AN EXCITING END TO THE DAY

[indigo_events]

Who: Everyone participating in the extra Prom event!
Where: The beach on the south part of the island, and nearby surroundings
When: Sunday, April 15th (night)
Summary: A special kite-flying sendoff goes awry.
Rating: PG-13, most likely
Log:



As night falls on the final day of an excellent beach prom adventure, the staff of Resort Gorgeous usher their guests out onto the beach for one last grand sight to top off the experience. Big, fluffy resort towels have been laid out for people and Pokemon alike to sit on, and locals are off to the sides, handling large and beautiful kites with incredible care. They come in all shapes and sizes, and each depicts a Pokemon you may have seen wandering the shores or swimming in the oceans during your time here. They're incredible works of art all on their own, and as the wind picks up, watching them lift off into the sky becomes an artistic experience in and of itself.

A hush falls over the gathered audience as the kites sail up, up, up into the sky. Small children begin to release lanterns that float up to join them, and the kites dance around them in practiced loops and twirls. In turn, they are illuminated from all angles, a play of shadow and color in the dark, starry night.

But as the show goes on, it starts to become apparent that starlight and lanterns... are not the only things lighting up the night sky.

A growing point of electric blue light that might have been overlooked at first among the rest of the stars becomes brighter and brighter, and bigger and bigger, quickly becoming what is clearly a long and jagged tunnel opening up in the middle of the sky over the island, accompanied by a sound like a clap of thunder.

There's barely enough time to react to the opening of space before, like bees from a hive, ghostly white creatures emerge, at least two dozen of them, drifting serenely down in the direction of the beach-- and, unfortunately, right towards the show, even as the locals gasp in shock and try to pull their kites in.

"What in the world is that?" one person cries out.

"Where did they come from?" shouts another.

But the biggest, most obvious reactions come from the wild Pokemon in the area.

Frightened Wingull take off in enormous clouds from their cliffside nests and scatter to the winds, the sea grows choppy with fish Pokemon of all kinds poking out from the waves to examine the bright light only to splash hurriedly back down, and even the Pyukumuku try to roll themselves back into the ocean, expelling their innards to help pull them across the sand. The landbound wild Pokemon don’t have the ocean or the sky to retreat to, and begin to swarm and stampede in their efforts to either find somewhere to get away from the strange, unnerving creatures...or stand their ground and attempt to fight them. The reaction from the wild Pokemon is so strong, in fact, that the strange creatures seem to panic themselves, jittering this way and that, only for some to get tangled in the strings of the retreating kites. Once ensnared, they start to emit an unsettling cry as they struggle to get free, lashing out with their tentacles at anything that comes near as they come tumbling slowly through the air towards the ground.

It’s chaos on the beach. Some locals try to yank their kites free, or send out their own Pokemon to try and defend themselves. Others run, scooping up children and Pokemon and yelling for others to do the same. Wild Pokemon are flapping and scampering everywhere, so panicky that they’re having a hard time telling friend from foe. The strange creatures are floating all around, lost and fighting with trained and wild Pokemon alike. But the question is...what will you do?


A wild Nihilego appeared!

>FIGHT
>BAG
>POKEMON
>RUN



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Comments

[meteorman]

[Shiro is one of the very few people whose shoulders are even level with Ford's in the first place. Really this is a good teamup.]

One thing at a time. Focus on what's in front of you and deal with that first.

[Trust him, he's a scientist, and he knows introducing too many variables too quickly is how you get overwhelmed.]

[shiro2hero]

[He'll appreciate it later. Much later. Like when there aren't giant jellyfish and lights in the sky threatening to turn his whole field of vision sideways and purple. Literally.]

[He thought that was all passed. But apparently, you're never here too long not to deal with some good old Flashbacks.]

Focus.

[Thank Space Lion Jesus that Ford said the magic word.]

Okay. Okay. Keep them off the beach -- make sure everyone gets to safety.

time for The Boy

[meteorman]

[It's his favorite word in situations like this. Focus. Center yourself, identify the most pressing thing and follow that. It's not always been good for him -- he already has a tendency to get tunnel vision without doing it on purpose -- but it's kept him alive for seventy years and that's long enough for him to consider it a good strategy.]

I thought at first we could bring them down and subdue them, but they're too strong. Driving them back is a more sound strategy.

[Franceska can't do that, though. She's a support Pokémon, and she's got her tiny hands full keeping Kuro's health out of the red. Cyclops has already done more than its share of work. Scylla is his strongest, but Scylla is his most aggressive and she won't want to follow a strategy that mainly consists of herding. So that leaves...]

MIPS!

[The big mismatched dog horse bursts from its ball and freezes. Perfect stillness. There's wind on this beach, there has to be for the kites, but it doesn't seem to ruffle the fur and feathers on MIPS' body. It lets out a very low sound, sort of like the creak of a rotten floorboard but slowed down into a haunting moan. The light of far-off attacks glint off the rhinestones on its helm.

Ford has never seen MIPS like this, but he's never sent MIPS out against such a serious enemy. He has to assume that MIPS is focused, like he is, like Shiro is trying to be.]

Push them back toward the water. Carefully.

[MIPS gives a single terse metallic bark and moves forward, still completely still, like a model glitched into its T-pose and stuck on a track. More miraculously still, the Nihilego -- at least the ones not grappling with Kuro -- seem to actually be backing away from it.]

he's Here

[shiro2hero]

[It's echoing several very important people in his head. Like Commander Holt, like Allura, like... everything he's ever told the team. It's helpful. It feels like it sets his feet back under him again.]

Back to the hole in the sky. Got it.

[As Ford sets to his own strategy, Shiro's calling out to his own Pokemon. Red and Blue are still trying to help the panicked people. Kuro is holding his own, now using mostly Steel Type moves -- which seem to have more of an effect than the rock type ones. Haunter and Green are still overhead...] Green! Haunter! Get them back to the light!

[That's about when Ford lets... that... out.]

[Something about it reminds him a little of Haunter, when the ghost really cuts loose. He's seen Heather's robot-dog-thing. But hers was far more mobile than this. It is definitely creepy. More importantly, though? The jellyfish think it's creepier.]

Kuro! Help Ford's ... MIPS! Go help it!

[The big Aggron does something like a double-take, but he's a well-trained Pokemon. If Shiro tells him to, it must be a good plan. So when the Nihilego start to back away, he uses that opportunity to smash into them -- tossing them back out toward the water, and their portal.]

[meteorman]

[One of the many movies Mabel forced Ford to watch to 'catch up' on everything he'd missed in thirty years between dimensions was the Last Unicorn. This, right now, is very much like watching the unicorns being forced back into the sea, except they're squid and the Red Bull is a Bethesda glitch. As MIPS moves forward the Nihilego draw back, shuddering uncertainly and curling their tentacles inward. Even on alien bodies, fear reads loud and clear. Is MIPS as alien to them as they are to everyone on this beach?]

Odd. [He's half talking to himself. This really is fascinating.] They don't seem bothered by the other Pokémon.

[Between MIPS and Kuro it's easy to back a small group of them into a little huddle: an angry Aggron on one side and a silent specter on the other means there's no way for them to go but inward toward each other. One of them seems to lose its composure completely and darts between them, making a break for it back up the beach (Franceska pirouettes neatly out of the way). MIPS doesn't turn. It just zooms backward, clipping partly through Kuro for a hot second. Maybe the touch of a Type: Null will give Kuro a little bit of its unsettling effect on the Nihilego. The rest of the group seems to be content continuing to back out over the water, even as MIPS moves away from them.]

Is it because it's man-made?

[shiro2hero]

If that's the case, I'm not going to argue. We'll take what we can get!

[Something occurs to him, and his attention snaps from the fight to Ford. If one glitch-dog can do this... and he knows he's seen more than just MIPS around before.]

How many of these guys are there? Is there any way to get them all out here?

[He looks back out to the fight, where Kuro is levering a series of hard Iron Head blows at the Nihilego, amplified by whatever contact he'd just had with MIPS. The jellyfish are wildly unhappy about this development... but. He's getting tired. Franceska has done great keeping his health up -- that isn't the issue.]

[It's the slow, creep of fatigue even his trainer can feel in his bones.]

I don't know how much longer we can keep this up.

[meteorman]

[Prolonged Mega Evolution is sure to wear down even the most resolute. Even Ford and Douglas, who are both determined to a fault and used to running themselves ragged, can't maintain it for too long (and boy does he kind of wish he had Douglas with him, but an ice type in the tropics had seemed like a bad idea). So when Shiro says they might not have much longer Ford isn't surprised.]

Then we had better wrap it up.

[The rogue squid is moving back toward them, apparently just desperate to get anywhere that doesn't have a horrible Frankenstein dog. MIPS is in hot pursuit. It glitches neatly around the squid: pop sideways, zoom past, pop back. It's just a matter of shifting a little on the x axis of the world. MIPS used to be bad at it, but it has since learned to control its intangibility and lack of tethers to the physical plane to its advantage. It places itself squarely between its trainer and his friend. If a floating creature could skid to a halt then that's what the squid does.]

MIPS--

[MIPS doesn't wait for a direction. It stares down the Nihilego with just about the most intense Scary Face ever executed. Its perfect stillness just serves to make it more intimidating. That is its' trainer, someone who stuck by it and defended its right to exist even before it did exist, who never treated it like it was defective even despite its glaring glitches, and it is not going to let some gross squid that fell out of the sky without so much as a by-your-leave put him or his friend in danger.

Its helmet begins to tilt, though the rest of its body remains still. First slowly and then with startling swiftness the helmet clips through the body of the creature it used to confine and falls with a dull thunk into the sand. It isn't a part of MIPS anymore. It can't be if it wants to rise to this challenge. It slowly floats forward. Its feet float through the spikes of the helmet as it leaves it behind.

There isn't any time to waste marveling at this. That can happen later.]

Shiro, Have Kuro hold the line to keep the rest of them from running in the wrong direction. MIPS, can you direct them up?

[MIPS, already glaring the rogue squid back into the huddle with its brethren, nods. It's a jerky motion: if real life had frames then it would just be two rough frames of its head tilting down and then up again.]

Good! Let's do this quickly.

[With its newfound boost in speed MIPS begins to float around and beneath the Nihilego, using their natural urge to move away from it to force them back into the sky. If Kuro covers its blind spot then they should be able to wrap this up fast.]

[shiro2hero]

That'd be great--

[Kuro isn't nearly so graceful as his glitchy companion. Aggrons aren't really made for it. The added bulk of his Mega Form doesn't do much to help matters, either. He packs a harder punch, he's harder to take down, but he's slower. Less able to herd the alien jellies like MIPS can. Doesn't mean he's taking this lying down -- he's headbutting them back out to sea, knocking into some of them with his tail like they're baseballs in a giant Aggron World Series.]

[Since he's down at the waterline, it means when the rogue alien thing tries to sidle their way, it's the jerky dog pokemon that gets there first. Kuro looks as if he wants to turn and charge back to protect his trainer, too, but he's got to worry about fending off tentacles.]

[And Shiro's trying to divide his attention between watching his pokemon's back, and witnessing... whatever it was just happened. Did MIPS just evolve? Could those things evolve? He's taken aback by it. If only because... because that helmet just fell through the pokemon. He shouldn't be that surprised, considering how many things Haunter just waltzes on through.]

[He shakes it off in time for Ford's voice to cut through the surprise.]

Yeah -- got it. You heard him, Kuro! Hold them at the water!

[And then, upward:] Green! Haunter! Help MIPS out!

[His own pokemon are quick to respond, and he's suddenly glad he'd seen Green fly before today, otherwise the Tropius zooming overhead would get concerning.]