Wulfenite and OrchidCrowns.
Sterling Spearhead.
Discovery Town Training Grounds.
Affected RPers: None.

Combat was really, really strange in Challengers of Fate.

Tiff and Haruka had both played on the Wii Vision, but this was… almost frighteningly realistic. When a Kabuto sliced open Tiff’s arm with one of its little claws, it hurt like crazy. When Haruka dazzled a Wingull with Confuse Ray, she actually got the mental sensation of using some sort of psychic power. When the two stopped to catch their breath, there was a real sense of tiredness, exactly what one would expect from an hour’s worth of fighting and walking through harsh terrain.

“I hope you don’t mind if I cram in some extra hours after you’ve logged off,” Haruka said, brushing some debris of one wing. “I don’t want to get too many levels away from you, but…” She smiled, an expression that looked pretty odd on a bird beak. “I wanna try flying.”

Tiff’s smile looked no less bizarre than Haruka’s, considering that she was showing off a mouthful of sharp teeth. “You bet,” Tiff said. “I’ll admit, rushing straight into our first mission might not have been the world’s smartest move, since we’re not really used to the whole… being Pokemon thing.” She laughed, “It all sounds so silly when I say it out loud.”

Haruka nodded, “Well, I mean, I have wings and you have a tail. So it feels kinda silly, too.” She tilted her head. “Say, how’s that scratch you got?”

“Not too bad,” said Tiff, shrugging. “It doesn’t feel great, but it’s not that deep and it’s not bleeding anymore. What about you? That Slowpoke’s psychic… thing couldn’t have felt good.”

“I’m fine,” Haruka said. She tried to shrug, but it wasn’t really possible with the bone structure of her bird shoulders. “It kinda gave me a headache? But I’ll survive.”

“Good, good.” There was a pause, then Tiff stood up and stretched. “You good to get going again? I think we’re coming up on the boss.”

As it turned out, they had been practically on top of the boss. There was a small stash of Entercards at the end of the cave, but in front of them stood a Wartortle that didn’t seem too pleased by the idea of the Sterling Spearhead getting their hands on any of them. It growled, then lunged for Tiff.

Detect was the sort of move that Tiff laughed at in mainline Pokemon games, but in PMD games it had been ludicrously overpowered. Here, it was balanced between the two extremes - her awareness was heightened, allowing her to slip out of the way of the Wartortle’s Aqua Jet, but she knew for a fact that it wouldn’t let her dodge everything. “Haruka! Can you confuse it before we attack it?”

“Y’got it!” Haruka answered. The Pokemon moves were surprisingly easy to use; all she really had to do was think about the move and then she knew what she had to do. She focused her mind and flapped her wings toward the Wartortle; out of the feathers shot a cluster of bright lights that dazzled the Wartortle. It turned toward Haruka, looking angry, and lunged. The sight of the enormous turtle moving towards her at ludicrous speed paralyzed Haruka with fear; she let out a shout of pain as the Tackle attack landed.

Anger surged through Tiff, and she rushed toward the Wartortle, hitting it faster than should have been possible. It moved to counterattack, but between Tiff’s reflexes and the Wartortle’s impeded movements, the Riolu easily dodged the attack. She tried to follow up by tripping the Wartortle, but this time its attack made its mark, giving Tiff a nasty scratch across the chest. It let out a shriek a split second later as Haruka unleashed a Leafage attack. Before it could get out of Haruka’s way, Tiff attacked again, kicking the Wartortle in the back and knocking it onto its stomach. Haruka kept the Leafage up until the Wartortle stopped moving.

“It’s fainted,” Tiff said, relieved. She walked over to the Entercard stash and picked one up. She tried to take another - there were plenty of the things - but it gave her a slight shock when she touched it. She tried again with a different Entercard with the same result. “I think we can only get one of these apiece,” said Tiff. Haruka nodded and walked over, taking one in her beak.

Getting back to town was a lot simpler than getting into the dungeon. The two of them were out before long - and when they got back, the square was in a panic.

“What’s going on?” Tiff asked, trying to be heard over all of the shouting voices. A Poochyena happened to hear her and turned. Tiff and Haruka started. The Poochyena, Hologrammar, looked terrified. There were tears in their eyes.

“The game is broken,” the Poochyena said, “we can’t log out.”