Chapter 32 - Prime

I wasn't sure if I was alive.

I wasn't sure if I was dead, either.

Nothing more than an empty canvas of white stood in place of the black vacuum that I had expected death to bring. I felt like I was floating a mile above the rocks, the fog, and the pain. It had all melted into a medley of nothingness where not even the most incoherent of thought could exist.

What came next swallowed the emptiness whole. An explosion of color ripped across my mind's eye without precedence or subtlety, cultivating into rainbows that did not seem to end at red or violet. These became the canopy of an endless forest, one that I could perceive with cognizant thought unlike the void of white prior. A forest that drew me in and promised benevolence.

Whatever was left of my being grew convinced that the sudden sensation must've been an avenue to the afterlife. Whatever part of me that was still alive was now convinced that I was entirely dead.

Time didn't exist here, yet I could still look around. A lining of distant trees contained an unmarked steppe with leaves and grass flowing in a false wind toward a single mountainous tree in the center. The earth in the lucid vision rippled and breathed a tangible breath into the monument, as if they were all roots sprouted from the trunk. Rivers of more rainbows streaked through the bark's arteries that lay exposed to the air, not losing a drop of their substance, before spiraling into the face's convergence. Spirals of light spun and encompassed my mind, this time of a green that seemed to satiate my soul. I tried to think of locations from my life to compare the tree's size to—perhaps a town or a city—but could recall none to measure.

Then the pattern on the massive tree pulsed, dispelling light that blinded eyes I no longer had. Energy took the form of wind and took to the grass and the trees. The breath they had breathed was returned to them tenfold, and ejected into me as well, wherever it was that I was observing from.

Somewhere far off, I felt another pulse. It ran unfathomable lengths of time and space to resonate with me.

As it began to oscillate with rhythm, and as the expanse separating it from myself closed in, I realized it was my own heartbeat.

Reality banished the vision at once. My senses materialized once again… yet everything I was aware of felt off. Every tingle that sparked within every nerve held a feeble desire to take control. But I couldn't move! Each of my senses were apathetic to my own will as I became a mere observer of my own bizarre metamorphosis. I knew I was alive; I had to be alive to experience such a rush of energy.

My brain struggled to process the onslaught of stimuli, yet a recollection of previous events still fought its way through. A fog obstructed most of what had happened, but the outcome of defeat was set ablaze in my mind. I was supposed to be dead, simple as that. No string of logical circumstance could explain there being anything but oblivion, let alone this annihilation that hardly allowed me to scream but one thought!

Leah.

I was given no time to ponder her fate, provided I could judge time at all. Agonizing pressure began to squeeze my scales where numbness had now departed. Every muscle and bone, every last cell suddenly shrieked as if being stretched an infinite length. Sensuality amplified beyond a trivial ache, beyond the tearing of ligaments and tendons, well past what my body should've been able to handle even in the best of health.

A new incursion of energy flowed through places within me I didn't know existed, spiking the shallows of my stretching muscles while gnawing sequentially at the bones within.

I tried to draw in air to gasp, or perhaps to call out, but discovered that the act was impossible. It wasn't impossible like trying to breathe underwater; rather, it felt like I didn't possess a mouth or lungs to breathe with at all. I wanted to struggle but discovered I had nothing to struggle with. I wanted to stand but I had nothing to stand with.

Even in this muddy state, I could tell exactly when the event horizon of my transforming biology had arrived. All at once, when the final and most violent spike of energy shook my core, and when the cloak of light was mostly lifted from my eyes to reveal myself back at Fogbound Lake, I found the capacity to move again.

"Ngh… What…?"

The act of pushing myself off the ground should've been muscle memory, yet my body seemed to realize before my mind did that these muscles no longer existed. Instead, I subconsciously utilized the slippery properties of my abdomen to raise my head and stabilize my balance, foregoing my legs entirely. By the time the outlandish way my body slid across the ground registered, I had already completed the motion without a thought.

Perplexed, I craned my neck down to investigate. My scarf was radiating a salient glow that hurt to look directly at, which might've been enough to claim my attention had what I saw below it not stolen it first. I had long grown used to observing my own reflection in a puddle or a mirror.

But now, for the first time since the day I had woken up as a Snivy, I looked at my body and saw a stranger. The same aversion from then now rose from the dead to steal the air from my lungs. I hadn't used my legs to get up because I no longer had legs.

Oh. I was no longer a Snivy.

Something beside me shifted. My eyes panned from my own body to the space beside it, where a heap of bright fur was tinted green from the luminescent combination of our scarves. Yet it was not the same heap of fur that collapsed every night into a bed meters from my own, or the same one that had covered my back for the entirety of my life. There were blatant resemblances to who I had been expecting, perhaps, but the changes were just as pronounced.

Somehow, though, my eyes weren't tricked even for a moment. Relief bubbled to the surface of my foreign tongue when I realized that Leah was already awake—alive!

She experimented with her own biological changes while her scarf provided her far more light than she needed. It didn't take her but a few seconds to stand on two legs and flex muscles unknown to her previous form and allow awe to wash over her face, which hadn't changed much unlike the rest of her body. An entirely different aura radiated from her when she balanced on two legs for the first time in her life, but even so, I could tell from her little movements that this was definitely still the same Fennekin I knew.

Her eyes panned over to me, glided along the length of my elongated tail, and finally rested parallel to my own. We stared into each other for a moment longer before she broke eye contact to glaze over the rest of my body again, as though she needed further confirmation that I was real.

Her eyes widened to reflect more of the limelight, and she gasped in a voice a few decibels deeper than normal. "S-Sage…? You look… Sage! Our scarves!"

I drew in a breath to respond, but no words dared to form. Nothing made sense anymore, so what could possibly be said with any degree of certainty? There was far too much to comprehend. I wasn't even sure how much time had passed, or if I were still capable of—

—Fighting. I immediately snapped my neck to the side and sought out the enemy. Fortunately, I would not have to look far.

My eyes sought out Volcanion and locked onto his diametric gaze a couple dozen meters across from mine. He stood firm, just as a Pokemon of legend should, but all aggression had ground to a halt. His eyes, along with the remainder of his psyche, sat rigid in the light of my scarf. Unmoving. There was no visible reverence on his part; not even a quiver of inconvenience that his prey had persevered; not even a pint of disbelief after observing something that was surely thought to be impossible. He hesitated to even twitch under the green spotlight that dispelled the fog and quadrupled my view distance.

Something swelled within me. No, perhaps I wasn't certain if I could fight like this. But as I rose to my tallest point to look down on a legendary monster, and as my vines revealed themselves to me as longer and sharper than before, the majority of my doubts were extinguished. Voltage that gathered within my biological weapons—the new and the old—electrified my scales and injected me with surreal confidence. My form change had even repaired the previous injury on my tail as though it were nothing more than a scrape—I had seen it healed, I could feel it working, and as the seconds passed I was starting to believe it all too. I felt so powerful now!

Leah felt no different, I could see it. With her own self-evaluation behind her, she abolished any implication of fear by picking up the wand she'd discarded earlier and pointing it threateningly at Volcanion. She might have exhausted its charges, but that really didn't matter: she could still channel her fire through any old piece of wood Her newfound confidence radiated with every movement as she wielded the stick without compromising her balance, courtesy of her bipedal upgrade.

She looked angry. But, even more than that, she looked hungry.

Volcanion still hadn't shifted. High on myself, I slithered a meter towards him. I didn't know what to say. A threat sounded nice in my head, but it would accomplish little, so I instead decided to start off simple.

"Explain yourself."

Each vowel rolled off my tongue with an emphasis entire novel to me. My voice was marked up to the regality of my new form, something foreign but not at all unwelcome.

The impatience that laced each word was not unlike how I truly felt though. Right now I was staring down what I believed could've brought me to this world. Played with my head! Stolen who I truly was! The pure anger—there was really no other word for it—that flowed through me was nothing like the fog's melancholy from before. This was enriched by a yearning for blood that ran almost as deeply as my yearning for answers.

"What even are you? What do you know about me?"

Silence persevered for a number of passing seconds that I didn't bother to count. I searched for movement: any sign of acknowledgement, even the smallest—ah!

Volcanion's jaw parted an inch and hung there suspended. A few seconds passed like this, and I began to think he had frozen stiff again. Even with the inhibitions that came with being tossed into a new body, I was about ready to slither forward and force the initiative myself. But before I could do so, Volcanion's jaw moved again, this time with a response behind it.

"...eVeN hERe," the voice that wasn't his hissed. When compared to the broken dissonance of before, it now sounded as though every syllable was being forced through a jarring veil of concrete. "eVeN hERe, wHeRe yOU sTanD miLeS fRoM yOUr pAtRonAgE. eVeN hERe dOeS yOUr fEeBLe aTTeMpT tO sAVe yOUrSeLvEs FiNd LigHt."

His cannons began to rise and charge themselves for release, and embers licked at the crease of his mouth as he spoke. "yOU aRe aS pErSisTeNt aS yOU aRe WoRthLeSs."

"What the hell are you talking about?!" I was screaming now, fighting a losing battle against frustration. Yet he didn't seem to hear me at all; instead, he just utilized the seconds of wasted breath to personify his animosity into a growing fireball. My collar itched where my vines lay dormant, as though they were chastising my brain for my hesitation. Had I really been expecting a verbal elaboration anyhow?

The battered gargantuan rose his neck to the sky to fully reveal the massive attack that had been loaded in his larynx, preparing for me a different kind of answer. His eyes sought me out specifically while they began to reflect the orange from his own charging flames; the eerie glimpse I caught of the demon inside sent a shiver up my spine and pledged that my freak evolution would not excuse me from this dance.

I tensed in preparation to dodge, but Leah had already bounded in front of me before I got the chance. The attack was released, but she did not budge; instead, she extended her claws toward the onslaught and let out an omnivorous cry as though she were pulling it in towards herself.

The oncoming fireball faltered in the air directly in front of the Delphox, as though it were having second thoughts. Without missing a beat, she moved her arms in a spiral above her head, and the flames obediently answered her command by splitting apart into a gyration that skimmed the earth around us in a wide circle but did not threaten us at all. Her wand traced patterns in the air, orchestrating the choir of danger to sing around us and become her domain. Finally, she briskly brought her claws downward, enticing the flames to simply disappear into nothingness. It was so smooth, made to look so effortless; only the way her mouth gaped momentarily at her own artistry betrayed that she hadn't already practiced this technique many times.

Back we found ourselves in the same standoff as before. The attack hadn't seemed to even phase Leah's stamina, and now that her moment of awe had passed, she wasted no time acting vain in the light of her display. With bared teeth and her cloaked arms extended out in sport, she mocked him: "That all you got?!"

She would regret that.

Not a grain of Volcanion's pride was bruised enough to show underneath the daggers in his eyes, nor was his rhythm broken to any noticeable degree. A pair of cyan circles permeated through what little fog remained, and the sound of liquid being pressurized into cylinders filled the air. Two broad hydro pumps followed up the fireball, angled intelligently to cover the largest target area possible.

This was of no consequence to me, as my elevated acceleration allowed me to slink between the danger without getting wet.

Leah's new form, on the other hand, was not so nimble—or perhaps it normally was, but the cone of fur that extended from her waist down caught under her foot and bottlenecked her as she tried to leap away. Right as I turned my head across to check her, she fell to a knee and only had enough time to blink before the jet of water found its mark.

I froze for a second, and only when I inhaled to scream her name did I remember to breathe. She stopped tumbling a dozen meters away from her initial position, where she lie still—just like before.

In that moment, Volcanion became little more than an ambient thought. All I felt was my heart dropping deeper into my gut than I thought it ever could before this day.

The grass whiffed underneath me as I snaked across the knotted grass as fast as I could snake, hoping to reach her side quick enough to recuperate, if not to simply make sure she was okay. But, an immediate movement in my peripherals reminded me of the threat, and I halted my dash just as another jet of water occupied the space mere inches in front of my nose, leading me to backpedal with a barely-muffled yelp.

I cast my eyes to the enemy, who had effectively re-established himself as much more than an ambient thought. At a rate alarming for his size, Volcanion trudged towards me with cannons raised and ready to fire. A frustrated grimace across his crooked face declared increasing impatience.

I started towards Leah again, but froze. Volcanion's aim was trained on the space between her and I, leading his strike in case I dared test his aim again.

With a huff of vexation, I altered my course and broke straight towards him instead. I tore across the grass in a zig-zag and surprised him at his feet. He threw a blind jab with one of his cannons, but I stopped just out of range with vivid recollections of using leaf tornado as a Snivy rushing to mind. Avoiding his strike, I whipped my tail horizontally across the space in front of him, expelling burst of wind and foliage that cut into his frame and sent him tumbling away from me.

"Damn you!" I hissed into the attack.

I wasted no time swerving in a semicircle and gliding the other direction, right over to Leah's side. My heart clutched in my chest at the sight of the Delphox's soaked fur, then leapt when she rolled over and waved off my attempts to check on the spot she'd been hit.

"I'm—ngh! I'm fine, I… can still fight," she assured me between heavy rasps. An unbidden cringe on her face personified her pain as I helped her up with a vine, and a spike of imbalance overcame her enough to lean on my collar for a moment even after she'd stood up. One paw was occupied by her wand that she'd somehow held onto, while the other hovered tenderly over her soaked ribcage. Her difficulty was now from bruises and soaked fur rather than the unfamiliarity with her own being from before, and a subsequent cringe of my own masked the immense relief that I'd have jubilantly displayed otherwise.

In sync, we both turned to face Volcanion just as his vindictive roar filled the air with his fury. He had been disoriented by my attack, but it had not appeared to hurt him much.

He began closing the distance between us again in barbarian fashion, raising his cannons just as Leah and I forked out to flank him from either side. Immediately recognizing our prior strategy, Volcanion halted in place and changed his own. At an automatic clip, he extended his cannons out in our respective directions and began firing water pulses at an automatic clip.

He was doing little more than spraying and praying and yet the strategy still thoroughly complicated my advance. I found myself locked into an unending dance to avoid being hit. Avoiding his storm with all kinds of slithers and ploys amounted to little at first, as his efforts to protect his flank and maintain distance perfectly matched mine to do the opposite.

I momentarily considered backing off and trying something different, but Leah's successful interference with his plans abruptly changed my mind. Her body might not have been built for the same speed as mine, but her aggression alone was enough to pressure his aim away from me and provide a small window.

As Volcanion turned to look for me a second too late, I had already closed the distance, snaking straight into his blind spot and uppercutting his jaw with my forehead. Stunned, he stumbled to the side and right into Leah's wand, which introduced the other side of his head to a point-blank rapture of psychic force.

Volcanion roared a barbaric roar as his skull was throttled. I withdrew my vines with intentions to expand upon his whiplash, but in his panic he managed to launch a flame burst at the ground that scattered torrents of fire in all directions. I barely slithered out of the bulk of the attack's range in time, but was not quick enough to avoid a couple of the blazing shrapnels sent my direction.

I cried out in agony. I felt a pair of piercing stings both in the general area of my tail. In an effort to circumvent a follow-up attack, I hurled a blind gust of leaves in the enemy's direction for good measure before retreating for a moment to gather my bearings.

Leah's struggle with Volcanion filled the air with strained, mutual grunts, and with the violent hurricane that fired at variance made when canceling each other out. Slithering right back into an elliptical pattern to find another angle to strike, I turned and saw she had never needed to retreat at all. Volcanion, after trying to shield another psychic attack with his forearm, attempted to bludgeon her head in by throwing haymakers with his cannons. The first, she ducked under; the second, sidestepped; during the third, which was aimed high, she found an opening and retaliated with a blast from her wand that sent him reeling.

"Just die, you prick!" she screamed.

Again Volcanion retaliated out of panic, now by wildly firing water pulses. I managed to cut down a pair of them that were in my way while I advanced to cut off his retreat, but Leah was not so successful. She spurred forward with a snarl of fury, but in her haste could not block one of the water pulses. She was her in the chest and her battle quickly turned into a yelp of pain.

I rushed the stumbling Volcanion in her stead, but something was wrong. Something had come undone inside me, leading me to freeze in place instead. My vines were now extended from my neck and poised to strike again, but they refused to shoot forward and instead simply stalled against my command. Then, guided along by an uncanny innuendo I didn't recognize nor question, I jabbed them straight into the earth below and penetrated the muddy soil. Only for a moment did the softness of the mud register before all surface sensation was cast aside in the wake of something else.

Time seemed to slow down, although I felt no sense of imminent death accompany it. Unnatural vibrations reverberated throughout my body from my vines, which had ingrained themselves deeper now and had begun to shake. I tried to draw in a large breath, but my neck had locked in place. In the blink of an eye, my body felt a mile away again. The divide between my scales and the surrounding world seemed to disappear as I became vividly aware of every root and sediment on the mountain. It was as though my two vines had multiplied into twenty, or perhaps thirty, all bristling to be unsheathed.

So, in what felt like the most natural of motions, I unsheathed them.

In an instant, the level stretch of land between Volcanion and I no longer existed. The earth split and cracked and sputtered in several places, introducing the air to chunks of discharged sediment and the bedlam of granite screeching against granite. In the midst of the chaos, Volcanion scrambled to his feet in recovery from my previous attack only to stumble once more from this new one. It was then that I realized it wasn't my vines that were shaking, but the ground itself.

No sooner had it all started before the product of this destruction penetrated the air: a spiked, olive-colored root twice as thick as my own diameter and extending infinitely as long. The violent outburst destroyed the landscaping within ten meters of its entrance and cast out an earth-shattering screech as it fought to squeeze out further—

Oh, and another! Another root of astronomical proportions crashed above the surface right next to Volcanion, bewitching him a small retreat to avoid the equally-astronomical thorns lining its stalk. But another vine identical to the first two would cut him off, penetrating the air to fortify a wide triangle of skyscrapers. With his angle of escape stripped from him, Volcanion hesitated to make any further movements.

The eruption was so sudden and tempestuous that it took a passing moment of awe to realize that I was not another part of the audience. I was the director of the chaos.

Volcanion spent less time questioning it than I did, and his grunt of expanding frustration reminded me that there was still a fight to be won. A jet of his white-hot fire had already collided with one of the sky-scraping plants by the time they ascended as far as they would go, serving as a follow-up reminder that was just as painful as it was effective. One of my vines—my real vines—spasmed for a moment at the influx of mild heat despite there being no flames in my general area.

Pain. Excruciating pain that I had not expected from my position a safe distance away. The sensation of burning cells was vague and distant but still not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. The impulse to draw back became irresistible, yet conceding to it surprisingly did not lead me to move from my spot rooted in the ground. Instead, my reaction translated to something elsewhere: the huge vine targeted by the attack completed the motion for me by shifting sharply to the side and out harm's way.

As one might swat frantically at a pest landing on their shoulder, I blindly swatted downward at the lingering burn. Just as the victimized vine had, the other two acted on this intuition and cut down on a flat-footed Volcanion, who tried and failed to stop their descent with a pair of hydro pumps that glanced off uselessly.

The crash that followed rattled my eardrums even from the distance I observed from. Each and every individual thorn tingled as they pierced his flesh, jarring my spine as though I were biting into him with my own teeth. He was crushed under the weight of the spikes, and a desperate vertical struggle commenced when he tried to push back with as much vigor as his weakened legs would allow.

Volcanion bellowed out now in his broken voice, this time in palpable agony. But I could only dig in further, push down harder. Crack bones, cut flesh.

Swinging the injured vine into the mess only took a moment and was a done deed in the same instant I thought it into existence. For the third time I felt the satisfying sensation of his defenses failing.

My breathing had already grown heavy from strain, but it could not overpower my prerogative to incapacitate him to the fullest extent I could. The image arose of Leah and I in our prior forms, broken and dying, and then dead but suddenly alive again. The thought was fuel: now I coiled the massive vines around the bastard, gripping him like a lifeline. He would have no allies to hold close, no air to breathe!

With one instinctual command, the vines rose from the ground. Volcanion rose with them, for they had coiled around him far too tightly for him to slip away. As the ascent commenced, I caught various glimpses through the greenery of what the enormous thistles had already done. One of his cannons hung on with half the flesh it had before, and anything that wasn't already crimson had been glossed with blood.

His struggles amplified vigorously upon leaving the ground. He tried breathing fire and forcing the vines apart, but could not even gather oxygen to sufficiently breathe from how tightly I squeezed. I continued to test the limits of my extrinsic powers by gradually lifting him higher and higher, and before long his flails of distress had slowed to a dejected halt once he had risen a good twenty meters in the air.

It was there that I halted the ascent. Now he was finally immobilized to where I could look him over properly, or at least the parts of him that were visible through the ample coils.

"Give me answers you… you demonic fire hydrant!" With every breath a chore, I was forced to shout between them. "Tell me what's going on!"

His eyes peered through an opening among the thorns and thistles, boring right into mine. My mental release on his prison loosened up just enough to allow him enough air to breathe, yet even when I did, and even when he heaved out a tiny, raw mouthful of thistles that had found their way past his jagged lips, he showed no initiative to answer.

I tried to put on a fierce face, a look that I couldn't even properly visualize given how new my evolution was. I tried to look intimidating with my shoulder-vines still stuck in the turf and my underbelly turned brown from the mud.

"Tell me!" I echoed. "Why am I a Pokemon?! Why are you doing this?!" A desolate voice crack betrayed my attempt at intimidation. "Just leave us alone!"

To the wind my screams flew. They did not echo, for there remained hardly any of the fog from before to them them back. Only silence, only unbearable and deafening silence hung once my pleas had been punctuated. It was a stalemate; I was so desperate to spot the slightest stir from him, just the smallest hint that he'd even heard me, that I had to remind myself to breathe.

Our stares remained locked, but something was off. All of his malice was directed through irises that focused on nothing in particular: a blind stare. A breath caught in my throat. Our gazes had surely aligned, but I realized he wasn't really looking at me at all. The dead stare, the broken voice, the withered shell that had lost its crimson gleam—this was the same body that had confronted Leah and I only days prior, but was no longer wielded by the same host.

Leah entered my peripheral vision. In my trance, I had temporarily forgotten about her; fortunately she didn't seem to notice, nor did she spend more than a fraction of a second gaping at the triad of forestry I had apparently just created. She took careful steps in Volcanion's direction, eventually stopping at my right side a few meters away. She had already extended the end of her wand upwards, the bark on the end sparking. Now, if he tried anything, he would have to worry about more than just strangulation.

On my other side, even further back in my peripherals, were the now-distinguishable forms of Team Carbon, who I had also forgotten about. They had entered the clearing at some point, all-too-likely drawn by the lively commotion through the dying fog. Mincinno approached first, taking the same slow and steady steps Leah had taken. Only he, along with Vulpix and Helioptile who mimicked his steps, seemed to heed us the same wary berth that they gave Volcanion in his imprisonment.

"What in the—" Mincinno blinked a few times and glanced at Volcanion, craning his neck further up than he probably needed as though dumbfounded he had to crane his neck up at all. For the time being, I broke my gaze upwards to catch his eyes traced back to where his teammates had been staring: directly at Leah and I.

Vulpix took a tentative step forward. "...Sage? Leah? Is that… you?"

She had barely moved before Mincinno had asserted himself a step in front of her. He held his arm out slightly, cautiously, to prevent her from moving closer. His eyes exclaimed distrust.

Leah saw this and, with her wand still trained in Volcanion's direction, held out her other claw to pacify him. "R-Relax, it really is us!"

The Delphox's mouth hung open for a moment to elaborate on what had happened, but it became clear that she was hardly more enlightened on the subject than anyone else. She and I shared a knowing glance—as in, we both equally knew nothing about what had happened.

Mincinno stared back up at where Volcanion was coiled up, and gawked. "Uh-huh… since when did you evolve and learn frenzy plant, Sage?"

"Just… keep a fair distance," I warned, my throat raw from prior yelling. "The controls on these things are iffy."

An unprecedented screech from above cut me off, and right on cue my new sixth sense spiked. Volcanion had begun to spontaneously struggle amongst his constricts in an apparent attempt to dislodge himself, grunting and sputtering and generating dissonance. Everyone froze and stared for two long seconds in amazement that he was still fighting back, Mincinno's team especially, given this was the first time they'd ever seen him move. Anger boiled up in my ragged throat at the sound of that hated voice; whatever was controlling this legendary Pokemon had gone absolutely insane. It must not have been be used to losing.

Leah tensed up and flinched a bit at the terrible noises, but would not fire a shot unless she was certain she wouldn't hit my vegetation in the process. The grip I held was so tight that she would only need to do so if I dropped him. I grit my teeth; if he was coming down, it would be because I slammed him down myself.

Through his furious clamor, I screamed up at him. "I'll squeeze what we need out of you if I have to!"

And I would do just that: I squeezed harder, curling the vines with intentions to press the biggest of the spikes lining the tendril into his shell. Using the ends of the skyscrapers like digits, I turned them clockwise and strained them as far and as hard as I could get them to go. It was wringing out a wet rag to get out the last of its fluids—the last of his blood, his energy.

Not a single square inch of my body felt as light as it should've, like each of my scales had been replaced with iron plates. Color flew from my vision and simply keeping my eyes open became an obstacle. He was not the only one losing energy; I had to wrap this up, fast.

Fighting back the burning strain, I tensed the tips of each tendril and let up just a bit in my grasp. Carrying him while struggling proved far more taxing than just holding him up, and already an unbearable cramp had begun to form around my collar where my real vines penetrated down into the earth.

"I can't hold him up forever…!" I shot Mincinno's team a strained look and wheezed. "Gah—Get back, I-I'm gonna throw him down!"

Something flashed from within the coils. I didn't catch what it was at first, but the second flash of black was far more pronounced as it seeped out in a gaseous state. His whole body seemed to emit an inky substance that levitated like a gas but roamed unaffected by the wind as it leaked out. The ebony cloud grew into a body of ink until it almost created another layer of coils around my own. It sputtered and bubbled against any feeble attempts of mine to get it off, and continued to grow to higher concentrations while showing no signs of losing its stick.

"Yo, what the hell is that stuff?" Helioptile blurted.

Even if I could've provided an answer, the only sound I could muster was a strained grunt underneath the immense strain that I found myself under just trying to hold my vines firm.

The gas above swirled and seemed to compact itself into the shackles that held in Volcanion, who was no longer visible beneath the cloud that had formed. A mighty, tectonic crack! filled the air, followed by crackling and crinkling and the earsplitting screech of chalk grinding against granite. It was unclear to all of us what was causing such discord, for there were no eruptions from the earth to lay claim to the sound. Thunder without lightning.

What had become clear, on the other hand, was that I was no longer in control. Leah, who had taken my advice and retreated a few steps, shot careful blasts of fire near the shadowy substance, missing most in her efforts to not hit me but applying whatever pressure she could. Mincinno and Vulpix and Helioptile, with less understanding about the plants' mechanics and therefore less care for hitting them through the substance, fired aurora beams and shock waves at will. They all disappeared into the black cloud without any indication of success.

Fighting to throw him down, I yanked Volcanion to the side; suddenly, it became far more difficult to hold him up as most of my leverage was lost. Keeping him in my grasp had simply become too difficult to bear, and after another earsplitting crack from within the gas cloud surrounding the top, I knew I had to let go.

Now driven to panic, I attempted to abandon him entirely by tossing him away, intending that gravity would decide his fate…

…But nothing happened. He was not released from the frenzy plant. There was no response. Not from the roots underground, nor the tendrils above, nor the thorns lining them. Nothing. Like the severed limbs of an amputee laid out in front of them, they could be seen, but could not be moved.

"Sage!" Leah only stood a dozen meters away, but she had to call out over the unnatural noise above to be heard. But I couldn't respond to her, mainly because I couldn't breathe. "Look! It's about t—Sage!" Her voice struck a desolate chord in the same moment that I realized something was very wrong.

The cloud of darkness slowly, finally dissipated, revealing the coils just as they had been before. Only, instead of the lush dark-green color I expected to see, they had now assumed the unmistakable color of stone.

I yanked my shoulder-vines out of the dirt so fast that I strained one of them in the act. I immediately began to check them frantically to ensure Volcanion hadn't affected my actual body with his stone sorcery, before an explosive sound above drew my eyes back to him almost immediately. Volcanion—what was left of him—shattered the remains of his once-organic confinement and leapt down amongst a rainfall of cascading pebbles and shards.

One of his cannons hung limply off the side of his body, with only strings of flesh keeping it attached. But neither this nor the holes and indentations in his body that made him appear an entirely different shape would stop him from raising the other cannon and staring me down.

Before either of us could make a move, Leah had already sent a pair of fireballs in his direction. Volcanion made no effort to dodge, and his stance did not stagger an inch when they pounded into his shell. Instead, he continued to look me over. Scrutinizing me. Almost like he was looking for something.

A painful, awkward silence filled the air. For once, I could hear the distant roar of the lake's heart beating against the night sky.

"sO yOU'vE fOrGoTTen oUr sTruGgLe?" the voice creaked. Regardless of how dead Volcanion looked and how weak he must've been, the voice did not change pitch at all. "hOw cONvEniEnT. hOw… aPprOpRiAtE. yOUr dEfiCiEnCiEs aRe tHE rOoTs oF yOUr TriBuLaTiOns aNd sHaLL bE tHe rEaSoN wHy yOU fAiL to CiRcUmvEnT tHiS wOrLd's FaTe."

He took a half-step forward and flexed his one good cannon, as though he felt he could still appear intimidating in the state he was in. I tried to return his stare, but my fierce look from before was gone. Now, it felt like iron weights had been tied to my eyelids and my chin.

"Oi!" Mincinno interrupted. "Why don't you tell us why you're turning Pokemon to stone, you supernatural asshat!"

Volcanion simply ignored him. His fierce gaze remained fastened with mine that I struggled to hold. "tHe eND iS aLrEAdy iN mOTion. MoRe aNd MoRe pOkEmOn WiLL FaLL VicTim tO tHeiR iMpErfEcTiOns, aNd yOU WiLL bE pOweRLeSs tO—"

"I'd appreciate if you answered my compatriot's question."

A breath caught in my throat at the new voice, but was quickly released once sweet recognition kicked in. I turned my head to confirm: there, having approached from behind, stood Ampharos and Mawile.

For the first time since escaping frenzy plant, Volcanion shifting his glare away from me. Turning his neck a few degrees, he scowled as best he could with his gnarled jaw.

"Hello," Ampharos began with a neutral expression. "Judging by your sickly voice and state of being, I'm assuming you are the entity who met these five on the Water Continent. Is that right?"

He stood tall and poised with his arms crossed behind his back and his chin level with the ground. His face did not shift from indifference as he spoke. Even so, nobody missed the undertone of disgust that had manifested in his voice.

Volcanion shifted his one good cannon back to his side while his gaze remained forward and rigid. "SiLeNCe, sMidGen. i aM aMonG eVeRy cOnTinEnT aNd WiThiN eVeRy bEinG."

The demon's eyes sought me out again, continuing before Ampharos could conjure a response. "aNd yOU, fOrGeTfuL vOicE oF hUmAns. LAy dOWn yOUr aRmaMeNtS aNd sUBmiT tO tHe iNeViTabLe, oR yOU WiLL eXpeRieNcE mOrE FrUiTLeSs pAiN tHaN yOU cAn pOsSibLy iMaGiNe."

He craned his neck up to the aftermath of the frenzy plant. The three gray tendrils stood permanently erect and inanimate, interwoven and blown apart near the top, thorns turned to precipices. Even the blood that had previously stained sections of the plant had turned to solid.

"tHe iMmOrTaL LeAvEs aRoUnd yOUr mOrTaL nECkS WiLL nOt bE eNOuGh, fOr tHeY dO nOt cHanGe wHo yOU tRuLy aRe. tHEy, tOo, sHaLL pEriSh iN tHe EnD."

He took a trivial step backwards and extended his cannon once more. More black gas materialized out of thin air, creating a perfectly-spherical ball of animated darkness that rested at the end of the appendage and caused every fiber in my body to tense up. I tried to call upon the previous premonition of briars and brambles once more, praying that I could produce some more wizardry before anyone got killed. It was clear I would not be quick enough.

Volcanion arced the cannon high above him, but instead of taking aim forward, he angled it downward in a semicircle to point at the top of his head. Before anyone could object or rush forward, the monster uttered one final scourge.

"mAy NiGhtMaREs pLaGuE yOUr FeEbLe MiNds."

Ampharos's paw shot up. "No, wait—!"

The cannon fired. Black gas consumed Volcanion's entire body almost instantly, swirling and festering in a torrent that coerced everyone to fall back several steps from the ear-piercing sound of mineralizing flesh.

I flinched back. The shrieking, metallic sound alone was unbearable enough to make me squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth. It was even worse than before.

Finally, when it was over, I looked up. Volcanion was now nothing more than a statue.

What I saw was exactly what I'd been expecting to see, yet it still did not immediately register that the danger had departed. A leaden breath exited my lungs, and then another, cultivating a rhythm. I hadn't realized how erratically my heart had been beating until it had begun descending toward equilibrium.

Ampharos gripped both paws on the back of his head, then let them drop down to his sides where they sagged. "...Oh," he sighed in disappointment. "I… I'm not sure I caught all of that, but it seems our culprit is and at the same time isn't our defendant here."

I barely heard him. My vision became spotty and unclear; his words were condensed, like he was speaking to me underwater. He must've noticed something was wrong with me, because his gaze immediately grew concerned once he looked back at everyone. The worry outlining his features could just barely be ciphered through the long tunnel I was looking at him through.

I tried to acknowledge him, but dizziness impeded any pursuit of speech. For a brief moment I feared I had been turned to stone somehow, but a sudden, familiar explosion of green before the blackness testified otherwise.

Everything disappeared. All five senses, all coherent thought—all of it vanished. For a moment or longer I was floating above the timeline.

When it finally ended, it was like waking up from a slumber I'd never meant to fall into. I was groggy, and moving anything didn't even feel possible. Even my organs felt out of order, as though they were someone else's.

Voices breached the far reaches of my cognizance after the eternity passed. My senses all returned in a fashion much more uniform than how they'd departed: all in the same instant.

I looked around with blurry eyes. I noticed the yellow feet of Ampharos, and upon raising my neck a bit, saw the matching purple scarves of Team Carbon and caught a glint off of Mawile's glasses. I blinked some of the blur away and looked again: wide eyes and open jaws from all of them. Judging by everyone's general positions were similar to before and how Ampharos was still in motion as he knelt down by my side, I could've only been out for a second or two.

I tried to raise my head further off the ground in an attempt to resume a snake-like pose. The attempt—feeble, at best—got me nowhere, for the proportions were all wrong. I raised a hand to my forehead and cringed at the spots still filling my vision, then froze as my tiny fingers caressed the scales there. There was nothing wrong with the feeling of the scales; rather, a breath caught in my throat that I could touch the bridge of my nose at all.

I rolled onto my back and let my eyes fly down and around my body. It was all there: arms, center-mass… legs! My legs! it was all so different, yet all so familiar. It now made perfect sense why I was being gawked at by everyone. I wanted to laugh the moment it occurred to me because of how obvious it was. I was a Snivy again.

Mawile removed her spectacles, rubbed the lenses with her knuckle, and settled them back on the between her ears in disbelief. Mincinno let his jaw hand halfway open, while Helioptile contorted his mouth into a broad oval.

Vulpix stared forward, failing to force down a chuckle. "What… d-did you both just lose evolutions?"

Both?

With impetus propelled by her question, I rolled over so my nose hit the dirt in the direction Leah had been standing. She was laying on her side right in the same spot I expected to see her. Her underbelly had picked up some clumps of mud with her fall, for she no longer had a dress enveloping her lower body.

Her Fennekin eyes sought out mine just as I sought out hers. Her Fennekin ears twitched. A distinctly Leah-like smile broke across her face.

"Damn," I snorted, smiling as I fingered the cloth around my neck. "Just imagine if we'd had these things in Nectar Meadows."

Leah and I regarded each other for a moment longer, both of us trading mutual stares. Then, in a blissful reciprocation of solace and relief, we both simultaneously lost ourselves to hysterics. Leah doubled over on her back in laughter, then back onto her side, struggling the balance breathing with giggling. I didn't find it any less funny than she did, and laughed more than a sane person probably would—at my own remark, no less.

It didn't matter one bit. We were alive! Just like I'd told Leah by the lake, we were gonna live! After all of that—the fear, the pain, hearing that turbulent voice again—I still couldn't believe it. Even if laughter was just a way for us to bury our nightmares, even if there was a tsunami of things to process, even if we didn't catch the criminal, we were alive.

The five surrounding us lacked context for the joke, but they joined along in our laughter anyhow, albeit in slightly-awkward fashion. Leah, so as to not be rude, turned to head to Vulpix and swallowed the bulk of her levity.

"I… I think we did?" She ran her paws across the curvature her face to ensure it was all as it should be. She lightly pulled at her whiskers, frisked the fur along her ears and shuffled her tail, not at all caring about the mud or the grime. Her paws halted their investigation upon reaching her scarf, where they would remain.

Vulpix extended me a paw that I took with my own. I wobbled a bit as she pulled me up, but found my balance as I always had. My legs worked just fine, just as they had before. I glanced back at my tail; it was stiff as a board and covered in dirt, but the flagrant burns had disappeared. The scarf had, upon changing me back, healed the worst of my wounds.

Leah turned to speak to me, but the floppy ears of Helioptile replaced her in my field of vision. He affectionately slapped the back of my head in what I could only assume was a warm-hearted gesture.

"My guy! You've got some mad hacks or somethin'!" he exclaimed without pausing to breathe.

With no indication of slowing down, he bounded over to one of the mineralized vines and compared his body's proportions to one of the lower spikes. He glanced back with eyes somehow wider than before; the spike was easily just as large as he was. "You think you could teach me how to whip up some of these?"

"I doubt Sage even knows how he did that," Vulpix cut in, rolling her eyes. "What makes you think you could pull this off?"

Their bickering quickly became ambient noise as Mincinno approached. A paw was cupped underneath his chin and his eyes were locked onto the green around my neck, exploring the simplistic striped pattern like a mystery dungeon.

"So…" he began. "I'm assuming you weren't aware these bloody scarves were capable of—" He turned to gape at the mess the fight had created. "—all that?"

I shook my head. My jaw had begun to ache from laughing earlier, so I popped it and acknowledged his question in a candid tone. "No, we had no idea. None at all."

Mawile briefly left Ampharos to investigate Volcanion's remains on his own so she could probe Leah and I. She strode over and took Leah's scarf into her paw while it was still around her neck, staring at it for a few prolonged seconds. Then she did the same for mine.

"These are clearly more than just personal knick-knacks," the researcher commented. The dry, scholarly tone her voice usually carried was eclipsed partially by astonishment. "They could have limitless historical and practical value. I-I absolutely must study them."

"For real!" Helioptile exclaimed, hopping in the middle of the conversation once more. He regarded me with an urgent expression. "Where can I cop one for myself?"

I looked to Leah, who shuffled her front feet. "I… I've had both scarves since I was a baby," she clarified. "So, um… I don't think you can just go out and buy one."

"Alright," Ampharos called from beside Volcanion's statue, cutting off the paparazzi. One arm was crossed around his chest, while his other elbow rested on it to where his paw cupped his chin to create an introspective pose. "I believe I've got it."

Mawile's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Somewhat, yes. But also… well, not really." With a hard frown, the chief ambled over to us before elaborating. "Indeed, Volcanion here possessed the capabilities to turn Pokemon—or any organic matter—to stone. We saw this firsthand."

He began to pace around. "But… we can assume from that display that we have not caught our criminal, for our criminal might not be catchable through empirical means." After pausing to think for a moment, he continued. "Was that discordial voice we just heard the same one you five reported of roughly three weeks ago?"

"Without question," Mincinno answered immediately.

"So then our pursuit is still on," Mawile mused with narrowed eyes. "We aren't under duress from some average criminal here. Something bigger is at play."

"Then we shall continue Project Chisel!" Ampharos declared, striking a pose. He resumed his regular stature quicker than usual once he caught a glimpse of the midnight moon, however, and elaborated, "—tomorrow. We'll get on it tomorrow. Tonight we shall head down to the pines below and set up camp. It isn't healthy to be frolicking at this hour."

"True enough," Mawile replied, producing an escape orb. She handed it to Ampharos with one paw while she pulled out her gadget with the other. "I'll phone the other society members and tell them where to meet us. Hopefully they didn't get too lost in the fog…"

With one final blow, the last metal stake for the tent was pounded firmly into the dirt.

I stood up and stretched my tender limbs. Despite the escape orb saving our group what would've been a hellish hike down, I was still beyond tired—both physically and mentally. Beyond sluggish. Beyond anchored. Beyond any exertion I'd ever put myself through. No orb or other such commodity could change this axiom of my being at this point in time. It was the middle of the night and I was sore. I couldn't think straight, nor could I recall many instances in which the prospect of sleep was so appealing.

The rest of the Society's tents were scattered around with no particular rhyme or reason to their arrangement. We likely would not have to worry about ferals, for we had made it out of the forest's inner depths to a clearing where the vague indentations of campsites had once existed here, all of them lost to time. Fortunately, it hadn't taken us very long to round everyone up here since most of the Society members had taken a side path that led in a loop around the forest rather than where Fogbound Lake was nestled in the middle. Also fortunately: no other group had any significant run-ins with the demon.

Good, I thought. The last thing we needed was to lose someone because we were spread so thin.

I pushed aside the hanging leather and ducked through the opening. Right away it was impossible to ignore how cramped the space was; the foldable cone-shaped tents Buizel and Bunnelby were assigned to bring necessitated a size limit in order to be feasibly hauled from continent to continent.

Things didn't get any less cramped with Leah taking up nearly an entire side. Her tail alone took up a quarter of the tent. She had pitched her blanket already and sat on her haunches facing away from me, fiddling with one of her wands while nibbling noisily on a tiny piece of bark she'd picked off of it.

She noticed my entrance once I haphazardly tossed my shoulder bag in the middle of our space. She tossed her stick on top the bag and, with visible lethargy, pushed herself up.

"Oh, hey." She looked at me with tired eyes.

I forced down a yawn and gave her a sideways nod. "Hey."

Facing me, she raised her haunches and copiously stretched her forelegs, releasing an unsophisticated feminine grunt. "Ngh… I think I could sleep for a full week after all that."

"You and I both," I sighed. "I'm too tired to even think."

My vines had stiffened up to such a degree that they objected any attempt to move them with an unbearable ache. So, I reached down into my bag with my arms instead to grab the unexceptional sheet that would serve as my blanket. It wasn't a particularly soft garment in my hands, but I already knew it would feel like heaven the moment I collapsed.

Before I could lay down for good, however, something even softer stopped me. Leah trod over and, in a spontaneous act, threw her front paws over my shoulders and squeezed. I almost questioned the nature of her surprise hug, but the warmth that erupted across my body quickly stifled such thoughts. I did what I could to sustain her embrace even though I couldn't return it with much force given the length of my arms and the ache in my vines. For a fleeting moment, everything I carried melted away. She was so soft—softer than the crust and grime lodged between scales and under fur—softer even than the scarf she'd given me.

When she finally let go after some amount of time, I braced sore shoulders for the playful slug she would inevitably deliver. But it never came. Instead, she stepped back, looked me in the eyes, exhaled deeply, and said, "I'm glad you're not dead."

I smiled innocently. "I'm glad I'm not dead too."

Then she slugged me in the shoulder. The Fennekin narrowed her eyelids to keep amusement out of her irises, but ultimately failed to keep it off of the rest of her face.

"Well, looks like your brain didn't get completely fried after all." She turned her nose up and fell back onto her blanket for presumably the final time. "What a shame."

After blowing out the small torch that Leah had lit outside, I crawled over to where I'd pitched my own blanket and collapsed, wrapping it around me. Some of the warmth from Leah's prolonged hug still lingered, easily warding away the nighttime chill that I had previously chalked up to a nuisance.

Finally, I would get the sleep I needed. Tomorrow I would have to reassess this whole stone situation, that much was certain. But for now, when there was nothing but pitch darkness and warmth all around, I would relish in every second I was allowed to lay down my head undisturbed. Bliss.

It was not long before Leah's heavy voice intercepted me somewhere between reality and dreamland.

"Hm?" I mumbled incoherently. I hadn't quite heard what she said.

"I…" she whispered more clearly this time. "I miss Serene Village."

Now that woke me up. If the position I was in wasn't so perfect, I'd have undoubtedly sat up upon hearing that in order to alleviate the contorted feeling that formed in my gut. I considered her words for a moment. Surely we both missed our old home; she'd told me this before on the Air Continent after all. This was a constant sentiment would probably never change for either of us.

"...So do I," I replied into the darkness. Hoping to prevent the conversation from spiraling further into despondency, I prospectively added, "But hey, we're living the dream, right?"

Leah scoffed loud enough to confirm that my optimistic efforts would fall short. "This isn't what I imagined it would be like."

With a deep exhale, I inquired, "What do you mean?"

"Sage, what I mean is that we literally died up there." Her sharp whisper was amplified by the total darkness around us. "We didn't have a chance in that fight, we…" She paused and huffed. "We shouldn't have even come here in the first place."

With a huff of my own, I propped my head up. "I guess I can't disagree with you there. This was all a bad idea, I know." Even though I was only whispering, I did what I could to project my concern. "Leah, are you feeling okay?"

"Don't get me wrong, it's still surreal working for the Society." Fidgeting like she couldn't find a comfortable position, she rolled over and sighed deeply. "I just… I didn't expect to be this afraid of dying. I've always wanted to grow up and come into my own, and now I'm starting to realize it's harder than I thought it was."

I could tell she was struggling to get the words out, so I remained silent during her confession. Never before had I heard her sound so vulnerable, which wrenched my heart further.

"I'm sorry I keep telling you this. I don't mean to sound like a broken record," Leah mumbled. "It's just… the real reason I miss Serene Village is because it was so... so easy. Back then, everything was just a game. I never had to worry this much about…"

She hesitated to continue. The silence that followed had its own weight, permeating the air in our tent and making the circumferential humidity a lot more harder to ignore.

"About what?" I breathed.

"About… you know, losing you, I guess." Leah fumbled her words, making her even harder to understand given the conversation's paltry volume. Regardless, I heard exactly what she said.

I inhaled to speak, but my throat was choked up. I tried to rack my brain for the right thing to say, for some formula that would alleviate Leah's inhibitions. But words wouldn't do it. Regardless of existential circumstances, we were adults now. We had adult problems and adult friends and adult capabilities. This wasn't Serene Village anymore. This was the world.

I swallowed and gathered the impetus to speak.

"I told you we were gonna live, didn't I?" I whispered. "Well… I meant it. I don't want either of us die either, and I'm—" I paused to think for a moment. Choosing my words was vital. "I'm… afraid too. I'm afraid that someone I care about is going to get killed by that demon."

I continued in an even deeper whisper. "So, that's why we have to stop it. We have to stop it so that we can live without this stupid fear. I…" My heart felt heavy in my chest, and every syllable felt despondent. I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. "I can't… I'm not gonna be able to figure this out without you, Leah."

"I know…" she sighed, alleviating some of the fear in my gut. Perhaps I'd said something helpful after all.

Several seconds of silence passed before Leah followed up with what sounded like forced amusement. "I know. I just… I needed to get that off my chest because I can't process everything that's happened today and I'm really scared and I'm not as strong as I thought I was. And… i-it's all pretty dumb. Sorry."

"Don't be," I interjected. "We need to communicate like this so we can understand each other." Then, in another offhanded attempt to lighten the mood, I slyly added, "...however hard to understand you may be sometimes."

What sounded like a scowl, a sigh, and a giggle sounded past her heavy heart in a single noise. She reached over to grab her branch so she could jovially swing at me across the small gap separating us in the darkness.

"Same can be said for you, my fellow delinquent," she retorted.

A chuckle of my own tried to escape my throat, but it was muffled by an even bulkier yawn. I was already teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

"Fair enough, twig-eater," I whispered to some coherent degree. "Let's get some sleep already."

With a final sigh to lift the remaining weight off of her chest, Leah turned back over and settled down for good. "Mm… By the way," she yawned. "You looked pretty slick as a Suh—Serp…" She paused.

"Serperior," I finished for her.

"Good thing you paid attention in anatomy class," she hummed. "That's one thing about Serene Village I don't miss."

Her final whispers hung in the air and faded. My mind pulled towards the waking realm where there was plenty to process and mull over, but my body was pulling me the opposite direction and winning the struggle with ease. These thoughts of mine would not out-prioritize sleep any more than they already had, that much was certain. Circumstances aside, we had dueled a legendary Pokemon.

We deserved this period of rest. Every second of it.

The lull of Leah's stable breathing was all that I could hear. Each exhale looped in a timeless span before everything was cast into dreamlike insignificance.