Originally Posted by
Lychee
Oh dear! Oh my! I was so caught up thinking and chatting I forgot to hop to it! Or... Hover, I suppose.
I'll go have a diplomatic debrief with Mortek, and see if Taiyou left anything behind that might help us... Avenge her? Maybe that's the wrong word for it. But still!
With the night looming overhead, you head out into the stale air. You make your way due south directly toward Mortek’s home, but you imagine it won’t feel homely in the slightest and you’re expecting not to get a warm welcome considering the situation. Still, you know for a fact that the Stalkers will prey upon weakness.
Answers will be your weapons…
…and you need them now.
When you arrive at Mortek’s residence, you find him outside all alone… brooding in the darkness. Frankly, you’re not surprised to see him this way, but at least he isn’t suicidal. While he’s not one to get emotional, the death of Tayou was more personal that he would expect and now he is feeling pain that he didn’t think was possible. Where she once was, there is now emptiness and a void. That crushing effect never goes away easily, if ever at all.
You softly approach, but he already knows you’re here. You almost expect him to attack out of rage, distrust, or even as a result of the pure insanity that has started to take him over. But no, instead, he continues to brood, his breathing growing heavier and more labored, his eyes almost never blinking.
“You know they’re still out there, Mortek,” you tell him, knowing with him, it’s better to be blunt.
You know it’s how he would have approached this conversation when Tayou was still alive…
…or if he had never met her.
But he is silent. He doesn’t make eye contact and instead continues to look at the moon, barely visible beyond the clouds… as if the moon is his hope and the clouds are all the darkness, anger, and frustration he feels, encroaching in on that hope and light in his life. You sense he’s losing it and it’s taking him off the path.
He is still on the outside, but inside, he is quaking as his emotions of fear, anger, frustration, and determination wage a four-way war with his mind and soul as the battlefield. And war, as you know, is costly for all sides… for all those involved. You sense he is very good at hiding these feelings and this ravaging emotional warfare, but you know this needs to stop before it consumes him and there’s no going back…
“MORTEK!!” you shout at the top of your lungs.
There is silence, but you look into Mortek’s eyes and it seems there is now a ceasefire. The armies have been called to stand down and fall back, because an unexpected fifth force has entered the battlefield… and this force has more cunning, determination, and possesses power far beyond what they could ever comprehend in this lifetime. This fifth force of raw, unbridled tenacity is…
…you.
“I don’t suppose you have some kind of miracle that might bring her back?” he asks, still avoiding eye contact.
But you know the truth.
You don’t need to, because deep in your heart, she has already been reborn elsewhere, starting over. She’s holding on, trying once again, somewhere out there among the stars in a new life, a new body… one of her choosing to see how much she can accomplish with it. She isn’t truly gone.
But you’re still here and there’s still work to be done. So for now, you ignore the question, because both of you already know the answer and the question had no purpose beyond letting Mortek cope with the grief… the denial, the anger, the bargaining, the depression…
…the acceptance.
“We can’t make this different,” you answer him. “But with what little time we still have left, we can make it different for those around us. This town. These Pokémon. Because it’s not over for them. They can still survive.”
“I’m not expecting you to fight,” you continue. “I just need to know what you know about them. The mission your wife started. The one we’ll continue. I need to know the details. Nothing is too small. Nothing should be overlooked. Even the slightest thing can be important.”
What do you know about the Stalkers…?
“I know they’re hiding among us,” Mortek tells you, looking down at the dry dirt that rests before him.
“I had to talk to Verio who recently lost his son,” Mortek continues after taking a deep breath. “I didn’t feel so alone after that. He told me about the Demonic Instruments he found, and how they were deeply imbued with evil. The same source of evil that has been killing everyone lately. But there was something else that I saw that he seemed to have overlooked. I’ve seen that face before. Depression, doubt, he must have been missing it this entire time and needed a second set of eyes.”
“It’s his daughter, Kammia,” Mortek grunts, looking away for a bit before looking back to you. “She found something that looks like it has taken some kind of hold on her. A dark fascination of sorts that might have targeted her child curiosity. It seemed to be some kind of flower terrarium, and she was more than happy to show me, despite being someone of a personal stranger to her father. She thought it might cheer her up and she just happened to find it laying around, which had me feeling suspicious. I looked at it and from an initial glance, nothing seemed wrong at first. Roses, lilies, tulips, all in clusters, but the more I thought about it and the more I remembered it, the more the image burned into my brain.”
“There’s something wrong with it. Something unnatural. I don’t know what exactly it is and I didn’t feel it at first until something pushed me to hold it in my claws and it made me feel uneasy. I could only give it back to her, but something still doesn’t feel right about it. Who made it and how did she find it? It’s construction and design doesn’t… it just doesn’t seem like it was ever from here. Like it’s alien in nature or is some kind of fake or counterfeit, but I knew if I said something, they would have thought I was raving mad…”
You then look to him, assuring him there’s nothing wrong with feeling this way.
“Three months ago, if you told them about the things they’ve already seen and heard about with what these Stalkers have done, they would have said it was all insane,” you tell him, assuring him there’s nothing mad about any of this. “There are things… dark things beyond the construction of anything that’s possible and attainable here. We’ll look into any of them.”
#1 Mortek the Garchomp has become Compliant.
“One more thing…” he tells you. “Ressi. She told me she had a dream where she murdered Sanfer, and it sounds like the work of Edifice. She thinks it had something to do with a strange prism-like object she found, but I don’t think they’re related. The problem is Hashani and Terron had the same dream from what I’ve heard and they never mentioned anything about a prism, even after I asked them specifically about it. But that prism… she showed it to me and I had never seen anything like that before in my life. Unlike the terrarium, what I saw seemed foreign and enigmatic, but at least not nefarious. But I still have no idea where it came from or what it’s for.”
“I’ll keep an eye out if I see anything else,” Mortek tells you. “But I agree with the others that something seems wrong with the coast guard. They haven’t been replying to me either and I have reason to believe they’ve been compromised by these Stalkers or at least by something trying to aid them. Malco… he was the only one I had correspondence with now he’s gone. Along with so many others. And now the coast guard is completely unresponsive.”
“Thanks for reaching out, but now I need some more time,” He looks away with a sigh. “After being unable to sleep or eat, I haven’t been up for talking after the whole incident but something you said… just seemed to help get my head out of the fog…”
You nod, understanding where he’s coming from. You tell him goodnight before you start heading back toward Benni’s farmstead. The air doesn’t seem quite as stale on the return trip, as if it got easier to breathe.
You feel it’s no coincidence…
ChiChi the Tatsujin Tapu Lele (M: Kūsho)
Health: 16/20 |
Sanity: 20/20 |
Purity: 10/20 |
10/10 Kurosuōbā | Dodge Rate: 30%
Perk: Diplomacy
Reincarnation Forms: Corviknight, Milotic, Aurorus, Espeon, Alcremie
EQUIPMENT:
- Defense Armor: <Empty>
- Jewelry: +|J| Blessed Armband+ (1S, 1P)
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