If Finn had to use one word to describe this place, it would be sterile. There wasn't a speck of dirt or dust anywhere, and the air had the taste of disinfectant to it. It made sense, in a way, seeing as this part of the fortress was supposed to be some kind of laboratory. As promised, it seemed to have no guards.
It didn't take long for Finn to begin feeling uneasy. He released Athena to watch his back, and recalled Nyx since she wouldn't be as useful in the tight corridors of the laboratory. The silence was slightly less stifling when he had her with him, though it was no less ominous. He had expected there to be something going on. Alarms, or panic, or something.
Instead all there was to hear was the sounds of his own footsteps, clanking on the metal flooring of the laboratory.
Why did they need this much space for a laboratory? Aspen's 'lab' was actually a combination pokémon center, daycare, and laboratory, which was why it was such a large building. The space needed for all of those things was significant. But this? Finn had yet to even see a piece of scientific equipment. It was just corridors so far.
Eventually, after five or so straight minutes of walking down winding hallways, Finn came to a much larger room. Situated against one wall was a huge machine with three huge tubes connected together by incomprehensible machinery. The rest of the room held tables with all manner of syringes, but what drew Finn's attention were five cylindrical devices with red cases and complex labels on them. They were stored in a briefcase that was currently open, with one of them set to the side. Finn walked across the room and picked up the one lying on the counter. The device had a removable cap, and upon taking it off he could see that it was there to hide a needle. The label seemed to have a series of numbers and letters that at first glance made no sense, until he saw the v3 at the end. These were some kind of iteration on something Plasma had already made. Something that needed to be injected.
Could it be Talos serum? Unlikely. Why would each injector be marked differently if it was Talos? The serum was complete anyways. It had already produced results in Belle, and probably in several Plasma-owned pokémon as well. There were only five of these, and based upon the levels of the translucent red fluid inside none of them had been used. Finn put the cap back on and placed it within the briefcase, closing the entire thing.
There, on the lid of the case, had his answer. Sequencer. The Plasma program to give humans powers. They already had it in production before, but it was thanks to Finn that this version existed. He'd have to destroy these when this was over.
Finn opened the briefcase and paused.
"Athena, do you hear something?" Finn asked quietly.
"…I don't have ears, my hearing is worse than yours," Athena answered, equally quietly.
"Right." Finn furrowed his brow. "I could've sworn…"
He didn't finish the sentence, instead lurching backwards as far as he could. A heavy shape slammed into the ground where he had just been standing. The ground dented where the shape impacted, and Finn was immediately reminded of Xollen's favorite way to start a fight. A reminder that immediately became more important when a giant metal claw hurtled towards him. Finn swung up his arms and formed a king's shield, blocking the attack. His attacker recoiled from the impact as the ghostly energy sapped their strength.
Finn took several more steps backwards, grabbing Athena's hilt with his right hand and her shield with his left. He blocked the next blow with Athena's king's shield, once again sapping strength from the one attacking him.
The creature that had assaulted Finn was human-sized, roughly Finn's own height. Its back was turned to him, and from that back protruded a hump made of turquoise metal. From that hump, at even intervals emerged four limbs. The shoulder joint rotated freely, allowing the more limited elbow of each limb to direct it in any direction. The forearm of each limb was constituted of a bulky conical shape with a protrusion pointing back towards the shoulder and a flat end from which three steel claws sprouted.
"Specimen one has evidenced greater perceptive ability than expected. Making a note." Finn's attacker slowly turned around, facing towards him. Its four metagross-like limbs all twisted in their sockets to roughly maintain their orientation. The hybrid – because of course that's what it was – had turquoise metal instead of skin. Their right hand was mostly normal, save for the steel claws at their fingertips. The left hand was raised to their shoulder level, a mechanical prosthetic with a panel on the back opened. Dressed in lab attire, with glowing red rings for eyes, was Cyril. "Commencing incapacitation."
Finn twirled Athena's blade, readying himself. "I'm not letting you stop me."
"You don't stand a chance, boy." Cyril lowered her hand and clenched her fist. One set of metagross arms anchored into the ground, raising her up. "I've already become more than human."
O-O-O
"What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing," Aelius demanded. He punctuated each word with a heavy strum of his guitar, sending shockwaves into the crowd of hybrids. "Quit. Doodling!"
"This is important!" Carsen shouted back. His kadabra and oranguru were using their psychic powers to desperately keep the foes back. The librarian paused in his frantic scratching of arcane runes to look up at Aelius. "You know, I knew you could use sound to mimic pokémon attacks, but I hadn't figured you could do it with just an amp and an electric guitar."
"It's a talent," Aelius said. "One I can't keep up if the batteries run out!"
Another strum, and a blast of sound slammed into a bird-like hybrid. Aelius repeated the chord, amplifying the power with repetition. Despite the repeated battering, the hybrid continued coming at him. Loretta let loose a stream of concentrated fire, scorching the hybrid's feathers and sending her recoiling backwards. Aelius felt a little bad for that. The poor thing had no choice in this, and she still had mostly human features.
"Okay, so little known fact: unown are made up of two main components!" Carsen began. "Psychic power and knowledge. The balance of these two factors varies from unown to unown, leading to some crazy variation in power that can be observed in the rare occurrence of prime unown-,"
"Is this necessary?" Aelius asked. He turned to look at Carsen.
"Look, I have to finish my train of thought or I can't do this properly!" Carsen said, stopping.
Aelius flinched as the bird-like hybrid got closer, only to get shot by a bolt of plasma that downed it immediately.
"I would like to hear," Nik said from way in the back. "It seems interesting."
"Thank you, Nik!" Carsen grinned at the electric elite. "Now where was I?"
"Unown are made of knowledge," Aelius supplied with a sigh.
"Right! So, unown are creatures composed of information and psychic power. Now, ancient civilizations worshipped the unown as minor gods – and why wouldn't they? Unown can warp reality in high enough concentrations." Carsen began drawing a circle around the edge of the diagram. "So they began to feed the unown. They gave their knowledge, their information, and their culture to the unown. In return, the unown started to guard these civilizations. And, over time, the unown changed.
"See, if you feed centuries worth of information to an unown, you trigger a latent evolution that is otherwise completely impossible. They become larger, winged, and gain the flying type. We call them sigilyph." Carsen paused for dramatic effect, completing the circle. When everyone who could've responded was too busy fighting to listen, he continued. Carsen stepped to the innermost part of the diagram and started on the center. "But if you feed a sigilyph thousands of years of information? If you give it the entirety of human history? What kind of psychic power could you get out of that?"
Carsen finished the diagram with a flourish and released a pokémon. Aelius only glanced back at the flash to see a short, furred, anthropomorphic pokémon of some kind he hadn't seen before. Its fur was patterned like some kind of butler apparel. As soon as its feet touched the ground, the air got… weird.
Aelius paused, furrowing his brow as the ground beneath his feet altered its physical properties. The hybrids, even as far as a hundred feet out, began to stumble and slow down as the physics of the area changed.
"Thank you Indeedee, your service is very appreciated," Carsen said. The diminutive pokémon bowed.
"Back to the topic, if you feed the entirety of human history into a sigilyph, it continues to grow stronger and stronger. It gets bigger, changes form, and eventually, it could even evolve again." Carsen dropped an inkpot into the center of the diagram on the ground, and ink began to flow through the scratchings on the ground. "Now, normally it can't exist under physics. Its psychic power is just too extreme. If it wants to manifest safely, it has to do so as a sigilyph. But if you have a controlled environment, like the Library or psychic terrain, you can have a creature that I honestly wouldn't even classify as a pokémon."
The ink illuminated pink, and from the center of the diagram a portal began to form.
"Now, this potential evolution is something I would call a sigilord. A master of runes and language." Carsen paused as the portal opened.
From the center of the portal rose an orb, three feet in diameter and ringed with eyes. Its skin – which may well have been bark or parchment instead of hide – was scribed with thousands of tiny letters and runes. Four more shapes emerged from the portal, all of them identical. They looked like huge totem poles with eyes at seemingly random points, multiple sets of wings on each pylon. Despite not being connected to the central orb, these pylons were clearly part of the same creature. Every inch of the pylons had some form of writing, all but the whites of the eyes and their pinpoint pupils.
"But I call it Archive," Carsen finished with a wide grin.
"Be Not Afraid." A psionic force rippled across the battlefield, its presence both terrifying and comforting. "For I Have Arrived."
Aelius felt tears rolling down his face and frowned. After a cursory glance around, he wasn't the only one who was crying against his will. Every human exposed to its voice had tears on their cheeks. This thing was seriously powerful.
"How long will it last?" Aelius asked.
The eldritch force of the sigilord turned to him. "Until Conditions Cannot Support My Presence."
"Or in other words, about an hour, since Indeedee here is going to maintain it as long as he can," Carsen explained.
"Great." Aelius took a deep breath, then settled back into a combat stance. The hybrids were beginning to adjust to the altered physics, and it looked like the zombies on the southern end of the battlefield were ignoring it completely. "Then let's get to work."
Archive the sigilord raised its secondary pylons into the air and released a pulse of psychic power. Across the battlefield, hybrids began to clutch at their heads and collapse. The sheer power of the psychic type made Aelius' brain hurt, but not in a painful way. It was more than worth it for this level of raw power on their side. He could live with it.
For once, Aelius was glad that Carsen was on his side.
O-O-O
Cyril made a slow advance, striking with her extra limbs to force Finn backwards. He kept up his footwork, keeping a safe distance from her. He slipped around a table, and with his shadow grabbed a syringe to hurl at Cyril. She didn't even flinch, ignoring it as it bounced off of her metal skin. A tray of medical tools were the next thing he flung, once again ignored. Then he hurled the table, which she snapped in half with her metagross arms.
"Specimen appears to have mimicked telekinetic powers by use of shadow manipulation. Ability reminiscent of ghost type powers." Cyril lifted her left hand again, speaking into it. There had to be some kind of audio recorder in there. She lowered the prosthetic. "It appears you got my message. I do wonder how you got through the defense system, but considering your powers and the pokémon at your disposal I wouldn't be surprised if you just found a way around it."
"You sent that?" Finn furrowed his brow. "Why would you send that?"
"It was child's play to figure out which entrance to the building was most likely to be utilized by you, or someone like you. The electrical defense system was my own boast. I had managed to replicate a design by the esteemed Nik Tesser." A brief grin appeared on Cyril's face, revealing her unevenly jagged teeth. "I need you for a little project of mine. Specimen One. The one whose DNA made the second generation of Sequencers possible. And soon, the third generation too."
"So the marks on your record are for plagiarism as well as unethical behavior. Good to know," Finn said.
Cyril snarled, pressing her assault. A heavy blow collided with Athena's shield, causing Finn to slide backwards. Another strike barely glanced off of the shield, and Finn had to turn his skin to metal to prevent the slam into the wall from hurting him. He slid out of the way of the followup, narrowly avoiding the blow that dented the wall, and then slipped from metal to intangible to avoid the fourth strike.
"I was wondering, though." Finn swung Athena's blade, a shadow claw swinging into Cyril. The hybrid lurched backwards to avoid the hit. "Who sent the other messages? I doubt you'd have bothered to repeat information."
"Other-," Cyril froze, stunned. "Other messages?" Her voice was quiet. She raised her left hand, taking several steps back. "Note. At least one traitor in the base. Additional information on Specimen One: Capable of changing own physical properties. Skin took on a metallic property. Intangibility noted. Conclusion: Powers derived from aegislash family of pokémon. Matches original sample."
"Speaking of, where is it?" Finn pointed Athena's blade at Cyril. "The blood sample you've been using. I'm pretty sure that's mine and I really don't want you to have it any more."
"The sample itself is no longer necessary for my work," Cyril snarled. "But I'll have you know it's very close. I'll just need a follow-up for a new project."
Cyril lunged, forcing Finn back into a nearby hallway. The hybrid landed on her metagross limbs, crawling like some sort of giant mechanical spider. She shrugged off a shadow ball, then another, and forced Finn to retreat into the hall. Finn's eyes widened as he realized just how outmatched he was. He and Athena together could only just hold off a hybridized Darrell, but a magmortar could rarely match a metagross, even with the type advantage.
So Finn turned and ran.
Cyril chased, scuttling down the hallway behind him with heavy footsteps. Her form was heavy, a result of the dense and nigh-invincible metal alloy that the carapace of a metagross was composed of. If her skin was made of the stuff, she had to have increased in weight by a massive amount.
Perhaps he could use that against her.
Finn turned a corner sharply, hearing Cyril come around the corner at the same speed. He glanced back over his shoulder-
And she slammed into his back, shoving him to the ground. Finn sprawled on his stomach, arms forced out to the sides. Evidently she'd gotten very good about controlling her velocity. Either that, or she'd used her psychic powers to compensate for her low turning speed.
"Let's update our sample." A sharp point jabbed into Finn's neck, only a pinprick of pain as she drained his blood. The needle was removed and replaced with a cold spray. "Don't worry, I don't want you dead. You're far more useful alive."
Finn grunted, and Athena slid him into the shadow beneath him. They emerged further down the hall, Finn lurching out of a corner to see Cyril holding one of the fingers on her mechanical hand up. She detached a vial of blood from the center of the finger, then with a flash of pink energy teleported it away.
"Blood sample acquired. Bran scan needed." Cyril looked over to Finn, still supported only by her metagross limbs. She tilted her head. "Short range teleportation? No. No psychic energy detected. Shadow travel probable. The question is, is it a manifested power or the ability of the pokémon? More research required."
"Yeah, no." Finn held up Athena and she fired a couple of shadow balls. Cyril deflected one with her mechanical hand while holding the other in place with psychic power.
"Interesting." Cyril threw the projectile aside and began to approach.
Finn reached down and grabbed Belle's pokéball, releasing her into the corridor. The machamp set her feet and grabbed Cyril, grinding her to a complete halt.
Something tugged at Athena's blade, and Finn gripped tighter to keep her from being ripped away. Her sashes wrapped around his arm as she was nearly wrenched from his grip. Finn was forcibly pulled down the hallway towards Cyril. He was flung over Belle and the hybrid, around the corner, and launched back into the main room of the laboratory. Finn tucked and rolled as he hit the ground, rising to his feet in time to see Cyril hurling Belle back into the room.
"Hmm, subject sixty-six from the defunct first wave of the Talos program." Cyril straightened, standing on her own two feet again. She turned to look at Belle, sprawled on the ground. "Underwhelming, now. How unfortunate. I'm sure Colress will be distraught."
Belle grunted, climbing to her feet. "Shut up already."
"Belle, like you practiced. Remember Xollen," Finn said.
"Right."
Belle launched into action, utilizing a flurry of blows and feints to try and distract Cyril and force her to multitask. The tactic worked on Xollen, who had been trained to the extreme upper limit of a metagross' ability. By giving the metagross too much to focus on, you could ruin its plans and force it to spend precious time and effort on deciding what attacks were threats and what weren't.
Cyril dealt with it by slamming her forehead into Belle's face.
Instead of dealing with the chaos, Cyril ended it immediately. It looked like the tactic devised to counter a metagross only partially worked on a hybrid.
The hybrid pressed her advantage, forcing Belle backwards. Finn stepped in, moving around to flank Cyril with swipes of Athena's blade. He alternated between shadow claws and sacred sword, in a bid to drive Cyril off balance.
And it didn't work. She divided her attention perfectly. Like she had planned for this to happen. He couldn't trip her up and capitalize on it if she didn't trip up.
Before Finn could act on the realization, Cyril forced the situation.
A blast of kinetic force sent Finn flying backwards, and Belle was launched in the other direction. Cyril reached out with her right hand and clenched it into a fist, causing the tables and the massive machine set into the wall to fly across the room to form a cocoon around Belle. Finn hit the wall and was similarly incapacitated, a floor panel crushing and deforming into a metal bar that wrapped around his midriff to force his arms down by his sides. Cyril didn't stop there, continuing to push Finn against the wall with her psychic powers.
"I wouldn't go intangible. The walls are heavily warded against ghostly intrusion, and I hear it's quite painful for any ghost that tries to pass through." Cyril walked over, her expression calm. Two of her metagross arms pointed directly at Finn, and the flat end illuminated brightly enough to form a pair of spotlights. His shadow may as well not exist anymore, destroyed by the brilliant light. "And now…"
Athena unwound her sashes from Finn's arm, slipping from his grasp to shoot through the air like a spear. Cyril waved one hand, and Athena's path took a sharp angle to slam into a wall.
"Magnesis. What a useful ability." Cyril flexed the fingers of her right hand, then shrugged. She extended her hand, and from across the room a headband covered in wires and sensors floated closer. She caught it out of the air and squinted. "Not as precise as telekinesis. But more powerful against the right targets."
Cyril placed the headband on Finn's forehead, then flipped a switch. Electricity crackled along the wires as the headband began to hum.
"Hm. Slower than expected. But still effective." Cyril looked at the front of the headband. "And uploading as it scans. Good. The magnetic force didn't interfere with the electronics."
"What do you want a scan of my brain for?" Finn asked, wriggling. He was trying and failing to reach of a pokéball on his belt. He didn't have enough range of motion to even dislodge one. He couldn't get his powers to work either. The lights were dispersing his shadow-based projections, he couldn't go intangible for risk of serious harm, and he couldn't move.
"A project. You've evidenced high adaptability and ability to learn at rapid speeds, along with other highly useful traits. Perhaps with a scan of your thought patterns I can isolate those traits and make use of them…" Cyril trailed off, furrowing her brow. "Steel does not have high enough density to block the scan."
Finn ignored her, still trying something, anything, to stop her. She shoved his head back into the wall with her psychic powers as he struggled, dazing him for just a moment. Finn reached for his pokéballs again, trying desperately to grab one. Any of them.
"What in the…" He heard Cyril say.
And then there was a click, and a pokéball fell off of his belt and opened.
Jitters emerged, and without even taking a moment to look at the situation blasted Cyril with a lightning bolt as big as he was. The hybrid launched across the room to collide with the wall. Her psychic powers faltered and faded, and Finn felt himself fall away from the wall just enough to indicate that he could now phase through the bar that had been holding him there. Finn took off the scanner and tossed it to the ground, stomping it into pieces. He picked up Jitters' pokéball and looked across the room to where Belle was now tearing her way out of the metal cocoon.
Cyril slowly rose, lifting her left hand near her mouth. "Important: Specimen One has psionic powers. Repeat. True psionics. Further sample analysis required."
"Good luck with that." Finn drew back his right hand and conjured a ball of shadowy energy, which he hurled at Cyril. She only barely reacted, trying and failing to dodge the projectile. Finn reached out towards Athena, and she pulled herself from the wall and floated over to him.
"And how will you-," Cyril began confidently, only for Jitters to strike her with another thunder. She couldn't block electricity, and her psychic powers seemed useless to hold back energy attacks. Perhaps due to the speed at which they traveled. Cyril collapsed, blinking rapidly as confusion overtook her confidence. "How…"
Cyril tried to stand up, and Jitters responded by once again blasting her with thunder. She collapsed, falling to all fours – or more accurately eights – as she shook her head. The electricity was doing something to her, hampering her thought process. Perhaps it was disrupting the communication between the extra brains that metagross were known for.
"Belle, pin her. Like Mom taught you."
Belle nodded and launched herself across the room. She landed on Cyril's back, and with each arm grabbed one of the hybrid's metagross limbs. She tucked her arms under each, then pulled. The elbows bent backwards, stopped only by the protrusion that jutted backwards.
"Jitters, I need you to create a distracting hum."
Jitters complied, rubbing his pedipalps together and making a low insectoid hum that was just strong enough to disrupt psionics without doing any harm.
Cyril finally managed to get herself together enough to focus on Finn.
"This won't hold me." Cyril began to stand, only to stop and wince as Bell tugged on the metagross limbs.
"Yes it will. It's pretty basic stuff. My mother's an expert in metagross, it's kind of her whole thing. She taught me, when I was young, that the best way to incapacitate a metagross is to force its elbows backwards. The leverage provided is enough to pop the limb out of the socket, even with average human strength." Finn walked over slowly, looking down at Cyril. "See, a metagross isn't meant to experience force from that direction, and the only natural predators metagross have are each other. A metagross can't do that to another metagross. The physiology doesn't work out."
"You can't stop me." Cyril reached out with her left hand, slowly. Sluggishly. The palm opened-,
And Finn cut the hand off.
Cyril shrieked, recoiling. She looked down at the severed stump of her left hand, dazed and enraged.
"Metagross are very good at predicting the future, but lack any true precognition. They create complex plans based upon their predictions, but they place far too much confidence in these plans. Even one unexpected action can disorient a metagross long enough to shatter its plan and put it on the back foot," Finn continued talking, taking a few steps away and towards the case the sequencers were in. "Jitters, set up a perimeter. As I was saying, a metagross' trainer is actually a fantastic asset because of this fatal flaw. The trainer can give it a new line of action immediately, circumventing the confusion and disorientation that tends to come with ruining a metagross' plan. You've gone too far away from that, it seems. As soon as your neural network was interrupted by electricity – something that doesn't happen with a full metagross, oddly enough – your power went with it."
Jitters went to work, setting up webs in a pattern that Finn had workshopped with him before. Finn reached the Sequencer case and looked down at it, opening it again.
"These were your creation, right?" Finn asked, picking one up.
"My magnum opus." Cyril's words slipped from her lips, the boast escaping almost unconsciously. "Powers for humans to rival pokémon."
"Hmm." Finn turned the injector over, then shrugged. "The world isn't ready for these."
Finn placed the injector back in the case and stepped back. With one swipe of Athena's blade, all five Sequencers were destroyed, the solution inside leaking into the case.
Cyril screamed, her voice going hoarse at the end as she strained her vocal chords. With a wrenching motion, she pushed herself forwards. There was the hideous shriek of metal ripping, and all four of Cyril's metagross arms ripped from their sockets. She lunged forwards, the claws on her remaining hand outstretched-
The spider webs pulled in complex ways, and a loop of silk pulled from the floor and snared Cyril's wrist. It pulled her straight upwards to dangle by her arm, helpless.
The hybrid thrashed, screaming all the while. A black lubricant leaked from the empty sockets of her now missing extra limbs, trailing down her back and dripping to the ground. More of the lubricant poured down her face, replacing her tears as she sobbed helplessly. Finn knew that it wasn't blood – he had seen it before when Xollen had met his match and suffered major wounds. She would be fine with losing all of the lubricant, if a bit dehydrated.
"Jitters, keep up the hum," Finn directed, walking over to the dangling Cyril. He released Athena to her own devices, then reached into the pocket of his new pants and pulled out a pack of hand-warmers. He had gotten them forever ago – before travelling through the mountains – and never used them. Now, though, he found a use. He ripped them open, activating the internal reaction that caused them to heat up, then dumped the lot down the back of Cyril's shirt.
He wasn't torturing her pointlessly. Finn knew full well how a metagross worked, and he knew that leaving her at room temperature would make it possible for her to eventually break free of the snare. A metagross' magnetic powers were fueled by superconductors, and heating them up disabled that property.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry if this is particularly uncomfortable," Finn said. "But you haven't done much to deserve leniency."
Finn turned and walked away from Cyril, leaving her to sob helplessly. He knelt down to scratch Jitters on the head.
"Hey bud, I need you to stay here and make sure Cyril doesn't escape. Can I rely on you for that?" Finn asked.
"Yes!" Jitters saluted with his pedipalps. "Will do!"
Finn smiled. "Thank you bud."
Finn stood back up and made his way to Belle. She was still holding the severed metagross limbs, looking down at them with a shellshocked expression.
"I didn't mean to do that," Belle said quietly. "I thought it would feel good, getting revenge on Cyril. But… this is just pitiful. I didn't want to rip her arms off."
"It's okay, Belle. She did it to herself." Finn looked back over at Cyril before returning his attention to Belle. "And… maybe it's better to just let it go. Revenge isn't all it's cracked up to be. It won't bring you peace."
"I guess you're right." Belle took a deep breath, then dropped the detached limbs to the ground with a loud clatter. For a moment Cyril's sobs were louder, then she quieted back down.
"Let's go." Finn tilted his head towards one of the corridors out of the laboratory.
Finn, Athena, and Belle left, leaving Cyril to dangle helplessly.
O-O-O
Tyson was in his element. Almost literally.
The hail and ice swirled around him, a flurry of cold that was sustained entirely by Cream's power. The vanilluxe was safe in the middle of the storm, blasting blizzards and other ice-based attacks at anything that dared get too close. The heavy-duty cold weather gear Tyson had on was the only reason he wasn't also hurt by the freezing storm. That, and the goggles that shielded his eyes. That was the most important part.
For anyone else, visibility in the hailstorm was negligible. Too much snow and ice, blindingly white. But Tyson was used to it. Equipped for it. Attuned to it. The blizzard was his, and it couldn't hamper him unless he let it. He was nearly unstoppable.
Still, he was glad that he was on the northern edge of the battlefield. Nik and Aelius had taken up defensive positions to the south, defending Carsen and the giant abomination he had summoned. The thing reminded Tyson of old depictions of angels, right down the fact that any who saw it started to cry. Until now, Tyson was relatively certain that angels weren't real. A relic of a religion that had fallen out of favor across the world. Now he was beginning to reconsider.
But it wasn't distance from the angel that made him glad he was to the north. No, it was the enemies he had to fight. Rather than the distressingly human hybrids in the center, or the undead abominations to the south, he only had to worry about the pokémon fusions. They were stronger than the average pokémon, but not to the extent of the human hybrids. That meant his storm was more effective than it would be elsewhere.
Tyson swung a heavy duty walking stick at a pokémon hybrid that got too close. He had selected it not for its efficiency in its actual use – the thing was far too heavy for any real trek – but for its bludgeoning power. And Arceus above was it effective as a bludgeon. Tyson wasn't used to fighting personally, but he was in excellent condition from his constant trips across the mountains of Toreta. He would be able to hold his position for a while to come.
Rika emerged from the snow to swipe down a swooping pokemon hybrid. It was a combination of a swallow and some kind of grass type, which made it unfortunately susceptible to the weavile's strike. Rika landed next to Tyson, licking her claws clean before she vanished into the snow once more.
Aquilon reared his head back on Tyson's other side, letting out a low rumble that shook and froze the air in a shockwave directed towards the horde of pokémon hybrids.
And Tyson took a step back, taking a sip from his water bottle to keep hydrated as he surveyed the battlefield.
He was holding his spot very well. So well that the ace trainers had moved to other positions to shore up weak points. Mostly on the south side, where the undead army was ignoring the angelic goliath's attacks. Zane's registeel was holding the center, with Darling the lopunny and Fezzick the alakazam striking down anything that managed to slip past the indestructible titan. All in all, pretty good.
Then again, they were only about fifteen minutes in, and the hybrids just kept coming.
He wasn't quite sure how many foes there really were. They just kept coming. Tyson was relatively sure he had seen a couple of pokémon hybrids just get back up after he knocked them out. Not a good sign.
A horrific shriek from across the battlefield drew Tyson's attention south again. The undead were closing in on Carsen's angel, slowly advancing through waves of prismatic energy. The psychic giant was focusing its power on closer targets, letting hybrids across the battlefield begin moving again. Blasts of fire and lightning could do little to keep the zombies away.
And then, with a brilliant flash and a column of flashing colors rising into the sky, the giant angelic creature was gone. Vanished into whatever extraplanar rift it had emerged from.
Things got worse almost immediately.
Hybrids that had been frozen by psychic power until that point started moving again. Tyson couldn't do much more because at that moment a humanoid shape blitzed through the air towards him from the other side of the battlefield in an instant.
The insectoid hybrid hovered in the air, twitching as it stared at him. Tyson stared back, eyes wide behind his goggles. He could recognize a few of its features, those still mostly human.
"Heather?" He asked, his voice not even loud enough to reach his own ears over the storm.
The ninjask hybrid shuddered, then whipped its claws out in an almost reflexive action that intercepted a leaping strike from Rika. The weavile collapsed to the ground in an unconscious heap.
Heather – Tyson was certain it was the flying type gym leader now, given how fast she moved – dashed towards Cream in the center of the storm, slicing three times in order to down Cream in an instant. The storm faded as the vanilluxe fell to the ground, the ice beginning to melt immediately.
In an instant, Heather was gone again. That left Tyson to try and salvage his position.
Fortunately, he was prepared. A weather team with only one member that could set up the weather wasn't a very good weather team.
"Borealis, Yvonne, I need you!" Tyson released his Alolan ninetales and his beartic, and the storm restarted nearly instantly. The snowy vortex hid Yvonne the beartic from sight, allowing her to fulfil a similar role to what Rika did.
He wasn't going to stop holding this point until he ran out of Pokémon, and that was going to take a long time.