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The second I sensed the urge to detain us, I told Rala to teleport Keiko and I to HQ so I could heal her burn in peace. Keiko had been through enough as it was - having to push through Return with Frustration to put a stop to the hypnosis machine put a massive toll on her body, and the burn wasn't helping. She was already unconscious and I wasn't about to let her deal with being incarcerated, as well. Unfortunately, Rala had to inform me that she couldn't make sense of the world outside of this cave. It had been a long time since she's had this problem, but I knew right away what the culprit was. Teleportation scramblers. So I thanked her for trying and put her back in her ball. I then went back to healing Keikio.

Absinthe just glared at the glorified police force and glared. "Aight, Angela, second verse, same as the-" she started to say. "No," I said flatly, drawing both the attention and the ire of the young Deathrage. "You're going to condemn us all if you fight back. Just let it happen. All we can do is to try and help them see reason," I tried to explain. Abby growled in disgust, but she recalled her Blaziken. "If this goes south, I'm coming for you, first," she cursed under her breath as the handcuffs were being slammed onto her wrists.

Fortunately by the time those who sought to incarcerate us got to me, Keiko had been patched up to the best of my abilities. "She's unconscious, and can't walk on her own," I explained to them as my own wrists were shackled. I made no effort to resist arrest, and thankfully, Abby didn't seem to be, either.

Crystal would turn to the sound of the explosion, eyes wide as the agents came in and collared Freth, followed by Kess coming in to fight Blizz and him getting collared as well. There was a streak of her wanting to fight the Zapdos hybrid, one that popped up back when she traveled with Reno and Aden in Ultra Space and encountered the one Blizzard variant, and one that almost certainly popped up whenever Crystal and Darts had their spats during the past year. She would take a step forward, but the sound of the arrest announcement stopped her. Arrested?! What for? Where was the reasoning?! Before she could rethink the plan of action, she saw more agents coming towards her, cracking her knuckles as she let her frustration fuel her once more. The Solgaleo hybrid would run forward and throw a punch at the first agent she came across, trying to crack the screen of the helmet. The next person to attack her would get an elbow to the gut, and then a leg to someone else’s knee, all in the name of her not getting captured. Within the fracas, however, someone managed to jump onto her back and-

Click.

She felt her arms fall to her sides, and her body began to fall forward, even without the little lock sliding forward. Panic would set in fast as her eyes looked down to her body, seeing them not respond to any of her movements. Second body, but she never imagined she would have a similar feeling of loss of control as back in Galar. Mentally, she was screaming, pleading to her body to move, but nothing happened, not even movement of her mouth. And then the little symbol slid into place.

Her vision went black rapidly, feeling like she was getting pulled through a void, or an unlit Ultra Space. The woman would blink once, then found herself on a stormy beach suddenly, the rain coming down so hard that she could barely see in front of her. “What the? Where… That collar, it was made out of Ebonite…” Her eyes widened as the realization hit her. She had assumed that she used psychic abilities more often than not for basic functions of her body, like movement, since she assumed was just a metal shell covering a cosmic dust body. But just even seeing around her and existing in reality… Did she use her psychic abilities just to exist? Light, she was so screwed. So, this place she was in now… Did her subconscious create this for a place to be just so she didn’t go insane? What the hell was going on? And when would she be able to leave? It might have been her imagination, but it left like the rain was starting to come down as she looked up at the sky, now just plain scared of what was going on.

Jumping out of Crystal’s head and back into reality, once the collar was secured, there would be no movement at all from her body. Someone might be able to tell that there was some sort of brain function if they checked, but her eyes, instead of having a white iris to separate the light blue of the sclera and pupil, it all just went solid blue. Lights were still on, but no one was in the driver’s seat.

—--------

Aile braced for impact as the beam was sent for her, the distraction ruse not working at all… For her, at least. When she hit the ground, she looked to Poggle, the alpha Nincada flopped on the ground unmoving. It was still a bug type, after all, and not even fully evolved. When she looked back to the jackhole that fired at her, she’d immediately crawl over to Poggle and cover him, intending to try and protect him from whatever blast was coming up next… when nothing happened. The woman would look up to see Blake. Hall looking confused at a piece of pumice instead of the Red Gem they were here for. Quickly recalling the insect, she looked around to find Kayvaan, finding the ninja frog standing up and holding his ribs. “s**t, you okay, Kayvaan? Return for now, I’ll look into getting you healed when we leave.” Seeing that Lykas was now the owner of the Red Gem, she was ready to hightail it out of there when-



What. The. Hell. Her head turned to where the voice came from, eyes widening in shock. Maybe mild horror. Old memories came back as she stared at the Expansion Suit, immediately wondering what the hell these people were doing with old Flare tech. She had even worn one of those herself at one point, in what felt like another life. Enough happened between then and now that she probably did consider it that. But it wasn’t that far away that she had forgotten any of that, and she doubted that she would, as much as she wished she could. Arceus, how she wished she could tear that part of her life out.

Shaking her head to drag herself out of her memories, she was trying to figure out a plan. There was nothing she could do for her collared comrades, but maybe if she could escape herself… A hand went to a Pokéball, her false hand flexing as she contemplated her options. She didn’t have Eisley for digging options, but she did have Kuat, as well as his Mega Stone…

“Alysandra Wyndra, stand down!” Aile’s head would turn, noting the use of her government name. That immediately threw her for a slight loop, not having heard that name in so long. She didn’t think she had ever used it during her time in Snagem, really, so it was doubtful anyone knew it there, outside of Sub at least. That alone wasn’t enough to give her a full reconsideration of her plans yet, though. As the woman backed up, staring at the multiple Expansion Suited people now surrounding her, she would look around, a hair away from pulling the Steelix’s Pokéball off of her belt when she spied two unfamiliar people near Sub, though one she could make a guess of. She’d heard rumors of an International Police officer who was only brought in on some major things, back when she worked around in the Kalos underworld. This matched the little bit of the description she heard of him, and did he mention the location of HQ? Merde… Shaking, Aile would rip her hand away from the Pokéball, kneeling down as she did her best to rationalize why they also had the Expansion Suit tech. ‘This group also had to be sanctioned by Interpol’, she thought as she put her hands on her head, ‘and they probably got the suit by raiding Lysandre Labs. That had to be it. It makes sense… What’s going on, though? What did we do?’

Aile grunted as she was shoved onto the ground by multiple hands, the agents not taking any chances with her as her hands were brought behind her back and handcuffed together. Aile wasn’t going to do any shenanigans with her arm unless necessary, but Arceus, was it tempting with how rough they were treating her. Looking around as best as she could while on the uncomfortably warm ground, she saw a lot of the others getting arrested as well. Hopefully, she wasn’t separated from the rest of the team. That would be a… decent sign, at least. Something to alleviate her deeper worries. Potentially a paranoia.

There had been many things she had expected from Blake Hall. An arrogant speech, some blustering about how Dim Sun was somehow the best despite the absolute bodying it was receiving, a grease stain where he used to be standing as he disappeared. The rock in his hand suddenly vomiting out a fiery laser beam was not one of the things Aria had been expecting. As much as she tried to get her Noivern to steer out of the path of attack, they would only manage to just get the main body out of the way before Noivern's one wing was blazed by the attack. Feeling her Pokemon already beginning to list to his wounded side as their flight became more of a dive, Aria would attempt to brace up the wounded and faltering wing to try and at least keep the crash half-level instead of a spiral into whatever ground coincidentally ended up underneath them.

The effort wasn't a complete bust, managing to keep her and Vibrato in a controlled fall that let them at least manage to steer for the solid ground instead of potentially ending up in the lava. However, all they had accomplished was steering, with an utter neglect to the whole slowing down portion of the equation. So the landing would immediately send Aria flying off of her Noivern's back and rolling across the ground until she slammed into a rocky outcropping. Taking a moment to hopefully let focus go towards whatever other Snagems leapt into action afterwards to gather Dim Sun's attention, Aria would slowly open her eyes to find... a whole new horde of thugs staring her down. And based off the shouting, apparently they were the cops?

Putting her hands up, Aria said, "I'm sure my lawyer is going to have a field day with this bout of illegal detention, so I hope you enjoy funding my music and streaming career."

---

Beau felt a set of claws settle on his shoulders as his Fletchinder prepared to help keep him aloft above his site of explosive mayhem. Which had some fast competition, with one of the walls that had been blockaded now erupting into an explosive mess as a bunch of jackbooted thugs that felt oh so familiar to Beau stormed their way into the area. And immediately, they were on the most notable Snagem hybrids with the majority of their numbers and effective personel. But with how effective those collar launchers appeared to be, it wasn't going to take long before the floating Vivillon got stung by these Beedrill. And while he fancied his chances as a lone operative in the old Kalos Resistance days, there were too many people already detained to risk something like that.

But he did have at least one idea to try and stave off some of the potential issues. Quickly releasing a puff of Powder around himself with his left hand, he would take advantage of the small window of lowered visibility to bring his right hand up and begin to quickly weave a small amount of silk from his String Shot around his neck. Once his quickly fashioned gap-creator for his inevitable collaring was in position, he would direct Red Baron to take an immediate dive from his Powder cloud. Hoping the sudden motion would disguise his little attempt at extra defense, it wouldn't take long before he could see one of the collars launched at high speed to intercept his neck.

Pretending like this was somehow a surprise, Beau would be hit with the device and it would quickly cinch itself onto his neck. How effective his improvised String Shot muffler was at preventing this device from doing its job once it resized around the strange material instead of Beau's actual neck, hard to say.

----

She had barely had time to celebrate the successful deployment of the Mawile Maul's Blooming Flower Flash Cannon. It had been so beautiful, the entire opening of the mouth to direct the blast, each piece of the containment chamber cycling up as it did its best to contain all of the energy Leslie had poured into the weapon. Sure, the lights for indicating energy levels and adding intimidation to the whole process weren't installed but she hadn't exactly anticipated a field test today of all days. And she had apparently brought the house down based off the extra boom and noise that she was hearing in the background. And her friend/projectile the Kanghaskid was immediately running to return to his mom's pouch beside her, so that settled that small issue of locating him.

Wait, why was the Kanghaskhan looking in a whole different direction and growling?

Turning in the pouch to look over as well, Leslie could see that apparently the SWAT team had just breach and cleared the cavern behind them. And was already systematically taking down every hybrid they could identify with a flurry of weird little collars. And while she could have hidden herself away inside the Kanghaskhan's pouch that she had spent the last half hour basically dictating a small assault from, the sedan-on-a-stick that she was still holding was a little too obvious for that to be a last minute plan. Watching as a trio of the squad spaced themselves out around her and kept themselves distinctly outside of hammer swing radius, one small thought would cross Leslie's mind. What would happen to the Kanghaskhan? If she tried to get it, it might still be liable to try and stuff her back into the pouch and she did not want to see what they brought out when even the appearance of resisting happened to appear. Letting go of her hammer, Leslie would pull out a Great Ball. "Just let me return my Pokemon. Theresa got zapped by Dim Sun's thing and she's been acting a little strange." She explained, looking towards the Kanghaskhan before whispering, "Please just go with it. No need for you to get hurt too." Knocking the device against the Normal type, Leslie would watch as it disappeared around her and deposited her onto the ground beneath her. Scrambling over to her hammer, she would manage to just wrap a hand around the handle when the first of the three fired collars slammed home onto her neck.

Still on top of the shaking Great Ball, Leslie could only hope that the Kanghaskhan saw things the same way and would let the capture happen for right now. If she wanted out after this, Leslie would release her but this was something to help everyone.

----

Well, this was going to hurt. I mean, Reno had been expecting it to hurt. But he hadn't fully been expecting Sol to try and catch the metal fist. But it did mean they were both restrained in the feedback loop of electrocution and locked muscles that kept them in contact long beyond what a simple punch would've normally caused.

Inside Sol's mind, Reno was taking quick note of the actual contents of the murals as he expected this sort of quick-and-dirty attack to bring out Sol's mental representation quickly. The contents of those murals might be valuable for his personal survival within this headspace. And was rewarded with....what he knew to be Aden and what he presumed to be his mother based off of similarity. That had been what some of this mental programming had latched onto? No wonder Sol was holding to this construct like the last drink of water in the desert.

And at around halfway through his fixing efforts on the second mural, a familiar sensation would settle in before he turned to look. It would appear that he had finally gotten Sol's attention in here. Taking the shaking in stride, Reno would smile. "Uninvited, certainly. But desecrating?" Shaking his head and the hand holding his fixing spray paint, Reno would give a gesture towards his finished repair and his current project. "I've removed this eyesore of a woman from the memory of your wife and child. Or were Aden and her so unimportant to you?" Playing a hunch based off the two dominant colors he could identify in this current mural, he continued with a few more shakes of the can for emphasis, "How about Cera and Sub? Do they compare so lowly to this Lavana woman you just met today?" Flashing a full tooth grin, he would pounce. "How about we reveal them and see how you answer then!!" Ramming his hand forward, he would collide the spray paint with the tip of Arcoiris and aim to detonate the over-primed can to do the rest of the repair right now so that Sol would have to face it head-on.

Back in reality, the two would finally separate as Tsuki's fireball slammed into Sol's stomach. Landing on the ground with huff, he would be forced to scramble back as the Weather Ball slammed into the ground and immediately erupted into a cloud of heated steam that threatened to broil Reno. Taking a few steps back to get beside Tsuki, he would begin to look around to try and assess how things were going elsewhere. And thats when Reno finally was able to focus and see how exactly the tide had shifted while his full focus had been on a two-pronged assault on his friend. This new group was here, with Expansion Suits from Kalos, suppression collar tech that he could almost guarantee was from Cipher, and....was that Kess, Looker, and the weirdo from the WCC? At this point, the small migraine he had been writing off as simply just strain from his tactical efforts came back to his attention. Because it was a familiar migraine, one caused by teleport suppression.

Okay, he was going to be sitting out the whole fighting Sol physically portion for a moment because this whole shock to the system was going to take a minute to process through this bout of memory overload. Especially since he could their battle now had an audience that were trained to fire on Sol presumably....if he either got too rowdy or too cooperative with Reno and Tsuki for their liking.

The collar would attempt to clasp around Beau's neck only for it to find it difficult to stick to the smooth silken neck wrap, the collar spinning around Beau's neck a few times before it harmlessly flew off. He had actually avoided capture, his ingenuity in the moment paying off. However it would not go unnoticed.

"Hm, looks like that one didn't clasp, Agent WHITE." Looker said as he looked towards and pointed at Beauregard. Sub heard this and quickly turned to see who he was pointing at, registering it was Beau, and then looked back at Looker, unsure of who this 'Agent WHITE' was but he had a funny feeling he knew and it was bad news. "Apprehend them, Agent WHITE." Looker followed up.

In response the towering helmeted man would step up from behind Looker and withdraw a Master Ball, tapping the button on the front and releasing from inside a strange four legged Pokemon sporting a helmet similar to its own. The man would make no verbal command and not even look at his 'Pokemon' a single time, never taking his eyes off Beau. However the green markings on his helmet would flash a few times, now brown, the ones on his Pokemon flashing in response, and the next thing anyone knew the chimera Pokemon he released would go charging at Beau. The four legged monster would easily ram into and take Beau down with a simple Tackle, smacking his bird away with a backhanded Crush Claw as they all hit the ground.

In that same moment of impact with the ground a certain someone had moved as well, so quick that he was already standing behind Beau when he hit the ground. Agent WHITE would say nothing as he reached down and picked Beau up by the top of his head with almost supernatural strength, like a person picking up a doll. While being touched Beau would be overwhelmed with a sensation of heaviness, stiffness and being overburdened, like he suddenly weighed five hundred pounds though clearly he didn't. Beau could do little as Agent WHITE used his free hand to gently clasp another collar around his neck, ensuring it was secure, and then tossed him aside like he was nothing. This feeling of heaviness would stay with Beau for awhile longer.

With Beau taken care of Agent WHITE would slowly to focus on the yapping Tsuki, looking the boy up and down a bit before turning the front of his eyeless helmet towards the still afflicted Sol. "Go ahead, Agent WHITE." Looker called out to the man, guessing what Agent WHITE was thinking in that moment. With permission Agent WHITE would make his move, his chimera Pokemon rushing towards Sol and taking a flying leap as it snatched Sol's blade out of the sky with a Shadow Claw, neutralizing his psychic hold on the blade as the Pokemon now stood on top of the grounded sword. In that moment Agent WHITE moved swiftly yet again, seemingly spontaneously appearing behind Sol where he would slammed a collar into the back of his neck, the Ebonite collar clicking in place. In that moment of being collared the hypnosis would be completely lifted from Sol, leaving him with full coherence of the moment he found himself in as he felt the cool pulsating sensation from the collar on the back of his neck.

"Anyone else wish to be acquainted with Agent WHITE and his Type: Null? Anyone?" Looker asked the group, glancing around the area. Sub just glared. Looker would perk up as Monique spoke and glanced from Agent WHITE to Monique. "Do you? Agent WHITE, educate her." He said as he pointed out Monique.

It happened so quick, Monique was knocked down to the ground and had Type: Null on top of her, the chimera Pokemon then leaping off of Monique and slashing at Malamar with both front feet as it executed a powerful X-Scissor to take the Pokemon down while his inhumanly strong trainer bore down on Monique and forced a collar on her neck, dispelling her illusion, the man's speed of movement incredible.

Blaziken, being one of the more rookie members of my party, tried as he might to hold his ground to repulse Kess. I was left in a daze during the whole exchange between the fiery fighting type and the sword wielding Zapdos hybrid, barely aware of what was going on. When I started to come back to my senses, I saw Blaziken flop right next to me, grimacing, under the harsh grip of paralysis. “Blaziken…augh…the….hell?” I took another look around, making sure that I didn’t just hallucinate from the heat in this place and sure as hell, I didn’t. Kess had leveled my hide out of the blue and presumably, she took Blaziken out for that matter. I then took a look around as the unexpected strike force started to take into custody the Dim Sun members as well as the Snagems, which left questions abound as to what in the hell was going on? I started to reach around to take out a Pokeball to recall Blaziken back to his ball before he tried anything else. As far as I could tell, we were caught out dead to rights by…something. Someone.

I tried to charge an ice beam in the palm of my hand, wondering why I was feeling out of it. I’ve been hit by Kess’s electrical attacks before. It shouldn’t have done this kind of havoc, training aside. I then felt around my neck, feeling something off. This collar. I started to pull at it, but couldn’t really get any purchase on it. Between the Snagems surrendering and the numbers we were dealing with, never mind me noticing Freth starting to get dragged off, I made a sigh, effectively surrendering as well at this point. No information, no nothing. As I got carried off, finally getting out in fresh air, I started to see that it was probably preferable to stay in that volcano. Whoever this bunch was spared no expense to practically get the drop on everyone here. Like this was some sort of trap. I still couldn’t really make heads or tails of it. I’d get carried onto a transport, sat down, and placed under guard. Apparently, they really didn’t want to take any chances with me.

I couldn’t help but to sigh at myself, annoyed once again that I was taken down oh so easily just unexpectedly. Every reason I train nearly killing myself in the process only to be swatted down. Worse, so much for an easy assignment…Tristen was probably going to be a bit upset about missing that ceremony…