to the side of the tower. SWIPE was trying to make sure there was no way out, and perhaps before long they’d have vehicles here to come down on us. “Sub! I hope you got us a way out of here!” I shouted to the Snagem leader. I wasn’t going to have this place be my grave, either by SWIPE’s hand or Ein’s, if I could help it.