Sorting paperwork had a strangely calming quality to it.. It wasn't particularly hard - just extremely tedious, and when you didn't have the documents that you needed, it was frustrating. Eventually, though, that sort of anger faded away.
Of course, Culus had gone through Undeath. That was the worst torture imaginable, and pieces of paper had nothing on the raw pain.
With days and days of practice with sorting and filing, Culus was getting better at filling it out. Thankfully, there was more to the job, however - Angira didn't seem to want to waste him by only having him perform simple tasks. For starters, every hour she would give him an 'emergency leadership exercise'.
...
"Culus!" Angira barked. "The distribution of Shadow Workers in Gelpia has increased tenfold. Five members of Key are well-known in the community, all independent of each other. What are your standing orders? You have five minutes at most."
Culus bit his lip. The first time Angira had sprung this sort of question on him, he tried 'gaming' the response by telling the agents to flee as soon as possible. That was a 'Key' sort of decision.
It had also revealed the agents, the Shadow Workers stopping them before they could leave. Telling them all to leave simultaneously had aroused suspicion in the guards, who were on watch for suspicious characters by the Shadow Workers. A solid failure.
The real solution, then, would be to get them out while not drawing their attention, because being among Shadow Workers and getting close to them was a recipe for accidental secret sharing, which worked both ways. Because Key's secrecy was infinitely more important than Chain's, interactions had to be avoided when possible, only having them when victory was assured. In Angira's words, 'A single loss and information leak can lead to Shadow Workers being implanted among us - and the failure of Key as a whole. Every mission is a roll of the dice with Key's fate.'.
"We use other agents to create excuses," he said after a second. "Have one of the agents currently not on active duty appear outside Gelpia's walls, sending a missive for one of them. Have another member of Key of the same egg group claim a family emergency and drag them out. Light a house on fire and spread Vulpix fur at the scene of the crime to draw their attention while getting the rest out."
Angira raised her eyebrows at the last one. "Far too conspicuous."
"It doesn't have to be Vulpix fur. It could be Cyndaquil fur, Torchic feathers, or shards of a Corkoal. If the number of Fire-types in one area is too high, the chance of an accidental fire rises dramatically - a stray ember on the wrong house sends the whole thing ablaze. You don't need a suspect either, because it's natural to run away from something like that."
"And if they try to run forensics on the fur?"
"We just use the remains of a Fire-type in the area, and maybe have a psychic plant a false memory if we can. It gets convoluted at that point, though, and they'll probably just stop there. Psychic memory readings make poor evidence, right?"
"... weak, but you didn't need to justify it that much," Angira said at last. "It could have just been a nasty prank from a belligerent Fire-type who left no evidence. An act of pure malice - arson. By itself, it doesn't point to us."
"... and…"
Angira snorted. "You could have also gotten a teleporter to go in - or just have the agents ignore the Shadow Workers while you came up with a more feasible plan. The influx of Shadow Workers suggests that they're outsourcing manpower, not kidnapping Pokemon for more. There was time to escape and restrategize."
"... ugh…" Culus wanted to bang his head against the wall. "Wasn't it an emergency?"
"It could have been, had an agent decided to continue their usual haunts and listening into Shadow Worker activity they shouldn't. You need to give the right orders as soon as you can. Not all emergencies need drastic action, just quick action." She paused. "But your drastic actions weren't half-bad. They wouldn't raise too many red flags, and with it, we could easily set up a different presence in Gelpia more suited to those we could directly identify as Shadow Workers."
"So?"
"A pass, Culus. Though it could have gone better, good work."
...
The stress of those emergencies never really abated, but Culus was finding himself more adept at dealing with them. You just had to sort of keep your head calm and make passive actions over active ones.
There was no virtue in being impatient; decisiveness didn't need immediate action. As a leader, you had to take an opportunity by its horns, but when you couldn't ever afford a strong loss, retreating when it got too rough was the best course of action.
It was taking a while, but Culus was getting the hang of it. Of course, he could never imagine himself in that situation, but ordering others to retreat? Well, he'd done it with Kapun and Rowan once before, in the fight against Kenki. It was common sense for you not to pick a losing battle where losing meant losing everything. Not unless you had any other choice, anyway.
The 'emergency leadership exercises' could be sprung on him at any point in time, but it happened especially often when Culus was getting lost in paperwork or training. Essentially, when he wasn't paying attention, where he was expecting it the least.
Other than that, he was given tips on managing large groups of people. Oh, leading a small squad was relatively easy - simply build rapport with your teammates and make yourself into a trustworthy figure, one that listened to everyone's opinion and treated them fairly, yet harshly if the time came for it. Culus already had the hang of that sort of thing.
No, Angira was giving him tips on managing logistics. Food, water, medical supplies, psychological evaluations, etc. The worst part of being a member of Key, interestingly, was that you couldn't get paid, since that sort of thing was easily traceable by bureaucratic systems that had their shit together (which was Chain in a nutshell, really).
Instead, food and water were managed by auxiliary helpers and merchants - who Kair switched to being after an unfortunate accident involving family, or something to that regard. Sanitation and food preservation was another difficulty, though one Ekib had devised several solutions for.
Ekib had been an incredible windfall for Key, with his technical know-how giving them the capability to expand bases.
It was a nightmare to comb through it all, and his appreciation for Angira grew by the day. Looking at the files for what other agents have to do let him understand that what they were doing was difficult, but as a leader, it was on him to make it so that they could do their job with as much ease as possible.
They had to move around agents based on capabilities - Fire-types and Rock-types, for instance, did poorly in marshlands, while Grass-types fared awfully near regions of the world that had magma spilling out. Flying types did well on the peaks of mountainous regions, but that was a fact that could rarely be used since not many settlements were formed on the tops of mountains, as it was hard to transport materials for living there for normal people.
In addition to types, there was the matter of power capabilities to consider. Any Pokemon that could learn teleportation essentially had to, even the ones that weren't psychics. Teleportation took care of transportation logistics extremely well, although it did tire out the teleporter quickly if used without breaks on large loads. Empaths and telepaths were always in high demand, which made psychics like the Hattena and Drowzee line valuable. Precognitives were useful as well, but their future sight was infinitely more unreliable than other abilities.
Other types had their own useful abilities, too, of course. A ghost's ability to phase through walls, levitation and flight, the use of aura by the select few numbers of Riolu and Lucario - everything had to be considered when assigning and reassigning members of Key to positions.
There was still more he could do, though - Angira had started allotting time in her schedule to learn how to Stifle and resist Stifling. She had delayed learning how to do so before, and in her words, 'every tool is a useful tool'.
Unfortunately, she wasn't having too much luck with it. She was learning far slower than everyone else had, even Sable (who only half-tried, in Culus's personal opinion). It wasn't due to a lack of effort, since she spent all of her free time trying to stifle - and it was only somewhat futile. She was able to push down on him, forcing him to try to resist… a little bit. But it wasn't enough to stop him - if he tried, actually tried, he'd break out. He didn't have to try too hard, but it was enough to remind him of pushing weights around.
Meanwhile, Angira could move a little while under his Stifling, but only one limb at a time, and moving more than, say, a meter would be ridiculously strenuous. She could do it, but she tired very, very quickly.
...
"... fifteen! Five more!" Angira shouted. They had more or less finished work for today. Angira had said, "You handle the work after training, and I'll supervise you to make sure you don't mess anything up," before she began to practice her resistance to Stifling.
Her idea of how to do that? Have Culus stifle while she did push-ups. Five sets of twenty, and she was currently on her fifth set.
"Sixteen! Four more!" Angira's muscles buckled, and dust and sweat fell from her brow as she grit her teeth, before pushing off the ground once more. Culus's expression, meanwhile, was a more passive and placid one as he studied Angira.
It was interesting to see the similarities between Angira and Brylle. They were both determined individuals, with a strong sense of discipline and authority - except that Brylle was far more neurotic about it, while Angira didn't leave much mincing for the words.
"Seventeen! Three more!" Angira's claws dug into the ground, raking large furrows into the stone. "Culus, Stifle harder!"
Culus obeyed, pressing his will on the Stifling and intensifying it. Strangely, the increased pressure didn't seem to change much about Angira's performance - though her teeth began to grind harder and louder, her arms didn't buckle any more than before. If anything, they were stabilizing.
"Eighteen! Two more!" Culus could almost see Angira's eyes bulging as she pushed harder and harder. Briefly, Culus considered just letting go a little bit, to make it easier on her. But then, she wanted this, so it was what she was going to get.
"Nineteen! Last one!" Slowly, Angira lowered herself to the ground once more, and now her arms were buckling. Her form was weakening, growing lopsided. Culus, once again, considered letting go. The instant he considered it, Angira shot him with a look, a look that said. 'Try it. Try it, and I'll make you remember the pain for a thousand years.' Culus, wisely, didn't let go.
And then, her arms shifted, and slowly, ever so slowly, she pushed herself back to the proper position. "Twenty!"
Culus immediately let go, and Angira, likewise, collapsed. However, she had, for the smallest of split seconds, adopted a wide grin on her face.
Before Culus could take a second look to confirm whether what he saw was real, or just a figment of his imagination, Angira got up, her face as normal as it ever was. There were after-effects of the Stifling, but Angira recovered remarkably quickly from those as well.
"So, Culus," she started. "Go take a break."
Culus looked at her oddly. "Shouldn't I be telling you that?"
She waved her hand dismissively. "I can handle the paperwork easily. I don't have the energy left to manage you at the same time, though, so until I do, do whatever you want. Just don't bother anyone while you do so, and we'll be fine. You sent your first mission out earlier today anyway, you've done enough."
"Of course, ma'am." Culus watched silently as Angira awkwardly lumbered away, her gait having become slightly odd. He hoped she hadn't messed up her muscles through sheer stubbornness - but then, she could go to Pandora for help with that, so it probably wouldn't result in anything too bad.
Now that he had a bit of free time, Culus wondered exactly what to do with it. Free time was a thing he was getting more and more of, but his hobbies had decayed heavily. If he ever had hobbies, that was - he didn't exactly know what sort of person he had been before Chain got their hands on him, but he could only hoooooooooo-
...
"... you traitor… our people!"
...
Culus winced, his eyes tearing up. That was… ugh. He had the oddest idea that he was missing something - it was a feeling he was getting a lot recently - but every time he tried to put his finger on it, it slipped away from him, out of his control.
Was it another facet of the Collar's control of him? Was it manipulating his psychology because of his allegiances? Because of his ideals?
Even if it did, he decided, he'd keep himself on the straightish and narrowish - he was a criminal, unfortunately, so he couldn't commit as he wanted to, but he'd at least be able to keep himself away from Chain. That was the hope, anyway.
To push himself away from the awful headache, he decided to visit one of the other people in HQ. It wasn't too busy, it never was since all the competent agents were off at their base, dealing with their own bosses. The only reason this base could be considered an HQ was because of the important figures that stayed here, along with the large portion of recruits.
Which… was just him right now, since everyone else was on missions right now. The only other people here were probably Ekib and Pandora, and he didn't particularly want to see Pandora. Oh, she was a nice enough lady, but he'd only really need to see her if he had an injury or needed an emergency dream training session.
"Hm… maybe it's time to go see Ekib," he decided. If nothing else, he could stay quiet and watch. Maybe, just maybe, he'd get some ideas on how to remove the Collar. A long shot, longer than Helios' chances of ever being 'cool', but still just as possible.
He walked through the halls, halls that he had become rather accustomed to now. He still remembered how Sable had shown him through the first time, and the resulting conversation he accidentally overheard. How it had rankled him, brushing against his fur in the most painful of ways.
He had been able to see Angira's point, though. The things he had done were so, incredibly, stupid. But then, that was hopefully in the past. The less time he thought about his mistakes, the better because it just depressed him, and he was going to make sure that he didn't make those same mistakes again anyway.
As he walked, still relatively far from the lab, he heard a strange whirring sound. He frowned, before perking up his ears to listen more closely - and then he realized something else. It wasn't just a whirring sound - there was the sound of glass.
A small bit of worry gripped his heart - what was happening? - before he smothered it and walked toward the source of the sound. His curiosity had long since been piqued.
Gingerly opening the door, he found Ekib, along with what looked like the frame of a Collar and pieces of glass. The glass seemed to be covered in soot and was smoking a bit, while the Collar's edges were twisted and bent in strange ways. Ekib was growling, his hand curled into a tight fist with sparks jumping off of it.
"Sir?"
Ekib turned around. Anger, hatred - for a split second, Culus's fight-or-flight response activated, setting him into a fighting stance. The neck was too thick for a clean kill, the heart is covered by dense layers of muscle and fur, but maybe the eyes-
"Culus?"
Culus blinked as Ekib's posture relaxed. It looked a little forced, but even that was fading away as well. What was… oh.
"Sorry, I just got a little wound up. Day's work, you know?" Culus chuckled a little awkwardly. Why did he…
Ekib didn't say anything for a few seconds, then cracked a smile. "Yeah, well, that happens sometimes." Ekib rotated his arms, and that whirring sound reappeared. "I think that's enough experimentation for a while. Do you want me to show you what I've been working on?" Culus nodded. "Then let's go."
Ekib walked out of the door, giving Culus a full view of the room. It looked like a lab, although a bit smaller than Ekib's. Did he really have a mini second lab?
And what he was doing…
"What were you trying to do with that thing back there?"
Ekib's smile slipped away. "Trying to build a Collar. It hasn't been going well." Culus winced. "Right now, it's only a side project, so don't twist your fur over it. Once we find Cognes Research Facility, it'll go smoother."
Culus could have probably asked something else - 'What if we don't find Cognes quickly enough?' but threw a lid on the question before he could say it and sour Ekib's mood any further. He had plenty else to think about anyway.
That brief episode, back in the little lab - he had been planning to kill Ekib, hadn't he? Even now, he was on edge - the bottom of his foot was unprotected, and a Bite would hamper Ekib's ability to fight back immensely.
Culus shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thoughts. He had thought he had a handle on that - he had managed to contain himself against Kenki, more or less, and in every battle after that, he had been in complete control. It had been so long since he went berserk against Midos and… that Toxicroak lieutenant of Kenki's. Docker, was it?
He couldn't even remember the Toxicroak's name, and yet he could still distinctly remember the savage battle he had against him. He'd just met Kapun, too, back when he had all of that hate, stress, and grief bundled up in him. He had fought with the intent to maim, to kill. His most recent battle, the one against Helios, couldn't compare.
Maybe it was the fact that he was alone now, or relatively so. Against Kenki, he couldn't go murder-psycho, since Rowan and Kapun were there at the beginning and end. Against Helios, Slate, Selene, and Eve on the boat, he'd had to deal with both a doubly-amputated limb alongside Rowan and Kapun's presence. Since then, he'd done his absolute best to keep himself in check. He'd never been pushed hard enough to go straight for the kill until Ekib's raw frustration brought it out again.
Culus clenched his fangs, and his golden eyes sparked a little. It had been so long since the Collar had done anything explicit to mess with his mind that he had, more or less, forgotten that it could override his will and beliefs entirely.
That damn Zoroark had robbed him of the chance to ever be a normal person. The biggest reason he was with Key was that they had the likeliest shot of freeing him from the Collar's control. With the Collar on, the Zoroark could say a magic phrase and leave him utterly incapacitated . Had he been free, he still would have helped Key (after slitting that Zoroark's throat).
'Master', indeed.
"Come on in," Ekib said, opening the door. Culus banished the thought of the Zoroark from his mind as far as possible. He didn't even know the Zoroark's name, so what chance did he have of enacting his revenge, much less inside the confines of the base?
The inside of Ekib's lab was empty compared to when he had first seen it. The tissues of Epsilon Fusions, the ring broadcasters, the tissue gel, everything had been shelved. All that remained were pieces of furniture and some vials of what looked to be blood.
"What happened to everything?" Culus asked. "The communication rings, the Epsilon Fusions…?"
"I've developed four prototype rings, and the team at Nucifera needs them for something. Other than that, I've only had time for the project for detecting Shadow Workers using Slate's tissues," Ekib said. "So, to make time, I put the other projects to the side. My sub-lab upstairs was my attempt at a break."
Culus walked around to the vials, the only things left. They were constantly held up to a light source strong enough to shine through them. Inside, Culus was able to see small particles. "So what are those vials of blood?"
"My first, and only, breakthrough." Ekib frowned while sitting down in a large chair. "Though I tried analyzing gene sequences, it was only until I looked into Slate's blood that I found my answer. This unique particulate substance was suspended in Slate's blood. I filtered it out, and sure enough, it was a material that I've never worked with before. One that wouldn't appear in a normal diet."
Culus raised an eyebrow. "Really?" For the longest time, he thought that Slate's ability was his respective talent, a part of his Aspect. But then, if he was unable to Stifle, it probably wasn't his talent. Slate was just impossibly untalented, and the detection ability came from something else. "What does it do?"
"If I could answer that, everything else would be simple," Ekib muttered. "I thought that I was making progress before. But after I showed my progress to Angira and Pandora, my progress stuttered to a halt. I've been working at this for what feels like years - even if it has only been a month or so."
Culus raised an eyebrow. "Can't you just… I don't know, pull it apart and look at its internal composition?"
"I don't have enough of the material to pull something like that off," was Ekib's terse reply. "The particulate is decomposing fast, so fast that I'll need to take another sample from Slate. Even then, I don't know what to do with it, and I only have a claw's worth of the substance."
Culus hummed. "I think I can help with one of those problems," he said.
Ekib turned to him, raising an eyebrow. "I don't know what you're…" His eyes widened, before sparkling. "I can't believe I forgot!" Ekib rushed around to open his desk drawers before pulling out a small container. Inside was a tinier box, which contained the strange filings suspended in Slate's blood. "You don't need to know what it is that you're creating, right?"
"Knowing the chemical composition makes it easier, but my first ever creation was a mirror that I had no idea how I created. It'll be possible," Culus said, before pulling on his talent. His skill with it was a bit rustier than he'd like - for the most part, he'd been training the power behind his Aspects using his Stifling. His talent was far too draining on that power to be used instead.
Concentrating on the filings, he tried to make another box appear next to them. Push… push… push…
Then, as if his legs vanished out from under him, he collapsed. Ekib grabbed him as he nearly toppled to the floor. "What happened?" Ekib asked urgently. "Did you manage?!"
"I… uh, I think?" Culus said feeling that nightmarish hunger rise once more. He looked at the box and saw a pathetically small pile of strange filings next to the box. "Yeah, there it is."
Ekib turned around to look at the filings, and Culus saw his eyes gleam. "Perfect," he murmured. "Thank you, Culus." Ekib then grabbed an empty box nearby. "How many more times can you do that?"
"I… uh… not today," Culus said, getting up slowly so that he didn't fall over. He then took a second to correct himself. "Well, I might in a few hours if I get something to eat. The power scales off of stamina for everyone. For me in particular, it's hunger."
"And for others?"
Culus shrugged.
Ekib looked at him contemplatively before turning back to the filings. "That can be played around with later," Ekib said. "With another source of the filings, I can be a bit riskier with what I do with these."
An idea came to him. "Try charging them with electricity," he advised. "If you haven't done that yet."
Ekib looked at him oddly. "Charging them with electricity? Are you looking to find some sort of magnetic reaction?"
"No - it's just that they're infinitely more complex than they'd look, and the varied materials are somewhat exotic. Both of those things drain into my ability to make things."
Ekib looked interested. "So you've tested the mechanics of your power, then?"
"More or less." Rowan's power was incredibly vague with what it meant, Helios's power just seemed to be an all-around upgrade to his body, Brylle's power was… something about locating failure? Whatever that meant. And Sable's power… it was the ability to slow time? She didn't seem to like using it, for whatever reason. "It's limited by size, complexity, and the number and strangeness of the materials. Knowing the exact composition helps but it's intensive nonetheless."
Ekib rubbed his chin, his eyes gleaming in interest and his body wires sparking somewhat randomly. "Fascinating… you can make anything?"
Culus paused. "I think? I've been able to make body parts, metal and purely biological, and I could probably make food if I wanted to. Although, it would be inefficient and counter-productive in an emergency."
"Really," Ekib said. "You built body parts?"
Culus sat down and lifted his forepaws. "Made with my power, 100%, and they work just as well as my old ones." Culus couldn't imagine how fast he would have died without his ability to create things. Aside from Kapun and Rowan's help, it had been the only thing that had allowed him to stay ahead of Kenki.
Actually, no, earlier than that. His ability to create single-handedly gave him hope to escape Ascendance Palace, back at the start. It had been with him since the beginning and had always been the most useful tool in his toolbox.
He then blinked, as an idea came to him. He didn't know what he couldn't create, since the only thing that had increased was the cost. If so, then could he make one?
"Do you have anything to eat?" Culus asked, a little antsy.
Ekib had turned to study the filings Culus had created. "Two left and three up from the bottom-right cabinet. Take as many as you need."
"Thanks." Culus turned to Ekib's cabinets, tucked away in the corner of the room. Navigating to and opening the drawer, he found a collection of dried berries and some glass bottles of water.
It took a bit of finagling with the cap (stupid Electivires and their opposable thumbs), but he managed to open the bottle of water. Throwing down the berries and the water, he found his energy quickly return to him. A little more than before. Perfect, since he was about to drain himself bone dry.
"Hey, Ekib?" Culus asked.
"Not now, Culus!" Ekib was poking at the new pile of filings with a charged claw - and the filings were reacting to it, lighting up and moving around in ways that didn't look like magnetism or any other natural force. "Your hunch was right! These particles can work independently, and they absorb electricity like it's nothing! They seem to be some sort of very very small machinery!"
"Ekib?"
"I must thank you, Culus. Your insight has-"
"EKIB!"
Ekib turned to him. "Yes, my friend?"
"Catch me when I fall."
Ekib knit his brow - and then paled, as a thrum of energy pulsed into the air. "Culus? CULUS?!"
...
When he woke up, Culus had to spend several minutes trying to push his crusty eyes apart. He belatedly recognized that, maybe, he should have gotten a second opinion when trying to do that…
… Nah. He'd always bounce back.
"Culus," a svelte yet harsh voice said from next to him. "I have to admit, I had begun to think that you had a rein on your impulsive ideas."
Culus couldn't turn his head, but he could easily recognize that voice. "Sorry, Lady Pandora. I thought-"
"Wrong. You didn't think."
"I thought," he repeated, plowing through her interjection. "That by making my creation as small as possible, it wouldn't kill me. And I was right."
"You didn't think," Pandora said. "Because even though you claim to have considered the risks, you thought that the risks were acceptable. They were not."
"Nanab, Iapapa, whatever," Culus dismissed. "What happened after I fell unconscious?"
"You don't deserve to know-"
"I'm going to find out anyway, so you might as well tell me. I know what I did, I just want to know if it was successful."
"Lady Angira specifically-"
Culus prepared his acting skills. Drooping his cheeks a little, he made a sad, pouting face. He probably didn't have Charm, but he underlaid a small Growl into the little whimper he made as he did so. A 'cute but sad kitty' face, if you would. "P-Please?"
"I'm not an absolute - Culus." Culus kept up the 'look'. "... you know what, fine. If Angira asks me why you know, I'll tell her you threatened to drop thermite on me while I slept."
"Deal." There was no way in hell he'd let Angira know anyway. "And thanks for the idea."
"Good lord Arceus, help me," Pandora muttered. "The attempt at creation was a success. Ekib, once he was assured of your safety, started analyzing it. It's composed of the same materials within Slate's blood, and the gem isn't within any of his databases."
So he did create a Collar. He hadn't tried it before but had wondered if he could. "Really?"
Pandora held up one of her fingers. "A Collar small enough to wrap around my finger snugly, but a Collar nonetheless. We haven't tried it on a Pokemon obviously, but this will give Ekib many, many strides in his path toward creating a counteragent to the Collar."
She then paused. "While Angira would like to let you know that what you did was foolhardy in the extreme, she would also like to, privately, thank you. She plans to spread the news among the bases to boost morale. Many of our agents are losing focus and hope since progress is essentially nonexistent. Now that it exists, many agents will likely train harder. Now, they will believe that Chain can fall within their lifespan. Now, the goal has come closer in sight."
"And that's why it was worth it," Culus concluded.
"Don't flatter yourself with an illusion, Culus," Pandora bit out. "If you had failed, it would have been incredibly counterproductive and destructive to our morale."
"We would have never gotten here without risk," Culus countered. Perhaps he was a little emboldened by his apparent success, but right now, he was in the right. "If I never used my ability like this, then Angira and her predecessors would have always wondered 'What if we tried this when we had the chance?'. Now, I've taken the responsibility for that choice on myself."
"Silver tongue indeed," Pandora muttered. "Regardless of the consequences, the idea was foolhardy. You are an asset to Key, one who, despite your flaws, is useful and valuable." She then grinned. "That being said, you are staying here for the next few days. Angira will give you paperwork to handle, but other than that, you will stay in bed."
Culus blanched a little. "But her Stifling practice-"
"She's had a modest breakthrough with that," Pandora interjected. "Though it's weak she can produce a modest Stifle. You aren't strictly necessary anymore, though your presence will be greatly appreciated when you return." She brought out a bowl of mushed berries and other substances. "So eat up."
Culus winced but opened his mouth as Pandora brought a spoon near it. Chewing on the flavorless mush, he felt like gagging but pushed it down his throat. Then his head began to spin.
"What… what did you…"
"Medicinal herbs, the essence of Spore, and other soporifics. You awoke far too early for me to be comfortable, and you still need to regain more energy. Rest, child - I have other, more important patients to attend to." She tilted her head to the side, and Culus's eyes slid over to see an Eevee unconscious on a nearby bed along with a random Elgyem.
"Who… how?"
"The work of your friends. Ask them when you wake up - in the meantime, eat up."
Culus was too tired and hungry to argue, ask a question, or fight against her. Sighing a little, he sat back in the bedpan and let her feed him, spoon by spoon, as he began to nod off.
No matter what anyone said, he wouldn't be dissuaded if a strategy put him on the line. He, in the end, wasn't important. Until he returned to normal, his Collar gone, he would be different in the worst ways possible, and fixing his life was more important than preserving it.
After all, it was just like Angira had said. He was…
… just a…
… tool.
...
"Sir, sir!" He turned to see Phlair, his childhood friend and current vice-general. It must be imperative news if he was coming here personally, instead of sending a messenger. "The Venitex are retreating! They've come up short against the line you created!"
Oh, thank heavens. Culus smiled. "Excellent work, Phlair." Off in the distance, out of one of the windows of the castle, he saw the Venitex armies move, in formation away from the lines of battle. "Yet, keep an eye on them. Don't seek to replicate the battle of Gurdin - we can't allow our guards to fall, in case that their retreat is a feint."
"Of course, sir." Phlair nodded. "I'll send messengers to maintain the vigil right away."
"Excellent," Culus said. Then, just as Phlair went to leave for the armies, he continued. "And one more thing, Phlair: let the food stores open a bit wider than normal today. Give each soldier… say, an extra half of the usual portion. And break out the spices, would you?"
Phlair paused, turning around. Then he smiled. "You're too generous, my Prince."
"Hardly. Get the bards out, under protection, to rekindle their spirits and morale. The deluge of rain and hail recently can't have left even the stoutest of soldiers in the best of moods. Make it so that they aren't as fattened and drowsy as a Snorlax, so feed them grain instead of heavy meats. If the Venitex are enacting a trick, make sure that they are capable of fighting."
Phlair's smile just widened a little. "Must I repeat myself?"
"If it wastes time, then kindly abstain."
"Ah, of course. Then, my Prince - or should I say, your Majesty? - shall I send some mead as well?"
"Dulled wits spell doom, moreso on a night like this."
"They'd greatly appreciate it. It would raise morale, as you said."
"If this was for the sole purpose of raising morale, I'd throw my armies a feast. No, this is simply a gift for their hard work. Mead is too much - simple ale will do for now."
"As you say, my Prince. Shall I send some mead for you?"
"No, I'd like Chesto tea, as the night waxes."
"Very well." Phlair left, leaving Culus alone in the halls. As the rain poured outside, he decided that his private study would be the best place to relax. He'd meet with the twin vice-generals, his cousins Streak and Stream, in a few short hours, and he'd need his stamina high for that.
A few scant minutes later, he stared out of the window of his castle at the retreating Venitex armies. Benedict was hardly a master strategist, but this was a perplexing maneuver. Had Benedict proven to be a coward prior, Culus would have dismissed the retreat as another failed attempt at striking at Eonia. Their alliance was encroaching quickly on the Venitex homeland, and Culus felt that they were getting desperate enough for rash maneuvers.
And yet, the Venitex hadn't been in a weak position during the invasion. They'd held fast and strong, of course, but he had estimated that with the number of provisions they had, they were readying for a siege - and he'd planned accordingly. This seemed to be a waste, and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why.
He sighed, desperately wishing for that Chesto tea. Life had become dreadfully stressful since the passing of his father. It was a simple illness, the annual pox, but it had been particularly devastating this time around. Not only his father, but Phlair had fallen ill. Only one had recovered.
He had been promoted from vice general to general - and technically, from Crown Prince to King, but the coronation wouldn't be held until a more opportune time - since the passing, but it was no consolation whatsoever. Already, Father's political enemies were meeting in secret - a fact his spies found out, which left him in very little confidence.
What would he think of Culus's handling of the position? Would he consider it deft and wise, or cowardly? The thoughts didn't keep him up at night, but he usually found himself beholden to the memory of his father.
It didn't matter, in the end. He'd handle whatever Benedict threw at him, and toss it back laughing. He was Prince Culus of Eonia - that was just what he did.
"Your Majesty?" A maid asked, bringing in a platter of tea, cakes, and sugar cubes. "General Phlair asked me to bring this to you."
"Come," was all he said. Wordlessly, the maid placed the tea on his table. Once she left, he took a large swig of the tea, feeling rather melancholic. Perhaps it was the rain, perhaps it was the memories, or maybe it was just the coming conflicts. He was having a harder time than usual telling the three apart.
After that, things fell into a lull for a short while. The tea slowly grew colder, though Culus hasted not in drinking it. His father didn't raise him to spit at what was on his plate, only sniff disdainfully at it. Wasting food early would lead to poor decision-making as a future king.
"Culus?" Phlair's voice asked from the door. "May I come in?"
Culus didn't bother to turn his head. "Of course." He heard the soft sound of footsteps, so different from Phlair's usual stomping - was he finally learning his manners? The small scratching sound of a chair soon came afterward, and a smile slowly formed on his lips as Phlair dragged a chair to sit next to him. "I'm afraid we won't have much time to speak casually, Phlair. The meeting is beckoning."
"Then it's a fine thing that I'd like the conversation to be short." Culus looked over at his side and saw Phlair sitting down on it. He'd never shown to be a fan of the rain, and yet now he was looking out the window as if it held the universe's mysteries. "First of all, did you like the tea I sent you?"
Culus sipped the tea, almost finishing it. "A bit spicier than I'd like," he admitted. "It doesn't quite taste like Chesto." He then took a breath and felt how slow it was. "Didn't I tell you to steep Chesto?"
"Sorry, I misheard it as Cheri." Phlair turned to him, offering an impish grin. "You've had a bit too much Chesto tea recently, and it would have ruined your sleep."
"Perhaps," he admitted. "But the coming meeting is important. I need to maintain my energy, and a ruined night of sleep would pale in comparison."
"Then you could have rescheduled. Do you want your position to fall yet again? To Princess Pixye?"
"Pixye would handle the kingdom well."
The two of them stared at each other.
Then Phlair broke out in giggle, and Culus smiled awkwardly. "Perhaps I speak too rashly right now. I must truly be tired if I considered Pixye capable of holding the mantle."
"Maybe," Phlair admitted. "All the more reason you should take a rest."
Culus had to admit, the idea sounded tempting. The stress had been strong, and he felt his eyes drooping already. He'd needed that Chesto tea, it seemed. "Call a messenger. I'll have to meet with my cousins tomorrow."
"I'll do so in a short while. There's no rush, is there?"
"No," Culus admitted, a small grin on his face. Let those two wait. "There isn't."
The two of them shared a companionable silence. Culus swirled the rest of his tea in the cup as he delved into old memories. "Phlair," he began. "You've been a wonderful friend."
"But of course." Phlair pawed at his shoulder playfully, punching it almost. "Only the best."
"Is there anything I can do to repay you?" Culus asked at last. It was Phlair's duty to help him and protect him, of course, but good deeds reserved good rewards. "Something material, maybe?"
Phlair shrugged. "Nothing in particular. My new charm looks particularly stylish." The charm, a silvery collar with an embedded gemstone, peeked through Phlair's ruff. "Maybe a small lot of conquered land from the Venitex, when we get around to it?"
"Sure thing," Culus agreed. "Though, I have to say that I think that collar of yours is particularly gaudy. I still think you should get something better."
"This charm saved my life," Phlair said, frowning a little. Culus couldn't argue with that - Phlair had been wasting away from the pox when he suddenly got the collar. One of the nurses said that a mysterious Greninja snuck into the illness ward and placed it around Phlair's neck. When they returned to Phlair after the Greninja escaped, they found that Phlair wouldn't let them take it off his neck.
His mind was undisturbed, as they soon found out - rather, the collar gave him a strong burst of energy, enough to supercharge his immune system. It tapered off eventually, but it allowed him to fight off the pox. Ever since then, he'd been like normal - though, he refused to take off the collar, saying that it was good luck and that the Greninja must have been a guardian mythical in disguise, or something like that.
"You should let us analyze it," Culus rebuked softly.
Phlair shook his head. "And risk it losing its magic? No way."
"The pox has passed."
"And once another one comes? What then?"
"Then we have many more charms to protect people with."
Phlair frowned, then nodded his head. "Perhaps," he admitted. "Still, until your inventors figure out a way to analyze this charm, I'm not taking it off."
"Fair enough," Culus admitted, swirling the tea around in his cup. Eventually, he decided that enough was enough. He finished off the tea, leaving nothing but red and green dregs in the cup.
Green?
"You should go to bed," Phlair said, skulking off the chair onto the ground. Lightning struck outside, brightening the room for a split second - and in that split second, Culus saw an odd expression on his friend's face. "It's been a long, long day for you."
Culus wanted to agree - he had, only a few minutes ago. Something stayed his tongue, though, and when his mouth opened, it said something else. "What else did you put into the cup, Phlair?"
Phlair shrugged. "Well, you needed your rest, so I made sure that some soporifics were sprinkled into the tea as well. Mostly spores, and some Sleep Powder as well."
"I - I would have gone to sleep anyway…" But then Culus truly cast his mind back to before the tea. He hadn't noticed or acknowledged his tiredness before the tea. "Would I have?"
Phlair said nothing, only smiling. Culus felt the oddest sense of foreboding.
"It's high time I met my cousins," he said. "It was reckless of me to decide to cancel the-"
With dulled reflexes, he could only barely see the attack coming. It wasn't enough to stop it, though, and he fell to the ground as Phlair pinned him in a position where he couldn't move.
"You should really go to sleep," Phlair whispered, none of his usual jovialness in his serpentine tongue. "But then, it's only a matter of time."
Culus struggled to keep his eyes open. He must have ingested some of those Spores directly - now, his body was working against him as much as Phlair was. "Why have you…"
He then noticed the collar glow slightly, in the dim light, and he paled. He understood what had been poisoning his friend's mind. "Since then?" he whispered.
"Since then," he agreed. "I had so many opportunities to kill you - but then, it wouldn't serve them."
"Serve who?" Phlair just grinned maliciously - and everything else fell into place. "Benedict… that demon…"
"He has another collar with your name on it." Culus's vision was dimming, and he could only see Phlair now. "I can't wait for you to join me… my Prince. We'll be tools together… forever." The last thing that Culus saw before the forced sleep took him, was the glimmer of the gemstone in the collar.
And that was the final time that Culus was a free man.
Rowan should have first noticed that something was wrong by the time they returned from their little spy portion of the mission. Even though they were in a place where Helios could speak freely, his power's personality no longer threatening to reveal all of Key's secrets, he was strangely tight-lipped.
Rowan had figured that he had made some sort of mistake. It was a very Helios thing to do, to fuck up. But he also figured that here and now wasn't the best time and place to antagonize Helios. Raga had dragged him off, at one point, to make sure that he wasn't too cruel to the guy.
It only made him want to be more of an asshole, but he also recognized what Raga had meant. There was a time and place to be an asshole, and he had to have at least some basis of common ground between him and Helios for something resembling teamwork to rest on.
So, although Helios was acting really weird, Rowan decided that he wasn't going to push the issue.
The talk on the way to the base was short and clipped between the two of them. Thilia chatted excitedly about all the baking she did on the way there - she also found a disappearance, lucky someone managed to salvage something from this mission.
When they arrived, they found the base loud with speech.
"Aren't I supposed to be here for a reason?" Slate asked, eyes blazing. Rowan turned to look at Helios, who just looked bemused. "Why am I even on this team if I'm just going to do nothing but train, train, train?!"
"Slate, please," Media said, her voice almost begging. "We know that it's frustrating, but-"
"But I'm just wasting resources at this point! I've made no progress whatsoever, for the past month! You guys have made more progress than me! Raga can stifle now, even if it's weak."
Helios whistled appreciatively. Raga turned to them. "Helios, can you please convince your friend that we're acting in his best interests?"
Instead of doing that, Helios grinned. "Slate, are you jealous?"
Slate's eyes widened. "What? I - what?!"
"Don't deny it," Helios continued, side-eyeing him. "You're jealous 'cause we went on a mission and you've had to stay here today doing nothing!"
"I - exactly!" Slate sputtered. "I mean - no, I…" Slate clutched at his scales. "If I'm not here to help, and training doesn't work, what am I even here for?"
Skell scoffed. "You're here to train until you're good enough to help out on missions - and if you get caught in our Stifling, you're dead weight."
"I mean, you could just carry him," Thilia mentioned.
Raga turned to look at her. "Sorry?"
"I mean, Slate's heavy, but he's not that heavy. If Skell were to carry him, he could do his job of finding Shadow Worker, right?"
"Me, carry him?" Skell asked incredulously. "I thought with psychic powers came increased intelligence."
Media hit Skell on the back of his head with a leaf. "Don't talk about her like that!" she admonished. "And she's right, you can carry him."
"I thought you were against him going on the mission," Skell countered.
"I was, but only because Slate would be in danger. If he's on your back, he won't have to worry about Stifling."
"But what if - what if I get into a fight!?" Skell countered.
"Then you Stifle and win."
"And if people look at us funny?"
"Slate riding you would hardly be the weirdest thing, would it?"
Skell looked between everyone, then at Rowan. "Come on," he whispered.
Rowan shrugged. "Usually, I'd agree with you, but right now, my head hurts from trying to pretend to learn medicine while doing my mission."
"... fuck." Skell sighed. "But it's not like he's going to accompany us on our scouting later tonight, right?"
"..."
"Right?!"
...
Helios had said that he was going to go and take a nap and that working in the fields was a giant pain in the ass. Considering how he, Rowan, and Thilia were the only people left in the base after the other four inhabitants went for a preliminary scouting mission, there was no opposition.
Rowan tried to relax, but after a couple of minutes, he found that his eyes were fluttering a bit. The day had taken a lot out of him, and he decided that Helios was right about some things. He didn't even take a minute to get comfortable before flopping onto his bed and getting comfortable, instantly falling into a light doze.
A while later, though, there was a small thump and a 'whoosh' of air around him. Rowan's ears pricked, and he opened his eyes - all while keeping an illusion of him sleeping wrapped around his body.
Helios had gotten up - he had said he'd take a nap to relax after complaining about how sore he was for an hour. Now, he was looking around in panic, his soul reading paranoia and caution, before firing off a small Sitfling - to break Rowan's illusion, maybe?
Instead of confronting him, then and there (irritation warred with interest - what the hell was Helios doing?), he simply closed his eyes, as though he never woke up in the first place, before letting the Stifle press him down. Helios took a breath of relief, before letting off the Stifling and creaking the door open.
What the fuck…
Just as Helios closed the door behind him, Rowan cast another illusion, this one of a closed door. He crept out, making himself invisible, and followed Helios.
Then Helios, heading up the stairs to the fake base above, broke into a run. He was running away from the base. Was he deserting them?!
He headed back inside and ran into the kitchen. "Thilia, did you feel Helios just now?" he asked.
Thilia, who was in the middle of stuffing her face with something she made yesterday, paused with a full mouth. "Whuh?" she asked.
"Helios just left the base!" Rowan hissed. "Was he - was he controlled or something?" Because the alternative was him actively betraying them, which he didn't particularly like.
Thilia swallowed. "Let's go after him." She wiped her mouth, before running (waddling, as Hatenna did) across the base.
Noting Thilia's difficulty, Rowan decided to make it easier on the both of them, and just picked her up. Oh, she was just as big as he was, which made it insanely hard, but even then, Rowan could keep up a good pace with her on his back. He was a little refreshed, too, after his little nap.
Running out of the base and sniffing the air, he found a whiff of Helios's scent quickly. Making sure that Thilia was secured tightly on his back, he loped through the dirty streets of the Moat. It was a little harder to parse Helios's scent from the others while moving, but soon, he got closer, and Helios's smell grew… smellier.
"Can you feel him?!" Rowan asked out loud.
"Not yet," Thilia said. "But I - I feel him!"
Rowan ran a little faster and found Helios waiting by the gates to the Citadel. "Helios!"
Helios whipped around his face growing pale. "R-Rowan? Thilia?! Why are you-"
"What are you goddamn fucking doing?!" Rowan shouted. "We're supposed to stay inside the base!"
"I - had something to attend to…" Helios said, not meeting their eyes. "I'll be back soon - definitely before everyone else returns. Don't worry, I'll be-"
"What. Are. You. Doing?" Rowan repeated, raking the dirt with his claws. Thilia hopped off of him, which made standing easier, but Rowan couldn't pay too much attention to that. "You don't have any business to attend to!"
Thilia's eyes widened. "Guys, I just felt some minds enter my range," she announced, breaking the argument. "Uh… two females heading this way, and a couple of others milling around on the outskirts."
Rowan blinked. Then he turned to Helios. "Who are you meeting?"
Helios turned to them, eyes wide with panic and worry. "Hide!"
"Helios, who are you-"
"HIDE!" he said, a little louder.
Rowan looked at Thilia, who nodded. Rowan growled, but acquiesced, spinning an illusion around himself and Thilia so that they were invisible. A second later, he felt Thilia tug at him to walk away.
He followed until they were a bit ways away from Helios. "What are we doing?" he hissed.
"I talked to Helios with telepathy," she murmured. "He said that he needs to talk with an old friend and that he wants us to stay on guard and make sure everything is as it's supposed to be."
"Is he serious?"
Thilia didn't say anything. Rowan wanted to scream, but settled for wrapping the invisibility illusion a little tighter around them, all while making sure they were nowhere near visible just in case.
"What the hell is going on?" he whispered. There was no response. He could only hope that things wouldn't fall sideways.
A second later, he heard a female voice - one that sounded a bit familiar, though he couldn't put from exactly where. "Helios, I thought I heard voices. Are we alone?"
Helios gulped. "H-Hey, Eve. And you're… Anna, right?"
Eve?!
Rowan quickly clambered onto a rooftop where he could get a good view of the gate, but would stay hidden. Thilia struggled to climb right next to him - and there, he saw one of their cell's targets. Princess Eve - they'd met before, but he never really talked to her. And yet, just by looking at her, he could tell that she wasn't one of those cosplayers that he'd heard about in the medical wing.
How the hell did Helios find the Princess…
His eyes widened. "Thilia!" he whispered. "Open a telepathic connection with Helios, and ask him what the hell he's doing here!
Thilia nodded, before closing her eyes.
The Eevee girl next to Eve, someone who Rowan didn't recognize, tilted their head. "Yeah?"
"Great. Uh, nice to meet you, Anna," Helios said, perhaps a bit too quickly. "So… what have you two been doing?"
"We've been… busy," Eve said. Rowan focused his 'soul-gaze' on Eve and Anna. Eve's soul seemed a bit muted - and there was a small core of darkness, or something like that, hidden deep inside. It looked familiar… though, he couldn't exactly place why. Other than that, her soul looked, more or less, like Brylle's did.
'Anna' (whose name sounded familiar, though the reason why escaped him), meanwhile, reminded him oddly of Slate, though he couldn't place why. Her soul's 'flow' wasn't as chaotic as everyone else's was, and it seemed to flow in and out of her chest area. Little things, but the similarities were striking. He'd seen one or two people with that strange 'central soul' in the Base, so it wasn't completely weird. An odd quirk, or something like that.
Thilia opened her eyes. "During the mission today," she whispered. "A Litwick working near him got injured. The medics were busy or something, and they couldn't get to him."
Oh… they were busy with him. A Wimpod had come earlier, asking for someone to help with a Litwick. They'd all said that they were teaching him, and told the Wimpod to defer it to Anna since she was more practiced with Litwick biology.
Huh… Was all this his fault?
…
Nah.
"You've been busy, huh?" Helios asked. "With what?"
Eve looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it's been a month since we've last seen each other, and both of us are still 'on the run', so to speak. I'm running from kidnappers, though, so what are you doing?"
Eve blinked. "K-kidnappers?"
"Yes. Now, you talk-"
"No, no, kidnappers?! What has happened since Logain?"
Helios blinked. "Did you… did you not hear about what happened in Fylak?"
"What?"
Anna piped in. "Oh, I remember that. It was in the news a couple of weeks ago - there was a jailbreak from Fylak."
"I heard about that," Eve said waspishly. "But what does that have to do with you?"
"Well… I was one of the people kidnapped. Or jailbroken, depending on how you look at it."
Rowan's eyes widened. "Is he - is he going to try and tell them what happened?!" But that would inevitably lead to Key!
Thilia shook her head. "He's telling me that he'll try to misdirect them - use the opportunity to make them think he's unattached to Key."
"This is insane!" Rowan hissed. "He's going to fail, we have to stop this!"
"How? It's already as bad as it is, they know that he's here. We simply have to hope that he doesn't fail any more than he already has."
Rowan wanted to throw a rock at Helios and scream at him for doing all of this, but that would break whatever stealth they had left wide open. Instead, he forced the illusion of invisibility to wrap around him and Thilia even tighter, before creating a secondary illusion to mute them past a few feet of where the two of them stood.
"You'd better not screw this up, Helios," he warned.
Eve shook her head. "Start from the beginning - what happened?"
Helios paused. "Well, remember how Slate gave up Cu- Kite, to the Shadow Workers? And how you and Selene bailed on the two of us as soon as you could?"
Eve paused. "Oh yeah… yeah, okay." She flushed. "I… uh…"
"Oh, I still resent you for that, by the way," Helios mentioned. "So you owe me."
"Damn it, Helios, you don't sound resentful!" Rowan shouted. He was more than thankful that his illusory abilities were up to the task of hiding them even now, but that wasn't much compared to Helios's raw inability to maintain a coherent lie.
Anna seemed to pick up on it as well. "You don't seem very resentful."
"Well, here's the thing - once we realized that the Shadow Workers were coming after us, I had Slate dig us a hole as far away as possible, in some random direction. We dug towards Fylak over the day, getting as far away from the Shadow Workers as we could."
Eve seemed to be putting things together. "So you were around Fylak at the time of the jailbreak - what did you do?"
Helios stiffened. "I - well, I had found my way into one of Ch-"
"NO!" Thilia silently - but very visibly - shouted - and Helios yelped as if she'd bit him on the tail It almost looked like he had heard her shout.
Wait, with the telepathic connection, he probably had.
"What - what happened?" Rowan asked, ears popping a little. He double-checked the illusion as he did, since dropping it at this point would have been devastating.
"He was about to spill Chain's name!" Thilia shouted between panicked breaths.
"What happened?!" Almost mirroring him, Eve shouted in concern.
"N-Nothing, I just bit the inside of my cheek," Helios stammered. "You know how painful that can be, right? When you're trying to say something, and you practically interrupt yourself by closing your mouth a little too fast, and-"
"Helios. What are you hiding?" Eve asked with narrowed eyes. "You're acting… weird. Weirder than I remember, at least."
"I - look, it's been a long time since I've talked to someone, okay? I've pretended to be mute as an excuse because I run my mouth a bit, and I'm better than you in every conceivable way!"
Helios's eyes glowed a little as he said that - then faded, but then his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. Rowan, meanwhile, wanted to claw his eyes out.
"I - what?" Eve asked, taken aback. "I…"
"A-Anyway," Helios said, more nervous than before. "Slate and I found our way into a laboratory. It had a lot of living research subjects, amalgamations of tons of different Pokemon spliced into one. They had the words 'Epsilon' etched on them. It was… it was creepy."
"Epsilon?" Eve whispered. "No… it… it can't…"
She recognized Epsilon Fusions - she was in the know. "Thilia, what is Eve's mentality?! Pull as much information from the top of her mind as you can!"
Rowan had long since laid the illusion on himself and Thilia, so he had no way of knowing what she was doing or what she looked like right now. And yet, after a second or two. "I - I can't tell!"
"What?!"
"It's telepathic interference! There's another, stronger, telepath in the area, looking into Eve's mind!"
Time seemed to freeze. Another telepath. Dark typing protected Rowan. Everyone else… wasn't. And while Thilia was capable of protecting herself (which would give away their position anyway, illusion or not), Helios wasn't. The second Thilia stopped reading Helios's mind, the other telepath would look instead.
Rowan tried to ask Thilia another question, but he found himself suddenly combating a small headache. Thilia looked like she was trying to say something as well… wait… how could he see her?
"Shit… my illusions…" he said, dreading -
*SNAP*
… the inevitable.
The illusions popped with how fast they were destroyed. The only saving grace was that he and Thilia still weren't in plain view, so they weren't found out. And now, a familiar, pressing weight pushed down on him.
He was being Stifled - and judging from Thilia's similar struggle, she wasn't the Stifler.
"Helios, you absolute buffoon." he mouthed
"What - what's happening?!" Eve cried loudly.
"I - I'm sorry, I just felt something weird in my mind," Helios said quickly. "I - I'll explain what I did later."
Rowan's eyes widened, before turning to Thilia and mouthing the words, 'Can you use telepathy?'.
Thilia shook her head.
A chance, a chance, the slightest of chances Helios gave them. The likelihood that the other telepath was in the range of Helios's Stifling was high - now was their chance to capture the enemy telepath before they could report on what had happened. A better result than nothing, at the very least.
"No, you're going to explain what this is right now," Eve spat out.
"Yeah! Why - why can't I move?!" Anna echoed.
They didn't have much time either -Helios would have to start spilling information sooner or later. With Helios, it was inevitable. Rowan winced as he took a few steps forward before he reasserted his strength. His resistance to Stifling wasn't something to be laughed at, he was strong. Thilia, too, started moving.
Where to go, though…
"It's - well, I call it 'Pressing'," Helios bullshitted. "It's a bit like the ability Pressure, except that it works with pretty much everything, instead of just making you tired. I got the ability - well, around Fylak. It's part of how I escaped. That's why I said why I'll tell you later, by the way." Helios then began coughing. "Uh, sorry about the Pressing. It's just something I automatically do when I feel worried, it's not in my control."
Helios, you goddamn… no, never mind, he was salvaging the situation. Rowan had to take the opportunity - he and Thilia had to scan the area and see where they could find any wayward telepaths.
"Keep an eye out," he murmured, low enough so that only Thilia could hear him. "Try to find the telepath as fast as possible."
Thilia nodded - then… "I sense three sets of emotions around us," she murmured. Her empathic abilities worked where her telepathic ones didn't… it was something, at the very least.
"Directions?"
Thilia quickly whispered three sets of directions, heights, and distances to him while Helios continued his explanation. "Well, while Slate and I were looking around the laboratory, we were found out by two Shadow Workers. They caught us and put us near Kite in Fylak."
"You - why?"
"I don't know," Helios said. "Efficiency?Something like that. Once we were captured, they left us alone there. To starve. For days." As Helios spoke, Rowan remembered how haggard and weak Helios, Slate, and Culus had looked at the time, and his stomach clenched.
He distracted himself by walking with Thilia to the first mind. The three eavesdroppers - five, including the two of them, previously seven with Skell and Media back at the base - were locked in place by Helios's Stifling, so their time limit was both how long Helios could last in conversation and in stifling.
Assuming, of course, that one of the three minds Thilia had felt was, in fact, the telepath they were aiming for. Because if it wasn't, they were effectively doomed.
Slowly, ever so slowly, they crept forward in the direction Thilia was pointing to. As they did so, Helios continued talking. "While I was there, I was… afraid that I would die. I knew I was gonna lose who I was. The Shadow Workers - they all said that they'd turn me into one of them in a couple of days, for the sake of their sponsor. I - I had nothing left to lose…"
"So then what's that power?" Anna asked. "I mean, I still can't move at all. This Pressing… what is it?"
"I don't know. I barely understand it myself." Helios took a deep breath. "While I was waiting for my demise, Culus started usingit. I don't know how or where he learned it… but after he used it for a while, I realized that I could use it. Slate couldn't, no matter how hard he had tried, so it's probably something only special people can use."
Helios was mixing truth with fiction well enough that Rowan felt meagerly confident enough to turn away from him. Thilia was actively looking around for the mind she felt, and Rowan began to sniff the air, trying to catch a hint of whatever scent the person hanging around might have left.
Then, just as Eve launched into another question - 'Special people? What does that mean?' - Rowan caught the smell he was looking for. Fur, a little wet and dank, hidden… strangely, it smelled familiar…
Then Rowan realized that they were hitting the edge of Helios's Stifling field. Only a few more meters and they would be out of its range - along with their target.
"Hurry!" Rowan hissed - just as he saw a tall figure at the edge of the field. "Catch him!" There was something… strange, about the figure, now that Rowan looked at him. As though Rowan had seen him before. Wait… it was a Zoroark…
Thilia ran forward, but she wasn't as fast as Rowan. Unfortunately, neither of them was fast enough - just as Rowan's claws were going to catch onto the Zoroark's blue bead, the Zoroark escaped Helios's Stifling field - a resistance built up just high enough to escape with the short time they had.
Honestly, it was impressive, given how hard it had been for Rowan to move after being Stifled for the first time. None of the other adults in their little cell had shown the capability to move very far yet - and while the Zoroark hadn't had to move too far, it still had to move some distance.
Then, as the Zoroark was about to flee, it turned - not to him or Thilia, but to look at Eve and Anna. And as it did, Rowan caught a glimpse of its face. It was one he'd seen before - not in person, but in a picture that Kenki had shown him when Rowan badgered him with questions as 'Runt'. A photo of an attempt to gather blackmail against a master thief.
"Zennitas…" Rowan murmured. His father.
The next instant, Zennitas was gone. They had failed in catching him. "Let's go back, he wasn't the telepath," Rowan said. Thilia looked at him oddly - did she see the resemblance? He honestly hoped not. "Where's the next target?"
Thilia tilted forward, pointing in a direction with the poof on her little hat. Soon, he and Thilia began walking - still slowly enough so that they wouldn't be heard, but quicker than before. If the telepath was on the fringes of Helios's Stifling field as well, they were in massive trouble.
"Helios, I'm pretty sure that if you had a special bloodline, it would have been discovered far before you. And that would mean that Culus had it too," Eve said, cutting into his thoughts. Oh no, what was Helios saying now?
"No, it's true!" Helios protested.
"We never should have left him alone," Rowan said under his breath. He was hoping for a giggle or something from Thilia - anything to lighten the mood and raise his hopes - but nothing came from her.
"I - ugh, forget it. What you said right then and there - that's bullshit. Seriously, you just implied that Culus is your family or at least some sort of royalty. He isn't."
"I know that, but - look, it's something you can't use. It's as simple as that."
"Who said anything about me using the Pressing?"
"I - OKAY, MOVING ON!" Helios shouted at the top of his lungs. "Now, I can use the Sti- Pressing, sorry - to lock people down, and I can move around in Cu- Kite's Pressing. It's the same for him, but the other way around. I used it to shut off the slavery bands temporarily and escape - and because Undeath seemed pretty shitty, I decided that I didn't want Kite to suffer all that. So I rescued him."
"Really? Where is he?" Rowan tensed at Anna's question. Helios, don't mess up now…
"I don't know," was Helios's simple response. "Once we left the Cell, Kite's organization came after us to rescue Kite. Then, once they flew us far enough away, they turned on me and Slate."
They what?
"Why?"
"Uh, because they thought that I would be useful. Maybe as, like, a bargaining chip or something. 'Give us money, and we'll give your prince back'. You know, things like that. It's not like they were going to give us back after rescuing us or make us go home, or ind-'' He coughed. Rowan let out a breath that he'd been holding. "Luckily, my ability activated then too. It's largely out of my control, and I've been trying to deactivate it for a couple of minutes now."
They were nearing the second mind that Thilia had felt. Rowan prepared himself - if this was the telepath, they'd have to knock them out and capture them.
They climbed across a roof - no one looked up - slowly, ever so slowly, and found a third Eevee.
"God - god damn it!" Rowan whispered, pricking the ears of the third Eevee. It tilted its head up to see him, and he saw ruby-red eyes. The facial structure was male, too. Who was he?
Never mind, it didn't matter. It was a face that had not only seen Helios and experienced the Stifling, but it also was looking at them. The Eevee's mouth was gaping in confusion, but that couldn't last forever. "Thilia, you won't stop me."
Thilia's eyes widened. "What are you-"
Rowan pounced from the roof, making the Eevee's eyes widen further. The sounds of a scream began to form quickly - and though Rowan desperately wished to create an illusion to muffle it, Helios's Stifling prevented that.
That left him only one option.
Rowan smashed into the strange Eevee, landing on him so that the Eevee's body muffled his fall. It wasn't a pleasant, easy fall, either. There was a lot of tumbling around, and Rowan got to remember what dirt tasted like.
Bad. It tasted bad.
Even Stifled as he was, the Eevee was putting up a resistance against him. His limbs were strong for how clean his fur looked, and the rhythm with which he was hitting Rowan suggested practice. The first thing Rowan had done upon landing was to shove his foreleg into the Eevee's mouth so that he couldn't scream. Now, he was suffering the pain of having an Eevee bite and gnaw into his arms repeatedly.
It hurt. It hurt badly. He couldn't describe it with anything, it just hurt.
Rowan decided to end it. He pushed the Eevee down, pinned him so he couldn't even move the limited amount he could through the Stifling, and then bashed the Eevee's head against a nearby wall. Repeatedly.
Like, thirty times. Probably. More like twenty, but he wasn't really counting.
Rowan was pretty sure the guy was unconscious around the twelfth time he smashed the guy's head into the wall, but he wanted to be extra sure about it. So he continued for about… oh, eighteen more concussions? Maybe nineteen, if he wanted to be extra safe about it?
"Rowan… Rowan!" Thilia hissed. "Rowan, stop!"
Rowan paused, just as he was about to smash the guy's head into the wall a twentieth time. "Why?"
"Because he's already - because he's not the telepath!"
"... shit." Rowan let the guy drop, checked if he was breathing (barely), and then turned. "Where's the third mind?" Thilia stared at him as if he were insane, and he felt the tiniest bit self-conscious. "Where's the third mind?!" he repeated, this time a bit louder.
Not loud enough for Eve and Anna to hear him, thankfully. They were still talking to Helios. "Um… congratulations on evolving, by the way. Sorry to hear how it happened," Eve said.
Rowan turned to Thilia, who whispered 'Escape from Key'. That… was a workable lie, he supposed. It's not like anyone could disprove it, at any rate, since the only people present and collecting evidence were also the people who would willingly tell the lie.
"I'm just more worried about Slate," Helios said. "He's still with them. I just - I just wish I could go and save him, but…"
"Laying it on a bit thick, Helios," Rowan muttered. Then he felt something waver - Helios's Stifling.
"What was that?!" Eve said. "Your - that force pushing down on us!"
"Great! The Pressing's wearing off!" Helios said - although, the tone in his voice was a bit…
Thilia turned to him. "He's scared," she whispered. "And panicking. He's running out of stamina!"
Rowan swallowed a curse. The thing that would fall first would be Helios's stamina, then. They were running out of time before Helios's Stifling fell and the telepath could escape, or finish reading Helios's mind. At this point, either would be a nightmare. He stuffed the Eevee's still-thankfully-alive body into a corner, before speed-walking in the direction that Thilia was now pointing to.
"So, anyway," Helios said. "That's why I'm here. I'm going to stay in hiding for as long as I can. I'm only going to stay in Nucifera for a day or two more. tops - I've been imposing on my hosts for too long as it is. Honestly, I might just leave tonight."
"... oh," Eve said. "I… hope you stay safe, at least."
"Anyway, I've spun this tale for you," Helios redirected. "What happened to you?"
"Me? Oh, I've… uh… well… that's… you know, I'll wait until that Pressing wears off until I talk. It's a little hard to breathe."
Rowan took the opportunity with gusto. They approached the third mind - it was hidden, deep behind some crates. "Get ready, it's the telepath," he whispered to Thilia, who nodded. This was it - this was the target they had to take care of.
Most likely… the Shadow Worker.
Rowan pushed the crates to the side to reveal an Elgyem, huddled tight. Its eyes glowed a bit, strong with determination. Its finger lights pulsed on the occasion.
The telepath - because there was no one else who the telepath could be - looked at them. Hate burned in its eyes, but it couldn't do anything. It was time to lock it down before it could esca-
*FWOOM*
The Stifling lifted - and yet, the Elgyem didn't teleport away - though it looked like it was trying to, at the very least.
"I've got a hold on him," Thilia grunted, glowing with psychic energy. "But I - I can't hold him for long. He's ridiculously strong."
"We have to kill him-"
"We can't!" Thilia said, biting her lip.
"Why?!"
"Because if he's a Shadow Worker that goes missing…"
Rowan cursed, before improvising the best solution that he could with the limited time he had - hitting the Elgyem in the back of the head with psychic energy. The Elgyem's eyes rolled up in the back of its head, and it slumped over.
Thilia gasped, falling over in exhaustion. "He's - he's unconscious," she announced, talking through the dirt.
"Don't relax," Rowan warned. "We still have to keep him unconscious in case he wakes up. Get ready to lock him in place."
"And Eve?"
Oh yeah, Eve. Rowan had almost forgotten about her. Helios's Stifling had worn off, so she'd be willing to speak now… hopefully. Through all of this, Rowan hoped that, at the very least, they'd be able to collect some new information about Selene and the Shadow Workers.
"Well," Eve said. "I took Selene to Mt. Polymus - over time, she'd become more and more injured. And when we were there, she… died."
"I'm reading her mind, she's lying," Thilia whispered. "Selene only almost died."
"Tell that to Helios, then," Rowan said. More than that, if Eve was lying… "I'll make sure the Elgyem doesn't wake up - make sure everything Eve and her friend says is correct, got it?"
"Got it."
"Really?" Helios said, raising an eyebrow. "Selene's stronger than that-"
"YOU DIDN'T SEE HER!" Eve shouted, sounding almost like she was crying. "She was - she was dying in my arms! 'Stronger than that' - what a load of bullshit!"
"'Was dying'?" rebuked Helios. "So she's different now, then."
Eve didn't say anything.
"What actually happened?" Helios asked. "Please, Eve - I told you the truth. Just give me the same treatment, please."
Rowan tapped the back of the Elgyem's head with Dark-type energy, hopefully disrupting his psyche in his unconscious state.
"... we went to Mt. Polymus," Eve revised. "When we arrived, Selene wanted something. I tried to give it to her, only to realize that she was lying to me so that I wouldn't see her die. I returned to see Shadow Workers grab her - I've been trying to infiltrate the Citadel ever since, to go and rescue her."
"That's something that used to be true," Thilia whispered. "But it changed a while back."
"Well, the Gate's open," Helios said. "You can just climb on over - but oh wait, Anna can go in and out of the Citadel freely."
"How do you…" Anna said suspiciously.
"Some of my coworkers at the fields mentioned your promotion. You're pretty famous over there," Helios said. "It doesn't matter, anyway. You can infiltrate the Citadel." He tilted his head at the gate. "After all, you knew if the gate was going to be empty or not. If you didn't know and just made it empty, then you can do that whenever you want."
"Yes, but even if I can infiltrate the Citadel, I don't know where she is," Eve countered.
"Another lie," Thilia said. "She knows exactly where Selene is. Now, I know too."
… holy shit. If this wasn't a trap, they just found out valuable information.
"Tell Helios to stop it there. We have what we need." Rowan told her. Thilia nodded.
"... Eve, please stop lying to me," Helios said. "I can see it in your face - you know where she is."
Helios, what the hell?!
"Tell him to stop!" Rowan hissed, making sure that the Elgyem was still unconscious. "We have what we need!"
"I know, but he doesn't seem to care!" Thilia whispered back.
"I don't," Eve said. "And if I knew-"
"Eve, please!" Helios said. "Just - just tell me… it's been biting at me, but… is Selene actually a mind controller?"
Rowan heard gasps. "N-No! You know that she isn't, we were with her for weeks!" Eve countered.
But from Thilia's face… that couldn't be true. "Well?" Rowan asked.
"... she's a mind controller," Thilia confirmed. "Eve was hypnotized earlier today - she's covering up for Selene."
Rowan didn't know what he was expecting. All the evidence led to it. But from Helios's pained grunt, he wasn't expecting it.
"Helios?" Eve asked. "What are you…"
"I've skimmed the memory Eve has of the mind-control session and passed it to Helios. He… recognizes the feeling or the mind control. He knows it isn't fake" Thilia explained. Rowan winced.
"... thank you, Eve," he muttered. "I'll be… leaving Nucifera now."
"What?! But - but I need your help!" Eve practically shouted at him. Rowan maneuvered to where he could see the meeting between the three Pokemon. Helios looked exhausted, practically falling to one knee. Eve and Anna looked similarly exhausted, but Eve was also red in the face. "You can't just - you can't just leave!"
"Why would I stay?!" Helios countered. "The whole reason we had planned on coming here was that it was where the Temptress was supposed to be. But Selene - if she can mind control people, then why hasn't she escaped of her own accord?"
"I - I told you that she isn't a mind controller!" Eve said.
"Shut up!" Helios roared. "I told you not to lie to me! I can see the truth in your eyes - she's mind-controlled people in front of you, hasn't she? Has she mind-controlled you, Eve?!"
"..."
"Selene did it earlier today." Anna stepped forward. Eve stared at her, scandalized. "And Eve needs your help. If Selene stays here any longer, she'll be corrupted into one of them!"
"She - she already has been corrupted!" Helios bellowed. "If she wanted to leave, she'd have already done so! She's joined them, Eve! Your - our - friend is gone! If she ever existed in the first place!"
"SHUT UP!" Eve screamed. "SHUT UP! YOU - YOU UNGRATEFUL SPOILED ARROGANT PRAT!"
Eve's shrieks and screams echoed throughout the surrounding buildings. Thilia began to shiver next to him. Rowan just wanted to be anywhere but here.
"SELENE HAS DONE SO MUCH FOR ME! FOR US! SHE'S DONE NOTHING BUT SACRIFICE, AND YOU SPAT ON ALL OF IT!" Tears were falling down Eve's face. "WHY DID YOU - WHY… WHY?!"
"You want to know what you should do?" Helios said coldly. "Leave. Leave. Go to a nearby city and report yourself as found. Go back to your life back at the castle. Selene won't go back. She'll never go back, and you're wasting your time trying to protect her! Just like I did!"
"She - do you know how much she's sacrificed?" Eve hissed. "She's been trying, but her - she's something called an 'Epsilon Fusion', she just can't return!"
"Then what are you waiting for?" Helios asked. "If you're not going to bring Selene with you, then you should leave! You had your chance earlier today! You still have that chance now!"
"Helios, you-"
"What are you waiting for?!" Helios screamed. "Do you like this? Having to hide your identity, having no family or friends you can truly be with, your life always on the line? Because I don't! All I can do is run, run, run!" He pointed behind him. "You have your entire life ahead of you! If you aren't being controlled by Selene, then run! You - you can always make new friends!"
Eve began to shake. Anna walked forward.
"Even if being around Selene is bad for her," Anna snarled. "Making and losing friends isn't easy! And Selene's someone she's been around for her entire life! You can't just abandon someone like that!"
"She has to!" Helios yelled. "Because Selene's going to take everything from you! Your - your hopes, your dreams, all locked in these city walls and made a mockery of! And if she's brainwashing you, then-"
"I - I - AAAAAGH!" Eve turned tail and fled into the Citadel walls. Helios started to try to run after her, but Anna blocked him.
"I think you've done enough for today," she said coldly. "This hasn't been easy for Eve. She said that you were on their side - oh, how true that must have been!"
"I was, but back then, I had… I had faith in Selene!" Helios bit out. "I had been around her. I thought that she was just misunderstood, that she couldn't be responsible for anything! But if she had the power of mind control the entire time, then how can I trust what I felt about her? How can anyone?! If she had mind control the entire time-"
"She didn't have mind control the entire time!"
"But she could lull me into a trance from the very start - she could do at least some of it! And if she could do that, what's to say that she didn't do it at other times, before making us forget! What trust is there when you have to deal with someone who can ignore that entirely!"
"... I hope you're happy," Anna said, before turning tail on him as well. Within seconds, she had fled into the Citadel, leaving Helios alone.
...
...
...
"... thanks, guys," Helios muttered as the three of them dragged the bodies back to the base. "I would have been in deep waters without you two."
"Shut up and keep dragging the Eevee," Rowan groused, hefting the Elgyem. Thilia was monitoring their psyches to make sure that they wouldn't wake soon - as well as everything around them, to make sure that they weren't attacked. "This is all your fault, you know."
"We… we found out that Selene has hypnotic powers. One of the goals of the mission was to determine if she was actually… evil," Helios whimpered.
"You're the only one that believed in her," Rowan countered. "Everyone else saw the truth faster. You just opened your eyes - we didn't find anything out. Meanwhile, you came ridiculously close to dropping information about Key to the enemy!"
"..."
"And now, we have these guys to deal with." Rowan jostled the Elgyem on his back. Now that he'd had the time to look at them with his soul sight not interfered with by Helios' Stifling, he found their souls… peculiar.
The soul of the Eevee was strangely like Eve's - muted, with a small core of darkness hidden inside. He still couldn't place where he'd seen it though…
And the Elgyem was another strange case. Its soul pulsed constantly, rhythmically. Rowan tried to listen in on the particular rhythm, but the one time he came close, he immediately jerked back. It almost felt like his soul would beat in the rhythm if he listened to it too deeply.
Strangely… he'd heard this before. He couldn't place where, though.
This was just insane…
They returned to the base, and Rowan sighed in relief. The four agents hadn't returned yet. On the other hand… that meant that they would have to break the news directly to a higher superior.
They walked into the base, and Helios winced. "Do we… have to-"
"We have to," Rowan repeated. Because if nothing else, Helios had to face the consequences. "Thilia and I had to go to extreme lengths to know these two out, and they need to be healed."
"But if they're Shadow Workers-"
"If they're Shadow Workers, Slate will be able to tell us once he gets back. The damage has already been done, anyway, because of that meeting." Rowan narrowed his eyes. "Why, exactly, did you agree to meet Eve in the first place?"
Helios shrunk in on himself. "W-Well… I was curious," he said. "I wanted to know what she had been up to ever since Logain. I was worried about her and… Selene." Helios's eyes darkened. "Anyway, it's not like I had a real reason to refuse the meeting."
Rowan snarled - this guy. "You didn't need a real reason to refuse, moron. You could have broken your word, and she would have thought lesser of you, but all of Key's secrets would have been kept safe." He paused as another thought occurred to him. "Why did she even know you were there?"
Helios didn't answer.
"... does the word 'disguise' mean anything to you?" Rowan bit out. Thilia didn't say anything, instead fiddling around with the knobs that would let them communicate to HQ. "Or are you just completely incapable of making correct decisions?"
"..."
"Well? What is it, your princeliness?" he sneered.
"Hello?" Pandora's voice echoed from the communicator. "What do you need?"
"Thilia here," she said. "Uh… agent code W7T69. Threat level…" Thilia looked over. "Guys, orange or red? I mean, they might wake up… so black?"
"Orange is enough of an emergency as it is - especially if it borders on red," Pandora said sharply. "Stay right there!"
A couple of seconds later, Pandora appeared. "What's the issue-"
She looked down at them and saw the unconscious body of the Eevee and the Elgyem. She froze.
"... Lady Pandora?" Helios asked. Pandora didn't respond. "Lady Pandora?!"
"... this is a code black," she said. "How much have you healed them?" Pandora asked warily.
"Rowan was a little vicious-"
Rowan snorted. "We didn't have the time to be picky about how we took them down."
"-so they might have a bit of brain damage," Thilia continued. "I didn't want to touch it with any healing moves in case I do something irreversible."
"Good," Pandora approved. She knelt, her eyes glowing. "Right now, they're both in comas. Healing them with a move would have made it permanent. As it is, they're still unstable, so I'll handle them." She looked up. "Have you confirmed whether they are Shadow Workers or not?"
Helios stepped forward. "While we were outside of the base, Thilia detected a malicious presence reading our thoughts. Both of these Pokemon were in the range of my Stifling. We took care of both, just in case. We… don't know whether they're Shadow Workers or not."
"I… see," Pandora said at last. "You three are leaving me with more questions than answers. I'll stay here and stabilize them - if they are Shadow Workers, we can't bring them to the home base."
"Why not?" Helios asked.
"Trackers," Pandora explained. "We've noted that Shadow Workers seem to converge unusually quickly. That means that some sort of long-distance communication is possible - and if it's distance-based, they would be able to triangulate the HQ's location at the very least. This base can be dismantled quickly - the HQ can't."
Rowan and Thilia nodded. "I… okay," Helios said.
"In the meantime, please explain exactly how-"
"It'll take too long," Helios said, a little flippantly. "We can explain it when the others arrive."
Pandora's eyes burned. "Did I permit you to interrupt me? Did I permit you to decide when to tell the story? Do you think that this is a story that should be delayed when telling to a medical professional?!"
Pandora's words echoed in the underground base. Her fat hands were balled into fists above the patients, the pendulum the Hypno carried swinging wildly. Helios visibly wilted, and Thilia began to look uncomfortable.
"Pandora?" A voice - Raga's voice - asked. "Why are you here, and why are you shouting?"
Helios shrunk into himself even more. His eyes were turning glassy, as though desperately trying to close without actually doing so. The usual swaying of Helios's tail stopped.
The three agents and Slate returned, Slate still riding Skell. Of course, the instant they touched the ground, Skell threw Slate off (Slate rolling to his feet).
"Pandora, why were you yelling?" Raga then looked down at the Eevee and the Elgyem and blanched. "Who are these people?"
Pandora tilted her head at Helios. "Ask him," she snarled, before turning to Slate. "Are these two Shadow Workers, Slate?"
"Shadow Workers?" Media asked sharply.
Slate looked at them. "Not that I can tell. They're normal people."
As Slate looked at them, Rowan looked at him. Aside from that weird 'central soul' nature of his, it pulsed. Maybe if they weren't side-by-side, he wouldn't be able to tell, but next to each other, they pulsed in unison.
That rhythm… a rhythm he couldn't get out of his head. What was wrong with Slate's soul?!
Pandora grabbed the two unconscious Pokemon. "Then I'll be off to give them emergency care. Helios, I expect a full story and apology by the end of the night, understood?"
"Y-Yes, ma'am."
With that, Pandora teleported away. Raga turned to the three of them. "What happened?" he asked.
Helios swallowed. "Well… earlier today, during my mission, I noticed that a Litwick's wax was melting quickly…"
...
...
...
"... and that's when you three came back," Helios concluded. "Everything that happened with the Eevee and Elgyem while I was talking with Princess Eve and Anna, you'll have to ask them for."
Rowan had to give credit where it was due. It drew a thorough line between what incited the events - a medical accident - and the chain of events that led to now. From accident to Anna to Eve to sneaking out, and then seeing him and Thilia. After that was the argument in full, all excuses and lies noted, Thiila's warning and the Stifling, before the return with the Eevee and Elgyem and the resulting report with Pandora.
Skell and Media had tried to interrupt several times during Helios's report, but Raga stopped them every time. From what he could tell, it wasn't out of respect, but out of a desire to get it out in one burst.
"Before we say anything else," Raga said. "Rowan, Thilia, explain what you did. Explain everything, in detail."
Thilia looked at him, and belatedly, he remembered that he was the first one to act. "When we were coming to the base from the mission, I noticed that something was up with Helios. I decided to respect his privacy for once and not dig into it. Then, while I was taking a nap when you guys left for the mission, Helios got up and left. I woke up and noticed he was gone, and then I notified Thilia."
Thilia stepped forward. "At first, we were going to bring Helios back as quickly as possible. We didn't think that he was deserting Key or anything like that, so we didn't call for help on the comms. We chased after him and found him at the gate. Then, when he was talking to Eve and Anna, we hid and listened in. I read Helios's and Eve's minds, and found the Elgyem reading Eve's mind."
"And then Helios acted, Stifling everyone around us. That broke my illusions and stopped Thilia's telepathic communication, but not her empathic powers. There were three minds not accounted for in the general area, and while Helios told the lies, we chased after them."
"Three minds?" Skell interrupted before Raga could stop him.
"The first mind… escaped. They were right on the edge of Helios's Stifling field, and by the time we got there, they had already fled. We don't know who it could have been, there wasn't anything we could do."
"Could you have Stifled them in place?" Raga asked.
"We didn't have the time to," Rowan said, ignoring the fact that he forgot he could do that. "Thilia felt them escape incredibly quickly by the time we got there. That, and it was a pure Dark-type. It couldn't have been the telepath, so we decided to prioritize the other minds before Helios's Stifling field collapsed." Rowan decided not to mention that it could possibly be his father. He didn't want to be kicked off.
Raga paused. "Not the best move, but a reasonable move within the circumstances," he allowed. "The other minds?"
"The first was the Eevee. He had… red eyes, for some reason." His soul had been like Eve's, who was a lavender-eyes Eonian royal. "Even though he wasn't the telepath, I couldn't let him go like the first one. I just beat him until he was unconscious, and to be safe, beat him a little more."
Skell gave him an approving nod. Raga coughed awkwardly. "And then, the Elgyem?"
"Our only choice for the telepath," Rowan said. "Thilia locked it in place with psychic powers, and I knocked it out with Dark-type energy. After that, we secured the two and began to monitor the conversation between Eve and Helios. And… well, that's it."
The base went quiet. All eyes turned to Raga.
"... Thilia, Rowan, you two did the best you could under the circumstances," he said, nodding. "You salvaged the situation as best as you could, and were instrumental in reducing as much damage as possible."
Thilia glowed under the praise. Despite himself, Rowan couldn't help but smirk. They did do well, didn't they? Not perfectly, but they did as much as possible.
Raga's eyes then went cold. "And as for you, Helios." Helios quaked under Raga's gaze - under everyone's harsh glare. "You broke your disguise in front of a potential enemy, allowed them to control a further meeting spot, went to the meeting they had near full control over, and acted in extreme haste without alerting your teammates, letting Chain possibly know of the existence of one Aspect." Right, the Zoroark… oh, and if Eve was brainwashed, her too…
"But… but they don't know about Key-"
"They don't, but they know about Stifling now. If either the Dark-type, Anna, or Eve manage to develop the Stifling aspect as a result of what you did, they will be able to share it among all of Chain." Raga looked at him and Thilia. "And that was a mistake you made. You could have kidnapped Eve and Anna, then and there. It would have been difficult, but not impossible, and we would have closed additional leaks."
"But they were brainwashed-"
"And we could have found a way to counter that, even induct her into Key's ranks. One of the goals of this infiltration was to return her - not necessarily willingly," Raga continued. "But lost opportunities aside…" Raga turned back to Helios. "What do you say in your defense, Helios."
"... I'll… do better next time-"
"No, Helios. There won't be a 'next time'. This is a case where an agent would be discharged dishonorably," Raga hissed. Slate, next to him, looked uncomfortable, but also strangely… happy? "Tomorrow, we'll send for Genevieve or Pandora to pick you up and bring you to HQ. Lady Angira will decide what to do with you, but I doubt you'll ever be involved in any serious mission again."
