Even explorers get lost. Even here, in this labyrinth of a forest, where the trees made never-ending hallways and landmarks repeated themselves over and over. The night was thick as tar with little trace of the moon or stars. Panne clutched at the scruff of her chest as she stumbled through the blackness, gasping for breath. A rustling was following her, and in the corner of her eye she could sometimes see it. The thing moved like a flash, making no sounds and leaving no trails. But it was there. Every time the Delphox slowed down, there would be a blind flurry of motion. Gashes appeared on her body with no cause. Blows were dealt with no source. Blood trickled down into her tail as she ran.
Every yelp of pain turned into a wheeze as it left her throat. For as hard as she searched, there was no way out of this hell. Then came a sharp jolt as she had kicked something solid in the brush. Panne crumpled to the ground and curled into a ball. The beast loomed over her like a mountain now, taunting her before the final blow. She was barely able to spit out much more than a single word.
"Stop!"
Panne tried to shield herself, and in the moment caught a glimpse of the creature's long body. Something in her head clicked, and all of a sudden her pupils seemed to dilate in a way they never had before. That basic shape became serpentine. Its narrow eyes began to glow blood red without any light to refract, and the longer she stared into them the tighter her throat became. She knew exactly who this was. She couldn't bear to forget.
Panne scrambled to her feet. Behind her, the Serperior lunged from branch to branch with an impossible ease. Dozens of lashes rained down on her back, but the sharpened vines only cut deep enough to leave marks. Snags caught on her wounds, trees stood firm in her blind path, and the sound of cracked twigs never overcame the thrum of her heart. Then, all of a sudden, she burst out from a thicket of ferns. The dream seemed to distort around her, and now she stood upon a hill. Her legs kept on running all the while, although one of them felt broken. A sense of nostalgia struck like a fist. It wouldn't follow her here.
Where was here, though? Panne struggled to collect that detail most of all. It must have been terribly important, since turning back to the forest almost felt safer than continuing ahead. As the Delphox trudged up the grassy slope, some awful feeling started to ball up in the pit of her stomach. All around her were signs that a enormous battle had taken place. Craters and fresh ash and the rich odor of drying blood. The further she progressed through the mud and decay, the stronger the coldness felt-it spread up her throat and throughout her ribs. When she tried to clutch her stomach, however, her hands were guided towards her chest instead. The fur was wet and sticky.
A blanket of dead brambles completely covered the hill. Panne stared at the ground as she walked, blood leaking out from between her fingers. The name of this place was on the very tip of her tongue. What was it, though? When she looked up again, her mouth moved on its own. "I love you."
A Snivy wept over his love, his hands pressing down on the Fennekin's fatal wound in a desperate attempt to staunch the flow. He cried out for help and cursed at the world in the same sniveling breath, but there was no one else here. A tiny star appeared in the abyssal sky. Panne watched as the dot of light grew, its gentle white turning into a cold shade of purple. Black tendrils surrounded the sphere like greedy fingers as the Delphox lost the strength to stand. She watched as the Snivy's entire body quaked, wracked with sobs so loud that they echoed in her skull and shook the ground beneath her. Everything was so cold, even her own blood.
"Oh." Panne blinked at the tears in her eyes, and then she could see no longer.
...
Nothing to see but grass and hills. Not that there had been anything to see in the previous few days, either. And not that Panne could see in general with all this wind to squint against. The repetition would've been enough to numb most people's mind to the point of complete boredom. Most people also weren't being chased by the undead equivalent of a natural disaster.
"It's here again!" Mismagius shouted above the gloom. In an instant, the Society collapsed inwards into a tight group with not a back left open. Several long seconds passed before an intense gale suddenly ripped through the grasslands, threatening to sweep all of them straight off their feet. With it came a grey haze which burned at her eyes and noses as it passed. When the air finally cleared of the anomaly and the wind had died down, the unified sound of coughing took its place.
Ampharos fought to speak through his hacking fit. "Is- Is everyone alright? Did anyone get attacked?"
"Not this time," grumbled Mismagius, who was naturally unaffected by the Spiritomb's physical symptoms. He surveyed the skies in an erratic fashion, constantly seeming to flinch away from something. "Damn, what a nuisance! As if this weather needed to be anymore dangerous!"
Panne cleared her throat and spat into the weeds. "It's because we're getting close! It knows it's running out of time! I bet the bastard's getting pretty nervous by now!"
Hydreigon shook their heads. They already spoke at a deep enough pitch to ignore the volume of the storm. "The abomination has little to fear. Not from us, not from anything. All the virtues of time and place are within its grasp, if it only had the patience to pursue them." With a single flap the dragon took flight once more. "We will need to coax it out on its own terms to have any hopes of slaying it."
As soon as they made absolutely certain there wasn't any injuries, the group went back on their way. More grass and hills and abject terror awaited them. Panne groaned and wrung a whole stream from the fur of her ears. The Spiritomb did seem like it was starting to panic, though. The storm had only been getting worse since this morning. Without any trees to serve as cover, it used the grasslands as an opportunity to launch attacks down from the clouds, at times with devastating effectiveness. Though she herself was unhurt, they had already gone through quite a few medical supplies already. Poor Volcarona was a pretty large target.
While the plains felt like they rolled on forever, the occasional break in the terrain hinted otherwise. Unusual patches of foliage cropped up here and there-oases of tropical trees and delicate temperate plants, normally growing in what would seem to be impossible places. If the map hadn't already assured them of the powerful mystery dungeon nearby, the proof was already right in front of them. There was no telling if this jungle's canopy would protect them from the Spiritomb's wrath, but there were tools within that surely could.
At some point, Jirachi asked a question Panne was already trying not to think about. "How do you think Mew's been dealing with all of this?"
They were met with silence at first. Once it was clear nobody else wanted leave their own thoughts, Mawile spoke up. "I'm not sure. It would be foolish to assume that the storm hadn't gotten there before us, but by all reports this stretch of dungeon is almost untouchable by the outside world. The wildlings have probably ran away by now, but I don't think Mew would abandon her own home. I suppose we'll see how bad things have gotten once we're in."
"Mew will be there," Hydreigon chimed in without a hint of doubt. "Where else would she be? If Panne never leaves Vallion's side, why would Mew?"
The closer they got to their destination, the more the earth seemed bent on preventing them passage. Grasses that once only reached the Delphox's waist had grown to brush past her shoulders, and that was even while bowing from the intense winds. It was getting exceedingly difficult to keep track of one another. Vallion unraveled as much of his vines as he could, serving as the rope that would keep them all connected as they waded through the terrestrial sea. He carried out the order without a word.
"So I know about this part! We're going to get spat right back out where we came in if we aren't careful!" Panne shouted over the wind. "Everyone stay on the ground and don't try to look over the grass! If you feel the air pressure start to shift around you, just keep on walking forward like you normally would in any other dungeon! Never stop walking!"
"Geez, Panne! How many times have you been here?" Kadabra spoke up from somewhere deeper in the thicket.
Panne gave a shrug despite that nobody but Val could really see the gesture. "Twice, but Vallion's technically at three! This was one of the places he went to look for me after I was gone! It took half a day just for him just to push through this first part and step foot in the dungeon at all!"
"Yeah, I remember that!" Ampharos said as they blindly plowed onward. "Few explorers knew about this place's existence, and of them there was still very little known about it! I've heard a lot about Mew's home, but I've yet to see it with my own eyes!"
The grass took on a far richer green the deeper they went. Thorny bushes started to catch on their feet, and were soon accompanied by huge ferns that were somewhere around four times the average size. The pungent smell of vegetative decay hit her nostrils. Then came an invisible force which opposed the wind-a riptide of energy that threatened to yank them straight back into the plains. It was as if their bones were magnets being repelled by the dungeon. The Society pressed against the force one step at a time, all hanging onto Vallion's vines like their lives depended on it. A sharp whistling filled the air. Just as soon as it appeared, the otherworldly resistance gave way, and the group all stumbled out of the grassy boundary into the smell of ancient wood and fresh moss.
"We're here," Panne said, pulling thorns from her fur.
Compared to the outside world just a few paces behind them, the jungle was completely alien. For all the green of the flora, there was now an array of vibrant yellows, blues, and reds. These striking colors spanned all the way up to the tops of gnarled trees, whose trunks were twice as wide as the Delphox was long. There must have been at least a hundred different species of plants and fungus in their immediate vicinity alone. Flowers of strange shapes and sizes, spiny fruits that barely looked edible, thick vines that looked more like young branches, and long strands of moss that hung from anywhere it could.
Not a single pokemon in sight, though.
While the temperature was considerably warmer than outside, the gusts that blew through the leaves were just as chilling. Not even the great barrier that encircled this place could hope to keep the demon out. The Delphox's fists balled up tighter than her stomach.
"That's incredible!" Mawile gasped as she whipped her bag around and withdrew her journal. Shielding its pages with her body, she started to scribble down notes. "I know you guys already did a report on this place, but, wow! I didn't expect such a drastic change! That almost felt like how it did in Destiny Tower!"
Vallion was the first one venture further. He came upon a cover of roots and craned his neck to peer inside. Not long after, a slow sigh filtered through his nose. He twisted away from the sight and walked away.
"Don't look," he said to Panne as she approached. "It's just another one."
She took a peek anyway. In the tree's clutches laid an Ambipom. It was motionless and limp-long gone before the Society could ever reach this place. There were no signs of a struggle at all, just the low-hanging jaw of a creature that had struggled in vain against asphyxiation. It must've tried taking shelter from the storm instead of running away. It stayed with its home, and this was its reward.
"Val... We-"
"How much longer does this have to go on?" he interrupted, his frown deeper than it had ever been. The Servine glared straight through her. "What do you think happened to the village we passed through? What happened to every mountain and forest we passed through? Look at what happened here! Just listen for a second! Listen hard and tell me what you hear!"
Leaves roared in waves. Branches creaked and moaned. Whistling winds snaked throughout the landscape. Thousands of raindrops fell by the minute. These were things that she'd already tuned out a long time ago. Beyond them, there was an unspeakable feeling that she didn't quite notice before. It sounded like... "Nothing?"
"Nothing!" Vallion confirmed with a shout. "It's empty here! There's not a single goddamn soul around. And it's not supposed to be like this, either. I've barely been around this world for a couple weeks and even I know that. The Spiritomb killed it. Just like it killed all the places we walked through."
Hydreigon raised their heads. "You two can feel it, can't you? Your connections to this place aren't quite severed. This used to be your home."
"No. No, it really didn't," Panne said. "I barely even recognize it."
"There are some parts of us that we cannot change. A tiny part of you still lingers in this place, and it recognizes that there's more wrong here than you realize. If you're so free of the past, then how is it that you can read the ancient dialect so fluently?" The dragon's six wings beat in unison like a judge's mallet. "This is Mew's home. Even if the tragedy doesn't strike the same chord as if the same happened to Serene Village, you can still feel the blow."
Vallion turned his head from the roots and towards the heart of the jungle. "Then before anything else, we have to find Mew."
"Yeah, but this is also the part where we look for emeras, right?" Volcarona said, shuddering as she picked at her bandages. "I'm tired of being useless! Lemme out there, I can scout a larger area than the rest of you!"
"Absolutely not!" Ampharos demanded, a rare voice for him to use. "I don't care how much ground we can cover! Whether it's full of life or not, this is an extremely active dungeon. We can't risk going off on our own when there's no guarantee we'll be able to find each other again. This is a team effort, understood?"
"Yes, chief!" everyone said in unison, the response ingrained into their tongues and their minds.
From that point on, the real mission had begun. It came time for the Expedition Society to don only their most powerful toys. Nearly a museum's worth of ancient looplets and artifacts were snapped around necks and waists in the span of minutes. Except Altaria, of course, who wore her favorite golden looplet for the occasion. Vallion still had the vibrant blue brace she'd given him back in the city. He shuddered as the brace's power shot down his spine, then looked back up with that determined face of his.
Dedenne stood up on Ampharos' shoulder, an emera brace etched with sapphire waves around her waist. The fairy cleared her throat and puffed her chest out. "Ah, finally! I was wondering when we'd get to business!"
Shutting the clamps in her journal, Mawile set her wonder aside. "First of all, before we do anything else in this place, we have to find emeras and we have to find Mew. That much is clear already. And I believe we're going to need at least one Awakening to add to one of Hydreigon's ritual, correct?"
The dragon nodded. "I have all the other ingredients and incantations ready besides that."
With a wave of his arm, Ampharos raised his head high and waddled forward. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's be off!"
Everyone fell in line behind the electric type. Panne could practically hear the drums as they marched, piling past the oversized flora into an empty unknown. She steadied herself with a breath. There definitely was something unnaturally oppressive about the atmosphere here. It caught in her throat and accumulated in her lungs and made her eyes want to water. Maybe Hydreigon was right. Maybe she did have some connection with this jungle still.
Even with the huge leaves and abundant colors, they started to find emeras within a matter of minutes. They weren't anything special, especially with the magnitude of the battle that was coming, but seeing them at all raised their spirits. It made sense that they'd be fairly common. Some of these plants practically thrived on the innate magic of dungeons, after all. Finding the right ones was always the hard part. And finding Mew-well, nobody really knew how to accomplish that part. If she didn't want to be found, that would be the end of it.
As they traveled deeper into the outer rings of the jungle, things started getting more vertical than seemed normal. Nonsensical slopes and sharp twists seemed to materialize out of thin air to prevent them passage. While the flora did its best to adapt to the rapid changes, scars of dark soil and mud ran up and down the cliffs where it had morphed all too suddenly. Maybe the jungle was trying to defend itself and couldn't tell friend from foe?
As irritating as they were, the obstacles failed to impede them in any meaningful way. The seasoned explorers pressed onward while they slowly gathered up the tiny boosts of power they needed. Panne even managed to find a Sun's Blessing emera hidden in the colorful maw of a pitcher plant. She immediately popped it into her looplet, but it seemed only a single emera of its kind couldn't break through the clouds on its own.
"How can you tell these things apart, anyway?" Vallion asked, staring perplexedly through a Burn Guard crystal. "I get that they're different colors, but how are you supposed to tell one green from the next?"
Panne leaned in and pointed a claw at a bump along the emera's side. "By knowing where to look. There's lots of little deformities and extra colors that you can read. Some are a little more obvious than others, I guess, but you'll get the hang of it again."
The winding passages continued to grow even more convoluted as time went on. The fact that the whole jungle was almost utterly silent wasn't making things any less freaky, either. At least their resources were really beginning to pile up. Everyone had at least one emera in their looplets, and Panne was finally given one of the most important tools in fighting the Spiritomb: Type Bulldozer. With one tiny click beneath her chin, every defense the demon had built up against her was null and void. The black water that used to douse her flames would instead end up boiling away in their heat. The Delphox pumped her fists with just enough excitement to make the Tempest Looplet tighten a bit.
That confidence was short-lived. Panne felt the fur on her neck stand tall at first, then a burning in her nose. Mismagius called out to take cover, but what cover could they take? All they could do was brace themselves against the sheer face of moss and root they'd been shimmying beside. An ear-piercing screech filled the air, but it came below the ledge, deep within the overgrown gully. The Delphox grabbed Vallion by the collar and pulled him down. If the attack had been aimed at their heads, it would have saved him, but the impact rumbled beneath her feet instead. Without any roots to hold up the sodden earth, it quickly started to give way. Entire chunks of ground started to slide away.
Kadabra's hands reached out for anything solid, choking out half a scream as she fell with the dirt. Panne lunged for the psychic type. Their hands met, but the Delphox had to step onto crumbling earth to manage that much. The only thing that kept the two of them from falling into the lower jungle was Vallion's vines around her waist. She saw a dark mist surge up from the base of the cliff. It spanned father than she could possibly see, congealing in the shadows of the trees and all the way down to the undergrowth. It was massive.
Ampharos yelled something. A static sensation rolled over her, culminating into an incredible, deafening white flash. She could see the crack of light disappear beneath the demon's surface. It retracted into the gully below with a swirling rush, yet it did not leave empty handed. An invisible force grabbed Kadabra and yanked her down, easily pulling the Delphox with it. They fell.
...
Panne awoke face-down in an unpleasant cushion of deep mud and freezing water. She struggled to even pull her head from the muck. When she finally did yank herself free from the mud, she heard the same set of strained noises come from further down the creek. Kadabra was too busy coughing up globs of dirt to respond to anything. At least the running water served to clear the Delphox's eyes fairly quickly. Better yet, there was no sign of the Spiritomb.
It made sense that the ghost wouldn't be here, since they definitely didn't land at the bottom of the place they were actually falling. The mystery dungeon had shifted beneath them. There weren't any cliffs around to fall from, and there certainly wasn't an overflowing river at the bottom of that gully which would've broken their fall. Judging from the submerged retaining walls, they might've just drowned outright if they landed more towards the center.
Then there was a third voice, hacking and sputtering just the same as they had. Panne's blood ran cold.
"Val! Val, where are you?"
The Servine had somehow been swept away further downstream. He had propped himself up against a fallen log, unable to stand in the current without having to swim outright. He gave her a weak smile. "Hi. I- uh. I jumped in after you."
"What? Why'd you do that, you dummy?!" Panne grabbed him by the looplet and hauled him up to eye-level. "In what universe is it a good idea to jump straight off a cliff? We didn't even know our fall was going to be broken! You could have died!"
"Well I didn't want you to have to fight the Spiritomb alone! I just- I thought it would be better if I went down there, too!"
"Uh. Hey!" Kadabra shouted above them, still attempting to get a decent breath in. "That's great and all, but where the hell did we end up, though?"
Yeah, that was a pretty good question. Panne hoisted herself up onto the dangling log, resting her elbow on its upturned roots while the others followed suit. "I guess...Somewhere safer? There definitely wasn't a river below us before, right? God, I hope none of the others think we hit the ground and died."
Vallion shivered as the icy waters rolled off his scales. He looked around at their surroundings just as confusedly as she did, only coming to the conclusion of a sigh. "Did the dungeon move out from under us or something? I didn't even know they could do that. I knew they shifted around but-"
"They definitely don't usually do that," Panne assured him.
"Maybe it has to do with what Hydreigon said," Kadabra said. "You know, about how this place used to be your home. Maybe the jungle recognized you guys and intentionally moved to catch us."
Panne wrung her tail out with a grumble. "Why would a mystery dungeon ever be kind to someone? You saw how many narrow paths we were forced to take, right? It probably wants us to drop dead just as much as it wants the Spiritomb to screw off." Hanging onto the roots of the tree, the Delphox hoisted herself up onto solid ground. "Whatever. We're just going to have to keep pushing through, anyway. Whether we find Mew first or the Society is completely up to chance now. Mew only ever hangs out in the most inconvenient places possible, so I'm sure she's in the center of it all."
With only the three of them, the search resumed. The terrain seemed much more forgiving wherever it was that they ended up. It mostly consisted of shallow hills and old growth, with the most discomforting thing being the way their feet sank into the rot. The storm was much less violent around these parts, as well, though with the lack of wind came an ever greater sense of emptiness. Where could the wildlings have all run off to, anyhow? If here was the only place some of them ever knew, where would they go when home was no longer an option?
There were plenty of tools to find along the way now that there was only three braces to distribute across. Panne had found a slow wand jutting out from some brambles, and quite a few notable emeras to boot. She had originally settled for a few basic offensive crystals when a brilliant green caught her eye from the hollow of a huge stump. Hoping for another Sun's Blessing, she hopped inside and examined her find, only for her heart to sink. The markings indicated that it was the kind of emera which damaged the user's body by removing their physical limits. Panne usually referred to it as Go For Broke, and avoided it on the principal that she didn't feel like dying early. Now she contemplatively held the emera up to the sky with her ears folded backwards. The scarf on her wrist started to itch.
"I don't know, I just..." Panne jumped a foot in the air as Kadabra started to speak. While the psychic type searched for the end of her thought, the Delphox quickly shoved the poor decision into the back pocket of her bag. "I feel like it's my fault that we're down here by ourselves. I'm the one that fell, you guys were just trying to catch me. I didn't want for this to happen."
"It's nobody's fault but the Spiritomb," Vallion replied with a shake of his head. "It would have dropped all of us into that pit had it gotten the chance."
"But I could have definitely predicted it beforehand! If I had just used my clairvoyance even once, we could have avoided this situation entirely! I didn't even think about that before coming in here!"
Panne inserted herself into the conversation. "Can't change the past, Kadabra. Why not just use your clairvoyance now if you're already so worked up about it? You could figure out when we're finally going to meet up with the others."
The psychic type stuttered a moment. She gave a tiny nod and scanned the immediate area, eventually coming to a stop beside a puddle that had formed in the side of a rotting trunk. She placed her thumbs to her temples and closed her eyes, opening them only when she blew into the surface of the water. The wind had come to a complete stop.
Panne found herself swaying back and forth, switching her balance from one foot to the other. The air had grown thin like they were near the top of a mountain. No matter how deep she inhaled, it never seemed like enough oxygen. Regret at having ever suggested this plan struck her like a brick. This was a piece of information that was better left unknown, she was absolutely sure of it.
Kadabra jerked away from the puddle with a shout. "No! It's not the-! We're-! Oh god. That's the Spiritomb. The first thing we meet out here is the Spiritomb. I didn't look past that part. I- I couldn't! I'm sorry!"
The Delphox clapped her hands against her sides. What a surprise, the hunch was right. The demon separated the only two pokemon it cared to kill from the entire group. What else was it going to go but chase them down? "Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure what I expected."
"It's fine! You did what you could. At least we know what to expect now." Vallion clapped Kadabra on the back with a vine. There was something off about the way he smiled at her, and with how he was acting in general today. It was too confident, too reassuring. Even if he had gotten over whatever was bugging him, it shouldn't have made him act this much stronger. Something else had changed.
Ever since that prediction, the emptiness that had permeated the jungle was replaced with a much more unnerving sense of danger. Flashes of black started to appear just beyond Panne's field of vision-little warnings that something was watching them more closely than before. The temperature had dropped to the point where she could see her breath once more. Powerful emotions sprouted up seemingly out of thin air. One moment she'd fight off the urge to lash out against her surroundings, and the next she'd be struggling not to cry.
"Hey Panne?" Vallion said as he ducked past a fern's leaves. "What kind of mood are you in right now?"
Terrible, she thought. "Passable. Why?"
The Servine stared straight ahead. "Because I'm about to make it worse," he said, letting the seconds drip by as he gathered his thoughts. "I know this isn't a good place, and I really know that this isn't a great time, but there might not be another time for me to ask. I need to know something while we're here." He glanced at the Delphox, but his eyes zeroed in behind her entirely. "Kadabra, what do you see in me?"
The psychic type stuttered. "Huh? I- I- What?!"
Panne's back immediately tensed up. She couldn't hide the distaste that erupted across her face. "Are you serious? You're damn right this isn't a great time! Like, you could have asked that at any point at any camp we set up! Why the hell would you want to know that anyway?"
"Because I still want to know who I was," Vallion replied in monotone. "I woke up in this body without even a clue of what I was doing here. I've been figuring it out slowly, but I'm running out of time now, and I just want some clarity before I have to face that ghost again. Please, it doesn't even have to be a long conversation. I promise we'll never have to have it again. I just need to know."
Kadabra glanced back and forth between Panne's frown and Vallion's determined glare. She crossed her arms and tried to become as small as possible, but it was no use. There was nowhere else to withdraw to this time. "...Okay. Um. Panne, please don't be mad at me. I wouldn't-"
"Just go on, He asked for it." Panne waved her arm dismissively and kept her eyes dead-set on the path forward.
With a gulp and a slow breath, Kadabra began. "I- I guess if we're really doing this, then I should from where it matters. I was an Abra when the calamity happened eight years ago. My family lived along the north coast of the Water Continent. There was no warning when Yveltal attacked, just some loud crashes and yelling and it was already almost over. I was too slow to escape on my own. My big brother managed to stall Yveltal long enough for me to teleport away. When I came back later, my entire family was just a bunch of statues, and my brother's was smashed to pieces.
"Even after you fixed everything, things never really went back to normal for us. My brother was basically the pin that kept everyone together. After he died, the whole family tore itself apart with petty arguments and useless fights. I didn't feel all that much better after I left, though. I was as alone then as I was back with my family. I wanted to just wander the wilderness until I finally died, since at least then I might've been able to see my brother again."
Kadabra shuffled over the underbrush after she nearly tripped. "Sorry, I'm getting off-track. I was tired of being lonely, though. But I was too weak to join a rescue team, and I definitely didn't fit in anywhere else. The Expedition Society was my last hope, and to be honest, I didn't think you guys were going to take me. It's not like I had any skills to work with, and who would want to feed somebody so useless? That's why I was so surprised when Ampharos found a place for me. Everyone ended up being so nice and kind and- and I even got my own room to stay in...And after a while I felt like I had finally found a home again, even if my job was just to deal with paperwork and visitors.
"That was when I...started to think about Vallion, I guess. It was just the way you acted at first-all aloof and quiet, but you always cared a lot more than it seemed. It reminded me a lot of my brother. You were one of the first people I even saw when I walked up to the compound, and I probably wouldn't have worked up the nerve if not for that. There's just so much of you that fell into the right places, and god I was already so lonely at the time that I couldn't help myself. It was hard to get to sleep at night without letting those stupid thoughts float through my head."
The psychic type started to hyperventilate. "All of this makes me seem so desperate, doesn't it? Panne, I- I'm so sorry! I never wanted for this to get out of hand. You have every right to hate me, there's nothing I could possibly say that would even come close to excusing how I feel! He's like some storybook hero that I can't stop wishing would've been there to help me...I'm sorry!"
The shadows cast by the sprawling networks of topside roots grew rigid. It was like the jungle was holding its breath, waiting anxiously for each moment to pass into the next. With Kadabra's last apology left to hang in the air, Panne could no longer bear the silence. "...You've never told anyone where you came from."
"No one but Vallion. This is the first time anyone else has heard it," when Kadabra spoke, it was obvious she was on the verge of crying. "Most of that probably didn't have anything to do with what you asked. I don't know."
Now it was Vallion who stared at the ground as he walked. "...So that's why?"
With a sniffle, Kadabra nodded. "I don't think anything else has ever made me feel as happy as you do. You're the reason I get out of bed in the morning. You're the reason I even have a bed to get out of in the first place. That's why it hurts so bad when I try to stop myself from feeling the way I do. I just want to be near you and be your friend but every single damn time I get this stupid feeling in my chest that ruins everything!"
Something was here.
"Shh!" Panne drew her slow wand and froze. It had gotten darker in the jungle. The shadows deepened, the canopy thickened, and there was a distinctly evil presence around them. She could barely see it, but deep down at the base of the hill they'd been scaling, a black mass writhed and splashed in the brush. "It's here, isn't it? The spot you foresaw?"
The psychic type gasped, their sobbing cut short. "Oh no! I wasn't paying attention, I- I'm sorry, this is-!"
"Quit apologizing! We've got worse things to worry about!" The Delphox set the wand in her hand alight and started to run. Before she could even think about retreating, the mists had already crawled up to the top of the hill. And the sides were flooded, too. They had walked straight into an ambush and didn't even realize it. The storm's winds returned all at once with a roar that matched the sound of the ghost's rage, and with it came an sudden deluge from above. The very ground they stood upon shook with the noise.
The fogs condensed into a wave and fought gravity to crash up the hill towards them. The Tempest Looplet started to tighten before Panne could even push Kadabra aside. With a swing of the wand and a lungful of flames, the encroaching tsunami collided with the sparkling plume, and the emeras did the rest of the work. The fire easily ate through the waters like she were burning through dry grass. The Spiritomb recoiled with an echoing screech. The wave receded back down into the mists, but thanks to the wand's effects, couldn't move much faster than molasses.
"Go!" the Delphox shouted and grabbed Vallion by the vine, who in turn grabbed Kadabra by the wrist. The chain of pokemon plunged into the black mists at the top of the hill. She immediately regret her decision upon gulping down an entire lungful of the stinging vapors. Blind, deafened, desperate, and coughing uncontrollably, they dashed over the jungle's unforgiving terrain in the vague direction of up, plowing through entire bramble bushes with the Spiritomb's choir of screams echoing from all directions.
Even when they broke through the other side, the only indication was the light that hit their eyelids. Their vision was practically worthless by that point. All she could tell was that there was a cliff of mud twice as high as she was tall, and was wide enough that she didn't even bother trying to look for a way around. The Delphox released Vallion's vine to sift her hands across the undergrowth. "It's too steep! I need a branch or-or anything! Hurry!"
"I still can't see anything!" Kadabra was forced to shout over the wind. Flurries of hail swept almost horizontally through the trees, blasting anything and anyone in their path.
It was already too late. Freezing liquid rushed over the backs of her hands and wrapped around her ankles. Panne tried to blast the water away with a few puffs of fire, but the holes she made quickly filled back in. She could see well enough by that point to notice that the entire jungle floor was pitch black, and that the same color bled upwards into a sheer wall behind them. And it was coming fast.
A vine wrapped itself around Panne's waist and pulled. She yelped as her feet lift off the ground, then grunted as her back hit the mud wall. "Over here! I can pull us up with this!" Vallion screamed from above, his silhouette wrapped around the base of a dubiously thin tree trunk. Meanwhile, Kadabra still clamored at the base of the cliff while the flood waters rose. Several tendrils began to manifest behind her.
Rather than give a warning, Panne swung around in Vallion's grasp until her wand arm was free. The Servine hardly had the chance to protest before the boom of her crimson flames filled the air. The immediate threat exploded into a burst of steam and smoke, but even the huge gouge she made was replaced in mere seconds. Once Panne was had been hoisted to the lip of the ledge, she scrambled over and let a coat of flames dance over her arms. Several more hurled bolts covered Kadabra's ascent for the most part. For as much damage as she caused, there was no end to the waters that crawled out of the fog.
Then the Delphox stopped. She had seen something in the mists that didn't bend with the wind. A Snivy whose amber eyes were so fierce that it was a wonder she didn't immediately see them. A Snivy who wore that patterned green scarf around his neck. A Snivy that was staring straight at her. She tried to blink the dream away, hoping that any moment she'd wake up in the tent, only to find that this was the only reality. The numbing chill, the sting of her soaked fur, the image standing before her-it was all as real as it could possibly be.
Tracers from wayward beams shot by her head. Panne gasped as the tendrils that had manifested behind her were blasted away. Kadabra then made sure the ambush was absolutely over by firing three more beams into what was essentially already a puddle. When the Delphox tried to look back at the Snivy, there was only the violent shaking of an empty thicket gradually being destroyed.
"Panne!" Vallion shook her awake. "We can't stand around for much longer! The water's still coming up the ledge!"
What once sounded like a small brook in the distance was now disconcertingly similar to the rolling crash of the ocean. Entire trees snapped and gave way to the weight of the demon. Everything in its path was smothered, crushed, and destroyed, and soon they would be a part of those casualties. She gave a tiny nod, and the three of them restarted their ascent.
The water was much slower than the mist. While the tsunami struggled to chase them up the slope, whole clouds of the noxious fumes raced on either side. One of those clouds rushed ahead and tried to cut them off. They were forced to dip away and reroute, losing ground over a quickly deteriorating jungle while the demon teased and jeered in its thousand voices. It could have seriously attacked them at any point. More than once had she seen the utter power of its ranged abilities, but it instead chose to toy with them in this cruel game of chase, its laughter traveling for miles.
After the third cloud rolled into their path, terror began to blossom into anger. "Do you think this is a joke?!" Panne's growl was swallowed up by the din. It had stopped reacting to her empowered flames, shrugging off her blows without so much as a screech. "You think this is funny?! You think I can't kill you right here?!"
Panne plunged her hand into the front pocket of her bag and felt for the smooth edge of an emera. With Vallion in her sight, there wasn't even a twitch of hesitation in her wrist as she popped Go For Broke into her looplet. A sudden tingling exploded across her body, numbness surging down her spine and spreading through her extremities. The sensation made no difference to the adrenaline in her blood. A deep breath, a squeeze on the neck, and a swing of her free arm were all it took to dispel the entire cloud with a massive blast of heated air. A small vortex was created just from the incredible difference in temperature. "Is that funny enough for you, bastard?! That wasn't even fire yet!"
The series of climbs ultimately lead up to the base of a massive mahogany tree. Its trunk was so ancient that colorful plants had sprouted from its knots, several of which were thoughtlessly ripped away by the gale. The Spiritomb was somehow immense enough to have already wrapped around to the other side of the hill, entombing them in an even tighter trap than before. This was the end of the road.
Vallion frantically took in their surroundings, wheezing for breath in his haste. "We could keep climbing! I can get us up there, it'd be easy!"
"And what are we going to do at the top of that tree?!" Panne brought flame to the tip of her slow wand, ignoring the electric feeling that sped from her heart all the way into her wrists. "We'd get caught, we'd fall, and we'd die! I don't need an extra two minutes of survival! If we don't fight right here, there's not gonna be another two minutes!"
Helpless to the whims of the demon, they stood and watched the last light of day be extinguished as the fog curled into a dome over them. The air went still so quickly that her ears rung from the dead silence. Even the thoughts in her own head were stifled. Then came what what Panne thought was a hallucination at first. The gentle lapping of waves against a shore, like they were standing in the center of a sandbar. Tiny white dots blinked open in the shadows. Pairs of them-eyes. More eyes than there were stars in the sky.
A pause. They were examined by those endless eyes for what felt like minutes. The tension was only broken when the flame on the end of Panne's wand started to whip to the left. A gasp stuck in her throat, she stepped backwards and narrowly dodged a tendril that had sliced through the air where her face once was. Before she could even retaliate, the appendage retracted back into the darkness, and the fire started to behave like normal.
"Back the hell off!" the Delphox screamed in response. She didn't dare launch her own attack for fear that the dome would come crashing down on their heads. And for fear of the limits that she had broken with this emera. "What do you want?! Quick screwing around and get to the point!"
"...I honestly feel like I'm about to die right now," Vallion muttered.
The thunderous boom of a thousand voices erupted, "ABOUT TO DIE."
Panne cringed and covered her ears. The noise itself was like a knife scraping the insides of her skull, but worst of all was the voice that the Spiritomb used to make it. Countless impersonations of Vallion, all steeped in emotions stolen from memories that didn't belong to it. A pang of rage caused her to launch a fireball straight up into the air, the resulting blast four times the size she expected it to be. Not only did the explosion rival the ghost's volume, but it also illuminated the fact that they were utterly captured. Just beyond the mist layer was the unmistakable shimmer of a rippling body of water in all possible directions. Even directly above.
"Oh no..." Kadabra gasped, clutching her stomach as she desperately fought back the urge to retch. "It's not a dome of mist. It's a bubble. We're in a bubble..."
Vallion grit his teeth. "Why? Why this? What are you waiting for? I don't understand why we're still-"
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND," the spirits mimicked once more, the uproar just as loud and grating as the last,
"Graah! Stop doing that!" Panne screamed. Regret rapidly filled her chest as the absolute quiet was replaced with a low, resonating hum. The vibrations of it shook the very roots of her teeth and swam through her body almost hypnotically. It was the same resonance that filled those lowlands beside Revelation Mountain. The one that got stronger as it bounced around the walls of the cave. The one that Vallion almost lost his soul to.
"We have to stop it! NOW!"
Menacing shapes and sloshing sounds manifested themselves from the shadows. Her flame whipped around like a whirlwind. All according to the premonition, water tendrils launched from every direction but straight down. Panne managed to fend off the first few, but twice as many joined the fight for each one she destroyed. Not even the huge swathes of fire she summoned could hold them back for long. They wrapped around her arms and tried to pull the joints of her shoulders loose. They swarmed around her legs and brought her to the ground. The last of them encircled her throat like ropes of ice, halting the fuel for her massive attacks altogether.
The wand fell to the ground beside her, still burning. Kadabra succumbed to the same fate not even five seconds later. Vallion held the tendrils off for some time, but it was hopeless. He, too, was bound by the Spiritomb and forced to kneel before its audience of eyes. A pathetic murmur left her mouth as she tried to shout his name. Even with this prickling energy coursing through her, there was nothing she could do without any air in her lungs. Kicking and clawing and punching did nothing when you were fighting a hurricane.
The humming had gotten so intense that it started to feel like an earthquake. She saw the golden lights start to manifest. Vallion quivered against his bindings. "You can't have it! We didn't come all this way for it to end like this!" Another jab to his stomach brought him low once more. Not even the burning in the Delphox's chest outweighed her desire to jump in front of those blows.
After a long fit of pained retching, Vallion somehow found the strength to push himself up. "You're wrong! I know that you think that everything will get better once you have his soul, but that's not true! It's only going to get worse! You can't even handle his memories!"
"HIS MEMORIES," the Spiritomb repeated as a single jarring choir, still using the Servine's own voice like a toy. One by one, the million little eyes started to merge together like bubbles. The less of them there were, the more she recognized the shape. More like his.
"They don't belong to you!" the Servine shouted. A single golden cinder floated up from his body towards the aurora. "And neither do all those lives you took! You wouldn't even want to be Vallion anyway! Do you have even the slightest idea how important he was?! There are so many people that need him! So many people count on him, every single day! You can't even begin to understand just how much he means to this world, even after Dark Matter was over! You don't know!"
"THEY DON'T BELONG TO YOU!" The demon bellowed back, its many eyes nearly becoming a single pair. Panne felt the tendrils quiver with its rage, but her every instinct screamed for oxygen above all else now. Everything fell out of focus-everything except the Servine, who grew a brighter white by the second. White. Not yellow.
In what seemed like a brief moment of indecision, Vallion glanced back at the Delphox. Even with the black spots that appeared in her vision, she could see into his eyes so clearly. They were changing shape. "I know... I know they don't, but I'm never going to give them over to you! Vallion is neither of ours to take!" The golden lights were now completely overcome by a blinding white. His body grew larger and longer and taller, his crumpled posture shifting into one of pride and defiance even in the grip of the Spiritomb.
Emerald vines flashed through the air, decimating the Spiritomb's false limbs. The ghost hadn't expected him to break free and hesitated as Vallion made a lunge for Panne. A single slash was all it took to remove the tendrils that had closed off the Delphox's windpipe. Massive, throbbing pain exploded across her head as she gulped in that next fleeting breath. She let the oxygen boil inside of her lungs and belched an inferno that cleansed the bindings over her whole body.
With her first real gasp, she scrambled for her slow wand, took it up in both hands, and snapped the twig right in half. Fire caught the escaping magic like a match to paper. The cloud of glittering smoke rose to the top of the bubble and caught the coming legion of tendrils. Panne turned towards Kadabra, ready to blast away her bonds, but the psychic type was nowhere to be seen. Worse yet, a skull-shattering crash obliterated the hum entirely. The Spiritomb had begun to collapse in on itself. She extended an arm towards Vallion only to find that he had disappeared as well.
A tiny form smacked Panne in the back of the head. "Leaving!" it shouted before a vacuum of atmosphere sucked her straight out of the darkness.
...
By all means, storms weren't calming. She took no pleasure in the sound the rain made as it crashed into a window, or the dreary dark colors that the heavy clouds painted the sky. But Vallion always had. He loved the gloomy feeling, even if the day had been horrible leading up to the weather. At this very second, while the Delphox coughed and hacked her brains out in the fetal position in the mud, her pupils still adjusting from the absolute blackness, she finally saw the appeal.
Panne tried to stand, but a bolt of lightning shot down her spine and floored her instantly. She couldn't even feel her limbs anymore-an electric numbness had replaced a vast majority of her sense of touch. It took a great deal of effort just to wrest the Tempest Looplet from her neck, fiddling with the difficult clasp using fingers she couldn't even feel. The numbness started to subside shortly after, and though it was replace with a stinging pain, at least she could move again.
Kadabra was nearby, nearly knocked out cold beneath the shade of a fern. No major injuries at first glance, but she was to rattled to even reply with anything other than tired moans. Definitely preferable to what was about to happen to them. Panne let her be and instead started to search for the missing Servine, calling out his name over a dry tongue. After a minute or so, the worry began to compound on itself. He was here, wasn't he? They all should've been wherever this was, right? What if he was taken by the Spiritomb?
Then she saw a Serperior.
It almost didn't even register to her who it was. The two of them simply stared at each other, a barrage of questions coming to both of their minds but never reaching their mouths. Her legs moved towards him on their own.
Panne gingerly reached for the sides of his head and brought him down to her level. His pupils sharpened as soon as their noses touched. She slowly ran her claws against his cheek. concentrating on feeling the texture of his scales through the residual numbness in her fingertips. Every Serperior she had ever seen carried a certain air about them with them, almost like an aura. Whether to inspire or to threaten, it was something that simply came with the package. But Panne had never been in the presence of one quite like this. Never one that made her heart feel like it was going to burst.
"This is just the worst!" a squeaky voice called down from above.
Panne was hesitant to pull away from the Serperior, only looking away once her hands had slid away from his face. She didn't regret it for long. "Oh hey! Mew! Finally, we've been looking for you all over!"
The pink pokemon flitted through the air, twisting and turning with anxiety. "What's that? You think you've been looking for me? You don't know the first thing about looking for something! That dumb cloud has absolutely ruined my day AND my week! Do you know how hard it is to track down something that could be anywhere? It wasn't even until that annoying buzz that I-" she gasped and turned rightside-up. "Panne! Is that really you? I didn't recognize you! What happened to your skirt? Where are your friends? Wait, where was that other one? Was she alright?!"
Kadabra, still on her back, meekly raised her hand. "I just...I need a minute. I'm not used to...to suffocating yet."
"Mew, we need your help," Panne said.
"Heck yeah you do! That thing was about to kill you guys! What is it, by the way? Is it a pokemon? I've never seen anything like it."
The Delphox shook her head. "No, I mean- Yes, thank you for saving us, but there's a reason why we're all here! Val lost his memories and we can't get them back without your help!"
"I- Wait. So this is..?" Mew flew down to meet the Serperior face-to-face. She contemplated his eyes for a few moments, turning her whole body to examine him from different angles. Realization dawned on her face. "Oh, I see! So you want to see my Val, then?"
Vallion nodded, still not completely adjusted to what had just happened. He looked surprised by the sound of his own voice. "I feel bad even asking since you've already saved our lives once, but this could be our only chance. If you could lead us to where my old body is, Hydreigon would take everything from there. We only need to find it."
"Aww, you didn't tell me old man Hydreigon was with you! That guy's seriously so lame!" Mew crossed her arms and turned her back with a scoff. She flew over his head in an arc, only turning to look back at him while completely upside-down. "I'll only help you if you promise to take care of this stupid monster. It's ruining everything and I want it gone!"
"Oooh, don't worry. I was planning on it." Panne stuffed the Tempest Looplet back into her bag, deep enough that no one could see what was lodged in it. "We won't be able to start the ritual with it lurking around anyway. Almost everyone's here, too. The three of us got separated after an attack from the Spiritomb. We haven't had much luck meeting back up with anyone."
"You're telling me that's a Spiritomb?" After turning upright again, Mew found her carefree smile once more. "Whatever. I'll lead you back to your friends for you! I'm just happy to finally see some other faces around here! Ever since the storm showed up everyone's been...Well, it's not been good. Besides, it's been such a long time since I last visited you guys! I probably won't even recognize half of you! I already didn't recognize half of you."
It took a while, but Kadabra had finally recovered enough to hobble forward to give her introduction. "Hi. I'm new. You probably don't..." she trailed off once she saw Vallion. "Ah. Is that- was that what that light was? Did you really...In the middle of..."
The Serperior lowered his head like he still wasn't sure this wasn't a dream. "Yep, right in the middle of it. Just like Panne on the Vidirian. Don't ask me how, I have no idea how any of this works."
"Well you know us. Always evolving at the weirdest times, ever since we were kids. Call it a bad habit." Panne smiled as bubbles of hysteria worked their way up her esophagus. All the tension in the air cracked and crumbled away all at once. "It really is a bad habit, isn't it? Now we're out of extra chances. I want to laugh but I feel like I forgot how."
"We won't need anymore chances after this," Vallion said, his expression hardening into the confident, stony visage that was so becoming of a Serperior. Her stomach did a flip. "We found Mew, and I'm sure the others have found an Awakening emera by now. We're already so close! The Spiritomb is the one that's run out of chances."
Mew stifled a giggle. "Okay yeah, you're definitely still Val. Nobody else says cheesy things like that after nearly getting eaten by a freaky cloud blob. We should probably get going before it reaches your friends first, by the way. I'm not sure I can save you guys twice in one day!"
...
The Connection Orb shimmered furiously. "I hate you guys so much!" Floatzel's voice rippled over the receiver, his blurred face full of frustration. "And you know what? This is the last time I'm going to willingly babysit the house! Because every single time I'm stuck with this job, you people go off and evolve and other crazy crap while I sit here and flip through paperwork all day! Next time I'm just going to force Jirachi to take my place!"
"Hey! We get it, you evolved in your sleep and you're still mad about it! You can't keep me down just because I'm part of the cool kids!" Jirachi butt in front of Ampharos to get into the gadget's view.
"Shut up about that! And actually yeah, I can. I'm the chief!"
"He totally can," Mew agreed from the back of the tent with a nod. "You can't horde all the cool stuff that happens to yourself. Otherwise nobody else will know how cool it all was, which automatically makes it uncool. It's just common sense."
Ampharos rolled his eyes. "Anyway, that's the gist of what happened. We're definitely not going near any more narrow cliffs after today. That's for sure. I'm not going to risk anything like that happening again."
"Goes without saying," Dedenne added.
"Damn, I guess you guys got it covered," Floatzel said through a wave of distortion. "All that's left is to murder that ghost and get Vallion back to normal. Unless something else goes awry along the way, which I'm sure it will knowing our luck. At least it can't get much more complicated than it already is."
Hydreigon murmured from the sidelines. "We have every major component needed. All that's left is to clear the way to conducting the ritual. Once the time comes, we'll have the abomination trapped in a corner at the drop of an orb."
"Hell yes we will!" Volcarona shuddered out her wings. "I've never been more ready for anything in my life!"
"So lame," Floatzel moaned, knocking a pen to the floor with a bored wave of his hand. "You know Archeops got to go off on an emergency call, right? Even he gets to see some action! I wish I could be there just to see it. Since you've found that extra Awakening, I'm sure the Dashing Wanderer will want to make his reappearance, won't he? I've been waiting on that for months!"
"Uh huh. And the Dashing Wanderer better not do anything stupid while he's around," whispered Mawile.
"What a chivalrous rogue does all depends on the situation at hand. It's not up to him what happens." Ampharos cleared his throat. "We should call it a night soon, huh? This will be no easy battle. We'll need all the strength we can get before dawn."
"indeed we will," Hydreigon added with a hum. "I will take watch overnight in case we are attacked, though I have a feeling that won't be necessary. Fate has likely already deigned when the final confrontation shall be."
Before the line was cut, Floatzel picked up his own gadget and looked straight at the Serperior. "Good luck with that damn ghost, Vallion! Bring me back some ectoplasm as souvenir, will you?" With a click and a fizzle, the Connection Orb fell dormant.
A different kind of energy buzzed around the tent tonight. And not just because Mew was bouncing off the walls, either. It was hope. This camp wasn't just another leg in their journey, in which they just piled on inside and tried their best not to be soaked. This was the destination. There were no factors left like 'if they were quick about it' or 'if the map is right around this spot'. Tomorrow was going to be the final day, and that alone was horribly exciting.
It didn't help that her heart raced if she even so much as glanced at Vallion. All coiled up in the corner like always, but still so very much different. What he said the moment before the change still rang very clearly in her head. Not everything was settled and over with yet. Not while he felt like a stranger inside his own body. But what was there to say that she hadn't already said a dozen times by now? What could possibly convince him that he was truly himself?
The Delphox's claws worked at the knot of his scarf, undoing and fixing the tie over and over again. There wasn't much time left to figure it out. By this time tomorrow, he was more than likely going to either have his memories back, or be dead in the ground. Tonight wasn't a good night for thinking, anyway.
"Kadabra," Panne called for the psychic type a few feet down the tent wall. It'd be too difficult to get some sleep if she didn't resolve something tonight.
After a great deal of hesitance, Kadabra barely lifted her head out from between her knees. Though her expression was blank initially, she was curled up so tight that a Sandshrew would be jealous, and the skin around her eyes was red and puffy. "Hm?"
"I don't actually hate you, just so you know." Panne fought the urge to look away.
Kadabra held her neutral expression, waiting even longer to respond the second time. "...Why not?"
The question caught the Delphox off guard, which made it even more awkward when she had to actually come up with an answer. "I- I don't know? Hate just isn't what it is. That's what I feel towards the goddamn ghost outside, and it's very, very different. I'd say I'm maybe more scared of you than anything."
"You're scared of me? Really?" The psychic type scoffed. "I can't begin to imagine why you would ever feel that way. I can barely run a mile. You can level an entire building in the matter of minutes."
"No, it's not like that. I'm scared of you because...because I start to wonder about the future. I think about what would happen if Val ever did decide to leave me. What if he starts to like someone else, you know?"
One deadpan stare later, Kadabra shook her head. "I don't know how but you've managed to say something even more ridiculous than before. Why the hell would Vallion ever, ever, EVER think of abandoning you? He literally just came up with a ceremony that meant he wanted to stay with you forever. Why on earth would you be worried about that?"
"I dunno. What if I end up changing too much? I'm not the same person I was eight years ago." The Delphox gave in to her anxiety and stared down at the floor.
"So? Who is?"
Her ears folded back. "Nevermind. I'm just too used to overthinking it. Now's not the time to get emotional about it. I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry for the way I've always acted towards you."
The strangely gentle pattering of rain was the only thing to fill the space. No matter what they did or what was said, time was always passing. The big fight was coming whether they were all ready or not, and it wasn't the combat that got to her, but the anticipation. Maybe Vallion had the right idea. In the case that something went wrong, it was important to understand each other the best they could. If only she could figure out how to understand him.
"Don't worry about it," Kadabra finally responded, then laid down with an arm beneath her head. "As long as everything goes okay for him, I'll be more than happy. I'd rather just focus on making that future happen, you know? It's okay to be worried about something that might happen. It just means we can focus on preventing it." She closed her eyes, leaving her wisdom to linger in the air like the humid warmth.