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During the One Year Timeskip, Near the End:

Ghost Master Mission Stage 1

The Unexpected Phantasm

It seems as though your body has been warped and transformed by Giratina’s curse. In order for you to get to the heart of your spiritual studies, you will need to visit Morty, the resident expert on most things paranormal and get him to a complete and thorough analysis of your new form, maybe he will be able to point you in the right direction in regards to your dimensional warping problem. The town of Ecruteak is full of many mysteries, and if you can’t get your answers there, no doubt Morty will be able to point you in the direction you should head. There are a lot more questions than answers about your new form, and for the good of future hybrids you should make sure to keep a medical record and send it to one of the professors as well.

Objective:
---Visit Morty in Ecruteak City to receive a spiritual analysis of your new form.
---Find out and investigate any and all clues he points to as possibly being of use in regards to your curse.
---(Optional) Make a medical record of the events and take it to one of the professors in one of the regions. (You’ll need to find a physician.)

Opposition:
---Honestly at this point it could be anything, it’s all in where Morty directs you.

Rewards:
---10x Snag Coins
---The experience should strengthen you to learn a new move.

Ecruteak City

--
“Well Darts, I do think I see your problem.” Morty says, extinguishing the flickering flames of the last lit candle in his office in his gym, the flame hissing out underneath the head of the iron snuffer as he pads the wick of the candle with the metal tool.

“Oh really?” Darts asks skeptically. He’s sitting in a chair across Morty’s desk from him, holding a clove of garlic in one hand, a dead chicken in the other, with a spell tag stuck to his forehead. “Oh do tell then, I wouldn’t want to keep me waiting.”

“Scoff all you want.” Morty says with a reproachful wave of his finger, setting the snuffer in a drawer in his desk before he pulls his chair into a comfortable position, rocking backwards to settle his feet on the desk. “I know.”

“Like I said then.” The Giratina hybrid says, pulling the spell tag off his forehead. “Don’t keep me in suspense, what’s wrong? Is it something to do with Dialga and Palkia? I knew it from the start, you know…”

“No.” The Gym Leader thoughtfully answers, brushing some wisps of his blonde hair back from his headband. The chair creaks as he continues rocking back and forth on the rear legs, his feet up on the desk in front of him. “Though Dialga and Palkia along with Arceus’ ban on Giratina is what is warping you to the other dimension, that’s not the heart of the main reason it keeps happening.”
+

“Okay, is it something Giratina itself is doing to me?” Is Darts’ next question, the hybrid actually perplexed now, as he had been sure the ban was what was hurting him the most. If it wasn’t the ban on him, it had to be something in the actual curse itself that was specific to him and him alone, or maybe the ancient ghost from beyond this world had some kind of grudge still. He takes the dead chicken and tosses it on the desk with a flop, the garlic right on top of it a second later.

“No, Giratina’s not specially punishing you, other than bestowing its form upon you, which it no doubt would know would carry all these crazy consequences and drive you to the brink of madness. Other than that though, no, I doubt it even cares enough to check in on you more than every once in a while.” Morty replies, twiddling his thumbs as he stares at the ceiling, clearly agitating Darts with his ability to be so forthcoming, but his decision not to be.

“All right then…” Darts replies, scowling underneath his golden crest. If he still had teeth to grind, they were grinding right now. “What do you propose it is then?”

“Well, and stay with me here.” Morty says, steepling his fingers over his chest and rocking back a little further. “Your body fundamentally possesses two different energies, and they are constantly at odds with each other. One section of your body, that would be traditionally called ‘soul’, you are fairly familiar with even if you do not know it. It is the basis of the Ghost type’s power, and it resides in the body of every living being from birth. Because of this, you are already accustomed to living with spiritual energy within you.”

“Hm.” Darts leans forwards himself, crossing his own fingers in front of his face, gold glittering as he moves. “So wherein is the problem? There’s something else.”

“There is.” Morty affirms. “Now that you occupy the body of a Giratina, as you may or may not know, you are a dual type hybrid. Now while my analysis successfully told me the state of your spirit, constituting the Ghost type half of your duality there is another… energy within you now, for lack of a better term. This type of energy is very powerful and outside of my area of expertise I’m afraid. However,” Morty says, holding up a finger to Darts’ head jerking upwards suddenly in protest. “I do know of a person who might have the answers you’re looking for, or at the very least know someone who can help you.” He settles all four of his chair legs back on the ground, whipping out another spell tag from inside of his desk, the same size as the one previously affixed to Darts’ forehead. Darts recoils a little with no desire to sport another face decoration, his crest was quite enough, thank you. Morty laughs, whistling to summon his Gengar who comes through the wall with an inkwell and a calligraphy brush, eyeing Darts with an evil cackle. “Don’t worry.” He chuckles, as the Ghost-type sets the utensils on the desk in front of him. He unscrews the cap on the ink, choosing his brush and carefully inserting the tip of it into the coal-black goo. “This one isn’t for your forehead, I’m going to give you a pass to take to Blackthorn City. Claire, as you probably know, is the eighth gym leader in Johto and she is considered to be well-connected when it comes to knowledge of dragons.” Morty furrows his brow in concentration, tracing sigils on the spell tag unfurled in front of him with the ink-dipped brush. “Knowing her personality, she may take some convincing to help you.”

“Knowing her personality?” Darts asks, a smirk hidden under his golden crest. “What, how well did you know her Morty?” He snickers a little. “I’m sure she gave you the Rising Badge, huh?” He needles. Darts and Morty had spent the last week or so together, Morty trying to analyze the Giratina hybrid’s condition through arcane rituals and all manner of witchcraft, some of which Darts fervently hoped remained out of sight and out of mind, the last one included. The two had become friends during that short time period,

Morty’s face flushes for only a brief second as he finishes his calligraphy, righting itself to white almost immediately. “Yeah, well, we’ll see how the great cassanova Darts handles a woman like her, eh? Should be a momentous occasion, I think she’s right up your alley.” Grinning at his last comment, Morty replaces the cap on the ink well, handing both to his Gengar who disappears after blowing a loud, wet raspberry at Darts.

“Rude.” He comments.

“You and Gengar get along so well,” Morty laughs, having met Darts’ Gengar during his time in Ecruteak. He waves the parchment in the air, attempting to dry the ink on it. “Maybe you should have been a Gengar hybrid instead of a Giratina, huh?”

This gives Darts pause as he gets up from his chair, cocking one eye a little. “Nah, don’t think so. Probably would never happen.” He stretches, cracking a couple of vertebrae in his back. At least he hoped they were still vertebrae, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure about his physiology any more. “Well Morty, it’s been real nice visiting and all, thanks for letting me crash at your gym.”

“Yeah, sure.” Morty mutters, half-jokingly. Darts hadn’t given him much choice in the matter, as he had broken into the Gym, set off a half-dozen alarms and subdued a pack of Haunters before engaging in battle with a half-awake Gym Leader. Declaring the state of the battle a draw, after neither one could gain an inch, Darts had pleaded for Morty’s help in deciphering the mystery of his body. Not being able to blame the hybrid, and being a little curious himself, Morty had agreed to help. Also Darts had drank every single drop of coffee he could get his hands on in the place, and Morty had liked his morning cup.
Morty hands Darts the parchment, a frown bending the corners of his mouth slightly. He was concerned about the gambler. From what Darts had told him, this new body had taken him from a compulsive gambler who viewed the gamble as the greatest thing in life to gambling doing nothing to fill some kind of new void in his life. “You take care of yourself Darts, something about this body unnerves me, although I’m not sure what it is.” He extends a hand for a handshake.

“Don’t worry Morty, I’m sure it’s the same thing that worries me.” Darts says, extending his hand to return the handshake, and Morty’s wallet, which gets an agitated exclamation from the gym leader. “The trouble I could get up to in a body like this.”

--

Blackthorn City

Blackthorn City, a quaint little city nestled in a pine woods forest in the mountains, was famous for more than one reason. Firstly, it was the home of the Rising Badge, the Eighth badge of the Johto region. The last summit for those looking to challenge the Kanto-Johto Elite Four and attempting to capture the title of Champion, Blackthorn City had seen its fair share of winners and broken dreams on the floor of the Gym of that town, and had for as long as the Gym had been open. No one remembered when the Gym had open; it had seemingly been there as long as the town itself. The reason for its typing was plain to see, the gaping maw visible with the naked eye high up in the mountains surrounding the city. The Dragon’s Den, a cavern filled with many rare and wondrous Pokemon of the Dragon type, open only to the chosen few.

The second reason Blackthorn City was famous was also due to this amazing cave, and that was for the caliber of trainers of Dragon-type Pokemon that the city gave rise to. The first, and still remembered as the greatest is the now-Champion Lance. Considered a prodigy of Dragon-type battling, Lance was the first to come out of the then-town of Blackthorn and make an impact on the world Pokebattling scene. To say his run was unstoppable was to not give the young genius his due credit, as he thrashed every Gym Leader in the Johto region with little effort including the then-leader of Blackthorn City Gym, his own grandfather. In the Indigo Plateau, with the crowds of the world watching him, Lance showed little trouble in navigating the competitors vying for the chance to face the four elite trainers on top of the battling world in Kanto and Johto. With a combination of incredibly strong Dragon-type Pokemon and inexplicably amazing strategy, Lance became the youngest trainer in Pokemon League history to win the right to face the Elite Four. The Pokemon world was abuzz, as millions all around the world tuned in to see the youngest, to borrow a term from a man in sunglasses, champ-in-the-making take on the ferocious Elite Four. One by one, savage battle by savage battle, Lance skillfully navigated each of the four battles en route to becoming the youngest Champion in League history. Blackthorn Town became a City in the years that followed, as Lance’s incredible marketing and the allure following him brought prosperity the town had never seen before. Aided by his years and years of dashing the hopes of all competitors challenging him at the top as Champion, Lance’s legend grew more and more, as did Blackthorn. For a while he went undefeated. When it was beginning to look like no one could topple Lance, one day he was defeated, by a pair of trainers from a small place called Pallet Town. Lance would step back out of the spotlight following that defeat and others from a few Johto trainers to let the new generation of trainers coming up after them have their day in the sun.

As he stated in his press conference following his announcement to retire as a full-time trainer in the Indigo Plateau: “The time on the top has made me soft, and these battle hardened trainers, fresh off of their journeys through their respective regions can climb this ladder we have built and topple me so easily now, that I am unfit to remain here on this summit. Times are changing, new Pokemon are being discovered every day in new regions and rather than stagnate here on this throne I have built, I too, will take to the road that has made these trainers strong, as it once made me strong when I challenged for my eight badges all those years ago.”

Even today in Blackthorn City, the very mention of Lance’s name gets an outpouring of emotion from the citizens there. No one has heard from Lance since he went on that journey so long ago, though there have been rumors of him showing up to influence world events here and there. He’s their Champion, through and through, and every member of his family faces enormous scrutiny in regards to following in his footsteps.

Enter Claire, his young cousin. The “Blessed User of Dragon-Type Pokemon” was born in the same Blackthorn City as Lance was, to the brother and sister of Lance’s parents. Being a few years younger than Lance, as her parents had opted to wait until later on in life to try for kids, she grew up in the middle of the furor surrounding his championship run. Lance was her hero as she went through the early years of her life, larger than life but always accessible at the same time. In between rounds during the Elite Four qualifiers, Lance would ride his Dragonite home for supper and lunches in Blackthorn with his extensive family; Blackthorn being the closest city to the Plateau on the Johto side. After all the matches for the day had been fought, Lance would take advantage of this same geographic proximity to go home and sleep in his own bed, but not before taking Claire for a ride on the back of his Dragonite. They would go out at sunset, just after the large dinner with the rest of the family was over. Claire would timidly tug on Lance’s hand, hoping he wasn’t too tired from battling to take her out, which he never was, and they would set out from their front yard as the sun began to sink, the sky turning vivid pink and orange, like citrus fruit at maximum ripeness. It was the thing she looked forward to the most, above all else, because as they drifted over the pinewood forests surrounding Blackthorn, the great grey expanse of Johto stretching out before them, Mount Silver looming off to the east and the Dragon’s Den covering the town in shadow as the sun set off in the distance, Claire got to talk to Lance one-on-one and ask him all kinds of questions. Most of the time it was simple questions, things like “who did you battle today?” and “who did you meet today?”. Other times it was Lance asking the questions, drilling Claire on type matchups and battle positioning. The normally introverted champion-to-be opened up more around Claire than around anyone else, regaling his little cousin with stories of battles he had fought in, laughing along with her at funny tales he spun up of amusing things that had happened in the backdrop of the Indigo Plateau coverage. “The microphone hit me in the back of the head.” Lance would joke, talking about his first ever interview after his first victory in the Pokemon League. “I think I have a scar back there now.”

“What?!” Claire gasped, with genuine concern, spinning to look at her older cousin, seated behind her on the back of the Dragonite. “Are you hurt?”

“No, silly, of course I’m not hurt.” Lance responded, rubbing her hair affectionately as he laughed, a rare occurrence, out loud. The microphone scar would become something of a running joke between the two of them. Between Lance complaining it ached when there was rain, and Claire fussing over it with bandages in a playful sort of fashion, half of their family probably believed that he legitimately had suffered some kind of wound. Claire would have given anything to be just like Lance when she grew up, and modeled herself as such, possessing an admirable connection with Dragon-types, just like Lance, and nigh-tutored by the then-Champion himself, when Claire hit the competitive battling scene she did so with gusto, her Kingdra at her side and a smile on her face, eager to follow in the footsteps of her older cousin.

It was a very different Claire who was looking out the window of the Blackthorn City Pokemon Gym when Darts got into town. She sighs a sigh of annoyance, the lines on her face deeper and more pronounced as a result of a day of constant boredom. Gone is the young, plucky girl who took on the Indigo Plateau with a bounce in her step. In her place stands a battle-weary Gym Leader, current guardian of the Rising Badge. Swept up in the swell of emotion and with the expectations of her hometown on her shoulders, the pressure was grotesquely bloated and situated squarely on Claire to perform. To say the Elite Four challenge had gone poorly would be a massive understatement. She lost out in the first round. Devastated, she had gone home expecting everyone to welcome her back with open arms, and while the loss stung, she had hoped she might be able to saddle up and try again the next year. Unfortunately for her, tragedy has a nice way of always striking twice right in a row, right at the moment you’re most devastated, for maximum effect. Upon returning home, Claire received the news that her father had suffered a heart attack, and his condition was unknown at this point in time. The people of her hometown treated her warmly enough during the first couple of days that she was back, given the uncertain state of her father. But there were people who had lost millions in merchandising opportunities and gambling, so there were some cold shoulders in that respect. Even that would have been bearable, if not for the worst part of it all; the disappointment Claire could sense emanating from the other members of her family. None of them ever talked about it around her, but she knew there were whispers, behind her back.

Five days after Claire experienced her first real heartbreak in life her father would die in the hospital where he had been taken in a coma following his heart attack. Lance came back for the funeral clad in his full Champion’s armor, his presence ensuring the press would cover the event. He was quiet, like usual, but as they talked after the funeral Claire sensed no openness from him like she had when she was a young girl. He seemed to be hiding an emotion, not grief. Disappointment? The thought of Lance being disappointed in her was too much for Claire to bear, so when after the wake conversation was broached about who was going to be the town’s next Gym Leader, Claire jumped at the opportunity. She was eager to try and slough off the feeling she was getting from Lance and restore her good name and stature in the eyes of the family. The Gym had to be run by someone of their blood, and she figured that after enough time battling at the Gym, she would be able to take a second run at the top.

Claire sighs again, moving away from her window to take a seat behind her lovely mahogany desk. She shuffled papers with little meaning as she stared down at the desk’s lovely finish. She was in a melancholy funk these days, those dreams of Pokemon League glory having slid into the past. Even Lance wasn’t around to comfort her as not long after his strange behavior following her father’s funeral, he announced his retirement and immediately made preparations to begin his journey around the world. The reasons he gave seemed very shallow, seemingly because of a couple of trainers had beaten him: two trainers from the Kanto region, and then two more from Johto. Claire had battled the latter two in some of her first Gym Battles, and she had been unimpressed with their skill, but they shocked her and the rest of the world by defeating Lance. His departure seemed hasty to the rest of his family, Claire included, so she had volunteered to go try and convince the ex-Champion to stay. They exchanged heated words back and forth as soon as she got to his house, one of the only times they had fought all the time they had known each other growing up. Claire challenged Lance to a battle, with the stipulation he stayed if she won. He agreed, adding that all he would need was one Dragonite and she could field as many Pokemon she wanted, above and beyond the regulation six Pokemon limit. Striking a nerve with Claire, she sent out all of her Pokemon at once to rush against Lance’s Dragonite. She had her pride as a Gym Leader, and she wasn’t going to back down. As Lance calmly and collectedly tore apart her entire team with one Dragonite, Claire came face to face with a harsh realization few people ever have to: she wasn’t good enough. Not good enough to battle on the world stage, and certainly not good enough to beat Lance. He left her with a few words of advice on where to go from there, and then he left, his Dragonite flapping its wings as the pair of them took off across the trees Claire and he had flown over all those years ago. That was the last time she had seen him, and that had been a few years ago now. Claire looked up from the papers she was fiddling with listlessly and looked at the clock. She was expecting company any time now, family she hadn’t seen in a long time… Maybe she could close early, just this one time.

--

Darts flew into town underneath his struggling Honchkrow who was huffing and puffing as it landed, dropping the jacketed gambler the last few feet in front of the Pokemon Center before collapsing in a heap itself off in the grass. “Ouch…” Darts grumbles as he inserts a golden hand into his jacket, which responds by bucking a Pokeball up into his hand, the appropriate one for Honchkrow. “Return.” A red light snakes out of the front of the ball, snatching up Honchkrow and depositing it inside of its confines. Darts tosses the Pokeball back inside his jacket pocket, his opposite hand reaching into the other pocket for his thermos of coffee. He had forgotten to account for the bulk his new accoutrements possessed, and he really owed Honchkrow an apology, but he was on a schedule. “So.” Darts says out loud, opening and taking a drink from his thermos, the cap clicking as he screws it back on. “This is Blackthorn City.” A messy nest of old buildings under the shadow of the Dragon’s Den, Blackthorn had the look of a big city mixed with the feeling of an Edo-era Japanese town. Figuring he’d be able to get a better look at the city if he was standing, Darts gets to his feet and brushes himself off with one hand, the other still tilted back towards his face as he suckles at his caffeine drip. The coffee was mostly to counteract the constant toothache-like longing that plagued Darts whenever he was awake, from sunrise to sunset as Dialga and Palkia’s ancient ban against Giratina that originally banished it to the Distortion World identified him as an intrusive agent into the real world and attempted to remove him.

“Seems as though what they say is true.” Comes a voice from behind Darts suddenly. He turns, letting the coffee down from his mouth slowly as he does so, not sure if they were yelling at him for his outlandish appearance or something else entirely. An old man in a kimono is walking towards him, seemingly the source of the voice. “Interesting things follow Honchkrows that get blown into towns on a Sunday.” The old man’s voice is deep, and though he did not speak very loudly, every word that hit Darts’ ear was crystal clear.

“What?” Darts asks, not really catching what the old man was saying. He paused, taking another gulp of his coffee after answering now that he’s sure the danger has passed. “Me?” The old man reaches Darts and smiles. He’s an unassuming figure, clad in a plain brown kimono. He was clearly old beyond most people Darts knew, liver spots dotting the back of his neck and the sides, wrinkles crinkling his face like a wadded up piece of paper. His hair is grey, and balding slightly in the middle. The wisps of hair covering his bald spot wave a little along with his short, white beard as he nods, still smiling. His hands were folded into the sleeves of his kimono, and his piercing blue eyes swept Darts up and down. The Giratina hybrid had the distinct feeling the old man was peering into the depths of his soul. He hoped he wouldn’t be the cause of cardiac arrest because of it. The old man bows slightly to Darts, a smile curling the corners of his mouth in a light friendly manner as he does.

“It is an old saying.” The old man explains, again in that sonorously quiet voice that there was no mistaking, every word seemingly beamed into his ears in high definition sound. “When a Honchkrow flies into a city on a Sunday, it is said to be an omen of things to come.” He nods his head lightly, knowingly.

Darts glances the man up and down, half wondering if the old man was going to jump him for money or something. “An omen of what, exactly?”

“An omen of change.” The old man states simply, his hand reaching up to tweak at his beard slightly. “People said that a Honchkrow on a Sunday always brought tidings of change, though to what, or for what people could never quite be certain.”

“So what is the point of that saying then?” Darts asks, glibly. “There’s no way to tell whether or not something changed.”

The old man quirks his mouth slightly, more of a slight sneer than anything else. “Then you are a fool for thinking so, because would it not be wiser to affect change in your own life and stride forwards confidently answering the question rather than backing away from it like a coward to leave it unanswered?” Darts is silent for a moment, as the old man’s words sunk in.

“So you would advocate proactivity then?”

“Isn’t it almost always better to affect change than to be the one pushed about by change?” The old man returns. “Rare is the time when change affected upon you from the outside is the change that you hoped would occur. Better to work towards that what you want to happen, than to sit and stagnate hoping that luck will get you where you need to be.” The old man bows slightly again, polite as he does so. “But you will have to forgive an old man his manners. When you get to be my age, such pleasantries sometimes fall by the wayside. Most people around here haven’t used my real name in a long time. Many people call me Teacher. Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”


“Uh…” Darts was still taken aback slightly by this old man’s demeanor. In his new body, Darts only had rudimentary knowledge of its instincts, but the feeling all of a sudden he was getting from this guy was nuts. Even though he knew in his head that it was just some old man that he would have no problem fighting, deep in his guts Darts knew that this geezer was something more than that. Darts had never had an inferiority complex in his life, usually the reverse, but next to this unassuming old man he felt like a rookie boxer stepping into the ring for his first match ever fighting for the world title right off the bat against Muhammad Ali in his prime. “The name’s Darts.” He manages, thickly. Who was this guy?

“Seems like I’m not the only one to cast off my name in this day and age.” Teacher says, removing his hand from his beard to place it back in the sleeve of the kimono. “Darts, eh? What, shall we throw you at a dartboard?” Darts’ hand clenches and unclenches a little irritably as the old man chuckles at his own joke, his gold digits grasping at thin air.

“Wow, never thought I’d get that joke from two places.” The Giratina hybrid says with a sigh, taking a half step backwards in case the old man decided to attack him. This is crazy, he’s just some buzzard in a kimono. Why are you backing up from him?

Teacher’s eyes suddenly move from Darts’ face to over his right shoulder. “Oh? Then a lot of things in this world will surprise you, I’d imagine.” He bows, suddenly seemingly in a hurry to exit the conversation all of a sudden. “Well, you know, I must take my leave of you now…”

“What?” Darts asks, his head turning reflexively to look for whatever it was Teacher had seen. “What are you…?” But by the time the hybrid had swiveled his head to look and see a woman dressed in blue hurrying towards his location and back to finish his question, the old man and his enormous presence had vanished, seemingly into thin air. The gambler scratches the back of his golden crest perplexedly as the woman he had seen approaching finally reaches him, raising a finger at him accusatorily.

“You!” she spits, her outstretched digit a powder blue thanks to her glove. Even though her point found its mark directly in the middle of his forehead, Darts was still so bamboozled by the old man’s sudden exit that he had to turn around and make sure she wasn’t accidentally pointing at some other unseen figure.

“Me?” Darts asks, thunderstruck still at Teacher’s hasty retreat. “I seem to be a person of fair interest around these parts.” He looks the woman up and down. She seemed to be in her early thirties, with a mane of blue hair flowing behind her in imitation of the cape she was wearing. She did have nice legs though. “What’s a honeybee like you doing asking after dear old Dar-” His sentence is cut off as Clair has already sprung forwards like a Ninjask in flight, using those legs he had just been admiring a second ago to attempt to deliver a crescent kick straight in the middle of Darts’ face. He manages to duck in time to dodge her leg, spinning outwards and away from the direction of her first leg, only to come face to face with her other leg, as she’s shifted her balance onto her first kicking leg to try and deliver a more on-target kick with her other leg. Darts is forced to throw up his arms in an attempt to block this one, and the impact sends him staggering to the cobblestone street, the kick smashing into one of his forearms. He drops the thermos of coffee he had been holding, yelping like he had just been burned as he manages to catch it as it heads for the pavement. The woman lands after her jump kick and put both of her arms up again, clearly still in an offensive stance that had the business end pointed at Darts. The look on her face isn’t anger. Disappointment? Darts hated to disappoint. Finding it hard to believe a man getting spin kicked in front of the Pokemon Center wouldn’t draw a crowd, Darts glances back and forth, his crest shimmering in the sunlight, only to find there wasn’t a soul nearby. Now that he thought about it, things had gotten quiet almost as soon as he had arrived and been found by that Teacher…. Oh well, there was no time to dwell on that. “Can I interest you in a cup?” Darts quips suddenly, tossing the thermos forwards at her face and flipping to his feet in the same motion, his hands headed into the pockets of his sentient jacket for his kunai. Before he can even fully land on his feet to right himself for a throw, the woman has caught the thermos, rolled underneath him and put both legs into the air so that her feet catch him in the in the back, springboarding him from his flip face-first into the side of the Pokemon Center in one move. His crest makes a loud metallic sound as it impacts the side of the building and he slides down in a crumpled heap, his jacket moving slightly to try and comfort him.
“Ow… why…” He groggily gets to his knees and puts a hand to his crest to check the damage. Thank god he didn’t have an ordinarily hard head, or he might have been in trouble. Meanwhile, the woman was showing no signs of backing down, and the couple of kunai he went for originally were back where he started in the middle of the street. Darts knew to have a fighting chance against his mystery assailant he was going to have to find a way to get to them, he wasn’t a melee fighter by choice, or by ever if he could help it. He gets to his feet, shaking himself a little as he rises, cracking his neck to inspect his opposition more closely, now that he had to take her more seriously. Her moves were wearing him down, inch by inch, and though he had never tested his new body’s upper limits of stamina, she definitely had him beat in the skill department. Blue hair, check, long legs, check… But before he can get much further in his analysis, she leaps forwards to engage him again, and Darts puts up his dukes. He didn’t like hitting girls too much, but it didn’t seem like this one was going to give him a choice and if she wanted to scrap, he was going to scrap. The assailant pummels his guard with a flurry of lefts and rights, each punch feeling like it was going to crack his arms in half.

Grunting a little from exertion, Darts turns his back slowly, forcing the woman to turn with him as she continued raining blows down on his amateur street fight block. Darts’ opponent smirks a little, not even seeming winded as her offense continues. Her stance widens a little as she begins raining body punches into the hybrid’s lower rib cage and gut, her hands dexterously slipping underneath his crisscrossed forearms to inflict damage, all the while Darts continues to rotate slightly, his ribs feeling like a bruised mass of twisted neurons from the punishment it was receiving. He just had to hold out for a couple more seconds… Those couple seconds were going to be elusive to grasp, as Darts’ opponent twirls suddenly, those legs twining like a blue braid as her cape twists around her before snapping back up towards Darts’ guard like a heat-seeking missile after a Magmar colony. She intends to break my guard. He realizes, calmly. Well, if that’s what she wants… The Giratina hybrid completely drops his guard and pushes backwards with his foot, letting himself topple backwards and go limp. The woman’s kick finds its home, blasting Darts backwards with a firm foot to the chest and back into the ground, the hybrid grunting in pain as the stones in the ground scrape across the base of his jacket as he slides back onto the cobblestone path… and back next to his kunai. Groping behind him for his weapons, he nabs the blade of one with the ends of his fingers, and immediately takes aim at the one who had catapulted him. Maybe just the knee… Darts thinks, sending the kunai flying with a snap of his arm as he sits upright for even more momentum.
“That’s enough.” The calm voice from before was back in Darts’ ear again, even though Teacher was now next to where the hybrid had tried to plant the kunai, idly holding it by the blade with two fingers.

“I was wondering where you had went…” The gambler admits, rubbing his bruised ribs slightly. God they felt like a pound of meat tenderized for dinner on account of how hard the woman had been hitting him. He was no longer interested in fighting now that the old man was involved in this conversation, if you could call it a conversation considering half of it had been fighting. From the presence he had felt before, Darts was nowhere near this guy’s weight limit. The Giratina hybrid might have been opportunistic, but he wasn’t crazy. Anyhow, the girl had stopped attacking him anyway with the reappearance of the old man in a kimono, her jaw dropping open slightly.

“S-sensei?” The woman manages, mid bow as she lowers her head to the old man immediately upon recognizing who it was.

“Sensei?” Darts inquires as he gets up off the ground to brush off his jacket, using his gold hands to knock pebbles and other debris off of the sensory organ he called a coat. He picks up his kunai that were on the ground and put them back into his pockets as his red eyes flit between both faces to try and make sense of the situation. “I thought you said your name was Teacher.”

“How… dare…” The woman’s hands clench into fists as she keeps her head lowered, maintaining her bow but not her composure.

Teacher smiles, raising a hand that immediately stifles the woman’s protests. “Now, I did you no disservice there, Dartboard-san. I told you that many people called me Teacher. Only a few would dare call me their Sensei.” He turns towards the woman who was prostrate on the ground. “Now Claire, let’s just call that another lesson in why you should never underestimate your opponent, shall we?” He indicates the prone woman with a nod of his head, his tone suddenly stern. The hair, or whatever Darts had resembling follicles on the back of his new neck was standing up as the intense presence he had felt before and vanished was back as the old buzzard’s temper flared. “He is a slippery one, I will give you that, but in a body like that how could you underestimate him? I thought that the pair from New Bark Town a couple of years ago would have been sufficient proof that you needed to work on your threat analysis. I see that I was wrong, and so it is on me as a teacher to correct even these gaping gaps in analysis, even though he is a legendary hybrid and you are not. Furthermore, you never once went to your Pokemon, even knowing what you did about your opponent. You got careless, and overconfident. Your overconfidence reflects poorly on me as a teacher, and we will discuss your punishment later. Are we clear?” Claire, as she has been identified, is flinching slightly at every word coming from that calm sonorous voice, her head bowed still.

“Yes… sensei.” She growls grudgingly, accepting her tongue lashing silently.

“Hold on a second.” Darts interjects, attempting to get through talking with only the most minor of winces as his bruised ribs complain at him under his trench. Not that his forearms were doing too much better, they felt broken even as he hoisted a golden finger to accompany his interjection. “Did you say that her name was Claire? That wouldn’t happen to be Gym Leader Claire, would it?”

“It would.” With a swish of her azure hairdo, Claire rises finally and turns away from the jacketed rogue with her nose in the air, as if Darts were somehow offending her with his mere presence. “What business of that is yours?”

“Cool your jets, princess.” Darts chuckles, holding his hands up in front of himself, the gold glinting on his outstretched digits as he gestures. “I wasn’t talking to you, I was asking your Teacher there. Darts moves towards the old man, indicating him with a nod of his crest. He was going to avoid the potentially hostile factor in this conversation, Claire, and appeal to someone possibly neutral.

It had been snowing the day Darts had left Lumiose City, a fact that at the time had meant little, but to say Darts had had his fill of snow by now, that would be understating it. The damned weather had buffeted him his entire journey towards Johto, and it showed no signs of slowing down as he had gone farther north.

He had started this expedition by flying to Blackthorn, which was currently shin-deep in the stuff. The message had explicitly warned him about trying to fly directly to his destination which meant he had to walk from Blackthorn out towards the mountain range containing Mt. Silver. “Return, Honchkrow.” Darts murmurs as he slides the Pokeball back into his jacket after recalling the (grateful to be out of the snow) mobster bird that had carried him there. He shoulders the backpack he had packed in HQ before setting off with a grimace. The snow was eating at him more than it ever had before, back when he had been human. It wasn’t as though he had liked snow when he was human, just now it was a little more potent. As the little flecks fell from the sky they burnt where they touched against his face and jacket, as well as the piled up stuff around his legs. Must be the weakness… Darts considers as he crunches his way through the tundra, snow spraying left and right with every thrust of his legs, the gambler obstinately ignoring the pain. Compared to Blackthorn City back when he had come here during the summer, during the winter the place may as well have been abandoned as well as buried in snow, as there was no one in sight. Even the gym’s lights were off, he noted as he passed the building, following the basic instructions Teacher had left to him the last time they had met. A few months had passed since then, but the Giratina hybrid was pretty confident in his memory as to where the old man had said to go. According to him, there was a path that was always well kept in the woods to the rear of the Pokemon Gym. Following that was supposed to bring him to a checkpoint of some kind in the face of the mountain range, where they identified anyone trying to enter the grove. Sure enough, a few minutes of walking later, just as Darts had begun to be convinced he must have misheard the Elder, a trail began that he could see winding out over the hills in front of him before he actually came to it. A clear-cut trail ran through the snow in front of him as if by magic, the snow lightly melting as it touched what should have been, at least to Darts’ eyes, nondescript ground. But in out just in front of his feet, a trail started marked by nothing he could see but something he could sense in his gut, of the same like that had emanated from that old man four months ago. Two ribbons of power outlined the two edges out ahead of him with draconic energy, tracing a path that alongside snow piled up, forming odd perfectly square edges on either side stretching far off across the hills. It was going to be a walk, for sure.

But Darts had come prepared for travel, expecting a journey of at least something of this length and he set off. This was clearly the path Teacher had expected him to find, the old man had probably made the road back when the earth was first hewn anew. Nah, he’s not that old. Along either side of him, outside the boundaries of the trail, Pokemon of all types and species wandered past seeming to take great care never to set a single paw or foot on the draconic energies. A pack of wild Rapidash wandered past, the younger Ponyta sniffling towards the gambler in an interested fashion before trotting back to their original herd to gallop off over a hill in the distance. Misdreavus would also float past, giggling in their oddly female voices while Ursaring and Teddiursa stalked the trees that would show up sporadically, using their talons to climb in search of Combee honey. For the most part the wild Pokemon ignored him, Darts ignored them in turn, and for a while it looked like the journey was going to be pretty easy-going as the road itself appeared to shelter him on either side from the worst of the snow in addition to the Pokemon. But as time progressed the storm got worse and worse it seemed, the wind picking up in intensity and the snow with it. He was glad for the shelter of the road, because if indicating anything by the torrential blizzard turned ice storm, as enormous chunks of what appeared to be pure frozen death to the gambler now blew past either side of the road, a hybrid could catch his death of cold out there. This was Freth and Blizz’s home country, Darts was positive. Sure am glad I’m not out there. When I get back to headquarters, remind me to ask those two how they ever withstood these winters. Although I do suppose it would explain their warm and friendly personalities. Hey, what’s that out ahead of me?

Lying out in front of Darts, there was a sheer cliff face that caused the road to screech to a sudden halt and bend at a ninety degree angle, clearly marked by the road curving at a lazy, easy to follow arc. That wasn’t what had grabbed the Giratina hybrid’s attention. Off the right hand side of the path, Darts could just barely make out a figure struggling through the storm, stooped and struggling against the torrential storm out away from where the path was. Whoever it was, they were clearly going to be in some kind of trouble as several Weavile were clearly stalking the poor woman, or at least Darts assumed it was a woman from the length of her hair, as she struggled against the wind. His fist clenches a little as he sees the predators approach, their scythes on their hands glinting slightly even through the snow. She didn’t see them at all, not at all, too distracted by the ice she was attempting to press forwards through. It’s days like these I wish I had as little of a conscience as people seem to think I have. He groans inwardly, before taking a running start into the storm, his jacket flapping dramatically as he dives forwards off the path, almost immediately thrown off balance by the first sledgehammer-like burst of wind once he was free of the weather-dampening effect. Cold was his first impression, along with his second and third. It had to be at least fifty to sixty below out here, and his entire body from the top of his crest to the tips of his jacket was screaming in protest at the furious burst of snow that accompanied the wind. Shards of ice pummeled every inch of him, but with limited time to react he was forced to try and make a move immediately, his hand going for a Pokeball inside his coat pocket. The biggest and clearly alpha male of the Weavile pack clashes its talons together, signaling their chance to pounce on the woman, who had stopped just ahead of them. Probably from exhaustion. Not going to take a chance, I have to make a move here. “Go, Gengar!” Whip-like, his hand slings forth from inside his jacket pocket to hurl a singular Pokeball out into the air. It cracks open to emit his Gengar, who is almost immediately forced down to the ground due to the wind.

“Gar! Gengar!” The ghost-type complains, sticking its tongue out at its trainer in protest as it hangs onto a nearby tree stump in order to avoid flying backwards. Its stumpy legs flail out behind it comically, as Darts shrugs a little apologetically as he struggles to stay upright himself.

“Sorry Gengar, it’s not exactly the best time for me either! Can you at least manage a Shadow Ball?!”
Darts yells, having to practically scream to be heard over the storm. This tactically manages to allow the Weaviles to miss hearing Darts call out his Gengar. It also, less so, had the secondary effect of rendering Gengar completely unable to hear him as well. After mishearing Darts yell something that sounded an awful lot like ‘Taunt them all!’, Gengar immediately springs into the air and shoots forwards, clearly only pretending to be affected by the wind at all as it pops up in-between all three of the scythed hunters, immediately blowing a wet raspberry as it flapped its tongue obnoxiously towards each of them in turn. Not exactly what I wanted, Gengar… Darts bemoans, doing his best to circle the outer perimeter of the now three-on-one battle as the Weaviles circled his Gengar, clearly not pleased that someone had come along and decided to interfere with such an easy kill. He was trying to make his way past the pack of Sharp Claw Pokemon and over to the woman they had been chasing, gritting whatever he had left for teeth underneath his crest as every frostbitten step filled his entire body with pain. No time to pass out here, gotta at least keep my composure for long enough to get her back onto the path… A sharp clang, audible over the storm returns his focus to his Gengar again a second later, as two of the Weaviles tangle together with claws crossed, his ghost cackling as it floats above them. The two smaller Pokemon had clashed as they had both simultaneously tried to use a Night Slash and been foiled moments later as Gengar had merely floated upwards causing the two to slam into each other. They now bickered and rolled around on the ground, each snarling at the other to get off because they saw it first. The older and bigger Weavile, however, hadn’t been so stupid as to fall for the trickster’s provocation so easily. It had been Taunted, true, but rather than rushing in like the two young’uns it had decided to spin a ball of dark energy in between its talons in order to toss a malicious Dark Pulse expertly into the air, homing in on the gloating and floating ghost as it grandstanded above the two fighters. The dark energy impacts Gengar directly in its side, an explosion occurring at the point of contact that sends Gengar sprawling across the ground with its eyes wide in surprise and pain at the Super-Effective strike. The ghost-type skips across the frozen ground like a hockey-puck, propelled by the impact from the attack. Darts figured he needed to do something defensive, to buy the Ghost-type some breathing toom. “Gengar, use Double-Team!” he shouts, desperation clear in his voice as he turns back towards the prone woman just up ahead of him.

Now, if you’ll remember from a second ago, it was pretty hard to hear in the middle of this torrential blizzard. And Double-Team does sound an awful lot like Hyper Beam if you think about it. Darts’ Gengar interprets the call as it heard it, opening its maw to begin charging a massive glowing globe of energy, expelling the blast in an instant outwards from its mouth, the beam smashing the Weavile like a freight-train to the forehead that sends it one-way into the ground. The ghost’s eyes roll back into its head as it lolls back on the ground, exhausted as it needed to recharge. The high-impact move had given our fearless hero the time he needed to reach the damsel in… distress? As he had moved closer to the prone woman he observed that it seemed as though she was protected by a barrier of her own, a zone that held off the harsh winter weather. She was bent prone not from exhaustion, but to kneel and pick up a Pokeball that had been dropped into the snow.

“Clumsy me, clumsy me…” The woman sighed out loud. “Always dropping things, that’s me. Such a shame isn’t it, Altaria?” As the woman called attention to it and as Darts struggled closer, the presence of the Pokemon that he hadn’t sensed before made itself known, an Altaria snuggling close to it’s trainers chest, very clearly the source of the barrier. He couldn’t tell if it was Safeguard or a well controlled Heat Wave, but it was keeping the precipitation far away from the woman, as she slips the Pokeball she picked up into a satchel at her side. She finally sees Darts struggling towards her, and immediately gasps in concern, signaling to her Altaria frantically. The Pokemon expands the barrier with a squawk of urgency. This earns him a grunt of appreciation from Darts who falls eagerly to the ground, his body pins and needles from the flurry of ice he had just had to endure.

“Just… coming to see if… you were alright, is all…” He gets out between dry heaves, lying facedown.

“All by yourself?” The woman twitters, putting a hand to her mouth in concern. “And without a Pokemon to help control the weather? How foolish.” Ouch. “But also very brave.” That’s… good? She was an odd one upon closer examination now that he was in a patch of reasonably clear viewing. An older woman in her mid to late fifties, she had a long untamed mane of dark grey hair that swept down and around the back of her head. She was ornately decorated around her arms and neck with long curving bones of some kind, possibly teeth, that complimented her odd brown tribal dress, woven and laced with ribbons. A clatter outside of the calm area brings Darts to his senses and he sits up, gaping in the direction of the noise. As far as he could make out through the storm, it seemed as though the Hyper Beam had KO’d the bigger of the three Weaviles on contact, and it was lying face-down in the snow. The other two Pokemon of the gang remaining had gotten over their initial squabbles and elected to share in light of the Gengar lying on the ground while it recharged its energy, both of them looming over the prone Pokemon with sharp as midnight Night Slashes primed. “Altaria!” the woman cries, clearly looking at the same situation as Darts. “Save that Gengar with your Featherdance!” Altaria swoops away from Darts and the woman, taking the protective weather field with it. Darts grunts in pain as the ice storm hits him full on again along with the woman who grits her teeth but otherwise seems unaffected by the barrage of this relentless winter. Tough old biddy… Darts admits to himself as the Dragon-type swoops over his prone Pokemon with a deposit of shimmering mystical feathers, the Featherdance blunted the majority of the damage from the twin Night Slashes as it hardened over the Ghost’s skin like a shimmering chain mail. Both of the Weavile’s claws smash off the face of it ineffectively, as the Altaria plunges down to attack, its neck craning out above its snowy plume like a Staraptor ready to strike as it opens its beak and unloads a scorching Heat Wave right in between the two attacking Pokemon, sending them scuttling backwards in fear and pain as their meal ticket suddenly got a whole harder to cash. They knew from experience tangling with Dragon-types in these parts was a good way to end a meal with a coffin, and the pair of them took off running after the burst of heat had scorched their sides.

A few hectic moments of Darts scrambling for the road later, and he sighs in relief as he makes it back to the path, slumping face-down once again in his exhaustion, his Gengar flopping down next to him in a similar state as its trainer. “Never again…” he vows, closing one hand solemnly. “I had no idea snow storms were going to be so dangerous in this body…”

“Gar, Gengar.” The Pokemon agrees.

“Why wouldn’t you have just used one of your Pokemon?” The woman asks, calmly stepping onto the road with her Altaria settled back in on her shoulder, its downy wings wrapped around her neck again. “There was no need to dive in so quickly, those Weavile didn’t even pose a threat to me. Though it was a very thoughtful gesture…”

“It was a little harder to see from the road…” Darts grumbles, rifling for his Pokeball to return Gengar. He does, and stores the pocket monster containment device back in the inside pocket of his jacket. The gambler composes himself for a moment and then gets to his feet, grunting a little in pain, though now that he was back out of the storm it all seemed to be superficial. His jacket waves feebly in happiness as he examines himself to make sure nothing was damaged. “You’ll forgive me for being concerned about your well being. Why were you out there anyhow?”

She looks embarrassed for the first time then. “I dropped one of my Pokeballs, actually. I’m quite clumsy, to be honest, and I had one of them roll right out of my satchel and off of the path. Of course, with my Altaria I had nothing to fear in going out to get it.”

A pair of thoughts hit him at one time. The first one was related to his immediate supply of coffee. He feels his shoulders and on his back in disbelief. His bag. The one that had all of that coffee in it was gone, it must have fallen off in all of the hubbub surrounding the snowstorm off of the path. He was glad that he had fueled up on coffee a bit ago, it would keep the voices of the Distortion World at bay for a bit, but other than that Darts could have cried. Then the second thought hits him. “Would you happen to be headed to the end of this path as well?”

The woman laughs, a musical tone as she puts one hand up to her mouth. “Oh, do forgive me. Yes, I do believe we are walking the same path. My name is Drasna, who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

Drasna, huh? Darts had never heard of her, but he was keen on anyone that shared the same first letter as his name. It was an oddity of his. “The name’s Darts.” He says, extending his hand for a shake. “Try and ignore the gaudy jewelry, it’s a new addition.”

Drasna laughs again, and returns the handshake daintily. “Oh, I can tell, Darts was it?” She admits, letting go of his hand after a brief shake and then turns back towards the path. “If we are heading to the same place, why not travel together? I could use a spry dearie such as you to help poor me along this dangerous trail.”

“Sure, why not?” The hybrid looks down the path, seeing it wind a ways out in front of them. “Having company is never bad, especially when that company can block the frigid outdoors.” He eyes the Altaria perched near her neck as the two of them begin walking, the Pokemon preening itself as it hangs on easily, its talons twined in Drasna’s woven dress. “How long have you had that Altaria?” he asks, curiously. “You two have some kind of uncanny bond.”

“Is that some kind of way of not-so-rudely asking me my age, Alty?” Drasna asks her Pokemon out loud, chuckling a little as Darts’ eyes wince a little in embarrassment. “She was my first Pokemon, and we’ve been together a long time. It’s a bond that you develop over time as you spend time with your Pokemon and face the rigors of the world together.” She turns to examine Darts’ face closely as they continue on. “You seem shocked. Do you not share a similar bond with your Pokemon?”

Well, if Darts had to admit it he hadn’t had all of his Pokemon for that long. His Honchkrow was his one true confidant this whole time, and he had been in the company of the bird from his first days on the streets of Sootopolis. But other than that, his band of Pokemon had been mostly recent acquisitions. He had caught his Goomy outside in the wilds of Kalos back during his adventures with Snagem, and his Dragalge had been snagged on another such endeavor. Even his Gengar was pretty new, having been caught during his various comings-and-goings involving his original destination. “One.” He says, after a moment of introspection.

“One? One is not nearly enough dear.” Drasna says, smiling faintly. “But I think that if you really put your all into it, you will bond with all of them in time. In fact I know so.” The shaman-esque woman looks around at the outer edges of the trail again. The snow was clearing up, and things appeared to be calming down for the moment. “It is a good thing we came through during the snow storm.” She notes. “The wild Dragon-types in this area have little love for people trespassing through their territories. It is only the fierce blizzards that provide a safe opening for people to travel this direction. On other days this landscape will be riven by horrendous earth quakes and the next day be drowned in torrential floods, it’s always a mixed bag.” She lets out a little note of happiness as she points out ahead along the path. “There’s the gate station there.” Up ahead of the pair of them, the clear area wound forwards until it hit what appeared to be the base of the mountain chain that included Mt. Silver, at a nondescript part of the bottom of the immense peaks. Embedded in the very side of the mountain was an impressive looking steel door. Winding about the edges, long Gyarados carvings hewn from the rock around the edge of the doorframe accented the outsides of the portal, providing a bit of pomp and circumstance to an otherwise undecorated entryway. The two of them hurry onwards with their goal in sight, Drasna beating Darts to the door and opening it first, with the gambler slipping in behind her.

Darts blinks his eyes at the sudden intrusion of fluorescent light versus natural once inside. It appeared as though the door blocked the beginning of a tunnel that bore straight through the bottom of the mountains, but it was lit by large sections of fluorescent tubes hanging from fixtures in the ceiling. At the gambler’s feet a bright red ornate carpet stretched forwards from the very edge of the entryway he had just walked through, down past what looked like a reception desk and all the way across to another metal door at the opposite end of the tunnel. Reception desk? Darts thinks to himself, slightly thrown for a loop. Not only that, from the second he had gotten into the tunnel, the temperature had definitely gone up. If outside on the path it was about thirty degrees, in here it was about forty to fifty. Might be geothermal heating… he considers, following Drasna forwards and down the carpet towards the desk. Seated behind the desk is a very bored-looking constable with a magazine, flipping the pages idly. Judging by his dress and the symbols on his chest, Darts took him to be of the same manner of official as the ones that block the paths on the various Victory Roads across the regions. He was nondescript, normal height, black hair, clad in the uniform of the official police of the Elite Four Commission. Everybody knew that the constables who were tasked with weeding out the trainers without eight badges took their job very seriously, but what was one doing out here? The hybrid fervently hoped that when Teacher had said ‘return to normal life’ he hadn’t excluded some kind of stipulation about also going out to win eight badges in the meantime. Drasna moves forwards to the desk and clears her throat politely, immediately causing the guard to set his magazine down. And for his jaw to slacken and eyes to widen in surprise as soon as he took in the woman standing in front of him.

“M-mistress Drasna…” He stutters, getting to his feet and bowing deeply. “It’s been such a long time, it’s an honor…”

“Mistress?” Darts asks out loud, quizzically quirking where his eyebrow should have been.

“An official title, dearie.” Drasna says cheerfully, waving his question aside. The guard turns his attention to Darts, his expression changing from one of deep surprise to one of suspicion.

“And who’s this one, then?” he asks, looking the Giratina hybrid up and down as if studying him for eight badges. The hybrid was slightly unnerved.

“He’s a nice young man who happened to stop and help a fellow traveler in her time of need.” Drasna giggles, her Altaria shifting a bit as she turns to nod at Darts. “It’s hard to find nice young men like these in this day and age, and if anything he matches the description the Elder sent me, I’m pretty sure he’s here for the enrollment, the old man’s taking him on as a student.”

“This is Teacher’s new student?” The guard asks incredulously, as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world. “I sure am glad he came in with you mistress, or I would have shown him the door for sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Darts asks, stung a little that he looked so unfit even to this guard settled behind a desk. He turns his gaze to Drasna then, a little bit of understanding starting to creep in to the situation. “You know Teacher too?”

Drasna lets out another snort of laughter then, as the guard bristles at Darts’ unceremonious question. “Of course she knows the Elder of the Dragon Clan, you dope. And I’d keep a civil tongue in your head while you’re around her, I would think that a probate member such as yourself and a member in society in general would show a little more respect to a member of Kalos’ Elite Four.” Whoa, that was news to this Giratina hybrid. Wide-eyed, he asked,

“Elite Four?”

“Titles, titles.” Drasna says, trying to wave away the fuss between the three of them as she wipes a tear from her eye, from laughing too hard. “Ronnie, he’s with me, I promise that he’ll be a respectable gentleman. He’s a good lad.”

‘Ronnie’, as was apparently the guard’s name, gives Darts another once-over, and judging from his face it looked like Darts had apparently fallen short of the mark around ‘Cascade Badge’. “As you will, Mistress Drasna, I’m not a fan of letting such a street ruffian in here but I will take your word for it. Both of you may proceed.” He sits back down behind the desk, waving them forwards. Darts notices the guard shooting him an ugly glare from the over the top of his magazine, as he follows Drasna forwards and up to the iron door at the end of the passage.

“Elite Four?” Is all he manages again, looking her up and down as if he had missed something. “I should have known from the talon sandals…” Drasna lets out a small laugh again, as though he had just said something very funny without knowing it again.

“It’s quite refreshing to meet someone so forthcoming.” She says, her smile planted on her face. “Yes, it’s true; I am one of the Kalos Elite Four. But like I said before, that’s just an outsider title. Here in the Sanctuary, that means nothing. Goodness, it’s been quite a while since we’ve had someone new come into this place. And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I don’t think we’ve ever had anything quite like you here.”

“They don’t call me one-of-a-kind for nothing.” The hybrid quips back, a grin firmly in place on his face as well.

“Oh, I’m sure of it. But I should tell you to watch your manners in here, dearie. The old ways of politeness and custom can seem… a bit extreme to someone not used to it.” She warns, before opening the metal door with an easy pull, her arms not struggling at all with the metal obstacle. As soon as she opened the door, Darts immediately felt a warm wind rush past his face and over his body, strong and clear and all he could think was that before him stretched paradise. A verdant green grass, the kind that only grows in warm climes with just the perfect amount of rain to keep it dewy softened his first step forwards into what looked like a warm summer night, the moon sparkling overhead to illuminate the scene below it. Drasna and Darts step forwards into the warm air, as the hybrid marvels at the view of the sky, a full moon ringed by mountains, as the little inlet they were in were circled by some of the highest peaks of the Mt. Silver mountain range. Down below the two of them, as they walked forwards to leave the door to clang shut, a small town stretched before them, built in the olden styles of architecture, similar to Azalea or Celestic in terms of age. Made of bamboo, with high sloping roofs stood at least a half dozen houses and other buildings. Some were closed for the night, while others clearly held sleeping occupants. Looming high over the rest of the buildings was a singular enormous building, clearly placed in position of prominence. Seeing as it was night, no one roamed the streets at the moment, but there were clear signs of work of some kind getting done tomorrow, as tools and odd jobs lay abandoned for the moment. A water wheel clacked gently in the small river that rent the little town in two, a pair of stone bridges arched to connect the two halves into one whole.

“What is this place?” Darts asks, taken aback by the ten second shift from siberian winter to the middle of summer in the Garden of Arceus.

“This is the Mymay Sanctuary.” Drasna answers as she follows him in, her Altaria bobbing its head with each step. Her voice seemed a little hushed and solemn against the quiet night they had just invaded. “The cradle of the greatest Dragon trainers ever to have lived. Every single one of the most famous and influential Dragon-type Pokemon trainers, myself included, has spent countless hours in or in the yard of that big building down on the end. That is the Mymay Dojo.” She sniffs the air a little, seeming nostalgic about the place. “It has been a long time since I have last been here. I only recently got the summons, and I was most publicly available. It should be interesting to see how long it takes for the rest of them to get here.”

“The rest of who?” Darts asks, perplexed.

“The rest of the Dragon Clan, of course.” Drasna answers, mildly. “It has been nearly thirty-three years since anyone has been allotted to join, but once they have been officially asked, all the other members of the clan near and far must return to the Sanctuary to vote on membership for the chosen individual. In this case, that would be you.”

“Me? I didn’t know it was that big of a deal.” Darts says, dumbstruck.

“Then you should get used to the idea. While here, you will train under the tutelage of the Elder. He will be attempting, no doubt, to get you polished up to making a run at membership, the same as Claire. The other members will come back, and depending on your standing in rank in relation to them, some of them will help you with your journey. And yet others will be unable, or unwilling until you rise some in rank.” The Elite Four member looks at him sadly. “I will, unfortunately, be in that position once we are in the confines of the Dojo. Technically speaking, right now you are not even in the Clan at all. You are an outsider, and until you are officially ‘sworn in’ so to speak as a Welcomed Visitor, you hold no status at all.”

“So that’s what the old man meant about ‘low man on the totem pole’…” Darts muses out loud, scratching his chin.

“I doubt those were his exact words.” Drasna says, a small smile showing up again on her face. “But yes. Once you have achieved that status, a step up above that would be Probationary Member, which would at least get your foot in the door.”

“And probably finally earn you the right to talk to someone with as high of standing as the great Drasna of the Elite Four.” Comes a third voice, interjected in a familiar sort of fashion. Where have I heard that annoying shrill voice before…? Claire had apparently snuck up on the two of them, sensing Darts and Drasna’s presence as soon as they had come into the grove. “Aunt Drasna, how are you?” she asks, the same look on her face that she had as when she was addressing the elder. All respect.

“Oh I’m well.” The priestess lightly steps forwards to embrace the Gym-Leader in front of her, her bones clacking lightly as she does so, before stepping back to point out Darts. “I had dropped a Pokeball off the road, and this nice young man saved me from certain destruction by a pack of Weavile.”

“Uh huh.” Claire sniffs, clearly not fooled by Drasna’s over-exaggerations as she’s forced to acknowledge the gambler’s presence. “I see you made it.” She hadn’t seemed to change much since the last time they had crossed paths a couple of months ago. She was still wearing the blue outfit with the black and blue cape she seemed to fancy so much, but the hybrid knew it still paled in comparison to his jacket.

“Claire darling, lovely to see you too.” Darts says, really ramping up the sarcastic tone in his voice as he does so. “It’s been so long, broken anybody’s ribs in the time we’ve been apart?”

“Oh, no.” Claire spits, venom in her voice now as she regards Darts with a contemptuous look that seemed to have been reserved for the worst war criminals in history, the last person that had stood her up, and Darts. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to break a few real soon though.” Her demeanor changes in an instant as she turns back to Drasna. “I really hope he hasn’t inconvenienced you at all auntie…”

Just like the old man… I guess she really is his granddaughter.

“Well I’m just glad that no other harm befell you on your travels.” Comes a voice into the conversation, seemingly beamed directly into Darts’ brain. There was no mistaking that light, quiet, yet crystal clear tone. All of a sudden, it seemed Teacher was directly next to Darts, his light wispy manes of white hair illuminated in a ghostly fashion from the full moonlight flowing down on top of him. His hands are tucked into the opposite sleeves in his kimono, obscuring them from sight, and he has a light, amused smile on his face as he regards both Drasna and the man he had called here to be his pupil. “Dartboard-san, how are you? I trust you kept your head down these last couple of months?”

“Oh you know me, Teacher. I’m a man who keeps a low profile.” He lies, hoping all that business with Team Snagem being rebellious terrorist outside influencing factions would fall by the wayside.

“Oh I’m all too aware of your profile, my young pupil.” Teacher says confidently, smiling down at Darts despite being shorter. “So, Drasna,” He redirects his attention back to the older woman again. “Tell me you saved room for supper, there’s nothing like capping off a long journey with a filling meal.” He offers his arm, intending to lead her towards the dinner table like a true gentleman.

“Oh I could hardly bear the wait on the way here…” Drasna giggles, returning her Altaria before taking hold of Teacher’s proffered arm as they both move together towards the Dojo.

“There’s supper?” Darts asks, noting a pang of hunger for the first time in forever. Hm. Odd. Normally he never thought about food, but the walk here had famished him. Also the fact he had no coffee was wearing thin on him, and the Distortion World headache had been steadily coming back.

“There’s supper for us, in the dining room.” Claire snickers, following after the arm-linked couple with her cape flowing behind her elegantly as she went. “But not for you, you’re not a member of the clan yet. You get to eat on the porch, like a good doggie.”

“What?” Darts asks, incredulously, as he follows the group towards the dojo. They pass through the gate and into an open courtyard build around the building, filled with dumbbells and weights and various other devices that looked like they were used for training Dragon-type Pokemon of various varieties. Teacher and Drasna disengaged from each other, the old man sliding aside the door of the Dojo to allow the train of people to enter what looked like, for lack of a better description, a porch area with a few tables and chairs scattered about. Screens covered the open windows, allowing a light breeze to blow through the area and further enhance the feeling it was a glorified sitting area. Lanterns flickered with that same breeze, lighting the area only slightly. The door further ahead, that Teacher reached and then opened with a twist of the handle was gilded red and gold, with a Dragonite crest embossed on the middle of the door that shone in the light of the lanterns as it turned. More Gyarados, similar in design to those that had surrounded the door outside in the rock face, wound around this door, artificially crafted in gold statuette form, reflecting back Teacher’s reflection as he turned back to look at the Giratina hybrid.

“I am afraid, Dartboard-san, that though she, barely a Probationary Member herself, should have better graces than to needle a guest who comes into her house…” The old master says, shooting a slight disapproving glance at Claire, which causes the Gym Leader to look sheepish for a slight moment. “…she is technically correct, as you have not been recognized yet by the clan as a Welcome Visitor. No one not at least recognized by the clan can pass through this door and into the Dojo.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Darts says, flatly, clenching one of his golden hands in agitation. “I have to stay out here?”

“I wish it were a joke Darts.” Teacher says, apologetically. “But it is tradition. Someone will bring you out a share of food, worry not.”

Drasna smiles sadly at the gambler, as she brushes a small lock of hair out of her eyes in a distracted, agitated manner. “Remember what I told you, Darts. Harsh to the outsider.”

“Harsh to the outsider.” Darts mutters, stung by the offense as even he had some pride in being able to eat inside. “No chance of some coffee out here, is there?” That headache was pounding at the front of his crest.

“No liquid crutch anywhere in sight.” Teacher says, his tone slightly stern as though daring him to argue it. “Nor the entire time you remain here.”

“Can’t say I didn’t expect as much.” The hybrid returns, once again lamenting the coffee lost in the storm. “Fine. Enjoy dinner, everyone. I’m going to… relax out here.” He paces over to one of the chairs and settles down, looking out into space as the trio head inside, after a brief shrug at Darts’ sudden change in attitude, through the gold and red door. It shuts with a final-sounding ‘clack’, and the gambler leans back, the cries of the Distortion World beating at the back of his head as he tries to not let his anger get the best of him as he relaxes on the…. Porch.

Come back to me… Come back to here… You cry out without me… You don’t belong there… You don’t belong in that world…

And he had thought “couldn’t be any worse” before he started this journey, huh?

--

This is an honor…? The old man had been trying to tell him something without really telling him it, it seemed. Darts and Ronnie set off just after that, the hybrid following behind the guard to avoid his analyzing eye. They don’t share a word, the guard focused on his job as they approach the door to the gatehouse, wrought in identical fashion as the one on the outside. Ronnie tugs it open to allow in the fluorescent-lit tunnel, Darts nodding to him slightly in thanks before proceeding inside. Leaning as though they had been waiting, but standing straight up now at the sight of him, was a group of unmistakably Pokemon Rangers, their hips heavy with the weight of their Capture Stylers swinging in their holsters. Two male, one female, the obvious commander of the three steps forwards to address Darts as he approaches. He was blonde, with military-cut hair and a jagged electric yellow beard. He had a set of scars on his cheek from some run-in with a wild Pokemon or something, and they moved as he grinned at the hybrid.

“You the one the Clan sent?” he asks, his tone gruff and rocky like the mountain they were in the middle of. “Name’s Commander Aaron, this here’s Slim, and that’s Cupid.”

“Yo.” The second male of the Rangers raises his hand, indicating himself to be Slim, and the description fit him as he was a skinny whip of a man, but he didn’t look puny, and he held himself with confidence, a wispy brown goatee his only facial hair.

“Hiya!” the girl chirrups, thankfully free of facial hair, but her hair was a vivacious pink and it splayed over the top of her blue headband that very clearly read ‘cupid’ in bright pink letters. All three were garbed in the standard black and red uniforms of the Pokemon Rangers, and all three of them surprisingly took his being a hybrid in stride. Seemed as though they were as worried about offending the Clan as Darts was offending them.

“Yeah, the name’s Darts.” The corresponding hybrid sticks a thumb out towards himself. “What exactly is it we’re dealing with here?”

“Straight to the point, I like that. I like the nickname too, I’m terrible with names.” Aaron chuckles, thumping his chest a couple times. “Well, me and my unit were patrolling this area for the last couple of hours, using our Stylers to subdue and keep the peace around these parts, keeping the Dragons away from towns and such. We were just on our way back to base when we got attacked by a Haxorus, smashing our jeep to pieces and almost taking Slim’s arm with it.”

“I got lucky…” Slim says, waggling the fingers on his right arm. Now that Darts could see it, there was a nasty cut up near the shoulder area of that same arm, it had been properly bandaged since it had occurred, but the dressings were still stained crimson from the severity of the wound.

“We crawled to this tunnel, being familiar with the area and all, and took shelter here. We know Ronnie, stop in to chat and such when we come by, and we knew the door was sturdy enough to hold out the Dragon, so we figured we were safe enough, which we were.” Aaron pauses, and Darts knew there was something else.

“And…?”

“ And, with Slim not at full capacity, even without our jeep, it would be no problem for myself and Cupid to make our way back to base and come back for him later, they would take care of him in the village and all, we know the Clan would probably allow it too. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that Cupid, Slim and I got separated from our Partners, which severely limit our offensive capability, and on top of that, the Haxorus hasn’t left. I went out to scout if the coast was clear and all I got for my troubles was nearly six feet of mad Dragon rushing towards me like a hell-beast.” Aaron grumbles a little. “The Clan’d take in an injured man until we could get him out, but there’s no way they would let a whole contingent of Rangers stay in the Village, so at that point our options were limited to waiting in this tunnel until the Haxorus supposedly left, and take our chances. Which to be frank, I’m not comfortable with. Or,” And here he moves towards Darts and wraps an arm around him. “We ask the Clan for help, and we take care of this Haxorus now before it becomes a problem.”

“Okay…” Darts says, as Aaron leads him down the tunnel and towards the door. “What about the blizzards? Shouldn’t that eventually drive the Haxorus off?”

“Blizzards?” Aaron asks, as if he were stupid. “The weather in this place is so impermanent that you may as well never count on seeing a blizzard again, as soon as guess when the next one’s going to be. No, today the weather is flash floods, and that’s why when they offered the services of an apprentice or whatever it is you are, I agreed, because all we need is someone who has Pokemon who can do something.”

“Charmed you’re so confident in me.” Darts says testily, spinning to look back at the three of them. Ronnie had come inside to take his post back up at the desk, so that made four. “What is it you’re proposing?”

“The ground’s flooded. All you have to do is battle the Haxorus and get it to slip in the muddy, flooded ground, and myself and Cupid should have enough time to use the Stylers to pacify it. You don’t have to beat it, just get it to fall down.” Aaron hoists his Styler for evidence, Cupid imitating him. “Problem solved, we get a high-rank capture, and you get to keep the balance of the Dragon-type or whatever.”

“Alright.” So the old man probably had sensed the Haxorus, and sent Darts to test his trainer mettle against it. “Do we go out on three?” he asks, cracking his knuckles.

“We?” Aaron laughs, shaking his head. “No no, we wait in the tunnel until you yell that it’s down near the door, and then we’ll spring into action. No sense in putting everyone in the line of danger.”

“Fine…” Darts thought he finally understood why the old man had sounded so bitter earlier. “I’m going out to take care of this now then.” He said, hoping it was a good deal more confident sounding than what he felt. He didn’t have either of his heavy hitters in Honchkrow or Gengar. Goomy was a fine Pokemon, but still on the lower-end of things, and he had been avoiding using his Dragalge as, on account of him snagging it, it had all but refused to listen to him.

“Good luck.” Aaron says, seemingly sincere in his wishes. Darts opens the metallic door and steps outside. Last time he had been out here it had been hard to tell what the ground looked like, as everything on either side of the path had been buried in a thick white snow. The trail left his feet and shot forwards, staying immaculate as usual as it led back towards Blackthorn, where it started. On either side of it the ground was either flooded water or mud, and the rain cascaded down, running off either side of the defined barriers of the path. No sign of the Haxorus at first, as Darts takes a couple hesitant steps forwards out of the metal gate. There was all kinds of foliage and trees that he had missed on his way here, having been blinded by the torrential snow storm. “Hm….” He grunts, trying to spot the Axe Jaw Pokemon before it spotted him. It’s not until he gets a few paces to the door that he senses something, off on the edges of his awareness, like a tightness in his gut right before the Haxorus emerges from the bushes at mach speed, slicing towards his legs with one edge of its jaw extended for a bite. Darts rolls out of the way, his muscles complaining a little as he does so, his gold accents winking in the rain as he dodges forwards. He sweeps his hand into his jacket, retrieving an Ultra Ball and a Great Ball and tossing them forwards in front of him. “Goomy and Dragalge!” The Goomy rolls forwards with a determined look in its eyes, ready to fight.

“Goo! Goomy!” It shouts, defiant in the face of the much larger Haxorus.

Dragalge lounges to the side, loafing off in spite of the threatening presence of the monotype Dragon right in front of it.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaxxxxx!!!!” The large dragon screams, before tensing again. It’s getting ready to spring. Darts realizes, all of a sudden. This Dragon-type was beyond any kind of Pokemon he had tried to tangle with, as its initial onslaught had almost left him in a wheelchair with no room for argument. The only reason he had gotten out of the way the first time was a combination of watching for it from the beginning and hybrid intuition.

“Goomy, use Acid Armor!” As expected, the Haxorus goes for the weaker of its three preys, jumping towards the much smaller Soft Tissue Pokemon with a vicious Dual Chop attack, its first impact being met as Goomy rearranged its organic tissue in order to protect itself with a diamond-hard skin in response, but it’s smarter than to let its second blow go uncontested, and the second chop hones in around the hardened area to strike Goomy on its much weaker, fleshy area and it goes spinning away with a cry of pain. The Haxorus follows instantly, its jaws wide as it attempts to catch the Goomy like a pink dragon-flavored hors de oeuvres in mid-flight, looking to devour it. “Dragalge!” Darts looks towards the seaweed imitator with a furious look as it flounders around, not even paying attention to the battle. He decides to dive in himself, snatching the Goomy out of harm’s way as the Haxorus misses by half of an inch, deciding to give Darts a Dragon Claw for his trouble. The attack rends down Darts’ crest, leaving a gash directly across his eye as the Super Effective attack cleaves him. He instantly is very thankful for his crest being above his eyes, as otherwise he would be half-blind by now, staggering out of the way with his Goomy tucked under his arm, trying to get a bearing on where the Haxorus had gone. It doesn’t take long to find an answer as the predator lets out another scream of rage, circling around to take a dive. Darts reaches a hand up to wipe some flowing… ichor? Blood? He wasn’t sure, but it was black and flowing out of his crest and down around his eye. “Dragalge!” He begs, appealing towards the Dragon/Poison Pokemon as it continues to staunchly ignore him. “I’m going to need your help here. Surely you didn’t get out of the situation you were in just to die like prey to this Haxorus!”

The Haxorus screams as it charges a brilliant purple aura around itself, enraged enough to finally use Outrage and rid itself of the pest that kept running around grabbing its dinner. It flies forwards, accelerating as it flung itself towards Darts, who sheltered the huddled Goomy with his own body, figuring at least if he took the hit maybe the little guy (who he had put in this situation) might have a fighting chance. The blade is close to hitting home when the Haxorus lets out a cry of anguish, before stumbling off the path and into the mudslide below, slipping and sliding at the sudden change in trajectory before smashing into the mountain face, muffled cries of anguish coming from the Dragon-type. Dragalge puffs again, letting out the last of its Smokescreen that it had just used to blind the Pokemon mid-attack. Well, at least I’m worth a damn Smokescreen, I guess. He scrambles to his feet, letting out a shrill whistle to alert the Rangers inside the tunnel. “Ey yo boys! She’s all yours!”
Aaron opens the door, his Styler already whirling above his head as he charges out, Cupid with her pink hair flashing right behind him with hers going as well. They both spin, seeing the prone Haxorus shaking its head, and fire, their Capture Lines tracing the outline of a tight circle as they furiously rotate around the prone dragon, swiftly enmeshing it in a net of the stuff.

--

“Thanks for the help there, boyo.” Slim says, giving Darts a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Our bacon would have been fried there without you.”

“Looks like you should be okay…” Cupid says, having inspected the wound above Darts’ eye. “I’m not familiar with hybrid anatomy, but it seems like it’s just a flesh wound. You take care, okay?” Aaron had already taken off with the Haxorus in tow, wanting to see it safely back to the wild where it belonged.

“Yeah, I will.” Darts lies, knowing nothing of the sort was in his future. That was that, the Rangers turned on the trail to head back and try to catch up with their Commander. The jacketed one turned the other way, heading back to his training, his Goomy and his Dragalge following him back towards the tunnel. “Ah, almost forgot.” He pulls out their respective Pokeballs from an inside pocket of his jacket and turns back, returning Goomy first, leaving just him and the Dragalge standing alone face to face. “Why did you help me?” He cuts to the quick of things, directing his words at the Pokemon, who he knew could understand him. “You could have let me die back there, but you didn’t. On top of that, you knew you couldn’t beat the Haxorus straight-up, so you cleverly blinded him at top speed. I don’t know why you saved me at all, I barely used you before now…”

“Dra…” The Mock Kelp Pokemon says thoughtfully, as if pondering a response. “Galge, dra.” It seemed to be indicating Darts’ fresh wound above his eye. The Pokemon turned its head to more closely reveal its right eye, a matching scar across the eye, miraculously without blinding the Pokemon. It seemed as though after seeing Darts take the blow for Goomy, pathos had awakened within the Dragalge. That or pure pity, the hybrid wasn’t sure which, or which he preferred. Regardless, the Dragalge’s attitude seemed to be ‘don’t screw up again, I’m your best Pokemon whether you like it or not.’ An attitude Darts could live with. He returns the Pokemon into its Ultra Ball, the red line scooping the Dragon up in an instant before he opens the iron door of the tunnels, descending again. Ronnie’s managing his usual post, and he looks up as Darts approaches.

“Well, all taken care of?” he asks, using his badge-analyzing look again.

“Yeah, it’s done.” Darts says, with a little shrug. “Can I get through?”

“…Sure.” He says, seemingly thinking Darts somewhere around a Thunder or Rainbow badge now. “Go on through.”

Darts miraculously makes it all the way out of the tunnel and through town back to the Dojo without getting stupidly lost, happy to once again cross the threshold into the odd world that now consisted of his free time. “So?” A calm voice comes, from on the porch before Darts is even able to take more than one step. “How did it go?” The gambler heads into the porch area, and Teacher is seated in the same spot as the night previous. The sun is beginning to go down, and the bright orange and reds of the sky shine straight through the screens on the porch, illuminating the normally white hair of the older man as a fiery red. Darts seats himself in the same seat as the night before, feeling rather like he was in grade school again. Well, the grade school he had not skipped out on.

“Fine enough.” Darts says, then without thinking he stupidly blurts out the entirety of the encounter truthfully, without talking himself up or bragging at all, the master nodding as he listens intently.

“…so. Why did he save me?” Darts finishes, still completely lost. “I have no idea, other than this.” He indicates his wound above his eye.

“A dragon will not respect you just because you have caught it. But seeing you lay down your body for one of its brethren, it seemed to finally see the glimmer of something it could respect you for. A Dragon does not respect trickery or deceit, but it does appreciate strength, courage, and a willingness to fight. It must have seen something it could respect.” The master explains, rising to his feet to walk towards one of the screens. He looks out up into the sky, to appreciate the sunset as it went down over the horizon as the silence stretches between the two of them. “I was working on dinner all day, so I hope you have the stomach for it. You’re going to need it for the last part of training tonight.” Now that he thought about it, Darts was starving, and he didn’t even care that he had to eat alone on the porch for dinner, as he happily took what he was served, devouring it the second that red-and-gold doorway had closed. It had been a tiring day so far for the hybrid, and he was wondering what could possibly be left.

Drasna comes outside after a bit, the hybrid having been done eating a long time ago, and gestures to Darts to follow her out into the yard, her Altaria clinging to her dress as she goes. Her talon sandals clack on the wooden floor of the porch before she makes it outside, Darts’ jacket swishing back and forth as they exit. “Y’know.” He says, as they cross the yard towards what looked like a weight bench set with dumbbells of various sizes. “For saying you’re not going to be able to help me, you sure have been helping me a lot. What’s the deal?”

“Oh, but I haven’t, really.” Drasna trots forwards towards the bench press, only straining slightly as she lines up weights on the metal bar. “My speciality with Dragons has nothing to do with building strength. If I was really teaching you any of my techniques or anything then I’d probably be in big trouble. Let’s call it a… bending of the rules, shall we?” She steps back and admires her work, making certain that both sides of the bar was even. “All right, let’s start with this.” She looks at him expectantly. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

“Who, me?”

Drasna rolls her eyes, indicating the bar with a wave of her arms. “No, the Elder inside the Dojo. Yes, you. How are we supposed to keep track of your progress if we don’t have a concrete system to measure what that progress is?” Darts gulps, settling himself under the bar, which was loaded with what looked like (to him) a lot of weight. He manages to get the bar off of the holders and bench it a couple of times, his muscles groaning and complaining as he gets the bar up a couple of times, but can’t manage anything past that.

“Alright, next.” She says, ushering the hybrid to the next task, bicep curling. This progresses for a while, him doing everything from chin-ups on a bar to leg lifts until he is worn ragged, exhausted as the final exercise, one-handed push-ups concludes with him falling on his face, the front of his crest resting in the dirt. “That looks like a good place to stop, wouldn’t you say, Elder?” Darts raises his face to see the Elder watching from on his lawn chair, erected near the weight bench. The gambler hadn’t sensed nor saw him come near, but he had no doubt that Teacher had heard and seen the entire ordeal.

“Mmm, I agree.” Drasna lifts the exhausted hybrid from the dirt, letting him lean on her frame, which was surprisingly sturdy despite her age. Teacher follows the Elite Four member inside, as she lays Darts to rest in the same spot he had slept in the night before. He groans and rolls over to see the face of the man he knew for sure to be his master now.

“So… how do I rate?” Coughs the hybrid, every muscle in his body from bottom to top screaming in pain. The wound on his face had become agitated again after his session in the dirt, and the wound was leaking a little black ichor again. Overall, he was dirty, he was exhausted, and he was hurt, and it showed.

“Not the worst.” The master says, smiling incredibly widely, at least it seemed to Darts, at something that should have been little better than an insult. “Not the worst by a long shot. Training begins again tomorrow before sun-up, I expect you ready.”

“If you say so… Sensei.” The old man tenses a little at that word, before nodding slightly and heading inside, saying nothing, but showing the emotion on his face, heading inside, Drasna giving her goodnight and heading off shortly afterwards. The night settles in over the hybrid as he falls into the land of dreams, the Kricketot he could hear outside the window playing him a lullaby as he drifted off. And for once, Darts slept soundly, never disturbed by any voices. Training had begun.

--

For the better part of the next two months, every day of Darts’ life was described as above. He was woken at dawn and began his training, on even days gathering flour for Drasna, on odd days he had double the meditation. On odd days there was very little physical activity, allowing for his muscles to re-knit and strengthen. It started with fifty bags of flour at first, and as the task got easier and easier, eventually the sacks doubled to a hundred, to the point where Darts had to carry two bags of flour per trip. Then it would up to a hundred and fifty and he would need to go three at a time in order to make the deadline for lunch, with the lunches getting more and more extravagant to necessitate the extra bags of flour.

As far as the meditation went, it started by just flickering to the Distortion World for brief moments, the Master wanting to test the limits of his ability, pushed him to stay there longer and longer, eventually netting himself enough time to walk one stone over in the opposite world across the pool of flames. The first time he had accomplished the feat, he had been surprised to show up one stone forward in the real world, but once he knew what to expect, he began stretching the limits of what he could go before coming back. It was one stone at first, but soon it was two, then three, four… In addition to that, Teacher began directing him on how to properly control his energy.

“Focus it to a point! Like a throwing weapon attached to your hand!” he chided, as his pupil emerged from the demonic realm again, his energies wispy and unfocused as he rematerializes. “That was sloppy! Do it again!” Under his harsh tutelage, Darts began being able to focus the spiritual momentum of returning from the Distortion World into a point over the top of one of his golden hands, using it like a makeshift spear to deliver a devastating blow, the Shadow Force looking more and more like an attack with a name that menacing would actually look.

Every afternoon, Darts mingled with the villagers, who still wouldn’t fully talk to him, but some would smile and acknowledge his presence, sometimes pointing to the wound over his eye that was healing as time progressed, apparently the story of him jumping in to protect his Goomy had made the rounds along with a rumor he had fought the Haxorus hand to hand, (Darts never bothered to correct them.) he had garnered a considerably better reputation than he had had before as a genetic freak and an outsider.
In the afternoon, Teacher would always send him on some kind of errand designed to build trust in his Pokemon. Sometimes he would get his whole team, and other times he would only get his Goomy, his master never giving him a hint as to what would come next. Sometimes it was simple things, like going outside into the wilderness to fetch ten of a certain kind of berry with only the help of his Goomy, to more complex ones like help the Pokemon Rangers with a problematic pack of Dragonite that refused to allow patrols through its territory. In each situation, the problem had to be solved with his Pokemon alone, and the rare times he had tried to cheat and muscle his way through, his master had somehow found out and berated him for hours. The old man saw everything.

At night, it was always one of two things. Either he exercised with Drasna, who continued piling on more and more weight and put him through more and more strenuous exercises as time went on. Every one of those sessions ended with the hybrid face-down in the dirt having to be carried onto the porch at first, until one night after he had done the last one-handed push-up, he managed to stand up, offer Drasna a very polite “No, thank you.” And totter bravely into the porch to collapse face-down, instantly unconscious on his own. It got better from there, each time Darts becoming more and more able to walk away from the ordeal, until he was almost completely fine at the end of the day. That was when she doubled the weight, driving the hybrid further and further towards his limit.

Or, if he was on one of his odd days where he was supposed to be resting, he watched Teacher and Claire spar, his master illuminating their stances and techniques, drilling the gambler on the things he was watching while he was fighting.

“What stance is this?!” The old man shouts, ducking under a particularly heavy blow by Claire to step in with a ferocious swinging shot to her ribs with the forearm. This particular teaching style let him further Darts and Claire’s education at once, seeing how Claire was still only a Probationary Member anyhow.

“Uh…” Darts was stumped, he knew it. Time to take a guess. “Tyranitar?” The old man has time to jump out of the fight, crack the gambler upside the head and jump back into fighting Claire before chastising him verbally.

“Wrong! Garchomp style!” This method of teaching was to get Darts to memorize the shapes of techniques with his eyes before he had to attempt doing it himself with his own body. As time progressed, and Darts got more and more accustomed to the routine of exercise and diet he now led, after Teacher would spar with Claire he would step aside to let Darts into the ring against her, putting his newfound knowledge to practice. Claire for her part seemed to treat it like the street fight they had had in Blackthorn each time, clobbering the hybrid the first couple of times he stepped into the ring with her, giving his ribs a good working over for every time he had made that joke to her since she had shown up. But after a couple of weeks of losing, the gambler noticed something.

She’s using Kingdra Stance… odd how I never noticed that before. Spade-shaped hands for striking, check… legs curled defensively, check… I wonder what happens if I… He steps forwards, letting his body guard itself defensively as he gently rolls past her first blow towards his ribs, adopting the ‘Shellgon Guard’ as he rolls past her and is able to actually throw his first punch towards her since they had begun sparring. All it forces her to do is dodge nimbly downwards and toss Darts like a sack of potatoes, rotating him even further on the axis he was spinning on, sending him to the ground in a crunch of gravel. But when Darts opened his eyes and sat up to the sound of his teacher saying:

“I think he’s getting somewhere.” That’s when he knew he was making real progress.

--

Every night, once Darts could get through his training without passing out, he would fire off a status report to Sub, in order to let him know that he was alright. Something was pre-programmed to send out status messages to those Snagems who had been inactive or gone for long periods of time, and as the weeks turned into months, the reports he was receiving back as he asked for news got more and more worrisome. Big things were brewing in Kalos, the gambler knew, but he couldn’t be there right now. More importantly was mastering the intricacies of this body to its fullest, and he apologized profusely to the leader for his inability to return, but he kept hustling and he kept working as hard as he could every single day, to ensure that every drop of sweat that hit the ground and every drop of blood that fell from his body wasn’t wasted, knowing it was only a matter of time before he would be inevitably called back to help, and he knew if he wanted to be worth the call, he needed to pour his all into training.

Not yet, not yet… I can’t go back yet, I’m not ready…

--

Somewhere around month two of his stay in the Mymay Sanctuary, the Elder woke him not with his familiar call of ‘training to be done’ but with the tone of ‘congratulations’.

“The council convened today.” The normally calm voice of his master seemed a little excited, as Teacher was clearly pleased. “To decide on your status as a Welcomed Visitor.”

“What?” Darts gapes, not yet fully awake as he sits up, his jacket fluttering a bit sleepily as he rises. “Did the rest of the Clan show up already?”

“No…” Teacher admits, his smile not waning at all. “But the scriptures of the clan say a council can be convened to decide on the status of an individual not as a Probationary Member, but as a Welcomed Visitor with three full members of the clan present.”

“But there’s not three full members of the clan present…” Darts groans, thinking his master must have gone slightly loopy. “There’s only you and Drasna, that makes two…”

“Those same strictures also state… That under certain circumstances a probationary member may be temporarily promoted to an advisory position so as to convene a Council Meeting.” Teacher explains, nodding. “Don’t test me on this one, boy, I’ve memorized more of these laws than you’ve ever read. Congratulations, my boy. You managed to convince the council.”

“You mean you and Drasna… you guys were impressed by me from the beginning, right?” The hybrid looks over his master beseechingly. “Right?”

Drasna comes out of the golden door, as the pair had been discussing the promotion in the middle of the porch. “Actually, dearie, up until a few weeks ago even I had my doubts that you’d make it. This training isn’t for everyone. We’ve broken more members than we’ve ever had actually join. But you stuck with it, and that was enough for me to give you my vote.”

“Not to mention, your selfless action of protecting your Goomy in penance for your own mistake of sending a Pokemon of that low of experience up against a wild Haxorus from around these parts swayed a lot of people on the board.” The Elder chuckles a little. “Of course by that, I just mean me. That was one of the highlights, but overall your performance with dealing with the rangers and connecting with your Pokemon in general has impressed me, and your continuing struggle with mastering the intricacies of your body has as well. The vote was nearly unanimous, with a two to one vote in favor of.” The old man didn’t have to say who had voted against him, Darts was pretty sure he already knew. Claire still wasn’t in the habit of talking to him yet, preferring a ‘go die’ to anything resembling a hello still.

“So. I’m a ‘Welcomed Visitor’ now.” Darts says, putting the term in quotes. “Does that mean I get to get off of the porch yet?”

“Sadly no.” The master shakes his head a little, his wisps of hair shining in the first rays of sunlight that were filtering through the porch screens. “But you have proved that you are a true friend to Dragons, and that you can handle our teachings, and so we deem you worthy of the title of… Welcomed Visitor.” The last part is said with a bit of ceremony, and Drasna claps happily as Darts shrugs.

“Eh… thanks, I suppose?”

“Now…” Teacher smiles again, the same secret smile he had been wearing when he had told Darts to go and get flour on his very first day in the sanctuary. “Don’t let your guard down just because you’ve moved up a rank. To become a Probationary Member, you need a council of at least five to vote in favor of, with one provisional member allowed on the council. So it looks like you have made it up one rank. The real training begins today.” He cracks his knuckles eagerly, his smile firmly planted on his weathered lips.

Real training? Oh man, what could possibly be harder than what I’ve already gone through the past two months? Well, I guess I’ll find out. Haven’t gotten any closer to finding out who the other members in the Clan are, nor any closer to getting Claire to at least respect me. I wonder what her deal is… Something in her past is haunting her for sure. Not to mention I don’t know nearly as much as I would like to about this place, that would be something to look into. But I’ve made it from barely being able to lift a bag of flour to being able to manage several sets of complex exercises. Not to mention I’ve made great strides in being able to control my body, I’ve managed to stabilize the problem of the nagging ache at the back of my head and control it through proper focus. Not that it’s a hundred percent mind, but with the ability to be able to use Shadow Force better and better as time goes on, it’s only a matter of time before I’ll hopefully be able to take this jacket off without warping to another dimension. I hope. The techniques I’m being taught here and the training being drilled into me day after day has shaped me into a newer, more keen Darts, and I wonder what the others are going to think about my choice of Mastery. Oh well, guess I’ll find out, whenever it is I get to go back to base for the first time…

Summary:

-Endured the hellacious ‘beginners training’ of the Dragon Clan.

-Established contact with the Dragon Clan, after being taken in as a pupil by the wise master, Teacher, who was insistent on Darts’ being able to control the body he finds himself residing in.

-Made a boatload of mistakes, but in the end proved to have something resembling decency that swayed Dragalge into helping him, proving the gambler a friend to Dragons.

-This allowed Darts to rank up in the Clan from ‘Misfit Outsider Nobody’ to ‘Welcomed Visitor’

-Provided the foundation and the means to beginning to master Darts’ first move, Shadow Force.

-Is now awaiting the arrival of other Clan members before he can continue ranking up higher, minimum of five being needed to at least get his foot in the door.

Dragon Master Mission Stage 2

An Example of Failure

Excellent work on becoming somewhat of a member of the prestigious Dragon Clan. While you're not a full fledged member yet you do have your foot in the door. Now before you can move up the later you must learn another lesson, the lesson of failure.

As you know, the Dragon Clan is incredibly exclusive, secluded, and difficult to even talk to one of their members. There is a reason for all this however. The Dragon Clan know that Dragon Pokemon are incredibly powerful creatures, difficult to tame. The power of Dragons is not something that can be taken lightly, which is why the Dragon Clan was established, to raise trainers powerful enough to tame this power. Unfortunately, not everyone who attempts to control dragonic energy succeeds, many actually end in failure. And this is your next lesson, to see what can become of you should you not understand that your power owns you, you do not own it.

Head back to the Dragon Clan and meet with Claire, she will be your tutor for this lesson. Claire will test you by teaching you an attack that has destroyed many other dragons, Outrage. As you know Outrage brings out a Dragon's greatest abilities, removes all limits, and lets them rampage unhinged. However, by doing so the Dragon will eventually lose control and can harm its self and others around it. Not all Dragon Pokemon master this move, some end up permanently harming themselves, end up in a perpetual state of rage, or worse, die. All members of the Dragon Clan must master the move Outrage, as it shows their abilities to control the absolute worse of the dragon. Can you?

Part of your training will involve you engaging with some of the most savage Dragon Pokemon in relentless battle. I'm talking about the Deino and Axew family lines, which means...Hydreigon. The idea is to see how you handle constant pressure while under the effects of Outrage. And there is no more savage Pokemon than those who will continue to assault you even if mortally wounded. She will probably show you to a ruined mountain filled with these things. One family fights for destruction, the other for peace, so it is a land of constant turmoil. Be warned, Claire is not a merciful teacher, you will be whipped into shape.

Be warned however, a former student of Claire's has heard that she has taken on a new pupil and he is not pleased. He is a Druddigon hybrid who had come as far as you, but failed. The rumor goes he became addicted to the power Outrage gave him and abused it. His mind was shattered by the constant rage and now he is highly unstable mentally and thus was kicked out from the clan. Some say he also had feelings for Claire which she dismissed, resulting in him attempting to impress her with his power.

Objective:
---Master Outrage.

Opposition:
---Wild Axew, Fraxure, Haxorus, Deino, Zweilous, and Hydreigon.
---Claire may even use her own Pokemon against you.
---The Druddigon hybrid might also show up and put a swift end to your training.

Pokemon:
---You may catch a wild Deino, Zweilous, Axew, or Fraxure.

Rewards:
---10x Snag Coins
---The move Outrage should you master it.
---The ability to take on the next Master Mission.

--

Where our story begins it’s night again, that time of the twenty four hours that make up your day when you’re supposed to lie your head down on a comfortable pillow and rest your bones; let the cares of the world all slip away into the blackness of sleep. Unfortunately for the jacketed gambler that most people know as Darts, sleep was one of those commodities that didn’t come too easily. The rigors of life in Snagem would have worn a normal person out, but Darts wasn’t exactly a ‘normal’ person any more. After his hybridization into a Giratina hybrid our hero got at most a few hours of sleep a night, whispers from another planet crawled beneath the surface of his gold-plated skull, keeping him more inclined to stay in the world of the living than the one he visited in his dreams. The best he could hope to do was what he was doing now, lounging on the bed with his head on the pillows staring up at the ceiling while hoping the voices weren't going to be too loud. Ever since the last time he had left the Mymay Sanctuary, the voices had come back slowly, drifting across the canvass of his mind now and again, harsh black and white thoughts in a sea of color. Busy struggling against the enemies and problems plaguing the area of Kalos, Darts hadn't had much time to consider his own mental state.

As you might expect going from normal person to terrorist to liberator took a lot out of you, but with things winding down now there was nothing to distract him from the matter always pressing close at hand to him: his body. As Teacher, the old master of Mymay, had demonstrated to him last time he had been under his tutelage Darts knew next to nothing about the body within which he resided. The familiarity was growing, certainly, but day-to-day living with Snagem wasn't giving the gambler the full picture that he needed. Field work let him flex the muscles of what he knew, only an expert was going to be able to answer the questions he still had about this form. On top of that, there was another issue bothering the Giratina hybrid, a thorn that wouldn't dislodge itself from his side so to speak. He sits up, his red eyes illuminating a portion of the bed as he does so to look square at it.

Over on the desk across from the bed was an ornately carved and crafted cask of some kind, lined on all sides with runes from the ancient Draconic languages. About the size and shape of a loaf of bread, it was more like a large puzzle box than anything else, but Darts couldn't make heads or tails of it, let alone open the damned thing. It had first caught his attention in the Kalos royal treasure room, hidden behind a painting of their ancient king. It had been faint at first, a whispering off in the distance, but as he had gotten closer to it it had begun to thrum against his mind, just like the call of the Distortion World. He had originally thought it was one voice, but after a bit more time to listen it was a duet, two voices in harmony with one as deep and dark as the blackest ocean and the other bright and high-pitched, like a melodious bird soaring free above the first. Whatever was in this puzzle box was calling to him with just as much power as the being trying to drag him out of existence, and Darts wasn't too sure he liked it. Whatever the pair of powers linked to this had in store for him, he had no idea, but he could not ignore the call emanating from inside this cask. He was hoping someone in the Dragon Clan would be able to read the runes on the outside of this thing and give him some kind of hint as to how to open it.

There was no putting it off any longer, Darts was going to have to return to the Mymay Sanctuary to consult with his master. The gambler gets up from the bed and grabs the puzzle box from where it lay crumpling his blankets, depositing the thing in a pocket in his jacket, the living organ that was his coat folding around the thing to pad it slightly. There was no safer place to keep it, any thief reaching into his pocket to try and take it from him would get more than they bargained for, reaching into the now-organic coat was sure to get them more than just a Shadow Force for their trouble. He figured leaving the guild at the moment was the best thing for both parties at the moment, there was a bit of a lull and he probably wouldn't be missed for a week or three. And, if anything was sure about Darts, you give him a week and a half alone, bored, and still three months clean without a drop of coffee, there was no telling what shape the HQ inhabitants or their wallets would be left in following a span alone with the half-mad gambler. Sub would probably dock his non-existent pay for this, but Darts was taking a leave of absence without notice.

--

Acknowledging the gate guard Ronnie with an awkward bow of his head, Darts was silently scanned and identified as having the proper amount of badges to enter and let through the iron door that marked the entrance to Mymay Sanctuary. As soon as he felt his feet hit the edge of the threshold of the door as he stepped through, the gambler could feel a great weight slough off of him, the twisted cries of the Distortion World slowly quieting as he made his way into the mountain oasis. Verdantly green grass padded each step the hybrid took down along the pathway down into town. No matter the extreme forms the weather outside took, in the perilous mountains near Blackthorn it was not unusual to go from blizzards to earthquakes in the span of a couple of hours, in Mymay proper it was always summertime. It had been night when he had left, and now the first rays of daybreak threw light onto the little hamlet nestled like a dragon's egg in the thorny protection of the mountains around it.

The rows of houses that made up the village stretched out in front of Darts as he slowly padded the path he had cut into his bones from hours and hours of treading it, almost instinctually. How many times had he carried bags of flour this way from the general store? It had to be more than a hundred, the Giratina hybrid figured, as his morning routine from the last time he had been here had been to carry forty to fifty bags, one at a time at first, but as he had grown stronger from his training, he had been able to carry more. Even as a legendary hybrid, the gambler had been in poor shape before undertaking Teacher's training course, and as he had worked his muscles and energy, he could feel himself becoming better and better. His feet carried him automatically through the front gate, and he was only half-surprised to find the Elder sitting at a table waiting for him. What fully surprised him was the amount of food splayed across the enormous oaken surface, the enormous table groaning underneath the weight of what appeared to be every food ever.

"Wow..." The gambler says, gaping at the spread in front of him, a little bit in awe of the trouble taken to put this incredible feast together. The breads looked freshly baked, and no doubt Drasna had had a hand in their creation. The Kalosian Elite Four member was a highly accomplished cook and baker, a master of all types of cuisine. Her grandparents in Sinnoh inspired her originally to begin cooking, and once she had moved to Kalos she incorporated the techniques of fine Kalosian chefs into her arsenal, increasing her expertise. A real culinary Altaria... the gambler thinks to himself. Fluffy on the outside, deadly serious on the inside.

Finally, interrupting his internal monologue, his master speaks. "Hello my pupil. How are you?" There was something odd about the way the Elder was looking at him, and an odd note in his voice that drew Darts' attention straight from the food and back to reality in an instant. It was a tone Darts had not heard, at least not in a while.

"I'm well." Darts dares, the only words he trusts himself to get out. The master in front of him wasn't taking any sort of aggressive stance, he was calmly sipping from a small cup filled with tea. But his chi had suddenly swelled, making the gambler's senses register him as though he were fifteen feet tall and covered in rippling muscles and aggression, not a old man in a kimono enjoying a hot beverage.

"Good." There's a moment or two of silence broken only by the slurps of tea taken by Teacher, his aggressive chi not receding at all, before Darts dares a second statement.

"Did... I do something wrong, Sensei?" He offers, his red eyes wincing slightly as he takes a step backwards, instinctively away from the still billowing aggression pluming off of the Elder.

"I don't know." Teacher says, calm as a summer day externally. "Would you have something to be worried I might find out about?"

"...no?" As soon as the word is out of Darts' mouth, the master snatches up a small remote off of the table, directly next to where his teacup had previously sat, pointing it at a small television in the middle of the lawn, an ornate stand gilt with ornamental dragons sitting beneath the fair-sized flat screen to hold it above the lawn. Video footage sprawled across the screen of the gambler's exploits in Kalos, from the assault on the castle gate proper to the fight at the Pokeball Factory, video clips cropped down to only show the parts with Darts in it played one after the other.

"Sloppy punch." Teacher criticizes as the first one floats past, still drinking from his tea in between each video and comment. "Bad block. Poor kick. Even poorer kick." This would continue for a solid ten minutes, as each and every section of Darts fighting that had been recorded in Kalos would appear on the screen to be dissected by the old man. There's a brief pause after the last one, the screen going black as the hybrid nods passively, the pair of them the very same distance apart they had been since the gambler had walked up.

"Alright, that's fair but don't you think you're-" Darts would be cut off as more footage would appear, this time of him fighting the Kanto Pokemon Federation on their motorcycles in front of the Underground Passage. How did he even get footage of this? The hybrid had to groan, internally. Kalos had at least been covered by the world press...

"Sloppy." Teacher says, his voice harsh and biting as he watches the screen. "Are you fighting thugs with unfinished technique or are you just that sloppy? And-" He pauses the video on the screen with the click of a button on his remote. The particular image that was on the screen was the gold-and-black hybrid clobbering a thug off his motorcycle with his arm in midair. "Do you want to explain to me what that is?"

"Ummm..." Darts says, clearly having no idea which answer was going to get him out of trouble. "A... clothesline, I believe it's called?"

"If you're going to use such a crass move, at least have the decency to know it's called a lariat." His master interjects, again with that biting tone. "Are you Crasher Wake? Do you plan to spend your time running around and jumping off of turnbuckles and winning imaginary belts any time soon? No? Then do my dojo a favor and spare me the embarrassment of fighting in public in such a fashion again."

"Wait a moment," Darts interjects, finally managing a word edgewise against his clearly agitated sensei, as he walks over to the table and indicates the lavish buffet next to both of them. "First of all, if you're incredibly disappointed in me, why would you go to the trouble of making me a feast?"

"It's not for you dear, we had no idea you were coming..." A calm, musical voice floats over the gambler's shoulder, causing him to turn his head. The slim form of Drasna in her tribal getup quickly approached Darts, a basket stuffed to the brim with bread in her arms and an apologetic smile plastered across her face. She had a shadow right behind her, less apologetic and closer along the spectrum to hostile towards the jacketed hybrid in their midst. Clair, the Blackthorn City Gym Leader. Granddaughter to Teacher, and a formidable fighter no doubt due in part to growing up under his tutelage her whole life, she had her arms crossed across her chest in an annoyingly superior manner as she approached. An ugly scowl formed across her face as soon as she realized who Drasna had been talking to. She had a different bag than Drasna atop her crossed arms, this one an unremarkable burlap sack with no outer markings.

"Great." Clair snarls, walking past the gambler without a second glance to hand the bag to her grandfather, pecking him on the cheek lightly. "Looks like we have a doggie on the porch again..."

"Hello to you too Clair. Miss me?" Darts asks, completely ignoring her last insult. As an Honored Visitor, and not an actual Dragon Clan Initiate yet, or even Initiate-in-Waiting, like Clair, he was forbidden entry to the inner sanctuary of the Clan proper. Unfortunately that included the dormitories, causing certain Honored Visitors to find themselves sleeping on the porch.

"Did you see grandfather's video package?" Clair asks, a tinge of venom in her otherwise seemingly-sweet voice as she raises her eyes to look at him finally. Two chips of blue ice boring into his volcanic red. She straightens from handing the Elder the bag, crossing her arms again. "He spent hours going over it to memorize your every failure."

"Clair." A warning rumble from the master silenced his second disciple, ending their squabbling. "Any news from our other guest?"

"Nothing yet." She informs, with a slight shake of her head. "Knowing my Uncle, he probably ran into some kind of trouble on the way here..." Drasna makes her way over to the table as Clair reports, setting down the basket of bread on the tiniest open corner of the pile of food.

"Well..." She sighs, looking over the mountains of vittles. "It would be a shame to let this all get cold..."

"Excellent idea!" Darts chimes in happily. He hadn't eaten before leaving HQ, and he was famished. A good breakfast would do him some good.

"Why are you excited, Dartboard-san?" Teacher asks, standing up from the chair he was seated in. Drawing the kimono close, the old man smiles for the first time since Darts had arrived, a sinister glint in one eye. "It's the break of dawn. You should realize that this heralds the beginning of... your morning training..."

"Oh no."

--

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" Darts screams, having to yell to be heard above the rushing of the waterfall he was in the middle of climbing. A jet of water crashes down his throat and he coughs, spitting it out a second later. "HOW IS THIS TRAINING?!"

"You passed the basic training!" Teacher shouts, his chi now settled to normal levels again. "And seeing how you had all that energy to be running around fighting bikers, I figured we'd skip the next level of training and turn up the heat a little bit!" His grin is visible even from beneath the waterfall, as Darts' fingers scrabble against the wet surface of the stone grooves beneath the torrential water pounding down on top of him. To add insult to injury, a trio of ropes, one around the hybrid's waist and two underneath each armpit, dangled backwards towards the ground, a large obsidian weight with odd markings scrawled on it attached to the end of each. He manages to struggle up a couple more inches through sheer effort, but Darts is beginning to have his doubts of ever being able to manage this.

"I missed you too Sensei!" he yells, trying to miserably reach for the next ledge as his strength gives out, all three weights dragging him into the pool below with a ferocious crash. Luckily it wasn't very deep, and the Giratina hybrid found himself only soggy rather than drowned.

Teacher was next to him in an instant, a hand proffered to drag his waterlogged disciple to his feet. "I thought you had it for sure." He says, the glimmer of a laugh hovering around the edges of his voice.

"Yeah yeah, I'm sorry..." Darts manages miserably, having accapted the hand. He moves his gold fingers to his waist and arms, pulling the knots on the ropes free to let the weights swing free and drop off on their own.

"It was never about punishing you, even if it was a good deal of fun." The old man admits, turning to look in the direction of the Dojo. They were in the backyard that served as training grounds most of the time for Clair and Darts. The two of them spent a good amount of time back here meditating and lifting weights the last time the gilt gambler had been in the area, and it looked like this time would be no different. Teacher had an odd pensive look hovering around his face as he stared up at the building. "Your training needs to be increased, the Clan will be here in full force soon. I cannot allow, and they will not allow someone so unpolished to go around representing us. If you cannot impress the other Clan members to give you their vote of approval, your tenure with me will be very short indeed, even if I am the Elder." He turns back to fix the hybrid with a meaningful look. "And I take it you remember what that means?" Darts did. The old man had told him the first time they had met that he was to undertake training to understand his body and control his inner power, and if he had refused or fought the master would have killed him simply to stop the might of Giratina from falling into the hands of anyone unsavory. He had no doubts what would happen if Teacher was forbidden by the clan to teach him.

"I understand, Sensei." He would not let it happen, bowing slightly to indicate respect. As he inclines his head, one of the weights that had been hanging from the ends of his ropes catches his eye. It had been an inopportune time to look before, being drowned in a waterfall and all, but now as the weight laid in the pool, the midday sun glinting off the metal, the rune in the middle of it was illuminated suddenly, and the gambler has a flash of recognition of the type of writing. Kneeling to scoop up one of the weights off the pool, he raises it to his master, the writing facing the old man. "This writing... What is this writing? I recognize it."

"You... recognize it?" Teacher questions, a white eyebrow raising in surprise, an uncommon occurrence as next to nothing surprised the old master at this point. "What are you talking about? This script," He takes the weights, and holds it up for the hybrid to inspect. "Is a dead language. It's been dead for over four hundred years. Us of the Dragon Clan are some of the only ones to have any familiarity with this script, and it's not just something you'd stumble on. It was an ancient ritualistic language, and only used for things of great importance... Where did you see it, exactly?" If a picture was worth a thousand words, Darts found something worth a million as he rummaged in his jacket pocket to pull out the puzzle box and present it to his master. It was the first time something like amazement entered his master's face while they had been training, and the old man takes the carven wooden box from the hybrid, slowly turning it over in wonder as he examines it. "I can hear it now." Teacher comments, as he turns away from Darts to look it over, his hands brushing over the runes on the outside of the box. "Your own chi was masking it rather well, but I can hear the songs now. Where did you get this?"

"The Kalos royal family treasure room." Darts supplies, watching him turn and twist the various segments of the wooden box as he inspected it carefully. "As we were finishing up tossing the monarchy out on their head, we took a little bit to inspect the treasure room and this was in there. Nothing else hooked my attention like this did. What is it?"

There's a long, pregnant pause before Teacher gives his reply, slowly twisting and turning the box still. "This is a treasure that belonged to another clan, one much like ours but with a bit of a different philosophy. Over the years, it should come as no surprise that a clan with as much prestige as ours would have many copycats, but there was one that stuck out as more than just a simple carbon copy. They were a group of Rayquaza worshipers, according to the scrolls we have in our library here. Hundreds of years ago-"

"Back when you were twenty or so?" The gilt gambler interjects with a laugh before his sensei's stern look reminded him of where he was. "Sorry, go on."

"A good deal before my time," Teacher continues, a small smile creeping around the edges of his face again despite himself at Darts' attempts at humor. "Our clan and this other clan, this group of Rayquaza worshipers, coexisted as peacefully as we could. Our philosophies at their core were too different for the peace to last forever, but the time indicated by the records seems to indicate that there was no real ill will besides that between the two. And by the time any real ideological struggle between us and them were to begin, they were gone."

"Differences of philosophy how?" Darts asks, intrigued. He had never heard rumors of other clans in any of his travels across the regions.

"If we are yin, they are yang, or vice versa as a matter of perspective." Teacher finally stops examining the box and hands it back to Darts, who takes it with a gilt hand and slides it back inside his jacket pocket. "Our clan is based around taming and controlling the strength of dragons, in order to fight against those who would wrong the world. Our notion is one of proactivity; waiting for evil to strike before striking back results in too many innocent casualties, so it is better to try and actively make a change for good in the world before that happens. These Rayquaza cultists always believed in defense before offense. They adhered to the philosophy that if one can muster a strong enough defense in the name of good then evil will never be able to strike effectively under their watch." The two of them begin walking away from the waterfall, Darts only pausing to scoop up the weight set off the ground and sling them over his shoulder as they go, the old teacher's grey hair shining in the now-afternoon sun. "It was one of the greatest shames that they were wiped out, at the end of that time period so long ago." Teacher pontificates, gesturing up at the cliffs surrounding them on the very edge of the horizon. "Some great evil managed to penetrate their defenses, and slaughtered all of them, at least so we believe. What else could have happened? There are no records to indicate what took place really, so no one may ever know for sure. While we may not have agreed with their philosophies, we were at peace with them enough for them to erect the great Air Lock that resides around the boundaries of this place. And as you can see, they were strong enough for it to last hundreds of years to today." Darts' master brings his gaze down from the cliffs and back to his student. "Whatever is in that box is strong, and ancient. I could feel it in the marrow of my bones as I held it in my hands. But I do not believe it is dangerous. This Rayquaza clan worshipped other dragons too, just not as much as they worshiped their great sky god. Whatever it is you find once you unlock it will surely be a great tool on your journey."

The pair were nearing the house again and Darts pauses to toss the weights and ropes into a box filled with all manner of training tools inside of it before they begin making their way around to the front courtyard again. He pulls the puzzle box out again, twisting and turning it as they go, the song dulled here by the ancient Air Lock but still calling to him. "So that's it?" He asks, after a couple minutes of silent walking. "No hint? No help? What do the markings say?"

Teacher turns back towards him, a calm look over his face as he looks his disciple up and down, his hands folded in the sleeves of his grey kimono as was his habit. "What kind of a teacher would I be if I gave you all of the answers and didn't let you discover some for yourself? All I can tell you," He says, in response to the sound of indignation that had come from the gambler, his eyes closing and then opening slowly as he smiles again. "Is that the box itself is not what is preventing you from opening it."

Well, that was helpful. Darts thinks to himself, ironically as he follows the stooped figure into the front yard, where the table piled high with food was still present. Drasna was sitting on one end of the smorgasbord, attempting to keep the flies off of it when she could with dainty flicks of an ornate red flyswatter, snapping them out of the air with precise, timed strikes. She turns towards the two of them with a smile as they near, smashing another fly out of existence without looking as she waves with the other hand. Mercifully, Clair appeared to be off somewhere else at the moment. If Darts had to bet, probably stomping on puppies somewhere.

"Hello boys!" She chirrups cheerfully. Smack goes the flyswatter again, faster than Darts' crimson eyes can follow. "How did the training go?"

"About as well as it could have, considering the raw materials I'm working with..." The master says, needling his disciple teasingly as he takes another one of the seats at the table, settling in and pouring himself a small cup of tea from one of the steaming decanters sprawled out over the surface.

"I'll bet." Drasna says as she shoots Darts a wink. The master had obviously been planning this punishment for a long period of time, so the gambler holds his tongue in order to avoid additional trips up the waterfall in the future.

Also try and give him less ammunition in all future Snagem endeavors. He makes a note to himself internally. "So." The Giratina hybrid scans the spread in front of them, and just barely manages to avoid diving face first into the tempting aromas wafting towards him. "What is all this food for, if it's not for my homecoming?"

"Oh just go on and tell him." Drasna says softly, giving Teacher a pleading look. "You've had your fun and he's had his punishment."

"No need." Teacher says, stirring the small cup by giving it a semi-circle in midair above the table before lightly sipping from it. "I believe he shall get his answer soon enough."

"What do you-oh, I see now." Drasna turns her head towards the front gate, flyswatting forgotten for a moment as she does, the master's gaze matching hers as they both look in the direction of the entrance. There's a few moments of puzzled silence as Darts looks back and forth from each of the two Dragon Clan members and where they were looking, before finally a gut instinct begins tingling at the base of his very skull and he looks to the sky as well. In the air above the compound, a grass-green shape slowly came into view over the far mountains, near the entrance of the sanctuary. As it approached, the gambler noticed that only perspective made it look slow by any means. It was a green bullet of speed, and as it got closer, the air whistling off either side of it was made evident by the contrail it left in the sky, cutting through the clouds. His teachers had sensed it from much further out, Darts realized, and as the Flygon swept in for a landing, he marveled over its command of the skies. Even though it had to be breaking the sound barrier before it made it over the mountains, the high-flying Dragon-type eased up on the gas effortlessly as it came in for a smooth landing, not even rustling the tablecloth as it finally planted itself on the front lawn of the dojo.

"Fly!" It chirps, clearly pleased to see the people in front of it, the Pokemon wearing an enormous flighty grin. The Flygon takes a couple of short hops towards the table, its wings propelling it slightly as it does so before folding back behind it and it lands near Drasna, nuzzling into her neck with another happy sound.

"How are you, little one?" Drasna asks, petting the Flygon on top of its crest affectionately. "Is there news?" The Flygon stops short as she asks this, hopping towards the elder suddenly as though it had briefly forgotten why it had come.

"Fly! Gon!" It squeaks, raising up its neck to present something to Teacher, a scroll of some kind barely visible against the light-green skin. The master takes the note with a grunt of thanks, absentmindedly patting the Dragon on its crest as he unfurls it on the table. There's a brief moment of silence only broken by the squeaks and chirps of the Flygon trying to get pet some more as he reads, Teacher's countenance darkening slowly as he does.

"What is it, Elder?" Drasna asks, having undertaken the task of amusing the Flygon in the inteirm as she reaches over to scratch it beneath the chin. It lets out a low thrum, a lot like the purr of a Meowth as its wings flutter behind it unconsciously as she slowly moves her hand up and down its throat. "This is Drake's, there's no doubt about it. No one else's Pokemon could have made it over the mountains by flying."

"Elite Four Drake?" Darts asks, though no one seemed to be paying attention to him anymore.

"Aye." Teacher agrees, folding the parchment up and tucking it into an inner pocket of his kimono. "The letter is from him too. He's in prison, again." There was an odd emotion on the old master's face, and Darts was sure he was torn between anger and bewilderment. "Something about poachers poaching ancient dragon hunting grounds in Unova... he went to put a stop to it on his way here, and the government there arrested him on charges of piracy." The master snorts a little, draining the last of the tea from his cup. "That would be my brother, diving in first and asking questions of legality once he was inside prison walls. Not to mention, we know people there, I don't know why he wouldn't just contact them..." The Flygon was practically draped across Drasna's lap by this point in time as she pet the happy Dragon. The Elder gets to his feet finally, pushing the chair back with a groan. "It looks as though there's a welcoming feast for you after all, Dartboard-san. Congratulations and welcome back." He says half-sardonically, moving towards the house. "I need to make a couple of phone calls, and there's no sense in letting this all go to waste. Dig in, and then come find me after lunch. This changes the timetable of our training slightly."

Darts doesn't need to be told twice, he's already neck deep in food by the time the porch's front door has shut.

--

Wow. Drasna sure could cook. Darts idly picks the inside of his mouth underneath his crest with a toothpick fashioned from some kind of ivory or bone, they had been in holders across the breadth of the table as he excuses himself from the group of people shipping box meals from the leftovers into the general population further down in the valley.

The gambler had been alone for the first part of his feast, as Drasna had excused herself to take the Flygon out behind the dojo to feed and rehydrate it after the long flight from Unova. After a little while though Darts couldn't ingest another morsel of the Elite Four member's cooking no matter how good it was, and he had dipped into the village to invite a couple of the villagers into the courtyard to help distribute the rest of the food across the populous. The villagers had been hesitant to talk to him when he had first come into Mymay Sanctuary as an outsider and a hybrid, but now he found that they were almost eager to interact with him, smiling and laughing at his corny jokes as they packaged the rest of the feast into practical take-out boxes for consumption later. He never forgot what his master had told him the last time he had been here, that these people were the backbone of their existence here in this paradise, and he did his best to show them his appreciation for what they did. The gambler had other business to attend to, however, and before too long he had to excuse himself from the throng of smiling people to find his sensei. A short scout around the building found his master out in the middle of the artificial lake in the back yard, a little ways away from the waterfall he had been forced to scale earlier in the afternoon. The gilt gambler had had a sneaking suspicion this was where they were to meet, as whenever they worked on something involving his powers directly, this is where they went. This particular lake had several small disc-shaped stone platforms across it in a grid. The pair of them had often trained out in the middle of the body of water, both to allow the peace and quiet of the moving water to suffuse the Giratina hybrid's raging emotions that would bubble to the surface as they slowly worked on peeling back the layers of control over Darts' hybrid body, but also to minimize damage to the yard. Drasna worked quite hard at planting flowers and grass every year.

"So." The Elder says, as Darts nears, hopping from stone to stone across the water. "How was your return feast?"

"Twice as good knowing it was for someone else, as usual." The hybrid replies, a bit petulantly as he hops onto the same platform as the old man.

"Ahh, well we can't all be so important as to always have feasts ready for us." Teacher chuckles. He was seated cross-legged in the middle of the platform and gestured for the gambler to take the same position across from him, which Darts does. "Now." In an instant, Teacher's face went from half-amused to deadly serious. Darts could tell whatever wisdom the old man was going to impart to him, it was not a joke. "The technique I am about to begin teaching you is the core of everything that we as Dragon Clan members do. None of us are hybrids like you are, so I am concerned that once you begin utilizing it you might tear everything around you to pieces."

"Tear everything to pieces? But sensei, I'd like to think you'd trust me more than-"

The old man interrupts Darts' protestation with the raising of his hand. "I am sorry, Darts, but there is a precedent that requires me to err on the side of caution involving this technique. While it is certainly a simpler technique, per say, than that of your Shadow Force, I decided to teach you that first in order to more effectively gauge your emotional readiness for this one." He clears his throat and then rises, taking a standard pose, fists raised and clenched in a standard kung-fu stance. "This. Is Outrage." In a flash Teacher quick as light disappears and then reappears on another disc platform near Darts, bringing to bear his fist against its surface in mid-air. The disc shatters almost immediately, cracks spiderwebbing across its face as soon as his fist impacts the middle of the platform. These cracks travel downward along the surface of the stone structure, along the sides of the column and down under the water, before the entire thing simply disintegrates to powder, the force applied by the old man's fist splintering the very center of the thing to its core, and he has to jump away before he is sent into the water along with the fragments.

"...wow." Is all the gambler can manage, still seated on the original disc in the middle of the water. The force his master had just demonstrated to him completely surpassed anything he had seen the old man demonstrate before. Teacher had always flared his chi to demonstrate his emotions, but with this technique Darts had not sensed anything in the way of major spikes in power before the old man had brought his fist to bear against the stone. Granted, the hybrid was not very experienced in the ways of sensing or measuring chi quite yet, but it appeared as though the old man had done nothing exceptional before demolishing the platform to dust with a single blow. "What was that?"

"I just told you, obvious question asking pupil of mine." Teacher says, stepping back onto their platform again, brushing some bits of rock off his kimono and into the water next to them. "That was a technique known as Outrage. When Dragon-types use it in battle, they thrash about violently with ancient rage awoken in their heart for several minutes, immense power radiating from them as they do so. Once they have finished, they are usually so exhausted and confused that they may strike anyone or anything, including themselves or their handlers. We of the Dragon Clan, though not being hybrids ourselves, are more in touch with our inner draconic energy than anyone else, so we too have learned to tap into this destructive force. However," Here Teacher pauses, with a steady gaze fixed on Darts, x-raying him as surely as any machine. "Even for humans, this power is not so easily controlled. And as us of the Dragon Clan have discovered in the past, this technique becomes doubly dangerous in the hands of a hybrid. But it is the basis for anything I will be able to teach you from here, and so you must learn it."

Oh boy, time to face the music. Darts slowly, grudgingly turns around to face Clair who's waiting for him with her arms crossed, the two enormous backpacks bulging with supplies right next to her. Drasna's talking to her animatedly at the moment, but she gives Clair a small peck on the cheek and a hug before turning towards the gambler. "Now, you two take care of each other even if it's just a small trip, the roads up to Josho this time of year are not awful but..." She turns back to look at Clair again, just for a second. "Take care." She pecks Darts on the cheek too, much to his surprise, and watches approvingly as they both take their backpacks from the ground. Clair still hasn't said a word to her charge, despite being in charge, and that did not bode well to him by any means. "Goodbye you two!" Drasna trills behind them, waving as she fades into the distance. "Come back soon and I'll make you guys a return meal!" The two of them shuffle through the village in silence other than the clanking of the pots and pans in their enormous packs, make their way out through the entrance and past Ronnie (did that guy ever sleep?) who was reading a newspaper disinterestedly. He gives them a courteous nod as they go outside, into the wilderness.

Unlike last time he had been here, the outer climate was not something resembling an arctic blizzard. He had helped Drasna through a major snowstorm on his way here from Blackthorn, and he was glad to see grass as the pair of them stepped through the iron portcullis. A slight breeze made his jacket shiver a little as he looked up to admire the moon, waxed to its maximum size that illuminated the valley before them. He had no idea where they were going, so he turns to Clair for advice just in time to see her pick up her pack and toss it at him. "Huh?" He asks, a bit confused.

"You are my pupil now." She snaps, turning her back to him immediately. "You will speak when spoken to. Maybe that will teach you to train your tongue a little. You will carry my bag and your bag on the way there. You will not talk to me, unless I ask of it. You will do what I say without question, and if you do not I will pack you up and crate you back to the Sanctuary to get booted out of this Clan so fast you will miss about seven zip codes on the way. Am I clear?"

"Yeeeees..." Darts sneers back sarcastical- In an instant, before the narration even has time to document it, Clair has taken hold of his hand and slung him over her shoulder and to the ground, his arm braced against her knee at the elbow joint, clearly ready to break it as she looms over the top of him.

"Let's try that again." She hisses, applying a bit more force to his arm as she holds it. "I asked you if I was clear. I don't care how strong you are, if I snap your arm in two like a matchstick I doubt you'll be able to fight me. Am I clear now?"

"...yes." The gambler shoots her a glare matched in venom only by the look she was giving him.

"You hybrids are all the same." She throws his arm down, releasing him in apparent disgust. "Always think that just because you have different bodies or more powers than regular people that makes you better than us. Well I'll tell you something." She gets to her feet, pushing him away from her body with a rough shove of her foot, sending him sprawling near the two packs with a sharp push. "In my eyes you will always be nothing but a freak and a disgrace to the Clan name. No matter how hard you try or how much effort you put in, you will be nothing but a blemish on our otherwise perfect history if you get in. Now let's get moving, time's wasting and my time is too expensive to be wasted on a mongrel like you." With that cheery note, Clair turns, her cape flapping a bit as she leaves the hybrid dumbfoundedly lying near the two packs. Figuring that he'd get left behind if he waited too long, supplies or no, Darts gets to his feet and slings the two bags over his shoulders. They were both heavy, but not so heavy that he couldn't support the pair on his shoulders, turning and hauling the bags over his back to struggle after Clair. The Gym Leader hadn't given him a second glance since she had taken off.

"We need to make it to the village before dawn if we ever want to make good time to the battlegrounds. Hurry up, disciple." The last bit was said with such animosity, Darts rolled his eyes silently behind her but didn't protest. Clair was a lot more experienced than him for sure, but as far as stronger overall the Giratina hybrid doubted it. What he really didn't understand was other than him being a hybrid what was her deal? Why did she hate him so much? There just seemed to be more questions and less answers at time progressed. and Darts wasn't sure he liked that.

The two of them travel in silence, broken still only by the clinking of pots and pans, exacerbated now because one person was carrying both enormous bags instead of both of them sharing the burden. Every now and again, Clair would point to some sheer cliff face that led to a point further on in the path and demand that Darts scale it. The first time he had asked if he needed to take both back packs, after she made him carry the backpacks up, throw them back down, and then do it over again he quickly came to the conclusion that yes, he did. By the time he got to the top of whatever part of the path Clair had indicated, she would be waiting for him. Her having just taken the path instead of scaling the mountains she barely seemed out of breath, and she would impatiently tap her foot as the hybrid struggled upright, shouldered both backpacks again and resumed following her in silence. He didn't voice anything he was thinking internally, but suffice it to say none of it was in any way complimentary to the blue-haired vixen ordering him around. After a while, the green grass of the valley gave way more and more to harsh stone frontiers, Darts spied a sign finally, cruedly painted onto the rock face ahead of them that said something that might have been Josho Doragon, but he couldn't tell. Mountain hermits had terrible handwriting.

Clair stops all of a sudden as they reach the base of the sign, a hand going out defensively across Darts' chest to stop his progress as well. He would have probably thrown down the bags and had words were it not for her face. The usually hardened and non-emotional mask that Clair wore all the time had crumbled in an instant, her wide eyed fright all too visible as she looked ahead of them in the path, off in the distance.

"What?" Darts asks, looking from her eyes to where she seemed to be trying to see, trying to figure out if there was something coming up that he wasn't anticipating already. A second surprise, next to her face, she didn't say a single word condemning him for talking a moment ago and she doesn't respond, staring out ahead of her wide-eyed. "Wha-" Before he can finish redundantly asking the same question, a figure out in front of them slowly came into view. Maybe a bit bigger than human-sized, its face was a putrescent red color, cragged and formed into a snout that jutted out in front of itself. Two mesmerizing liquid golden eyes glared out from behind the protrusion, completing a very striking profile that had Darts knowing for certain that whoever it was was not human. From the neck down, a roughly-spun brown cloak covered the rest of the man's body, but no matter his other fashion decisions, the man was wearing a broad smile on his face and approaching the pair of them. Clair's reaction engendered nothing but alarm in him, and as the figure approached Darts' math skills finally put two and two together and came to the conclusion that this was Zax, the Druddigon hybrid.

"Hello Clair." Zax rumbles, a vicious purr rolling out of him as he looked the Gym Leader up and down, her eyes rolling slightly as he does so.

"Zax." She replies, her hands clenching into fists unconsciously as he approaches. "You know why I'm here."

"I do?" He asks in response, a forked tongue slithering out from between his lips to snatch a leftover bit of food on his muzzle, as his lips raise up in a smile. Gleaming white canines were displayed between his pink gums, a predatory smile if Darts had ever seen one. "Oh do tell, do tell." His eyes roam to Darts then, stooped behind Clair while hauling the two packs still, and his face takes on a much less friendly visage. "Who's this?"

"Oh that's-" By this point Darts is all kinds of fed up of not being able to talk for himself. He had to endure Clair's tender mercies the whole way here, and he is going to be damned if he was going to let Clair talk for him towards some reject from the Clan.

"The name." He says, a bit louder than he may have intended, as he lets both enormous backpacks fall to the ground with a clash and a clatter as they bounce off each other and land on the stone surface with an audible clang. "Is Darts." He takes a couple steps forwards, past Clair who is looking at him with a glare intended to put him in the ground that instant, to go face-to-face with the Druddigon hybrid. Their eyes lock, Zax's pair of pale-amber gold eyes racked with intensity and... a tinge of madness? Meeting them were Darts' fiery-red pips, glowing with intensity as the Giratina hybrid stared down the man in front of him, pissed at Clair for dragging him up through those mountains, but doubly pissed at the form in front of him for betraying the Clan and their trust. For some reason, for a man who usually owed no allegiance to anything, Darts could not stand the sight of him. "Dragon Clan Initiate-in-Waiting. I would ask who you were, but I think I can spot failure when it's in front of me."

Immediately responding to the Giratina hybrid's posturing, Zax rips his brown cloak asunder, revealing a chiseled body beyond whatever Darts could hope to sport, pale blue abs amid a mass of muscles. He wore a traditional gi, bound at the waist with a black strip of cloth that swayed as the Druddigon hybrid took a fighting stance. His hands up, Zax rocked back and forth on his sandals slightly as he displayed his guard. Darts immediately sensed a dull fire within the hybrid in front of him, azure flames identical to the ones that resided in his own soul began pouring a surge of energy over the man's muscles, empowering him with Outrage.

"Looking for a fight, eh?!" Zax spits, wild-eyed. Well, that blew up quickly. Even from here Darts could see that his pupils were as dilated as a drug addict on a ten-day binge. Battle-addicted. I see what they mean. He chances a glance at Clair, but she's not even considering him, that familiar baby blue venomous glare pointed in another direction for once, fixed on the back of Zax's head with unblinking malice. But even for all of that, the Giratina hybrid knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one thing. She's frozen. Clair's muscles trembled as though flexed to the maximum, but even still she made nothing resembling a movement, not even blinking. That, to Darts, trebled his trepidation going into what he knew was shaky circumstances at best, without Clair to even back him up. If I don't do this here, there's a real chance that we die.

Desperation fueling him, Darts immediately attacks, rushing the more muscular hybrid while he had the advantage of surprise, his hands coming up from where he had been lazily lounging them, the pockets of his jacket. Pressing forwards, his golden fists slip underneath the pure-Dragon-type's guard, as Darts attacks his opponent's kidney area, pummeling the bigger man's guts with all the strength he could muster as he pushed his advantage.

"Graaaah!" Zax snarls, backing up as he tries to create some separation to use his newly-swollen muscles, but Darts keeps on top of him as best he could, throwing lefts and rights in alternating combinations, the whole time making sure to keep his guard up. No video montages this time. he vows, silently. Foregoing retreating, as the jacketed hybrid was stubbornly sticking to him like glue, the bigger hybrid plants his feet, strengthening his guard. Quick as a whip, Darts drops underneath to snap his leg across in a sweep, using the bulkier hybrid's weight to his advantage as he sends Zax sprawling to the ground with a crash. Well. Darts straightens, his guard intact throughout that entire exchange. That went well. Wait. Ow. A sharp biting pain in his hands causes him to tilt his fists slightly. The golden exteriors were still intact for the most part, but there were several gouges now in the surfaces of his knuckles, black ichor lightly trickling from the fresh wounds.

"Mmmm... nnnahhh..." Zax has gotten back to his feet, and smiles, his tongue lolling out slightly at the sight of the gambler examining his wounds. "Rough Skin. Very durable, and very handy against annoying middleweight fighters such as yourself." Despite the pounding he had just taken, the Druddigon hybrid didn’t look all that crazed any more, but the Outrage was still slightly smoldering within his core. Freed of his former mania, at least for now the hybrid now carried himself in a way Darts liked much less than crazed. Focused. Zax smiles winningly, his needle-sharp incisors on display again before he strikes like lightning, almost faster than Darts could see as the blue-ish red blur pounces on top of him. The gambler gets his guard up just in time as the first assault moves in to blast him, the incoming dragon's claw barely deflected by the outside of his forearm. What power... It was so strong, that even as Darts' feet dug into the stony mountainside, the attack slowly rotated him without lifting, two divots left as his unrelenting stance carved them into the rock. Wow. If he hits me even- There's no time to finish analyzing his weaknesses, as the second blow comes in from above, a knock out punch designed to exploit Darts dropping his guard to counterattack. Rather than obliging, the gambler holds fast and turns slightly, rolling across the blow to soften the impact and keep his guard intact. Now that I've got his back... Just as the Giratina drops his guard finally to attack again, Zax spins faster than before as another flare of Outrage pumps through his veins, and he counters the incoming punch, his hand slipping around Darts' outstretched arm to exploit the centrifugal force needed to throw the punch in the first place. His crest smashes forwards violently of his own accord, bouncing Darts to the ground in a second. Dazed, Darts flips back to his feet and rolls underneath another oncoming punch that sends him spinning like he had just dove into oncoming traffic as it clips his guard. Thank god it had been his own momentum that had dealt the damage and not an actual blow from the Druddigon's muscles.

Both of them square up again, Zax still smiling, but even wider this time if that was possible. Lots of teeth in this bugger... He wasn't even holding up a guard at this point, clearly believing he now vastly outpaced the jacketed hybrid in front of him. And maybe he did, but Darts wasn't about to go down with an ace or two still in his pocket. The Giratina hybrid strikes first again, but this time Zax was there to meet him, two blurs of speed impacting in midair as Darts seemingly fails in his attempt to slip beneath Zax's guard. Blue muscles flex, trapping the smaller hybrid's arm in the crook of the other's arm. Seemingly. As soon as Zax twitches to throw his unoccupied arm towards Darts' face proper, the jacketed wonder vanishes in a blur of motion for a couple of seconds before re-emerging almost instantly, back from the Distortion World, the sudden disappearance of the hybrid's weight and re-emergence throws the Druddigon hybrid off balance, allowing Darts to reappear and throw a solid right hand, covered in the necrotic energies of between-world transport as he unleashes a Shadow Force directly into the maw of the mass of muscles in front of him. His blow hits home with a satisfyingly solid sounding thud, sending Zax smashing down into the ground with a sonorous boom as Darts finally connects cleanly.

"Hah... hah..." Darts is gassed, panting slightly as he looks at his downed opponent, his guard still up but shaky. That entire exchange hadn't taken too much out of him, but using Shadow Force still seemed to take almost everything he had in the tank all at once. He still hadn't dared to use Outrage, as he doubted he could control it under these circumstances. He examines Zax one final time, dropping his guard to turn and look at Clair. The last thing he would remember before he was beat unconscious would be the sight of her liquid blue eyes, and the reflection of the Druddigon hybrid springing on top of him as soon as he had turned his back.

--


"Nnnaaaahhh!!!" Darts shouts as he sits up awake, violently bringing himself from the bowels of unconsciousness all at once, his jacket curling in pain around him as he does so, sending him flopping back onto the bed as waves of pain wash over him.

"I was wondering when you were going to wake up." Clair's merciless tone is the first thing to meet his ears, and the Giratina hybrid groans, begging sweet unconsciousness to take him once again. The Gym Leader was standing in the doorway of whatever room the gambler now found himself in. It looked to be a house of some kind, he could hear the whistling of the wind outside as it swept by the tiny dwelling. A fire in the other room was pumping heat through the whole domicile, and he was grateful to whoever had lit it. A sharp pain in his hand reminds him of something unpleasant, and he directs his gaze downward. They are thoroughly wrapped in bandages, and as he moves he can feel more bandages, around his ribs, down one of his legs, and oddly enough on his jacket. He looks back up at her as she bores a hole in him from above, her sapphire circles unrelentingly zeroing in on his battered form. "Why did you do something so reckless? So stupid?" Her voice is harsh, and Darts shakes his head slightly to knock some of the cobwebs free.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that even though you knew nothing about the situation, nor any of the reasons for being here, you somehow got the idea in your addled little brain that fighting an opponent of unknown strength and propensity was a good idea?" Clair doesn't hold back at all, each venomous tongue lash as stinging as the last. Her arms are crossed defensively and as Darts inspects her, she looks relatively unharmed compared to him, other than a small scratch across her left cheek that's already been tended to, from the look of it. "Honestly, I don't know why grandfather bothers with you, I really don't. You're hopeless."

"I'm hopeless?" As Darts attempts to stagger to his feet and off the bed in protest, his wounds ache and so he thinks better of it, settling for sitting up a little bit further instead. "What, your grandfather leaves me in your care and you think you can just insult and belittle me at your convenience? Well I've got news for you, that's not the way this works. And judging by your reaction to that hybrid who just cleaned my clock, I'd say there's a bit more to this 'Zax' than anyone's been telling me." At the first mention of his name, Clair's hand clenches involuntarily. "See?" Darts says, nodding to indicate it even as the Gym Leader rushes to loosen her grip. "That's what I'm talking about. You froze back there. You don't freeze. Six solid months of sparring against you, and not once in all of the times we've fought. Not even close. Why now?"

"If you think I froze, why do you think you still draw breath, or whatever it is you do in that body of yours?" Clair snidely snaps back, "Don't you realize that Zax could have torn your head from your body without so much as a care in the world and tossed it aside like a child's toy? Fighting him without Outrage is pointless. Even if you kept your guard up rather well," Darts took whatever satisfaction he could in that almost-compliment. "There was still no way you could possibly hope to outmatch him. Outrage makes him stronger, Outrage makes him faster. Not to mention he has more experience fighting than you do, you've just begun to scratch the surface."

"If I've only begun to scratch the surface, why do you insist on trying to drown me?" Darts asks, exasperatedly. "What do you have against me? Ever since I've come here you've been nothing but terrible to me, if you have a problem with me, this is the time to get it off your shoulders." He points a finger accusingly, his palm wound with white linen. "There's something you're not telling me, and it's affecting your fighting, even if you won't admit it."

"Go to bed, idiot." She says coldly, turning to leave the room. "We'll discuss this further in the morning. Try not to kill yourself out of shame before dawn." With that lovely parting comment, she sweeps from the room, her cape following her as she shuts the door behind her, plunging the room back into darkness. Falling back onto the comfortable pillow, darkness was all that the Giratina hybrid desired right now honestly. Fighting with Clair could... wait until... morning. His eyes shut, two pips of red winking out in the dark and he sleeps again, the second of two days with regular sleep. Even though they were outside of the Air Lock around Mymay, he hadn't had time to hear even a whisper of the Distortion World, and lady unconsciousness took him again for the moment.

--

Clair sits bolt upright on her bed in another room of the house, the lights off and her knees to her chest as she silently sits, fully clothed, wide awake in the darkness of the night. The people of Josho Doragon were kind folk, and once Clair had made it to the town dragging a half-dead and unconscious Darts an old couple had immediately volunteered their domicile for housing the pair for the night. The room Darts currently slept dreamlessly in had been their son's room, and this room their daughter's before both had moved on in life to other things. She was thinking back on what had happened a few hours ago. She had come face to face with a man that could have been the closest thing in her life ever resembling genuine love turned murderous psychopath.

"Zax! You know why I am here!" She had needed to shout to be heard over the sound of the predator pummeling the unconscious body in front of him, driving him off of the gambler with a sharp crescent kick as soon as she neared the pair coming in at a dead sprint. Forced to at least block, Zax does so, retreating a few steps. He shakes his head as he takes a second to compose himself, . As soon as Darts' blow had landed, the Druddigon hybrid had feigned unconsciousness, but Druddigons have sturdy, almost impenetrable skulls, and as mighty as the Shadow Force had been, it paled in comparison to the level of power needed to take down a juiced up Dragon. Feigning unconsciousness, Zax had merely waited for the correct moment to strike, as soon as the hybrid had turned his back, he took the opportunity and one punch was all it had taken, nearly separating head from crest.

"I... I know why you're here? Why don't you just tell me why you brought this rabid drake to my doorstep. This is your pupil? He's barely a little nestling taking his first couple of steps out of the clutch." Zax derisively takes a moment to deliver a solid kick to Darts' ribs, the hybrid's unconscious body rolling across the ground like a ball. Clair doesn't even move to stop him. She daren't. He refocuses back on her and approaches, his teeth bared again in that violent smile. Everything about him was violent now. A mass of muscles and anger, he puts his eyes level with hers as he approaches, coming within striking distance.

"And that's exactly why you should let the pair of us go. He's here to learn the same technique that you already possess. You may live for battle, but fair combat at the very least, Zax. Give me some time to try and refine his technique. He can't even... hold a candle to you." A spastic involuntary movement, like she wanted nothing more than to squeeze the life out of the hybrid in front of her followed this momentary compliment, her hands wringing by her sides. Zax fixes her with a steady eye, his musculature on full display as he crosses his arms across his chest.

"What's in it for me?" He asks, pointedly, his voice lowering to a hurt growl. "Last time we saw each other, I'm fairly certain you had rejected my love and told me never to return, minutes before that fool Elder hurled me from the sanctuary."

"I couldn't love a monster, Zax. Which is what you have become through overuse of that foul technique. You're nothing more than a junky now, looking for a fix." Clair answers, hatred dripping from every syllable. There's a sudden motion then, and a pain that causes the Gym Leader to put a hand to her cheek in alarm. A singular shallow cut traced her jawline from her chin to her ear, a few dribbles of blood running down her cheek as Zax smiles again, knives squared against each other. He sticks out his tongue to take a taste from his claw.

"Now, now." he rumbles, threateningly. "You don't want to make me mad, do you? That would be very bad for you. You don't have the strength to even tangle with me. You're lucky I didn't lash out at that first kick or you would be a lot more.. liquidated than you currently are. Why should I give you any time? I can end your foul-fighting apprentice right here and..." He takes another threatening step towards her, nearly nose to nose now. "Take what I want."

"Is violence still your solution to everything?" She asks, calmer on the outside than she was on the inside, every fiber of her being screaming at her to back down immediately. "How did that work out for you, being banished and all? I had to beg my grandfather not to decapitate you, to give me the chance to capture you alive so you could face judgment." She stands in defiance of him still, refusing to be intimidated physically as she keeps her gaze level. "But what if I told you that I suppose I knew a way that you could possibly rejoin the Clan, if you give me a week to train this one here?"

"You would never tell me, even if you knew such a way." Zax grunts, but even though try as the Dragon might, an unconscious shiver of desire had run through his body, a deeper desire than battle showed itself as he shook uncontrollably. He was listening, that much Clair could be sure. His pride had always come from being a part of the Clan and once he was banished, it had hurt him as effectively as punching an exposed nerve.

"Give me a week."

"Four days." Zax replies, his tone indicating it wasn't a negotiation.

"Four days, then. We will be training on the old battlefield, out past the village. Four days from tomorrow, you will head there and invoke the right of chōsen no migigawa. It is an ancient rule, left from the days when the clan was flourishing and masters would often have multiple apprentices and they needed a way to give a second chance to talented apprentices who may have failed the first time. Invoking this rule allows you to face the apprentice of a member, probationary or otherwise of the Clan, and, as long as you have been a member of the clan before challenge him to a honorable duel with his spot in the Clan on the line. Defeat by knockout, or death." Clair's hair had fallen over her eyes as she said this, and she made no move to brush it away, hoping it would obscure the horror she felt at offering such a bargain to a brute like this. All hybrids were the same, in her eyes. Recklessly violent and made doubly so by the strange impulses their odd bodies had. It was bad enough her grandfather had taken to this homeless jacket-wearing vagrant of a hybrid, but to let this violent murderer back into the clan did her whole line a disservice. "It's only valid because you were formerly the apprentice of a member yourself, and even if you've been banished the rite is still valid. It's an old rule, one that not many know of. But it exists, and they will have to acknowledge you."

"Chōsen no migigawa, eh?" The dragon rolls the syllables over his tongue, as if savoring every syllable. "Very well, on the dawn of the fifth day I will come to you. I will wipe your pathetic charge from existence, and I will retake my rightful spot on the Clan's roster. Tell this... 'Darts' that he has four days to put his affairs in order, there will be no holding back next time."

He had left then, taking his enormous energy presence with him. Clair, to her credit, took her time sinking to the ground, her entire body shaking with effort before she decided freezing to death out here was much less preferable to the fate that awaited them in four days time, getting up and hauling the hybrid's unconscious body to the building they were now huddling in. Correction, she was huddling in.

I can't let him see me like this. Clair vows, silently, as she looks out the window into the darkness beyond it. Either of them. I have to be strong, like grandfather taught me. She had been so confident when the Elder had given her the choice of whether or not she wanted to bring Zax to justice. Yes, she had answered confidently. Yes, I will bring him back here so he can stand trial. But as soon as they had been occupying the same area, her heart had faltered. Pulling her knees closer to herself in the dark, she knew that she would never be able to lay a hand on him. The things they had been through, experienced together, they were bonds that she was not willing to break. And while he had refined his use of Outrage a million times past what he had left the monastery with, she was confident in her own skills and her Pokemon that she would have been able to take him down, especially with Darts' frontal assault. It had been a good attempt, something she would never admit out loud to the golden hybrid, but without Outrage an amateur like him had no chance of even holding a candle to Zax.

She was hesitant to consider the possibility, but the simple fact of the matter was that if she couldn't get Darts in fighting shape in four days, she would have to honor the rite of combat she had presented the Dragon with. Her chances of becoming a member proper would vanish as soon as she had to give the Elder the news, not that she didn't feel like she was chasing smoke and shadows anyhow. Five years is a long time to wait, only for someone new to show up and immediately be given the same chances you had to fight to earn... She turns to look outside the window again, not trusting herself to sleep just yet. Zax could be anywhere, despite his promises not to interfere in the training she wasn't sure if she believed that yet. Only time would tell.

--
Day One of Four

God... damn is it morning already? Darts' eyes flutter open to reveal the same house he vaguely remembered waking up in the night before. He sits up, his ribs screaming at him in protest the entire time, but it wasn't so unbearable that he couldn't do so. Removing the bandages from his hands, the gambler turns them around to inspect the wounds. Other than a few faint traces that had left small indentations, faint little white lines that appeared to mimic scars, most of the damage done to them appeared to have healed overnight. Either this place is one of those magical healing ghost cottages, or I have less trouble getting back on my feet than I used to. So it seemed, even as he began moving around more vigorously his ribs, which he would have sworn were broken from something yesterday, were going from a sharp stabbing pain to a lighter dull throb as he got up and got moving around. The door opened into a hallway that was connected directly to a main kitchen sort of area. There was an old couple, a man and a woman, the owners of the house Darts surmised, sitting in the kitchen enjoying something that looked like scrambled eggs and toast. They had a fire lit again, the roaring flames licking a kettle that seemed to contain more scrambled eggs, causing the hybrid's stomach to let out an audible gurgle. "Er... hey." He says awkwardly.

A sudden slap to the back of the head would break the ice immediately as Clair comes out of a bedroom to his right behind him, rebuking her temporary pupil sharply. "Can you contain your stomach for two seconds, you buffoon? Thank our hosts properly." Darts shoots a nasty look over his shoulder but doesn't outwardly rebel, giving a short bow to the elderly couple.

"Thank you for giving us a place to stay for the night." He says, honestly. The two give him a kind smile and a not, so he stands up straight again, turning to face the Gym Leader, who looked venomous as ever. The gambler noted that she appeared to have bags under her eyes, but declines to comment on them because he figured the chances he liked the resulting argument would be slim to none. "So. What's the plan from here?"

"We stay on track. My grandfather has tasked me with taking you to the battlefield, and whether or not you decide to continue throwing yourself into traffic, as long as you live I will honor the Elder's wishes." Clair adjusts her cape slightly, giving a bow of her own to the old couple, she made sure her Pokeballs were on hand and easy to reach, something Darts took note of but again declined to mention. "Besides. You're going to have a rematch anyhow. And I'd rather you not retarnish our already besmirched name."

"A rematch?" Darts says, disbelief marked in his voice as he does so. "I don't have a prayer of fighting that Ryu ripoff any time soon. Not only is he in much better shape than I am, you said it yourself, Outrage makes him stronger, Outrage makes him faster. I don't have a chance against him."

"Then we even the playing field." Clair looks him dead-on in the eyes for once, icy blue chips opposing his fiery red gaze. "He uses an imperfect Outrage technique, because he never learned how to handle it properly. If his Outrage is strong, your Outrage even at a beginners level should be far and beyond anything he can conjure up. If your muddled blood has to be in our Clan, at least for the moment, you should be able to fight without soiling our reputation."

"And you think you can teach me the technique?" The gambler was unimpressed with her reasoning so far, so he was still fairly dubious of these circumstances. "Why do I have to fight this guy again, exactly?"

Clair's gaze, locked eye to eye with the gambler shifts to the side slightly as she appeared to be intently looking at the wall behind him. "How do you think I got him to let us leave?" She asks, her voice quieting a bit. "I put my word on the line that we would be at that arena in four days. The Clan's honor is on the line here, if we don't show up..."

"Four days?"

"Four days." Clair looks back at him, her tone firm again as she does. "If you hadn't stupidly jumped in to attack him without provocation we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place, so the least you could do is clean up your own mess. We'll be staying here for the duration of our stay in Josho, so do be polite."

It looked like this was unavoidable then. Darts lets out a sigh, and nods solemnly, accepting responsibility for a great deal more than he knew, though Clair doesn't mention that part, she figured the chances she liked the resulting argument would be slim to none. As long as he trained well, the fact his Clan membership was on the line would be moot, and if he trained poorly, well, she had bigger things to worry about beyond whether or not that annoying speck was in the Clan any more.

"So." The Giratina hybrid says, inclining his head towards the door. "Should we get going? If we've only got four days, the time's wasting."

"That's the first intelligent thing I think you've said." She says, grimly nodding herself. The pair excuse themselves and make their way outside. The tiny village of Josho Doragon rose to meet them, a cluster of rustic buildings piled together on an outcropping of rock in the cradle of the mountains. The wind had calmed down since the previous evening and a light powder of snow had fallen, most of it melting away in the almost midday sun. Water glistened and shimmered as it fell from the rooftops, forming puddles where it lay. A couple minutes of Darts following the woman in front of him later, and Clair extends a hand, pointing at a large stone building, easily visible from the outskirts of the town. It was a dumpy grey color, almost blending into the stone behind it as its rounded form extended out against the wilderness. "That, is the official battlefield of the Dragon Clan. Back when it was originally built, challengers used to come and test the Clan's might both in Pokemon battles and physical combat. Many of the things that have shaped the modern Dragon Clan came from decisons that came from that battleground."

"Seems sort of... abandoned." Darts comments. squinting his eyes against the harsh rays of the sun to get a better view. "How long has it been since someone has used this place?"

"Since..." Clair pauses, remembering. It had been the last time she, or anyone from the Dragon Clan for that matter, had seen Lance. Right after he had finished destroying her team with a single Dragonite, he had gone to the battlefield to settle a dispute with... someone from outside the clan. She had been too distraught to go watch the ex-Champion battle after such a total defeat, but she was positive he had won. The times Lance had ever lost were rare, to put it mildly. "A couple of years, at least..." They make their way out of the village and up the path cut in the ground towards the place, the slope rising slightly as they came upon it. As dull-grey up close as from a distance, it was a fairly large place, and now that Darts had more opportunity to look it over, it didn't match the dull color of the rock, it was hewn from the side of the mountain itself. A pair of Gyarados, ornately cut but worn down from the weather, flanked either side of the singular doorway, their mouths wide with rage. Clair ascends a set of steps up to it, and turns the handle of the great oaken door with authority. It was unlocked, so it swings inward without protest. The hybrid takes a second to inquire.

"Do we... usually just leave this place unlocked?"

Clair smirks, as if she knows something funny that Darts doesn't, takes a step backwards, and then gestures into the open doorway with a swish of her cape, backing out of the doorway to let Darts go in first. "After you, then. You look like you know a thing or two about breaking and entering. Why don’t you go see?"

Pretty sure she didn't bring him all this way just to let him die, but not liking the situation all the same, Darts hesitantly takes the lead, and walks into the stone building. It's dark on the inside, considering the building appeared to be windowless that wasn't much of a surprise. As he makes his way into the blackness in front of him, his hand searching the wall for a lightswitch, he suddenly becomes aware of a rustling vibration running through the walls, a pulse passing by his hand just before he finally locates the switch and hits it. The lights come on with a 'pop', revealing a horde of Deino sleeping in various states all along the hallway that stretched before him. There was a pair of doors at the end of it, but both had at least one Dragon-type dozing in front of it. The source of the vibrations, however, appeared to be a different Pokemon. In addition to the dozens of sleeping, blind (luckily) Pokemon in the hallway, every single spot that looked like it had wooden paneling built into the stone at some time or another has an enormous gash ripped into it, and several piles of odd, oblong-looking stones. These openings were completely devoid of any Deino sleeping by them, and suddenly Darts realized what they were, tusks. "Axew." He says out loud, but not loud enough to be heard by the Deino, he hoped.

"Now you see." Darts turns back to look at Clair, who had just spoken. "This place is home to two distinct families of Dragon Pokemon, Deino and Axew. Putting them together in this confined of a space is bound to cause conflict. Technically, it's our fault. Our ancestors carved this place out of the mountainside, and the Deino who had been living here just refused to leave, so we let them stay. At the same time, all of the wood structures and paneling attracted a family of Axew who have now built a honeycomb of tunnels throughout this entire place. I would advise against running afoul of any of them, as a couple of would-be robbers have no doubt found out. They rarely have time to fight anyone other than each other, but I'm sure they can make time for you." She points to a set of steps the gambler hadn't seen before, winding its way downward into the floor behind the back of one of the fatter Deino. "There are bigger evolutions than these too, further down in the bowels of the mountain. That is where you will be training for the most part."

Darts gulps. It was bad enough he had a date with a Druddigon hybrid in four days, but some part of him doubted whether or not he was going to make it that far under Clair's tutelage. "So if the battlefield isn't further down, where is it?

Clair waves him out of the building and then leads him to the side of the thing, where another steeper set of steps wound its way up the side of the structure and to the very top of it. Once astride the field, Darts understood the circular-lipped design of the building. An enormous granite Pokeball was cut in the top of it, clearly serving as a battling arena on the top of the place. "And this is the place?"

"This is it." Clair confirms, kneeling down to examine one of the defined lines on the ground, tracing it lightly with a finger. "As old as the mountain it was cut from, my grandfather would joke." She stands, brushing the dirt off her fingers as she fixes Darts with a determined look again, he wasn't sure if he liked that more or less than poisonous hatred. "Well now, you've had a chance to rest from your injuries, shall we start your training?" Worse. Definitely worse.

--

Bruised and beaten again, Darts slumps down in the hallway in defeat, settling next to a sleeping Deino with a sigh. Clair had set the gambler to observing the Dragons in the hallway, insisting that it was essential to see the technique demonstrated in the wild in order to more properly master the technique. After two hours of watching Deino sleep in the hallway and not a single Axew in sight, Darts had decided to stir something up. Hence the bruises and beatings. The Deino were awake now at the very least, and they were milling around in a group, as if they were waiting for something. They couldn't see, so what were they...

All of a sudden, as if on a cue, there's a loud vibration from deep inside the mountain, and rushing out of the tunnels comes a group of Axew, equivalent in size to the Deino's numbers. They have the blind Dragons flanked on both sides, and they immediately rush in to attack, squealing. The Deino respond in kind, and pretty soon before the bemused gambler's eyes, seated where he was on the stone floor, all-out war has broken out between the two factions. They meet in heated combat, the Deino biting the Axew viciously as the tusked Pokemon attempt to fend the blind attackers off with their sharpened tusks. As each side vied for positioning, here and there Darts would notice some Pokemon begin attacking their allies alongside the opposing side. Clear users of Outrage. Over time, he begins to be able to pick out which Pokemon is about to enrage by noting ones that suddenly, aggressively crash into battle, then withdraw, then thrust back into battle again, then retreat, before doing it a third time. Usually right after that, the Pokemon would begin smashing the immediate area randomly, blindly attacking whatever it ran into. After about fifteen minutes of back and forth fighting, both sides withdrew, the Axew disappearing into the walls and the Deino go back to milling around or lying down.

What was I supposed to get out of all of that? The little Deino sleeping near him wakes up finally, blindly getting to its feet before padding over to his prone form. It had missed the entirety of the battle and it squeaks angrily at the Giratina hybrid, a tiny bark emitted from its muzzle as it looks at the space where it knew he was. All of a sudden, it smashes into Darts' crest, sending him flopping back down onto the ground fully. "Ouch... what..." Thinking fast, he goes back to his training with the Elder earlier, and closes his eyes. He could sense the core of energy within him, pulsing, but as he focused hard, the Deino rushes him again and he could sense its energy too, an intense azure rush of Outrage going through it as he rolls out of the way to avoid it and the little guy smashes into the wall with a yelp. "What's that..." The Deino tries one final time, exhausting itself as another blue wave of Outrage rolls through its body, but this time Darts takes pity on the blind Dragon and stops it before it hits the wall, dodging away nimbly. It lets out a little squeaky bark again, but its movements are unfocused and confused now. I was right... Darts thinks, triumphantly. But what does this mean? That we can only use Outrage three times? That's not right, Zax used it for pretty much the entire fight... is it linked to stamina? Pondering all of these things, Darts slips his way down the hallway now that all the Deino have rearranged themselves to no longer be sitting in front of the doors at the end of them (They still avoided the Axew tunnels, however.). He opens the left-hand door with a small creak, and Clair looks up from the book she was browsing. This room was a record-room of sorts, and ever since Clair had sent him to go do his training, the Gym Leader had been in here, perusing various scrolls and documents about the Clan and its history. Darts assumed she wasn't actually supposed to be in here by the guilty way she jumped every time he came in, but he ignored that.

"Yes?" she asks, face red as she had hurriedly knocked a pile of scrolls off the desk in a jumbled heap with her last jump. "Don't tell me you think you've got it already..."

"I've got an idea, but I need to test it. Is there any chance I can borrow you?"

"...very well." She looked like she would like nothing more than to refuse his request, but it was nice knowing that Clair had as much on the line here as he did, as it was her who had accepted the rematch. If he lost, she wouldn't look very good in the eyes of the rest of the Clan. The two adjourn to the arena atop the stone building and face one another, Clair taking a fighting stance as Darts puts up his guard. They had sparred countless times back during the gambler's first visit, and it takes very little prompting, none in fact, for Clair to pounce on him, her long legs immediately searching for any weaknesses in her guard. No mercy given as always, her long swinging kicks drive him backwards, pummeling his forearms with her attacks, and he wondered if she weren't taking out some internal frustration out on him. He tries to press inwards, but she continues switching her stance, rotating her body in order to prevent the gambler from getting close. Inch by inch he tries to press towards her to force her to give up her assault, but she keeps nimbly hopping backwards on one foot, the other practically powdering his rock-solid block.

Alright not good... How did he do it...? Darts dimly remembers the feeling of Outrage flowing through Zax's body, and he reaches for his own, turning the knob on his draconic energy just slightly internally. The energy flows through his body, dousing his muscles in the energy, and he twists the lever a bit more, trying to keep it at a constant burn throughout his body. Clair's kicks, which had looked lightning fast a moment ago were now moving rather... slowly, it seemed. He weaves in mid kick in an instant, his hand going for a palm strike against her ribs. Much to his surprise it connects, sending Clair sprawling away with a surprised 'uff' as the wind leaves her body and she tumbles to the ground in a heap, her cape flipping over her head comedically. The Gym Leader regains her composure in an instant, out of the tangle and to her feet before Darts has so much as half of a laugh formed.