Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Here... now!" It wouldn't take much for Cera to unleash the surge of chi, staying as close to S-22 as possible. She didn't dare hold onto it for any longer than needed, wanting to see the third act to its conclusion and hopefully buy a few more precious seconds. She just hoped it'd be of use somehow.

Sol apparently wasted no time in going elsewhere, moving to the mission control center. He spotted the broken antenna, but with nothing on hand to replace it or anything to use nearby for the same purpose, he'd use his own Flamethrower to start welding the antenna back in place. At the moment, he figured it to be the best course of action he could do.

Aden would take a similar opportunity to actually go inside mission control, hoping everyone inside was alright. Mostly. He wasn't sure of what he'd see before he went inside, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

Amaranth, however, stayed outside and looked to the two Gym Leaders after their mention of Norman. "He's talked about us?" She asked, admittedly a little surprised at the discovery. Sure, things seemed to go well in her initial meeting with him and within the quarantine zone despite the end results, but she had doubted a single person- Gym Leader or not- would have any real sway. But then, she couldn't say she knew Norman as well as Liza or Tate likely did.

Upon realising how close to the edge of the target release zone, Isaac whirled around, a new sense of urgency filling him. Seeing that S-22 was under control, temporarily at least, Isaac raced back to the other compartment, urgency completely replacing caution. Reaching the dispersal machine, he quickly pressed the glowing button. A beep sounded, followed by a satisfying "whoosh" as the cure began to spray from various nozzles around the exterior of the rocket.

Rushing back to the computer in the other compartment, Isaac opened a Pokeball containing his newest Pokemon, a Porygon. "Get into the systems," he said as he attempted to find a menu option that would give him any measure of control over the rocket's flight path, "And see if you can keep this thing within the ideal dispersion zone. Keep an eye out for anything suspisious, however, and get out of there if you run into trouble." They still hadn't found Ein, and Isaac wasn't willing to put anything past the madman.

Dista and Beau looked between each other and the destruction that currently surrounded them, nodding to each other before diving into the fray to clean up the area. While Beau would direct himself to retrieval of trapped people, Dista flew towards the mission control center. She would barely glance at the broken antenna before having her Metagross push the debris away. Jabbing the Metagross' one arm into the wiring and aiming the other one towards the location the rocket had been flying towards, Dista hoped something as smart and mechanical as a Metagross could transmit and receive stuff like this.

Aria was unresponsive as the rest of the explosion dispersed, simply remaining where she had collapsed.

Reno looked to the new ground he had to cover, leaning out of the hatch he had opened to examine the area. "Okay then. Can't just blow this one up. Need to punch across this wasteland. How?" Reno pondered out loud, absent-mindedly patting the tank as he did so. Remaining silent as he kept up his rhythm of patting, his vision slowly drifted to the tank. If he had created a shell out of good-will and honest questioning, maybe he could upgrade the tank. Fighting himself against the bloodlust of this mind, the tank began to glow blue as Reno channeled his intentions of freeing S-22's mind straight into the machine. The blue light would coalesce into armor plating that spread across the vehicle, with it forming into a large ram on the front. Deciding to test his vehicle, Reno slowly drove over the first mine and felt it explode. The mine rocked the tank and threatened to flip the vehicle, but the plates adjusted themselves to right the vehicle and keep it on its course despite its efforts. "Okay, time for the real test. Full forward charge!" Reno ordered, the tank and its new equipment lurching forward to brave the minefield and debris to reach S-22's consciousness.

"Oh s**t," Isaac muttered to himself, looking around wildly for something to hold onto. Spotting a handhold near the door to the so far unexplored next compartment of the rocket. Rushing over, Isaac rushed over to the protruding piece of superstructure, where he grabbed onfor dear life. Whatever Sub was planning, it was probably going to be something big. Hopefully, whatever it was, it would be big enough to deal with the monster of S-22.

Despite the Metagross' best efforts to destroy the transmitter and due to the helpful welding powers of a certain returning turkey, the transmissions Mission Control had all but given up sending begins transmitting through Issac's helmet.




"Isaac my boy!" Cozmo crows in front of Aden, standing with rows and rows of other scientists in a traditional mission-control looking setup, groups of computers splayed across desks all watching data on a large central screen on the far wall from them. Data was being relayed in constantly as the rocket speeds over the continent, on the map before Aden as well as in real time, the cure began spewing forth from each canister with an audible thump, a contrail of vaccine painting the sky as the rocket soared through its target trajectory. "You've done it! We're getting readings here, something like 90% of the rocket's trajectory was maintained while dispersing the cure! My boy, the introduction of this vaccine should save us hundreds of years of battling the virus! Instead of taking us two centuries you all have made it possible for us to possibly rid the continent of this thing in the end of my lifetime..." The clearly ecstatic professor drones on and on in the background, as Isaac's Porygon was busy burrowing through the system files in the computer to try and find some way to right the rocket's trajectory, as the flight path was beginning to pull to the outer atmosphere on purpose, and it didn't look like there was a way to hijack the controls seeing as the rocket was on 'manual' the only way to change that would probably be in the last room... the cockpit.



The sheer noise factor of the Sinister Sphere itself should have been an indication it wasn't anything to mess with, and had S-22 been able to move, he would have probably nimbly dodged out of the way. But there was two problems with that: One, he was blind and had no idea the attack was coming until it was too late. And Two, he couldn't move.

Krakaboooooooooom!!!!!

The sound the projectile makes as it ripples through the air over and again thrummed through the entirety of the rocket and everyone in the room from the volume, before the projectile even hit S-22. The thing catches the Sharpedo hybrid full-on in the chest, toppling the living weapon backwards from sheer momentum, he didn't even have the musculature to hold himself up even as he held his ground fairly well. That was to say nothing of the sound the projectile made going out the wall behind him. Cue one case of explosive decompression at high atmosphere. And while S-22 was strong enough to still be standing, a smoking crater on his chest where the projectile had hit him, he wasn't strong enough to fight his own momentum and the decompression at the same time there was an adjust in gravity. Had there only been one or two of these factors in play at one time, maybe the systems of the ruthless killer would have been able to compensate, but the combination of equally unlikely circumstances and brilliantly executed strategy result in S-22 being ejected out of the rocket and begin going into a free-fall, but slowly.

Not like any of the Snagems inside the rocket had any time to enjoy the win, Darts' main source of anger had jettisoned outside the rocket wore off and with it went the confusion as he snapped out of the side-effects of his Outrage, his vision clearing. Shaking his golden crest back and forth, the jacketed hybrid was suddenly aware of a couple things. Firstly, he was really tired for some reason... and it seemed like he had blacked out a little bit back there... odd... And secondly, there was a hole of a vacuous nature, succeeding in dragging him next most successfully as he had been right in S-22's face before the Sphere had sent him flying out of the rocket. His golden talons scrabble frantically against the surface of the rocket's hard metal floor, screeches audible as the draconic gambler desperately tried to keep his whole self inside the rocket completely, his normally supremely confident red eyes clouded with worry as he struggles to keep purchase inside the spacecraft.



Reno's tank would bravely charge forwards, more mines and barbed wire exploding and crumpling beneath his tank's treads as he gained purchase within the monstrosities mind, the time dilation between the mental and physical planes going unnoticed as Reno's mental might crashes through the next mental barricade, and into an odd display of sorts. There were several more barriers before the Psychic, and not all of them looked like the physical kind, odd looking energies made up most of a wall in front of him, and there looked like there were a few more kinds still ahead of him, mostly unobservable at this distance. There is something else he can sense beyond all of these barriers, he can finally just barely make out something like a consciousness. It was hard to get a bead on it at this distance but there was most definitely something alive still within-

Reno's inner musings are evilly interrupted without warning, his attention brought back to his physical body jarringly, as the Sharpedo hybrid jettisons from the rocket, the mental tether he had connected between himself and the weapon snapping finally at great enough distance. The other thing Reno would realize, a moment later, was that Darts' frantic scrabblings weren't going to be enough to save him as the Snagem's feet lift free of the floor, the Giratina hybrid in free fall backwards towards the hole in the side of the rocket.



Liza and Tate both nod in the affirmative. "Yes, Norman spoke very highly of your group when he heard what HAZARD was doing to your reputations, he was furious. That combined with their harsh treatment of him in Petalburg led to him taking a very... deep interest in the organization, and as a Gym Leader he had no trouble getting a chair on its inner organizing committee in short order. The fact a government organization would hold such a grudge was... suspicious to say the least. He was trying to discover who had such a vendetta they would organize a ruthless smear campaign against you." They explain, both of the twins sharing the same person they were looking at the entire time, turning to each member in turn in synchronization.

The city, for the Snagems that were interested in combing the wreckage, was only slightly damaged overall, but the destruction that did exist was devastating in the areas it occurred in. Buildings were leaning into each other, there were fires in several buildings where Dull had blown their gas mains. The square within which the two Regis had battled was almost totally demolished, big sections of the cobblestone square completely removed down to the bare earth beneath. And that was before accounting for the enormous crater in the center of where the devastating final parting gift from Cipher had come from. The very edges of the circle carved into the street below the epicenter was crystalized from sheer heat, forming a glassy corona on the edges of the radius before it had been contained. Over the entire city a pall of smoke hung, deep and thick from all the explosions, rocket launches, demolitions and battle that had taken place in the last couple of hours.

But the other remarkable things were the people. And while wounded in need of care did dot the streets here and there, or people in need of assistance, frantically trying to find their families or loved ones, for the most part the people of Mossdeep held strong in each other. Doctors from the hospital and Joys from the Pokecenter in the city had come out en masse to help the wounded of both people and Pokemon in the streets, and teams of HAZARD grunts moved trying to keep people from whipping into a panic and moving in an orderly fashion. It was abundantly clear that while a blow had been dealt to the city, it was not a fatal one. And as for the people near the Snagems, well... they might notice that people were gathering and looking at them a whole lot more than usual for a bunch of international vigilantes. But in the eyes of the citizens that looked at the group as they moved through the wreckage of Mossdeep, they might notice something about the types of looks they were getting. The emotion contained in their faces was not fear, it was overwhelming gratitude.

The good news, Aden thought, was that everyone inside Mission Control seemed to be fine. More than that, in fact. While the data and what everyone else was doing might as well have been early-day Kalosian to him, it took far less experience in rocket science to understand what Professor Cozmo was saying. Was this actually a success? Wait... maybe not quite. He could at least figure out what the map was relaying, and he doubted it looked entirely good despite part of the mission being accomplished. At least, based on only 90% of the intended trajectory.

He wanted to ask how long it was going to stay on that trajectory, given there was the issue of potentially having to get out of the rocket, or at least, he assumed as much. But, given the arguably pressing matters going on, he opted to keep silent for now. Let the scientists who knew what they were doing handle this; if anyone was going to be able to instruct anyone on board, it'd be them.

---

"Sounds like what we were hearing from Devon on the subject..." Though Amaranth hadn't exactly been there for the events, she did at least remember what had been said concerning everything after the fact. Even so, she wasn't sure why there would be such a grudge; only that not everyone within HAZARD agreed with it. "I'll guess he couldn't find that part out?" She asked.

In the meantime, Sol would do what combing he could of the city. If he had to compare the aftermath to anything, it looked almost like something out of the old B movies with gigantic Dragonites and the like. It was easy to tell Mossdeep City had taken a lot of damages, but seeing the combination of people, medical personnel and HAZARD grunts trying to at least salvage what they could, it was unlikely to stay that way for any longer than necessary. He couldn't quite shake the feeling that more than a few in the city were looking to them more as heroes than anything. He'd eventually land after his assessment, if only to provide further help for anyone that needed it.

---

However, things on the rocket were still arguably more chaotic than it was for those on the ground. Even with S-22 ejected out thanks to Cera's attack and the impromptu creation of an airlock, there was still the matter of that hole. And, as she would realize, being the one to fire such an attack meant two things. The first was the sheer force of it throwing her into a wall, which felt mild compared to the second: the vacuum from the hole she made immediately trying to throw her out too. And, exhausted as she was, no amount of throttling her would prompt a spontaneous teleport to safety, even as she tried to cling onto something, anything to remain inside.

Unless someone could further stop her from being flung out, it was unlikely that Reno's efforts would come quickly enough to keep her inside and the team would instead find out that a Mew could possibly be launched into space.

As the hole in the rocket was sealed shut and Sub no longer had to rely on Griswold and Ulalume to keep him and his other two Pokemon from flying out with S-22, the man was finally able to catch his breath, falling to his knees panting. "He'll find a way back." Sub said aloud, to no one in particular, referring to S-22. "But he is not a concern at the moment..." The Dark One said as he stood up and recalled all his Pokemon, gracing the rest of the battle worn Snagems with only the slightest of glances.

"Ein." He said the mad man's name, finally taking a hard look around his surroundings to see if there was another compartment to this rocket, perhaps that's where they'll find him. And that's when he saw it, the door to the cockpit. The man said nothing more as he approached the door, reached out, and opened it to find either vengeance or ruin in the form of a certain scientist, he hoped.