Lucy honestly couldn't have known quite how icky it might have felt at first for Amethyst. Reason being? She for one had never been eaten, and didn't quite have the imagination or well... education to simulate it in her head. Therefore, she totally just sort of... took Amethyst's lack of any real struggle, or at least perceived lack--goodness knew her stomach muscles could bench press a house or something, and/or complaints as acceptance. Such was Amethyst's fate, to make passerby freak pokeballs when they see Lucy's abdomen.
...Some time later Lucy reached the peek. Had she been a human, she probably would've been exhausted, but even with the extra weight hanging off her abdomen she was still relatively full of energy. When she moved up to the top however it was not the hovering cloud of floating pokemon souls above the holy spires on which Arceus had wrote his commandments that drew her attention. You see there was something even more interesting to her present, something that definitely hadn't been there last time she had visited. A painting, plastered against the wall. It depicted people, a struggle of some sort against an unseen enemy. The characters depicted were moving fluidly as if through sorcery. She for one had never seen anything like it. As she observed the eye catching, brightly colored painting her eyes inevitably moved to two visually identifiably pokespirit wielders under it. One had the strangest, least human ears she had ever seen and the other... well... she had a tail sticking out of her backside! The end of the tail was bulbous and appeared to be covered with a sticky colorful substance similar to that found on the walls. Was this the painter?
She approached the two. They looked.... exhausted, famished. In fact they really didn't look all that good! As she moved closer it might appear that the smeargle pokemon-spirit wielder was wounded. She came to a stop a handful of feet away and placed a hand on her bulging stomach in a soothing manner, giving it a light rub. This show of affection was of course directed at her lunch prisoner meta-daughter. She grit her teeth in frustration, but decided to ask anyway. "Did you make this..?" she asked. Amethyst would be able to hear Lucy's voice pretty easily from within her, but she might have a harder time hearing the voices of the others, which would likely sound very muffled.
"Yes..." the smeargle wielder responded bluntly, in a somewhat weak tone.
"...But why? What does this mean?" Lucy asked, receiving a somewhat disappointed look from the apparent artist. It hadn't really occured to her that the artist might have wanted her to understand without being told. Despite this, the girl sighed in an exasperated manner and went on to explain. "Everyone needs to know... These pokespirits--They are not our saviors. They're a curse." the smeargle wielder said, pausing to take a somewhat labored breath. Geez! This girl was /dying/! Somehow, Lucy wasn't all that concerned though. She was too used to, y'know, people dying. "We're digging even deeper holes... Humanity's days are numbered..." the smeargle wielder continued. This disappointed Lucy, who personally had little tolerance for this pessimistic nonsense. "...Didn't you make this with your pokespirit?" Lucy asked, somewhat impatient. "There's no going back for me... The only way out is--death..." the artist replied. Lucy was beginning to get a clearer understanding of the situation... and she didn't like it. "...If things are going to hell, why don't you /do/ something about it? ...And who's this" she asked, gesturing to the other girl with the very strange ears. Said ears reminded her of... flowers, some how. She found herselfreally disliking this girl's train of thought. The artist however declined to respond, and for a moment silence was Lucy's answer.
"...I can hear... everything." the girl with the strange ears said. Lucy got the impression that something was wrong with her. She sounded... traumatized, though Lucy lacked the vocabulary to describe it. The somewhat disturbed girl slowly sat up and looked at Lucy with a haunted look in her eyes. It was kind of disturbing to say the least. Amethyst would feel Lucy's muscles tense as she became wary of the plausibly crazy pokespirit wielder in front of her. "Your... you're pregnant, but...--Ew...W-Why do you keep her trapped in you?" the girl asked in a manner that suggested she thought it was cruel, reaching out and lightly running her fingers across Lucy's exposed stomach, an action Amethyst may be able to feel. Lucy however did not take kindly to this touching and promptly gave the offending hand a light smack, scowling a bit at the other girl. "She's /mine/. Hands off." Lucy scolded in a somwhat hostile tone, suggesting she would totally kick this girl's butt if she had any objections to Amethyst's current situation. This actually seemed to hurt the other girl's feelings, and she withdrew a bit.
"...Is she... food to you?" the odd girl asked, kind of weirded out. It was understandable, but Lucy didn't much care to consider this. She placed both hands on her hips and leaned over the other girl a bit, as if to oppress her. "As far as you should be concerned, /yes/." she said. Wait, what? Why would she say something like that? In truth, she was trying to intimidate the other girl. She hadn't quite considered that implying Amethyst would be digested might alarm the smaller girl. What could she say? She was a kid whose primary train of thought was her own survival, not the feelings of others. Habbits died hard. The other girl seemed distraught, staring at Lucy's stomach as if struggling to come up with a plan to save the child who wasn't actually in danger. However, a mild groan from Lucy's stomach seemed to snap her back into reality--whatever disturbed reality that was.
"...If you intend to kill me, I can't stop you." she said in a downtrodden tone. Lucy was somewhat taken aback by this, and didn't immediately respond. She didn't know how! "...I came here to die." she stated, further catching Lucy off guard. "I never wanted this. The fighting... the pain. The terror and--I hear everything." she said, repeating that last part like a broken record, weakly pulling herself up and reaching out to grasp Lucy's stomach lightly, yet another gesture that Amethyst would probably feel. She pressed her ear against said gravid belly as if listening for something and proceeded to close her eyes. Lucy actually was not amused at all by this, a look of disgust and irritation on her face. Her patience had admittedly been worn thin for the day, and she was ready to slap a ...person. Yet she couldn't quite bring herself to murder this girl. She clearly wasn't... /trying/ to hurt her. She wasn't a threat--even if she had no respect for personal space. Lucy's hands raised as she was embraced as if to grab her assailant, but she never did. Instead she just sort of... stared the other girl down as if hoping she'd just stop being so invasive. She /still/ didn't know what to make of this. Sure she was the one with a living person in her stomach, but clearly the suicidal girl with no sense of personal space was the weird one here. Right? ...Or at least she was to Lucy. Eating people frankly even all that weird to her.
After a moment the girl opened her eyes, a surprised expression on her face. She lifted her gaze upwards at an irritated Lucy and, ignoring the scowl she was getting, continued to talk. "...Wait--You're lying." she said, completely sure of herself in tone. This threw Lucy for a loop. How had she just called her bluff? "You're--" the girl said, a hint of confusion in her tone. For once both of them were at a loss for words. This didn't last long, though. "...You love her." the strange girl said in a slightly distant tone, as if considering the implications. At about this point Lucy just sort of... gave up and decided to roll with this. The girl clearly knew what she was talking about. "...Yeah." Lucy admitted, and just sort of prodded the girl's head as if trying to encourage her to let go. And then Lucy's stomach smiled The wielder wasn't particularly phased by this however, and went silent for a moment. After a moment she let go of Lucy to Lucy's relief. "...Will you push me over the edge and end my suffering..? Maybe my pokespirit will bring you more happiness than it brought me." the odd girl uttered, thoroughly confusing Lucy for a moment. She wanted to be shoved off a cliff? That's messed up--But then of course she realized the girl hadn't of course meant that literally. She was however asking Lucy to deliver a mercy killing.
...She honestly wasn't sure how to handle this. On the other hand, she didn't particularly want to. On the other, she wasn't exactly horribly opposed to this. Her main concern was less the girl's apparently madness but whether her pokespirit was something she wanted. Did she want something like this? ...Lucy raised her fist and solidly struck the other girl right in the face with a dynamic punch that could only be described as questionably overkill. It was only after she'd thrown the punch that she considered that the other girl, the one with the tail, might not be so okay with this. However, when she looked over the smeargle-wielder merely met her gaze in a cold manner before looking away dejectedly.
...Huh. She silently noted that she could probably take down that smeargle wielder for her pokespirit as well, but wasn't so sure she wanted to load up on a dozen pokespirits or whatever so fast. Speaking of which, as she laid a hand on the downed pokespirit wielder she began to become aware of the sensation of absorbing a pokespirit. It was strange, to say the least; she hadn't exactly experienced this before. Was this how Amethyst had felt earlier?
It was as she finished absorbing the pokespirit and took it's form that the voices started. Whispers, voices, all sorts of sounds seemed to explode around Lucy in a startling and intrusive manner, filling her mind with a terrifying amount of information such to the point that it immediately began to overwhelm her poor human brain. She clutched at her ears, which were now more like a flower than anything resembling a normal human ear and found they were very soft and maleable, floppy even. The pain she was enduring was far more distracting however and she promptly dropped to her knees, not completely understanding she had just opened pandora's box. It took her several long moments of sitting there clutching at her ears to semi-adjust to the noise levels and sheer ammount of information she was processing. She could hear the wind, tell how fast it was going without feeling it, tell which direction it was blowing without seeing it. She could hear the smeargle wielder's breathing, and even a faint heartbeat. With that came a beating from inside her beyond her own. It was Amethyst. To her amasement she found she could not only hear every noise with great clarity but that she could distinquish small details to the point where she could effectively /hear/ someone's internal emotions based on how they were audibly reacting to them. For a moment she was distracted with the premise of listening to Amethyst's emotions, but this was far from the most insane thing she heard.
...The voices. She heard disembodied voices as if there were people all around her talking, remarking on what was going on, /judging her/. Amethyst would find that Lucy had become extremely tense as if she were in pain or otherwise seriously stressed, which was in all fairness completely accurate. As Lucy began to realize that these voices were in fact in her head she became angry. "Who are you?!" she demanded in a mildly frightened tone, only this time a more familiar voice answered her.
"...They're ghosts." the smeargle wielder said, hesitating a moment before continuing. "You're hearing the dead--those too weak to manifest themselves normally. Humans." she continued in a distant tone. Lucy just sort of... bit down hard and pulled herself to her feet, resisting the pain she had no way to defend against and standing strong against it even. It was all she knew to do in the face of something she really didn't understand. She looked down at her stomach and was somehow surprised to find that there was no longer a mouth on it, and it had lost a great deal of it's elasticity, leaving her feeling very taut and perhaps a bit uncomfortable compared to normal. In hindsight, it might not have been safe to go through this transformation with Amethyst inside her. She laid a single on on her stomach and closed her eyes, forcing her thoughts over the noise that surrounded her.
Then she took a deep breath... and unleashed a scream so loud it literally carried halfway across Sinnoh. Anyone anywhere near the mountain would probably feel physical pain from the sheer velocity of the scream. What did she scream? Well...
"/SHUT/ /UUUUUUP/!"
...Yeah. The world fell silent around Lucy as her deafening scream drowned out literally everything and I mean everything. Amethyst for one had probably been somewhat protected within Lucy's stomach, which of course muffled all sound passing through it. Despite that fact, the sheer power of the scream probably hadn't been pleasant, and had probably resulted in an earthquake-like sensation via the vibrations it had caused. Even the dead had shut their loud mouthes. Perhaps her scream was so powerful it could bother those beyond the concept of pain?
Lucy just sort of... reached up and covered her mouth with her fist as she realized what she had done. A quick glance over at the smeargle wielder revealed that she had totally been KO'd by the attack, or perhaps killed. She couldn't quite tell. Well... so much for being merciful. Apparently she had tapped into hyper voice without realizing what she was doing. What other moves did she know?
"Wish... Sweet Kiss... Attract... Hyper Voice... Snore... Iron Tail." a voice said, from /inside/ her head. Huh... Wait, iron tail?! She turned and looked over her shoulder only to find that she did in fact have a tail--a very short, poofy one. She just sort of shook her hips back and fourth a couple of times in an attempt to wag it about and silently questioned how she was supposed to... y'know... apply pain with this. She mentally asked her pokespirit who she was. "I'm... Audino." the mental voice replied in an ever so slightly shy tone. It was a lot quieter than you'd expect from a pokemon. With her free hand still resting on her stomach Lucy stood there for a moment and discussed things with her pokespirit. A quiet one like this would be pretty comfortable to have around, even if the noise of the world around had a tendency to make her ears bleed. "You have a healing touch, and--and your body will regenerate from anything short of complete annihilation." the voice continued. Lucy examined her hands as if searching for oddities in them. Her skin had an oddly pink tint to it, and she somehow felt a bit sluggish, but she otherwise seemed pretty normal! The ears were quite different though. She reached up and rubbed one tenderly, finding that it felt pretty dang good all things considered.
It was then that she considered testing her powers on Amethyst. She lowered both her hands onto her stomach and... made a wish. At first, it didn't seem to do anything, but just before she started to become skeptical a feeling of raw power hit her seemingly out of the blue, coursing through her and by extension Amy. It had a powerful healing and energizing effect on both of them. Feels good man
Afterwards she finally allowed her hands to drop. How was she... going to let Amethyst out again? The thought crossed her mind and she smirked at a hidden joke. She supposed she'd need to return to her gulpin fusion soon to facilitate that function. Thus, off she went to search for the no-dount small village that had once been Amethyst's home. It took her a while of looking down and around the sides of Mount Coronet, but soon she noticed something rather unnatural. Scaling down the mountain proved mildly painful, but to her surprise the pain fanished as quick as it had come, leaving no scrape nor bruise. ...Regenerate indeed.
Finally, she reached what appeared to be a set of ruins somewhat below the peak, hidden from the normal route up the mountain. First thing was first--she moved in and began searching for clothes. This proved easy enough. She found a nice red dress that appealed to her personally and proceeded to try it on in front of a broken mirror, removing her ruined shirt entirely in the process. Mirrors were kind of awesome yo--How did they work? Magic, clearly. Regardless, she wound up tucking the skirt of the rather short dress into her pants, giving it the impression of a shirt. The dress easily covered her stomach, though it didn't do much to hide it's shape. She was satisfied however, and moved on to find somehing for Amethyst. Perhaps a similar red dress and--oh... She pulled out a dress of oddly appropriate size for Amethyst and examined it. It was nice and frilly--cute, girly. After a moment of examining it's durability she shrugged her shoulders and sat down on a chair, only for it to break underneath her weight. She let out a short-lived yelp but was otherwise unharmed, getting up and moving over to a sturdier looking chest where she sat down and placed the dress beside her. She supposed it was about time she let Amethyst out... The voices were getting loud again anyway. She returned to her gulpin fusion and took a deep breath before pulling up her dress and opening her mouth stomach to regurgitate the smaller girl, who would probably wind up in Lucy's lap as she was released.
...The real question of course, was if Amethyst gets a second birthday, and if that means she gets /double/ the presents!
Regardless Lucy produced a rag and promptly began to start drying Amy off. "Hey..." she finally said in a slightly awkward tone, not quite sure how to address the elephant in the room. She half wanted to ask if Amy had gotten any sleep, since she had been pretty docile within her. More likely though she wanted to know how Amy was feeling, and how she had felt about what had just happened now that it was over. There actually wasn't anything preventing Amy from fleeing on the off chance she had not taken being eaten alive well at /all/.