They'd swelled their ranks, sure, but Ran felt uneasy about their chances as they stormed down into the fray below. Pokemon all around her opted to ignore the many stairs that gave them access to the second lowest floor of Crag - instead, they jumped straight down into the raging battle.
Outrider looked back at her and shouted, "Ran! Keep up and stay close! The rest of you, concentrate your efforts! Small groups of two or three each to a member of the SDC or the Children of Mother! Relay the orders!"
The mercenaries did not seem to understand that the defense forces and angry civilians of Crag alike were not here to help them - though as Outrider launched a flying kick directly at the head of a gurdurr locked in combat with three bellsprout, it became clear to Ran that they would know soon enough. Screams of pain and shouts of confusion rose into the air and blended into the coughing and gagging all around her. The fight the SDC had brought to the Children had not been pretty. Mangled bodies of machoke, machamp, gurdurr and conkeldurr peppered the ground floor of Crag. And nearly all of them were surrounded by at least two or three smaller pokemon.
The smell of spilled blood. The sight of it - across the facades of homes, warehouses, places of industry and the ground in between them all. Mulched bodies that were little more than viscera, bone and sinew. Collapsed fighters against destroyed carts, still bodies blown through broken sections of wall, and the scattered remnants of collapsed stairs filled the ground floor of Crag. Beneath it all, the sickening smell of voided bowels.
A conkeldurr, clutching at his stomach and leaning against a partially destroyed home near the foot of the stairs, reached out to Ran, Outrider and Valor. He coughed, the corners of his mouth stained with blood, but said nothing. Instead, his arm fell to his side, and the other let go of his stomach, allowing the contents to spill out.
Ran sprinted past Outrider as he ducked beneath a swing from the chunk of stone pillar the gurdurr brandished. She launched herself directly at the three stunned bellsprout staring at her. Bandanas of pure red, so small they looked comical, were wrapped around the thickest parts of their heads.
The first hardly had time to look surprised as she cut through it and slashed it to pieces. The second had only just started to scream in anger when she dropped low and slid past it, claws raised, and took its head off in the process.
Her vision was narrowing. She snarled and shouted, "Fuck off!" as she rose from her slide and tumbled past the final bellsprout's barrage of purplish acid . She dove forward as her vision narrowed down to pinpricks. Ran raged inside her head, screaming at the doppelganger she knew had crawled out to seize control.
"Give me back my FUCKING body!" she shrieked internally. She was in some dark box - the box this hideous demon lived in when her head was clear. She saw a slice of the bellsprout's head go sailing through the air and felt her lips yank into a cruel smile. She knew this demon's name.
Karan. A flash of a man's face. A man she knew. A gengar - a pitiable, miserable gengar.
"No, no, I don't think I will," mumbled Karan. A pair of claws covered in golden blood came into her vision and the bittersweet taste spread across her tongue.
"I said GIVE. IT. BACK."
She could see it clearly in her head. Her own clone staring back at her. Her smug grin and imperious eyes. Her crossed arms and shining claws. "Make me," she mumbled. "Go on. Make me."
Ran's scream of defiance exploded from her mouth as she felt something strike her firmly on the back of her head. She looked over her shoulder and saw Outrider still several steps away, worry painted clearly on his face. He couldn't have hit her. "Are you alrigh-" he began.
"I'M FUCKING FINE," shouted Ran. "Where's Valor?" Perhaps he had struck her instead?
Valor rolled into view at full speed, slamming directly into the spearow that was diving straight at Ran. The dull thud of the impact rang out as the quilladin sent it spiraling into the building a few paces away, destroying the facade. "Right here!" he shouted as he rushed into the building. The spearow burst out of the plumes of dust the destruction had kicked up. Almost immediately, Valor's vines were upon it. One snatched at the injured bird - a miss.
The second found purchase, winding around the bird and slamming it straight into the ground. Valor slammed a shield down to deal the finishing blow. A loud crunch met Ran's ears. The quilladin's eyes skipped past the fresh corpse and instead pointed at a pikachu and a nidorina running circles around two heavily injured machoke. "Take them out!" he shouted, tearing after them.
Ran joined him, her heart drumming a furious rhythm in her chest. Valor hadn't hit her either. She sprung from the quilladin's head as he stopped and raised his shields, deflecting a crackling ball of electricity and a spray of needles. Ran soared straight at the pikachu, her claws icing over all the while...
She missed. An arc of electricity found its mark, instead. She screamed, convulsions wracking her whole body and sending her to the ground. A loud thud filled her ears and the electricity dissipated as quick as it came. She kipped up and saw the pikachu splayed out on the floor in the shadow of a bleeding, bellowing machoke.
The mercenary brought an overhead smash straight into the mouse's head, spraying a macabre pattern out from its burst skull. All the while, Ran sprinted straight at the machoke and flung herself onto his massive shoulder. One set of claws found purchase in his shoulder while the other raised up and then drove straight into the mercenary's neck. Out, in, then out once more. The machoke fell over with her in tow. He gurgled and clutched at the bleeding wounds in his neck, trying desperately to staunch the flow.
Ran's pulse pounded in her head. Her vision narrowed to pinpricks once more, and cruel laughter filled her lungs. She'd lost control of her body again, but she'd be damned to the Abyss if it stayed that way for long.
"STOP!"
"You don't even know what these do," whispered Karan, filling Ran's vision with the chainmail gauntlets she wore. "No sense of intuition. Pathetic." The bitter, metallic taste of blood filled her senses. Her narrowed vision then shifted to the machoke-turned-pincushion on the ground, then to the nidorina beside him, neck clearly broken. And then, to Outrider and Valor, both of them rushing at her. One of Valor's vines shot out towards her.
"Watch," said Karan with relish.
"NO. YOU. WON'T!" screamed Ran. She clawed around in this box without edges, desperate to tear through walls she could not see.
Karan did not run towards them, but rather, directly away. Her narrowed vision caught a kadabra in the distance, raising a machoke into the air and contorting its limbs in sickening directions. Then Karan pivoted on the spot, diving forward and slashing through the air.
Her vision went black. She felt like she'd been compressed. Chest, head, legs - all of her, all at once. She couldn't draw breath. And the smell.
The smell of ozone?
The pinpricks of vision were back once again, but she had somehow returned to the mangled corpses of the fallen SDC mercenary and the two Children he'd fought. Ran was forced to look over her shoulders and wave delicately at Outrider and Valor, who had only just turned around, utterly confused.
"They're not worth killing," whispered Karan. "Not yet, anyway."
Ran struggled against the darkness around her, scratching and tearing at nothing. "GIVE ME BACK-"
"Shut up. Let's have some fun with these." She raised her paws, the runes woven into the chainmail glowing indigo beneath a sheen of scarlet. Karan turned her head. "And them."
A luxio, a shinx, and a raboot - all wearing crimson bandanas - were locked in combat against a conkeldurr, who held them at bay with furious swings from two enormous iron bars. Cowering behind a piece of rubble was a terrified-looking scraggy, who ducked their head behind the shattered remains of a home every time the conkeldurr's overhead smashes failed to find their target.
The raboot wreathed itself in flame and launched forward, fast and low, aiming for the ogre's legs. The conkeldurr reared back to strike at the rabbit as it drew within range, but instead was struck in the midsection by twin bolts of lightning. It convulsed and dropped its iron bars, then collapsed with a second resounding thud as the raboot collided with its legs. The smell of searing flesh filled the air.
The luxio and shinx both charged at the conkeldurr the moment it had hit the ground, crackling arcs leaving their tails as they slammed into the ogre. The fallen pokemon gave a breathless shout, thrashing uncontrollably in the dirt. Arcs of electrical energy bounced from the shinx and luxio in unison, colliding in mid-air and producing a much larger bolt before it struck the conkeldurr. His groans and wild thrashing came to an abrupt stop as his body went completely rigid. With an almost casual air, the raboot hopped onto the fallen mercenary's face, feet wreathed in flame. The rabbit looked down at the conkeldurr with a bored expression, even as its new platform caught fire and began to twitch and spasm.
With a lazy turn of the head, the raboot turned its attention to Ran, who was now a dozen paces away, claws raised and face twisted into a mad smile. The raboot's eyes flicked to the bandana around her arm, which bore Nomad's colors. Then, the raboot pointed at Ran and said in a feminine voice, "Not ours."
The shinx and luxio turned on the spot and sprinted at her, snarling and crackling with electricity. Ran slashed the air with a scoff, slipping into yet another black tear in space. In the span of a blink, she tore through reality and appeared behind the advancing lynxes. The sweet sounds of confusion filled her ears.
Ran launched herself straight at the raboot. A reflexive heel of flames rose to meet her advance. Compression. Black. Ozone. The light of the battle, here on the other side of the confused rabbit. Ran wheeled around and in two steps was upon her opponent. The raboot hadn't even begun to turn around and face the weavile. Standing on one leg, the other still high in the air and kicking at nothing, she was vulnerable. Karan laughed as she pulled Ran's arm back to strike.
A flash of Ran's claws freed the supporting leg from the rabbit, sending her toppling to the ground with an ear-splitting shriek of pain. The sound was cut short when Ran drove her claws straight into the screaming raboot's head and pulled them free with a bloody flourish.
"LET GO!" screamed Ran into the black void around her. "This isn't your body!" Alas, desperate protest did nothing.
"This is absolutely my body," whispered Karan. The weavile ran her tongue along a bloody claw, filling Ran's senses with the taste of iron and staining her vision red.
The shinx held back to fire another wave of electrical energy at Ran as the luxio sprinted at her. The wave would hit her first.
But they hadn't learned. Darkness. The smell of ozone. Ran came out on the other end of the tear at a full sprint, her claws raised and her body low to the ground. The shinx could do nothing but stare, mouth agape in its last moments. A tiny gag filled her ears as Ran drove her claws through its neck. She lifted the shinx and threw it from her talons, bones grinding against her claws as it slid off. The soft thud of the shinx's lifeless body never came. Instead, an anguished scream from the luxio dominated the air.
"You fucking monster!" he screamed.
The weavile spun around and smiled. "Oh, look who's talking," said Karan in a sickly sweet tone. It was almost pitying. Ran felt her paws run down her body, from her collar to just above her crotch. A gasp fell from her mouth and then she smiled once again. "Come die."
The taunt worked. The luxio broke into a dead sprint, a roar carrying in his throat all the while. Wild arcs of electricity shot off his body and scorched the ground he soared past. Bolts of lightning flew from the lynx, directly at the weavile. Too fast. Searing pain flooded her limbs as she lost control and fell to the ground. The luxio struck her chest with his head and toppled her over, then pounced on her, his paws pinning her arms to the ground. He snapped for Ran's neck with a frothing snarl, but the weavile wriggled out of the way just enough to take the bite in her upper arm instead.
Ran screamed - and then seamlessly shifted it to a single, cruel laugh. "Missed," breathed Karan, drawing the word out and blowing a sheet of ice into the side of the luxio's head. Nearly half of his head had been encased in solid ice when he finally let go of her arm. He pawed furiously at his head, trying to break the ice away.
Karan cackled again, bringing her newly freed arm up and immediately stabbing two claws through the luxio's exposed throat. A muffled scream met her ears and the force holding her down weakened enough for her to overpower the luxio. She tossed him aside and immediately crawled atop him.
Her claws stabbed into everything. Neck, chest, legs, stomach - anything she could reach. With a low, shaky gasp of excitement, she bit into his neck and tore a chunk of his throat free.
Ran looked on, powerless. Disgust, fear and blinding fury swirled in her stomach. "STOP!" she screamed as loud as she could.
Karan swallowed the shredded chunk of meat and growled, "Shut up." She rose from the luxio's corpse and looked back at the piece of rubble the scraggy hid behind. She wiped the blood from her lips onto her arm and called out, "Hey. Come out. It's over."
The scraggy peeked over the piece of destroyed building, met Ran's eyes, then hid once more. "N-no. I'm a- a- an Orphan. You'll kill me."
The weavile smiled broadly. "Don't be stupid. You didn't fight, get out here," said Karan, her tone gentle and reassuring. "Go on, come out here." The scraggy peeked out again and then rose up from behind the rubble. "That's it." She beckoned to him. "Come here."
As the lizard drew closer, Ran screamed from within the void, "Leave him alone! He didn't do anything! LEAVE HIM ALONE, HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING."
Her own voice echoed back at her, dripping with venom. "He didn't do anything? You don't know what he's done. He made me suffer." A delicate laugh filled Ran's head. "And he taught me everything. So I'm going to show him and you what I've learned."
Images flashed past as a long-sealed memory burst through the black. A dark alley. Sneering faces - one of them, a scrafty. Kicks and punches beating her into submission. Cruel peaks. Violation. Violation. Violation. Violation. Violation. The feathers in the plume upon her head and growing from her tail yanked free. Violation. Violation. Violation. Violation. Violation. Beaten, bloody, and ruined in a cold alley where unfeeling skies stared down at her stinking, dying form.
It was so much. It was almost too much. Almost.
Though Ran felt like she was going to be sick, she would not let Karan claim an innocent life. Child of Mother or not, the scraggy did not have an ounce of fight in him.
Ran sprinted as fast as she could at the black abyss in her head, diving straight into the emptiness. Her claws impacted with something as hard as metal. Cracks of blinding purple light greeted her alongside a terrible throb in her head.
She felt herself stagger in place and drop to a knee, her breathing labored. The speck of vision she had started to open up once more.
"RUN! DON'T LISTEN TO ME!" shouted Ran, looking up at the scraggy. "RUN!" Tears flowed down her face, staining her fur the color of midnight. The scraggy stopped in his tracks, staring wide-eyed at the weavile, then took a step back.
"Are you- are you ok?" he asked.
"I will kill you, RUN," she commanded once more. She did not wait for the lizard to respond. Instead, she got unsteadily to her feet and seized her head as she sprinted towards the nearest house. She just needed to be away from the scraggy. Away from the war around her. Away from it all.
Though the interior of this home was softly lit, the waves of pain filling her head made it appear as if it were nearly midnight. The whole world was spinning in place, and it made running in anything resembling a straight line nearly impossible. She banged against tables, knocked over chairs and stumbled straight into a cabinet bearing dishes. The sound of breaking glass and ceramic echoed in her ears.
The brittle sound of the shattering glass resonated inside her and she felt the world spin beneath her feet. The pain was properly blinding now, and the screams of bestial rage that echoed in her mind felt like they'd explode out of her own ears. Karan's screams were otherworldly, possessed of a demonic fury Ran could only barely comprehend.
She fell to her knees as her vision began to narrow. No. No, it wasn't narrowing. It was darkening. She felt exhausted. The pain throbbed harder than ever, pulsing right in the center of her forehead and spreading everywhere inside her skull. The floor rushed up at her as she tipped over, and the interior of the house faded away.
Ran's feet were wet. Her shins were wet.
She opened her eyes and found herself in the same endless pool of water from when she'd used Outrider's stomach as a pillow. A warm awakening tinted with equal parts fondness and embarrassment. This was the pool from a dream that seemed so terribly long ago, now. And yet it had only been days.
Karan rose out of the water in front of her, the liquid rolling off her fur in thin trails, like hot oil across a pan. Her teeth were bared, and visibly grinding against one another as the demon trained her eyes on Ran. They were eyes that had become little more than slits with tears beading in the corners.
It was more than anger. It was a hate of such purity that it made Ran nearly take a step back.
"This is my body," said Ran to her doppelganger. "Not yours. You don't get to kill whoever you want. You know who we're fighting, who has to die, and who deserves to be spared."
"No. One. Deserves. Mercy." Karan's words dripped out of her one by one as bare hisses. She pointed directly at her own heart. "I certainly didn't FUCKING SEE ANY!" She lunged at Ran in the blink of an eye, but the vicious thrusts that came at her throat stopped an inch away.
Energy arced across Karan's arms, tinted lilac, indigo and violet. Ran's doppelganger screeched and pulled her arms away with what appeared to be enormous effort.
"That's not going to work. Not here," said Ran in a low voice.
"I could rip all that you are to shreds," breathed Karan, pacing around Ran slowly. Her eyes had become positively feral, the pupils in them little more than barely visible pinpricks. "You would be nothing without me."
Clouds of inky black swirled around Karan and snaked out towards Ran. One of them wound around her leg and squeezed, filling Ran's eyes with flashes of old memories locked behind an opaque door that looked as black as the Abyss itself.
The alley Karan was left for dead in. The returning figures of those who violated her. Flashing claws and sprays of blood. A triumphant, sick inversion of the roles between Karan and that scrafty. Their forms blurred together, melted into colors that collected in a pool between Ran and her shadow. The endless expanse of water around Ran and Karan retreated away, and the clear blue skies shifted to a wine red.
The pool of swirling colors became the form of Karan towering over new prey. Visions of sharp claws and stopped hearts, bedfellows to the intoxicating effects of lustful murder.
Ran stepped towards the figures that filled her eyes. With a single wave of her arm, the forms collapsed back into swirling pools of colors that could not mix, sprayed out across the black ground that expanded into infinity around them.
The brilliant white and glowing red of Karan's eyes stared back at her from the abyss that obscured her body. But her gaze had changed - the imperious quality had faltered. Traces of concern crept in from the edges. Perhaps even fear.
A voice screamed from the black, "NO! THIS IS NOT YOUR BODY TO TAKE FROM ME. I WILL NOT HAVE IT STOLEN AGAIN."
Fear.
"Show me what you fear," whispered Ran.
A new vision filled her eyes. She could smell it. The stinking, fetid waters of a chamber to a pretender. A chamber tucked far beneath the foundations of a gleaming tower that did all it could to hide the corrupting caresses of lust and greed that festered all around it. Two figures - one of them shining and sharp, the other dark and burdened. Pain filled Ran's limbs as her heart began to race. Echoes of what Karan felt in that chamber. Echoes of what she felt.
A voice like grating metal filled the void between Karan and Ran. "Escape with your life," it echoed. The wispy form of a bisharp filled Ran's vision.
The skies overhead pulsed a brilliant crimson, and Karan materialized out of the shadows alongside unearthly howls, diving for the illusory pokemon. The doppelganger phased right through it and landed in a crumpled heap on the other side. The bisharp melted away, replaced by the figure that stood far behind it. Gleaming metal flashed in the dark of that chamber, and lightning and thunder filled Ran's senses.
The Old Nightmare. Karan's, not Ran's. Karan could not brush it away, but Ran could. And it took nothing more than one simple wave.
The smiling faces of her friends blossomed out of the dark figure as the lightning and thunder faded away. Thea's trust in total strangers. Valor's bruised, but still whole, sense of justice. Stone's devil-may-care smiles and irreverent laughter living beneath eyes shining with certainty. Outrider's voice echoed in the space between Karan and Ran. Long-winded sentences offering impressive articulation of simple thoughts. They drove her forward - drove everyone forward.
Each of them a way to the comforting feeling that the world still made sense. Even if it didn't, even if there was no reason for any of it, even if raw absurdity reigned from a throne of chaos, it was the feeling that mattered.
Ran had reached out and seized it, and refused to let it go. Few would ever offer something so precious. Even fewer would offer it so readily - so easily.
Ran shook her head and crouched down to look at Karan's defeated form."But you - you lost it. And so, you threw mercy away."
"I DID NOT!" screamed Karan, refusing to look up at Ran.
"You don't own this place. Or this body." Ran closed her eyes and took a breath. When they opened once again, the skies had regained their cheery blue, though the waters had not returned. Instead, a gleaming white floor of granite extended out in every direction. Ran stood up and continued, "It is mine. Now get up."
Karan did so slowly, her entire body shaking. Her arms in particular shook so violently it looked like electrocution. But even as she stood before Ran, she looked away, her face set into a snarl and her eyes narrowed at something in the distance. "Go ahead. Do it," she spat. Defiant to the end.
"I can't kill you either. Then again, I don't need to. But, you're never taking what's rightfully mine again. Not after you threw it away," said Ran, her voice shaking. "Now look at me."
Her shadow did not move, but instead continued to stare into the distance, allowing a silence so strong that it pressed against Ran's ears. And it went on, and on. For an unbroken minute, Karan did not move, blink or speak.
Ran felt her shadow break before Karan could even move. With an open paw, Ran stopped Karan's wild thrust at her heart. Purple energy arced all over the doppelganger's body as her eyes went wide.
With an almost pitying look, Ran raised a single claw and pressed it against the jewel set in Karan's forehead. "There's a war on. You're going to help, even if you have to watch from within the Abyss like I did."
A gentle tap against the jewel, and the world around the two weavile swirled away into nothingness. Right before consciousness brought her back to the bowels of Crag, Ran could hear her shadow clearly in her ears: A single anguished scream of defeat.
Ran's eyes fluttered open. Her vision was blurry, her head still hurt, and the insistent, burning pain of the bite wound on her arm had filled her senses all at once. She got up and clutched at the injury - some of the punctures were still bleeding, but others had begun to clot.
An eerie silence filled her ears. This was definitely the same house - where had the sounds of war gone? It didn't matter right now - she focused instead on the many punctures in her arm.
She didn't have Karan's disregard for sustaining injuries - fighting with this bite would be painful. She rubbed her temples and took a long, deep breath. A figure stumbled into the dimly lit home, and she jumped at the sight, her claws raised.
Cyan light surrounded the figure of Outrider. Ran's eyes widened and she said gleefully, "Outrider! It's me!"
The light faded and visible relief spread through Outrider's form. His shoulders slumped and a sigh fell from his mouth as he approached the weavile. "Thank the gods. I thought you'd been lost," he said, his tone grim. "But you appear-" His eyes found the bite. "Injured. But not terribly."
"Karan took a bite in the arm," said Ran, looking down at the luxio's parting gift and then shrugging. "I think I've got some bandages, help me get them wrapped up." She pulled a roll from a pouch at her side and handed them to Outrider.
The lucario began to wrap the weavile's injury, his face set in a thin frown all the while. "Who is Karan?" he asked.
"A…" Ran paused. "Me? Some part of me. From long ago. From before any of this." The weavile mulled over the figure she'd seen. It was definitely human. But she wasn't - she had claws in those memories. "She's- no, I'm from the same place Stone is. Maybe not the same exact place or anything like that, but I'm from where the humans come from. And I'm not human."
Outrider stopped wrapping her arm for a moment and stared down at Ran, stunned. "You're...from the same place Stone is from? And you're not human?" he repeated.
"Yeah. I'm not. Weavile then. Weavile now." She smiled. "Good thing, huh? Means I already knew how to use these." She looked down at her claws. "We have a war to get back to, Outrider, hurry."
The lucario continued dressing the wound and said all the while, "I would have been here sooner-"
"I don't know how long I was away from you."
"Too long for my tastes, health and state of mind. Valor and I wanted to pursue, but after you slipped past us with that technique your gauntlets gave you, a detachment of SDC and Children of Mother came almost literally crashing down on us." He shook his head and tightened the bandage, then cut the excess.
"It was a massacre. The frontlines burst into existence then and there as many of Crag's defense forces and motivated citizens joined us. The SDC knew we were a threat at that point - they must have gotten runners out of the fray to report that the defense and recon forces were now their enemies as much as Mother's forces were."
"So you had to fight your way through," said Ran, looking up at Outrider, awestruck. "And you led them the whole time?"
"We had to, yes. And I did. Once the fighting had thinned enough for me to break through, I started to look for you," said Outrider.
"You left Valor behind?" said Ran, her jaw dropping.
"Valor stayed behind to help collect wounded, like I instructed. The SDC and the Children alike were routed, that's why the lines thinned. We can't give chase - we're too injured. When Stone or Thea arrive we can continue our fight." He cleared his throat and rolled one of his shoulders, wincing as he did. "We should get back to him." He strode towards the door out of the home and gestured for Ran to follow after peeking outside.
"Hey," said Ran, as she walked up to him. Outrider glanced over at her and made a noise in his throat to signal he was listening. A smug grin spread across Ran's face. "I see what you did. You could have sent Valor and a couple of recon troops to find me. Instead, it's you."
Outrider averted his eyes. "I could find you faster by tracing your aura."
"I'm sure. Let's get back to Valor."
They emerged from the house into the war-torn streets of Crag once more. The cries of pain and shouts of command had dissipated from this section of the city - instead, the crackling of fire and distant shouts and screams carried on the wind had become all that filled Ran's ears. She and Outrider walked past several fallen SDC members - some appeared to have suffered little, with broken necks or puncture wounds where hearts once lived. Others, however, were not so lucky. Ran saw the broken body of a machoke, back bent unnaturally over a chunk of thinner rubble. Not far from the fallen mercenary were several completely unrecognizable piles of blood-stained fur and viscera. Fragments of bone stuck out here and there, but gave no clue as to what pokemon the mound of gore once was.
She covered her mouth with her paw and fought down the revulsion in her stomach. Even after all she'd seen, this was new. The headless body of a machamp laid in front of them, one of its many hands tightly clamped in a death grip around a piece of iron as thick as Ran's arm. It had been run through several Children of Mother - whether through torsos, stomachs, heads or through the front and out the back, no less than four corpses adorned the dead mercenary's "weapon."
Outrider averted his eyes. "It wasn't any more pleasant on the way to you," he mumbled.
"You don't say…" managed Ran, trying not to retch.
They pushed past the awful sight, but the number of fallen pokemon only grew in number. They were nearing the epicenter of a battle, and figures in the distance came into view like shadows cast against walls of dust. A haze sat in the air all around Ran and Outrider, created by the dust of dozens of partially and fully destroyed buildings and walkways. Lengths of rope trailed on the ground where bridges once spanned above. Splintered chunks of wooden planks and boards, used to create rickety and thin paths between the buildings above, littered the ground as well. Several had been picked up and slapped together into ad-hoc shelters. Places to keep the wounded, the dead and the dying.
"Valor!" shouted Outrider as they walked past what appeared to be purposely moved rubble to create a low wall around where the defense forces had consolidated. "Valor, where are you?" The lucario gave a short nod to a kadabra eyeing him as he walked deeper into the makeshift fortification. The psychic replied with a short nod and then turned its attention once more to watching a major street.
Pokemon criss-crossed before them, carrying bags, medical supplies, armfuls of berries, and sometimes bodies. No one seemed to pay them any mind.
"That well known already, Outrider?" asked Ran. "No one even tried to stop us from walking in."
"Our armbands do not match Mother's, nor do we share species with the SDC's members." His left ear twitched as someone called his name.
It was a pyroar, and as she ran up to Outrider and Ran, she panted, "We've just about gathered up all the wounded and dead. Ours, anyway. The others can burn, rot and fester until this mess is behind us. Where are the others? I've been told more defense and reconnaissance forces are supposed to be joining us."
"Thea and Stone - a braixen and a lycanroc," began Outrider.
"Does he walk like you or me?" interrupted the pyroar.
"She walks like me."
"Same cloth around her arm?" she asked, pointing at Outrider's own with her nose.
"Yes. The braixen doesn't. She'll have one of those silver pendants that some defense forces get to identify themselves. Probably around her thigh," explained Outrider.
"Haven't seen anyone like that come down here. Do they even know where to go? Crag's stack after stack of wood walls and stone foundations, but it still spreads out enough to make finding us difficult."
"She has a point, Outrider," said Ran, cutting in. "How are they supposed to know how to find us?"
"That's what I'm concerned about," said Outrider, looking at Ran briefly before snapping his eyes back to the pyroar. "Have you seen a quilladin? Wears the same colors we do."
"Yeah, somewhere over there." The pyroar turned and gestured with her head in Valor's direction. "At least I think so. Could be other quilladin around."
"Did he have two shields?"
"Yeah."
"That's him." Outrider took off without another word towards Valor, and the pyroar fell in next to Ran.
"You're coming with us?" asked the weavile.
"He said he's concerned about getting those reinforcements we need. We might have to go to them instead of the other way around, and that's not good given the beating we took. So, yeah. I'm coming with you. Need to find out what the deal is," said the pyroar. "
"How bad was it?" asked Ran.
"Valor!" yelled Outrider.
The quilladin looked up from tending to an injured marshtomp and gave Outrider a nod. Tending was perhaps a strong word - he was holding bandages and berries with a shield that was temporarily a tray. Beside him, an audino wrapped one of several deep gashes on the marshtomp's torso.
The nurse glanced up from their work long enough to look at the lucario, weavile and pyroar now staring at them. With a sigh, he grumbled, "You don't look hurt, so unless you've got a bad case of internal bleeding, curl up by a rock and cry the shock out."
"We're just here for Valor," said Ran, watching the audino's paws work. The fur was matted and sticky, stained deep red with blood halfway up his arms. "Thanks for doing this."
The nurse sighed. "Yeah, of course. Glad I could help." He took a sitrus berry from Valor's shield-turned-tray, along with a clump of herbs and a small jar of golden honey and dumped the contents into a stone bowl sitting next to the marshtomp's head. "Wouldn't be happening if we decided that maybe dying for gods know what reason was a bad idea, but what can you do? I only wish we stocked common sense."
The audino began to crush the herbs, honey and berry together into a thick paste, then stuck a bloody paw into the mixture and exhaled. His eyes shone for a moment and then he began to slather the gently glittering mixture onto a long roll of bandages. "But this is fine too. Dozens dead. Hundreds maybe? Who knows by the end, but at least we'll have…" He looked up at Outrider and then glanced around. "More work for the Bibarel Tribe, I guess."
"Ugly realities," muttered Outrider, his tone apologetic. He looked at his friends and the pyroar in tow. "We need to collect everyone that isn't tending to the injured and plan our next move. Let's get moving."
"Hey, I wasn't fucking done taking jabs you!" shouted the audino, staring daggers at Outrider as the lucario tried to walk past to leave. "I've been listening to this poor bastard talk the whole gods damned time about the importance of all this sacrifice, and then you walk up and I can see exactly where it-"
"Stick to saving lives," interrupted Ran, looking the audino in the eyes. "And make sure you leave some pokemon behind that can keep the injured safe, Outrider."
The lucario nodded. "You have my apologies, for whatever they're worth," he said quietly.
"You know that no one gains anything from you being so fucking righteous right?" shouted the audino, still wrapping bandages around the last of the marshtomp's cuts. "Nothing but your own fucking sense of justice. Worthless cunts, the whole fucking lot of your kind."
Ran opened her mouth to speak, but Outrider held a paw out in front of her and shook his head. "I'm sorry. You can blame me and anyone else seeking justice. I'm sure from your position, it looks like anything but. After all, no one would hold that against you. Not with what you do."
The audino let out a low and shaky breath and fell silent. "Easy for you to say. You don't watch them die," he said at last. He stood up, collected his bandages and berries, and turned about to begin working on an injured raticate.
Outrider lowered his gaze and shook his head.
"He's not wrong," mumbled the pyroar. "Then again he's not killing anyone."
"War is a costly thing," replied Outrider. "However this ordeal is settled, the triumphant will pay all that they owe, and all that is owed by the vanquished."
"I don't think wars work that way," said Ran.
"Most don't. But we are fighting two - once against an enemy that wishes to annihilate, and another against an enemy that wishes to control." The lucario shook his head, and resumed his walk. "And we all know how those end."
They passed many more injured pokemon and their attending nurses, eventually closing in on several large gatherings of relatively uninjured comrades. A kadabra and flareon - the same ones from the tavern - stood apart from the gatherings, talking. Both looked serious, and the kadabra sported a large cut that ran across his face. For his part, the flareon had one of his legs wrapped in a bandage. A few spots of blood had made it to the uppermost layer.
Outrider approached them and raised a paw in greeting. "Good to see you're both alive."
"Likewise," said the kadabra, giving him a nod.
"How's the leg?" asked Outrider, looking down at the flareon.
The flareon scowled. "Bastard only nicked me, I'm fine. Stings but I can put weight on it."
"We never got your names," said Ran. She looked at the pyroar next to her. "Or yours."
"Catch," said the kadabra at once.
"Coal," offered the flareon.
"Still Grasses," said the pyroar, closing her eyes and looking pleased with herself.
"That's Valor, he's Outrider, and I'm Ran," said the weavile, pointing at each of them in turn.
"We have a lot to discuss," said Outrider, stepping forward and looking around at everyone. "First and foremost, how to move so many pokemon up into the higher levels of Crag."
"I thought those friends of yours were supposed to be bringing troops down. Why are we heading up? We suffered losses in that fight," said Catch, gesturing in the direction Outrider had come from.
"Catch is right," said Coal, looking troubled. "Glad as I am that we beat those fuckers back, we probably drove them up into Crag, not further out towards the edges of the ground."
Outrider crossed his arms and made a low humming sound, his brows knit and his expression thoughtful. "Does Crag taper as you move higher?"
"If it does, it's barely noticeable. That would give the city maximum height, after all," explained Catch.
"It should have one, though, right?" asked Ran. "You can't just build up forever."
"Yeah, things would have to crumble eventually, even if you've got the best builders in all of Grass," added Valor, looking around.
"The primary support pillars, and the network of secondary and tertiary supports they use, keep Crag propped up when it shouldn't be," explained the kadabra. "Were it not for those pillars, the city would fall apart."
"Are they easy to identify?" asked Outrider.
Coal nodded, and chimed in, "Yeah, you can see them cutting through buildings. I think buildings are actually built around them on purpose."
Outrider pulled a piece of graphite from his pocket and walked over to a discarded, pale chunk of wood. He drew a series of boxes of different shapes on it. "From the top-down, the buildings of Crag look like this as we get higher, yes? I'm using how buildings were placed around the area of our Communal as a reference, but I'm fairly certain the ideas stay the same no matter how high you go."
"Yeah, that's about right. When you move to a new floor, the buildings are in entirely new places to help distribute weight. Unless there's a support column running through it," said Catch, crouching down to watch Outrider draw. He traced a clawed finger between buildings over and over. "And then the walkways connect the various buildings. There's very little in the way of meeting squares until you get high enough."
"What are you thinking, Outrider?" asked Still Grasses.
The lucario began drawing walkways between the buildings; they were simple sets of parallel lines, but they did the job just the same. "I've seen that the quality of the walkways across several levels of Crag can vary rather wildly unless you're in the uppermost levels. Railed pathways, measured boards and expert craftsmanship can live alongside rope bridges with half-rotted planks and long segments of boards nailed end over end to each other, barely wide enough for a single pokemon to walk across. But as far as any sort of space to set up makeshift camps or outposts, we'd effectively be working with none at all."
"Buildings have walkways for pokemon to use to move around them without having to cross ten bridges," said the pyroar. "But I don't see where you're going with this."
"Do you think we'll be holding floors?" asked Outrider, looking around at everyone.
Coal and Still Grasses both frowned. "We'd have to, wouldn't we? How else can we secure our own troops?"
"You can't hold an entire floor. It's a maze, and there's too many places you can move between them. How do you keep watch of two dozen staircases? Three dozen? Four? We have limited resources and limited pokemon to assign to guarding every staircase," said Catch, looking over at Outrider and frowning.
"Hold buildings," said Valor, looking up at Outrider.
"Exactly," said the lucario, smiling. "We prioritize sections of a floor with bigger buildings, especially if they have nice pathways. We destroy the lower quality pathways that lead to the building and narrow down avenues of attack to just one or two chokepoints."
Ran scratched the side of her head and frowned. Something about this seemed off. Ah, of course. "Someone has to watch stairs and ladders still," she said.
"Yes, but we also have the luxury of being picky with which access points to the higher levels of Crag we defend. Destroy ladders altogether, block the mouth with rubble or something, and focus on holding down quality staircases and destroying shoddily made ones," said Outrider. He scratched out several pathways leading to a particularly large square on his board. "It helps discourage counterattacks and keeps us able to deliver information more easily when everyone is in a few connected buildings instead of spread across a floor." He scratched out a few symbols on the board he'd used to symbolize ladders and stairs.
"And if say, the SDC is on the same floor as us?" asked Catch.
Outrider's expression became grim. "That's a call to make when it happens. If it happens. We need to meet up with Thea and Stone before we engage in further planning and discussion. For now, clarity on how we make camp and defend it is enough." He tossed the plank down and looked at Catch. "We need to get moving. I'm going to get the defense forces and volunteers ready to move. I need you to pick a dozen pokemon to leave with the injured."
The kadabra closed his eyes and sighed. "A dozen? It's not many, but they'll be missed in our ranks. And they might not be enough if anyone gets any ideas." He tapped his chin and spun one of his spoons between the fingers of his right hand with incredible precision and dexterity. "I know a few enthusiastic, if only basically competent, citizen volunteers and a few greener defense troops we could leave."
"Is that a good idea?" asked Valor. "Those pokemon over there are hurt, and the nurses can't fight. Is leaving them behind to defend all the injured fair to them?"
"We're at war, or close enough to it," said Still Grasses, cutting in. "Tough decisions have to be made."
"They do," said Outrider, looking back at Valor and meeting the quilladin's eyes. "Find those volunteers you mentioned, Catch. As well as those defense forces. The volunteers can try to coax any citizens that haven't escaped to higher levels out of their homes. Hopefully they can aid in defending the wounded, tending to them, or providing supplies of some kind." The lucario looked over at Still Grasses and added, his face serious, "And you, you're staying here as well."
The pyroar looked furious and opened her mouth to argue, but Outrider cut across her, "That's an order. You need to get into contact with the farmers beyond the city itself. Secure any kind of provisions for the wounded that you can. Shelter, if you can manage it."
"Why me? I can-" began Still Grasses.
"Because your name suggests you know how to move through underbrush without so much as a watchog noticing you," said Outrider, interrupting her once again. "And if there are any members of the SDC or Children of Mother out in the fields, we need someone that knows when to evade and when to engage. Does that adequately describe your skills, or do we need to find someone else who is up to the task?"
The pyroar opened and closed her mouth several times, completely at a loss for words. Finally, her ears drooped and she inclined her head. "I can do it," she mumbled. "I'll try and send any citizens I find as I make my way out of the city towards the injured."
Outrider nodded. "Get moving then. Catch, find your picks, then report back here. Ran, Valor and Coal, with me." The kadabra turned on the spot and hurried off into the clumps of defense forces a few dozen paces away from them all, while Still Grasses took off in the opposite direction.
Ran watched as Coal deliberately bumped against Outrider's leg and hissed, "Why did you leave Still Grasses here?"
"I do not know her abilities, but I do know she sought me out, determined to listen to what we had planned next. That means she wanted to lead," explained the lucario in a low voice. "I haven't seen her perform. I caught sight of both you and Catch engaged with our foes, and through it all you continued to offer guidance."
"So because you're unsure…"
"The unproven stay so - for as long as the threat of failure outweighs the benefits of their trial," said Outrider. He raised his voice as they drew within earshot of many of the defense forces. "We are moving!" he shouted, now walking through the groups of pokemon. Ran followed close behind and felt uncomfortable watching heads and eyes snap from Outrider, down to her, then to Valor and Coal. "Upward and onward. The SDC and Children have routed, but we could not properly pursue. And we still cannot. But we can find those forces Stone and Thea promised us. It is now too late to assume they could make it to us without incident. We are now taking forces to them. Fall in."
The defense forces immediately began to collapse into roughly aligned ranks, and Outrider mumbled down at Coal, "Take a quarter of the forces."
"Outrider!" shouted Catch, jogging up to him and the others, weaving through the bunches of pokemon in the way.
"That was really fast," said Ran. "I'm no expert but, was it that easy to find a dozen pokemon?"
"The citizens all knew each other and so did the unseasoned defense forces. They were clumped into two groups instead of peppered through this entire fucking body of pokemon," explained the kadabra.
"Fair enough. You're taking a quarter of the forces as well. That'll leave myself, Ran and Valor with half. We're going to take three different sets of stairs as we rise. All of them should be as close together as we can manage. We cannot afford to eat unnecessary risks right now." Coal and Catch both nodded, and the lucario continued, "Mentalists, stonewalls and any pokemon with a head harder than iron to the front. They'll need to form the wall we put up against assaults from the SDC if we encounter them. If we encounter Children, well… They'll still be effective."
"On your go then, Outrider," said Coal.
The lucario met Ran's eyes and held her gaze for a few seconds before he faced towards the nearest staircase and shouted, "Onward!"