March 26th, First Year
Thick snow crunched under her boots as she dodged to the side of an incoming Hydro Pump. The blast of water shot true and cleaved through a nearby tree, sending the fir toppling and obliterating the icy stream nearby. A caterwaul boomed from a few paces away and Jaku only had a mere second to unsheathe her saber as the large weasel came bounding toward her. Her ears would be ringing for the next day or two, she was sure.
"Ursaring, use Body Slam!" Komuro was already shifting forward, his Ursaring tackling the alpha Floatzel to the ground.
It wasn't an even match by far. With a hiss, the alpha Floatzel picked the Ursaring up by its neck as though it were a cub and flung it into a cluster of trees. Rocks shattered and the tree toppled under the pressure. The alpha Floatzel's burning scarlet eyes seethed as it turned to glare at them but not for long as a flurry of stars descended upon the alpha's back.
"Mothim, Giga Drain, Go!"
Mikiro's pokémon darted around the alpha with practiced skill, avoiding its sharp claws as it looked for a place to attack. Jaku gave Peanut the order to distract the Floatzel and after confusing the beast by dancing between its feet, Mikiro's Mothim latched onto the back of the alpha's head, obscuring its eyes with its large wings as it began siphoning energy. The alpha shrieked in pain and threw itself into the dirt back-first, crushing Mothim in the process with a sickening crunch.
A cold feeling laced through Jaku's fingers. That did not sound good. "Peanut, Play Rough!"
Peanut immediately ceased dancing around the Floatzel and leaped onto its exposed belly, viciously tearing at the much larger beast. It dodged an incoming Slash and with a throaty snarl that made the hairs of the back of Jaku's arms stand up (when had her little baby learned to do that), it reared and sank its claws into the Floatzel's eyes.
Komuro's Ursaring joined the vicious beatdown, holding down the Floatzel's legs so that it could freely tear at the beast's belly. It seized one of the alpha's arms in its jaws and snapped it with a loud crack!
"That's enough!" Warden Mai cried. Both her and Egel looked horrified.
The alpha Floatzel gave a hearty lurch and struggled to turn over again, blood oozing from its face and belly into the snow and dirt. It weakly kicked away Komuro's Ursaring and grasped at its face to try to find Peanut who still had its claws embedded into its snout.
The alpha Floatzel stumbled forward, teeth bared, before collapsing back to the ground onto its belly with a whine. To Jaku's surprise, the bloody red glow of its eyes had all but withered away. To Jaku's further surprise, Warden Mai ran forward, protecting the alpha with her body.
"What in distortion are you doing?" Komuro demanded, recalling his Ursaring back to his side. "It's dangerous! Get away from that thing before it kills you!"
"It's a Lesser Lord!" Mai retorted. "It's just protecting its territory. Look! See! It's not frenzied anymore!" As if proving her point, the large Floatzel huffed but remained lying in the dirt.
Jaku begrudgingly sheathed her saber and recalled Peanut back to its pokéball. "Well, what did you expect? That thing attacked us first." She watched as the alpha Floatzel crawled away despite Warden Mai's protests, slipping under the ice of the river with an exhausted whine. "Well, that's that."
"I've got potions," Komuro called. "Mikiro, how's your Mothim?"
The younger scout was already crouched in the snow, one arm under the tattered wings of his partner pokémon. Haru, another of the Galaxy Scouts, rushed forward and called out his Ponyta who easily lifted up the battered bug-type pokémon. One of its wings looked close to falling off.
"She fainted," Mikiro rasped. He stood shakily, eyes darting behind the group to stare at the looming forested hills. "Do you- do you guys think there will be more of them? More of the alphas?"
"Not on the path we're taking." Warden Mai was still staring at the trail of blood leading to the river. She paused. "Not apart from Lesser Lord Kricketune."
"What's this I hear about a 'Lesser Lord'?" Komuro's hands were balled up fists, stomping forward until he was nearly nose-to-nose with the Diamond Clan warden. "When we agreed to this outing, there was no word about tackling these alpha pokémon. I want to go back home in one piece- not several!"
Warden Mai didn't speak, her eyes darting to Jaku before she closed her eyes. When she opened them, the panicked look had completely disappeared. "…The Lesser Lord being frenzied was something I did not anticipate. That is just as much a surprise to me as it was to you."
"How many Lesser Lords are there?" Haru spoke.
"Several. They are scattered throughout each region and assist each Lord or Lady with taking care of the territory and maintaining its upkeep. They are always alpha pokémon too. We're not sure why that is the case but it would be best to avoid them all together."
"Then the alpha Rapidash on the Horseshoe Plains? That's a Lesser Lord?" Jaku questioned her.
Warden Mai nodded. "Correct. But we digress. We need to get a move on before sundown. And you two- Jaku. Haru. If we run into Lesser Lord Kricketune, I ask that you engage it sparingly. If we accidentally kill or grievously wound it, we risk the gamut of disrupting the environment." At Mikiro's scathing look, Warden Mai continued. "I'm aware it might not seem pertinent now, but any damage we cause to the Lesser Lords will reflect back on the environment and on the same scale, the pokémon. Just… keep that in mind."
Jaku narrowed her eyes and followed after, biting her tongue. Warden Mai hadn't reacted at all when the Floatzel had come bearing down on them out of nowhere. She hadn't even attempted to help with the Munchlax that she called her partner. A bit dim to ask your security guards to not be wary of aggressive man-eating pokémon.
The group slowly moved forward. As soon as Warden Mai was out of earshot, Mikiro scoffed and snarled something under his breath to Komuro and Haru, palming his Mothim's scuffed pokéball. He caught Jaku's questioning glance and pointedly turned away, his lips turned in a scowl.
They kept moving, the hills growing steeper and steeper as thick grassy plains turned into forested hills. It certainly didn't help that the snow was piling up in the undergrowth. But the further they moved, the more and more Jaku noticed that everybody was acting strangely.
Haru and his Ponyta kept stumbling, their feet catching on nonexistent roots or tripping over literally nothing. Mikiro kept trying to use the trees as leverage, his hands always a foot or two off. Even Komuro and his Ursaring were acting strangely. For every noise that shook the trees, they would always look in a completely different direction, eyes glancing in every which way before either Warden Mai or herself would get them back on track again.
Am I doing that too? Jaku wasn't the best at hiking and sure, a weird headache had been building in her head since they crossed the bridge, but Warden Mai and Egel were acting perfectly fine. Maybe it was a Galaxy Team sort of thing. She ignored the way her headache suddenly worsened along with the twist of nausea in her belly and kept up the pace. She then glanced toward Egel and-
"Oi! Egel, what are you doing?"
Her fellow ranger had stopped completely and was staring up at the sky, his expression vacant. Jaku moved to snap him out of it, drawing back when she realized that the man was completely stiff.
"What's going on over here?" Warden Mai backtracked, an annoyed glint to her eyes as she tried to get Egel's attention.
"Hey, Warden Mai. I think we need to take a break," Jaku suggested. Perhaps this was just leftover stress from the battle. She opened her mouth to say more, making the mistake of following where Egel was looking and… oh. "A distortion," she whispered.
Hidden by the thick needles of the firs and curtains of descending snowfall was a network of faint space-time cracks. And just like the last time she'd seen one forming, she felt inexplicably drawn to it like a Mothim to a flame. As a matter of fact, they were standing right underneath it.
Jaku didn't get to see the distortion form last time, but now, as the crack began to widen and hiss, the same warm fuzzy feeling enveloped her from head to toe. The last thing she heard was a shout from Warden Mai before the lights cut out.
Wind blasted through the undergrowth and the trees shuddered, groaning as they rocked back and forth. The pale sunlight had been erased and replaced with a sickening shade of indigo light that made the snow and growing mushrooms glow like fireflies. A dense fog crept into the trees and with it came the scent of burning tinder and wildflowers.
So nice, Jaku thought, the familiar calm creeping into her senses. Volo and Rei had been thoroughly creeped out with the distortion before, but Jaku couldn't see why. Not when standing in the middle of one was like soaking up the sun on a nice day. She was completely oblivious to the fact that wild pokémon were blipping into existence around her, nor the sudden muffling of her group's panicked yelling.
She turned to tell them to quiet down and instead came face-to-face with a fluffy pink-and-white pokémon. A pair of luminous ice-blue eyes stared back at her, the creature approaching softly as its footsteps made no sounds in the deep snow. It chirped as it came closer, a tangle of tendrils waving around its form as if waving hello.
A new intrusive thought wormed its way forward in a tone that was not her own. A friend.
Jaku crouched and found herself extending a hand to the pokémon. This wasn't a terrible idea. Not at all. It was just a pokémon after all. She didn't need to be wary or afraid. What could a pokémon possibly do to her? And all pokémon were her friends, right? She blinked as the fluffy pokémon nudged her hand with its nose, a pair of colorful tendrils wrapping around her wrist and arm. Another pair of tendrils floated around her waist and torso, the beautiful colors drawing her attention from the way that the tendrils were steadily tightening around her.
So pretty. So soft. Jaku watched as two more of the pink-and-white pokémon emerged, surrounding her in a web of pink-and-white ribbon feelers. They felt cool along where they met skin, and their touch soothed the headache that pounded behind her eyes and made her vision fuzzy. The first one approached even closer, its face cloaked in a calming pink glow as the headache vanished completely.
"-Jaku! Get away from those things!"
The pink-and-white pokémon whirled around to glare at the approaching party, retracting their ribbon-feelers to wave them angrily at the group. They only got angrier as Komuro called for his Ursaring, the fur along their backs bristling.
"It's okay," Jaku rasped, her mouth dry. "They're friendly."
"Friendly?" Mikiro spat. "Jaku, get back over here before those things strangle you to death!"
"What are you talking about?" She rose to stand, finally taking notice of the bruises where the tendrils had wrapped around her. Strange. They certainly didn't hurt. Weird. She moved to pass the fluffy pokémon, smiling when one of them tried to block her path with a whine of distress. "I don't think they planned on strangling me," she called back dubiously.
Once she was back in arm's reach, Warden Mai pulled her close, her eyes not leaving the pack of pokémon as they tried to come closer. "I don't know what they were doing but whatever it was, we need to get out of this distortion. Immediately."
No matter how far they walked, the distortion never seemed to wane. Fog obscured their vision well into where they would be able to see the bay and after much debate, Warden Mai finally let them take a break in a clearing not far from the path.
"Is this actually a distortion?" Haru asked timidly. "I've never seen one so large, especially when we've been walking for well over an hour. They never last longer than a few minutes, tops."
"Should we go in another direction?" Egel asked.
"No. We need to get more info on Lord Wyrdeer. That's our first priority," Warden Mai declared.
"What about our personal safety? I don't know about you but strange pokémon coming out of the aether isn't exactly safe to survey in. Not to mention the fact that cotton-head-" he gestured at Egel "- nearly had a seizure a while ago and strangle-bait-" he gestured toward her "- was almost kidnapped by those things!"
"You mean those pink-and-white pokémon? They were friendly!" Jaku protested. "I mean sure, I have bruises now, but they weren't trying to kill me! The bruises don't even hurt!"
Komuro turned to glare at her. "Those things were draining you. You looked nearly as pale as the snow."
"I don't know what they were doing, but I'd prefer that to your aimless accusations, Komuro. At least with them, I didn't have a headache."
"Will both of you quiet down?" Warden Mai hissed. "Lord Wyrdeer is up ahead."
That immediately got Jaku to go still. She followed Egel's lead and crouched behind a fallen log, her eyes watching as a large figure emerged from the trees many paces away.
Nearly hidden by the fog of the distortion, the creature's hooves crunched loudly in the snow as it approached. Jaku could hear its ragged breathing, something wet dripping into the snow as it wheezed. Branches cracked. The dim light of the distortion intensified and so too did the headache behind Jaku's eyes.
Egel and Komuro withered, their eyes scrunched in pain as they held their heads in their hands. Warden Mai had her hands on the bark of the fallen tree but her fingers flexed and twitched, her mouth set in a scowl as she looked pointedly away from the approaching Lord. Why wasn't she looking?
A horrible groan split the silence. Mikiro had his mouth open wide, his eyes sightless and shiny with terror. He crumpled into the snow like a toppled Stantler, arms and legs held stiff at odd angles as he began to shake. The muscles along his face and jaw rippled and flexed as he convulsed, his neck bending to a sickening angle as one of his legs rose and bent. Blood dripped from his nose and eyes as he let out a horrible rasping noise. A seizure. Mikiro was having a seizure.