“How does it feel, knowing that everything you’ve done amounts to nothing?” a woman spoke off in the distance, her voice raspy and cold.
“What?” I asked as I slowly awoke from the deep slumber I’d fallen into.
I lied still on a cold floor covered with lavender tiles. Feeling weak, I waited several moments before finally trying to get on my feet. I wasn’t sure of where I was at the moment, but one thing that seemed certain was that that phantom wolf probably left me here for dead after making me see that awful vision. Whether it would come true or not, I had serious doubts that Doxinox would be the ultimate cause of it.
“You heard me. How does it feel, knowing that the world you live in may soon come to an end?” she asked again, hissing this time.
“Why should I believe that killing Doxinox will change anything? As far as I know, that’s just a ploy that creature was trying to use on me to hand her over when everything would be just fine.”
I glanced around trying to see if I could spot the woman, but couldn’t see anything for miles. The whole area looked to be just one dark and endless plane of tiles. Only purplish-black clouds hanging on the horizon seemed to be the other dominant feature of this realm.
“The gods of Beyi Quofyi have long stood in defiance of charlatans such as Arceus’s brood. Who are you to question us?”
Suddenly, I heard something falling down from far above. Looking upward, I notice a huge ball-shaped object with large metal spikes protruding from it coming straight for me. Immediately, I dashed headlong out of the way. The mace-like object crashed several yards directly behind me, creating a massive shockwave that forced me onto the ground.
“What the h*ll was that?” I swore to myself. Glancing back, I saw that the impact left a deep crater around the ten-foot-diameter orb with three-foot-long spikes. As the sphere lifted off the ground, I noticed that it was actually attached to the thick tail of an enormous snake. The appendage bared crisscrossing black and red stripes that seemed to course the entire length of the serpent’s otherwise brown body as it vanished into the distance. I couldn’t tell for certain, but this monster had to be at least one hundred feet long.
“I am the strongest Pokémon in all existence. None can withstand the brutality of Rage Incarnate,” the woman hissed as her gargantuan shadow loomed overhead.
Coiling her tail under the rest of her body, the behemoth descended to ground level, revealing her cobra-like head covered with thick ebony scales. She had three crimson-red eyes, two positioned regularly with the third in the middle of her brow, and a gaping maw full of numerous daggers for teeth. Lastly, I noticed that there was also a tattoo right under her face consisting of matching red eyeball with two white crescents flanking its top and bottom.
“Rage…Incarnate…?” I stuttered as she stared me straight in the face.
“I am the embodiment of hatred, born from the negative emotions you and all other creatures share.”
“That’s impossible… How could a Pokémon come into existence like that?”
Slamming her spiked tail-tip into the ground behind me, she retorted, “How dare you liken me the creatures you train? I am a goddess and you shall respect me as such!”
“Oh, Vaspudem! Learn to control your temper now, will you?” another woman spoke from a short distance away. There was no mistaking her voice either… It had to be the same b*tch who’d been terrorizing me in my dreams…
Vaspudem slowly lifted her weapon-like tail away again and coiled it around her backside. Unable to bring myself to turn to her, I waited as the other entity crept up to me and put a hand on my right shoulder. Glancing at it out the corner of my eye, I noticed that she only had two long fingers and a slightly shorter thumb, each with a small pointed claw on their fingertips; additionally, she seemed to have hard dark-purple skin similar to an insect’s exoskeleton.
“I never thought the time would come when we would meet face-to-face, boy…” she then commented, “And I must say, you’re just how I like my prey. All plump and juicy, not like those strapping young warriors I seduced in the olden days!”
“Why the hell don’t you just leave me alone for a change?”
“Ha! Like I’ve told you before, humans are such fragile creatures… The least bit of rage or lust in your hearts is more than enough to twist your mind.” I shrugged to make her loosen her grip and then stepped forward a little. Vaspudem reared her head back as though she were readying to bite at me.
“Stay your hand, Vaspudem!” the other woman demanded, “He’s mine.”
Pivoting around, I saw that my tormentor these past several months had been an eight-foot-tall half-humanoid Pokémon, in the sense that her torso was that of a voluptuous woman while her lower body seemed comparable to an arachnid’s abdomen. She wore an ivory mask that obscured her face, though I could plainly see her silvery eyes peering through the holes near the brow area; her long violet hair seemed to hide the rest of what the mask didn’t cover. A decorative black-iron breastplate accentuated her slim figure perfectly, and she wore matching vambraces on her forearms and shins. There was an upside-down symbol on her belly that consisted of three white triangles touching one another at their inward points, with the lowest triangle extending all the way to the large spinnerets on her butt.
“What do you want with me?” I asked her.
She threw her head back in full-on laughter for a moment before she suddenly replied, “Well, since you’ve refused to hand over Doxinox, how about killing Arceus for us instead?”
“What?”
“You heard her,” Vaspudem hissed overhead.
“Arceus has been eluding our brother since time began. We’re out to do nothing less than prove what a fraud he is, and there’s no better way to do that than by proving that he isn’t immortal,” the spider-woman scoffed.
“You’re lying!” I shouted.
“You only kid yourself, boy. If nothing is done, your world and many others will end. That much I can assure,” she snickered, twiddling her fingers and creating a silk web between her claws.
“Why the h*ll task me with this, then?”
“Your essence is forever bound to this domain, just like everyone else whom has ever lived,” the voice of the phantom wolf from before explained, “If Arceus gets his way, this realm will fall into steady collapse and the foundation of the multiverse shall waste away to nothing, resulting in the annihilation of all existence. For this reason, either he or the abomination must be destroyed.” Glancing around, I noticed that he wasn’t anywhere to be seen this time; however, I saw that both the spider-woman and her sister were slowly backing away from me.
The lupine entity’s shadow appeared off to my left and expanded across the floor into the distance. Unlike before, the creature’s head had essentially vanished as it reached towards the far-off horizon, leaving an apparent trail of flowing hair behind him. I felt it a bit perplexing that this being’s underlings gone the extra length to make themselves known this whole time, while he’d chosen to remain as nothing more than a specter.
“Why can’t you just kill him yourself? You seem pretty boastful about proclaiming how much stronger you are than Arceus, but all you’ve really showed me is evidence of his strength not yours…”
For a moment, I thought I struck a nerve. I could vaguely see the full-form body of a large wolf Pokémon coming back at me from the distance. However, as the creature stomped ever closer, I began to realize it wasn’t the same beast who’d confronted me before. Instead, he seemed to be something ungodly altogether.
The canine monster loomed over me at a height of about twenty-three-feet tall. His pelt looked to be dark gray, and his body overall seemed extremely muscular. There were seven iron spikes jutting out in different directions from his backside, and he had large reddish claws protruding from each of the toes on his paws. Apparently this creature’s tail seemed somewhat longer than I’d have expected it to be, but for the reason that it had an iron mace with seven large spikes at its end like Vaspudem’s did. However, the most disturbing feature of this Pokémon was the fact that it had three different heads positioned equidistantly from one another in a virtual triangle on a huge disk resting atop of his thick neck. Unlike the rest of its body, the fur on each head was colored black, red, and green respectively, with the last two facing away from me and apparently resting in a sleeplike trance. The face staring towards me had a particularly grim expression, making a slight frown with his mouth and keeping his glowing amber eyes wide open as if he were ready to cry.
“You clearly do not comprehend the situation in which you find yourself,” he solemnly spoke with ghastly report. The hellhound then began to circle around me as if he was readying to strike. I reached for one of the Poké Balls in my right holster but suddenly realized I didn’t have any of them on me.
“Your Pokémon do not exist in this part of Chastity’s Domain. This part of the realm is exclusively reserved for you.”
“What the h*ll does that mean?”
“This is an area where your dreams and memories do not include them…early childhood…” Glancing down for a moment, I realized that I was a lot shorter here than how I was supposed to be. Also, I seemed to be wearing clothes featuring cartoon characters on them.
“Your current state is merely a reflection of your former youth, which now only exists here.”
“What makes this place so important to begin with? I get the part about it being connected to my world, but how?”
“Before the beginning, there only existed two beings trapped within an endless void. They were twins born from the same primordial mass and consciousness, all of which sustains the multiverse even today. Because they ceaselessly fought one another, the energy released from their attacks caused such massive explosions that entire cosmoses were formed and, through their chaos, this one came into being to connect them all.”
“And any damage caused in them happens here?”
“To an extent. Many universes have fizzled out of existence, but records of them remain on the furthest boundaries of this domain…as nothing more than shattered memories…”
“So this place is essentially a ‘hall of records.’” The monster looked away from me and off to the horizon. Then, he nodded slowly in confirmation.
“Anything that happens in physical reality is reflected here. However, on such a monumental scale as milord showed you, it would have catastrophic consequences by triggering a chain reaction that would make this place too unstable to support itself.”
“That still doesn’t explain why he can’t handle Arceus on his own!” I retorted. The beast rotated his heads’ disk to the right and then roared at me with his red-colored face.
“He has been tracking him for eons and to no avail! Is that much not clear?”
Nervously, I again asked, “Then why have me do it?”
Rotating heads again so that his green one faced me now, the creature snorted and replied, “Your destiny has been bound to this task since the day I appeared to attack the abomination. If you don’t believe me, go forth and see for yourself…”
“What?” Suddenly the monster opened his abysmal maw widely and lunged at me as if to swallow me whole.
I awoke to the feeling of a violent jerk throughout my body. My heart was racing, and I had a hard time catching my breath after that terrifying nightmare I just experienced. As I lie facedown on the floor, I took a moment to glace around and reassure myself that I was back in the lobby of IIPS, recognizing the common’s generally lounge-like décor.
Canersia and his partner had apparently left since the time I’d fallen unconscious, which was most likely hours ago given that it looked dark outside through the entrance’s windows. After a moment of thought, I checked both of my holsters in case they decided to take Doxinox from me anyways. Feeling her ball snuggly in its holder, I breathed a sigh of relief, slowly turned over a little, and finally stood up.
I felt that something was still amiss about this whole situation. Those Pokémon in my dream seemed as real as anything else I’ve encountered during my career, but something them felt completely off. If what they said about their realm being affected by anything that happens here, how could they know what was going to happen before it actually occurred?
“Why?” I heard a faint voice call from down the hallway directly behind me. Turning around, I saw that the corridor Ali went down earlier was almost pitch-black due to the lights being off…or at least it was until a sudden flash radiated from the far end and brightened it up with a blinding gleam. Amidst the burst, I heard the bloodcurdling screams of a young woman in her mid-twenties.
“Felicia!” I cried, immediately recognizing the familiar tone of her voice. Then, I dashed like a madman down the hall after her.
I couldn’t see much thanks to the intensity of the light, but I noticed that I passed by the vague silhouette of a plump guy passed out near the beginning of the hallway. As I reached the end of the corridor, I could make out Felicia’s outline as well. For some reason, she appeared to be hunched over on the floor. Once I caught up to her, I noticed that she was actually down on her hands and knees screaming in agony. I tried to reach down and grab her, but my hands went right through her body like I was a ghost. Suddenly the blinding light faded and she seemingly disappeared.
Looking around, I noticed that I now stood in a virtual fork in the hall, which diverged into left and right branched in front of a room that I presumed was one of the school’s classes. Clearly what I just watched was some sort of illusion, given that the corridor appeared almost the same as I saw it from the entryway before Canersia and Darkrai attacked me. But did that mean that one of them was manipulating my thoughts, or was I still trapped in that dream world somehow?
Hearing a violent crash coming from the classroom behind me, I pivoted around to see that the doorway into the room had been essentially cut out and replaced with a perfectly circular opening nearly nine-feet across. Because it was so gaping, I saw all the way into the lab-like chamber. Numerous desks had been pushed off to the sides of the large room, toppled over, and broken apart by some unprecedented force; likewise, there were many trails of familiar green and black ooze. As horrendous as all this destruction was, the thing that drew my attention even more was the second, even larger hole in the wall on the far side of the room. That hellhound must have had something to do with it, given his derogatory remark about attacking Doxinox sometime in the past.
I slowly stepped inside, keeping my hand on Apollo’s Poké Ball just in case I needed him. The scene seemed unusually quiet, considering the apparent rampage Doxinox and the hellhound went on. However, I could feel that I wasn’t alone here.
”How could she do this?” the voice from a few moments ago spoke again.
I turned back around to come face-to-face with an all too familiar sight. Just a few inches behind me was the visage of the same avian Pokémon who’d been harassing me at the end of my dreams these past few months. Her cone-like face seemed pale in the darkness but I could distinguish the familiar triangle around the perimeter of her visage and her slanted auburn-colored eyes. This time, I could see how she had a twelve-foot-long arrow-like body, since she had a long neck extending from the rest of her egg-shaped body. Her wings appeared fused to her sides and curved back and away from her form to create an apparent heart shape near her rear. Finally, I noticed that a pair of flat oval disks seemed to comprise her feet or tails.
“YOU!” I barked at her as the creature hovered awkwardly so that her body was perpendicular with the ground and she could curve her neck in order to stare me down menacingly. Doing so, I suddenly realized that this wasn’t the same creature who’d been haunting me in my dreams like I thought, given that the marking around its face turned out to be blue instead of red when faint light reflected off the creature’s metallic skin.
“You…are not Felicia?” he then asked me telepathically.
“Of course not,” I told him, reaching for Apollo’s Poké Ball. He backed away somewhat and then straightened his body out while keeping an eye on my movements as I grabbed the sphere.
“That device will not work here,” he commented, tilting his head inquisitively to the left. Stepping back myself, I pressed the button on the orb to release my Pokémon, but the mechanism wouldn’t unlock.
“What are you?”
The entity tilted his head to the right now and said, “My name is Leyi-geyi. I am…an atypical species of what you humans call Pokémon.”
“Okay… How do you know Felicia, and why don’t my Poké Balls work?”
“This place is the manifestation of a traumatic event Felicia endured many years ago, which I inadvertently caused. Also, things from physical reality have no place in the world of Nostalgia…” I was still stuck in the Nostalgia…? Figures…
“Young man, please explain to me how you came to be here. Only a select few can move freely within this domain, so how is it that you can wander about?”
“To be honest, I don’t know… Before waking up here, I encountered a three-headed monster who…”
“Cyobrus, you mean. He patrols all parts of this domain, keeping watch over the Dreamtime at his master’s bidding. His powers also allow him to take mortals from their normal dreamscapes and show them those of others.”
“That explains a lot, but what did he want me to see here then?”
Leyi-geyi suddenly shifted his body from left to right as though he were feeling uneasy being near me. Afterwards, he pointed his nose straight up towards the ceiling.
“You wouldn’t have an acquaintanceship with my twin sister, would you?”
“What? No. Of course not. What would possibly make you think that?”
“This event only occurred because she had become so spiteful of Felicia Barnes’ creation that she unleashed Cyobrus just to slay it. But by doing so, she undermined the boundaries separating physical reality from Nostalgia. Those barriers are necessary to keep the dimensions of the multiverse from colliding with one another.”
“Come again?” I said, not understanding what he meant at all.
“Mmm… Put simply, the divergent realities forming all creation would destroy one another if they suddenly overlapped. This would occur on a level far beyond your comprehension, but the effects are no less destructive than what human astronomers dubbed a ‘super-massive black hole…’”
“You’re joking?” I slurred, knowing instinctively that something of that magnitude was theoretically the most powerful force in the universe…
“Thankfully that damage was repairable. However, our emergence into your world was not… We exist on the very fringes of reality, tethered to no dimensional restraints like all other beings are.”
I scratched my head and then said, “Alright, now you’ve really got me confused. What exactly are you, some sort of deity or something? Because I’m getting really tired of all these supernatural shenanigans.”
“‘Deity’ is the last term I’d use to describe myself… I prefer to think of myself as more of watcher, hence why my name translates as ‘Watcher Humility’ from the language of Quofyi.”
“Okay, okay, you’re a watcher. I honestly don’t give a damn. I just want to get my facts straight and get the hell out of here!” He mumbled to himself for a moment and then turned away from me.
“The Pokémon who rules over this realm won’t allow that, even if I were to intervene. He is a tyrannical fiend known as Otulp, and doesn’t stop hounding his victims until they break. What he wants is nothing less than the eradication of all, and I mean ALL, humans from this and any other reality they live in…” Leyi-geyi replied with a tinge of conceitedness in his voice.
“Are you serious?”
“Indeed. But his spite only stems from my sister’s desire to annihilate me after making what she saw as a dire mistake. As it were, my actions against her inadvertently led to the creation of all matter in physical reality at the exact moment she spawned this dreamtime domain. From then on, our children ceaseless fought against each other while we stayed on the proverbial sidelines.”
“So where does that leave me?”
“Otulp and his sisters, Vaspudem and Arachana, have a natural affinity that draws them to their mother’s presence. Consciousnesses that profusely exude auras of Lust, Rage, and Fear cause them to go into a frenzy the likes of which mortals cannot possibly fathom.” The last sentence in particular struck me like a knife to the heart. All the frustration over my loss to Meg made me easy prey to at least one if not all three of those demons. This must have been what the three-headed beast meant for me to learn.
“So, how does this domain work? Do memories just manifest themselves here, or is there something more to it than that?” I then asked.
Leyi-geyi turned back to me and explained, “The memories of all creatures who have ever lived or shall ever exist congregate and interconnect in this plane of existence. However, it is the task of Nostalgia’s Keepers to ensure that no entities come into being that exist independent of this realm.”
“Then, Doxinox would be an example of such an entity.” He nodded gently in response.
“That explains why Otulp and his sisters are so p*ssed off at me for trying to resist them for so long. But if I don’t give them Doxinox, the only alternative is to take them up on their ultimatum and…” I uttered until Leyi-geyi interrupted me.
“…Destroy Arceus… The same thing Otulp has been trying to do since before the beginning of physical time. Trust me, it isn’t anywhere near as easy as he would make it sound. And even if you manage to destroy your universe’s Arceus, he has created many doppelgangers that exist throughout countless realities, which makes the task virtually meaningless.”
“What can I do then? If the two Pokémon fuse together like he showed me, everything is just going to be destroyed anyhow.”
“Otulp rarely if ever reveals his true motives to anyone, even his siblings. He’s exactly like his mother, and the few things he does reveal may as well be half-truths since they’re so indistinct.”
“Do you mean…?”
Leyi-geyi shook his head and continued, “No, whatever you were showed, you should accept as a dead honest fact unless you’re given reason to believe otherwise. I cannot discern what you saw for certain, but I can tell you that it will happen in one form or another.”
“What should I do?” I muttered to myself. Leyi-geyi projected the manifestation of a hand and place it on my shoulder.
He then commented, “Time betrays us all in ways unimaginable… What occurs now and then doesn’t always impact how things will ultimately turn out in your life. The only thing that’s certain is that time goes on with or without you. Make the most of what you have, for Destiny cannot always decide what’s best for you…” Suddenly, his body appeared to disintegrate into tiny glowing bits as he vanished from head to tail.
“Wait, what’s going on?” I called out to him as he nearly faded away.
“I can return you to your own time from here, but know that a terrible challenge awaits you upon your return. Do you think you can surmount to it as ill-prepared as you are?”
“What’s happening back in the real world?”
“I cannot say for certain, but Canersia is waiting to attack you soon after you reawaken. I believe that this item will help you put him in his place!”
The shimmering particles that streamed from his body then swirled together in front of me and took on the form of an oddly-shaped helmet. It was made from silvery metal, and looked like it had been forged to fit over some canine’s head. There were eye slits, ear holes, and openings for the creature’s nostrils so it could see, hear, and breathe without problems. Lastly, there was some chain mail around the neck area, and a small opening for hair to come out of near the back of the head.
“Equip your Lupudle with this helmet after I send you back. It should strengthen his physical prowess twofold if not more. Just know that its true power won’t reveal itself unless he fully realizes the age-old discipline of his clan.”
“Okay… If you say so.”
Suddenly I felt unusually weak… It seemed like the wind got knocked out of me. I crouched onto the floor, gasping for air. If this was Leyi-geyi’s way of waking me up, it sure wasn’t pleasant. A shadowy presence then consumed the area as I finally passed out on the ground, clutching the helmet close to my chest.
Slowly I began to awaken upon the floor in the middle of IIPS’s lobby. Feeling the remaining headache brought on by Canersia probing my mind earlier, I realized that I actually was awake this time and not just going through another transient fantasy caused by those demons again. As I stood upright, I also noticed that I had the same object that Leyi-geyi gave me before he sent me out of that domain. But then, that also meant that I had to hurry and get this thing onto Spunky before I suddenly found myself at Canersia’s knifepoint again.
I took out Spunky’s Poké Ball and released him almost immediately. The wolf appeared in front of me with a yelp and wagged his tail joyfully.
“Spunky! Sit, boy!” I ordered and he instantly plopped his butt on the floor at attention. Sliding the chain mail over his neck and then fitting the helmet over his brow, I managed to get the item on him without so much as a nip from my Lupudle. As his ears and locked fit through their openings, I gazed in wonder as to how much he began to look just like a Metalupus now.
His eyes squinted past me as though he noticed someone coming down the hallway behind me. I turned to see the vague silhouette of a husky man approaching in the dimly lit corridor. At first I thought that it was Ali coming to get me, but I then noticed the glowing amber eyeballs glaring from four spots on his face and brow. With a dagger in his right hand, the lupine monk stopped imposingly in front of the passageway and created a glistening translucent barrier to seal it off.
Standing off to my Lupudle’s side, I told him, “Show him what you do to Psychic-types, Spunky!”
Spunky stood down on his forepaws and growled at his opponent as he readied to charge at him. Canersia sneered in response, but then revealed the gruesome dagger he held out against me before from under the sleeve of his cloak; this time, however, it appeared as though the weapon were dripping fresh blood. If that meant he’d just killed someone with it, then Spunky and I may have more of a problem on our hands than I originally thought.
The monk began approaching us with a staggering gait. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be such a swift runner given his apparent weight. Standing off to the side, I watched Spunky run at him head-on to tackle Canersia hard with his Double-edge attack. Upon contact, Canersia’s body flew backwards and slammed into his own barrier. Clearly he didn’t have the physical strength to brace against regular attacks like most opponents I have Spunky fight against.
Quick to recover, though, Canersia got right back up. As he came at us again, he swung his blade out in front of him and launched psychokinetic shockwaves at my Lupudle in the same fashion as Psycho Cut. Each attack hit stronger than the last, forcing Spunky back several more inches as they struck. They didn’t really seem to be hurting him, though, since the blasts only struck the top of his helmet because Spunky kept his head tucked down the whole time.
Once Canersia got close to where I stood, the wolf turned his attention to me and aimed his attacks my way instead. Dashing out of the way, I realized that the monk’s assaults weren’t as potent as one he used on me during our previous encounter. He was probably just trying to keep us away from anything that had occurred towards the back of the building in the time I passed out here.
“Spunky, use Reaper Fang and end this already!” I ordered as soon I got over by him near lobby’s entryway.
My Lupudle growled deeply as he channeled the power of his spirit into a blackened aura that began to surround him. Canersia stopped about halfway across the commons, focusing all of his eyes onto the malevolent force starting to engulf the area. Partway through his trance, Spunky opened his maw widely to reveal his fangs, as they appeared to grow out to unprecedented lengths. His body also transformed into that of a primordial-looking canine with hulking muscles and a raggedy-looking mane several feet long. Lastly, his fur turned to a charcoal-gray color and he seemed to become transparent like a ghost.
Canersia just stood there as though he were waiting for Spunky to charge at him again. Instead, my Lupudle just vanished into thin air and instantly reappeared right behind his opponent. Biting hard through the back of the monk’s cloak, the grisly Pokémon grasped his jaws firmly onto the victim’s soul. Then, he tried to forcibly rip out Canersia’s essence.
Furiously, Canersia ripped off his cloak and jumped away from Spunky before he could finish his attack. Landing right in front of me, the humanoid wolf roared in my face and then returned his attention to my Lupudle, who began to revert to his normal form. With his back to me, though, I noticed that there were three blood-red scars that extended from the base of his neck down to his tail. Also, I saw the distinctive tattoo of a brown pawmark with an amber-irised eyeball centered in its pad on the backside of his head.
“Spunky, use Feral Fang!” I commanded as Canersia moved towards him again.
Dropping his dagger on the floor, the monk summoned an ankh-tipped staff to appear in his right hand. Then, he reformed the scepter he had earlier into his left one. Afterwards, Canersia stopped right at the center of the room and held each weapon towards the floor.
Spunky stood his ground several feet away from him, instead of following my previous command. Clearly he sensed something about Canersia’s stance that I didn’t pick up on. A few seconds later, I realized that the tips of his staffs were pulsating with purple auras. Once they synchronized, a lariat of energy dropped from each rod.
Raising his ankh, the monk snapped the first psychic whip at my Lupudle, striking him hard on his side. Spunky yelped loudly in horrific pain. Canersia then cracked his other one at the young wolf, lashing him dastardly across Spunky’s hind-leg. Welts appeared on his victim’s body almost as soon as he pulled back on his weapons. Next hitting him with both at once across his back, the assault now drew blood as it cut into Spunky’s skin. The Lupudle backed away out of fear for his own life the second right after that hit.
“You b*stard!” I shouted as I dashed over to pick up the dagger Canersia dropped.
Unfazed by my comment, Canersia continued to lash out his whips as he tried to force Spunky back against the barrier he created at the rear of the room. Irately, I charged at the wolf-man and jabbed his own weapon into the back of his head. He immediately howled out in horrific pain and dropped his staffs onto the floor, causing their energy streams to dissipate as well. Then Canersia dropped to his knees and tried to reach the knife to pull it out.
Rushing over to Spunky’s side, I checked to make sure his welts weren’t too serious. By the look of it, he just seemed to have minor bruises and light cuts long his back, the left side of his abdomen, and his right hind-leg. The little blood that actually seeped through his fur wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could’ve been if Canersia continued his assault like he did. I recalled Spunky into his ball to keep him safe from any more danger and then brought out Orion to help finish this fight.
Orion sneered at his opponent as soon as he laid eyes on him. In his distraught state, Canersia didn’t even bat an eye at the approaching huntsman that loomed over him with his bowstaff held upward ready to kill him.
“This is bad… This is very bad,” Orion muttered as he thrust his weapon deep into the wolf-man’s skull. Canersia let out a final bloodcurdling howl, but suddenly vanished in a wisp of black smoke.
“What happened?”
“He was nothing more than a very realistic illusion. You should feel bad for letting Spunky take a beating from it.”
“Hey! I didn’t know!”
“What’s worse is the fact that that Pokémon suddenly showed up in a place like this. What’s happening, Jay?”
“I have no idea. Canersia attacked me right after we got back to IIPS. After that, I was put into some kind of nightmare or something.”
“You remember what you learned in history class, right?” he commented, shaking his head, “Dallinos folklore depicts Canersia as a demonic being who’s said to be bound to the Dreamtime world of Beyi Quofyi. If you listened to the lectures like I did, you’d recall that Beyi Quofyi is the source of all consciousness, meaning that Canersia can attack on both a physical and a psychological level at the same time.”
“Sh*t! Well, I guess that’s what I get for not pay attention back in high school.”
Orion sighed, “At least I have good enough hearing to listen from even inside my Poké Ball…” Turning around, I noticed that Canersia’s barrier had faded away like his doppelganger did. Recalling Orion, I immediately headed down the long corridor ahead of me.
I felt a sense of uneasiness as I raced down the hall. The classrooms were all locked up tightly and cleaned out for summer break. There wasn’t a lot of lighting save for the single row of fluorescent bulbs that had probably been left on for security staff while they patrolled the building earlier today. As I reached the end of the hallway, I saw the diverging paths like I saw in my dream but noticed that the doorway into the laboratory had long since been repaired where a giant hole existed before.
Coming to a stop at the fork, I took a look down both paths. I couldn’t tell which way to go in order to find Ali and Felicia. Though, given the circumstances, it may have been a smarter idea to have left the building and called the police. Then again, would anyone really be able to stand up against the monsters attacking the university if I didn’t? Suddenly I heard something click loudly behind me.
“Well, look who we have here?” an Irishman’s voice then spoke as the stench of tobacco smoke filled the air. Pivoting around, I found myself glancing down the barrel of a loaded shotgun with the same man from earlier holding it steadily with his right hand.
“Bet you didn’t expect to see me here, Boyo,” the muscular Mr. Kyles continued, taking a long inhale off a cigar he had between his left hand’s index and middle fingers.
“I should’ve figured as much after Canersia showed himself.”
“Then guess you already got the gist of it?” he said, pointing the end of his gun down the right branch of the corridor, “Get moving. Yer friends are waiting for you.” Pivoting around, I started down the passageway. Jonathon Kyles put his weapon against the back of my head as soon as I took a few steps away from him.
I ceased up for a moment while he finished, “And don’t get any stupid ideas. I will blow your brains out without a second thought.”
Removing it from my cranium, he shoved me along down the hall until we came upon an off-branching outlet that led outside into the rear courtyard. Pushing on my side, the man then guided me into the smaller hallway and outside where Felicia, Ali, and several security officers were gathered in front of a large statue of Arceus near the central plaza. I noticed that one of them was the same guy who accompanied Jonathon here with Canersia. He held out a small handgun at the group in an attempt to kep them in one spot.
“Alright, Ali! We’re done playing games! Where are those abominations you promised us?” Kyles called out from across the way. Ali squealed in agony as Felicia conked him on the side of his head with her fist.
“You son of a b*tch! I knew you were behind this the whole time!”
“Felicia, please! I have never met these men in my entire life! I thought that my contacts were the others that swung by early this morning, and they only wanted Doxisite…”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you gave out classified information!”
The young man shot off his handgun overhead and shouted, “Shut the hell up already! You two argue worse than an old married couple!” Both Ali and Felicia looked at him with spiteful glares.
“Kids these days… No real nerve whatsoever…” Jonathon uttered, shoving me aside and walking straight up to the group. Aiming his shotgun right at Ali’s face, the scientist stared blankly at him in fear. After a second, Kyles pointed the weapon downward and shot the man’s right shin! Ali collapsed onto the ground, screaming loudly out of horrific pain.
“Now that is how a white man does it, Wolfgang. Get yer act together, boy!” Kyles scolded his protégé as he took another puff off his cigar.
Afterwards, he reloaded his weapon with a bullet hidden in his pocket and again demanded, “Where are those Pokémon you promised us, Ali?”
“Behind the statue! There’s a compartment that only Felicia and I can open! The experiments are secured inside it!” Ali yelled, clutching his leg in agony.
“Good,” Kyles commented, and then put the gun to Ali’s forehead. Begging for his life, Ali tried to force himself backwards away from oncoming gunshot, but all in futility as the projectile hit him pointblank.
“NO!” Felicia and I both screamed.
“You’re coming with me, woman!” Kyles then demanded, grabbing Felicia on her forearm, “Wolfgang, keep an eye on Feral and the others until we come back around.”
“Yes, sir!” Wolfgang replied.
“Let go of me!” Felicia shouted as the burly man forcibly pulled her around the far side of the plaza’s sculpture. Wolfgang turned to me for a moment and then glanced back at the group of security officers gawking in shock at the sight of Dr. Jubara’s corpse.
Taking out Doxinox’s Poké Ball, I threw it towards Wolfgang as hard as I could. The sphere clonked him in the back of the head before it fell to the ground and opened.
“Hey! No funny business, you *ssho…” he retorted with his firearm aimed at me, until he saw the massive reptilian head forming from a large puddle of ooze in front of him.
Doxinox roared right in his face as he fired off a couple shots into her enormous maw. The bullets apparently stopped inside her body since they didn’t pierce through to her backside. After a momentary pause, she suddenly grabbed the gun out of Wolfgang’s hand with a tongue-like appendage and swallowed it whole on him.
“What the h*ll is this thing?” Wolfgang asked as he backed away from Doxinox by several yards.
“Doxi Riboneria… The same type of monster your friend is about to get his hands on if he doesn’t stop what he’s doing.”
Angrily, the punk took out a purple-colored Poké Ball and threw it into the air. In a blackened flash, the silhouette of a large bulbous insect appeared in the sky overhead.
“Coreetle!” it screamed as it suddenly crashed onto the sidewalk.
Overall, the bug’s brownish head and thorax were far smaller than its seven-foot tall abdomen, making it look somewhat ridiculous. A callused part of its shell split the midsection of its cranium so that its eyes sat on opposite sides from one another, directly over each of its wide-clamping pincers. It had three long but stocky-looking legs on each side of its thorax, and a pair of large amber wings that stemmed from it and only seemed to cover up a small portion of its backside. Lastly, I saw that the insect had second pair of pincers or cutters on its rear.
“Coreetle, use Flamethrower!” Wolfgang demanded. The enormous beetle backed up a little bit and opened up the tiny mandibles hidden under its face. Sticking out a forked tongue, it then unleashed a powerful stream of flames that utterly consumed Doxinox in a massive inferno.
Doxinox caused her body to dissolve into a liquefied state once again. Then she formed a massive purplish hand that grabbed onto Coreetle’s hindquarters. Afterwards she flung him skyward, and launched herself right behind him. As she reformed into her normal shape far above the battle area, Doxinox wrapped her normal arms around the beetle widely and caused themselves to flip-flip erratically in midair. Once they reached the peak of their flight, the experimental Pokémon made sure that her opponent had its back turned to the ground as they began to fall straight back to earth.
“Get out of the way!” I ordered, and everyone immediately spread out so that they wouldn’t get caught up in the crash that would result from Doxinox’s oncoming Seismic Plunge.
As the two Pokémon slammed hard into the concrete nearest the statue, the resulting tremors caused the entire courtyard to shake violently. The impact had also left a small crater where the monsters landed. Doxinox lay listlessly splattered on top of a barely twitching Coreetle. Both Pokémon apparently fainted from the sheer power of the assault.
Unfazed by Doxinox’s strength, Wolfgang recalled his Pokémon and reached for another right away. I made Doxinox return to her Poké Ball and immediately sent out Apollo in her stead.
In another dark flash, the outline of a four-foot-tall boxlike structure appeared and landed on the ground with a hard thud. As the corona dissipated, I recognized it as a miniature replica of a vaudeville stage. Its frame and performance area were constructed from a partially rotted hardwood, its faded red curtains were tattered, and the small pair of adorning happy-sad masks at its top-center portion looked cracked. A pair of scrawny arms reached out of the backside suddenly, each covered in pale brown fur and having stumpy fingers with long black claws growing out of their paws.
“Oposeteer!” the demon screamed as its head suddenly popped out from between its appendages. The creature itself had a crudely egg-shaped head with a single trapezoidal ear sticking up from it and the other half of its cranium cut open so its grayish brain matter showed. Its eyes were nothing more than large white circles that had beady black irises at their centers, and the lower half of its elongated jaw seemed hinged because it was broken.
“Apollo, Pyro Salvo!”
“Oposeteer, use Shadow Ball!”
Apollo immediately clapped his forepaws together, while forming a massive fireball atop the ruby in his forehead. Oposeteer held his scrawny arms out in front of his chest area, focusing spiritual energy into a shadowy orb. Before his opponent could finish, Apollo released a fiery barrage of small blasts upon Oposeteer and knocked the possum puppeteer onto his back. The creature struggled to get upright again, but Apollo showered more firebombs upon him and kept attacking until the Pokémon fainted.
“Damn it!” Wolfgang squealed as he recalled his Pokémon and sent out a third one, “Cryse, finish this!”
After the blackened aura faded this time, I made out the distinctive form of a lean five-foot-tall canine. A thick mane of translucent white hair obscured most of its otherwise bluish-white body. The Pokémon’s frame seemed almost solid like an ice sculpture, which was supported by thick icicles for legs and defined by a robust chest, thin abdomen, and curled-up tail that had long icy daggers hanging from it. Its face also looked as though it were frozen in place because its maw pointed slightly upward and away from Apollo with an apparent sneer, while the frosty spires dropping off its floppy ears aimed directly at my Pokémon. Finally, I noticed how this Pokémon’s eyes glowed a malevolent violet hue.
“Shadow Sneak!” its trainer demanded.
“Fiery Gale!” I shouted at Apollo.
Cryse immediately exuded a purplish-black aura and stretched out a ghastly arm along the ground with his shadow. In response, Apollo began to spin around and create a funnel of flames above his head. His enemy grabbed onto his leg from underneath using the phantasmal appendage he’d created, and then rung him around counterclockwise to break Apollo’s concentration. Afterwards he slammed the ermine hard into the dirt.
Momentarily enraged, Apollo counterattacked Cryse by launching a powerful stream of blue flames from his mouth. The sudden inferno consumed the frosty pooch entirely, causing him to scream out in horrific pain. Next, Apollo levitated upright again and intensified the flames by using his pyrokinesis to make them burn hotter. Cryse’s body started to melt because of the assault, though the ghostly form of his spirit inside it still retained the creature’s general shape.
“CRY-ZAY!” the specter called out after his physical form turned into a puddle of water on the ground.
The ghost then raised above the fireball Apollo made and charged my Pokémon wildly. As soon as he got close to Apollo, Cryse vanished in order to enter his body. Several seconds passed before Apollo started to scream out in agony. His body jerked violently back and forth as though he were being hit from side to side. After a few more moments, Cryse’s spirit reappeared in front of his owner, while Apollo suddenly dropped onto the ground. I knew the attack Wraith Run was intense, but I didn’t imagine it could do such horrible damage without the user being visible.
I recalled Apollo a few seconds after he collapsed. Reaching for Orion’s ball, I felt that something seriously wrong was about to take place. Cryse recreated his frozen body from the liquid on the ground, but then for some reason, he immediately returned to his master’s Poké Ball.
“Ha! I think I’ve bought Jack enough time to do what we came here to do!” Wolfgang cackled as he ran around the far side of the Arceus statue.
“Damn it!” I barked, realizing that he was right. I went around the opposite side of the sculpture, while the remaining group of security guards followed me.
Once on the other side, I saw that Felicia had already opened up the secret vault in the base of the statue. Jonathon Kyles reached inside to take out the two Poké Balls with the same lime-green and black hemisphere colorings that Doxinox’s ball possessed. Wolfgang immediately came up behind the two and briefly explained what happened around front to his boss.
“I have to give you some credit, Feral. You’ve got guts fighting an armed man with a Pokémon that’s immune to gunshots,” Jonathon then commented, pointing his gun off towards the back of the courtyard, “But you’re just a bit too late to stop what we’re about to accomplish. Behold the second part of our operation!” Across the way, I saw the familiar cloaked figure of Canersia standing before a massive gray vortex that seemed to be sucked down into the earth. Its center glowed with a mixture of black, red, and green as though something were about to emerge from the portal…and I had a strong feeling just what it was…
Something then began to howl with a horrifically loud pitch. The sound was stunningly powerful, making me feel an intense mixture of negative emotions all at once. Suddenly three canine heads started to rising from deep within the funnel. Each of them held their maws back as they bayed to the heavens and had a unique pelt color that matched those I saw in the middle of the energy spiral. After the heads surfaced, the iron plate they were attached to with spiked studs around its perimeter appeared as well.
Cyobrus’s rear heads immediately went back to sleep while the front black-colored one faced forward and hovered away from the portal they came out of. Behind them, the shadow of the phantom wolf that attacked me earlier with Canersia and Darkrai also emerged from the vortex. This time, however, his form seemed to transform into something much more humanlike; his lupine body gave way to the bolder silhouette of a ten-foot-tall man who had a nearly perfect physique complete with bulging chest muscles and massive biceps. The entity’s bottom half was covered up by thick black fur that resembled pants, while the rest of his body had pale gray skin. All four of his eyes seemed to reposition themselves so that two were atop his brow and two were above his nose. Lastly, his enormous mane turned into flowing locks of endless hair cascading down his backside like a stream.
“Those who think themselves God shall perish in my maw…” Otulp then declared in a booming voice. He then held out his left hand, causing a massive sword to appear in it as if from nowhere. The blade was made from black metal that shone with a foreboding luster. In his opposite hand, he summoned forth a set of three arced hand-claws created from a similar.
“This shall be my final ultimatum, boy. Serve my cause or I shall destroy all of whom you hold dear,” he said, staring directly at me.
“Jay, what the h*ll is he talking about?” Felicia cried out.
“This guy is the one who’s really after Doxinox. He claims that she’s a threat because one of Sinnoh’s legendary Pokémon wants to merge with her,” I replied, facing the statue of Arceus once again.
“If you do not believe me still, watch now as his children come forth to wage war against me…” Otulp stated as he then turned his attention skyward.
The rest of us did as well, beholding another terrifying spectacle overhead. Two additional portals appeared, one blue and the other pink. Several moments passed before the silhouettes of two dinosaur-like Pokémon came soaring out of them. Canersia and Cyobrus seemed to get aggravated by the presence of the new Pokémon, almost as though they wanted to attack them the second they appeared. Otulp raised his sword and apparently quelled them.
Both dragons landed off to each side of Otulp as if they were ready to take vengeance on him for some long-standing blood feud. Each of them resembled the two statues out front, the blue one having an imposing stature like a brontosaurus and the pinkish one vaguely mimicking Godzilla. The Pokémon had odd jewels embedded in their bodies, the first with a diamond in his chest and the other with pearls in his shoulders.
“And so the Traitors have arrived…” Otulp sneered, “Pathetic, to say the least.” Both Pokémon roared furiously at him until he held his blade over his head and slashed crossways at Dialga. It barely nicked the jewel in his chest but the beast dropped to its knees as though its strength had been completely sapped.
“Such is the power of my Nostalgia Longsword. A mere cut shall drain all your strength… A full slice will cleave you in two, then devour soul… Your father knew this all too well,” he signed, “Alas, I actually regret using this weapon when my fangs are so much more effective.” He proceeded to do the same to Palkia, only cutting his chest lightly instead of aiming for the gems on the creature’s shoulders.
“Oh, how many times we’ve been through this across countless realities… I don’t even bother keeping track anymore of all your doppelgangers that I’ve slain.” Finally, Otulp ended his victims’ lives with a one brutal hack across both of their necks. He then licked their blood of his blade.
“What did you do?” I slurred at him.
“The very same thing I’ve done for eons. But no matter how many times I kill them, their father constantly eludes me. This is why I want you to join me. So long as the abomination exists, Arceus shall pursue it. If they merge, the multiverse will be destroyed.”
“Jay, don’t listen to him! He’s just trying to brainwash you into giving him MY creation!” Felicia yelled at me.
“Shut up, b*tch!” Kyles demanded, hitting her alongside the head with an open hand.
“Leave her alone!” I scolded him before feeling an intense surge of fear spread throughout my mind, forcing me to cringe.
“It does not matter what the woman thinks; I only state the truth about what her creation will bring about,” Otulp continued, “In fact, she deserves punishment for her actions.” He suddenly vanished and reappeared next to Jonathon, Wolfgang, and Felicia. Dispatching his claw weapon, Otulp summoned forth a massive coffer adorned with gold and silver diamond-shapes around its exterior.
“If this woman means anything to you, locate Arceus and bring me his head. My hellhound shall accompany you from this moment forward to ensure you do your job. Fail me, and I shall destroy her wholly.” Suddenly he dropped the box upon her, and it opened like a cage to trap her inside it.
“What! NO!” I shouted as the container disappeared.
“As for the others…” he concluded, teleporting over by the security guards, “Let this serve as a reminder of exactly who I am.” He slung his sword through the entire group and cleaved them all in half. Licking their blood off his blade, I noticed that faint mist also getting absorbed into his body as well as the shrieks and moans of the people he’d just killed. Truly, he was the God of Death…
Afterwards, Otulp made himself vanish along with Jonathon Kyles and Wolfgang. Canersia and Cyobrus remained behind, however. Fearing an instant attack from either of them, I reached for Orion’s ball. But no sooner did I touch it, I suddenly felt Canersia attacking my mind again. Then, everything suddenly went black…
<End Chapter Six, Part Two>
<End Lost in Longing>
