[RP] Spiritwater – Tides of Witchcraft

[Neo Emolga]

Cassandra Silvers (AKA Naomi Hart)
Memorial Hill
Affected RPers: @Desolate Divine @Noblejanobii @Chakramaster

Cassandra didn’t want to admit she hadn’t ever taken a ride on a motorcycle before, but she decided to go with it, especially since cars on Akala Island were rare and most of the locals used either bikes, mopeds, or motorcycles like this one. But there were plenty of cases where locals and tourists would ride Pokémon as well, but none of the six Pokémon that she had now were ones large enough to ride and support a human passenger.

After getting her helmet on, she climbed on and held on tight as she and Jon raced through the streets. For a very short moment, Cassandra had taken a glace at something Jon had noticed, and if memory served her correctly, she thought she had recognized Avery Miller from four years ago, but wasn’t quite sure. At least this person reminded her of them. She also didn’t recognize the person they were with, leading Cassandra to believe maybe she was just seeing things and too many people she now saw were reminding her of someone else…

After arriving at Memorial Hill, Jon and Cassandra had met up with Dylan, who had been trying to calm a Decidueye. Once Dylan explained what he had found and who he believed left the curse, Abbee the Decidueye explained further, letting them know she had to give up tailing the suspect to prevent Dylan from triggering the hex. Meanwhile, she had realized Jimmy had been following them shortly after getting off the bike.

“Long time no see both of you,” Jimmy told both Jon and Cassandra. “I was filled in on the details.”

“Hey, good to see you too, Jimmy,” Cassandra smiled at him. “Still, just watch your step and don’t touch anything you don’t need to. We’re still not sure what the nature of this hex is, or why it was put there.”

“No matter, it’s a lead if nothing else,” Jon said. “Cass, any idea what it is?”

Cassandra had moved in to take a closer look, looking at the petition paper. She had seen the purple-colored symbol left besides the name “Brianna Levine.” While Jon and Dylan believed that was the suspect’s name, Cassandra felt it could be a hoax or possibly someone the suspect wanted to frame. It just seemed reckless to leave their real name at the scene of the crime. Still, she wasn’t as concerned about that as the symbol itself.

Looking it over, she felt she didn’t recognize it entirely at first. It bore the marking of an Axtavat Sigil, but the purple glow to it didn’t make sense and the more she looked at it, the more she felt her initial theory about it being an Axtavat hex may not be quite right. Still, reading and identifying curses was not beyond her ability. However, right now, as she looked around while keeping her hood covered over her face, she wasn’t sure who might be watching and listening. She didn’t want to be caught in the act of disarming a curse, because then that could be reported to Agatha’s posse and then she would know there were Shadowcraft witches working on the opposite side. Since she wanted to do this quietly and secretively with the way Akala Island was right now, there were too many eyes everywhere.

She had decided to let out Nami the Purugly and Angel the Swanna. Once the hefty gray cat and white swan Pokémon emerged from their Pokéballs, Cassandra took another look around at the dark shrubs and darkened skies.

“Nami, I’m going to need to you to be terragi while Angel, I need you as an aerotai,” Cassandra told them both. “No time to explain, there’s eyes everywhere around here and I need to concentrate on this.”

The Purugly and Swanna almost gawked as they looked at Cassandra with shock before they looked at each other suddenly doubting everything they had known about her.

“Purr…?” (“How… does a human know what those mean?”) Nami asked Angel, totally in disbelief jargon thought only to be known to wild and feral Pokémon was now being used by this human. “Purr…ruuu… (“I haven’t heard those used since I was a Glameow back in the wild…”)

“Swaa…naa…” (“Me neither, this girl is pretty unusual.”) Angel nodded, looking at Cassandra and wondering if she really was human after all.

“Takiae, please…” Cassandra instructed them as she understood and overheard what they were saying, using the lingo of ‘please pay attention’ that normally only an alpha Pokémon in the wild would use to instruct the pack. “If you see anything out there, I’ve got to know.”

Still bewildered by Cassandra’s knowledge of such things on top of her being able to understand Pokémon speech, they decided to obey her command. While Cassandra approached the petition, Nami kept a lookout on the ground while Angel kept his eyes on the skies, guarding her as they remained vigilant in trying to detect any disturbances in the shadows and in the surrounding environment. When Cassandra arrived, she saw the laminated paper and she looked closely at the list of signatures, seeing the name “Brianna Levine.” Ordinarily, the sigil was invisible and was easy to miss. She realized this had to be a contact-based hex, and she realized Dylan was extremely lucky to have not triggered the curse if it was primed enough to glow from the proximity of his hand being there.

“Nas kama narin…” Cassandra muttered as she hovered her hand over the sigil, trying to read what this other Shadowcraft witch had left behind.

But even in trying to read this Shadowcraft hex, she was getting a mixed feedback, but then shortly after she realized what was going on. Whoever had left this here had created a hybrid of two hexes interwoven together. An almost experimental hex, which got Cassandra wondering how and why someone would set this up.

“It’s like two curses in one,” Cassandra explained to the others. “Whoever left this here managed to figure out how to weave a Zekve and a Koxein curse together. Had you touched that, you’d be one really sick and queasy Shroomish and whoever left this here and hexed you would get to see through your own eyes and watch everything you were doing without you even knowing.”

Cassandra felt she could disarm it, but it would be a delicate process. She’d have to cut the link to the nether first, but she didn’t know if that dark energy was running through the sigil together as one cohesive insignia or if it now had two separate sources like two live wires charged from two separate power units. She figured she’d start with the Koxein portion of the hex, feeling if she at least disarmed that but accidentally trigged the Zekve hex, she could take becoming a Shroomish over running the risk of having Agatha’s followers discover they had a witchcraft hospital to curse and hex to kingdom come.

However, after a minute of delicately dissecting the sigil’s source of power to the nether, she was able to sever the link and disarm the curses as one without having anything trigger. With the hexes dispelled, she was able to easily “clean” and flush off off the inscribed hex marking as if it was never placed there.

“And poof, it’s gone,” Cassandra replied, smiled she learned something out of that. “Whatever they’re doing, they’re getting clever about it. Which… gives me a theory about this whole thing.”

She then looked to Jon, Dylan, Abbee, and Jimmy. While she knew what she was thinking may not be entirely true, she at least wanted to put it on the table as a plausible basis of investigation.

“Agatha and her witchy friends here may be cursing and hexing everyone as part of a training or ‘educational’ experience,” Cassandra theorized, seeing as how this was an experimental hybrid hex. “The other possibility is this is all for research for some really nasty intention. Or both. Either way, I have a feeling they’re using everyone else on the island as lab Ratattas for practice to see what’s most effective and then get everyone in their posse to become an expert at it. I know this because… we did some experimenting with Shadowcraft, too. Back in the wild for the past four years. Shadowcraft isn’t so cut and dry, it’s adaptable, and we adapted it to align with our natural surroundings as a kind of… druidic-like magic of sorts. But it takes trial and error with experimentation. Sometimes it works, other times… odd things happen. Let’s just say I was glad ‘Sonia’ and ‘Sasha’ were still around when I accidentally triggered my homemade ensnaring flower trap spell or I might still be stuck in that.”

Nami and Angel had looked at each other again, perplexed and confused.

“Anyway, I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility,” Cassandra told them. “In the meantime, that Koxein hex gives me an idea. If we could nab one of these witches, lay this ‘wire tap’ curse on them and we… ‘accidentally’ lose our hold on them and they escape, we might see where they’re hiding and what they’re up to. I imagine it kind of works like your sight-sharing with Latios, Jon, although I haven’t tried using Koxein curses myself. I figure it’s worth a try while Agatha believes no one but her own witch friends has access to that kind of spell.”

Cassandra knew she’d need to head back to the urgent care center to brush up that Koxein hex, but she wasn’t worried about that. She was thinking she might have to run this idea by Steven first, as he may have already had his own plans that she was not aware of, and it was likely she hadn’t heard about them yet as she had been busy at the urgent care center. But still, if he gave the plan the green light, she was confident she could master the use of that Koxein hex rather quickly and put it to good use as she felt it couldn’t be too complicated of a thing to learn.

It was trying to catch a living and breathing witch and get them under control long enough to do this hex without them realizing it… that, she knew, would be much, much harder…

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Jarena Farrell (AKA Sonia Fairchild) and Violet Radcliffe (AKA Sasha Winters)
Section B, Heahea City Urgent Care Center, Heahea City
Affected RPers: @Chakramaster

"Excuse me, can you ladies help? I seem to be a little lost."

Jarena had turned around to see Alisaie Kendo, though she didn’t recognize her. She also didn’t see her go through the Section B entrance, although Jarena would admit she wasn’t watching it all that closely. While she didn’t seem like a threat, Jarena just decided to be a little careful and not openly reveal what was going on here, just in case.

“Oh, hey there, name’s Sonia, nice to meet you,” Jarena told her, using her cover name. “You’re in Section B right now. Did you have some kind of ailment you need resolved?”

Jarena figured if she did, she could point her in the right direction depending on what it was. Section A was still there for resolving the usual urgent care medical procedures that weren’t witchcraft-related. It all depended on what kind of help she needed, if anything at all.