Ghost in the Swarm
(AKA. Advancement Mission #1 )
TIER MISSION 6 --> 5“The best way to find your enemy is to lead him to you. Always remember that, Daisy,” Cerise whispered. The pokemon resting on her head didn’t say anything, only stared forward intently. Both of them were crouched in some bushes as they listened for sounds of life.
Not too long ago, the pair had scouted out the area (with Raider’s help), and found where many of the Scyther gathered and hung out. In fact, that was where Raider was now--making loose, wide rounds around the group to make sure Team Ninja didn’t walk in from some other side.
“Yanyan!” Cerise from somewhere nearby, and that’s how she knew when to move. However, what emerged from that bush wasn’t a small trainer and her Totodile. No, what emerged was a Scizor! Sure, it was made of slightly-saggy fabric and had the proportions of a little girl, but--No, it was just Cerise and Daisy in costume.
“Get into position, Daisy,” Cerise said softly, and the Totodile nodded before crawling down her arm and into the costume’s right claw. “You got it?”
“Toto!” Daisy said, clamping the claw a few times to prove it. Setting up the costume had taken up a good amount of time; using her savings to buy it, then dying it a different color--green in fact. Figuring out some sort of rig for Daisy to use in the claw, just she could open and close it at will. Cerise could easily lift the pokemon enough to use the claw, and her other hand held the end of a clampy-doo-hicky that would enable her to use the other claw. The costume wasn’t perfect, but all she really needed to do was draw attention.
“SCI SCIZOR!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, ignoring an irritated scream of ‘toto!’.
“Yanyanyan!” was the response, and she knew that Raider the Yanma would be acting stage 2 of the plan! Meanwhile the pair moved, a little slowly at first but quickly picked up speed. Cerise could never claim to be as fast as a real Scizor, but she was quick on her feet.
There was clamor of sound somewhere nearby. Buzzing, cries of “SCYTHER!” and the sound of falling trees. It was moving in another direction, North, away from Cerise and Daisy. “Good job, Raider. You‘re going to have to go all out to dodge a hoarde of Scyther…”
As Cerise reached a clearing, she took a moment to glance around while she took cover. It was definitely the area the Scyther were inhabiting; notches in the trees and rocks, something Cerise could only assume they slept together on, some berries stashed away for food…
However, there was something there she hadn’t predicted but welcomed. A scyther. It was tending to what looked to be a small group of Pokemon eggs. “Yeah, we definitely don’t want those guys coming anywhere near here. We know where the Scyther are, and hopefully the Scizor is with them. Raider should be able to keep them busy for a while. Meanwhile we have to find the Ninjas!”
So they took off running in another direction; the way she’d first heard Raider call from. It wasn’t long before the fake-scizor Cerise found them, all hanging out near a small stream. Their leader, the one with the red scarf sat on a rock. Or rather, crouched on it. For some reason.
“Isn’t that uncomfortable, Takashi?” One of his friends asked, and Takashi shook his head.
“No, this is the way all Ninja sit.” Takashi grinned, puffing out his chest, “I read it in a book once. It‘s called the.. Uh… NinjaSit.” Almost immediately the rest of the group scrambled to find stuff to NinjaSit on.
“Where’s that Scyther at anyway?” One kid asked, as he tried desperately to tie a ninja scarf around his Koffing (with stinky results).
“It’s not a Scyther, dummy. It’s a Scizor. Scizor are as Ninja as they come! Silent, Stealthy, and I bet one could cut you down without you even knowing it!” Takashi stood up now, putting his hands through his hair as he tugged at his red scarf.
“THAT’S THE LEADER!”
The whole group froze as the foreign voice filled the area. Cerise covered her mouth. At least she had hidden behind a tree with her back to it, so she wasn’t immediately visible. Or, at least she thought so. The tree directly across form her sported a strange shape. A strange shape that had its eyes trained on her. The empty eyes of a golden husk that one could swear had no soul. Yet even as they made eye (?) contact it didn’t move. It just floated there.
“S…Scizor?” Cerise said softly, scooting to one side. To try to sneak away from the thing that seemed to eternally face her.
“WHAT’S THAT!?” Some kid asked, pointing in her direction. Immediately she panicked.
“It’s the Scizor!” Takashi leapt from his rock and ran over, already clutching at a pokeball. “Jimmy, get your Shedinja out of the way!”
Jimmy, probably related to Takashi somehow, whined, “Call me Sasuke! I call you by your Ninja name! SASUKE! And why couldn’t I get the Ninjask? You ALWAYS get the Ninjask!”
“STOP!”
Again everyone froze, their eyes on the ‘Scizor’. Eyes wide with horror and amazement.
“You can TALK?!” Takashi said in a whisper.
“Listen. You must all leave this mountain, and never return. You don’t have what it takes to train on this mighty land.”
“We’re not training, we’re here to capture you! Oh man, I’ll be the best ninja ever! We’ll get tons of jobs and sneak around in the shadows and--” Takashi began, only to notice something…”Hm.. You’re pretty … soft looking for a steel type.”
“That’s what happens when you’re old. You… get all saggy?”
“…”
“Besides, you don’t have what it takes to be a Ninja. A Ninja can always think on their feet!” Cerise bragged, “Pull out the unexpected! And most of all they don’t wear bright red scarves!” She pointed a claw at Takashi accusingly, and the teen scowled.
“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that. Go, Muramasa!” Out of the poke ball he threw sprang a Ninjask--or rather, the blurred image of one. In an instant, the pokemon was right in front of Cerise’s face. “Muramasa! Use Fury Swipes!”
Cerise, instinctively acting when the pokemon appeared in her face, screamed and… well, put her all into a headbutt. The pokemon wasn’t expecting it so soon, (nor a head butt from a pokemon that couldn’t learn it). The bug pokemon was startled and wavered in the air.
“Wow, this pokemon really is a Ninja. I wasn’t expecting that at all!” one of the boys marveled. “Go, Koffing!” the Koffing tried to hover over but was… on the ground, kind of squeezed to bursting by the scarf tied around him. “Kooohhhhf…” it said miserably.
“Nincada!” Someone else stepped in, and a Nincada sprang to life. “Scratch!”
“Shedinja! Join him! Use your scratch! And after that use Sand Attack!” Jimmy piped up too.
As it leapt, Cerise realized that if she let it hit her, it would rip her costume! So she thrust Daisy’s claw forward, pointed at both of the approaching pokemon. A torrent of water burst out, knocking both of them back, much to the amazed clamour of the group. However, one pokemon seemed unaffected besides being moved and dripping wet. Sand kicked up from nowhere, spinning once around the Shedinja before the sand flew at Cerise. She instinctively covered her eyes, but remembered that she was in a costume. Therefore she pretended to be blinded as she watched the grits of sand bounce off her shiny, unblinking, plastic eyes.
“It’s a good thing Shedinja has WonderGuard. I bet you didn’t expect that. Does that make me more ninja than Takashi?” Jimmy asked, looking hopeful. Takashi shot him a loathing glance.
“No. Because I don’t know what the crap WonderGuard does.” Cerise waved a claw rolling her eyes (but they couldn‘t see that).
“WonderGuard makes it so that only Flying, Rock, Ghost, Fire and Dark types affect it. All the other type of moves won’t effect it at all.” Takashi explained, still glaring at his brother.
“Takashi! You just gave away Shedinja’s weakness!! You jerk!”
“Well you shouldn’t have tried to be more Ninja than me.”
“You suck as a ninja!”
“No you suck!”
Meanwhile, Cerise rushed at Shedinja and thrust out Daisy’s claw! “Daisy, use Bite!” The claw opened up, and out of the claw came a blue muzzle lined with sharp teeth. Teeth that clamped onto the Shedinja. Instantly it fell to the ground, no screaming, no squirming, no… anything. It sort of just fell. That was the problem with having a haunted shell pokemon.
“Oh my god! THERE’S TEETH IN THERE!”
“That’s a freak pokemon! Not a ninja pokemon!”
“No wait that’s a Totodile in there!”
“IT CLAMPED A TOTODILE!”
“LOOK ITS ARM IS DANGLING OUT OF THE CLAW!!”
Despite the group being all male, there were several girlish screams.
‘Guess the game’s up,’ Cerise reasoned, but did have one more trick up her sleeve. It was a little harsh, but she whipped the claw to one side, catching Daisy off guard and caused her to fly out of the claw and onto the ground where she lay motionless.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!” the boys screamed, all except Takashi and Jimmy. They just looked horrified.
Cerise would then reach up and pull at the Scizor head she wore, just enouch so that her human head could squirm out of its mouth. “HELP MEEEE!” she screamed, getting more screams from the boys as most of them turned tail and ran. Only Takeshi remained behind (the other guy left his Koffing, but it kind of poot-rolled after him).
“Buahahahaha. What a bunch of suckers,” Cerise laughed, and Daisy sat up to laugh too. Though they slowed into silence as they noticed Takashi hadn’t left. After a moment of silence, Cerise scratched at her head, “I’m not really a Scizor--”
“I know that!!! HOW DARE YOU! I NEED TO CATCH THAT SCIZOR! If I don’t then I’ll NEVER be a real ninja!” Takashi shouted, his Ninjask on his shoulder now.
“You don’t need pokemon to be a ninja. I mean, why would you want the pokemon to do all the ninja-ing for you?” Cerise asked, pulling off her claws now. Good thing she’d worn clothes underneath. “You never get to feel the wind rushing past your face. The feel of impossible escapes… the knowledge that if you wanted to you could throw a shuriken at someone’s butt and they’d never know who did it.” Now she stood, in her regular clothes as she kicked the Scizor head to Takashi.
Takashi paused, looking down a moment. Slowly he took the Scizor head. Then he looked up. “You’re right. But the only way I’ll feel confident enough to do those things is if I have a Scizor to teach me. And what better Scizor than a shiny Scizor?”
“Ask a ninja to teach you then! You really think Scizor would teach you and your friends to be Ninja just so you can run around and get hurt? You don’t know what being a ninja means at all!”
“Well neither do you!”
“I know more than you! And I don’t even want to be a stupid ninja!”
“They’re not stupid!”
“They are when you’re one!”
“I’ll capture every dang Scyther on this mountain if I have to just to find that Scizor! You’ll see!” With that he threw the Scizor head down and stomped it, thoroughly frustrated.
As if on cue, there was a huge mass of buzzing. Faint at first, but then getting steadily closer!
“YAN!!!! YAN YAN YAN YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” Raider whizzed by over head, followed by what had to be at least 20 scyther. Naturally, they paused when they took in the scene of Takashi stomping what (to them) looked like their leader’s head. “SCYTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The mass dove, and Cerise screamed as she scooped up Totodile and ran for the cover of the trees.
“What? No!” Takashi screamed as well, running for it as his Ninjask took flight and tried to stop the oncoming storm but quickly got knocked out and thrown to one side. The Scyther were working together, passing the pokemon along the swarm, each of them getting a hit in until the pokemon wasn’t moving anymore. Quick, efficient, and potentially deadly.
“Nincada! Koffing!” Takashi cried, a noticeable squeak in his voice now. He only made it a couple of feet before he fell to the ground. “Hold them off! DO SOMETHING! PLEASE!”
The poor pokemon only stood (and floated there) wide eyed, as the swarm approached, dozens of scythes and angry scowls pointed in their direction. And as the scythers landed and charged, one in a perfect position to relieve Takashi of several limbs, a torrent of water blasted it from the side, knocking it into a tree. Not only that, but Raider dove into view, carrying the fake Scizor head tauntingly.
The scythers paused, look at Takashi momentarily before chasing the yanma again. “SCYTHERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!” They screamed. The rush of air that passed by Cerise and Takashi both nearly knocked them off of their feet.
“Those things are REALLY mean, huh? Do you really think you could have taken them all? You’re not strong enough, Takashi.” Cerise said softly, looking at him. Concerned, stern, completely serious. Takashi met her eyes, then sighed.
“I… guess you’re right. They would have torn us apart. Not just me either. My friends… My little brother…” Takashi didn’t stand up, instead hugging his knees to his chest.
“Come on, you big baby.” Cerise grabbed the collar of his shirt and tried to force him up. It took a moment but he was on his feet after a moment. “Real Ninja. Real, honest-to-goodness Ninja, know what they’re getting into before they act. They’re very smart, very aware, and very good at what they do. Every day is a challenge. Every task is a test. And you sir, you just failed.”
Takashi nodded. “But… how do you know all of this? Are… Are you a ninja?”
“…Pfft. No. Like I said, Ninja are dumb. All of the work, none of the fame. They’re all about subtlety. That ain’t me!” Cerise smiled and laughed a bit. “I know a lot about it because I used to watch a LOT of movies. Read a LOT of crazy books and comics and stuff. But you should go. Not sure how long my Yanma can keep them distracted.”
A smile appeared on Takashi’s face as he punched Cerise’s shoulder. “Fine. I guess you’re right. We don’t have to give up on being Ninja, but… we just need to go about it differently.”
“And not destroy the environment.”
“And not destroy the environment. Right.” Takashi returned his Koffing and Nincada. But before heading back for his Ninjask and leaving, he had one more question. “What’s your name?”
Cerise, having put Daisy on her head for the trip back, turned to look over her shoulder at him. For a moment she considered it, before finally answering. “I don’t have one. I’m a ghooooooostttttt.” She said, wiggling her fingers and backing into the bushes nearby. Then she was gone. Off to the place she’d shown Raider, to meet them at after he’d finished distracting the scyther and led them back to their stomping grounds.
Takashi blinked, narrowing his eyes a moment before leaving to get his Ninjask and heading away from the mountain. They wouldn’t be back. Not for a long long time. He had things to tell the rest of Team Ninja. Something he’d learned from a ghost.
END
