I crawled to my feet, wincing at Winnie’s claws digging into my scalp as he hung onto me.
“Bzzt!” Rotom buzzed, zipping out of my hood and flying around in circles to express its displeasure before buzzing what sounded like a swear word and tucking itself back into my bag.
Yeah, I’d do the same if I had the option.
I dusted my clothes off as I looked around at our new surroundings. We were alone in a dark and claustrophobic forest similar to the haunted woods. If I were to guess, the entire group had gotten separated to make us easier to pick off.
Celia and the others did make a plan for a scenario like this but I couldn’t for the life of me remember it.
Thanks a lot brain.
Shaking himself, Winnie looked around and sniffed the air. “we got separated from the others. i don’t think they’re nearby either.”
“No shit.” I muttered in reply. “We can’t find them from the ground, the forest is too dense.”
I reached for Sahara’s Pokeball. Our next best option was to get up in the sky, hopefully we’d be able to find someone from a bird’s eye view.
My hand hesitated as multiple large shadows flitted over us. It was another flock of Braviary, this time led by a large golden Hisuan Braviary.
“Umm, never mind. Let’s just stick to the ground.” I muttered to myself as I slowly backed into the shadows of the forest, hoping that we hadn’t been spotted.
There was a loud high pitched screech that made Winnie and I flinch.
Winnie pulled a face. “i think they saw us.”
One of the birds, a Unovan Braviary, separated from the flock and dove down, barreling straight for us. A swirl of flying-type energy surrounded the bird Pokemon, further boosting its speed.
I booked it straight into the densest part of the forest I could find. Braviary weren’t suited for flying in enclosed spaces due to their large wingspan, so hopefully the closely knit branches and vines would slow the bird down.
That unfortunately meant that I would be slowed down too, as I had to duck below branches and watch my step unless I wanted to snag a foot on a tree root.
Thankfully my plan seemed to work well enough and I could hear Braviary’s frustrated screeches as it tried to weave through trees but kept getting caught on something.
“az! this is an illusion! i can’t unweave it like we did back in the cave cause it’s too dense but i can manipulate it a bit! go straight for now!”
“Roger that.” I continued to crash through the maze of trees and bushes, the roots and branches that seemed to be snagging at my clothes at every turn became less frequent thanks to Winnie. Now that there was less need to look at the floor for any tripwire roots, I increased my speed.
Despite my attempts to lose our pursuer behind in the forest, we could still hear the Braviary chasing us behind, letting out furious screeches whenever it got caught on something.
A warning from Winnie also let me know that the rest of the flock was still tracking us from above. The Hisuan variants were probably using their psychic powers to let our pursuer know where we were.
I was starting to lose steam, a Pokemon like Braviary would be able to pursue us for tens of miles, and I’d rather not have to face off with a flock of them plus a Noble one.
“Winnie, is there any way we can throw them off?” I shouted.
My foxy friend didn’t get a chance to answer. A tree root literally leaped out of the ground and coiled around my ankle, my heart leaped in my chest at that jumpscare. I braced myself to fall on the floor but the impact never came.
Suddenly there was a ravine in front of us where there wasn’t one before. I let out a cry of surprise and Winnie yelped as we tumbled downwards and landed in a large pile of very soft and very out of place snow.
I wriggled around like a turtle on its back and was able to right myself, bursting out of the snow pile and spitting out dirt and snow that had gotten in my mouth.
“Winnie, are you alright?” I asked, looking around and digging at the snow pile to find him.
Winnie popped his head out like a mole, shaking his head to get the snow off and sneezing.
“Oh there you are.” Relieved, I was about to grab him to book it again when I noticed, that wasn’t Winnie. It was a different Hisuan Zorua.
It was smaller, with more rounded ears, and paler markings than Winnie.
I stared at the newcomer. “You’re not Winnie.”
The Zorua stared back and giggled. The real Winnie popped his head out of the snow pile next to the newcomer.
“who’s this?” He asked as he dug himself out and shook the snow off.
The newcomer’s grin widened, “You might wanna duck back down unless you want the birdbrains to find you!”
With no hesitation, we ducked back down into the snow pile. I still would’ve liked some clarification on who the newcomer was, but first we needed to lose the Braviary flock.
The pile of snow instantly shifted into a large pile of leaves as we heard a bunch of screeching fly past us. It wasn’t until the sounds of the flock had completely faded that the new guy told us it was safe to come out.
I stood up and brushed all the leaves off while Winnie jumped out of the pile with the strange Zorua. The two sniffed each other’s neck fluff before the newcomer playfully bounced backwards and laughed.
“We have no time to lose! Follow me!”
I inwardly groaned at the prospect of having to run through even more dense forest, my legs were already burning from the previous effort. Thankfully the newcomer seemed to know how to change the illusion enough that our path was nothing but evenly packed dirt.
“Who are you again?” I asked the Zorua, quietly following behind at a jog.
All I got from the little fox was, “I’m Mii!”
I tilted my head in confusion, “Yes, you are you. Do you have a name?”
Mii took a second to glance back at me, “No, I’m not you, I’m Mii!”
“Yes, you’re you.” I answered.
“No, I’m Mii.” Mii repeated. “Are you perhaps hard of hearing?”
“az, her name is mii, not me.” Winnie told me as if I was missing something obvious.
“Is there something I’m not getting?” I asked the two.
Winnie rolled his eyes, “just call her mii.”
“Okay she is Me. I see.”
“no, not me, mii.” Winnie corrected, putting extra emphasis on the last word.
Mii giggled, “Your human isn’t the brightest is she?”
I sighed in defeat. “Could you tell us where we’re going?”
“Oooo! Just wait and see! It’s awesome!” Mii squeaked, “All my friends like it! Well, I mean they would if I could show them. They wouldn’t tell on me but sure they are blabbermouths.”
Mii kept on chattering about her friends and siblings and Meemaw as she led us around the forest in what felt like circles. After paying more attention to how many turns we made, I realized we technically should’ve been going in circles. I counted eight right turns followed by eight left turns. We should’ve looped around back to where we started but the surroundings were different each time.
Finally, I saw something that stood out from the disorganized ruggedness of the forest, a tall cylinder structure covered in vines and leaves. Hints of aged white marble peeked out from beneath the pillar’s blanket of ivy.
“Is that it?” I asked, pointing at the pillar.
Mii nodded, giving Winnie and I a tail flick to encourage us to take a closer look.
Approaching the pillar, I brushed aside its foliage cover, pulling off a few vines to reveal a few carvings of what looked like Azelf and Lake Valor.
“There’s more over here! Come look!” Mii shouted, the Zorua was standing on top of a big tablet. Winnie was already standing at the foot of the tablet.
Past the tablet I could see two other ivy covered pillars, positioned so that all three pillars formed a triangle around the central tablet. Considering how the one I was standing next to had Azelf on it, the other two probably had Uxie and Mesprit.
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I hopped over a bunch of roots and a fallen log to get to the center and did a double take as I saw a familiar looking object set in the middle of the tablet.
“The Arc Phone.” I whispered, brushing a hand over the item. The phone was firmly wedged into an impression in the stone tablet and didn’t react to my touch. “What’s it doing here?”
“arc phone? what’s that?” Winnie asked, with a tilted head. He gingerly poked the bottom of the tablet with a paw.
“A phone given to a very important person by Arceus during the Hisui period.” I answered, gently tapping at the phone screen to see if it would do anything. The phone screen stayed dark.
“It’s something Meemaw’s friend gave to her.” Mii explained, “She likes it a lot but it doesn’t do anything.”
“Meemaw’s friend?” I repeated to myself. As in the player character from Legends Arceus? What was their name? Akari or Rei? Wait, that’s the name of the rival right? Since the player character was taken from the future, would it be Dawn or Lucas?
Too bad the tablet doesn’t have any writing on it.
Right below the Arc Phone was a carving depicting what could only be Arceus, Origin form Palkia, and Origin form Dialga, and a girl in a Survey Corps outfit standing before them.
“are those pokemon?” Winnie asked when I stopped my hand at the carvings of the deities.
“Yes!” Mii answered, “Those are Arceus, Palkia, Dialga.” The young vixen proudly listed out, kinda like a little kid in class who was reciting something they memorized to the teacher.
I nodded, “Yep. That’s them.”
“who are they?” Winnie asked the two of us.
I leaned back as I thought of a short answer. “Umm, to put it simply, Arceus is the creator of the universe, Palkia is the god of space, and Dialga is the god of time.”
Walking around to the back of the tablet, I immediately saw a massive carving of Giratina. There was a glowing yellow crystal embedded in the center of Giratina’s chest. Winnie stood up only his hind legs, front paws resting on the tablet and touched his nose against the orb before sharply recoiling and snorting.
“it smells like that grumpy old dragon from the distortion world.” The white fox commented, wrinkling his nose.
“Yeah, that’s cause it belongs to Giratina.” I said, “I wonder what it’s doing here.”
“Heeeyy! Over here you slowpokes!” Mii shouted over to us from atop a tablet that sat in front of one of the still covered pillars. I looked back at the top of the central tablet where she had just been sitting before looking back at her.
Did she teleport? I thought as Winnie and I headed over her. I pulled the foliage off of the pillar, revealing a carving of Uxie and Lake Acuity. The ivy and vines on both structures seemed to be connected so they came off together in one clump and revealed what was on the tablet. There were even more colored carvings on Uxie’s tablet, depicting a story in a slightly comic book format.
Mii leaned down from her place on the pillar. “Cool right? This isn’t my favorite one though, let me show you my favorite one!”
I held up a finger, “Just a second, let me read this.”
As I knelt down to get a closer look, Winnie hopped onto the tablet and then onto the top of the pillar with Mii, who was impatiently clawing at the side of the pillar.
The carvings were pretty straightforward, so it wasn’t hard to figure out the story. I tapped my bag to get Rotom’s attention, “Rotom take a photo of all the tablets and the pillars.”
Rotom replied with a grumpy, “Bzzt.” But obliged after a few seconds, flying out and snapping photos of the carvings.
The story on Uxie’s tablet started with a depiction of what looked like Unovan Zoroark and Zorua being driven out of Unova by humans.
They traveled to a distant land and settled down, but were driven out by humans again where they came to the only place where they’d be left alone by humans. The Alabaster Icelands.
Unfortunately, the illusion foxes weren’t well equipped to deal with an arctic winter, so they froze, starved, and died. The little carvings of bone-thin Zoroark huddling with Zorua were quite dreadful despite being so simple.
Then a tendril that looked suspiciously like one of Giratina’s tendrils reached out of a portal and touched the corpses of the illusion fox Pokemon, granting them new life as the Hisuan Zoroark Variant.
After that it was just a bunch of carvings of the Hisuan variant waging war on humans, using their illusions to take revenge instead of simply defending themselves like they previously did.
Another case of becoming the monster others see you as.
Then the humans fought back, bringing a new Pokemon into the fray. A giant purple swirl with a ton of green human faces. Spiritomb. Using the angry mass of souls, the humans quickly repelled the Hisuan Zoroarks and forced them to flee into the deepest corners of the icelands.
How did the Hisui people get their hands on a Spiritomb of all Pokemon?
There was a fancy line that seemed to indicate a new chapter introducing an injured Hisuan Zorua who was cornered by a few humans and their Pokemon.
Then two people in Survey Corps outfits, a boy with a Rowlet and a girl with a Dewott get in between the humans and the Zorua and convince them to leave.
The Survey Corps members heal the Zorua and offer it some food before leaving, much to the Zorua’s surprise.
Then at what looks like a different time and place, the two Survey corps members. their Dartrix, and Hisuan Samurott are cornered by a pack of rather angry looking Hisuan Zoroark. The Zorua they rescued before gets in between them and saves them as well.
The ending was a bit hard to figure out but it looked like the Zorua joined the girl’s team?
I jumped, snapping out of my thoughts as I heard a sudden click and the sound of stone sliding against stone and gears clinking.
“What? What was that?” I looked up at the pillar where the sound came from. Mii and Winnie were still sitting there. Well, Winnie was sitting. Mii was hopping up and down like a caffeinated toddler.
Wow, Me is a lot smaller than Winnie. I didn’t really notice until they were sitting next to each other.
“Yeah, the pillars all do that if something heavy sits on it.” Mii explained, “Or if I hop on it a lot. You’re done looking right? Come on!”
The young vixen bounced off of the pillar over to the next tablet and pillar set.
The second pillar, Azelf’s Pillar from what I could see, already had most of the foliage pulled off of it, probably by Mii, who proudly began pointing to the fight scenes and talking about how cool they looked. From what I could tell, the carvings all showed that Survey Corps girl fighting a different Noble Pokemon with her team.
Plus, they were indeed cool carvings, and despite being rather faded, I could tell they were once the most colorful part of the tablet. I could tell why Mii found these parts so cool.
I pulled off the foliage from the parts that were still covered. It took less time to figure out what was going on in the carvings on this tablet. These were events I was familiar with.
The Survey Corps girl, Either Akari or Dawn, seemed to have been tasked with calming the rampaging Noble Pokemon by the Survey Corps. After succeeding, she was accepted as a mediator between the quarreling Diamond and Pearl clans and she was given the Celestia Flute.
Then the Space-time rifts got worse and she was unjustly blamed for them because of her dubious origins and banished from Jubilife village whereupon she received help from the Diamond and Pearl clans as well as Cogita.
Then there was the mission to go to each of the three lakes and taking on the trials of the Lake Guardians and crafting the Red Chain.
Mii then gleefully informed me that the fight with Commander Kamado was her third favorite part of the story.
From then on the events began to deviate from what I knew. Palkia and Dialga emerged from a Space-time rift at the summit, both in their origin forms, whereupon the Red Chain was used to restrain the two enraged deities before they could start fighting each other.
Then the leaders of the Diamond and Pearl clans came forward, each with a flute on hand similar in design to the Celestia flute, just with different colorings. They both began to play a song that calmed the angry deities down enough that they could be let go. Then the gods of space and time departed in peace.
I straightened up, looking at Winnie sitting patiently on top of Azelf’s pillar, waiting for me to finish. Mii was clawing at this pillar as well while she waited.
“I’m ready to go see the next one.”
Immediately, Mii jumped off of this pillar, tripping the button on the top of the pillar. I could hear the grinding of old gears working against each other as Mii ran over to the last pillar and hopped on top.
Winnie followed along, jumping onto the tablet and using Will-O-Wisp to burn away the plants covering, Mesprit’s Pillar and Tablet.
The first thing I noticed about the story on Mesprit's tablet was that it wasn’t finished. It started with Akari/Dawn speaking to a man in a blue, white, and yellow traveling outfit who bore a similar resemblance to Cynthia.
“Volo.” I muttered to myself, “Those look like Arceus’s plates.”
Winnie perked up at the mention of plates, his ears twitching. “Plates? Like what we use for food?”
Mii wrinkled her nose, “You guys use plates for food? Meemaw says that plates are sacred and should be respected.”
“Huh? Why are plates sacred?” Winnie asked, “They’re for holdin’ food.”
Mii vehemently shook her head,“No, they’re not.”
“yes they are.”
“Nuh uh!”
“yes too! back me up guys!” Winnie said, turning to my shadow. Shuppet grumbled something about stupid kid arguments but otherwise the ghost gang didn’t react.
I waved my hands at the two foxes. “Guys you’re talking about two different things. Winnie, the plates we use for food are different from the Arceus’s plates.”
“The former is indeed used for holding food.” I said to Mii, then I looked at Winnie, “The latter are items that can boost the holder’s power.”
I pointed to the part of the story where Akari and Volo were standing at the Spear Pillars with seventeen out of eighteen plates.
“Or if you collect all of them, you can use them to summon Arceus.”
“Yeah, in this part then Meemaw and her friends battle the Lord of the Distortion world and his friends!” Mii squeaked, hopping a few times. “They were doing an honorable duel to see who got to go meet the Lord of Creation!”
I don’t think that’s how it went down. I guess ‘Meemaw’ made the story more kid friendly than it originally was.
Mii continued to talk, “Then after Meemaw and her friends sent Mr Lord of Distortion and his friends running with their tails between their legs, they got to meet the Lord of Creation!”
“Mhhmm.” I said as I looked at the last parts of the story carved in stone.
During the meeting with Arceus, it looked like Akari chose to stay in world to continue help integrate people and Pokemon together and help both sides understand each other more and work together.
The carvings quickly became messier and more disorganized and Akari/Dawn stopped appearing in the carvings all together. Then members of her team slowly stopped showing up as well, and all that was left was a Hisuan Zoroark.
I pointed at the lone carving of the Hisuan Zoroark bowing before the Spear Pillars and being surrounded in a golden light, “That’s your Meemaw right?”
“Yepity yep. This is when she was judged as worthy and got her blessing. All the lords travel to the Pillars to get their blessing.”
“is that why they’re all golden and shiny?” Winnie asked.
“Yep!” Mii replied, “And they get really strong. I wanna get a blessing so I can become really strong too, that way my big bro won’t be able to keep stealing my berries from me, but I don’t wanna be all golden and shiny. I’m not the flashy type like mommy is.”
“There’s nothing after Meemaw gets her blessing.” I remarked.
There was a bunch of empty space left on the tablet after the depiction of ‘Meemaw’ getting her blessing. The story hadn’t been finished, kinda like the author had just given up writing the story. Or maybe there was nothing left worth recording.
“Yeah. I think Meemaw stopped making this cause she got too busy running the sanctuary and she forgot about this place.” Mii shrugged, “Aaanyways, what do you think?”
“It’s very interesting. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.” I said, glancing at the story on the tablet once more.
“The drawings are cool.” Winnie said.
I looked back up at Mii and Winnie, “Umm, by the way. Could you two perhaps jump on the top of this pillar too? I wanna see what happens when we get all the pillars to make the button pressing noise.”
Mii jumped up. “Ooo! How come I never thought of that?! Yeah let’s do it!”
“Sure.” Winnie shrugged, jumping up onto the pillar top to sit next to Mii. I heard a quiet photo snapping sound as Rotom sneakily took a picture of the two sitting next to each other before diving back into my bag.
It took a few seconds, but I saw the two go down a few centimeters as the button went down under their combined weight. Then came the same mechanical noises as before.
There was a click and a pop that came from the central tablet. I jogged over and spotted a long rectangle hole that had opened up in the tablet.
Set inside was a purple and red spiked looking ocarina that rested on top of an aged journal and a stack of papers. Behind that was a bunch of dimly glowing red crystal shards.
I took a step back as the Arc-Phone lit up and buzzed, a notification on the screen reading: New Message.
I was about to tap the message icon when a shockwave rumbled through the entire forest. There was a loud SHHHHHHH as the tree branches violently ruslted against each other. A massive flock of birds took off from the forest, screeching at each other as they fled the area, leaving behind a silent forest that seemed to be devoid of sound or movement.
Mii let out a squeak of fear, her fur poofing up as she scurried away into the woods, yelling, “That’s Meemaw!”
A freezing gust of wind swept through the area, blowing away any sort of warmth from the surroundings and bringing in a permanent unsettling chill.
“That’s not good.” I muttered, leaning down to let Winnie hop on.
“i say we book it too.” The little fox said, whipping his head around to look for any signs of danger.
The moment I stepped away from the tablet to book it into the woods, the reality shifted.
Our surroundings morphed into a very familiar town from Legends Arceus. I stumbled and shook my head to get rid of the disorientation and looked up. We were in Jubilife Town, right outside of the Galaxy Team’s headquarters.
Ghostly shadows of the people who once inhabited the ancient town floated around, paying no mind to us. One even walked right through me as if I wasn’t even there.
Winnie and I flinched as the gravity in the area seemed to increase, a new presence joined us soaking the area with a chilling aura that seemed to embody the work vengeance.
I slowly turned around to face the newcomer. It was a small and wiry Hisuan Zoroark accompanied by the Lord of Fire who was standing to attention just a few feet behind the illusion fox.
This Hisuan Zoroark was pure white like freshly fallen snow, no red or gold markings, and she was slightly transparent. Her long and wild mane lightly waved around in the cold breeze, her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping.
I felt the chill sink even deeper into my bones as the Mountain Lord opened her faded golden eyes. Her attention lingered on Winnie before they settled on me.
Then the Mountain Lord spoke. I see you’ve found my sanctuary.
The Lord of Fire stepped forward, growling. You do not have to speak to these lowly peasants my liege. Let me deal with these pests.
The temperature rose and the Noble Arcanine began to glow brighter as it started to prowl towards up.
The Mountain Lord raised a single claw, stopping the Lord of Fire in its tracks and the heat emanating from the noble fire type was immediately snuffed out. No Kogane. I am not so old that I need others fighting for me, nor I am not above taking out the trash once in a while.
I will deal with them. You go deal with the pests outside. First the ones at our doorstep, then the ones in that flying den at the edge of the illusion dome.
The Lord of Fire nodded and then bowed, walking backwards a few steps before turning and sprinting away, the forest swallowing the noble fire type up in only a few seconds.
The Mountain Lord then turned her attention back to us, sauntering closer to us as she thought aloud.
Now what should I do with you? Thieves who are foolish enough to invade the burial grounds of my dear friend.