[Pokémon] Wings Have We

[Giratina ♀]

{28} please take me down​

Poliwag stared down her opponent in defiance, not particularly enjoying the jeering look that Aeveon was giving him. Sheridan, on the other hand, looked outright worried, and after her sixth cry of, "Aeveon, are you sure you want to do this?" and the blue lion's sharp-toothed, admittedly wicked-looking grin of approval, Casey finally decided to say something about it.

"Sheridan, it's a Pokémon battle," he called across the battlefield. "What's the problem?"

"I told you before," she said. "I don't like battling with my Shinies. I don't want them to get hurt, okay?"

Aeveon spat on the ground and walked into battle position, lashing his tail expectantly. "…Whereas he can't seem to get enough," Sheridan concluded sourly.

The journey to Raxi had gotten rather tedious, and so the group had earlier on decided that they ought to stop and enjoy the scenery. Eventually, someone brought up the subject of Aeveon, and within ten minutes everyone was egging Sheridan on to use her new Pokémon in its first battle. She had vehemently refused each time, but the pestering – while good-natured – eventually got to the point where she would be ready to do anything to shut them up.

It was at this point Sheridan realized that she really was the only mature one in the group, the other members being boys. Saffron didn't count.

So here she was, swallowing her unease. Aeveon looked positively elated to stare down Casey's Poliwag and was apparently unaware of his owner's dubious thoughts. Sheridan realized that she was supposed to make the first move after only ten gestures from Casey, Aeveon, and Poliwag, and the woman took out a JAWS of her own and pointed it at the Flying-type Eeveelution. She wasn't psychic; she didn't know what moves this beast had!

After that was done, she looked up and said, "Gust."

Aeveon batted his immense wings (large because otherwise they wouldn't support his similarly immense body weight) and sent a gust of wind hurtling toward Poliwag. Little sparkles swirled along in the air torrent, thanks primarily to more of Aeveon's spectral dandruff loosing itself from his wings. The light Water-type ground her feet into the dirt and shut her eyes in an attempt to root herself to the spot, so as not to get blown away; it worked, and upon her Trainer's command directed a Water Gun into Aeveon's chest. He roared loudly, apparently finding the rather weak attack painful.

However, he kept fighting, and within seconds Poliwag was on the receiving end of a Bite from his massive jaws. In response Poliwag fired another Water Gun; Aeveon took this valiantly to the face, his molars still clamped around Poliwag's round body. Eventually he found that if he didn't let go then Poliwag would continue to blast him with water; when that happened, he wisely decided to let it be.

"Hypnosis," ordered Casey. Poliwag followed his instructions, and within minutes a swirly apparition was floating towards Aeveon. The Eeveelution's eyes followed its twirling path vainly, though that was just wasting time; within minutes his eyes drooped and the wingbeats got progressively slower.

The battle ended swiftly after that.

Sheridan was forced to recall Aeveon as he fell, lest the creature fall to the floor and break at least ten bones in the process. She held the occupied Pokéball in her hand, staring at it grimly for a few seconds. It was then she realized that nobody was making any noise; this was unusual for the group of men who had just fifteen minutes earlier been laughing at her for not wanting to battle, and so she looked up, wondering what was holding their amusement. She soon found out.

Poliwag seemed to be glowing.

Sheridan's eyes immediately lit up, prancing across the battlefield to hover blissfully over Poliwag. Her body began morphing – getting larger and rounder, arms sprouted from her sides ('Finally,' thought Casey), and her tail promptly sucked itself back into her spine. Finally, the glow faded and the result was a Poliwhirl – same color blue, same swirly internal organs, but a lot of other things that made the little mediator adorable had changed.

"Oh," said Casey. Sheridan, now no longer having to worry about interrupting her Evolution, pounced upon Poliwhirl with the enthusiasm of a hyper-caffeinated fangirl. Casey thought it wise to return Poliwhirl before she got there, though, and did so with expert timing.

"Alright then," said Clyde after everyone had recovered from the ensuing giggles. "I think we've established by now that Sheridan really shouldn't be battling?"

Casey shook his head, smiled, and started along the road again.



"She's what?"

"Gone," said the Gastly nonchalantly, inspecting a seemingly random fraction of its eerie purple smog. "She's left the building, and we don't know when she'll be back. Her Pokémon are gone too."

"So who are you, then?" asked Caro, pointing. They were standing in front of the Raxi Gym – a bright, well-kept place in a nice neighborhood. Unfortunately, their path inside was being blocked by a rather insolent Ghost-type, and as resident Pokémon whisperer Caro had been nominated to move him out of the way.

It didn't seem to be working.

"I live upstairs," Gastly remarked in the same bored tones. "She's a very kindhearted woman, you know. She'll let any Pokémon under the sun make themselves comfortable in the unused parts of her Gym… too bad she's gone, though." The Gastly smiled devilishly. "The Gym Leader doesn't believe in any frilly mazes or mind games, see. She just wants the Trainer to prove their bonds with their Pokémon, that's all… but since she's gone…"

"How long will we need to wait?" asked Caro grimly.

"You're looking for the Midlight Badge, aren't you…?" asked Gastly, looking up to regard him just slightly more than he had beforehand.

"I'm not. He is." Caro pointed his finger at the appropriate red-haired youth, who waved meekly and then returned to inactivity. "How long do you think it'll take this Gym Leader to get back so we can fight her?"

"Well… that depends." Gastly tapped a wisp of gas to its mouth. "Which is more important to you: fighting this Gym Leader or getting the Badge?"

"Badge," volunteered Casey, after Caro had translated the question.

Gastly peered at him then turned back to the Pokémon spokesman of the group, shaking his head sadly. "And you're sure in that decision? There is another way to get a Midlight Badge, but…"

"What is it?" asked Caro.

"If you want the Badge fast, you could start by going to the other half of the city," said Gastly. "The city of Raxi used to be two separate settlements, see, with two different Gyms. Eventually they merged into one, but there's always been two official Pokémon League Gyms here… mostly because both of the original Gym Leaders were too stubborn to let his building be closed down." The Gastly snickered in amusement. Caro relayed the explanation with most of the important details intact.

"That's all we need to do?" asked Grant in disbelief. "Go to the other part of the city and fight the other guy?"

Gastly's pointed teeth became strikingly apparent in his next antagonistic smile. "Easier said than done. You have to find it first!" With his ominous message conveyed, the Gastly disappeared and the door to the Raxi City Gym clicked firmly into what was obviously the locked position. After emitting a series of irritated muttering (with Saffron kicking the door for good measure), the group accepted their fate and walked away from the Gym.

"Well," said Sheridan. "That was unexpected. Looks like we'll need to go to the other Gym. I think I remember the way…"

"You know where it is?" gasped Casey.

"Maybe." Sheridan shrugged. "Hey, it's been years since I've been there last."

"Personally, I'm more concerned with what the Gym Leader is like than any Gym," pointed out Grant. "You should at least figure out what Type they use."

Clyde snorted. "Are you kidding? That Gastly acted like the Gym must be a pain in the tail to get to, so the Gym Leader must be unused to battling. He's probably some little kid." He shook his head. "No, Casey, you should definitely just go over there."

Sheridan shook her head. "He's not a kid! When I was there the Gym Leader was around fifty. He was actually a very nice man, good at battling too."

"When was this? Ten years ago?" asked Clyde mockingly, putting a hand to his ear. "It's a small wonder he kept the job that long. No, he will have retired and there's probably going to be a new kid around, and he'll be a total pushover. I can tell you now, your nice skilled trainer won't be there anymore." Clyde paused for a moment, apparently finished, but then went on. "So how come you took this challenge back in the day if you hate battling, then, huh?"

Sheridan scowled ferociously at him and turned away.

"Cool it, Clyde," grumbled Caro. "We don't need you making zingers at people all the time."

Grant appeared to have opened his mouth to say something considerably ruder, but with Caro delivering his message in language appropriate for people under eighteen he wisely decided to shut up.

A few seconds passed until there was a collective realization that with Sheridan not talking, nobody had any idea where the Gym actually was. When this happened, Casey turned to her in the most casual manner possible and said, "So where's the other Gym?" Sheridan finally snapped out of her moody trance and looked up.

"I don't remember," she said. "I mean, I know it's in the… er… other half of the city, but it's like a maze in there."

"Other half?" asked Casey.

"Yeah, other half." Clyde, miraculously, seemed to have sobered up. "Call it whatever you want. Backstreets, Raxi Slums, Twilight Town, that place. Remember when I said Raxi's ecosystem wasn't inspiring? That was why." He said this as they walked through one of the clean and impeccably bright streets of Raxi, which Casey had taken to be true across the settlement. Of course, just to throw a wrench in his logic, this was not so.

"It's not that bad," defended Sheridan.

"Let's remind ourselves the date you—" Clyde stopped talking when he caught the glares everyone else was sending him. Having admitted defeat for now, the man shook his head and dropped the subject. "Whatever! We're just going to need to find this Gym. Faster we do that, faster we can see the back of this place, right?" The others muttered agreement; albeit in crude and juvenile terms, Clyde had summarized their goals here.

Finally, they came across a large wrought-iron gate not unlike the one they had entered Raxi City in. Except now, instead of having a nice little arch over it, the pointy fence was no more than a rusted barrier with a hinge on it. It was evident immediately after entering this side of town (the gate, though it looked locked, opened at the slightest appliance of pressure) that they weren't in Kansas anymore.

"So… um…" Casey opened his mouth to attempt to inspire some sort of conversation within the traveling party, which would hopefully lead to the sort of communication that would get people where they needed to go. This failed, and the group lapsed back into silence.

Grant peered into a side alley, curious to see what demons spawned in this particular sub-species. All of the other backstreets in this area of the city were generally dark and dirty; however, he was pretty sure that this was the only one that looked like a bomb had exploded in it. Looking closer, Grant noticed with a distinct shiver the cracked, separated halves of three Pokéballs.

He quickly resumed his pace.

"Aren't there supposed to be people here?" asked Casey, looking around and seeming just as unnerved as Grant was.

"Yeah… somewhere else," said Sheridan. "I think we're in the Raxi Backstreets…"

Clyde, Saffron, and Grant shuddered, whereas Caro and Casey looked downright confused. "What's wrong with that?" offered the former, looking around.

"If it's any indicator," said Grant worriedly, "this place has also been called a man-made Labyrinth."

Caro missed the significance entirely, but Casey didn't. "Labyrinth as in… capitalized?" His face was white. It didn't improve when Grant nodded grimly. The Labyrinth, in ancient Shinolite mythology, was an endless maze designed with multiple spells set on it so that once you entered, you were forced to wander for eternity, with the only salvation being death at the hands of a man-eating, saber-toothed Tauros.

As was to be expected, Casey moaned loudly.

Finally, through the miniscule amount of light that came through to the Backstreets' floor, the group managed to locate a building that looked like it was the Gym if the sign next to it was any indicator. It didn't seem occupied, and indeed looked to be in a state of disrepair. After sharing a few concerned glances with one another (Sheridan looked faintly like she was going to be sick), Casey took a breath and walked up to the door.

Somehow it was open; this meant that it wasn't just a broken-down husk of the Gym of years past. This was both good and bad news. The Gym was open, so he wouldn't need to go waiting for the other Gym Leader to come back. On the other hand… well, Casey shuddered at the thought of whichever creep ran this place.



The creep who ran this place was, at that given moment, scowling at things.

Well, alright, he was always scowling at things. But this time the scowling was actually relevant.

"AARGH!" He ground one fist into the other. Everyone else present (i.e., one human and two Pokémon) was well aware that Mt. Gym Leader had blown its top again, though the reason for this was – as usual – unknown. The onlookers wisely decided to remain silent, lest they invoke the full power of their master's wrath. He continued to ramble angrily for a few minutes further before abruptly stopping. "Jordan!" he barked.

"Ah, yes?" said the human, a man of around thirty with large glasses that seemed to amplify his eyes. Jordan was the Gymkeeper; every Gym had one, but rarely do they do anything when challengers are around. Only a few plucky ones wander around, following promising young charges. Jordan here was not one of them, instead opting to remain in the Gym.

Goodness knows why.

"Release Inverse and Reverse," said the Gym Leader icily, his voice rasping. "If the impatient fools don't want to wait for her to get back, then they'll just need to suck it up and go through the trials, won't they?" These sorts of outbursts were not uncommon, and it was mostly agreed among the few other people living there that they would be more disturbed if it didn't happen. Everyone had long since learned that the best way to escape with your life was: A, make your presence as little-known as possible, and B, carefully step out of the way.

Jordan did just this and slipped gratefully out of the room to follow his orders. That Natu always creeped him out.



"What. On Earth. Is that."

Clyde was considerately regarding the monster which was standing at its station when they entered the second room. This was made a slightly more justifiable question due to the fact that the room was practically pitch-black. (The first room was normally lit, but hilariously the door locked audibly behind them.)

The Groupie Galaxy now stood in what looked to be a room with walls made of stone, furnished sparingly with a scratched-up wooden side table, a rug, and of course the two-headed beastie before them. One of its heads looked like a horse's, but the other had a rounded snout and grossly oversized, pointy teeth. The horse head had two white alien antennae on it and a short pink mane, and its neck was attached to a yellow hoofed body. This pattern continued until one got to the other half of the creature, wherein the fur abruptly changed to chocolate brown and canine paws designated where the hind hooves should have been. Following this metaphor, in place of a tail was the round head.

The only bright light in the room was what appeared to be a stage spotlight, pointing at the wall. On the wall, directly in the center of the beam, was a framed piece of paper. Typed on that were the words:

"So you've decided to try the Raxi City Gym.

In the event that your delusional brain is capable of reading this, I have considerately prepared instructions on how to get past this Gym puzzle. I'm sure you've dealt with more than enough of them by now.

In front of you is a two-headed Pokémon, and beyond that, two doors. There is only one way out of this room, and that way leads to the chamber where I am. If you open the doors you will observe that both ways ahead are pitch-black, and so the only way to know if you are taking the correct path is to merely walk through it. If you don't, you will plummet to a room below. No, the landing will not kill you, but you'll also be at the total mercy of whatever horrible beasts lie down there.

Ah, but you will notice the Pokémon. By now one of the heads will be looking around nervously and the other will be giving you the evil eye. This is normal, and if either head is doing anything other than that, you may as well dive into one of the doors at random. The Pokémon – whose species, by the way, is a 'Pumipuyu' – knows the way out. You may only ask the Pumipuyu one question total, and you must ask one of the heads in particular, not both.

There are two ways to solve this puzzle. One is easier said than done, the other easier done than said."​

This invoked a rather long pause in the Groupie Galaxy, as they read the Gym Leader's note over and over again both to themselves and out loud. Finally, Saffron came to a conclusion: "This dude is crazy." There was murmured agreement, not too loud in case Pumipuyu was listening, and finally Casey pointed out that this would require a lengthy and strategic discussion.

And, huddled into a circle, discuss they did.

Well, except for Caro, who loudly proclaimed that he was going to think in that corner over there. The others didn't try to convince him otherwise, considering that Sheridan was offering a much more plausible solution.

"Okay, so I've heard of this before," said Sheridan in an undertone. "It's called the Knights and Knaves' Puzzle. One of the heads speaks only truth, one of the heads speaks only lies. The whole point is to trick the guys into giving you some sort of competent answer which will then tell you where you need to go… but we can't do that, so I guess we'll have to find out some other way to work it out. There has to be a way."

Caro stared at the Pumipuyu. "Hey," he said. "Um—"

"We're trying to work here," Saffron informed him irritably.

A little bit later: "You guys—"

"Caro," said Casey patiently, poking his head out from the huddle, "as much as we all value your input, we're trying to work this thing out, okay?" He then dove back in to continue discussing how they were supposed to surpass the classic puzzle under these special circumstances.

"Listen to me!" said Caro exasperatedly.

If anyone had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Clyde's expression had been getting consistently sourer from both Caro's pestering and the inability to get the answer out. Finally, he hit boiling point.

"Alright then!" he snapped, straightening to his full (and considerable) height. "I don't know if you idiots are going to try anything today, but to be honest I don't want to spend any more time in this place! We're getting nowhere, you hear me? Nowhere! We might as well just go right up to that deformed Girafarig and say, 'Hey you! Yeah, you with the pink hair! Where's the door that gets us to your sleazy Gym Leader?' Yeah! We could just go right up and do that, and…"

"Pumi," said the yellow head politely, cutting into his rant. "Pumimipumimipu."

Just as everyone was about to give Clyde a collective kick in the shin, Caro's eyes widened and he said, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh!"

"What?" snapped Sheridan. "This moron just wasted our question by…"

She paused at the look Caro was giving her. "He didn't waste our question," said Caro, beaming. He leaned against the wall, which was a surefire sign that he had gone into exposition mode and had somehow figured it out better than they had. Sheridan looked miffed.

"Look… this isn't the Knights and the Knaves… don't you get it?" At everyone's bewildered expression, Caro continued, getting steadily more excited. "The puzzle isn't to figure out which of the heads tell the truth! That has nothing to do with it! Look, they both know the correct answer! He – the Gym Leader, whoever he was – he knew we were going to figure this much out, that we would think from what he gave us that it's the Knights and Knaves! He did it on purpose, don't you get it? He set up his puzzle almost exactly like the normal one, and he made us impose the usual rules on it ourselves!"

"So?" asked Saffron.

Immediately, Sheridan's brain clicked the facts into place. "He must expect us to be able to get an answer out of the Pumipuyu heads, ignoring the fact that it might be a lie!" Sheridan thought for a moment on how to continue. Then, "Caro, there's a problem."

"What's that?"

"None of us here speak—"

There was a pause. Caro looked at her, smiling wildly, while Sheridan's expression slowly morphed from irritation to revelation and finally to glee. She opened her mouth to speak.

"The trapdoor," interjected the ex-Raichu, turning to the others. "It's the trapdoor."

EEEEEEE
RAXI CITY ARC
EEEEEEEE​

 

[Luphinid Silnaek]

EDIT when you come back: Oh, it was April Fools! I never thought to check the date. I'm dense.

I caught up! Awesome.

Chapter 13:

The Fearow gave a grating caw. Honchkrow cawed in return. They were both trying to impress and scare the other. Hikaru looked at Casey's Pokémon with a sort of appreciation in his eyes for a second, before returning to Earth and continuing the battle. "My boy," noted the poncho-clad man chipperly, "you're dead meat." And he smiled. And he watched Fearow glow, watched the feathers around it quiver and wave like it was in the middle of a rainstorm (which it was). And he allowed the Pokémon to beat its wings and fly up in the air, past Honchkrow, past Casey and Hikaru, and up into the raincloud itself. And he watched the cloud react to Fearow's arrival. And he said:

"Thunder."

He also watched the wicked thunderbolt descend from the sky. He watched the surprise in Honchkrow's eyes turn to fear. He then watched them close. He watched the charred, singed bird fall to the floor. He watched his opponent recall the bird shakily, try to find a handrail to hold on to on the raised platform. He watched Casey fail in that attempt.

And he watched the boy crumple to the floor and black out.

Hikaru looked up to the raincloud. And he saw the most wonderful symbol in the world appear in the swirling clouds. He knew that the boy was seeing the same image burned into his closed eyelids. That's what they always saw. At the very same moment he heard the synonymous voices of CD0000, William, Kidd, and Aerith saying two words that rang loud and clear in his ears.

"Holy crap."

It's because this sequence is so epic that I bring it up; the style loses a little force in the third paragraph because the 'he watched' repetition actually does wear itself out. I think the point where the sentences begin to uniformly start with the same phrase is the main culprit, and on top of that the slight variations you made to disperse the redundancy, they disperse the effect too. 'Thunder.' is a good cue to radically change the pattern (if not the mood) of the sentences; you should use it to try out other ways of expressing how momentous this epic **** is.

Caro. Do not insult your author. That is seriously not a good idea. So maybe when you've discovered the Internet and end up reading you finally get a clue.

…Wait. Ahem.

This fourth wall hole is so massive it's brilliant.

CHapter 14

Six people (and a computer) sat around a table.It was a rounded table, large and intricately carved out of wood.

At the six areas of the table where the points of a pentagon would be was a chair, one person sitting in each chair. One of the people, a woman sitting on the bottom left spot, had an opened laptop computer next to her. She was currently in the process of pressing certain keys on the computer, occasionally speaking into it with short phrases like "Um…" and "Can you hear me?"

The computer sat around the table too? 'At' is ambiguous enough to apply to both people and computers, I think. Also, pentagons have five vertices, unless this is maths fail on Giratina's part.

Sheridan looked at her for a few minutes, then reached out again. "Poor kid. You're lost, aren't you? Here, let me take off that mask for you. You probably can't see anything with it on, right?" She took a step forward and reached for the mask.

You ask for it! You do! The only thing possible to do in a creepy experience is to try and make it worse.

Chapter 20

And ah, hold on. It's multiplying. The same lock-tailed ghost monster is appearing in all sorts of different places, quickly filling up and blotting out any traces of black that had been left behind. The things were also giving off a convenient soft glowing, meaning that I could no longer see anything except floating ghosts and lights. Eventually, one of them – the first one to appear – stepped forward. When its mouth opened, so did all the other mouths, and they spoke as one.

Another mood bit. Besides the sudden tense change, I really do like this worriedly thoughtful style for his POV, and the formal narration you headed into sounds a little dry in comparison. Then shortly afterwards, the style gets pretty informal and 'these-are-the-thoughts-in-my-head' again, so I'm not sure what the five minutes of style/tense change are supposed to do.

Anyway, further reading makes me think this fic is not just fun (and indecently unorthodox), but actually awesome. Your style really comes together; it's a wonderful mix of British fantasy-comedy and journeyfic and Giratina that does a lot of very colourful things through the story. Besides, it's so rare to write something not constantly trying to tell its reader I AM DRAMA, THAT'S SERIOUS BUSINESS, LOOK AT ME -- have I ever done it? I don't think so. A region with only one known canon city gives a lot of imaginative freedom, and you use it. I notice so many places in Holon are named after Greek letters, except Raxi, I don't know what's up with that.

Chapter 21 continues to puzzle. You gave like one mention to the fact that apparently the Groupies' timeline diverged to a happier one just before their death, and I'm not even sure if that's a mention. The only way I could explain it is if the Karmada did fulfill their mission, Fedora dude decided the information in the Briefcase wasn't worth preserving, and sent a suicide bomber their way. Giratina or someone else would have to diverge their reality ahead of schedule, but record their 'death' in the official records (whatever those are). That sounds a bit extreme.

I'll join the PM list, by the way.

 

[Giratina ♀]

Chapter twenty-one... I believe that was the April Fool's chapter, right? The one with the BDV grunt running in with a bomb? (Sorry, I'm kind of in a rush.) Yeah, that wasn't the end of the chapter. Sorry. xP The Groupie Galaxy are alive and well.

Anyway, I find it interesting that you compare me to a lot of British literature. While I can see how you would think that, I am proud to inform you that I am, as a matter of fact, American. The whole style sort of developed after reading Harry Potter and taking the goofiness a step farther... the likes of Pratchett and Gaiman were found later, when I had actually convinced myself that it was an acceptable form of writing.

Actually, Raxi City was named after a Greek letter too, but it was so skewed up and thought of so long ago that I can't seem to remember what it came from. XD Anyway, you're the first to point out the letter naming thing, and the reasoning behind that links back to the Delta Pokémon thing tbat Holon had going on a few years ago. Delta being the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet and whatnot, I decided to run along with it and give all the other cities appropriate names.

This fourth wall hole is so massive it's brilliant.

Well, Giratina isn't exactly known to be the most tactful when it comes to her narrating.

Also, yes, Giratina is bad at math.

...Oh, wait, I remember part of what Raxi was from! The Gym Leader there was originally a Poison-type Trainer, so I took it from something and the name "toxic".

 

[Luphinid Silnaek]

Yeah, I didn't think you were British. The American vibe was still deep in there, though I didn't notice it immediately. It seems perfectly rational that a writer could have influences from a certain style and country without having gone there (evidence me and my occasional satire forays), or even acknowledging that particular school.

I like the Greek letter theme. It makes it sound like a skewed pantheon, and the story sound like it might make fun of Greek myth at any moment. Not that I think it will.

I'm trying to figure out the other component of "Raxi". Hmm... not an alphabet, unless I'm mistaken.

 

[Giratina ♀]

Well, I guess the Legendaries themselves are a sort of vague, floaty parody of the Greek Pantheon, but they're sort of present in all of the Archiverse stories so I don't know if it counts. And as I said before, I don't think I'd be able to connect the first part to any letter unless I knew which it was beforehand... and that information has been lost to us all for months. XD I've just taken to thinking of it as 'just Raxi' for far too long.

 

[Giratina ♀]

Joy of joys, wonder of wonders! Chapter 29 is on its way!

{29} i'll fight them away through you​

"The… trapdoor."

Saffron clearly failed to understand Caro's statement. She saw no trapdoor – not that there was sufficient lighting anyway, but still – and she also saw no way for Caro to get the idea that there was, indeed, a trapdoor. She looked around on the floor, and there was no trapdoor in sight. The others did the same, and none of their multiple lookarounds came up with the location of any sort of trapdoor.

Hilariously, in that room, there was a trapdoor.

Caro walked forward and made motions with his hands for everyone to step back, and after some prompting and insistence that he really did know what he was doing, they actually complied. Smiling smugly, Caro whipped aside the rug that was previously under their feet, gesturing and holding out his hands like some sort of demented, hoodie-sporting stage magician. Everyone looked down and simultaneously found some hard surface to mentally slam their forehead against. Where the rug had been was a trapdoor.

"Oh," laughed Grant. "Caro."

"Yeah?" he asked brightly, glowing in his own success.

He shook his head and walked up to the trapdoor, kneeling down to pull it open. "You speak to Pokémon… I had forgotten."

Saffron and Clyde suddenly had a look of great revelation, which was swiftly replaced with confusion. "Wait," said the former. "What?"

"I used to be a Raichu," explained Caro helpfully as he went down the ladder after Grant. "Ask someone later. We're in a Gym, aren't we? So we're here to watch Casey beat his next creep and win a Badge."

Saffron turned to her sister with an asking expression, but Sheridan wisely said, "Later."

When everyone had descended the ladder into the room below, they found that they were in an even darker room than before. Only the very faint blue-and-red glow of Rotom illuminated the narrow room. Suddenly, Casey had a revelation. "Wait a minute!" he said. "If we're under the Gym floor, then if we had gone through the doors, wouldn't we have come down here as well…?"

"Ah, no," said a voice from the darkness. "You actually wouldn't. You would have wound up on a very large warp panel which would have taken you to a side room, and from there you would exit the Gym and try again." A man stepped into Rotom's faint glowing halo, the plasma's radiance catching on his thick glasses. "My name is Jordan, the Gymkeeper here. Your final opponent is just down the passage, and I am here to deliver the rules before you begin."

"Er… why?" asked Casey. "What rules are there?"

"Only one, and it's not that hard," said Jordan. "No Electric-types may pass beyond this point." He turned his head slightly to reference the chipper light source. "Including your… wait, is that a Rotom or isn't it? I've never seen that form before!"

"Oh, uh… he kinda possessed his own Pokéball," said Casey embarrassedly. "We can't actually return him right now."

"Well then one of your traveling party will need to wait here with him," remarked the Gymkeeper sternly. "I assure you that the rule is not meant to hamper your progress or battle in any way. The Gym Leader here trains Psychic-types, as you may be aware, and Electric Pokémon do no damage difference against them."

"If it's not to bother us, then what is it?" requested Clyde.

"The Gym Leader… well…" Jordan grimaced. "Alas, he has a phobia of Electric-types. I do not recommend crossing the Gym Leader."

Glances were shared. A phobia? Were they even allowed to have that sort of thing?

"Are there any lights down the remainder of this passage?" asked Casey, deciding to change the subject. It obviously couldn't be helped.

"No. You must light the way using your own or your Pokémon's power."

Casey turned back to the group from his then-appropriate spot in the front of the procession. "Alright… does anyone here have a Fire-type on hand?"

Everyone shook their head.

"Oh," he said grimly. "Then… does anyone want to stay out here with Rotom…?"

Sheridan raised her hand, of course wanting to skip out on a battle; however, then she gave off a little 'oh!' and everyone knew that a plot was bubbling in her head. "Casey, I have an idea!" She handed Saffron to Grant, who took her with a startled expression, and sent out Kaeo in all his sparkle-skinned glory.

Casey waved at the Pokémon, not at all seeing where this was going.

Kaeo waved back, completely seeing where this was going.

"Kaeo here makes things glow blue when he uses Levitate on them," explained Sheridan. "Kaeo, can you levitate yourself, dear?" The Drowzee made a mellow grin and floated into the air. Lo and behold, he was glowing with a strong blue aura. "See? Kaeo is strong enough to keep up his levitation down the course of this passageway… right?" She turned to Jordan.

"It's not that long," explained Jordan with a smile. "Telekinetic glow is a perfectly usable resource. I must also commend you; usually people use their Ponytas or somesuch to make fire light the corridor."

Sheridan beamed and held out a Pokéball, which she also gave to Grant. He was now in the process of juggling two heavy and extremely valuable objects in his arms – Saffron and the Pipe – and so the former took a little slack for him and held the Pokéball instead. With that, Sheridan made a little motion to Rotom, who happily zoomed over and rested himself in her arms. "Have fun, guys," she said, sitting down on the floor cuddling Rotom. Fortunately, her coat covered the thin layer of dust and debris that the others' shoes merely ground over.

Kaeo waved and began floating forward, prompting the others to follow him.



From the end of the passage, someone looked up from his previous position – not that it made any difference. He said, "Kh!"*



Standing in a large room, surrounded by flickering computer screens, stood a girl.

Her mouth was tightened into a line of seriousness and determination, not the type of thing you're supposed to see on a child of her age. Around her neck and down her back was a giant pink robe with a collar that stood of its own accord, and on her feet were large boots. Her hands were covered by pink gloves, and red hair fell from her head in thick, long curls. Under this wild bush there was a mask. A pink one, with little black dots where the eyes should be, and large cat ears.

Amarachi meant business.

She had gotten in here the hard way, for it had been a long time since her Mewkizuu powers had faded. And whose fault was this? Why, the owners of this room, of course. Amarachi looked at the machinery in disgust, but she knew that right now she must not destroy it. She had witnessed the prophecy of the Hatsudsu – 'Future Seeker', or prophet – and she knew that while these ideas could, and would, release mass destruction, they would also bring about hope.

So much hope.

The demented creatures ran around this Region. When humans could tell who they were, they regarded them as if it were a natural occurrence, like it was not their business to ask about the unusual but to inch slowly away from it. Meanwhile, they left one Region to ruins, and they were coming for the next.

She was standing within the power source, the flickering of unnatural blue lights scanning her well-disguised body.

"So be it," she murmured. "Your horrors live today… but what of their skeletons?" She walked up to one of the machines, staring at it with sightless and painted-on eyes, and took off her mask. The pale pink fur fell to its natural alignment, having been stuffed into an unusual pose for so long. Giant iris-less eyes took in the lights, the neon blues of both catching and flickering upon one another. Hanging the mask around her neck, the girl with the natural face set to work.



As he walked down the corridor, it became increasingly apparent to Grant that it was long.

Placing one foot in front of the other became a difficult task about halfway through. As they walked, he holding Saffron in one arm and the Pipe in the other (with the Briefcase having been previously succumbed to Clyde's Hammerspace), a pounding in his head began to grow steadily louder and more painful. Finally, he groaned and set Saffron on the ground, using the now-free hand to hold his head while he moaned.

"Grant? Are you okay?" asked Casey. The troop stopped immediately.

"Ungh…" was his response.

Finally, he got down on his knees, and then sat, clutching his head and making quite pained sounds all the while. Everyone else watched, scared, as he leaned back and rested his head against the wall.

From somewhere distant, they heard a cry of great pain.



"THIS WILL BE BRIEF, GRANT STERNBERG."

"Will it really." The sarcasm was evident in my voice.

"OF COURSE. WHEN HAVE WE EVER LIED TO YOU?"

I was not in the best of moods, and I was also willing to bet that the horrendous headache was these Pokémon's doing. "What do you want?"

"WE HAVE FOUND MORE OF OUR KIND, GRANT STERNBERG," the Karmada said. "SINCE WE CARE ABOUT YOUR MENTAL WELL-BEING, WE SUGGEST YOU LEAVE. NOW."

"Oh… this is about the migraine, isn't it?"

"PRECISELY."

I bit my lip.

"YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED TO OUR WARNINGS," observed the Karmada. "THE OTHER KARMADA TROUPE HAVE…"

They were cut off in a flash of light.

I heard a scream.

A roar.

And then I woke up.



"…Grant? Grant!"

When the man woke up, it was Caro who was leaning dangerously close to his face, and the giant brown eyes were not what he needed to see after that uncomfortable soundtrack. Fortunately, Caro returned to an acceptable distance once he realized that Grant was awake, and sanity was restored.

"Are you okay?" he demanded as soon as Grant looked like he was able to breathe.

"Yes…" he groaned, using the wall as support to stand himself up again. "Casey, I'm sorry about this. But I think I need to skip out on your battle."

"What? Why?" Casey was genuinely worried. Oh dear.

Grant looked around, wondering if he ought to spill the Karmada beans, then decided against it. "This place has been giving me… well, a really bad headache," he said. "It's only gotten worse as we walked down this hallway. I… well, you saw what happened."

"Go," he said immediately. "You shouldn't get hurt to watch some battle."

Grant smiled shakily. "Thanks." He picked up the Pipe and walked back down the corridor.



From the end of the passage, someone's brow furrowed – not that it made any difference. He said, "Kh!"*



Amarachi was running. With a briefcase. And her mask covering the whole Mew thing.

Normally, this was a terrible safety hazard and she wouldn't do it unless she was particularly eager about something. And she was eager about something – to escape the snapping jaws of the Houndour that were chasing her. She had been caught, and three of the robed fools had showed up, tossing out the dark dog Pokémon in order to capture her somehow. Amarachi realized that they were trained to egg her on in a certain direction, never quite catching up but always on her heels, until she hit something nasty and they could advance.

Amarachi would not take this, so she dove into an elevator. At least she had gotten away from the Houndour, keeping her briefcase – not the Briefcase, but merely a briefcase – entirely safe. Elbowing to the side the person already there, she stabbed the button that said "1F" and waited, panting, for the startled scientist to regain his bearings.

"Um… hello," said Torsten Lund. "Can I help you?"

"I think you might," said Amarachi. "Do you believe in space monsters?"

"I do," he said immediately.

Amarachi nodded. "Good. Then you are obviously an impostor and, by ancient Shamoutan logic, I can trust you."

Torsten looked down at her quizzically. "…Come again?"

The girl cleared her throat. "I trust you," she said, "and I also trust that you don't like your job here at all. These nincompoops wouldn't hire anyone who believed in true things like space monsters."

"There actually is a kind of Pokémon that's born from a meteor," offered Torsten a little uneasily, wondering why a girl like this was asking such adult questions. "It's called…"

"Deoxys, I know," said Amarachi.

Torsten nodded, assuming that perhaps this girl was some kind of child prodigy. "You're a follower of the works of…" he faltered, apparently not enjoying the concept of saying this person's name. "of… urk… Rondot Lund?" He was rather surprised that someone so young would be aware of the otherworldly Pokémon, but it was a pleasant, retain-small-string-of-hope-for-humanity sort of surprise.

"I've seen some of them," said Amarachi. "Though personally I don't like to rely on other people's research to get my information…"

Torsten looked down at her now, not at all expecting what she had just said. "…You mean you've seen a Deoxys?"

"Well, yes," said Amarachi airily, "but only in passing, you know. Not up close and personal or anything… since the species is so enigmatic I haven't really had much of an opportunity to talk to it…"

The scientist nodded vaguely. However, it was at that moment that something clicked in his mind, and his head whisked to stare at the girl who had put a hand over her mouth. Even underneath the mask he could tell that her eyes widened in surprise at what she had just said. "Pardon me… but did you just say talk to Deoxys? We assume it speaks a dialect of Pokémian," he said, tone growing more concerned by the second. "Unless—"

"Um, no," said Amarachi. "B-but that's not the point!" she blurted out.

Torsten raised one silver eyebrow. "Then what on Earth is?"

"There is a problem here, a corruption if you will," explained Amarachi.

Her considerably taller companion snorted and folded his arms. "I knew that already, young lady."

Amarachi looked peeved by the reference to her as a 'young lady', but she decided to ignore it in favor of the obviously more important factor here. "Well, whatever you feel the corruption is, honest truth about it is probably ten times worse. Now, before I continue…"

The elevator dinged then.

"Sorry, kiddo," said Torsten. "I can't stay. I'm expected somewhere."

Amarachi imitated his arm-crossing. "I can wait."



Casey had checked at random intervals to make sure that none of the remaining celestial bodies of the Groupie Galaxy – Kaeo, Clyde, Saffron, Caro, and himself – were feeling any ill effects as a result of walking down the corridor. Aside from Clyde looking slightly peeved, justifiable considering he was toting around a chatty little Psychic-type, nobody was feeling any effects, and eventually what they assumed to be the end of the tunnel emerged.

The word 'assumed' was used because there was, unfortunately, no light at the end of it.

What they did find was another room, much taller than any other part of the Gym. It was hardly lit at all, rather a lot like the other parts of the building, but they could make out enough to establish that this was the stadium, and that their trek through the world's most sadistically difficult Gym was nearly over. However, before that could happen, they would need to face the wrath of—

"Hey, this ceiling is higher than the other rooms," said Caro. "I guess that must be the bulk of the Gym?"

Gee, Caro. You really do know how to tick off an author, don't you?

…Oh wait, here he comes now.

"Unbelievable," said a dry – literally – voice from the corner. "Someone actually pulled through with it."

Then, with a soft creak, one creature let his presence be known. Casey braced himself for daring to look at the Gym Leader responsible for that whole trapdoor idea. Whatever devilish monster he had in mind suddenly whimpered like a puppy and hid in a corner. For behind the sandpaper-y voice was a very different beast indeed.

'Can they even do that?' wondered Casey in between attempts to close his jaw.








* For those wondering how to pronounce 'Kh!', merely make a K sound and sound very, very irritated.

Gee, that guy's voice doesn't sound too good. I wonder what he did to make…

for want of a wing (character profile 12)

…oh.​

 

[Giratina ♀]

{30} the most hateful and cursed​

Despite the fact that a large and (at first glance) pointless pair of sunglasses hid his eyes, his sunken face was nothing short of bitter. Hair fell in his face – long, oily strands which suggested they hadn't seen a comb in a very long time. Sitting on his head, with empty and all-seeing eyes, there was a small green Natu. His clothes were faded and, in a few instances, ripped. Standing next to him was a Pokémon, a purple-and-gray shadow which seemed to be regarding Casey somehow. And then there was the whole matter of the wheelchair.

In general, just the sort of thing that makes one stop and wonder, "What happened?"

Of course, Casey did just this, but after a second he shook it off and hoped that he could ignore it for the duration of whatever horrendous battle was to ensue. He was also vaguely aware that Kaeo looked concerned, though for what reason was uncertain… was the Psychic-type reading his mind?

"Challenger," rasped the creature which was just barely recognizable as a human being. "Kh."

"W-what?" Casey swallowed his stutter, but regardless his adversary caught on to it.

"I'm expected to recite a little speech to you now," he continued. "It will explain all about how wonderful the Gym is and how I feel absolutely sanctified to have you in my pitiful presence. It will then go on to explain that I'm going to put all of my being into our battle, that I will do my very absolute best, that I expect you to do your very absolute best, etcetera etcetera etcetera. None of it will be true, and it will only serve to postpone the inevitable and make all of us feel ridiculous." His scowl darkened further. "For that reason, I will condense that speech for both of our benefit."

Casey nodded. He… didn't feel so awesome about this fight anymore.

"I am the other Gym Leader of Raxi City, the one everybody knows nothing about and distrusts by default. You will ask no questions, and I will answer no questions. I train Psychic-types, and in the unlikely event that you defeat me, I dispense the Midlight Badge. My name is Rodney. I don't care about yours."

Registering these fragmented sentences, Casey nodded again. "Right."

Casey was not previously aware that it was physically possible to Death Glare through a pair of sunglasses. He was proven wrong.

As if on cue, a man with rather large glasses walked out of a side room. "He actually managed to get past Pumipuyu?" the Gymkeeper observed with some surprise.

"Evidently." Somehow, this served as a cue for Jordan to stop making conversation and do what he was supposed to. He did so, and turned to Casey with a much more personable expression than his boss. "Hello again, challenger. This will be a three on three fight, with all Pokémon within the battling ring counting as one of the three. Any Pokémon switched out constitutes as a faint. Do you agree with these terms?"

"Yes… I do."

"Fine." Jordan turned on his heel and walked to the appropriate referee position. "Then the battle may commence."

Without skipping a beat, the first Pokémon of the evening entered the field; a tall green bird, with multi-colored wings and large eyes. It actually bore a striking resemblance to the shrunken version now sitting on Rodney's head, which led Casey to the conclusion that it was an Evolution of some sort. Well, it made sense, at least. This in mind, Casey decided to combat fire with fire and sent out his own flight attendant: Honchkrow.

Rodney snorted in irritation. "Now how did I know that was going to happen," he said drily. "You people are pathetic."

Caro, in the beginning, had raised eyebrows at the theoretical type immunity Dark had to the Psychic attacks that Xatu probably had in spades. Of course, he deflated again when Xatu's eyes glowed a bright blue, and other lights of various colors began shining off of its body. Honchkrow didn't look happy, but it took to the air anyhow, regarding Xatu with a sort of inferiority which had just been stomped on but remained legitimate.

The move was Miracle Eye. Xatu knew to use it… without his Trainer saying a word. Some sort of code language?

"Krow," said the great dark bird.

Caro winced.

Casey thought for a moment and then said, "Um… Faint Attack?"

One could practically hear Rodney willing himself not to wheel over to the wall and bash his head against it.

Honchkrow, on the other hand, was happy to mow down the funny bird in front of him. He slipped quietly up to the Xatu, looking calm as one could in the middle of a Gym Battle, and suddenly launching a barrage of dark energy directly into his enemy's face. Xatu hopped back in surprise, covering its face with large multi-colored wings, but the damage was done.

"Now then," said Rodney in obvious mockery of a conversational tone. "Let's get this over with."

Xatu opened its wings, and this time its eyes were once again glowing blue. There was no visible change or shift for a few seconds, and then Honchkrow suddenly had a sort of mini-spasm, twitching violently and eventually glowing blue as well. It flapped its wings frantically, but to no avail – Xatu had complete control over its motions, and the Mystic Pokémon simply stood there, looking up at it. Honchkrow cursed in the Murkrow dialect, and it was a doozy.

So much so that Xatu looked mildly unnerved for a second, but quickly regained its hold once it sensed Honchkrow struggling to get power over himself once again. Xatu couldn't let him escape the Psychic – once again played without a command. There was clearly something in Rodney's bitter commentary tipping his Pokémon off.

"Slam it around, I don't care," said Rodney with a hint of aggravation in his voice. "Didn't I tell you already that you didn't need to wait for me to do things like that?" Xatu didn't make a futile move trying to respond, but instead commenced to do just what it was told to – Honchkrow went soaring to the left. With a flick of its wing, Xatu watched stoically as the Big Boss Pokémon was slammed into first one wall, then the other, then the ceiling, then the floor. Then the first wall, and the second, then directly into a corner, then slung across the room…

Casey didn't particularly want to focus on the screeches of pain that his Pokémon was giving off, so instead he looked somewhere else. Unfortunately, that somewhere else happened to be Rodney, who was drumming his fingers impatiently – and wasn't regarding Honchkrow at all. Instead, it was Natu who followed the Pokémon's path through the air, and even the young Psychic-type watched blankly.

It was then that Casey noticed something might be wrong with this picture.

Regardless, Honchkrow eventually was thrown to the floor, Xatu having become tired of tossing him around like a rag doll. He skidded for a while before coming to a halt, and it became obvious that the Pokémon had fainted a while ago. Casey returned it without a word, but merely with a rather unpleasant glance in Rodney's direction.

He still looked bored.

"Having fun?" Rodney asked.

"No," replied Casey icily. "No, amazingly, I'm not."

"How terrible! Maybe sending out the next Pokémon will ease your pain?" His expression darkened once again.

Despite the insolent overtones, the young Gym Leader had a point, and so Casey held up his next Pokéball and tossed it onto the field. "Larvitar, use Dark Pulse."

The small green dragon did just that, sending a visible wave of its own twisted thoughts hurtling towards Xatu. The Pokémon once again put its black wings up over its face, but this time the attempt failed; it couldn't take the super-effective attack, and eventually it crumpled to the floor on its own time. Rodney didn't say a word as he returned the Pokémon, but it was obvious that he was grinding his teeth.

Casey smiled. Maybe while he had Larvitar around there was some hope of winning the fight.

The purple-and-gray shadow slipped into the relatively bright lights of the battlefield, and it was revealed to be – of course – a Grumpig, looking rather displeased with itself but a Grumpig nonetheless. It worked without any sort of speech from Rodney… this was getting just slightly confusing.

"Larvitar, use Thrash!"

The small dinosaur gave a triumphant "Lar!" and punched the air a few times – for good measure, you'll understand – before dashing madly towards the Grumpig, who seemed to be in defensive position already. It wasn't the best possible shot for making a good long impression, but at the very least he would be able to get an attack in now. Casey watched as Larvitar continued to patter threateningly forward, little sparks of light following as it got ready to pummel the Psychic-type into next week.

It was then that Casey learned how to skewer a Larvitar.

Larvitar stopped mid-stride. A second later, out from the Pokémon's back came a white spear of light, which had in actuality passed right through the Rock-type. As Larvitar staggered to the side, Casey noticed that the Grumpig had ducked its head, and now that the damage from the Power Gem had been done it was straightening up and back to its initial position.

"Ack!" muttered Clyde.

Caro huffed. "This is not cool. Casey must have fallen into, like, sixty traps by now!"

"Yes, well," said Jordan indifferently. "Welcome to the Raxi Gym."

Kaeo, on the other hand, was watching the fight with a somewhat concerned expression on his face. He had picked up on what was going on, and it was now a matter of determining whether he would be able to get the message across to Casey without being intercepted.

While the Drowzee tackled its own difficulties, Larvitar hopped back up. Casey could see now that full-on physical attacks were obviously not the route he should be taking… but even then, Larvitar only had one move that didn't fit the criteria, and that was a new one he had only just taught to Larvitar by way of a Technical Machine. Even so, it might be able to turn the tides – or at least postpone the inevitable. Casey's mouth tightened into a line.

'Alright then,' he thought. 'You can just have a taste of…'

"Okay, Larvitar! Use that new TM we got, To… uh, what are you doing?"

The Grumpig had its arms spread wide, forehead gems glowing. It was obviously concentrating hard on something. The relevance of the move was entirely lost on Casey, who figured that it was Light Screen or Barrier… but those shouldn't affect a move like Toxic! The Gym Leader was obviously too learned to try using a move like that, especially after he had seen the purple gunk ball forming in Larvitar's hands. Even so, the challenger decided that it probably didn't matter too much anyway. So he let his Pokémon get on with the attack.

"Now! Fire it!"

Larviar pitched the gunk like a baseball towards the Grumpig and its barrier. The Pokémon stood up straight again, having finished its protective measures, and merely stood there blankly as the ball flew towards him. Casey crossed his arms and smiled smugly; this Rodney kid had obviously given up and was now trying all sorts of stupid attacks looking for something that would work.

"You really are full of yourself, aren't you?"

While Casey was busy stroking his ego, Toxic had been continuing to make its way towards the opponent. But now that he looked again, the purple orb was gliding in exactly the opposite direction; i.e., directly back at Larvitar. Casey could only watch in confusion as the ball 'o slop drenched his Rock-type, clinging to his armor and seeping into the soft skin below. The Pokémon sent him a death glare from over his shoulder for even daring to make him use such an attack.

"Sorry?" said Casey weakly. 'What on Earth was that?'

"You couldn't recognize that move at all?" hissed Rodney. "You must be some sort of imbecile…!"

Casey figured that he was already dead meat and might as well get some information out of it, so he said, "Um… what was that attack you just used, then?"

"That was Magic Coat, idiot," the Gym Leader grunted, looking steamed just for having to stop the battle to explain what had just happened. "You know that Toxic you just used? It's a status move. Take a wild guess what Magic Coat does, why don't you."

"It… deflects status attacks?"

Rodney whipped out a hand and pointed in Larvitar's general direction. "Hello? Your Larvitar just got badly poisoned, moron!"

"So it… redirects status attacks?"

Rodney facepalmed without skipping a beat. He muttered a long sting of words which, judging from their intonation, were not pleasant, but eventually reality seemed to catch up with him. He looked up, looking not at all pleased with the general situation, despite the fact that he was sweeping the floor (which most certainly did need a good sweep) with Casey.

"Yes," he said slowly with a lot of compressed rage in his tone. "Yes. It redirects status attacks. And if you'll recall what Toxic does, then within eight turns your Larvitar will be defeated… assuming I don't do that first." The Grumpig lurched into motion again. From its gems came another beam of light, hurtling right towards Larvitar. Of course the small dinosaur prepared to take the brunt of the attack.

And it did. But when that happened, Casey merely said, "Rock Throw."

Larvitar, who didn't have any rocks on hand, merely settled for the sand that was trickling slowly out of its body. The sand stream grew faster until there was quite a mound in front of him, and when that happened Larvitar merely pointed at it and said "Lar lar!" Using some kind of mystical Pokémon power, the sand hardened back into its original form: a pointy spear of rock. Larvitar then turned back to the Grumpig, who didn't look happy.

The rock flew swiftly towards him, and was just about to hit him in the chest when the Pokémon disappeared.

He had been recalled.

"Pokémon two on the Leader's side has been recalled!" bellowed Jordan from the sidelines. "The Gym Leader is now—"

"We know that!" The response was unanimous.

Without another word Jordan got up from his seat, prompting a curious glance from Caro, and walked blankly out of the room into another door. It was done as if he knew what he was supposed to be doing without it being told – or screamed, as the case may be. This belief was reinforced when he returned, walking beside an old friend from floors past. One half of this newcomer looked around nervously, while the other looked like it wanted nothing more than to nom on Jordan's head.

"That's the…" began Casey.

"…Pumipuyu," finished Rodney. "Yes."

The two-headed Pokémon regarded Casey in various different ways, as was to be expected for a creature with that amount of heads. The smaller, jittery head (referred to as Head A for future reference) was glancing confusedly between the two Trainers, presumably searching for a way to get out without further agitating the other head (this head shall referred to as Head B) and ignoring the fact that the two unfortunate bodies appeared to be joined at the hip.

It stood there, shooting glares and demented smiles of various frequency at Larvitar. That is, it did that until some mysterious power reminded it that it was in the middle of a battle, and it fired a very dirty-looking wad of energy towards Larvitar. It didn't need to be ordered to begin setting up a sand wall around it, but alas, it didn't have time to harden and the Shadow Ball simply passed right through it. Just to rub it in Larvitar's face, the sand splashed all over said face while the Shadow Ball set to work wiping out the rest of the Ground-type's energy.

Larvitar fell to the ground, mouth gaping open.

"Hm," said Rodney disinterestedly.

Casey frowned – no matter what clever code messages this kid used to order his Pokémon around, it didn't hide the fact that he was a jerk in a major way or that he would need to go down in defeat if Casey intended to get his Gym Badge in the next year. So he recalled Larvitar and sent out his final competitor – the newly evolved Poliwhirl, and the only conscious Pokémon who hasn't been banned by Gym rules.

Instead of ordering an attack, Casey turned to Jordan and asked, "May I have a time out, please?"

"Go ahead," the ref called back.

Rodney "Kh!"d angrily.

Casey crossed his arms, taking a good look around at the battle and its surroundings. The lighting was hardly enough for him to see, even with his hair pulled out of his face by the gravitationally rebellious hairdo. This brought him to his first point: it must be darn near impossible for Rodney to see anything wearing those sunglasses – and the hair over them as well. And yet he was able to tell when Honchkrow was sent out, and what species he was, before the Pokémon had even said a word.

So he must be seeing through something else… like, say, the inconspicuous little ball of feathers atop his head? It had to be the Natu, or some other Psychic Pokémon in the building (Psychic-types were the only ones able to connect with humans on a psychological level, and vice versa – this Casey knew from a riveting discussion with Sheridan a while back). Kaeo was sitting there… but he wouldn't allow a stranger into his head. And even Casey knew that all of his Pokémon were liable to faint at any time, so he would have nothing supporting him in the interlude between battles.

Unless, of course, the Pokémon wasn't used in battle at all and just stood there. Was it hiding somewhere in the rafters of this cavernous place? Casey began to glance around again, particularly up into the ceiling, but the answer soon became apparent to him; said answer was standing right there, just a short way across the field. It was small and green and had a big red feather sticking out of its head.

So he was using Natu.

'Good, one problem solved,' Casey told himself. 'There's now two goals left to accomplish: figuring out how to exploit it, and why.'

Well, why indeed… he could just take off those stupid sunglasses at any time and the entire deal would be foiled. Though if he was going to take them off later, why were the things on at all? Unless—

Casey stopped his train of thought right there. This was mostly because Rodney's expression had changed again, and it was not for the calmer. So instead of following that unfortunate thought bunny, he reverted his brain to working on the other problem. This worked a lot better, and the beginnings of a plan soon became apparent to him. Casey would work everything else out after he reassured himself that he was the only person in his head.

'Kaeo,' he thought as forcefully as he could in the Drowzee's direction. 'Cover me, won't you?'

The Pokémon brightened up; he really did seem to have figured it out on his own. There was no need to convey the plan now, so Kaeo merely followed his instructions and set up a mental barrier around Casey's side of the field.

Almost immediately, Rodney's expression soured further (if that was even possible). "What?" he rasped.

Casey smiled and thought, 'I caught you.'

But of course, his opponent didn't hear it.

He watched, wearing that half-smug grin of triumph, as he sent still another thought in Kaeo's direction. 'Kaeo, I need you for this.'

'Hmm?'

'I'll give the attack order to you, and you'll give it to Poliwhirl, all right?'

'Poliwhirl is only a Water-type.'

'Well, he can still get the messages, can't he?'

There was silence from Kaeo; he was apparently thinking it over. Finally another response came in, and with this one was a feeling of satisfaction, excitement almost. 'Yes. Yes, I suppose she can.'

'Good! Tell her to use Hypnosis.'

Kaeo apparently delivered, as Poliwhirl only took a second to look back at him curiously before returning to the task at hand. Her eyes began glowing a pale blue – not blinding, but enough so that her pupils and whites couldn't be distinguished from the other. Pumipuyu Head A had been watching Poliwhirl the entire time, and so found itself unable to look away from the sleep-inducing effects of Hypnosis. Head B, on the other hand, had been wandering his eyes around, having lost interest in the battle.

By the time Head B realized the attack was going on, it was over, and with just a few body movements Head A was shaken into awareness again. The two took a battle stance, Head A having apparently grown a spine since drifting off.

Unfortunately, the other Pokémon in Rodney's arsenal did not have that luxury.

Though of course human beings were unaffected by the Hypnosis rays, they could certainly feel them, in the form of a faint tingling in the back of their minds. Rodney had obviously picked up on this faint tingling, for his expression had changed yet again. For a second the thought crossed the challenger's mind that maybe he had done something wrong, skipped a step, anything that could give this twisted Gym Leader an advantage…

…but then Rodney became aware of a weight in his lap, and Casey knew that he had everything squared off.

"What…" spluttered the Gym Leader amusingly, apparently unable to finish his sentence. Though it was not from rage; the anger that had been bristling around him like a physical fog had all but disappeared, and by now he looked precisely like what he really was – a thin and crippled teenage boy.

Oh, wait, there went the fog again.

"JORDAN!" he boomed, more than loud enough for the Gymkeeper to hear from his place next to Clyde, Kaeo, Saffron, and Caro from the stands. The aforementioned members of the Groupie Galaxy all started at the sudden noise, but Jordan didn't flinch in the least.

"He's… he's… the challenger has been using Pokémon outside of the battling ring!"

Jordan bit back the obvious and more satisfying remark that was pushing at his brain, and instead delivered this shard of truth: "Ah… that rule is null and void in this Gym. I think we both know who we can thank for that."

He looked like he was enjoying himself immensely.

This only enraged Rodney further; but of course, he could do nothing but scream, and after letting out a roar he returned his focus to Casey. "You know what? Fine. Fine! You only have one Pokémon lef! Even after your juvenile stunt I can still beat you!"

Casey crossed his arms and said nothing, wearing that same smile of triumphant New-Casey-Logic that had been gracing his features for the last few minutes. He didn't say anything.

"Well? Don't just stand there! ATTACK!!"

"It's your move," offered Casey pleasantly.

"You know that I can't do that!"

"Oh really?" Casey uncrossed his arms, putting them at his sides. "Why is that?"

"Because Pumipuyu is ASLEEP!"

The last word echoed throughout the stadium, causing massive confusion for the majority of creatures in the room. Pumipuyu, because both heads were obviously not asleep, and Clyde, Saffron, and Caro, who weren't following at all. That left four people who understood – Rodney and Jordan, who had known since even before the battle began, Kaeo, who had realized it soon after, and Casey, who was calling him out on it.

And, in proper call-out fashion, he pointed one gloved finger in the ragged Gym Leader's direction. Though of course he could not see it.

"I got you!" he began. "That was impressive there, I gotta admit. Very clever and stuff like that. But I still got you."

"What are you—" Rodney seemed to realize mid-sentence what was going on, and this stopped him cold.

Casey pulled down his arm. "Now, I don't understand your reasoning behind doing this even with all those complications, and I don't think now is really the time to ask you. But I also don't think it's something that really needs to be taken advantage of, and I'm not going to let you get completely frazzled trying to find out what's going on. So I'll tell you now: Pumipuyu is awake. The brown head told the yellow head to wake up, and it did."

"Why does he need to tell him that?" muttered Clyde to the hoodie-clad youth beside him.

Caro, who had seen what was going on (if only vaguely), continued to blink at the events transpiring on the battlefield.

"And with that," the challenger concluded, "I'm afraid that you're kinda in the dark."

This left the Gym Leader speechless for quite some time, a feat which Jordan would later recall Casey fondly for (among other things). But finally he collected his bearings from receiving all these mixed signals at once, and Rodney said something that hadn't come out of his mouth in a very long time.

"…Okay. Fine. The battle continues."

Casey smiled. And though his blind adversary didn't know that had happened, just for a brief shining moment the corner of his mouth twitched as well.

And then it was gone.

"Poliwhirl, Body Slam."

The Water-type didn't need to be asked on why she had gotten her orders verbally, nor did she want to hear it. Instead, she fired herself towards Pumipuyu, each footfall sending dust up into the air as she grew closer to the Psychic-type. It didn't have time to respond, and both Trainer and Pokémon knew that; so Rodney remained silent as Head B turned to absorb the brunt of the attack, being the larger and more muscular of the two.

"Psychic!"

While Poliwhirl was still inches away from the tip of Pumipuyu's muzzle, the Pokémon glowed a bright blue, and Poliwhirl was slung right back to her starting position. The attack had been an effective one, even if there had been no walls involved. But Poliwhirl brought herself to her feet for the next command. At the words 'Mud Shot', a thick spray of gunk was sent hurtling for Pumipuyu, who in turn used another Psychic to fling it back at Poliwhirl.

Casey, being Casey, told Poliwhirl without hesitation to make a bigger Mud Shot and sent it at the first one.

This, she did.

Pumipuyu received the attack directly to the face, and being unable to absorb the blast of two attacks at once, shook for a few seconds and fainted.

At this point, the little green ball of feathers still sitting in Rodney's lap stirred back into motion. Upon realizing what had just transpired, the Natu gave a chirp of alarm and quickly righted herself on the head of her owner.

Jordan stood up. "The Gym Leader's third Pokémon has been defeated! Victory goes to the challenger!"

Casey nodded to the Gymkeeper and began walking across the battlefield, recalling Poliwhirl with a smile and a "Thanks" as he went. About halfway across, he became aware of a small object flying in his general direction, and he quickly and instinctively reached up to catch it. The object was obtained right before it was to hit his forehead – it didn't even occur to him to make a parallel to the whole Rotom Pokéball fiasco – and upon taking a good look, he found it to be an octagon with a raised center.

He thought he saw a small blue glow flare around it, and then turn off.

"The Midlight Badge," called Rodney from across the room.

Casey smiled. "Thanks!" With that, he took a step backwards and turned around, his intention being getting to the door without being attacked by anything. Sadly, this was not to be.

Without warning, Casey suddenly became aware of somebody placing their full body weight on him, and a few seconds later he heard the excited cry of the culprit. "THAT WAS AWESOME, MAN!"

Caro was hugging him. Tightly. Of course, when he realized what he was doing, the sixteen-year-old squeaked in embarrassment and hopped off of his traveling companion, firing apologies a mile a minute.

Casey started laughing. "Hey, it's alright…"

"Well… well, whatever!" proclaimed Caro loudly. "We should get moving! Um… yeah! We need to go! That's what we should do!" And without another word, he grabbed Clyde by the arm and pulled him out, grinning like a maniac. Casey turned around and shrugged to Jordan, who was now standing on the floor of the battlefield. He noticed that Rodney, once again, was frowning – at first, Casey assumed it was just his crabbiness returning after the fight had ended, but he then noticed a few important differences. It wasn't a scowl or a death snarl, the two default expressions that Rodney seemed to wear.

"Come on, Casey, we gotta go!"

He didn't get more than a second to see it, but as Caro came back and dragged Casey along too, he could have sworn that the blind Gym Leader looked kind of sad.

 

[Giratina ♀]

{31} casey and the amazing mirror​

The room was decently lit, but it still managed to convey an uncomfortable feeling for the three people currently going through the proverbial shredder.

"Well, Miss Solana, see," offered one of them, a woman with brown gravity-defying hair and a rather tight catsuit under her BDV stake-out cloak. "We were doing our best, you know, to get the notes back. But that refugee and his friends… well, they keep evading us."

The other two – a man with green, rather feral-looking hairspikes, and a Delcatty – nodded in agreement.

"Oh, right, they kept evading you." Solana, a rather plump woman of around twenty-eight and dressed in gray, leaned back in her chair. Only a desk separated the two parties, but Billy, Kidd, and Aerith would swear that it was the single most intimidating desk they'd ever seen. "Of course. It must be so dreadfully difficult to catch a spineless Grunt, two blathering children, the only Pokémon hunter on Earth who doesn't like conflict, and a lazy musician. You three have really got your work cut out for you."

The trio was silent.

As was Solana.

Finally, she seemed to grow bored of the trio's badly-suppressed squirming, and continued. "We asked you to do something very simple: reclaim the first set of notes. We don't need them anymore, per se, but they are definitely to be kept secret. And according to your latest reports, they seem to have lost possession of the notes." Solana's expression was not inspiring. "Is this true?"

"…It is," said Kidd, a tad uncertainly.

Solana nodded to them in the same way a sadistic trigger-happy Honchkrow nodded to his underachiever of a lackey. "Well, as you can plainly see, you three are failures. Dupes. Botch-ups. But unfortunately, we're required to keep two of you around…" She glanced to Aerith and Billy. "…and somehow I doubt the third has anywhere else to go." Kidd gulped. "You three are stuck here, and the Boss isn't going to tolerate anyone lying around in a prison cell while they're still capable of getting work done."

All three of them nodded uncomfortably.

"Which is why we're allowing you to try again with the meddling brats. It's also why you've been sent to this base, considering it is the closest to where they are." The way Solana put this out made it sound like she was grudgingly doing the three a favor – and she was. "However, we also want to ensure that you don't get… distracted again. I have decided to assign another person with you three on this mission. Consider it a make-or-break. If you succeed, and your accompaniment agrees that you have pulled your weight, then you will be forgiven and sent back into the force. If you fail, well… expect to take quite a few liberties in your future." Her expression turned from the evil deadpan to a similarly evil smile.

"Y-yes, Miss Solana," the three stammered in unison. Including, amazingly, Billy.

"Goooood." Solana pressed her gloved finger on a nearby button and spoke into it. Soon after, the door behind them slid gracefully open, and in walked a man wearing the BDV underling's uniform. The helmet visor was down, shielding the top half of his face.

"…But Miss Solana!" exclaimed Aerith as soon as she saw him. "He's only a Grunt!"

The Grunt in question looked down at her, his mouth never turning from an expressionless line. He easily topped six feet, with an utterly chilling presence about him that dwarfed even Solana's.

"This one is relatively new, yes," said Solana. "But he is more than capable of handling the likes of you. Despite your ranks as agents, I expect him to be treated as an equal." They hastily nodded in agreement, which brought a smirk to the woman's face. "Good. I've already given instructions to our friend here, and he should be able to explain them to you. I expect preparations to begin immediately. Are we clear?"

All four BDV underlings nodded.

The Grunt turned on his three comrades. "My designation is 507786," he remarked. "Follow me."

And they did, right out of Solana's office.



With the relatively catastrophic events of the Raxi City Gym well behind them, the Groupie Galaxy set off for their next adventure. Namely, the city of Sigma, nestled comfortably on the side of an ominous giant volcano (dormant, thank you very much, the townspeople weren't that stupid). It had clearly taken its toll on the nearby ecosystem – the dirt all around was reddish and dry, and only hills of the same coloring managed to break the monotony.

Regardless, this wasteland was the place that they would all discover a number of interesting and quite alarming things… in due time. Before they could do that, however, the merry band of travelers would need to get some other minor difficulties out of the way.

These 'minor difficulties' included the small matter of crippling migraine headaches.

"Are you sure you shouldn't have, y'know, seen a doctor or something before we left?" asked Saffron uncertainly, quite concerned for the wellbeing of her pipe-wielding companion. Grant seemed strangely sure of himself today, a strange parallel to the unusually empathic Mime Jr.

"Yes, I should be fine," he stated. "Really." Though her uncharacteristic concerns were rather irritating after prolonged exposure, Grant didn't feel that he really needed to complain about it – after all, at any given time of his life before the past few months, he would have called himself delusional to have someone fuss over him like that. Though he wasn't at all aware of it, the man's expression soured as he walked, and yet nobody bothered to point it out. This was primarily because they had moved on to another distraction.

"…Hey!"

Without any prior warning, Rotom had stopped his cheerful orbit of the group. This was strange enough as it is, but just to make everything that much better, the small Pokémon immediately began drifting slowly in another direction, his face(s) totally blank. Casey didn't notice soon enough to grab the Ghost-type out of thin air, and once anyone had noticed, Rotom was flying too high in the air for any of them to reach (even the towering Clyde).

"Rotom, come back here," called Casey. "We're not going… there." He couldn't make out what exactly the Pokémon was heading for, but it most certainly wasn't their next destination.

The little orange ball paid him no mind.

Shooting a confused glance with Caro (who shrugged), the redhead set off after his Pokémon, of course leading the others to follow suit. Eventually, though, they became aware that the nearby area had become somewhat brighter due to some unusual force – whatever it was, they certainly couldn't see it. But Rotom floated on, out of any of their range, and calling him back soon proved to be fruitless. It was at times like this when Casey really, really hated himself for…

…well…

…how had Rotom lost his Pokéball again…?

Shaking the thought out of his head, Casey decided that he really didn't need to concern himself with that right now; currently, the most important problem was the fact that his Pokémon was floating off into the dark unknown without any emotion or hesitation whatsoever. Casey wasn't sure which part of that scared him more. Regardless, they continued to follow the little creature.

Eventually, though, they were forced to squint.

Standing in front of them was some giant wall of light, sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow but unfortunately in too close proximity to admire. After Casey had moved directly out of the beam, he realized that it was in fact coming from a… mirror.
In the middle of a volcanic wasteland.

Well, okay.

Rotom made a soft mumbling noise and continued to proceed towards the mirror. 'What does he think he's going to do with it?' wondered Casey, not knowing whether he should be concerned or not at the sheer randomness of the situation. 'It's not as if Rotom cares a whit about what he looks like…' Casey found himself incapable of finishing the sentence, as right before his eyes the mirror proceeded to swallow Rotom.

Alright, so it didn't swallow him per se, but Rotom simply moved directly into the mirror as if entering a vertical wall of water. Without any hesitation at all, Casey hopped in after him. He wasn't quite sure if the others had followed suit, but to be honest, his mind soon moved on to bigger things – such as the fact that he was now being sucked into a bizarre rainbow vortex following after a deranged Pokéball.

From behind a rock there could be heard the sound of snickering, and the three BDV agents ran off to regroup with 507786.

He had been standing behind a larger rock (there wasn't a lot of hiding places to choose from in the middle of a desert, after all), and when they came up to him, it took a few seconds to pick him out from the shadow of the thing. He was apparently quite good at hiding.

"Now we follow them, right?" asked Aerith.

507786 took his time staring at the mirror they (mostly he) had rigged up using a number of frazzled Mismagius. Eventually, though, he bothered to respond. "Yes. Now we follow." And with that, he walked over to the mirror (which had now reduced itself to a pleasant glow) and tapped its surface with one finger, immediately sucking himself in after the Groupie Galaxy.



Once everything had slowed down to a pace where Casey could open his eyes without feeling nauseous, he looked around. The place he had landed in looked something like the Route he had been in earlier, but it was considerably more mountainous, with many caverns popping up. Not to mention the fact that at this point, the volcano appeared to be… active… oh dear. Casey nearly walked into a stream of lava that crossed directly over his path – not a good end to the adventure, to be sure.

"Guys?" he called nervously. "Anyone here?"

No response.

"Um… hello?"

Again, nothing.

"Darn it," Casey muttered, looking around. "Caro? Sheridan? Anyone?"

His response was the sound of flowing lava. It was not a pleasant sound.

Great. Now he was alone in this volcanic wasteland, without even Rotom for company – and it was unlikely that anyone else in his party would want to come out to this rather ugly environment anyhow. He would just keep them inside their Pokéballs until some understanding could be made. Giving a rather defeated sigh, Casey continued to walk, only stopping when he saw something small and black on the path in front of him.

Upon further inspection, it turned out to be a Pikachu, albeit one with glowing red eyes and black fur. The unPikachu looked up at him silently.

"Er… hi, there," offered Casey competently.

The Pikachu snarled and gave him an electric shock. This Pikachu's electricity appeared to be blue instead of the usual yellow, noted Casey before he received the (relatively weak) blast. Stunned, Casey took a step backwards – it was all he could do to keep himself from tumbling into the dust. Meanwhile, the Pikachu hissed menacingly at him and darted off to some unknown destination.

Once Casey had regained full mobility of his limbs, he attempted to chase after the unPikachu, but found that it was not where he had assumed it had been. There was no evidence that the little creature had been there at all. Thoroughly confused but not seeing any reason to dive deeper into the mystery, Casey continued on his way. If there was any luck left, he would be able to find someone he knew wouldn't attack him… at least they would be together then.

And then, somewhere from the east, he heard the sound of a drum.

Rather confused at the presence of a drum in the middle of this wasteland, Casey followed the steady beats, which every so often deviated into another song. Casey didn't pretend to know much about instruments, but when he wasn't attempting to locate the music that had somehow veered him off track, he was kind of enjoying it. The player was good.

Finally, behind a rather large boulder, Casey thought he had the noise cornered. With catlike tread he peered over the side of the rock, trying to get a good look at what was making the noise, mind already whirling on who it could be. One of his friends? Another person here? Some kind of Pokémon…? He pushed his head in farther; he could only see the drum itself, not the person playing it.

Suddenly, the object and the noise disappeared, and a gruff voice demanded, "Who's there?"

Casey promptly lost his balance and fell.

Sufficiently startled, Clyde hopped up from his previous spot, with his ashiko drum shoved back into Hammerspace. Upon realizing that the facefaulting intruder was in fact his 'friend' Casey (Clyde refused to think of them as friends, even now), he relaxed – if only slightly – and slowly walked forward. He decided to ignore the fact that Casey would likely look up to find a six-foot-tall gorilla of a man who he wouldn't be able to identify from that vantage point.

Casey did just that.

"…Ack!" Only after he had put some space between himself and Clyde could he see the man's true identity, and once that happened, Casey attempted to get to his feet while trying to retain the few scraps of self-respect he still had.

"So this is where you went off to?" asked Clyde, arms crossed. "…Whatever. At least you're alive."

"Same. Good to see you."

The ex-Go-Rock Quad nodded. "You alright? Rotom ran off, I guess, but is everything else in order?"

Casey nodded. "I think so. You?"

His expression hardened; evidently, Clyde hadn't checked this himself. After shoving his hand into his pocket and feeling around for a second, the thirty-year-old nodded, signifying that he was in fact clear as far as possessions went. Instead of responding immediately, Clyde began looking around, clearly not amused with the place they had landed in now. "…So. You got any idea where we are?"

"Not in the least," deadpanned Casey. "Apparently a place with demonic Pikachus in, but that's all I got."

He received a funny look for his trouble.

"…Right," said Clyde. "Have you at least made an attempt to… you know… get out?"

"Into where?" responded Casey, gesturing to the volcanic wasteland surrounding them both. "I don't see any other magic mirrors around here, do you?" And he was right; there were actually no magic mirrors to be found in the immediate area.

"Magic mirror." Clyde didn't look amused. "You think we got here by way of a magic mirror."

"Well… yes?"

Clyde snorted. "You're such a kid sometimes. There's no way we could have been brought here by a mirror. Even I know that mirrors don't do that. We probably got caught by a Kadabra that knew Flash or something." From the expression on Casey's face, he remained unconvinced, but he didn't pursue the subject any longer.

This was mostly because a third figure had intruded on their little meeting, and it wasn't another member of the Groupie Galaxy. Mostly.

The newcomer had the stature of a preteen, but was dressed in a black hooded robe that covered his face. Despite this, a few spikes of black hair managed to poke into the air from under it – and more importantly, sitting on its shoulder was a smug-looking black Pikachu.

It took a few seconds for Casey to notice him, but once he did, the whole situation changed dramatically.

Pulling his hood back, the shadowy boy showed his face – and, more importantly, his distinctive hairstyle. Beneath the hood was jet black hair, divided into two distinct clumps of spikes. One of them hung from the bottom of his head, tilted slightly to the right, and the other stuck out at a ninety-degree angle from the left side. Casey would have recognized that 'do from a mile away, and the presence of a little electric rat only made the similarity more striking, but… there was a problem. He had a serious face on, almost a scowl.

Ash never scowled.

Happy day!​

 

[Giratina ♀]

{32} brave chapter​

Casey and 'Ash' stood staring at one another for a rather long time. And it would have been longer, too, had Clyde not intervened in his usual manner: "Who's the kid in black?"

'Ash' pulled his hood back over his impeccable hairspikes, which somehow managed to fit under the cloth, and turned his attention upon the blue-clad man. The black Pikachu, however, kept its demon-eyed glare on Casey, a fact that both interested and disturbed him. Since when had Ash's Pikachu ever cared that much about either of them? It wasn't as if the two had met in person, after all…

"Leave this place," the hooded child said at last.

Clyde snorted. "Or what? You'll cast spells on us? Get out of the way, kid, we have more important things to do."

The other member of the Groupie Galaxy wasn't so quick to object. This was because – aside from the obvious clash of personalities – he was still focused on the Pikachu, whose eyes had just flashed a very concerning shade of blue. "Um, Clyde? I don't think we should be arguing with him right now…"

"What? Why?" asked Clyde. "Don't tell me you're actually listening to this pipsque—AARGH!"

In a shocking turn of events which wasn't at all related to anything else that had ever previously occurred, Clyde suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a long and unpleasant Water Gun. Meanwhile, the black Pikachu had dismounted his master's shoulders and taken to the ground… or, at least, it seemed that he had. For instead of the little rat-like monster that had been there a few minutes ago, the all-black Pokémon had now taken a form vaguely like that of a crocodile, with giant eyes that, amazingly, glowed an ominous shade of red.

The unTotodile gave a toothy grin, clearly enjoying Clyde's despair.

And oh, it was despair – at least, it was despair for about two seconds. Right after that, however, there was a furious roar from the pile of drenched clothing that was Clyde. It emitted a long string of infuriated words that would be better off not repeated. Despite this, and the fact that Casey was cringing routinely at the severity of his exclamations, 'Ash' looked unfazed. As a matter of fact, his face hadn't changed a bit. The usual smile that broke out after attempting to act serious had never come.

"Leave this place," he said.

Casey gritted his teeth. This was obviously not Ash, he could see, that, but… "We will, okay? We will. But… but first you need to tell us who you are. Then we'll leave, alright?"

'Ash' stared at him with that uncharacteristically evil frown. Without a word, the unTotodile hopped back onto his shoulder (now reverted back to its unPikachu form). With two sets of unimpressed eyes looking them over, Casey suddenly lost a considerable amount of his courage, but fortunately 'Ash' complied anyhow.

"You are a fool, to not know who I am," he said with the sort of icy tone that had no place in a boy's voice. "If you must know… I am Ash, the Guardian… It is my job to ensure that both dimensions remain safe and entirely separate." He stepped closer. "You are from the other dimension… Leave this place."

"Well, uh… see, that's the problem," said Casey rather pathetically. "We don't know how to get back to our… world." Even saying it himself sounded ridiculous – but then again, this Ash was spitting out nonsense at a rate higher than his own.

"I see…" said Ash.

"Wait, you know about this whole dimension thing, right? So surely you know how to get us out. Could you, I don't know, maybe try and… help?"

Ash nodded. "Yes… I shall… help." From beneath the folds of his robe, Ash held up a hand-mirror like it was some kind of sword. The mirror promptly began to glow with silver light, which soon seemed to take on a mind of its own and fired a beam into the sky. All that the two members of the Groupie Galaxy could do was stand back and cover their eyes as, from somewhere above, a giant stormcloud amassed itself, with various cloud pieces shaped into spikes sticking out from various points. And then, from out of the middle of the cloud-like monstrosity came a giant bird neck, like that of a vulture, with a single giant eye.

Pulling the black hand-mirror down, Ash collected himself and took a step back from the giant deformed Altaria. "Farewell, dimension travelers… May Altakko take you to a better place…"

He disappeared into a round portal with a surface like a mirror, leaving Casey and Clyde alone with the great monster Altakko. For good measure, Clyde screamed out another curse, before descending into just general yelling for his life. Casey, meanwhile, had given up on his previous intention of leaving his Pokémon inside their Pokéballs, and reached into his backpack's pocket in order to root around for them… only to find his Pokéballs not there.

Casey joined his traveling companion in screaming.

"…Hold on a minute!"

From somewhere over their heads, Clyde and Casey suddenly became aware of a presence swooping upon them. Swiftly looking up (anything to divert their attention from the horrific Altakko), the dynamic duo found themselves looking up at a rather unusual sight: a human figure, about the size of an eleven-year-old, with giant angelic wings and an uncomfortably large sword.

He landed at ground level, but only for a second – not even long enough for either of them to get a good look at him. Soon he was up in the air again, brandishing his super-sword threateningly. Altakko squawked angrily and dove for him again, but he managed to whack the lunging beak out of his face and took another stab at it. It didn't seem to do much, and the creature continued to pummel away at the boy. Eventually he had to fly back out of its range, dodging the demonic Swablus that seemed to conjure themselves out of thin air.

Taking a breather, he batted one of the Swablus back at Altakko, and heard it scream in pain – much louder than any sound it had made when he tried to hit it the first time. Apparently seeing some kind of hint from this, the winged boy settled himself into a batter's position, and proceeded to knock the Swablu creatures back at the monster that made them. Soon, the returning projectiles (which exploded upon contact) proved too much for Altakko, who with a conclusive wail finally dropped to the ground and disappeared.

With a conclusive laugh, the winged boy dropped to Earth again as well, and simply tossed his sword to the side. With that one motion, the wings disappeared, and the yellow-tinged steel weapon turned into a small floating thing in the shape of a star. Taking out a hand-mirror of his own, the boy promptly sucked the glowing star into its depths, and finally turned on the two stunned Trainers.

"Hi there!" he said cheerfully. "I guess Anti-Ash attacked you again, huh? He should really stop doing that… oh well. My name's Ash, the real one. Who are you?"

…Erk.

It wasn't so much the fact that this kid and the hooded one shared a name that brought Casey some concern, nor the mention of that other one again. Instead, Casey was drawn to the fact that this eleven-year-old looked exactly like Ash did, but without the dark ominous outfit. He had on a blue-and white jacket over a black shirt, with somewhat faded jeans underneath. If only for the distinct lack of hat, this would be the Ash he remembered.

If Casey had been confused before, he was now utterly lost.

"…Hey, are you alright? You look a little flustered there."

"What? …Oh. No. I'm fine. Uh… this is Clyde over here, and I'm Casey."

"Oh yeah?" He looked rather pleased to find this out. "Well, nice to meet you guys, Casey and Clyde. What exactly did you do to earn Anti-Ash's attention, though? Usually he doesn't bother with mere mortals like you."

"Doesn't… bother?" asked Clyde, not quite following. "What does he do to people who aren't 'mere mortals'?"

"Well, obviously he tries to kill them," said Ash offhandedly. "Like what he did to you. It's strange, though – we haven't even heard from him for a good long time before now, and then when I get here, he's just attacking random passerby. I think something's wrong."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down." Casey held his hands up in an attempt to quell his parallel's seemingly-incessant river of dialogue. "Who's 'we'? And how do you know… how do you know Ash?"

Ash cleared his throat. "Well, for one thing I could ask how you know Ash and didn't know me, but we can save that for later. Anyway, I'm the Guardian of Mirror, you know? Surely you know what the Mirror is, you know, the big giant master creation mirror up in the sky? Well, it broke, see, and then right after that happened… this guy just randomly appeared. Ash, he called himself. Said he was the Guardian of Mirror, would you believe that? Him! But I know better, see, because this has happened before. One time, a long long time ago, the Mirror broke… and all of a sudden this kid just randomly turned up, a dude in a black robe, called himself… like… Mitsuru, or something. I dunno. And the thing was, the Guardian of Mirror at the time was also named Mitsuru, and he looked exactly like him and had the same name…"

Casey and Clyde shared a look. Neither of them was quite sure which Ash was worse.

"…and then the Mirror was all repaired and stuff and it was done." Ash didn't seem to have taken a breath. "So anyway, Anti-Ash – that's what I'm calling him, since obviously I'm the real Ash – has been running around calling up these weird creatures and calling himself the Guardian of Mirror. And killing things, because he seems to like to do that, but every time he tries I've been there to stop him. And that's what's been going on."

Casey blinked.

"…But you knew all that, right?"

"Uh, no. I had no idea. Do you know… do you know why, uh, Anti-Ash has been attacking these people?"

"Oh, something stupid. Like they're crossovers from the other world or something. Everyone knows that can't happen – I wonder where he gets his information if he thinks everyone is from the other world, huh?"

Casey cleared his throat. "Well… um… I don't know about the others, but… Clyde and I… we are from that other world or whatever. At least, we think so."

This, finally, oh graciously and finally, made Ash shut up for more than two seconds. However, it was too good to last, and eventually the kid found another excuse to start talking. "…What? But that's impossible! You can't get through because the Mirror broke, like I said!"

"Well…" said Casey, utterly at a loss. "We certainly didn't come from a giant mirror in the sky or anything. But this is definitely not the world I remember."

"Oh really? Well… I did hear the landmarks are different in the other dimension… let's see." Ash put a finger to his chin, in thought. "Alright, I'm going to name some landmarks in this world, and we'll see if you can recognize them. We're on Mt. Sigmon right now, so Sigmon Mountain, I guess. And then there's the Raxi Mansion and the Rhoter Ocean. And also Epsil Ruins, but nobody ever visits there. Let's see. Castle Rhion, the Omegus Constellation, Talwing Cavern, the Omicro Route… and there's one more. But I can't remember it. Any of those sound familiar?"

"Well… those are the names of cities," explained Casey. "We just came out of Raxi, and we were going to Sigmon. I think we went through Rhoter and Rhion earlier on."

"And Epsil," added Clyde grudgingly. He didn't really like to think about that town.

"…Yeah, and Epsil," concluded Casey, with a nod in Clyde's direction. "But I've never heard of it being a palace. It definitely was a town when I went there. And Rhion wasn't really a castle, either, it just had a big wall or something. Rhoter wasn't really an ocean in its own right, just a city on top of a lake or something…"

"By the sounds of things," said Ash with a finger on his chin in comparatively deep thought, "you probably did come from the other world. But how did you get here, then?"

"We found a mirror in the middle of a desert wasteland," explained Casey. "On the way to Sigmon, like I said. Rotom – my Pokémon – went flying in there, and I was chasing after him, and we ended up on this… Sigmon Mountain, did you call it? After that, we ran into your, uh, Anti-Ash, and he summoned that… thing. Said he was going to help us."

"That is freaky," said Ash with a thoughtful frown, putting his hands on his hips. "Well… maybe you are from the other world. But I don't think that's ever reason to get killed, do you?"

"No," said Casey and Clyde in unison.

"Hmm…" said Ash thoughtfully. "I know! I can take you two over to the Omegus Constellation. Lord Roman will know what to do with you."

"Lord Roman?" asked Clyde, arms crossed.

"Yeah, Lord Roman." Ash nodded. "He knows everything, and he's kinda my boss, so if I bring you guys back to him then he'll know that I'm doing something and you'll get a way to go back to the other world. Everyone wins, right?"

Casey and Clyde shared another look. Eventually, they nonverbally decided that this Lord Roman was the only lead they had, and turned back to Ash.

"Okay," nodded Casey. "We'll come back with you and meet this Lord Roman guy."

"Alrighty! But remember to just call him Lord Roman. He gets a little touchy when people don't give him proper respect or whatever." Without any room for Casey or Clyde to respond, still another mirror portal opened up under all of their feet. With a feeling somewhat like being clubbed violently over the head, the trio made their leave from Sigmon Mountain.

Mercifully, only one bystander was around this time. The Delcatty licked her paw smugly and trotted off, ready to report.



Research of the Holon Mirror World had been a pet project of his for a while now. Though of course his rank prohibited him from truly gaining any useful information, there had been small windows of opportunity where he had been able to sneak off to some extensive library or another, intent being finding out more about this mysterious parallel world. Though his initial suspicion had been quickly squashed – that this universe was in fact the non-dimension ruled upon by the great deity Giratina – it remained a topic of great interest, and was possibly the only thing that drove the Grunt as he toiled his way through this abysmal existence.

Oh, 507786 had done well. The superiors were pleased with him, apparently more so than the average Grunt. But even so, he had felt meaningless. So, so meaningless. There was no room for deviation, experimentation or excess thinking. No way to use his brain or his hands. If not for… certain factors getting in the way, he would have told himself that this work would likely have driven him insane.

And then he ran across knowledge of the Holon Mirror World.

Though naturally the superiors had found out that he knew something about it eventually, he had insisted that his knowledge came from previous experience. Certainly they didn't expect such intelligence from a drafted Grunt. While it hadn't been enough to earn him any sort of promotion – heavens forbid they did that – his name now at least had a reason to be remembered: he knew about something they didn't.

Which could explain why he was now standing in the middle of the Raxi Mansion. It was a hollow excuse for a building that had clearly once been quite grand but had fallen into disrepair. For quite possibly the first time in the past hundred years, there were people wandering around in it, one of them being the towering BDV Grunt. The other, of course, being a dude in an orange hoodie.

Caro was wandering through the crumbling maze of a house with pure fascination on his face, mirrored (no pun intended) in the face of his Raichu.

Hiding in some shadow or another, 507786 was positioned, watching him proceed. The other two had been easily taken care of; they had been sent blindly to investigate a completely innocuous area of the Holon Mirror World, where there was supposedly CD0000 to be found, and the talking Delcatty had been dispatched to watch over the spike-haired boy. He doubted any of them were coming back too soon, and that was just fine by him.

507786 didn't exactly know this kid's name, and he would be leaving soon enough to find CD0000, but for now… there was no need for him to know anyone else was here.

"Hey, Raichu," said Caro casually. "You know where we are?"

"Rai."

"Yeah, thought not… I don't recognize it either." He stopped to take a look around. Hastily 507786 stepped backwards, farther into the shadow provided by a convenient doorless archway. By the looks of things he had slipped by the boy's keen eye, and the duo promptly proceeded into the next room, still holding up a conversation. There was no doubt now.

507786 took his own high road into the chamber which Caro and Raichu had entered into, only to find something rather unusual.

"…Pollutants," snarled a boy in a black cloak.

"Wait, what?" Caro halted his discussion with Raichu and looked up at Anti-Ash. "Sorry, man, didn't quite catch that."

"You're all pollutants," continued Anti-Ash. "And for this, you shall suffer."

Caro took a step back, quite concerned with this recent turn of events, and in typical Caro fashion attempted to resolve the situation in the best way he knew how. "…Hey, man, I don't know what your deal is, but I'm no pollutant, 'kay? So, um, if we could all just forge this even happened…?"

It didn't seem to be working.

"Well, okay," said Caro, frowning. "Raichu, hold on. This guy looks like he means business…" Reaching one hand into the infinite depths of his hoodie's pockets, Caro emerged with another Pokéball, which he now tossed onto the field. "Sandslash! This doesn't look so good – get ready for a double battle!" This, Sandslash did. However, Anti-Ash merely smirked in that wicked and distinctly un-Ash-ly way of his, and whipped out the jet-black hand-mirror again.

It was pointed directly at Sandslash.

"You shall be my tribute," he told the mildly confused Pokémon. "Now! Ruined King, lay waste to these miscreants!"

Despite all manner of concerned shouting from Caro and Raichu, Sandslash followed Anti-Ash's orders, lumbering over to his side of the makeshift field. And oh yes, he lumbered – for even as the Pokémon walked, it was clearly getting bigger, and by the time it had managed to turn itself around and face Caro again, it was hardly recognizable as the Ground-type Pokémon it had been previously. This one was more like a tower than any living thing, with giant holes representing eyes turned downwards in a clearly angry expression. Two stone horns, apparently the things that were Sandslash's ears, stuck out on either side, and giant claws – made of brick, like everything else – flexed.

The Ruined King didn't look happy.

"Hey!" yelled Caro, enraged. "What did you do to Sandslash?"

"That's not your pathetic rat," said Anti-Ash primly. "That is the Ruined King, and he is going to do what I told him to do and be rid of inequalities… and that encompasses you as well, stowaway in the rafters!"

But when I look at the staaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaars...
​

 

[Giratina ♀]

{32} brave chapter​

Casey and 'Ash' stood staring at one another for a rather long time. And it would have been longer, too, had Clyde not intervened in his usual manner: "Who's the kid in black?"

'Ash' pulled his hood back over his impeccable hairspikes, which somehow managed to fit under the cloth, and turned his attention upon the blue-clad man. The black Pikachu, however, kept its demon-eyed glare on Casey, a fact that both interested and disturbed him. Since when had Ash's Pikachu ever cared that much about either of them? It wasn't as if the two had met in person, after all…

"Leave this place," the hooded child said at last.

Clyde snorted. "Or what? You'll cast spells on us? Get out of the way, kid, we have more important things to do."

The other member of the Groupie Galaxy wasn't so quick to object. This was because – aside from the obvious clash of personalities – he was still focused on the Pikachu, whose eyes had just flashed a very concerning shade of blue. "Um, Clyde? I don't think we should be arguing with him right now…"

"What? Why?" asked Clyde. "Don't tell me you're actually listening to this pipsque—AARGH!"

In a shocking turn of events which wasn't at all related to anything else that had ever previously occurred, Clyde suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a long and unpleasant Water Gun. Meanwhile, the black Pikachu had dismounted his master's shoulders and taken to the ground… or, at least, it seemed that he had. For instead of the little rat-like monster that had been there a few minutes ago, the all-black Pokémon had now taken a form vaguely like that of a crocodile, with giant eyes that, amazingly, glowed an ominous shade of red.

The unTotodile gave a toothy grin, clearly enjoying Clyde's despair.

And oh, it was despair – at least, it was despair for about two seconds. Right after that, however, there was a furious roar from the pile of drenched clothing that was Clyde. It emitted a long string of infuriated words that would be better off not repeated. Despite this, and the fact that Casey was cringing routinely at the severity of his exclamations, 'Ash' looked unfazed. As a matter of fact, his face hadn't changed a bit. The usual smile that broke out after attempting to act serious had never come.

"Leave this place," he said.

Casey gritted his teeth. This was obviously not Ash, he could see, that, but… "We will, okay? We will. But… but first you need to tell us who you are. Then we'll leave, alright?"

'Ash' stared at him with that uncharacteristically evil frown. Without a word, the unTotodile hopped back onto his shoulder (now reverted back to its unPikachu form). With two sets of unimpressed eyes looking them over, Casey suddenly lost a considerable amount of his courage, but fortunately 'Ash' complied anyhow.

"You are a fool, to not know who I am," he said with the sort of icy tone that had no place in a boy's voice. "If you must know… I am Ash, the Guardian… It is my job to ensure that both dimensions remain safe and entirely separate." He stepped closer. "You are from the other dimension… Leave this place."

"Well, uh… see, that's the problem," said Casey rather pathetically. "We don't know how to get back to our… world." Even saying it himself sounded ridiculous – but then again, this Ash was spitting out nonsense at a rate higher than his own.

"I see…" said Ash.

"Wait, you know about this whole dimension thing, right? So surely you know how to get us out. Could you, I don't know, maybe try and… help?"

Ash nodded. "Yes… I shall… help." From beneath the folds of his robe, Ash held up a hand-mirror like it was some kind of sword. The mirror promptly began to glow with silver light, which soon seemed to take on a mind of its own and fired a beam into the sky. All that the two members of the Groupie Galaxy could do was stand back and cover their eyes as, from somewhere above, a giant stormcloud amassed itself, with various cloud pieces shaped into spikes sticking out from various points. And then, from out of the middle of the cloud-like monstrosity came a giant bird neck, like that of a vulture, with a single giant eye.

Pulling the black hand-mirror down, Ash collected himself and took a step back from the giant deformed Altaria. "Farewell, dimension travelers… May Altakko take you to a better place…"

He disappeared into a round portal with a surface like a mirror, leaving Casey and Clyde alone with the great monster Altakko. For good measure, Clyde screamed out another curse, before descending into just general yelling for his life. Casey, meanwhile, had given up on his previous intention of leaving his Pokémon inside their Pokéballs, and reached into his backpack's pocket in order to root around for them… only to find his Pokéballs not there.

Casey joined his traveling companion in screaming.

"…Hold on a minute!"

From somewhere over their heads, Clyde and Casey suddenly became aware of a presence swooping upon them. Swiftly looking up (anything to divert their attention from the horrific Altakko), the dynamic duo found themselves looking up at a rather unusual sight: a human figure, about the size of an eleven-year-old, with giant angelic wings and an uncomfortably large sword.

He landed at ground level, but only for a second – not even long enough for either of them to get a good look at him. Soon he was up in the air again, brandishing his super-sword threateningly. Altakko squawked angrily and dove for him again, but he managed to whack the lunging beak out of his face and took another stab at it. It didn't seem to do much, and the creature continued to pummel away at the boy. Eventually he had to fly back out of its range, dodging the demonic Swablus that seemed to conjure themselves out of thin air.

Taking a breather, he batted one of the Swablus back at Altakko, and heard it scream in pain – much louder than any sound it had made when he tried to hit it the first time. Apparently seeing some kind of hint from this, the winged boy settled himself into a batter's position, and proceeded to knock the Swablu creatures back at the monster that made them. Soon, the returning projectiles (which exploded upon contact) proved too much for Altakko, who with a conclusive wail finally dropped to the ground and disappeared.

With a conclusive laugh, the winged boy dropped to Earth again as well, and simply tossed his sword to the side. With that one motion, the wings disappeared, and the yellow-tinged steel weapon turned into a small floating thing in the shape of a star. Taking out a hand-mirror of his own, the boy promptly sucked the glowing star into its depths, and finally turned on the two stunned Trainers.

"Hi there!" he said cheerfully. "I guess Anti-Ash attacked you again, huh? He should really stop doing that… oh well. My name's Ash, the real one. Who are you?"

…Erk.

It wasn't so much the fact that this kid and the hooded one shared a name that brought Casey some concern, nor the mention of that other one again. Instead, Casey was drawn to the fact that this eleven-year-old looked exactly like Ash did, but without the dark ominous outfit. He had on a blue-and white jacket over a black shirt, with somewhat faded jeans underneath. If only for the distinct lack of hat, this would be the Ash he remembered.

If Casey had been confused before, he was now utterly lost.

"…Hey, are you alright? You look a little flustered there."

"What? …Oh. No. I'm fine. Uh… this is Clyde over here, and I'm Casey."

"Oh yeah?" He looked rather pleased to find this out. "Well, nice to meet you guys, Casey and Clyde. What exactly did you do to earn Anti-Ash's attention, though? Usually he doesn't bother with mere mortals like you."

"Doesn't… bother?" asked Clyde, not quite following. "What does he do to people who aren't 'mere mortals'?"

"Well, obviously he tries to kill them," said Ash offhandedly. "Like what he did to you. It's strange, though – we haven't even heard from him for a good long time before now, and then when I get here, he's just attacking random passerby. I think something's wrong."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down." Casey held his hands up in an attempt to quell his parallel's seemingly-incessant river of dialogue. "Who's 'we'? And how do you know… how do you know Ash?"

Ash cleared his throat. "Well, for one thing I could ask how you know Ash and didn't know me, but we can save that for later. Anyway, I'm the Guardian of Mirror, you know? Surely you know what the Mirror is, you know, the big giant master creation mirror up in the sky? Well, it broke, see, and then right after that happened… this guy just randomly appeared. Ash, he called himself. Said he was the Guardian of Mirror, would you believe that? Him! But I know better, see, because this has happened before. One time, a long long time ago, the Mirror broke… and all of a sudden this kid just randomly turned up, a dude in a black robe, called himself… like… Mitsuru, or something. I dunno. And the thing was, the Guardian of Mirror at the time was also named Mitsuru, and he looked exactly like him and had the same name…"

Casey and Clyde shared a look. Neither of them was quite sure which Ash was worse.

"…and then the Mirror was all repaired and stuff and it was done." Ash didn't seem to have taken a breath. "So anyway, Anti-Ash – that's what I'm calling him, since obviously I'm the real Ash – has been running around calling up these weird creatures and calling himself the Guardian of Mirror. And killing things, because he seems to like to do that, but every time he tries I've been there to stop him. And that's what's been going on."

Casey blinked.

"…But you knew all that, right?"

"Uh, no. I had no idea. Do you know… do you know why, uh, Anti-Ash has been attacking these people?"

"Oh, something stupid. Like they're crossovers from the other world or something. Everyone knows that can't happen – I wonder where he gets his information if he thinks everyone is from the other world, huh?"

Casey cleared his throat. "Well… um… I don't know about the others, but… Clyde and I… we are from that other world or whatever. At least, we think so."

This, finally, oh graciously and finally, made Ash shut up for more than two seconds. However, it was too good to last, and eventually the kid found another excuse to start talking. "…What? But that's impossible! You can't get through because the Mirror broke, like I said!"

"Well…" said Casey, utterly at a loss. "We certainly didn't come from a giant mirror in the sky or anything. But this is definitely not the world I remember."

"Oh really? Well… I did hear the landmarks are different in the other dimension… let's see." Ash put a finger to his chin, in thought. "Alright, I'm going to name some landmarks in this world, and we'll see if you can recognize them. We're on Mt. Sigmon right now, so Sigmon Mountain, I guess. And then there's the Raxi Mansion and the Rhoter Ocean. And also Epsil Ruins, but nobody ever visits there. Let's see. Castle Rhion, the Omegus Constellation, Talwing Cavern, the Omicro Route… and there's one more. But I can't remember it. Any of those sound familiar?"

"Well… those are the names of cities," explained Casey. "We just came out of Raxi, and we were going to Sigmon. I think we went through Rhoter and Rhion earlier on."

"And Epsil," added Clyde grudgingly. He didn't really like to think about that town.

"…Yeah, and Epsil," concluded Casey, with a nod in Clyde's direction. "But I've never heard of it being a palace. It definitely was a town when I went there. And Rhion wasn't really a castle, either, it just had a big wall or something. Rhoter wasn't really an ocean in its own right, just a city on top of a lake or something…"

"By the sounds of things," said Ash with a finger on his chin in comparatively deep thought, "you probably did come from the other world. But how did you get here, then?"

"We found a mirror in the middle of a desert wasteland," explained Casey. "On the way to Sigmon, like I said. Rotom – my Pokémon – went flying in there, and I was chasing after him, and we ended up on this… Sigmon Mountain, did you call it? After that, we ran into your, uh, Anti-Ash, and he summoned that… thing. Said he was going to help us."

"That is freaky," said Ash with a thoughtful frown, putting his hands on his hips. "Well… maybe you are from the other world. But I don't think that's ever reason to get killed, do you?"

"No," said Casey and Clyde in unison.

"Hmm…" said Ash thoughtfully. "I know! I can take you two over to the Omegus Constellation. Lord Roman will know what to do with you."

"Lord Roman?" asked Clyde, arms crossed.

"Yeah, Lord Roman." Ash nodded. "He knows everything, and he's kinda my boss, so if I bring you guys back to him then he'll know that I'm doing something and you'll get a way to go back to the other world. Everyone wins, right?"

Casey and Clyde shared another look. Eventually, they nonverbally decided that this Lord Roman was the only lead they had, and turned back to Ash.

"Okay," nodded Casey. "We'll come back with you and meet this Lord Roman guy."

"Alrighty! But remember to just call him Lord Roman. He gets a little touchy when people don't give him proper respect or whatever." Without any room for Casey or Clyde to respond, still another mirror portal opened up under all of their feet. With a feeling somewhat like being clubbed violently over the head, the trio made their leave from Sigmon Mountain.

Mercifully, only one bystander was around this time. The Delcatty licked her paw smugly and trotted off, ready to report.



Research of the Holon Mirror World had been a pet project of his for a while now. Though of course his rank prohibited him from truly gaining any useful information, there had been small windows of opportunity where he had been able to sneak off to some extensive library or another, intent being finding out more about this mysterious parallel world. Though his initial suspicion had been quickly squashed – that this universe was in fact the non-dimension ruled upon by the great deity Giratina – it remained a topic of great interest, and was possibly the only thing that drove the Grunt as he toiled his way through this abysmal existence.

Oh, 507786 had done well. The superiors were pleased with him, apparently more so than the average Grunt. But even so, he had felt meaningless. So, so meaningless. There was no room for deviation, experimentation or excess thinking. No way to use his brain or his hands. If not for… certain factors getting in the way, he would have told himself that this work would likely have driven him insane.

And then he ran across knowledge of the Holon Mirror World.

Though naturally the superiors had found out that he knew something about it eventually, he had insisted that his knowledge came from previous experience. Certainly they didn't expect such intelligence from a drafted Grunt. While it hadn't been enough to earn him any sort of promotion – heavens forbid they did that – his name now at least had a reason to be remembered: he knew about something they didn't.

Which could explain why he was now standing in the middle of the Raxi Mansion. It was a hollow excuse for a building that had clearly once been quite grand but had fallen into disrepair. For quite possibly the first time in the past hundred years, there were people wandering around in it, one of them being the towering BDV Grunt. The other, of course, being a dude in an orange hoodie.

Caro was wandering through the crumbling maze of a house with pure fascination on his face, mirrored (no pun intended) in the face of his Raichu.

Hiding in some shadow or another, 507786 was positioned, watching him proceed. The other two had been easily taken care of; they had been sent blindly to investigate a completely innocuous area of the Holon Mirror World, where there was supposedly CD0000 to be found, and the talking Delcatty had been dispatched to watch over the spike-haired boy. He doubted any of them were coming back too soon, and that was just fine by him.

507786 didn't exactly know this kid's name, and he would be leaving soon enough to find CD0000, but for now… there was no need for him to know anyone else was here.

"Hey, Raichu," said Caro casually. "You know where we are?"

"Rai."

"Yeah, thought not… I don't recognize it either." He stopped to take a look around. Hastily 507786 stepped backwards, farther into the shadow provided by a convenient doorless archway. By the looks of things he had slipped by the boy's keen eye, and the duo promptly proceeded into the next room, still holding up a conversation. There was no doubt now.

507786 took his own high road into the chamber which Caro and Raichu had entered into, only to find something rather unusual.

"…Pollutants," snarled a boy in a black cloak.

"Wait, what?" Caro halted his discussion with Raichu and looked up at Anti-Ash. "Sorry, man, didn't quite catch that."

"You're all pollutants," continued Anti-Ash. "And for this, you shall suffer."

Caro took a step back, quite concerned with this recent turn of events, and in typical Caro fashion attempted to resolve the situation in the best way he knew how. "…Hey, man, I don't know what your deal is, but I'm no pollutant, 'kay? So, um, if we could all just forge this even happened…?"

It didn't seem to be working.

"Well, okay," said Caro, frowning. "Raichu, hold on. This guy looks like he means business…" Reaching one hand into the infinite depths of his hoodie's pockets, Caro emerged with another Pokéball, which he now tossed onto the field. "Sandslash! This doesn't look so good – get ready for a double battle!" This, Sandslash did. However, Anti-Ash merely smirked in that wicked and distinctly un-Ash-ly way of his, and whipped out the jet-black hand-mirror again.

It was pointed directly at Sandslash.

"You shall be my tribute," he told the mildly confused Pokémon. "Now! Ruined King, lay waste to these miscreants!"

Despite all manner of concerned shouting from Caro and Raichu, Sandslash followed Anti-Ash's orders, lumbering over to his side of the makeshift field. And oh yes, he lumbered – for even as the Pokémon walked, it was clearly getting bigger, and by the time it had managed to turn itself around and face Caro again, it was hardly recognizable as the Ground-type Pokémon it had been previously. This one was more like a tower than any living thing, with giant holes representing eyes turned downwards in a clearly angry expression. Two stone horns, apparently the things that were Sandslash's ears, stuck out on either side, and giant claws – made of brick, like everything else – flexed.

The Ruined King didn't look happy.

"Hey!" yelled Caro, enraged. "What did you do to Sandslash?"

"That's not your pathetic rat," said Anti-Ash primly. "That is the Ruined King, and he is going to do what I told him to do and be rid of inequalities… and that encompasses you as well, stowaway in the rafters!"

But when I look at the staaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaars...
​

 

[Giratina ♀]

{33} holon mirror world​

Lord Roman, by most definitions, wasn't a particularly striking man.

He was of average stature, with short red hair and a somewhat rounded face. Forsaking the standardized trope of royalty wearing long flowing robes, he was dressed much more appropriately by this world's standards: a black suit, clearly well-tailored but not excessively flashy. He didn't even have a cape. Unfortunately, the royal interior designer seemed to disagree with his thoughts on appropriate garb; the man was sitting on a throne that looked extravagant and very out of place next to Lord Roman himself.

"Hello," he said, obviously intending the statement towards Ash. "Good to see you. Now who are these gentlemen?"

"Hello, sir," said Ash, bowing. Casey got the idea that he ought to be doing that as well and nodded his head, but of course Clyde stayed put. "I found these two while on my rounds, sir. Anti-Ash was attacking them, and I later learned that it was because they were from…"

"From where?" Roman seemed genuinely interested.

"…from the other world, sir," concluded Ash, not without embarrassment. "I took them to you, as you requested, um, sir."

"Splendid, splendid!" Roman hopped up from his previous position and went swiftly down the steps of his throne's raised platform, holding a hand out to shake. Casey and Clyde did so, not exactly sure if this was the sort of activity that royalty were supposed to be participating in, and after that was all over Roman took another opportunity to speak. "May I ask your names?" After the duo introduced themselves, Roman nodded again and continued to act friendly and polite – exactly the way that they would imagine a dictator wouldn't act. So began a short questionnaire on where they came from, how they got here, and so on, until Casey asked the forbidden question.

"So, um, Mr. Roman. What is this place, exactly?"

"This place?" he asked. "How do you mean? This building?"

"No, not quite, sir. Um… you know how you were talking about our home world? What is, the, uh, other world? The one we're in now?"

"Ah, I see what you're talking about," said Roman, putting one hand to his chin. "I suppose Ash never bothered to formally introduce you… ah well, what's done is done, right?" He walked over to one of the rather large windows and flung open its curtains, showing the lush landscape beyond. "This, friends, is a dimension known commonly as the Holon Mirror World."

"Holon… Mirror World?" repeated Casey rather stupidly.

"Oh yes," said Roman, pointedly ignoring Casey's statement of the obvious. "The Holon Mirror World. For the longest time we and our ancestors had just called it the World, but upon discovery of another dimension – that would be yours – and the realization that they are both strikingly similar to one another, we decided to… connect the two, if you will. Since people from your world came into ours but not vice-versa, and since our world didn't exactly have a name anyhow… it was decided that this land should be called the Holon Mirror World."

"Oh. So the mirror thing was coincidental?"

"Of course not. Where do you think we got the 'Mirror' part from?" Though Roman's voice sounded just slightly testy, one look at his face explained that he was just playing with them. "No… everyone from your world always seemed to come through a mirror. Unfortunately, for some time now, there has been a strange veil of darkness over our world… it has not corrupted us all, but it is certainly getting there. Try as we might, we couldn't get any enchantment we have to cause a mirror from our world to connect with yours, due completely to the presence of that veil…"

First Casey asked, "Enchantment?" And then a second later, he added, "…Wait, what?" If they couldn't get a mirror back to the real world, after all… well, that was obviously the only way between the two planes. No mirror travel meant no world travel. And no world travel meant…

"That is the truth," said Roman, turning back around to face them again. His expression had darkened considerably. "I'm afraid we don't currently have a way to return you to your own side of the mirror. The magic to break the veil has not yet been discovered by our team. I… am sorry." Even Ash looked a bit more somber as he explained. (This was likely because he had no idea such a veil was in effect.)

Casey, meanwhile, was thinking. "…So," he said to Roman in a rather serious tone. "This world… this Holon Mirror World… you said that our world was our side of a mirror. Does that mean that the people who exist in our world have copies in this one? Clones? People who look like them, with the same name…?"

"Yes," said Roman, somewhat unsettled. "How did you know?"

"Well, for starters," said Casey, "Ash is exactly like someone I used to know."

This caused a laugh from both Roman and Ash. "Ha! Really?" asked the latter, turning to Casey and apparently forgetting all about his self-restraint in the presence of Lord Roman. "Am I cool in the other world? Please tell me I'm cool in the other world!"

"Um…" Casey began. "Well…"

"…Are you saying the other me isn't cool?" Ash looked distressed.

"No! Um, no." Casey held up his hands. "I, uh, haven't seen him in a while, is all. I don't know what he's like right now. But what I remember… he was pretty cool?" Despite the fact that he appeared to be asking just as much as telling, Ash seemed satisfied, because he straightened up at once and began glowing with pride. It seemed that the coolness level of a complete stranger was apparently something worthy of Ash's concern, though how exactly Casey couldn't quite fathom. (He had been doing that less and less lately, so it came as something of a surprise.)

"Nobody cares about how cool a random stranger is," grumbled Clyde. "Can we cut to the chase here? Getting us back?"

"Yes, of course." Roman sighed. "Well… as I mentioned previously, we don't currently have the magic prowess necessary to conjure an interworldly passage with that veil in effect. But by the sounds of things, Anti-Ash does." Roman sounded as if he was on to something. "That was obviously dark magic, the only kind that Anti-Ash can conjure, and the same kind that the veil of darkness is made of. If you can find someone else who practices such magic, and convince them to help you…"

"Then we can get them to make a portal for us," Casey finished.

"Precisely." Roman still looked grim. "However, there is a reason that such thing could be problematic. You see, dark magic is by virtue much stronger than light magic, and is practically immune to it - which is why we have not been able to breach the veil of darkness. It is also a very rare and secret art; unless someone is a descendant of one of the main practicing families, they may never see any dark magic in use, much less make it themselves."

This shot down Casey's spirits considerably. "Oh. So… we can't?"

"I'm not finished," said Roman. "Obviously, such people still exist today. It is merely a matter of finding a dark magician willing to help you out. And for that… we have a solution." As if on cue, a shadow appeared in the window. As it moved inside the room, however, it was revealed to be a small white lizard, with red markings running along its body and multicolored bird wings. The lizard thing chirped a greeting to Roman and Ash, before finding a comfortable position on the former's head.

"This is Dragoon," he laughed, obviously referencing the lizard. "This little boy can sniff out magic of any kind. Magicians strong enough to create a passage between the worlds will naturally radiate magical energy, which should make it easy for Dragoon to hunt them down." Roman then proceeded to speak to Dragoon in a language none of them understood (including Ash), and the lizard chirped helpfully and moved itself over to Clyde's head. The man tensed, but amazingly, didn't swat him off.

"Don't worry about what happens afterward," said Roman. "Dragoon will find his way back with Ash. …And yes, Ash, you are to escort them on their mission. Doubtless these two would get hopelessly lost without you." Ash swelled with pride.

"Yes sir!"

---

Caro and friends only just made it out of the castle alive.

The fight with the Ruined King had not been an easy one, and it was clear as day that most of their success had been due to the quick thinking of the 'stowaway in the rafters', otherwise known as 507786 (among other things). Though he had not brought out any Pokémon of his own, most of Caro's moves had been on his recommendation… and amazingly, they turned out well. Finally, the Ruined King – like Altakko before it – had been felled. Unfortunately, this wasn't the extent of Anti-Ash's trickery. He still had two more things on his agenda: one, take a prisoner, and two, send the Raxi Mansion to rubble once and for all.

He succeeded in both of these things. Caro had never even gotten a chance to ask his tutor's name.

Even the athletic young Trainer had been reduced to his knees outside of the castle gates, panting. His Pokémon had both been recalled, with no intention of bringing them out again unless it was absolutely necessary, and now Caro was left in a dark (and cold!) forest with the rubble of a Ruin behind him, completely alone.

Until he wasn't.

There was the grind of boots against the dirt floor, and Caro looked up to stare into the eyes of a mocha-skinned twentysomething with yellow-and-green hair.

"What's up?" asked Sheridan.

Caro looked up at her and laughed. Who cared if the creepy little kid had transported himself out at the last second, holding the masked guy with some sort of magical leash? Who cared if it was beginning to snow? He would handle that later. After all, he had just discovered a friend – in other words, a veritable Caro power source. The boy pulled himself to his feet and dusted off his clothes.

"Oh, hi!"

Sheridan raised an eyebrow. "Hi. What are you doing here?"

"Um, well," said Caro, looking behind him at the ruins. "Funny story, that. I could tell you sometime."

"That would be nice," said Sheridan, smirking. "Come on. There's an inn in the forest nearby. We'll get something to eat and talk it out over that." She turned around and began walking the way she came. Caro, not being one to turn down a meal, immediately followed.

Sheridan's inn turned out to be a building made of logs, but with a very homey atmosphere about it. This was due in no small part to the multitudes of expensive-looking green and red decorations lining the walls. "Oh, Christmas decorations," said Sheridan thoughtfully. "Apparently they celebrate that here?" (It should be noted that, in the 'main' world, Christmas was celebrated only in certain areas, and it was never very prominent.)

"Yeah," Caro replied. "Been a long time since I saw these sorts of things." And it was. He had only seen them once before, during a brief voyage to Hoenn. Sinnoh and Holon rarely celebrated such things, and of course, the Pokémon universe of his origin didn't know a thing about them.

The topic of discussion soon turned to something a bit more relevant, but only after the two of them had ordered drinks and food. The waitress had assured them that the money they held out was indeed the local currency, which was a prompt for both Caro and Sheridan to keep their mouths shut about the whole 'coming from another world' thing. Once Caro had spilled his guts, he received a thoughtful look from his companion. "So this kid," she said, taking a sip of her drink before continuing. "You said he just upped and disappeared with the guy in the cloak? As if by magic?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

The woman looked around. "Hmm. You know, we've seen a lot of funny things in this place, and it might be that it was magic. I mean, that sort of thing might be possible for regular human beings. In this world."

"Could be," said Caro. "Or maybe he had some Pokémon helping him."

Sheridan nodded. "Right. Or he had a little Pokémon helper. Whatever happened… he's quite a kid, huh?"

Caro nodded. "Sure was." At that moment, a woman not even thirty stumbled past their table, apparently unsteady on her feet with a flushed face. Sheridan sighed and shook her head, but Caro stared at her curiously. After he saw his companion mouth the word 'alcohol', though, he got the memo, and casually looked anywhere that wasn't in the woman's direction. (Sheridan thought it a little strange that Caro didn't immediately recognize her intoxication, but chalked it up to the increasing likelihood that he had just never seen a drunken person before.)

The woman flopped down in a convenient empty booth and hung her head there, looking grim, before yelling to the waitress who wasn't there that she needed another. It didn't take a lot of critical thinking to tag 'drink' onto the end of that sentence. There was a hesitant silence, but finally she got her beer. She was then quieted for another three minutes by slapping money into the waitress' face, who decided to ignore the fact that she had overpaid by ten dollars.

Caro and Sheridan casually returned to their food and drink, making quite sure not to look at the drunkard for too long. Judging from the wide array of noises coming from her table's direction, the last drink had apparently lulled her into a very different state, as she was soon slumped on the table, apparently asleep. It was a minor discomfort to everyone present in the small dining area, but those same people knew that it was a given to have someone with a bit too much to drink every once in a while. Hiding from well-meaning loved ones, perhaps, or just from themselves.

The door opened. A few people glanced up to look at them, but returned to the much more attractive prospect of their food - that is, they did until they noticed who exactly the newcomers were, and then they had reason to pay attention. Standing in the door there was a kid all of them recognized, if only vaguely, and only the sour staring of the tall and somewhat overweight gentleman next to him could send their gazes away. Even that one met resistance.

Meanwhile, completely unaware of any of this, Casey walked in with Dragoon on his shoulder.

 

[Giratina ♀]

{34} the spitfire story
​

Immediately there was overjoyed calling from Caro and Sheridan's area of the room. The three walked over, exchanged greetings, and allowed Ash to do most of the explaining on what exactly was going on here. He didn't do much better of a job than any of the others could, but they piped up where they were able, and eventually Caro and Sheridan were able to get a general idea. In return, Caro and Sheridan were able to give their own riveting explanation as to how the group found themselves in the Holon Mirror World anyway, up to and including the suspicious absence of their pipe-wielding friend.

"So, this Grant person…" said Ash. "He's the only one you can't find?"

"That's right," nodded Casey. "We're not intending to go back until we find him, though. Leaving him here would be just rude."

"Not to mention that he's our friend and we should be helping him," offered Sheridan, with a pointed glare in Casey's direction. He nodded quickly to agree with her.

"Yeah, that too…" Casey blushed slightly.

Discussion moved on to other, not-quite-related topics for a while there, mostly centered around Christmas traditions in their various worlds and areas, and for the time being, everything seemed relatively nice. This was in direct contrast to the truth, which was that everything was not relatively nice. Not relatively nice at all. For at that very moment, there was a castle sitting somewhere in the Holon Mirror World, and within it was the three most problematic forces in the Groupie Galaxy's world: Anti-Ash, 507786, and both versions of Grant Sternberg.

Of this motley crew, two of them were tied up, and one of them might as well have been for the way he was being treated by the fourth.

The first two were right now having a nice little discussion in the cellar, where they had been locked in. Their only other companions were a number of cases of wine (both men confirmed to the other that they didn't drink), and a few lowly wild Pokémon, which 507786 occasionally conversed with as if he could actually understand them. Grant then made the half-correct assumption that he was totally mad.

"So," said Grant once 507786 had finished conversing with a particularly smart-mouthed Ratatta. "Have you got any idea on how we're supposed to get out of here?"

"Not currently." 507786 looked off in a different direction, the upper half of his face still covered by the BDV grunt visor. "Doubtless, there is an escape route here somewhere, but we are merely not aware of it."

Grant nodded thoughtfully. "I guess."

He received a look from the Grunt. "You 'guess'?"

The brown-haired man nodded uncomfortably. "Yeah. I guess. I mean, we don't know for sure whether there is one here, right? Because we haven't found it yet."

The Grunt stared at him, and then turned his attention to something else once again, evidently something more interesting than Grant stumbling around in the dark. He couldn't help but feel a little insulted, but instead of sitting there and boiling he decided to continue the discussion. "Um, so you're a BDV grunt, huh?"

"I am."

"…I used to be a Grunt." This caught his attention, and Grant could see that he was most interested in the words 'used to be'. Most Grunts were. The man turned back to him again, silently willing Grant to elaborate for his benefit. Well… alright. But only because he had nothing else to do.

"I ran away," he admitted, not particularly caring that he probably wouldn't get a positive response out of his new friend here. "There are agents sent on my case, but they haven't shown up in a while."

"Have they?" 507786 asked in response. "Or are they just being stealthy about it?"

"No, they definitely haven't shown up in a while," said Grant, shaking his head. "They couldn't do a stealth mission if they were following a sleeping Snorlax." Despite himself and his company, he actually chuckled at this, seriously imagining the bumbling trio doing just that and failing spectacularly. He wasn't paying attention to the firm line 507786's mouth was in as he stared him down.

So Grant sat there, lost in thought, and 507786 wondered how in the world he was going to get any information out of this numbskull. Eventually, he gave up on making any sort of appropriate strategy, and merely took the straightforward approach.

"…Do you know a boy named Caro?"

This snapped Grant out of his trance, and he looked at 507786, surprised. "Yeah. How did you know?"

He ignored Grant's question. "How is he?"

"Fine, I guess… but who are you, if you know him so well?"

"An old companion."

Grant blinked. "Not a friend? If Caro has spent more than five minutes with you, he starts calling you his friend."

"Exactly," 507786 responded. "He does that. I am not particularly fond of the word."

The twentysomething leaned his head back thoughtfully, staring at the ceiling with all its creeping mildew and Spinaraks making homes for themselves. Every so often he took another glance at 507786, but each time he looked deep in thought, so Grant passed on trying to make conversation once again and returned to his own musing. A few times he dozed off, only to be met by the Karmada, but they insisted that while his companion was in possession of a small pack of Karmada himself, those ones seemed to be extremely docile and concentrated on some other pursuit.



Meanwhile, on a level of the castle with a positive floor number, the other two residents were having a discussion.

"Of course I can take care of him," said one of them, a man in his twenties with scruffy brown hair and a very concerning outfit on.

"I don't think so," remarked the other one, a boy with black hair and a similarly-colored cloak. "He is my prisoner. How do I know that you'll just let him go free and do as he pleases? He is the lowest scum of this world. I will not allow anyone to merely walk off with him."

"He ain't gonna get off easy," cackled the other one, waving a gloved finger. "I can give you that."

"Oh? And what are you going to do to him? Hit him with that idiotic metal rod of yours?" Anti-Ash was referring, of course, to the metal pipe in the other man's hand. His grip tightened around it, and when Anti-Ash looked up again, he was snarling. From under the shadow of his hat, the man's eyes glinted dangerously. "I'm sorry, but that is really just pathetic. It's better you leave his handling to me."

"Listen, kid," he snarled. "You're going to fork up that idiot or I'm gonna use this thing on you!"

Anti-Ash smiled. It was not a nice smile. "I'd like to see you try."

So he did.

Sixty seconds later, the man was lying on his back in front of a closed door, stripped of his weapon and uncomfortably familiar uniform.



Dragoon was making noise. A lot of noise.

Ash was staring at it rather blankly, and Casey was attempting to hush the little lizard-like monster so that people would stop staring at him (people such as, say, Caro and Sheridan and the waitress and just about everyone else). Eventually, the young Trainer succeeded in silencing his animal companion, and began talking to it, which technically wasn't that much better.

"Shh," he told the creature. "Have you found something?"

Dragoon pointed with a claw at somewhere else in the room and chirped loudly. Casey followed his gaze, and then looked back at the others, whose expressions ranged from pale-skinned horror to foreheads sitting in their palms. He stared blankly between them and the woman Dragoon was pointing to, but upon Caro mouthing something to him in the same manner that Sheridan had done a short while before, Casey got the memo.

Sighing, he got up and approached the red-faced woman on the other side of the room.

"Um, excuse me," he said. "You wouldn't happen to be… a magician or something, would you?" Immediately Casey mentally kicked himself for how utterly stupid that sounded.

The woman looked up at him and smiled wispily. "Sure," she drawled. "I can be whatever you want."

Simultaneously realizing what she was talking about and fighting a sudden urge to run very quickly in the opposite direction, Casey gulped and continued. "No… I'm serious. Can you… can you do any magic? Like, strong magic? Or…?"

She stared at him for a second. "…Yeah."

The otherworldly Trainer slowly and uncomfortably explained his situation to her, unsure of whether she actually picked up more than half of it, and when he had finished he received the same stare he had gotten at the beginning. However, this time she offered a legitimate response as well, and that was the following: "…Well… I can't help you there… but I got a pal who can… heheh…"

He blinked. "O-oh. Is that so. Um… could you take us to him?"

"Us?"

Casey pointed to the rest of the expanded Groupie Galaxy, over at the other table. She followed his finger somewhat blearily, but eventually brought herself to nod at him. "…Sure… I guess I could do that…"

Sighing with relief, he offered one more question to her while failing to notice that she had gotten up. "So wait. What's this guy's name?"

"Ah, don' worry about that," she slurred. "He's a good kid, honest… eh… an'… an I'm Delilah… you go an' call me that, huh…?"

At that point, Casey did a little mental work of his own and connected this Delilah person to a certain other person named Delilah, specifically the one who just happened to look exactly like the one in front of him right now (sans the dark expression and extremely cluttered living space). He attempted to keep his brain from imploding and vowed to never, ever speak of this again.

Meanwhile, Delilah had loudly and none-too-politely rounded up the troops, and after hastily throwing payment at the nearest waiter, she dragged them out and proclaimed rather loudly that her friend lived not too far from here. Comforted (or not) by the thought of getting a quick way out of here, they let Delilah and Dragoon lead the way, and eventually came to a large set of wrought-iron gates. Everyone stared up at it, none too convinced that this person Delilah was talking about was the best to interact with, but they followed her in further anyway.

"Aaaand there's where I'mma heave yeh," said Delilah, standing in front of an impressive-looking house and apparently unaware of her unfortunate switch of words. "He doesn't like more people than ab'lutely ne'ssery, so… eheh… I'mma leave you kids t'go see 'im, alright?"

Blinking, nobody bothered to take the incentive and stop her as she walked (well, staggered) away.

With a large sigh, Casey turned around and looked back up at the giant manor, and everyone else followed his lead. "Ash," he said, "do you recognize this place at all?"

"No," the boy responded.

"Well then!" declared Caro. "We'll just need to go exploring, right? Right? …Right?"

Two more days 'til Re:coded... two more days 'til Re:coded...
​

 

[Giratina ♀]

{35} wings of innocence come off in the night​

Grant really had to wonder how his captive was missing this. After all, here were two of his captives, who had devised an escape plan directly under his nose and were now sneaking around a dark old corridor that didn't look like it was designed to house anything more advanced than a rat. However, he really wasn't complaining; anything that allowed him to slip by unnoticed was all good in his book. On the other hand, looking up again, Grant found 507786 to be moving with the same controlled stature that he had been using the entire time; it may just be because Grant was a little on the short side, or perhaps because 507786 was over six feet tall, but he commanded quite an imposing presence, even in a barely-lit corridor.

The ex-Grunt shivered; fortunately, he wasn't the one carrying the torch.

Suddenly, his companion stopped, and when he did Grant did too. "…What is it?" he asked, looking around.

"Be quiet," came the prompt response. "We aren't alone down here."

Blinking, Grant strained his ears to figure out what 507786 was talking about, but then figured that it must have been some kind of amplifier in that helmet. (Come to think of it, it was a little funny that he never took off that helmet… it almost led Grant to wonder what exactly was underneath. Did he have something to hide? A scar, maybe, or some kind of unfortunate tattoo? Most Grunts couldn't wait to get the stupid thing off!)

Oh, oh wait… yes, now he heard it. From somewhere down the passage, there was definitely the sound of annoyed profanities being grumbled underbreath. Grant took a step back, eyes on the corridor in front of him.

"Dammit!" muttered the voice. "I still can't believe he… that little rat! Stealing everything, everything! Can't believe I had to sneak my way through the entire place… just to get it back… nearly gave me a heart attack, aargh…!" There was something odd about the voice, but Grant couldn't quite place a finger on it — and yet whatever it was, 507786 heard it too, because his head had ducked slightly and he appeared to be focused intently on the area ahead. A second later, his hand was hovering next to his pocket (and Pokéballs, Grant suspected), and a rather threatening voice filled the passage.

"Who's there? Identify yourself!"

A startled tone came from the murky blackness ahead, and something caught in the torchlight and shined against dark. It was metallic, definitely, the object was long, maybe… a sword? Eep. Grant redoubled his grip on the Pipe, ready to use the bludgeoning weapon against whatever foulmouthed being had also found himself unfortunate enough to get trapped down here.

"Rather not!" barked the voice from the shadow. It didn't sound scared, or even angry; instead, it was more cocky than anything else, like this guy could beat whoever happened to be in front of him, no matter who the person happened to be.

"Identify yourself," he repeated, now with a Pokéball in his hand. "Or I shall force you out."

"Hey, don't bust an artery over there." The tone was taunting, but despite it, the shadow flickered and a distinct mass became apparent within it. "I'm right here, right here. No need to bust out the big guns." There was a glint of metal once again from beyond the edge, and a gray boot came into the light. It was followed by a leg, and another one, and a body, and after that a—

Oh. Oh dear.

Quite involuntarily, Grant emitted a small squeak and brought the Pipe up to a defensive position. That… that was the last thing he needed to see right now. Or the last thing he needed to see ever, for that matter. (From somewhere deep in his mind, he could hear the Karmada muttering frantically.) And yet, before 507786 had gotten over it himself — because he most likely noticed too — Grant addressed his skeleton in the closet, sounding not quite as scared as he actually was.

"Who… who are you?"

Of course, he already knew the answer, and a second after the young man's entire body came into the light. Under the rim of that hat, eyes were catching the light, leering out at him like he knew he had done back then… he looked exactly the same, right down to the age, a-and the weapon, there was no one else who could carry something like that, it was almost frightening — no, it was definitely frightening! — and there it was. On the shirt. He had worn that outfit, that same outfit, for years. It was the same. Right down to the stitching on the big red R…



Meanwhile, up on the positive-numbered floors of the castle, the rest of the group were very close to finding their man.

It had not been an easy journey up the levels of the tower, and several of the members of their little traveling party had already exhausted their Pokémon. But the hour had come at last when they could finally put this kid to rest – and hopefully, while putting him to rest, find a way out of this wretched place. But that was all later on in the hour; right now, everyone was concentrated on the discovery of...

"Rotom!"

Casey was the first one across the room, without even noticing that he was moving at all. The little Pokémon was sitting in a metal cage barely big enough for its physical form, so that the energy beam which bore a striking resemblance to a Mightyena head was forced to lie outside. But when his Trainer got there, the energy head wasted no time in roaring happily and attempting to nuzzle him... which failed due to the distinct lack of physical form, but it was the thought that counted.

"Hey, Rotom," Casey said, grinning. "It's alright. We're all here now."

Rotom himself was glowing much fainter than he normally was, the energy core in the center of his being looking like it was in danger of sputtering out entirely. That quickly sobered Casey's mood. "...Okay, this thing obviously has a lock on it," he said, straightening up. "So we need to find that lock."

"But where, though?" Sheridan touched a few fingers to her chin. "Obviously somewhere safe... won't just be lying around..."

"Maybe we could try Anti-Ash's... uh, office thing?" suggested Ash helpfully. "If it were me, I would want to keep the keys to such a unique Pokémon's cage around for quick access. Plus wherever he is probably has a lot of defenses... and if we get through those, you get the keys to Rotom's chamber, I get to take out Anti-Ash and his dark barrier over the worlds, you all go home, and everyone is happy. Sound good?"

Everyone looked at him for a few seconds, before Casey snorted and rubbed his hands. "Sounds good."



As it turned out, Anti-Ash was not to be found on the top floor of the building. This was of course a great disappointment, but that disappointment was quickly replaced by concern – he had been waiting for them on the roof. This was a problem because, of course, one could trip over the edge and die when on the roof. Regardless, there was nothing to be done, and even though the cloaked boy was waiting casually for them when they arrived, everyone came to the top floor of the tower in immaculate style.

They bashed down the stairwell door.

"Ah, so here you are," came the snooty voice from the other side of the roof. "I was wondering when you would all get here."

"Cut the theatrics!" Almost immediately, Ash pushed to the front of the group, staring down Anti-Ash with surprising viciousness for a ten-year-old. "As the true Guardian of Mirror, I hereby command you to cease your treacherous activities and leave the Holon Mirror World, back to the place where you belong, and from which you came!"

"...Silence," said Anti-Ash.

"...What?"

"Silence," he repeated, voice rising in volume and ferocity. For a minute there, Casey was actually relieved that his face was now covered by a hood, because whatever expression was under it probably would have haunted his nightmares right up there with the demonic Spheals of Rhoter City. "Silence! I am... I am the Guardian of Mirror! I am!"

Now, in any other situation, this just would have looked like he was having some sort of powerful kid sorcerer temper tantrum. However, other situations didn't compensate for the stormclouds now developing around the previously-clear sky, or the winds that were now beginning to pick up and toss the folds of Anti-Ash's cloak in all directions. "I am..." He was rising into the air now, the wind picking up – the hood of his cloak flew back, but all of a sudden, the face beneath it didn't look anything like Ash. Either of them. "I am..." He was growing. And transforming. This was bad. No longer were they witnessing a human boy, but a draconic semihuman in a large cloak, quickly growing stranger and stranger by the minute. "I am...!"

There.

He had now transformed into what appeared to be some kind of humanoid Groudon-Salamence fusion, with steel plating over his head and detached claws, swiping at nothing but air.

"I AM THE GUARDIAN OF MIRROR!"

"I'm sorry," said Ash after a long and awkward pause, "but that is not the Guardian of Mirror."

In some twisted form of response, the Not-Guardian roared and swung one giant claw at Ash, which he nimbly evaded with the help of a magic mirror and a pair of angel wings. With another swing of his handmirror through the air, he was holding the same golden sword he had bore when Casey and Clyde first met him – Ash was now fully decked out for battle, and as he shouted down to the group below, they ought to be doing the same.

But apparently, even Ash's powers as Guardian of Mirror weren't enough to tame the beast – demonstrated nicely when his golden-winged splendor went hurtling into a wall. With that minor distraction out of the way, the hulking monstrosity turned its attention on the other pathetic little life forms that had displeased it, AKA the Chosen One and his crew.

–

"Chosen One? That's new."

Zero was floating next to my head today, looking immensely bored with the entire universe, which was entirely possible. I, meanwhile, was scowling darkly at the Dea Procol Machina, once again totally at a loss on what to write. So like the good little assistant he wasn't, Zero stepped in to help, in his own special little way.

"Yes, Chosen One, and no, it ain't new. I told you about this, right? Manaphy?"

"No." He didn't look amused. "Somehow it failed to evade your wide range of reference."

I rolled my eyes, leaning back. "Whatever... Anyway, uh, Manaphy. He's the one that gets all the prophecies, and he's teaching his son, Phione, to do the same. They do it by sitting in a room and watching vapors swirl up around them or something, and from that they divine the future. I don't get it, but again, I don't ask – because they're still correct, regardless of what kind of gas you use to read 'em, you know?"

"Sure." He didn't sound amused. There was a pause while he continued to look over my shoulder at the screen. We both sat there and blinked through the footage coming in from the Holon Mirror World, and rest assured – it was not boring footage...

"Uh, Giratina," offered Zero a few minutes later.

"Yeah?"

"Well," he said with a heavy sigh, leaning on the back of my chair. "I really hate to break it to you, madam, but your Chosen One here is what we in the business call 'totally BUTTERFLIES screwed'."

I smirked smugly, knowing that he would never learn of my brilliant new form of censorship. "Relax, will you?" I trilled instead. "He's going to get through this somehow, you know. Chosen One and all that. He wouldn't have been picked for this if he wasn't completely certified for the job." Normally, I really wasn't the sort to be placing so much faith in someone because of something like a blessing, but really... this was the Chosen One we were talking about.

"You're sure this kid is the Chosen One?"

"Of course. Manaphy hasn't been wrong before, and he won't be wrong today."

 

[Caliban]

Chapters and chapters that I had not yet read! Well, I've read them now.
Quite enjoyed this latest batch of yours; especially the alcoholic bits. ;D

Grant really had to wonder how his captive was missing this.

I think his captor?

Also, I think he's screwed. Just saying.
I'll check back later to see what happens to him. XD

 

[Giratina ♀]

ANNOUNCEMENT

Hi everybody.

Well, as you've seen, the update schedule for Wings Have We has all but gone down the wazoo lately. I have been pushed all over the place by seemingly everyone, have been getting even less sleep than usual, and just last night have been forced to leave an RP site when most everyone has been trashed by a hellish lead admin. Plus my grades are plummeting and I am in danger of failing many of my classes -- this year marks the first time I've ever failed a class, ever. I am officially putting Wings on extended hiatus until I can get my life back on track.

Good luck, love you all. -Gira
​

 

[Giratina ♀]

{36} it always begins in the cerulean sky​

"…Grant."

"Hm?"

The dynamic duo was now beyond the threat posed by the several hundred skeletons in Grant's closet. But of course, 507786 being the 'considerate' man he was, he didn't intend on letting that particular incident die any time soon. Not that he was one to talk. "Your traveling companions… they are further up the tower, yes?"

Grant shook his head. "Not that I know of."

"I see." 507786 stepped over one of the several fallen pillars in the room; apparently, this part of the castle had been ransacked by… something. "And you never told them about…"

"Yeah," the younger man said quickly, eager to cut off such a topic. "It's, uh, not the sort of thing that you really go around blabbing to everyone, you know." He paused then – did his new 'friend' know? After all, for all he knew, he could have just been a regular old Grunt, albeit one who really didn't want to be there. And he had certainly made no show of hiding his allegiance, if the freakish BDV grunt outfit was anything to go by.

"I understand," he said.

Well, good.

"So…" Grant looked around. They were climbing their way down a corridor now, but fortunately, all of these pillars seemed to be intact. Though there was still little to no lighting to go by. "How did you end up joining Team BDV?"

"Drafted," he said.

Grant shuddered. He knew how the BDVs performed their 'drafts' – find random Joes on the street, mug them, and drag them into the nearest convenient base, forcing them to join at gunpoint. It seemed to Grant to be more trouble than it was worth, but he supposed that it did make more members. Who needed morality, after all, when you had a decently sized criminal organization? "Oh… I'm sorry."

507786 shook his head. "Don't be… to be frank, this is hardly a new experience."

Grant stopped and looked at him. "Are you saying that other Teams have drafts too?"

"No."

There was a pause. Then, "…Oh."

So this really was nothing new to him. 507786 had been in a team like that before… that made two of them, Grant thought with simultaneous relief and terror. 507786 had seen concrete proof of his allegiance already, and he had been somehow hoping to, er, kill him off before he could tell anyone who would actually care. (Because, even though that ship had sailed, there were probably still people who would be happy to shoot him through given that certain piece of information. Some people never changed…)

"Would you, uh, mind my asking which team you were on, then?"

"Yes," he said dryly in response.

Well. Okay then.

It was at this point that they came across an open door, promising a staircase. It looked rather like it had been previously locked, but was busted open by some display of brute force. Either they weren't alone in here, or this was the same work of the beast who had been toppling those pillars earlier. Regardless, after a brief glance at one another, they decided to charge forward – and it's a good thing they did. Because the next room promised a very important clue.

"…Rotom?"

Immediately Grant was running across the room; it was impossible not to recognize that creature. (At least, if you were part of the Groupie Galaxy, anyhow.) 507786 followed after him, mildly interested in this new development, but otherwise seeming unfazed... and probably quite a bit miffed at his easily distracted companion. "And what exactly is this?" he asked flatly, stopping a few feet short.

Grant, who was at this point occupied with drilling Rotom on where Casey and the others had went, ignored him.

Shaking his head in apparent disgust, 507786 stood there and waited for the two to reunite (though to their credit, it wasn't much longer after he intervened), and after that fiasco was over everyone got back on track. "Alright," said Grant, turning back around. "Rotom's here, right? So this tells us that Casey and everyone else is also here."

"Or they could be held somewhere else," offered 507786 helpfully. "Possibly somewhere a significant way away."

"But we've only been here a few days; this world doesn't seem technologically advanced enough to get human cargo somewhere else in such a short period of time." Grant smiled craftily, confident in his rebuttal.

"It is long enough to get them to walk a mile or so and be placed in a different facility."

...Oops.

"Anyway, we should at least look through this building first," said Grant somewhat stupidly, attempting to make up for his previous blunder. "It would be kind of a waste if we came here and didn't look. ...But first, help me find a key to this cage, alright? We can't leave Rotom like this."

507786 saw no reason why they couldn't indeed leave him right there and move on, but set to work anyway. Soon enough, after ripping down a few tapestries and getting Rotom to slip in some subtle work of his own, the cage had been opened and the three of them were continuing to proceed up the tower. Despite himself, 507786 occasionally sneaked a few looks at the strange entity known as Rotom – it certainly looked like no Rotom he had ever seen before, and he had had quite an experience with Rotoms.

But that was irrelevant. 507786 shook his head and moved on, being careful not to step on the blatantly obvious booby traps that had been left scattered up and down the stairs.

They reached the top floor just in time to get slammed in the face by a Poliwhirl.

Grant yelped with a face full of Water-type and stumbled backwards down the stairs, right into 507786, who fortunately was able to steady himself against the narrow walls.

Rotom, on the other hand, saw no reason to delay, and immediately flew over and latched himself to Casey's arm (his head was too covered with hairspikes). Though he was initially startled by the sudden appearance of an over-excited Ghost-type, Casey soon realized who exactly it was, and temporarily paused his curb-stomping to have a brief reunity session. This was quickly stopped when 507786 and Grant walked onto the roof of the building proper, the latter holding a fainted Poliwhirl.

"What in the world is..." Grant had begun his sentence, but quickly shut up when he noticed the freakish demon thing looming over them all. The draconic beast had glowing yellow eyes and a mouth full of pointed teeth, and now looked like it was ready to eat something. Probably them.

"What exactly is this?" 507786 seemed to be much more contained in the face of ancient evil, promptly walking up alongside Casey.

"I'm not sure," he said in response, allowing Rotom to float closer, the intention being to fight the demon that was once Anti-Ash. "...Er, hang on. Who are you again?" He turned again to Grant, who had been the one to bring him up in the first place.

"It's okay!" the ex-Grunt yelled.

Shrugging, Casey turned back to the matter at hand. 507786 folded his arms, not looking like he was planning to do anything; this was unfortunate, because with Poliwhirl down, Rotom was officially the last conscious Pokémon of the collective Groupie Galaxy. 507786 probably could have been moderately useful, even if the Pokémon he had were regulated due to his involvement with Team BDV.

Casey glanced up at him briefly, but it didn't take long to get the memo, and once that happened he gave up and just decided to focus on the battle.

"Alright, Rotom. Thundershock!"

Rotom complied happily, sending a bristling thunderbolt flying towards his adversary. The monster merely scowled at him; just like all of the other attacks, it seemed to have no effect. The opposite did not prove to be true, however, for within five minutes Rotom too was lying on the ground, his inner spark flickering dangerously low.

Now with absolutely nothing to distract him from eating the souls of everyone in the present area (or whatever he intended to do), the demon once known as Anti-Ash began to bring a smile onto his face; needless to say, it wasn't a nice smile. Instead, it was a downright wicked smile, of the sort one wore when he was about to rip you into ribbons. Coincidentially, this was exactly what was happening.

So Casey and friends were ripped into ribbons.

Or, at least they were supposed to.



"Hey, that's cheating."

"It is not cheating! I'm allowed to do this sort of thing!"

The argument, as usual, was heating up, and the combatants were, also as usual, Zero and myself. Right now we were arguing over the fairness of... er, call it Legendary intervention, hmm?

...Alright, so it was an epic deus ex machina. But this isn't really a story or anything, so it's okay.

I watched boredly as a Sacred Bolt of Judgement came down from the heavens, striking the demon square in the middle of the head. Of course, it scared the living bejeezus out of everyone down there, but hopefully they didn't believe it was Rotom's doing. (I wouldn't put it past them.) The creature fell to the ground in a flaming, roaring heap, causing most everyone else in the area to take at least a couple steps back if not more.

Because death by flaming demons of the night is really on the rise this year, apparently.

After the flames had died, the Groudon-Salamence monster was no more; instead, it had transformed back into a suddenly frail-looking clone of one Ash Ketchum. No one even bothered to move towards it; even as they watched, the body began to fade in and out, like someone had finally realized that it probably wasn't supposed to exist – and then, all at once, the whole thing just upped and disappeared into air.

This was not limited to Anti-Ash, however. Though the sky technically seemed no more radiant now than it had before – there was no light given it that hadn't already been there – it suddenly seemed to flush with color, as if something had been holding it back from presenting its real being to the people of the Holon Mirror World. And it had. All over the world, it seemed that everyone had a weight lifted from their backs – a weight that had been sitting there so long they gradually forgot about it, just took it for granted. At least until it disappeared.

Slowly the group found their bearings again from the ridiculous event which had just passed. None of them looked like they completely understood it, except for Ash, but even he was just standing around, sharing shocked glances with the others. Caro noticed someone he hadn't previously seen – a man in a BDV Grunt's uniform, with pale skin and a tight line for a mouth. Blinking thoughtfully, the teenager continued to stare, until 507786 looked in his direction. That prompted Caro to quickly avert his gaze into the floor.

The first person to move was Ash, the real Guardian of Mirror, who slowly walked into the center of the rooftop platform and turned his head to the sky. "Thank you!" he shouted up to the heavens. "Thank you, O masters of the Legendary Court!"

Well, you're quite welcome, kid.

OH YEAH. WHO'S AWESOME? I'M AWESOME.​

 

[Cutlerine]

Whoa, how did I miss this chapter? Anyway, now that I have, and have refreshed my memory of recent events in Wings Have We with a quick dip back into earlier chapters, I have to confess that there are a couple of things that probably need to be brought to your attention.

Firstly, and most importantly, your cast. It's enormous. Wings Have We rivals some Dickens novels for sheer cast size. There are a vast quantity of characters, and it's quite easy to muddle them up, forget who's who, or just completely forget they exist. Now, on its own, a giant cast doesn't necessarily mean a story is bad. But in this case, there just isn't that much differentiation between people. You flit between different perspectives and narrative points of view so often that the boundaries between the characters begin to blur and merge, and the result is that the reader can quite easily become confused about what's actually happening.

Now, the PoV-changing thing is often handled well - for instance, when you change to Giratina's perspective. But that works so well because Giratina has a very distinct personality and tone of voice. No one else in the entire story writes in quite the same way she does. If we take another example - for instance, Casey and Grant - their voices are almost identical. This wouldn't be such a bad thing (this is, after all, a comedy, and it is funny), except that when you have as many characters as you do - well over ten major ones right now, at my rough count - it gets pretty confusing.

On the plus side, though, Sheridan's usually easy to recognise.

Right. I'll draw a line under the 'many character' thing now, because I'm on the verge of slipping into full rampaging-editor mode and inadvertently shredding your story. Next point: the plot.

At first, the story of Wings Have We was easy enough to work out. We've got a hero and his companions on a journey, whereupon they get drawn into the sinister yet lovably inept machinations of an evil team and their Delta Species Pokémon. Good. That's perfectly fine, and it's all funny. But then you bring in the Holon Mirror World, and your story loses its focus.

Before the Mirror World section of the story, the plot was a lot more engaging, to be brutally honest. Yours was an honest journey fic, plying its trade and asking no more than to be read and enjoyed. Then, there was a massive interruption to the main storyline in the form of the Mirror World. My point is not that you shouldn't have put that part in. My point is merely that it was only when I read back that I remembered what the actual plot was, and that shouldn't be the case. Basically, this is a case of trying to do too many things in one story at the same time. I appreciate that this is a journey fic, and as such, there are deviations from the main storyline, but the Mirror World part is far too large a one. In short, it feels like I'm reading a completely different story to the one I was reading five chapters ago.

Right. Second line to be drawn under that. No more mention to be made of the Mirror World.

Those are the things I dislike about Wings Have We. You are completely free to disagree with me, of course; these are opinions, not immutable laws. And maybe you'll prove me wrong about the Mirror World with some crazy situation later on that ties all of this in together, and I'll say: Wow. That was ridiculously clever, and I take back everything I said.

Er, anyway, before I get onto a stupid rant like that, I'd like to point out the things you've done well, too. It seems only fair, since I just spent ten minutes mercilessly beating your story to the floor with a metaphorical frying pan.

Firstly, it is funny. There are no end of good lines and comebacks; the dialogue is almost always good for a laugh or two. Take Grant's recent conversation with 507786, for example: it is undeniably funny. The same goes for pretty much everything Giratina says or does. The situations that Casey and co. get into - the whole MissingNo. thing, or the Pumipuyu situation (ah, Hugh Lofting, you brightened my childhood) - are not only funny in their own right, but spawn more amusing dialogue. That's all well-executed and good.

Secondly, regardless of whether or not the story has become more of a ramble than a properly plotted narrative (damn it, I was meant to draw a line under that), it's still hugely entertaining. It's a good adventure, and almost always fun to read. You can tell from reading it that you've enjoyed writing it, which is always good, because it makes it way more enjoyable to read.

Thirdly... uh, I think I covered all the general things, actually. Unless I go into specifics - which I really can't be bothered to do, not with a painting, a drawing and the next chapter of my own story to finish today - that's the essence of what is great about Wings Have We. Keep writing, and good luck.

Man, that took far too long. I only meant to come here and read the latest chapter. Gah. That's what happens to things I like. They force me to come and critique them.

Anyway, overall it's good. There are just a couple of things that might need tweaking in later chapters. And now I shall leave, because there are only so many hours of the day remaining, and I intend to seize them.

 

[Giratina ♀]

Firstly, and most importantly, your cast. It's enormous. Wings Have We rivals some Dickens novels for sheer cast size. There are a vast quantity of characters, and it's quite easy to muddle them up, forget who's who, or just completely forget they exist. Now, on its own, a giant cast doesn't necessarily mean a story is bad. But in this case, there just isn't that much differentiation between people. You flit between different perspectives and narrative points of view so often that the boundaries between the characters begin to blur and merge, and the result is that the reader can quite easily become confused about what's actually happening.

Now, the PoV-changing thing is often handled well - for instance, when you change to Giratina's perspective. But that works so well because Giratina has a very distinct personality and tone of voice. No one else in the entire story writes in quite the same way she does. If we take another example - for instance, Casey and Grant - their voices are almost identical. This wouldn't be such a bad thing (this is, after all, a comedy, and it is funny), except that when you have as many characters as you do - well over ten major ones right now, at my rough count - it gets pretty confusing.

Off the top of my head, I can identify only two major perspectives in the story: Giratina's and Grant's. Since Gira is the narrator for most of the story, and she is obviously capable of reading others' thoughts, she tends to inject a lot of her own voice into the things that the other characters do. (This is partially the reason behind your rambling point; it can pretty much be chalked up to both Giratina's and my own inability to write.) So the snarky comments are usually her own narrative, unless it was specifically stated that they were the thoughts of the characters.

But on the second count, you're probably right. There are a lot of characters involved, especially for a journeyfic -- I mean, six as a main cast, not including talking Pokémon? And then taking into account the various members of Team BDV, as well as Torsten and Amarachi and the other guys? Insanity. But I am working to tie it together.

Before the Mirror World section of the story, the plot was a lot more engaging, to be brutally honest. Yours was an honest journey fic, plying its trade and asking no more than to be read and enjoyed. Then, there was a massive interruption to the main storyline in the form of the Mirror World. My point is not that you shouldn't have put that part in. My point is merely that it was only when I read back that I remembered what the actual plot was, and that shouldn't be the case. Basically, this is a case of trying to do too many things in one story at the same time. I appreciate that this is a journey fic, and as such, there are deviations from the main storyline, but the Mirror World part is far too large a one. In short, it feels like I'm reading a completely different story to the one I was reading five chapters ago.

Right. Second line to be drawn under that. No more mention to be made of the Mirror World.

This could not be more true. I've been convinced for a long time that the Holon Mirror World was quite possibly the biggest mistake I've made as a fanfiction author ever, and I am more than happy to leave that dead where it stands. The hiatus I've fallen into was probably because I realized just slightly too late that the Mirror World was a big old pile of derp, and had to somehow slog through it to get back to the main storyline. But I can't undo it all because... well. Important events happened in there. XD

Er, anyway, before I get onto a stupid rant like that, I'd like to point out the things you've done well, too. It seems only fair, since I just spent ten minutes mercilessly beating your story to the floor with a metaphorical frying pan.

Frying pans are good, I like frying pans!

 

[Cutlerine]

Off the top of my head, I can identify only two major perspectives in the story: Giratina's and Grant's.

That told me, I guess. However, I was referring to the voice of the characters in particular: if I read their dialogues, a lot of them sound very, very similar. It's not that they all need to have differing speech patterns or anything - it's just that I don't know what's going on in anyone's head. It's nothing major, when you put it like that; just that I'm not always entirely certain what makes one character's personality different to another's.

Oh, and I'm glad you realised that the Holon Mirror World was a dead end. It's like scar tissue: you can't really cut it out now without leaving a hideous sort of hole, and so it will remain as a permanent reminder never to do that again.

Anyway, I shall now return to silence and continue just to watch, wait, and read.

P.S.

Frying pans are good, I like frying pans!

I'm glad you like frying pans. So many people don't these days. In fact, I strongly advise you to go and talk to one for a while. They're such lonely souls, they'll be ever so grateful for the company.