September 7th, First Year
"I am so sorry gentlemen, but I cannot allow you both in. We're still in the process of cleaning and decontaminating the medical wing."
Emmet wasn't paying attention to the spindly nurse in front of him or his brother, his weary eyes moving first to the large cotton screen in front of the door and then to the wooden bucket with brackish water next to the doorframe. He and his brother were in Jubilife strictly for business and that business was returning the Time Gears and the Time Pendant back to Jaku. Back to Burr. Their rightful owner, Emmet chuckled inwardly. He reeeaaallly didn't want to return the artifacts. He would rather keep the immense power of time travel safe and out of the ranger's hands. The last thing he or Ingo needed was a potentially dangerous car blocking their tracks or possibly causing issues for them further down the line. If he were a patient man- more patient than he knew himself to be- he would try and gain the ranger's cooperation as unlikely as that would be.
He'd been fighting Ingo's decision ever since Mespirit had shown up at Ingo's home station and had spirited him away to the inside of a distortion. He and Mespirit had had some secretive conversation; one Emmet had not been privy to. He would strangle the little pest the next time he saw it. Maybe punt it over the mountains if he got the chance. Teach it a lesson for manhandling his brother. In any case, Ingo had been "gently persuaded" by the veiled deity to track down the ranger, give them back the pendant and gears, and then go and get his god-papers. Emmet had seen the Old Verses a handful of times; they looked like grungy old newspapers that commuters often left on the platform only to get stuck in the tracks. Old Trash is more like it.
Ingo hummed, snapping Emmet out of his inner monologue. "I am aware, Nurse Peselle, but I must insist that we be allowed in. I have already received approval from Captain Cyllene to press forward. It concerns the whereabouts of a fellow faller who was entrusted to the Galaxy Team's care." Ingo's words were polite. Soft. Meek. Curious and begging but not damning. Ingo's tone however… his brother's tone was brisk. Hard. Especially on the last part as if condemning the foreign agency's capabilities.
"That's just the thing," Nurse Peselle flinched, crossing her arms. The nurse took a small step back. "I think… I'm not sure what happened, but I know I saw a pokémon eating something in there. You must understand- wild pokémon are not allowed in the Galaxy Building or Jubilife Village for that matter. The windows are made of solid glass both on the ground floor and on the floors above. They require a high force to break, let alone shatter completely. I can't figure out if the horrid creature crawled in through the floor or through the walls, but it's- I think it maybe possibly ate the other faller…?"
Emmet blinked, his smile twitching. He fought the urge to laugh. "That is… ridiculous."
"Emmet!" Ingo blurted out, his false tone switching to sincere abashment. He grabbed Emmet by the hem of his haori, one firm hand gripping Emmet's shoulder. "Please apologize at once!"
"It is ridiculous," Emmet restated, smirking. "The windows are made of solid glass. There are guards on duty." Emmet had to keep from laughing. "This building is made from bricks and solid wood." He had a degree in engineering! Literally, the past decade or so of his life had been devoted to meticulously memorizing a subcategory of engineering and planning that would help him predict the possibility of pokémon getting into the subway tunnels so as to not get squished into the tracks. Maybe small bug-type pokémon could get through via the exposed platforms. Maybe ground-type pokémon could burrow through. But a pokémon larger than a Lillipup trying to push through bricks and solid glass? Laughable!
"Maybe it tunneled through?" Nurse Peselle fumbled, her pale eyes narrowing as she uncrossed her arms.
"Was there a tunnel in the headquarters?" Emmet shot back, delighted in the nurse's agitated disposition. "Did you hear a window being broken before the incident?" Silence met his questions. Emmet grinned a little wider. "I am correct, then. Pokémon cannot appear out of thin air inside an isolated building." He paced closer to the cordoned-off room. "I want to take a look. Maybe I might find something you haven't."
Peselle shook her head, tapping her shoes against the floor. After a moment, she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "If Captain Cyllene pardoned you then I suppose it's alright… for now. Just… please wear some protection. None of the other nurses have worked up the courage to see whether there were any…any scraps or eggs." She made to turn before pausing. "We've no idea how long that thing was in there for."
"Emmet," Ingo interrupted, putting one hand on his shoulder. "I think maybe we should wait until the nurses and scouts assemble a pile of evidence," he murmured quietly into his ear. "We do not have much to go off of as it stands now."
A silent message, one spoken with narrowed silver eyes and terse expressions. Even after all the time they had spent apart and the ways his brother had changed, Emmet could still read parts of Ingo's body language. "Do not exacerbate the staff; the only reason you are allowed here is because of me," is what Emmet knew Ingo wanted to say. Emmet pointedly cast his eyes at the floor and nodded. Ingo was the senior… for now.
"I… do not want to wait that long," Emmet finally retorted with an air of exhaustion. He adjusted his hat, dusting off his kimono in order to do something with his hands. Work off the anxiety. Stave his growing nausea. Ignore the coming task. "We have to return the gears back asap." In a quieter tone, Emmet added, "You do not want to cause another distortion, do you? I will go in. You stay here and get a deeper history, okay?"
Emmet was surprised when Ingo readily agreed, tossing a fleeting glance over his shoulder before retreating with Nurse Peselle in tow. Ingo always was more sensitive to… accidents than Emmet was. And as he watched Ingo's black coat disappear around a corner, he felt… relieved? It had been weeks since they had recoupled for good but it's not as though they were always attached at the hip. Emmet found himself cherishing the little alone time that he had gained as he turned back to the task at hand: investigating.
"We must really be back in the past," Emmet grumbled as he donned sections of the extra uniform Peselle had set aside for him. He took up two pairs of gloves, one cotton and one leather, missing the sensation of his own tailored work gloves… wherever they were in the space dimension. If Isadore or Ramses knew that he was going into what was essentially a crime scene without proper PPE… Emmet laughed nervously. Oh, they would absolutely give him hell if they knew what he was doing.
He hoped that his missing items were safe, but what Emmet really missed were his original pokémon. Not a day went by when the thought of his missing partners didn't cross his mind. Galvantula, Eelektross, Durant… Maybe they were just scattered like Chandelure and Haxorus were? Emmet sighed. He could hope all he wanted. He would see when the time either came or when it didn't.
With his hands and feet somewhat protected, his mouth and nose covered by a thick face cloth, Emmet carefully moved aside the curtain and stopped short of the doorway by an inch. The hairs along his arms rose and he instinctively glanced over his shoulder, nausea roiling in his gut. "This… this is not usual," he muttered weakly, trying his best not to gag at the putrid scent that filled the room. He could see now why Nurse Peselle would classify it the way she did.
There was blood everywhere in the affected corner of the room; it was all over the walls, the floor, the baseboards. Broken glass littered the floor, a humid breeze blowing in through the gaps of the canvas tarp that the nurses had hastily set up to keep out the elements. There were no gaps in the floorboards or dirt suggesting a tunnel-in. The surrounding area had been completely clear, leaving the affected side of the room like an ugly dark red scar. Emmet used to be partial to horror movies; loved them ever since he was a kid. This… this is just like in the movies.
The cot in the corner was dark with old, coagulated blood, darkest most near the head and middle of the cotton pad. Large patches of blood were nearly symmetrical on either side staining the cot and the floorboards beneath. There were no splatters. No splashes of blood on the equipment either. By the looks of it, if Jaku was injured, she certainly didn't struggle or move around during the incident. There were a few patches where the blood had just barely made contact with the surface of the cotton padding, small, pointed footprints of sorts leading from the right side of the cot to the shattered window.
Emmet quietly envisioned the ranger as he had last seen her: unconscious on their cot, surrounded by medical equipment and old gauze pads. The nurses had put her in a supine position; belly up, arms to the side, feet facing the door. If Emmet were matching things correctly, that would mean that the blood would have come from the ranger's throat, wrists, and somewhere between the thighs and calves. Whatever had happened to them was intentional. It didn't take a genius to line those points up.
He paused. "Throat, wrists, and thighs. If I wanted to theoretically hurt somebody, I would target those areas first. They would probably bleed to death first." His mind flashed back to when he and Ingo had crossed down from the Coronet Highlands into the fieldlands. Ingo had shown him how to best incapacitate a wild pokémon for consumption. Ingo had specifically mentioned that most people targeted those areas when hunting. That was a people thing: targeting vitals. Targeting numerous vitals. What kind of pokémon would feel the need to slash numerous major arteries just to eat?
Did the ranger do it to themselves? Harm themselves? Emmet inwardly pushed that thought away. They were in a medically induced (and ghost-type induced) coma. Of course, they wouldn't just wake up and slit all of their major arteries for fun. Emmet then weighed the idea a bit more. Would Burr actually commit suicide for an ulterior motive? He tapped his foot on the ground, not liking the answer that his mind came up with. Yes. Yes, she would.
Back near the lake, Mespirit had suggested giving a Reviver Seed to Jaku when the ranger was suffocating in her own blood. Emmet had never figured out whether the deity was lying, but he did remember that there were a handful of those tiny golden seeds in a pouch apart from the rest. Reviver Seeds. They could be like revives, and that's assuming that the user has to… die before they activate. He had taken all of Jaku's items with him including the little golden seeds. As much as he didn't like the thought, suicide wasn't out of the picture. Not yet, anyway. He made a mental note of that grisly theory and then promptly shoved it to the back of his mind for safe keeping.
Another theory, one of the ranger being targeted by some other person, came to mind. Emmet went in deeper as he studied the room. No footprints. No fingerprints. No weapons. Nothing. It was almost as if the ranger had just leaked their blood like some kind of punctured juice packet and… disappeared… "Disappeared?" Emmet blinked. A twinge of disbelief mixed with confusion and fury pooled in his gut. He reached for a pokéball on his belt, quietly shushing the beast as the large Arcanine was forced out into the room.
"Can you sniff out your trainer?"
The Arcanine didn't so much as flinch as it began sniffing around at the room. It snuffled around the bed and discarded bedsheets, but it never left the area. With a huff, it sat down at Emmet's feet, disgruntled and tired and concerned. So that was a definitive 'no'. Emmet gave another try with the ranger's Zoroark who was surprisingly a lot less okay with the gore. It took one look at the bed and then at Emmet before promptly retreating to its ball. "Another no. I am two-to-zero."
But at the very least, he had some hypotheses. He carefully rose, tossed the bloodied scraps of cloth in a distinguished bin, and then paced down the hall to figure out where his brother and the nurse had gone. He practically exploded into the room once he heard Ingo's distinctive muttering, only noticing afterwards how quiet the room had been before his entry.
"…Ingo. Nurse Peselle."
Ingo was first to respond. "Emmet. Did you find anything?"
"Maybe. Nurse Peselle. A question."
"Yes?"
"What did this supposed pokémon that you saw look like?"
The nurse fidgeted, leaning back in her chair. "I only caught a few details since it was so dark at the time. There was a light behind the creature, but it was faint. It was a big pokémon; about the size of maybe a five- or six-year-old child. It had this big head and these great big claws- and it had horns!" The nurse shuddered. "It had these big dark eyes too… all black, and it was covered in scales like a Magikarp. It was smeared in blood when I saw it first."
"Did this pokémon attack you?" Emmet enunciated carefully.
"No. It just… sat in the bed for a second or two. I got scared- a wild pokémon in the building! Of course, I screamed. I think the little beast got scared as well and it fled through the window into the grass yard outside. Saw it leaving by the flame on its tail. I can only wonder how it didn't manage to set fire to anything in the room."
Emmet was furious now. How? How on earth did that little water flea manage to wake up from a twice-induced coma after being disemboweled, cut themself apart, and then skitter out of a brick building like a fleeing Rattata? He sat heavily in a nearby chair, his face in his hands as he groaned in frustration. Great. Just great. Somehow, he had gone from successfully containing the wild card champion of time to having no clue where they were at with the vaguest threat that they were also a wild pokémon. A fire-type pokémon. Emmet froze. Burr was a regional variant Charmander. He had no idea what extra typing she was or could be.
"Emmet, are you alright?" Ingo asked as softly as he could.
"No," Emmet groaned in response, shooing off his brother's hand from his shoulder. "Ingo, things just got worse. I will tell you later."
I'll need to follow the tracks a little further before I share with Ingo. Emmet had made a quick start out of the Galaxy Team Headquarters, leaving Ingo to grab some much-needed supplies back in the dojo with his captain friend. Good for him. With further permission from Captain Cyllene on Ingo's persistence, Emmet had gained permission to follow the tracks north away from Jubilife into the woods.
He narrowly avoided colliding with a tall blond man who had been leaning against the side of the building; a Gingko Guild merchant by the looks of it. As Emmet passed, the man let out a surprised noise before clicking his tongue.
"You there! There's no exit north of Jubilife. Wherever are you going?"
"I lost something," Emmet grunted back, not bothering to turn around.
"What did it look like?"
Emmet stopped abruptly, irritation at the interruption making his tone curt and sharper than he had any business being. "I do not want your help. Please leave me alone." Without another word, Emmet continued his brisk march forward until he reached the side of the building where the medical wing window would be.
"Sir!" the merchant called. "There are dangerous pokémon on the other side of that fence! You should turn back-"
Emmet hastily ignored the annoying merchant. There were bits of glass on the unkempt side of the Galaxy Headquarters as well, the tall grass trampled in some places. Unlike the interior of the building, finding tracks directly outside was nigh impossible. Emmet wandered up the steep hill behind the building and paused, sighting chunks of wood missing from the fence. Bingo. He effortlessly hefted himself over the fence and onto the other side. Granted, he had pokémon to protect him in case he did run into any wild pokémon. The line of secured pokéballs at his hip were longer than he knew them legal to be. Ten. Ten pokémon. Most are not my own but they'll do for now.
The woods bordering Jubilife were dense and dark like the ones surrounding Anville Town back in Unova. Emmet was careful to keep a close eye on the undergrowth, immediately finding a trail in the source of bloody prints on the tree bark. Upon closer inspection, Emmet reached for a pokéball and called for the ranger's Zoroark. It would have an easier time hearing incoming threats than he ever could and it was a pokémon that Emmet both knew and that was friendly toward him.
"Keep an ear out," Emmet muttered. The dark Zoroark nodded before immediately taking its place behind him. That wasn't the print that he was looking for on the tree. It was a handprint; four fingers, one thumb, and a broad palm. Not the handprint of a Charmander and certainly too long on the fingers to be Burr's hands either. If anything, the print was big enough to have come from Emmet's own hand. A shudder passed down his back. "Something is reeeaaallly not right here."
The woods darkened further as Emmet progressed into the woodland leading into a wooded valley shaded by thick oak trees and fallen logs. Mossy boulders dotted the steep slope and thick brambles cordoned off a section of the valley where a stream had formed. Emmet followed what looked to be a tail-track, a long wavering line in the dirt that led directly into the depths of a dark, muddy den. Long claw marks riddled the exposed roots and more solid walls of the tunnel. On the outside of the den were a small mass of polished bones. Pokémon bones.
"…Burr? Are you in there?" Emmet called. Silence. Long, looming silence. From behind him, Zoroark let out a long baneful howl before sticking its nose into the burrow. From Emmet's belt, Burr's Quilava and Eevee sprung loose, joining Zoroark as they called out for their trainer. The Quilava being slimmer than its counterparts, carefully wiggled into the narrow den, its faint violet flames wavering as it disappeared into the depths.
The Quilava then emerged from the den and in its mouth was a long, dirty rib bone, still messy with uneaten, burned flesh. The Zoroark was quick to grab it, narrowing its eyes as it inspected the remains. It snuffled at the Quilava's pelt, its ears pricking up before focusing back on the bone. After a few seconds, it shrugged and tossed the bone deep into the woods.
"Wha- what was that?" Emmet demanded. "What can you smell?"
In response, the Zoroark shifted into a Magikarp and gave a pathetic flop before returning back to its original form.
"A Magikarp bone?"
The Zoroark nodded. It sniffed again at the burrow and pointed to a part in the woods, a confused glint in its eyes. It crawled through the undergrowth, carefully following an unknown trail until it came to a stop near a massive willow tree. Near the roots of the trunk, wide in its width and unknown in depth, was a large tunnel.
"Oh." Emmet carefully kneeled and reached his arm in, his anxiety and disbelief kicking back in when his fingers brushed against the dirt walls of a tunnel that went straight down. "A fire-and-ground type," Emmet grumbled, pulling his hand back out. He grimaced. The tips of his gloves were a faint red. "Of course. Super. Bravo." He let out a low sigh. This would get him nowhere anytime soon.
Returning back to Jubilife had not made either theory more apparent. Emmet was careful relaying that information to Ingo as they sat within a borrowed long house from the corps, Emmet carefully watching Ingo's face for signs of disbelief or reluctance. Ingo mulled over the information for a few minutes, his eyes lazily focused on the frame of the door as he quietly chewed his food. After a while, he sighed as if to start speaking.
"Emmet."
"Ingo."
Ingo clasped his hands before him, his eyebrows furrowed. "What you are suggesting is… not possible. Unthinkable as a matter of fact."
"My dearest brother-" Emmet mocked, stealing the last slab of fish from a porcelain dish- "I have been gathering clues all day. It is one or the other."
"How can you be so sure? Humans cannot turn into pokémon." Ingo's tone was dismissive. Harsh. Cynical.
It wasn't a tone Emmet was keen on having directed toward him. Sure, he and Ingo bickered sometimes; they were brothers. Siblings argued all the time. Emmet considered himself lucky that he had only gotten into one shouting match with Ingo since arriving in Hisui. I plan on keeping it that way. We don't need any violence in the family.
"I have! I did! A month ago!" Emmet carefully checked his volume and adjusted his irritated expression. He was still getting used to the new Ingo. "I don't know what pokémon I turned into, but I was there." Emmet fiddled with his hands, absent-mindedly laying the time pendant on the table before him.
Ingo seemed to notice his hesitation, putting down his cutlery to face Emmet directly. "You are… tense. Would you like to discuss it?"
Oh, not about what I found. I can't discuss that with you, Emmet thought. I don't want to discuss what's going on between us at all. Better save that for later. Emmet cleared his throat. "Can we talk about… returning to our home station?"
Ingo's reaction was down-toned. Slow. His brother moved back ever so slightly, clasping his hands together in his lap as he glanced at something behind Emmet. When he spoke again, his nervous gaze was centered on him. "We may."
"Ok. Good. We have to return home. This is not our right time or place," Emmet led in, turning to Ingo. "Not your correct station either. You do not remember Unova."
"I don't. Where are you leading this conversation to?"
"I am getting there… If I- we- are to go home, we must all couple together. No secrets. Just communication." Emmet fiddled with the Time Gear. "You are familiar with Akari. Do you trust them?"
Ingo hummed. "I am unsure as to who I really trust at this moment. Miss Akari shows promise… I can trust her, I suppose." Ingo then reclined in his cushion. "I cannot and will not trust Miss Jaku, though. She has already proven that she cannot be trusted."
"I can agree with you."
"Really? And I thought you were allying yourself with them due to their unfortunate accident."
"It's-" Emmet silently cursed himself. "It's more complicated than that. I don't trust them, but I can understand the tracks that they have been placed onto. Tomorrow, I want to propose that we split tracks. Just for the next day. There are some things I want to look into."
Ingo raised an eyebrow, a coy smirk on his face. "You want to go hunting for our missing faller, I presume?" At Emmet's guilty and surprised expression, Ingo chuckled, rubbing at the bags under his eyes. "You seemed quite interested and ready to go on the search for them earlier."
"You don't think it's strange how they disappeared?" Emmet tried. "Ingo, you hexed her with Chandelure. I had the time pendant. No sane person could get up and run along their tracks after being gutted like a faulty cab. I… I suspect that something else is going on."
"Such as?"
"What the nurse proposed and what I saw do not match. The nurse claimed that a pokémon had broken in and had eaten Jaku. Tell me Ingo; do your wild pokémon in the highlands cut through all of a person's major arteries and let them bleed to death?"
That got Ingo's attention. "That is what you think?" Ingo crossed his arms. "You did not go into detail as to what you found in the medical wing. Was it… that bad?"
"Exactly that bad," Emmet stated. "There weren't any signs of a struggle. Blood was pooling. No splatters. No weapons. No leftover… remains. What the nurse stated matches up with what Jaku looked like when we were in that space-time-distortion at Lake Verity. Small body, scales, and solid black eyes. Almost like a regular Charmander. I want to know why she escaped. What scared her off so badly."
"You make it sound as though she was attacked while she was sleeping."
Emmet blinked. "You… that is a theory but I'm unsure as to who would be the culprit. There were bloody handprints that followed Jaku's tracks into the woods. Human handprints. The nurse saw Jaku as a pokémon. There were no other pokémon at the scene, dead or alive. A human can't follow small pokémon into burrows. It would explain the slashed arteries and the prints."
"Enough amateur forensics, Emmet. That will do." Ingo carefully put the dishes in a washtub and then reseated himself at the low table. "I can understand your thought process. Very well. We may decouple. I have things I must attend to tomorrow regarding the Galaxy Team and correspondences with the Pearl Clan. You will search for Miss Jaku during that time, yes?"
"Yes."
"Then it's settled." Ingo rose and then paused. "And once last thing? Behave yourself."
"Always."
September 8th, First Year
A damp wind tugged at the spruce trees as Emmet tailed after his guard pokémon. With the bulky Arcanine in the back and the spry Zoroark in the front, Emmet was left to follow as the two keen sniffers traced their trainer's mystery trail away from the woods and onto the Horseshoe Plains. After Emmet's quick debriefing, Vespiquen had kept an eye in the sky for any odd flames or flash of golden scales.
He approached the sweeping trees of The Heartwood atop the back of the Arcanine toward a place he wasn't keen on revisiting: the cave. It was the only place Emmet could see the ranger returning to. Somewhere familiar and enclosed. He was privy to a smaller presence tailing him the minute he stepped foot under the forest canopy. Something small. Something quick. Something with sharp eyes and silent footprints. He ignored that presence. For all he knew, he was armed and dangerous and he had something to do.
Emmet was familiar with the few landmarks around the cave the seldom times he was allowed outside of it, and he knew that the shallow river that curved through the woods would take him right toward his ulterior destination.
The Zoroark stiffened, the fur along its neck rising as it sped up the pace, tossing up sod in its wake. Within only a few minutes, Emmet recognized the shallow dip in the river where the creek spilled into a ditch; the way in. Slowly, he steered the Arcanine down the shallow ravine until they approached a narrow crevice into the stone hollow. He stilled and then let a nervous smile show on his face; things had changed since his last time there.
Already, Emmet could tell that his intuition had been correct. A tell-tale tail mark appeared halfway down the steep walls of the stone hollow, trailing into the hidden cavern behind a slab of petrified wood. The stone hollow was littered with clean pokémon bones; ribs, phalanges, femurs… skulls. There was no scent of carrion or still water. No scent of death or decay. Only that of growing things and the faintest etch of charcoal.
In any other case, especially given the situations that Hisui had thrown at him, Emmet would immediately retreat. Places like those were places that dangerous pokémon liked to nest, according to the wisdom Uncle Drayden has passed unto him and Ingo when they were young boys. "The most dangerous pokémon steer clear of tall grass; they hide and wait for their victims to come to them."
Emmet carefully motioned the Zoroark forward; they were one of the ranger's pokémon. He could mitigate most of the damage if he approached carefully. Maybe they wouldn't attack if a trusted partner was in the front. Carefully, he moved the slab of petrified wood back and entered the cave.
Things were messy. Awful. Eerie. There were scrawlings all over the dried mud walls and floors, some done with dyes and bones sharpened to a point. Small pokémon bones were gathered up in a pile in the corner of the room, handfuls of bark and wide leaves stacked up against the walls. Just like the mountain cave, Emmet noted grimly. What are these for?
Zoroark circled around the cave before stopping. With a frustrated whine, it carefully exited the cave to the stone hollow.
Emmet shook his head and reclined against the wall of the cave, crossing his arms. There had to be an easier way of tracking down burrowing pokémon. To his knowledge, most pokémon burrows were only a few feet deep and they didn't travel long distances like trains did. But Burr was a person and people think differently than wild pokémon. If he wanted to find Burr, then he would have to rationalize things the way she would.
He didn't know the ranger all that well. Only through brief eavesdropping and casual snippets that he had heard between the ranger and his depot agents could he slightly idealize the type of person that she could be. She had seemed to be rather close to Agent Ramses in the past.
"Hey, Ranger Frosty!" Ramses teased, calling out from the coffee counter as Burr passed him by, a packaged sandwich in hand. "Got something I wanna ask you. You got time?"
Burr scoffed, reclining back in her seat at the lunch table. "Sure, why not? Shoot."
Ramses approached, slamming down a mug of coffee and a plate with two slices of old pizza on it. "What are Derefs?"
"Derefs?"
"Yeah, that's what I said. Derefs. Did some looking around on Riako. That's where you're from, right? Apparently, Derefs are a big thing there. What's that all about?"
From Emmet's position on the lunch table beside theirs, he saw a look of confusion and smugness cross the ranger's face. "Yeah, uhh, Derefs are man-eating pokémon. They're illegal to train or own unless you want to go to prison. That or fuck around and find out why their habitats are protected by the government."
Ramses raised an eyebrow. "Man-eating pokémon? You guys live near man-eating pokémon?"
"It's more like we each mind our own business. Derefs will leave you alone most of the time so long as you don't go wandering into their territory. They're pretty docile at a distance. For instance, Riako has Charmanders, but not the Kantonian kind you're probably familiar with. Ours are fire-and-ground-types and they're infamous for a case a hundred years ago where a glass factory tried to incorporate them in to their staff."
"Why? What happened?"
"The factory wasn't feeding them enough, so they rebelled, tore apart almost the entire list of employees, scorched the rest of them, and then went on to sate their appetites by killing more than two hundred and fifty people and subsequently setting their houses on fire. And that's not all. Those captured Charmeleons and Charmanders went back to their clan, brought the whole brady bunch back to town, and then finished off the survivors who thought it was over and didn't think to flee. The whole town had to be abandoned because the Derefs didn't leave. It's a ghost town now. Nothing but dirt in the desert."
Ramses had grown speechless, his mouth agape as he busied himself with his pizza. "There are trainers in Riako. They didn't fight back?"
"Oh, they tried to. But Derefs don't care for other pokémon. Completely ignored them. No, they went straight for the trainers and their flammable houses."
"Do all parts of Riako have Derefs in them?"
"Yup, but there are clear distinctions between which parts are safe and which parts have Derefs in them- those are monitored by us pokémon rangers. You've got Salamences in the north by Agoldfair. Houndooms are notorious near Paztah- so are Cacturnes. Araquanids are especially dangerous because Riako has a central river where those things breed like Raticates."
"And you're a pokémon ranger, so you regularly deal with Derefs?"
"Uhh, yeah I do. I work primarily with Charizards. I'm the only person stupid enough to do it, and luckily for me, they won't eat me because the matron Charizard- the head female- used to be my partner. I'm the only person in the sector that knows how to handle them correctly without getting torn apart like a chew toy."
"Oh really?" Ramses drawled. "So what do you do if a little flock of Charmanders or Charmeleons try to eat you? What's your strategy?"
"Well for starters, Derefs only eat people if you trespass in their homes or if they're starving. I just coax them out with food. Maybe a thing of Tauros meat if I have it on me. Charmanders and Charmeleons can digest practically anything and they'll take anything over having to fight to get their food. If they take the bait and fight back, hit them with a ground-type move. They have a twice weakness."
"Do you live with them?" Cloud asked, his mouth full of potato chips.
"I don't. Most of the Charizard lineage live underground where its hot. You can find them in guarded places like canyons, cliffs, and inside of desert caves during the daytime. Again, Charmanders and Charizards don't really care for humans. It's the Charmeleons you have to watch out for because those little bastards are fast and they can fly."
Emmet roused himself, thankful that at least he could remember something useful for the task at hand. He needed to find Burr who was currently a Charmander. "Where is the most guarded place in the Obsidian Fieldlands?" He knew the answer. He was sitting right in it; a stone hollow. A guarded area. Or maybe Deertrack Heights would suffice since Burr was close to Lord Wyrdeer?
Night had already fallen by the time Emmet had gotten close to Tidewater Dam. His memories had served him right as he knew by the eerie golden light on the water; his target was close by. He crawled closer, shushing Zoroark and Arcanine as they carefully circled towards its back.
Now that Emmet was human-sized, he could see why 'Derefs' were supposedly feared. As it were, the creature on the bank was hunched over, its tail flame a weak rusted red as it dragged a torn carcass out of the water. Its golden and black spotted scales were splashed with fresh blood that dripped into the sand. The Charmander dug its talons into the Bibarel's flank and hoisted it onto a cluster of rocks, tearing into its belly with wild abandon. The noises were… yeesh. He would need to approach carefully.
Emmet paused. Something was moving on the opposite side of the woods. A dark but tall silhouette moved silently through the brush, the pale moonlight illuminating a hat and a thick coat. "Could it be…?" The figure moved up to the edge of the woods, something small in their hands as they focused on the occupied Charmander from afar.
Emmet recognized the portly shape of a Gible as it toddled forward, standing at its trainer's side. Are they… are they trying to catch Burr? Before he could open his mouth to stop the trainer, a pokéball was sent sailing out of the inky blackness. The ball whistled, making a terrible clacking noise as it struck Burr in the back of her head. To Emmet's surprise, she disappeared into the pokéball. It ticked once. Twice.
In a blood-curdling roar of fury, Burr broke free of the capsule, turning it to cinders as she turned on the trainer. Her black eyes were cold and narrowed, golden flames spilling out from the scales along her back. She took a deep breath in before letting loose a Fire Blast. Large rocks were tossed into the air from the implosion, a steady crackling filling Emmet's ears. The woods were set aflame.
Emmet tore away from the treeline, watching as the man was countered viciously by Burr who had jumped him the moment the man escaped the fire. The Gible had been unharmed.
"Oh, they tried to," came Burr's ponderous voice from the past, reminding him of the imminent danger before him. "But Derefs don't care for other pokémon. Completely ignored them. No, they went straight for the trainers and their flammable houses."
The man screamed, racing toward the river as Burr angrily set the man's clothes and hair aflame, her teeth embedded in the man's legs. She held on even as the man dunked himself underwater, the water frothing as the two went under.
"A little help here?" Emmet called. He dashed toward the river with Zoroark and Arcanine in tow, watching as the man broke the water surface, twisting and screaming in agony as Burr kept at her vicious assault, tearing chunks of flesh from the man's arms until she eventually got caught up in the river current. With a loud serpentine hiss, Burr sent another shower of flames the man's way and then turned to swim back to the bank only to stare directly at Emmet.
"…Please don't hurt me."