Far away, across a vast sea in the land Hoenn, Deoxys had been meditating—monitoring the energies of the world as they ebbed and flowed, sensing the unique signature of every living being, each as a tiny pinprick of light against the great dark fabric of the elements. Recently he had felt a spike in the region of Kanto, identifying two combatants of considerable strength, though it was impossible to be sure exactly how strong either was given the vast distance separating them from Deoxys. He now made his way west, soaring over the stone plateaus of Hoenn's outer-desert region.
Deoxys was a Pokémon of roughly humanoid shape and proportions, though his silhouette was comprised of sharper lines and more angles than a human's rounder outline—he also had no feet to speak of—and only occasionally did his two pairs of tentacles twist and reshape themselves into arms and hands. He was orange-red in color but for his face, which was hued a grayish blue. A brilliant gem of deep purple was inset in his chest, and the same color was in the markings that dotted his back as well as on a vertical slash that ran down the center of his face and would have been perpendicular to his mouth if he had had one. Currently, Deoxys was in his Normal form, one of four shapes among which he could shift at will to access different, specialized abilities, and all of which looked different—his Attack form featured impressive spiky extensions to his head and legs, Defense was rounder and more solidly built, and Speed was built like an aerodynamic sail with limbs.
He was flying over an empty expanse of rocky plains when his levitation abruptly failed. Barely had the thought formed in his head, What— before he was plummeting to earth. As the unforgiving ground rushed to meet him, Deoxys shifted to Defense form, crossed his arms, and braced for impact.
There was none. The ground wasn't unforgiving, if there was even any present. Deoxys plunged through the terrain as if it wasn't there, and the darkness the swallowed him whole.
-m- -m- -m-
Deoxys sat up slowly and groaned; his brain felt like it had been doing corkscrews inside his head. I was falling...and then what? He looked up and around him, but could see nothing in the pitch darkness.
A voice hissed from the shadows, its source impossible to place. "Does your head ache?" A cackle of laughter followed the sneer.
Another speaker, "Look at him, he's too dizzy to stand!"
"A great Legendary, shaken after a little fall!"
"He looks so confused..." The voices were coming from all directions.
"What, can't you see us?"
Suddenly, a fuzzy purple light illuminated Deoxys's surroundings, and he saw that he stood in a large, roughly circular cavern with tiered rings rising up its sides—each was greater in diameter than the one below it. Around each ring sat dozens of ghostly Pokémon composed of ephemeral purple smoke swirled around a core of like-colored light, upon which eyes and jack-o'-lantern mouths were etched in neon green. Green orbs of an uncertain material dotted the spirals, orbiting slowly around the center. "You've stumbled into our circle!" shrieked one of them—the Spiritomb. "Our domain extends all the way to the sky!" The group of Spiritomb began to sway and drift lazily to the side, floating in circles around Deoxys.
Deoxys turned with them, keeping his eye on the Spiritomb that had spoken. "What do you want?"
"We want..." The Pokémon's insubstantial grin stretched into a horrible leer than was literally too big for its face. "We want you dead."
"What a surprise," muttered Deoxys, knowing better than to ask why. "Look, I've got more important things to do than fight with you and your overly excitable friends." He gave an exaggerated shrug. "So, why don't you just leave me alone, and I'll be on my way."
The rings of Spiritomb accelerated, moving so fast their outlines melted into streaks of purple lined with green. "Oh, but you are alone!" And in a split-second they all vanished.
Decoys rolled his eyes. I can't waste time fighting them; I don't care if they want to kill me... He summoned a sparking mass of energy between his tentacles and launched it upward, but it did not hit any ceiling and continued rushing straight up until it the light was dimmed to nonexistence. Deoxys frowned mouthlessly. We can't be that far down.
He whirled quickly around and deflected the large rock that had come flying from nowhere, setting a Defense force field between him and the stone, but no sooner had it struck his barrier of light than a whole salvo of boulders shot at Deoxys from all sides. He swung his thick Defense form tentacles in a series of quick of lashes, smashing the rocky missiles to pieces.
Spiritomb began to blink in and out of visibility all around like a parade of flickering candles, firing bursts of energy at Deoxys. He blocked them easily and returned the favor with his Attack form, but the wily Spiritomb dodged his offensives and retreated among the shadows. Yet more projectiles flew at Deoxys, energy and stone both, and he grew more frustrated with each he was forced to stop. He had no desire to kill the other Pokémon, but enough of his time had already been taken up by the engagement. I'll try to get them to give away their positions, but if that doesn't work...
"You can't kill a Legendary Pokémon with such puny attacks!" he called to the cavern at large, as pompously as he could. "Come out and face me, you pathetic swirls of purple mist!'
A single derisive, crazy giggle was barely audible, and Deoxys shot a fast energy wave at the sound. A Spiritomb dropped from its perch, out cold, becoming visible as it did so. "Well?" demanded Deoxys, still in his loud, arrogant voice. "Is that all? You claimed you were going to kill me! And yet you're hiding like cowards, attacking from behind and while cloaked by the dark! You'll never defeat me this way!"
This time none of the Spiritomb made the slightest sound, and instead a host of additional energy balls and slabs of rock were launched his way. He batted them away without difficulty as before. That leader one's probably keeping them in check. He would have gritted his teeth if he'd had teeth. Well... Plan B. Spreading his arms wide, he yelled "Psycho Boost!"
With a sound akin to a scream, a crackling pulse of devastating power expanded from the gem in Deoxys's chest, spreading until it filled every corner of the cave and surging upward with a howl. As the deadly light reached them, the Spiritomb pitched forward and dropped like stones—unconscious or dead, it was impossible to tell. Every last one collapsed to the cave's very bottom, joining the first. When the flare subsided, flickering slowly then gradually fading to nothing, only the Spiritomb whom Deoxys had conversed with remained.
"Which poor sap did you use as a shield?" Deoxys gave a mouthless smile. "I've been delayed long enough. How about I leave without you interfering?" The Spiritomb breathed a stream of ghostly blue flames at him in place of an answer. Deoxys dodged the conflagration and whacked the Spiritomb with a tentacle as it tried to rush at him, knocking it back.
The Spiritomb recovered and drew back. Its core began to glow as it charged power within itself. "Cursed—"
In a split second, Deoxys rocketed across the cave and tackled the Ghost Pokémon in Speed form, slamming it into the pit's side at lightning speed. "Should have let me leave," he said, and hit the Spiritomb point-blank with an Attack form blast that sent it smashing through fifty meters of solid rock.
Deoxys thrust a tentacle at the now-visible ceiling of the grotto, blowing a hole in the dark stone. With his levitation restored, he rose through the gap and shot into the distance towards Kanto.
A/N: This was a quirky chapter to write, but I'm happy with where it ended up. Weeeelp, we've got another one of our heroes/protagonists/whatever introduced, and we're on our way down into the depths of the plot...next chapter, that is. Review if you please and I promise I'll update soon.
