In which Amber remembers.
Sorry for the pun, but I had to.
Okay, a quick note about last chapter and more specifically Amber's performance against the Hydreigon.
She was very lucky.
She managed to get enough of a Dark Pulse together to hit, she got the flinch, and she also landed the High Jump Kick.
In relative levels, she's about Lv. 20, it was mid-70s.
She dealt negligible damage to it.
One more quick thing: parts of this chapter are quoted directly from the game (primarily dialogue).
With that out of the way, let's get into the chapter.
Hello? Is this thing working? Can you hear me? Oh, thank Arceus. You're not gone just yet. You've got to listen to me. It'll return any minute now. You need to stay focused, and remember all you can. If you value your memories at all, you'll listen to what I have to say. We need too be quick. You at least remember your name, right?
Amber, she thought. It's a nice name, probably one she'd pick for herself if she hadn't been given it at birth.
Okay, okay. Good, you remember your name. What else do you remember? Are you a boy or a girl?
Sometimes, thought Amber. That felt right, on a visceral level.
Thank goodness. You still remember you.
An oddly pixellated sound impinged on her mind.
It's here. Amber, you need to wake up! I've sent someone to fend it off and get you out of here. You need to wake up!
Amber swam back to the surface of her consciousness through the shards of shattered memories, vaguely aware of a cold presence looming above her through the pounding of her head. She blinked her gummy eyes open, seeing a too-wide grin set in a purple face.
The creature (Gengar? Why did that name feel right?) cackled, before reaching out to touch her forehead with a chill-aura-radiating hand.
"Mew!"
There was a squeak, as if that of a cat, and the purple thing flew back, surrounded in blue-white aura. The Gengar(?) seemed to become more transparent with fear, then turned and dove into the wall.
The Gengar's gone… go. Follow Mew, get out of here, and never look back. Good luck.
"Mew!" squeaked a pink, fuzzy creature (oddly catlike, noted Amber absently) that floated over and nudged her shoulder with its little pink paw.
Amber groaned, rubbing her forehead as she sat up on the slablike bed that she had been placed in but still not throwing off the blanket draped over her. "Someone get the number of the truck that ran me over?" she quipped, trying to dredge up some reason why she should be here.
"Mew!" replied the cat-thing (Mew?), holding out a note in its paw to Amber.
"Thank you, kitty," she said, taking the note and wincing as soreness bloomed in her back as she stretched over to take the piece of paper.
Amber,
You might not remember this, but you have been working on Recover, and you've been trying to tie it to a mantra. You said something about it having to be associated with healing yourself, but you never said anything more, and you also never used it to try to get your memories back. If they're doing what I think they are, this seems like an excellent trial by fire.
-A
Amber frowned. "What kind of healing mantra could I be thinking of? There's Waïse Heill, but that's not self-healing. Maybe…" She frowned for a moment, then focused on the idea of being completely restored, and dredging up a memory from a work she'd read long ago (or maybe recently, her disjointed memories distorted her sense of time). "Wholeness Rightly Assumed!"
She fell backwards onto the bed, passing out as her memories returned to her in a rush.
This time, when Amber returned to consciousness, it was with a "Well, fuck."
At least she knew why everything seemed so familiar- she was playing through Pokémon Insurgence. "I better get all three of the little ones back, author," she grumbled, pushing herself off the bed to settle to the floor under reduced gravity, keeping the weight off her bad leg.
"Are you okay now?" asked Mew from behind Amber. "No plans to collapse?"
"No, I think I'm entirely too angry for that right now, Mew," Amber replied absently.
"Wait, what? I didn't think you could understand me, you didn't before!" Mew floated in front of Amber, frowning. "What changed?"
"Hell if I know," groused Amber, looking around the room for something to use to walk so she didn't have to rely on her gravimancy. "When you got in here, you didn't happen to see my staff, did you?"
Mew tilted its head. "Uhh, not that I saw, but there could be one. Stay right there, I'll be back!" With that, the floating cat zipped out of the room, leaving Amber behind.
"Got it," said Amber, clenching her jaw and stoking the flame of rage in her chest until she could breathe again. Then, she focused, cutting down on gravity until her bad leg could bear her weight, and proceeded to leave the room, looking around for something to write with.
She found a pen and a sheet of scrap paper, then proceeded to scrawl a note on it.
Persephone,
I thought you knew what it was like getting left to a cult's tender mercies. Why wish that on someone else?
Ainsel.
Leaving the note on the bed, she continued out the door, then started when Mew reappeared, clutching Amber's staff. "I'm back, with a staff thingie! It was in a closet."
Amber blinked, dumbstruck, then took the staff, resting on it and allowing her hold over gravity to relax. "Thanks, Mew."
"No problem!"
The duo continued on through the corridors, reading a few snippets from books and picking up medicines that Amber promptly put in a bag she found, then proceeding up a flight of stairs that opened into either another set of stairs or a door. When Amber tried the door, the biometric lock stymied her, so they proceeded to a second flight, Mew tapped Amber's shoulder, offering a note to the trainer.
I chose Mew to help you out of this mess due to its special ability. It is able to use Transform to change its form and disguise itself as something else. However, unlike Ditto, Mew can transform you as well. If you can find DNA, Mew can disguise you as someone else. You should be able to use this to escape.
"Huh. Thanks, Mew."
"You're welcome!" chirped the feline, hovering after Amber after she climbed the stairs.
Mew immediately pinched their nose upon reaching the top floor of the base. "Yuck! That green goop stinks!"
Amber was more distracted by a pair of Darkrai statues on a higher level, climbing the stairs to get a better view. "Hey, Mew?" she called to where the psychic cat was making faces at the moat of green goop around the edges of the lower room. "I think I found some DNA."
The diminutive Psychic-type teleported to Amber, then hovered closer to the ground, sniffing at the blood in the circular glyph on the floor. "Yup, that'll work. Want me to shift you now?"
"Sure, why not."
With a squeak, the world twisted, and when Amber could see again, she was looking out through a white-and-red hood, and while the staff was gone, she could put weight on her bad leg thanks to Mew's psionic support.
She stepped forward, thrown off her balance for a moment by the differing proportions of this body, then turned and hurried down the stairs.
This time, the biometric scanner let Amber through.
The rooms on this floor yielded a Repel, an Ice Heal, an awakening, and another two Potions, then she proceeded to climb yet another set of stairs.
She felt more than heard Mew's groan at the stench of the green sludge, and privately agreed, However, she persevered and managed to catch the ritual.
"And so we begin…" said a black-clad, white-haired woman (that Amber's knowledge of the Insurgence game allowed her to identify as Persephone), standing on another elevated platform with two Darkrai statues on either side, facing another cultist in the center of the green-glowing ritual circle on the floor.
"Miss! Please, you can't do this! I don't want to die!" blubbered the cultist, cringing away from her.
"You swore when you joined that you would give your life for us. How is this any different?" Ignoring the figure cowering before her, she called over her shoulder, "Activate the ritual circle!"
The green light of the circle blazed red.
"Darkrai, Lord of Darkness! I call upon you to enter our world! In return, I offer you the soul of this loyal servant, to be bound to your world of nightmare forevermore! Voco virtutem umbrarum dominum!"
And the room went black.
A rasping noise and wave of despair heralded the return of the light, with the lighting taking on a red cast. In the place of the cultist-turned-sacrifice floated Darkrai, facing Persephone.
"Darkrai, the lord of nightmares… You are the Great Balancer of the world. You punish the great, and slay the immortal. It has been a week since I saw you last. You remember what occurred then? We accomplished something incredible that day."
"Not so incredible as to be permanent. Little legend, be safe, for the Augur's sake," rasped Darkrai, and Amber knew they were referring to her.
Ignorant of Darkrai's comment and Amber's answering nod, Persephone continued. "I thought, finally, you had accepted our offer to join us. But you fled soon after, necessitating another summoning. As such, now I call upon you again… Darkrai, why will you not join me?"
Interrupting once again, Darkrai spoke: "Because you acknowledge not the hypocrisy of what I was forced to do. You, a victim of the cults, asked me to seal away an Arceus-chosen in the mind of an Author-touched and imprison them here for you."
Once again, only Amber heard this, and her mind kicked into overdrive.
"I know my sister has seen you time and time again… Why do you favor her over me?" She paused for breath, maintaining eye contact with the Dark-type. "I beseech you, Darkrai, join me. Join the cult that has worshipped you for so long. With my guidance and your power, the world could be ours!"
"Power has purpose, foolish child. And you understand not mine." Darkrai vanished, leaving only those words behind, for an audience of one human and one Pokémon.
Persephone seethed in silence for a moment, then spoke. "Well isn't that just lovely. It's probably gone off to Selene City to see my sister again… What a waste of a grunt."
As she descended the stairs, two cultists moved to stand in front of her.
"And what," she hissed, "do you two want, exactly?"
"Miss, please. I'm confident that if we had another try, we could trap Darkrai here! We don't know why it didn't work this time, but if you'll just give us another chance…"
"Out. Of. My. Way." She didn't bother waiting for them to move, releasing her Houndoom and snapping off a curt "Fire Blast."
The two cultists slammed into the wall, then fell to their knees, burned but ultimately alive.
"I'm going to go check on the prisoner. None of you had better follow me." She stalked off down the stairs, and the mounting tension in the room dissipated as the burned cultists were dragged away.
Amber wasted no time in leaving, barely grabbing the Burn Heal (with a muttered "You better have Burn Heal!") in the side room.
Emerging into the forest, Mew allowed the change in their shape to vanish, with Amber's clothes returning to the Hive Mind shirt, plain pants, and deep blue hoodie she had on before. Silently giving thanks for both the return of her staff and that somehow her clothes hadn't begun to stink, she tromped down the stairs and out into the forest, following the path out of the forest.
Upon emerging into Telnor Town, Mew tapped Amber's shoulder again, offering another note and a small flute.
Bemused, Amber took them both with a "Where are you keeping these? You don't even have pockets!"
This flute lets you call upon Mew when needed. To use it, register it to the Y button, or just play it. Good luck.
-Your Benefactor.
"What, three meta jokes in one chapter? What, are we trying to get to an average of one per chapter?" muttered Amber, slipping both the note and the flute into her bag.
"Alright, Amber! Good luck, see you later!" squeaked Mew, rising into the air.
"Was that Mew? I could swear I saw it here, just now!" Amber turned, coming face-to-face with the white-haired youth her meta-knowledge told her was Damian.
"Did you see it? A tiny pink Pokémon? It was floating really close to you!"
"Uhh… yeah. Yeah, I did." Seeing his face light up, Amber hurried out her next words: "But don't tell anyone! Mew doesn't really like people, so it wants to keep its secret."
"I promise!" he said, crossing his heart.
"Thanks, kiddo," said Amber, ruffling his hair.
"I'm not a kid, I'm thirteen!" he shot back, pouting.
"If you say so." From the combined ages of both Amber's other-world life and that as Mr. Fuji's daughter, she was easily into her twenties, but she decided to lay off with the "kid" talk. "Anyways, I'm Amber," she said, offering her hand to shake.
"My name is Damian," he said, shaking her hand and confirming her meta-knowledge. "I'm an aspiring Pokémon Trainer! You came to Telnor Town at the perfect time! The Augur– the greatest man in the world, of course– is coming today! You know who the Augur is, right?"
Amber schooled her features into neutrality, hiding her reaction to the outburst and the man it was centered around. "Yeah, I do. The Protector of Torren."
"Yeah, that's the guy! Anyways, the mayor and the townsfolk have been preparing ever since this morning. I'm excited! I was just running errands before he gets here!" Damian turned his gaze onto Amber. "I know! Why don't you help out? We're assigning jobs in the Town Hall! You know, cleaning and so on." Not taking no for an answer, he took her hand and dragged her off towards the center of town.
"Well, guess I'm helping out."
And that's the chapter!
I'm probably gonna be working on longer chapters going forward, since I'm now in the territory of things I can base the story off of instead of just beating the story juice out of my brain.
Still looking for a beta.
Read and review, please and thancc!