Noah "Neo" Ashfield
Mossdeep City, Hoenn
Affected RPers: N/A

For that quick moment, Hayes was winded from me hitting him in the throat. As he was gasping for air, he didn't pay attention to what was happening around him.

Oh snap, better fly out of there!

Snuff and Cyclone quickly cleared out of the way, and that was when the ceiling started coming down. Hayes caught his breath just in time before a nice chunk of concrete knocked him over and made his head the fleshy equivalent of mashed potatoes. More piles of crap came down, but thankfully it didn't bury the body too much.

I found out what happens when a person in Burst form dies. Didn't think about it until now, but it caused both the Pokémon and the human to be suddenly vaporized. The body of the Mega Krookodile disintegrated into nothing.

Somewhere in that crap heap, there was the Ancient Burst Heart. I dug around for it, trying to move as much junk out of the way as I could. I was definitely not leaving that behind for some other chump to find. I lost Ken and Luke and my Dragonite and Floatzel had the stuffing beaten out of them. Not to account for all the times I was a second away from getting tagged by the Grim Reaper.

And then I heard sirens. What the hell, now the cops arrive? I looked up and yep, three police choppers heading to the expo. Crap, if I tried to flee by the boat, they were going to see it and give me more hell over it.

"Come on, come on," I grumbled, trying to find the darn Ancient Burst Heart by shifting through as many rubble piles as quickly as I could. "Where the hell is it?"

Try that pile over there.

I did, but no dice. Meanwhile, the choppers were starting to land. I estimated I only had about three minutes to find this thing before they had me surrounded. I then just started to pick stuff up and throw it aside, letting me know what was already searched and what wasn't.

"WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED, THROW YOUR WEAPONS DOWN AND SURRENDER!"

I looked up to take a peek and damn, these guys sure were fast at getting mobilized. Given, all this destruction wasn't my fault... most of it anyway, but these guys wouldn't know that. Last thing I wanted was to turn myself if. Crap, if they figured out who I was, I'd spend eons in the slammer.

And that's when I found it. I grabbed the gem and took a quick look at it. Yep, this was definitely no ordinary ruby or that kind of gem. It made a regular run of the mill Burst Heart look like cheap glass.

And that was exactly when the cops breached the building. Well, time to have a little fun with these losers.


Janine "Angel" Price
AMS Deathwing, Mirage Island, Hoenn
Affected RPers: @The Nonexistent Tazz

The computer system was, well, at the moment, a little technical. Yarvick was probably a little confused by it, but hey, we could easily make this user friendly when we got the time!

"I see... You're definitely talented," Yarvick told me, being ultra nice! "Most of this would have just flown over my head. I'm not a prodigy at computers, I'm just an expert, and that's all I've got for standout education, other than being really good at taking things."

"Ah, no worries, dude!" I encouraged him. "We'll make this whole configuration thing easier. Once we've gone over it, it'll be so easy a caveman can do it!"

Now where have I heard that before...?

But shortly after that, Yarvick went through configuring his mutagen. He really did a lot of playing around with it! I couldn't help but think yeah, you could play around with this thing all day long and still have quite a fun time! Eventually, he was set on using Greninja as a base with some Ninetales, Smeargle, Ampibom mixed in as well, but before he got to finish it, we got another visitor!

And I found out it was that Yantil Massadar dude. Ah man, I knew he was going to tell Tiantus about this if he saw it. Ah well, better to just play along with it and introduce him to this crazy concoction I made up!

"...Janine?" He asked, wondering if the big, fluffy Lopunny was really me.

"Oh, hey dude!" I waved to him, just playing it casual.

"Yes, that's Janine," Yarvick told him. "I saw a mutated Lopunny in here, decided to investigate, turns out it was her, she's testing out a mutagen, and this is the result of really pushing it. Really interesting stuff going on with that, but, I assume you're here to talk about the virus?"

"...Yes, yes, the proto-Deoxys Virus investigation, yes," Yantil told him.

Proto-Deoxys Virus? Dang, I must have been cooped up in here for a while now. I hadn't heard a thing about that and I couldn't help but say I was curious now. In the meantime, Yantil kept looking at me, totally baffled. Ha, ha! Awesome, I had to try to get him in on this stuff too!

"The virus is...Non-responsive to any singular stimuli," Yantil told Yarvic. "All attempts thus far have failed. We believe that multiple stimuli were involved instead, but more on that later. The conditions of the host are worsening, considerably, and Titanus had to do some quick surgery to prevent his death, in fact."

"...What?!" Yarvick said in a panic.

"Relax, I assure you that the Alakazam is still alive," Yantil quickly assured Yarvick. "Not well at all, of course, but alive. The surgery went off without a hitch. As it happened, we discarded our old theory on how Deoxys mutated, and came up with a second one: the virus is not just trying to reproduce in there, the Proto-Deoxys Virus is attempting to do some sort of mutation to the host to turn it into something else entirely. It's quite in the nature of a virus to do that, actually, but not on this scale, veins were snapping and trying to rearrange themselves, organs were shifting. It was...I'll leave out the details. The Alakazam is still alive, though, due to quick reaction. However, we cannot save it once the major organs start attempting to resize themselves."

Ouch, wow, that sure sounded pretty serious! I didn't have all the details about the research, but yeah, didn't take a scientist to figure out stuff like "veins snapping" and "organs shifting" was probably bad news! I mean... well, I was kind of doing the same thing, but at least my way of mutating things was a little bit more user-friendly!

"In any case, we're now also theorizing that it is not a case of IF we can mutate it, but rather WHAT we can mutate it into...And if we can do it in any timely manner," Yantil continued. "It's harder than it looks, Deoxys is...Well, all known DNA samples are currently under tight government regulation, to prevent ANY sort of attempts at mutation or the like. In other words, the only way to reliably recreate Deoxys is to, naturally, recreate the environment. This is incredibly difficult, but possible with our assets on-board. The Aurora Borealis, the extremely cold temperatures, the Spring Equinox, a colony of Starmie in mating season...Deoxys was born in some very complex conditions, to say the least. But again, we're trying to replicate them to the best of our ability, and it's not as hard as it seems."

"Thanks for the update, doctor..." Yarvick replied. "I'd rather stick around here and be of some service to Angel here than just sit around, if that's not a problem."

"Certainly not," Yantil replied. "Volunteers are a hot commodity in these labs, to be honest...I'll leave you two at it."

Boy, was he right about that one! Do you know how few people ever willingly walk into my lab? Geez, I don't bite, people! And I didn't booby trap the place either! But in the meantime, Yantil simply left, still shooting glances at me. Wasn't sure if he was spooked or wanted to give this a try himself!

"...So, yeah, want to hear the story behind how I'm involved in all of that?" Yarvick asked me. "It's rather on the long side of things."

"I... think I have a pretty good idea already," I told him, figuring as much. "Trying to recreate Deoxys... definitely sounds like tricky business!"

I wasn't sure what process Tiantus and Yantil were using, but hey, he had the best guys working on it! As for what Yarvick planned on using Deoxys for... I didn't have a clue. Not really the cutest companion anyone could ever hope to have, but I supposed he might be a handy guy to have around in some cases!

As for the mutagen form that Yarvick was working on, I felt like putting in my own recommendations, but then I kind of realized they probably wouldn't be his style. Nah, he really did seem to be going for the cuter Pokémon, but hey, if he ever asked, I knew just how to respond!