Team Double-Take!
Location: Fullmoon Highway, approaching Fractured Heavens
One figure, two forms. Noon squinted and strained against the sand in the air, all the while her head pounding like an intensified heartbeat, the presence before her wavering between two amorphous simulacrums over and over again even as she implored herself to focus. Something had triggered the pain to rise in a calamitous crescendo and now the tempestuous migraine, having reached its peak, turned her vision into blurred streaks and shapeless clouds; eventually, she conceded to the agony in her vexation and exhaustion. She let her neck sag and nearly collapsed onto her knees. She screwed her eyes shut.
"Noon, enlighten my ancient eyes." Are you shitting me? The Girafarig did not open her eyes—she obstinately screwed them tighter—and she imagined the Zwelious hastily tossing filthy hair about in an attempt to peer past her bangs. "Have we been approached?"
"Yes." Though her preferred response was, "I didn't know I was the team's seeing-eyes now, and obviously since we've stopped", she would never say it. Still, there was an evident edge to her voice, one at which Heckle was keen at discerning and she could feel the Zweilous' haunches rising, for what the rightmost head hated most was implied insubordination.
"Who is it?" Jyde's snarl was less stoic, more ardent and desperate. Noon visualized smoke lifting from his jowls like drool from the ravenous. The aroma was so familiar, she felt she could scent it even from her considerable distance ahead on the side of the highway, past all the wind and dust, both of which were finally beginning to settle. With it, the raging storm in her head ebbed away into a more infrequent pulse-pulse-pulse.
She took advantage of the dwindling pain—mostly for the Zweilous' sake, if she was to be entirely truthful—to peer across the vacant landscape at their acquaintance standing solidly against the sullied sky, twenty feet away. Her first impression was that they were dead. There was a distinctive, cadaver-like quality about them, one she chalked down to their starkly inorganic coat, glinting in the dirty light, and their cold expression, flat against a chapped, conical face, with eyes more jaundiced than a scintillating gold; for some inexplicable reason, Noon expected them to be a gorgeous golden color. The way this corpse-like creature stood and the aura it projected were so deceptively regal, so deceivingly grandiose, that she felt a pang of pity regarding the now-faded blue of its metallic pelt, its now-gnarled horns, and the clump of tangled hair beneath the creature's sturdy chin. The inscriptions they'd all came across on many instances portrayed this Legend as being, truly, a Legend, an intimidating yet fair and justice-seeking ruler. But Noon's sympathy was swiftly overridden and, suddenly, she was hit with the sensation of dread.
"Good... gracious, it's—"
"What, child?" Heckle rasped as the winds began to build again. Dry earth left insecure by the sparse patches of life surged upwards and around them.
"Damn weather!" Jyde cursed aloud. The dust storm took advantage of his moment of weakness and he was soon sent spluttering, spitting out arid soil, an action which disturbed the rightmost Heckle. "Deplorable," she muttered, and expectantly, Jude overheard her and spat back, "Shut up!"
The debris simply slid off Cobalion who, Noon noticed, never looked directly at any of her teammates. Their jaundiced gaze stared ahead, purposely past them all, and the Girafarig could not reason if they were ignoring everyone out of conceit or could not regard any of them at all.
Within her, the dread began to swell. "We might have to deal with a Legendary today, guys."
Silvia appeared at her side, now, from the distance, violet fur tousled and tangled with grit and her face contorted anomalously into a look of pure contempt and hatred. The gentle way in which she cradled the blanketed bundle in her arms contrasted with her clenched teeth, her darkly furrowed brow. "What Legendary? Where?" She barked her inquisitions ardently. She either shuddered in the chilling wind out of exhaustion or anger, and if it was the former, it didn't matter, for the yearning to lash out hung about her like a heavy smog.
Annie was there to repress her; she felt her tail send a discouraging glower in the Aipom's direction. "It's Cobalion," Noon then proclaimed. The name had an unprecedented effect, on her before anyone else. Suddenly, that growing hesitance inundated within her, spilling over and out her mouth, and she couldn't stop from talking loudly over the rising winds. "We just saw them on the walls yesterday, in that ruin! They were the one with the horns that were shaped like lightning bolts a-and it said they had never been defeated 'cause they always 'fought for their friends' or something a-and they were literally made of steel...!"
"What does it want?" Heckle asked coldly in her raucous voice. Jyde had taken upon his a solemn and reflective silence.
"I-I don't...!" Noon nearly went hoarse herself, her voice high and wavering with alarm dying in the sharp lashes of the wind. She coughed as the dust nearly entered her throat, beat her long lashes furiously to protect her eyes from the onslaught. All the while, she pleaded within her mind: Don't panic. Don't panic. It's your responsibility to stay calm.
"I can't tell. They're just standing there. They're not really even looking at us."
"Does that mean it won't notice if we kick its ***?" Silvia's remark was dour, tenebrious. It just lifted over the upsurging dust storm as its winds started to calm again.
They all peered icily from the roadside, Cobalion still inflexible and unmoving, eyes vaguely tracing the horizon, the faraway mountain range. Noon was petrified and solution-less whilst Silvia, with all her unsolvable rage, would need to remain beside her.
It was the Zweilous that confronted the Legendary. They stepped onto to the highway and roared.
"Cobalion!" bellowed the leftmost head. "We of the Fractured Heavens sanctuary command you to explain yourself! We know your kind. We are in the full right to demand your intentions."
Jyde's dauntless shout darkened gradually as it proceeded and the Zweilous bared its fangs and crouched down upon its painted legs imposingly. It was then Cobalion's gaze shifted onto the Dragon and lingered there, as expressionless and living-dead as they had been throughout the encounter. Jyde and Heckle must have felt their contemplation and thus mimicked the rigid stillness of the Legend, heads tilted upwards as if they could regard their target, and from there the stare-down commenced. The dust flew up, wracking both Pokemon with stinging granules which coalesced in their mangled hair, threatened their eyes and nostrils, and still the Zweilous and Cobalion refrained from even the slightest of movement. Noon shuffled her front hooves in anticipation, Silvia attempted to draw her neckerchief over her mouth, and as the winds settled for a third time, the two Pokemon stood unmoved.
But, then, Jyde began to shudder. "Damn you..." His low hiss split the silence, and as the Legendary continued to stand unaffected, he burst out severely, "SPEAK!"
Silvia grimaced. "Can it even do that?" she jeered.
Cobalion then did something extraordinary: it blinked. A sign of life, finally, and then, even more audaciously, it tempted a step forward, and then another. It positioned itself as if threatening to bolt away, but Team Double-Take! was prepared to enlighten them on this mistake.
Heckle threw back her head with a earth-shattering roar. Battle cry! And they all launched onto the gravel of Fullmoon Highway.
Silvia reached their opponent first, springing from her quadruped running stance onto her front arms and then spinning forwards, her hand-tipping tail swinging around and ready to come crashing down on Cobalion's skull like a war hammer. The crushing blow was never delivered, however, as her Brick Break technique was intercepted with the Legendary's artful use of their horns, ducking right to hook the Aipom's tail between them, cutting the move short and abruptly jerking Silvia in their direction. The intention was to slam her, while snagged, into the road, which the Aipom caught onto and improvised around it; her third hand established a tight grip onto one of her captor's horns and, athletically, she swung herself around to loop her long tail around Cobalion's neck. And yet, her hold did not last long, as in a grandiose flash of light and the sound of splintering steel, shards of metal burst from the Legendary's pelt, sending Silvia catapulting off with a ear-piercing scream. The Legend swiftly followed up with a devastating headbutt, bounding towards the Aipom who was still in midair, which sent her tiny form tumbling through the air before plummeting and bouncing off onto the arid terrain beside the street.
"Silvia's down!" Noon announced and, under Agility's influence, raced to her teammate's aide as Jyde and Heckle addressed their opponent.
The Zweilous staggered into the Steel-type's path, the leftmost head exhaling smoke from his nostrils before belching forth a brilliantly-fervid blast of flame that torched the ground before his feet, but not the target.
"You moron!" Heckle scathed, forcing their body forwards. Her step shook the earth, shattered the stone underneath their feet, as a solid crack in the highway's surface emerged and traveled towards the target, and, suddenly, the ground opened up around the wary Cobalion and they were consumed in a tremendous, crimson-colored upsurge of terrific power.
And yet, when such power died away, leaving the ground upturned and demolished, the Legend remained in its wake entirely unharmed, surrounded by a subtle, shimmering, dome-like barrier, one which melted away like a trick of the light.
The rightmost Zweilous head, outraged, exclaimed, "Fiend! How dare you!" This was in-response to Jyde who she viciously lashed out at and who indignantly returned to favor. Cobalion turned their attention away from them and onto the Girafarig.
Noon was attending Silvia, hastily digging through the various pockets of her team's piled-on carrying bags for something of satisfaction. The Aipom was mainly disoriented, though her hands had bleeding cuts from catching her devastating fall and an earlier wound at the base of her tail had opened up upon impact. On top of things, she was evidently exhausted, as they all were from the mission, and far from ready for combat, not that she or anyone else could afford to use that as an excuse.
"Found a stirus." She laid the berry at her team member's feet. "Eat it."
"I'm seeing in, like, threes right now," the Aipom giggled out of delirium, arms fumbling in the dirt for the little yellow berry which she then gratuitously placed on the tip of her tongue. "Ahahaha! Everything hurts..."
"I know. I'm sorry," the Girafarig soothed, hearing the earth fracture, knowing the Zweilous could hold their own against the Legend as they prepared, not realizing the Earth Power had been reflected, not noticing Cobalion approach from behind until Annie gave a strangled shout and she spun around, half-exclaiming, "Holy sh--!"
Their horns flashed past and, in those few moments she had to evade then, Noon reflected on the blade-like sharpness of their tips and concluded, then, that no matter how gnarled they looked from a distance, they worked just as well as any weapon would. Her first instinct was to flee, then, when she found herself staring down this Legend, this corrupted being capable of and willing to kill if need-be. But they were too fast to even permit her to feel fear. Cobalion lunged forward once more and she quick-stepped, feeling the world around her go in fast-motion as Agility sent her backwards and far away from the menacing horns. Cobalion, unperturbed, approached her again, determined to overwhelm her. The tactic was, unfortunately, working, as she brayed and lashed out with a sharp Stomp. The kick missed, and Annie tried next, fangs bared, but her reach was too little, and the Cobalion was now able to take advantage of the opening permitted, performing a powerful upward slice, collapsing Noon.
The Girafarig was thrown onto her side. The sounds of items clinking and crunching could be heard from the bags strapped to her. But, extraordinarily, Noon played off of the momentum, rolling onto her feet, albeit with a stagger, planting her hooves into the ground and determinedly bowing her head as if ready to charge. Her own horns danced with electricity. Her eyes were narrowed and she snorted boldly. Even Annie—
A knife whisked past her, causing her to abandon her audacious stance with a timid squeak. As the object planted itself in the earth beside her, a voice called out: "'ey! Tough guy! Over here with your horned self!"
Oh, no. Milos, no. No! The nasally voice was undeniable. During Noon's silent protests, her assaulter turned away from her and instead studied the Floatzel in the distance.
Their ginger fur badly matted, the bandages on their stomach threatening to peel, Milos still stood, contemptuous and confident, sneering across at Cobalion from the Fullmoon Highway. "That's right, you heard me! Don't tussle with her, you freak. Fight me if you want a real challenge! I'll take your dumb mug and plant it under a rock where it belongs."
"Oh jeez, Milos, what are you doing?" Silvia shot up immediately, and, predictably, he ignored her.
"Do you think this is the time to be bombastic?" Jyde snarled and he and Hyde both appeared to share the mutual horror as they whipped around to regard the reckless fourth member of Double-Take! behind them.
"C'mere!" And yet, Milos continued to taunt nonetheless. "Y' think you can take me out? I wanna see you try, Tarnish."
Cobalion narrowed their eyes. They were in full attention of the Floatzel, now, and Noon could anticipate the charge before it happened. "Kiki, save him!"
Even to Silvia, she was the smallest, the quickest. The shining Doduo popped up from her hiding spot amidst the largest patch of weeds and began to sprint. In her swiftness, she dissolved into a green streak, outpacing Cobalion by a formidable amount, and before the Legend could collide with the vulnerable Milos she had done it first. The impact sent them both sprawling, Milos onto his back, and when the Doduo struck his stomach he emitted a terrible shout of pain, but at least he was safe.
Noon, however, recognized in that moment he may not have even been touched, for Cobalion paid no attention to neither him nor the pet Doduo. They galloped past without a second parting glance and, in seconds, they appeared miles apart.
"Was that all a waste of effort?" she murmured aloud.
Jyde and Heckle stomped over to the wailing Floatzel and very confused-seeming Kiki, despite the vacancy in her eyes, as her heads weaved back and forth. "Probably," Heckle grunted. "We won't be able to catch up with it, anyways. So I suppose that was energy we could have used for the trek home."
"What an inconvenience," Jyde muttered.
"As if wallowing will make things better," she shot back.
"But where are they running—" Noon's question halted mid-sentence. "Home"; she seized up. "They're heading for the sanctuary." And as the revelation dawned on her further, she repeated, "Holy ****! They're heading for the sanctuary! We're screwed!"
The Girafarig carelessly threw off their supplies, scrambling with the expectant lack of grace of a hoofed animal through the many pockets. "Where's the Connect Orb? Where's the Connect Orb?" She was frantic, practically shaking with fear, but eventually the sphere rolled out onto the sand and promptly activated itself.
"Delphox Yuko! Delphox Yuko, please!" Noon begged. Her cries were interweaved with heavy, heaving panting. "A-are you there? A Legendary Pok—... A Legend's on its way to Fractured Heavens...!"
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