{RP} The S.S. Wishmaker - Tides of Witchcraft

[Neo Emolga]

The Diamond Ladies
Royal Promenade
Affected RPers: @Chakramaster, @Noblejanobii, @Desolate Divine, @Shruikan

As more Pokémon joined the group that had intended to bring down the Ladies, Celestina had confirmed they weren’t all hers. Nonetheless, it was Victini and the three Ladies up against Celestina accompanied with her Flygon and her Roselia along with Avery as a Buizel accompanied by their Shaymin, Gloria and their Girafarig, while Jimmy as a Pachirisu was accompanied by his Pikachu, his Salamence, and his Rotom. They were looking up at an army and there was no way to fight it or run from it as they were outnumbered four to one. And they didn’t even notice the Grovyle…

If any kind of fight broke out, they knew they would go down. The Ladies, along with Victini, were a bit nervous.

Jimmy as a Pachirisu had stepped forward, introducing himself before getting right into the grim nature of the situation. All the while, Jarena felt ashamed, knowing it was her that turned him into now Pachirisu self. And after that, he mentioned the fact they had turned Ethan into a Skwovet and his girlfriend into a Dedenne and that they were only making things worse.

I know… I suck. Jarena thought to herself as she looked down with an unhappy Buneary face.

Jimmy then mentioned what they had done to themselves, and what they were even planning to do, even if they escaped. In his words, he explained that this could go on and on endlessly as they kept getting themselves entangled further and further into a web of lies. But what really hit home to all three of them was being told that nothing they said was trustworthy. And all three of them just felt ashamed because of how badly they had dug themselves into this situation.

Jimmy then felt they couldn’t even be trusted to turn them back and undo the damage they had done. They had felt like they never got the fair chance at trying that before they had gotten all the reagents only to have everything stolen, but they didn’t mention any of that. In the meantime, he felt that they had become too reliant on their witchcraft and cheating, whereas he had been practicing using his own Pachirisu abilities to make a point that they didn’t need such things.

He then had recommended to use the radio to contact one of the Champions while Rotom would help translate the message into a form of communication the recipient could understand. And he was only willing to give this offer once.

There was a moment of silence among the Ladies and Victini, all of whom looked downcast. Cassandra couldn’t help but sit down, sigh, and look down to the ground as her Eevee ears drooped down and her eyelids fell.

“We’re… awful, I know…” Cassandra sighed. “You said it. We’re cheaters, liars, scumbags, numbskulls, we’re a real bonafide train wreck when it comes to morals.”

“Hey, I’m no numbskull!” Jarena exclaimed back at Cassandra. “But… eh heh… yeah, you’re totally right about everything else.”

“It’s more than that,” Violet commented, looking off to the side as she slouched with her Furret paws by her side. “We’re responsible for the biggest scam in Pokémon battling history. We own that.”

Cassandra couldn’t help but sigh again. After a moment, she took her paw, pulled off the strap of her black fanny pack containing her spell reagents, and threw it aside well out of arm’s reach. While she wasn’t completely disarmed in terms of spells without her reagents, not having any would limit what she was capable of. But she wanted to show she was willing to cooperate as much as she could.

“We’re…?” Jarena asked, questioning what Cassandra was trying to do.

“Yup,” Cassandra replied mirthlessly. “Or at least I am.”

“No, no, no, I agree…” Jarena replied, quickly removing the strap before tossing her own reagent bag aside. “So long!”

Without mentioning a word, Violet soon followed their example and tossed aside her own bag, and couldn’t help but sigh as well. Without their reagents, they were not quite as dangerous as they were before. Meanwhile, they were no longer standing their ground, making it clear they really didn’t want to continue this any longer.

“Rotom, if you could hop into the radio and connect me with Cynthia, that would be great,” Cassandra muttered, not looking forward to this conversation, but deciding to go ahead with it anyway.

“Why most certainly!” Rotom agreed, leaping toward the device and becoming one with it.

It was then that the radio had directly contacted Cynthia, all while Cassandra held the radio with her Eevee paw. Meanwhile, everyone else was privy to Cassandra’s conversation.

“Cynthia here, what’s up?” her voice came on through the speaker.

“Hi Cynthia, this is Cassandra,” she told her, though not very enthusiastically as Rotom translated her Eevee speak into English so she could understand. “Yes, Cassandra Silvers. And I’m with Jarena and Violet as well.”

“You!?” Cynthia exclaimed. “Young lady, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do!”

“I know,” Cassandra replied, sighing again and looking exhausted. “That’s exactly why I called.”

Cassandra then took a deep breath. She was tired of running, tired of fighting, but most of all, very tired of cheating and lying. It was draining, exhausting, and stressful. She swore she could constantly feel her sins nipping at her nerves and she was tired of it. Very tired of it.

“I want to officially declare this to be my confession to all my crimes,” Cassandra spoke to her. “So if you’d like to record it, share it, get other people like Steven, Lance, Blue, anyone else you know of on the line, here’s your chance.”

As she was saying this, Jarena just looked sick to her stomach and had to sit down while Violet didn’t even want to make eye contact with anyone. They knew this was going to hurt, but like a rotten tooth that was hurting painfully and needed to be ripped out, it had to be done and the sooner it was over, the better. They had been dreading the possibility of this for a while, sometimes in the past wondering if all the lying, cheating, trickery, and deception would ever catch up to them.

It finally had.

“Go ahead,” Cynthia replied, not revealing who else might have joined the radio chat and if she was now being recorded.

“I screwed-… no, we screwed up,” Cassandra began. “But it’s mostly my fault. That aside, I want to start from the very beginning.”

“Jarena, Violet, and I first met during a slumber party six years ago,” Cassandra spoke to her. “There were about ten girls in total, but the three of us had a thing in common where we liked screwing around with supernatural stuff. I had taken a box of tarot cards with me that night and we did all kinds of stupid stuff with them while the other girls watched some dumb movie none of us had any interest in.”

“We exchanged contact information and we became friends,” Cassandra continued. “We met up more often, and found naturally, we hated rules and those who made them. We liked telling little lies at first, mainly because the truth is usually boring. And we liked to mess around with things we shouldn’t have. We went beyond tarot cards and superstitious stuff because even that got boring. And most of that stuff was junk that wasn’t true anyway.”

And then Cassandra took a deep breath. What she had revealed was really only a precursor to some of her darker secrets. But now she needed to come forward with everything. She knew it would mean some dire consequences, but she felt they had to give up. They needed to stop transforming people into Pokémon like they were terrorists taking hostages.

“I came across Shadowcraft through an online vendor,” Cassandra explained. “Everything about the transaction was confidential. I actually took that as a good sign. So I bought the first book, what was called ‘The Initiator Tome.’ I figured either it would be fun to try, or if it was false, well, it wouldn’t be any different from a lot of the other stuff I bought.”

“As Jarena, Violet, and myself discovered, it actually worked,” Cassandra continued. “After coming across so much junk that were mere superstitions, we finally found authentic witchcraft stuff. It took us about three weeks to get ‘initiated,’ but after we figured out the process of tapping into ley lines, aligning chakras and pranas, and things like that, we actually tried a few beginner spells. They were incredible at first, but as always, we kept wanting more.”

“And then…” Cassandra sighed, “…we got reckless. We tried a few hexes and curses on wild Pokémon. Made them dizzy, cursed them with sleep, basically gave our own Pokémon an edge as we participated alongside them. Made wild Pokémon easier to capture, also. From there, we bought more Shadowcraft books, learned more witchcraft, and then we actually started using these spells in trainer battles against other trainers. It started as a funny prank at first, a prank that the other trainers never suspected… but we thought hey, if Pokémon have supernatural abilities, why not us?”

“…I don’t think I need to explain just how far we went with it,” Cassandra confessed to Cynthia, knowing she of all people would definitely know. “One of us would enter a tournament, the other two would spectate and do the hexes and the curses from the sidelines while no one was watching, making it all seem like it was natural. And we took turns from one tournament to the next, never having any two of us enter the same competition.”

“We couldn’t stop,” Cassandra muttered, looking a bit pale. “We… crossed a line and we didn’t have any way to get a clean exit once the stakes got higher. We won major tournaments, kept setting the bar higher and higher, and we started getting a craving for fame and the prizes were wonderful. I won enough money to be set for life way before most people even really start their careers. All three of us became famous and we thought we could keep it going on forever. And then things got dicey when there were people trying to figure out our secrets because things looked suspicious, but we kept our secrets hidden while there was no way to pull the plug. Anyone that came close to finding the secret had to be taken out of the picture. Turning them into a Pokémon was the safest way to do it. I didn’t want to kill anyone, but we couldn’t let them talk and tell anyone else if they saw our Shadowcraft stuff, so they became Pokémon. And it became this… really dark habit.”

“And…” Cassandra spoke, starting to wrap it up as she looked direly ashamed, “…that’s how we got here today. Everyone knows how far we got, but it was here, right at the Pokémon High Seas Tournament that it all caught up to us… and we deserve it. All of it. As I was in a panic, I ended up getting turned into an Eevee because I forgot to remove a Pokémon Transformation Hex on a pillow we were using to hide the books we brought along for the trip. Jarena and Violet worked hard to try and gather the reagents needed to undo the affliction, but just as we had the human samples and golden nugget we needed, the nugget was stolen and… I’m sure everyone’s seen that video by now. Jarena accidentally hit Violet with the spell after Violet tried to chase the thief down, and she got turned into a Furret as a result of that. And Violet got angry enough to return the hex on Jarena to turn her into a Buneary. I imagine it must have looked really insane to anyone who watched that, but to me, it was… heartbreaking.”

“We tried to bargain our way out,” Cassandra confessed. “And it only made things worse. Trying to fight our way out also just made it worse. When the consequences of everything sped at us, we decided we just wanted to run from it all. No more battles, no more fame, we didn’t even want to go back to being human after everything was taken, including our books. Whatever luck we had left totally ran dry, and… in the end… all we wanted was just to escape, run off as Pokémon, with no more rules and people telling us what to do.”

Jarena slowly and sheepishly approached the radio, wanting to put in a word.

“Uhh… hey…” Jarena softly spoke, smiling nervously. “Jarena here. I just wanted to say… everything Cass said is true. We lied, we cheated, we got… boy did we get carried away.”

“She’s right,” Violet also spoke up. “Don’t know who you have on the line, but this is Violet. I want to add my name to Cass’s confession.”

And Cassandra sighed, hard enough to the point where she couldn’t help but shiver. The rotten tooth was finally dug out, but now they had to brace themselves for the bloody mess that would be coming out next.

“I’m going to need some time to discuss this with the League and the other Champions,” Cynthia replied in a serious voice. “I believe what you said is true, but a simple ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to cut it. But if you want to at least take a small step toward redeeming yourselves, then help us get this tournament back up and running by undoing the damage you’ve done. There’s less than a few hours before tonight’s battles begin, so you’d better move quickly.”

Cassandra had looked to Avery Miller and then to Ethan Caldwell, who had actually woken up to at least hear the second half of the confession.

“I’m going to need a few things,” Cassandra explained. “I need a DNA sample of both Avery Miller and Ethan Caldwell, although with Ethan right here, he may have a stray strand of hair on his jacket or cap that we can use. Then we need two golden nuggets. We also need copies of the pages for the Affliction Reversal Spell in the Shadowcraft Evangtin Tome, which I think I remember it being on page 271 and 272. Jonathan Drake has the Evangtin Tome along with the Shadowcraft Anaksin, Xethen, and Zeketh Tomes, so someone needs to let him know what we need. I know he probably won’t trust us with the entire Evangtin Tome, which I understand, but all he has to do is scan and print copies of those pages, because we’ve never done this spell before and haven’t memorized it. Also, you can tell him the tomes are not hexed or anything like that. He was asking about that earlier.”

“Fine, I will contact him and we’ll see what can be arranged,” Cynthia replied. “But if you pull any kinds of tricks or misdeeds, you ladies are finished and I’ll have all three of you confined to a Pokéball if it’s needed. Mark my works.”

Cassandra swallowed hard at the thought of that and she could see Jarena and Violet really didn’t like the idea of being attacked and then finding out the hard way what getting captured in a Pokéball was like.

“Let’s meet up by the Main Pool on the top level,” Cassandra proposed, understanding why Cynthia was warning them. “We need some water for these spells anyway, and the pool has plenty of towels. We’ll probably need those, too because I imagine if the spell works, their clothes won’t instantly wrap onto them, so… they’ll probably not want to be seen naked, and the towels will let them have a quick cover to wrap themselves with to make it to the bathroom to get changed. Also, this Main Pool meeting site is out in the open, so we will have no where to run to if you think we’ll try escaping. Bring an army of Pokémon, trainers, snipers, whatever you think you need to feel confident about this arrangement. I promise you we won’t run, but that’s all I can say. Once we get Avery and Ethan back to normal, your tournament is good to go. Of course I already know I’m well beyond disqualified, but that’s besides the point. And if all goes well, then we can go to step 2 and get the rest of your operatives changed back.”

Cassandra then turned to Ethan, who still seemed a bit nervous. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Natalie was looking at him with a bit of concern, but she decided to let him make the choice for himself.

“You agree to this, Ethan?” Cassandra asked, trying to forget what had happened with him just some time ago. “Your battle with Jon is in only a few hours and we really don’t have any alternatives.”

“I… guess…” Ethan muttered, still not used to being in his squirrely Skwovet body. “But uh… yeah, please… no funny business this time? You Ladies are scary and this ‘Shadowcraft’ stuff is nuts!”

Cassandra nodded and then turned to Avery, still as a Buizel.

“How about you?” Cassandra asked them. “I know you have really no reason to trust me, but I don’t know of any other way to do this…”