Ruby
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Player Character
Posts: 155
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Dr. Ruby Walker Ph.D.
OOC Username: Magnere
Arena Points: 60
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Post by Ruby on Sept 19, 2024 18:15:11 GMT 9
#s://i~imgur~com/2olvtyK~png Murmur follows down, glancing at the trainers, and with Sarah following them they were extra cautious. Today was not the day for sleepy accidents, everything was counting on them. She could practically sense the pressure in the caves, whether that was just the stress, or actual psychic pressure, was another thing.
It was a bit terrifying.
Ruby watched through their eyes, mind quiet and relaxed, no stress in her sleep, just simply observing. It was, oddly peaceful. All the information was simply being absorbed.
Colorless Pokémon, plants, water, light, and a chamber filled with Corruption that makes the Munna back up and twist, an instinctual fear twisting into her gut. If Sarah Lee wasn't nearby, they'd probably have lost their nerve and booked it. When the Corruption was seemingly carried elsewhere, she'd look right down at the trainer, nodding right away.
[tangent="I did."] "Muuu." [/tangent]
They'd curiously examine the crucifix stuck in the stone, but were far too hesitant to slip straight into the room where corruption once rested. But it seemed the trainer had no reservations. The cross was pulled from the rock like something akin to a fantastical story. Perhaps she would take the time to enjoy the similarities, when the high pitched sounds immediately drew her attention.
[tangent="Okay-"]"Muu-"[/tangent] Was all the Munna would say in response, floating backwards in the air as fast as they could, following their leader. Only to eventually come across Ruby once more.
Kartana were everywhere, swarming around Kyukon , and it seemed something else had happened to them as their hand dissolved entirely. It seemed their trainer, and the Indeedee, were left unharmed and ignored, but certainly that couldn't last forever.
As Ruby watched everything happen, seeing the new threat around her, an uneasy fear began to creep up through her mind, piercing the brain fog of sleep.
It was like a nightmare.
Suddenly shaken awake, Ruby immediately collapsed down onto Sarah Lee with a shout of surprise, and suddenly everything came snap back into focus.
The Caves. The Threat. Her Fear. Her Anxiety. Nothing had changed. It was all still here. "Sarah! I-" Ruby's words immediately failed her, being addressed by her royal title had her stiffening in their arms. Her eyes wide, heart pounding away inside her chest. Each pump of blood spreading that fear further and further, threatening to claim her.
It was enough to make her blood run cold, like daggers of ice flowing through her veins that paralyzed her.
"I will not be making it to Hearteater."
"W-what?!" Ruby suddenly shouted out in response, the shock enough to break her free of her own anxieties and move again. "Sarah, you have to! What- What are we going to-" Her words failed her again, slowly trailing off.
She understood even before they said the words, an awareness washing over her that swiftly had tears drip down her cheeks.
She was in charge now, and that terrified her. Sarah ran off to conflict the swarm, and yet she just continued to stand there, terror gripping at her very soul.
And yet, something suddenly stirred inside her. A feeling, an emotion that she didn't know how to express welling up, fighting back against the intense chill. A memory of something else, another time, a memory she could not believe she had forgotten.
Ruby's heart was suddenly pounding, a righteous fury that had been long since buried, a passion she had all but forgotten. She had stood tall in the face of overwhelming threats, fears that would have stalled her in her steps, and somehow gained the trust of the people to be granted the right to rule. Queen Rubella was everything that she had always wanted to be. Confident in herself, unafraid to act, creative and inspiring, a guiding force for others to walk the realms of dreams without fear.
So why was she so afraid?
Queen Rubella did not stop existing, just because she was awake. All those traits of hers, were always hers. She just didn't realize it yet. Until now.
[tangent="Ruby? We need to go."] "Muuuun."[/tangent] Munna spoke up, and Ruby looked up at her Pokémon. She had no idea what they were saying, she couldn't understand them. That wouldn't do. Not any longer. She was in charge, she couldn't make excuses. She needed to know, so she could help everyone. A fire burned in her eyes as she slammed her hand on the Pokéspeech Toggle.
"Murmur, head down back into the tunnels, keep your eyes out for anything."
"I can do that-" Murmur spoke, and for the first time Ruby heard their voice. A very soft, sweet, gentle tone filled with the long, sleepy energy that never vanished. But now was not the time to marvel in theese new truths.
"I know you can, but find where those Ultra Beasts took the Corruption. Hearteater must have a purpose for them. Follow it, no hesitation, we don't have time to waste."
Both Darling and Murmur seemed suddenly shocked at Ruby responding to them, actually seeming to understand what the Munna had said. But true to Ruby's words, they didn't have time the waste. The Munna with wide eyes, immediately dashed straight down back into the tunnels without another word. They would swiftly attempt to find whatever path the UB's took, pushing past their own fears.
Darling, however, immediately noticed something different about Ruby. Her emotions were radiating off of her like a flame, detectable to the psychically sensitive Pokemon. That fear was still there, the anxiety never left, worry still incredibly visible on their expression alone, and the stress was just as strong. But a passionate determination was overwhelming them with such an intensity. Fear no longer held her back, it would push her forwards. It made Darling smile right away.
"Darling, grab the Litten and bolt. I'm sorry to put you through everything, but we have to act. Please, keep searching, follow Munna in their scouting, help guide them towards the source of your connection. I promise to protect you with my life."
"My Queen, it is me who would protect you, always. I am as always, loyally at your service." A smile would cross the Indeedee's only face, quickly moving to pick up the Litten after his own strike, having to pluck them straight from a swarm of razor sharp origami beasts, they'd swiftly cradle the Pokemon intensely in their arms as they moved to follow the Munna as fast as their little legs could run.
Meanwhile, Ruby wasn't just standing there either. She'd quickly stretch a hand out, hoping to grab Kyukon 's own, should they be able to grab hers with their one good hand, and rip them out of there before Sarah Lee 's intense attacks threatened to blind all of them. "Come on! Further down, we got to go! I'm not going to leave you behind!"
Ruby would hopefully escape further down with Kyukon in tow, at some point reconnecting with Josh Devlin as well. She had seen the confrontation briefly while she was asleep, but to see the Ponyta restored meant that they had some kind of chance. They could save everyone here, somehow, someway, eventually.
"Sarah's holding them off," She'd quickly begin. "We need to go, now. We have to see what lays at the bottom of this tunnel. Josh, my Pokemon are not fighters, but they're going to help us be prepared for what's ahead. I need you to be ready, whatever is down here is incredibly powerful, we're going to need your fast Pokémon to help us escape as soon as we're done, unless there is some exit we don't know of yet."
Something was missing, something nagging at the back of her mind. Just a few seconds had passed by before she realized what it was.
Activating her inventory, Ruby equipped her own Crown Jewels. The icy gems sparkling to life, floating around her head in a spinning, slow pace, remnants of a crown long forgotten. Now, she finally felt right.
She was both Queen Rubella and Ruby, and in truth, always had been.
"I have a last ditch scenario, if nothing else works. I can attempt to open a portal to the Dream World, but I am worried about letting IT in there. Hearteater has such intense psychic presence to overwhelm potentially hundreds of thousands of Pokemon, I would never dream of subjecting King Articuno to it."
All the while, Munna and the Indeedee were carefully searching about back in the chambers where the Corruption used to be, careful to not go too far ahead without anyone else joining them, but would certainly keep all six of their senses open and pressing forwards as soon as they were joined. They had to find where the Corruption was taken, they had to find what this "feast" was.
Sooner or later, it would be time to try and lay their eyes on it.
The Hearteater.
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Kyukon
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Lone Wolf
The Creed
Posts: 319
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Arthur Wright
OOC Username: Peony
Arena Points: 0
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Post by Kyukon on Sept 19, 2024 23:36:16 GMT 9
#s://file~garden/ZlmrDagh4hF11gNT/Kyukon%20(Arthur)/kyukon7~png Was it always this bright?
Arthur thought, for a moment, if vision fatigue was a thing in deep dives like UNOVR, but he felt like he had played the game for longer before and not experiencing such a thing. He knew that his eyesight was not perfect, but it wasn't a matter of blurrines–it was like someone had increased the brightness of a TV screen, color becoming shrouded in white.
The sunlight glared at him. Admonished him. He pressed on, undettered, ignorant, in denial.
So he agreed with few words when Ruby mentioned the intensity. He was staring at it right now. He had no idea what she saw in the pile, but it was a look of recognition, of incredulousness. He knew that her stake in the world ran deeper than his, so he dutifully followed, watching her along with her Pokemon as she climbed up the pile. He saw items fall, dislodged from her feet. Trinkets and baubles that had elicited no response from him other than passing interest. When she got down, she had already kept her prize. He wondered what it was for.
He didn't need to be told twice about this place. The thought of this just being a game had run away from him somewhere along the way, and he needed to remind himself of it as a way to get his bearings. He didn't know what Ruby had in mind, but it was certainly not falling asleep in front of him, floating as if she had become a balloon. The Pokemon reassured him that this was perfectly normal, but was it? And more importantly, was it the correct thing to do? They seemed to know more than him, so…
❝I suppose all of us need rest after this is over.❞
Were they even close to getting what they needed? This was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission, though it certainly did not feel like it. They pushed deep into this dungeon as if they wanted more than answers, plowing ahead, knocking on death's door to get an audience with the master himself. He had thought, maybe he could stay ahead of everyone still. Maybe if he gambled, maybe if he bargained–
His thoughts are pierced by a whistle, constant and moving. ❝Gou–❞
The Monferno reacted, but he only had a second before the sunlight dimmed, covered by a descent of what looked like paper stars, spinning like wheels. They consume the pile before hurtling towards Arthur and his Pokemon, and even if they were small and thin, there were so many of them that they were pushed out, out, tumbling, stopping before the coil pit, scattered. The trainer groaned, pushing himself up, before suddenly he found that to see was to feel pain, and the cat, the cat–
Light. The world faded from view. It burns, it burns, it BURNS–
He curled his body inward, doubling over, the skin on his right melts; liquid flesh joining the ground and absorbed into the soil, returning to something unknown. In his ears he heard an echo of a heart that was not his, but why did everything feel so real? Where did the echo go? He managed to look up, tried to see through the blinding lights. A familiar figure was in front of him, moving, moving, pulling–(he felt nothing on his hand, but the arm that remained followed, along with the rest of his body)–to flee, it looked like, until, until he was
He was away, at a distance; his vision cleared to a storm of white descending on his Pokemon, his partner, into a shred of a memory that was once there.
He was only half sure that he was screamed.
Fire soon consumed his sight; another Pokemon in place, another person, a voice. And then there was a hand, and he found himself moving without thought, without feeling. He was running. There were voices, but he could not hear. The light fading away, their descent back into the tunnels, meant that he had no excuse to hide behind blindness.
Gou was not there.
He made a deal with the devil and paid the price.
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Josh Devlin
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Beginning Trainer
Player Character
Posts: 1,053
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Josh Devlin
OOC Username: RaikouRider
Arena Points: 28
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Post by Josh Devlin on Sept 20, 2024 4:22:37 GMT 9
Combat Log> Ixion recovered from an ailment.
The heartwarming reunion was interrupted by a flood of UI message at the top of Josh's vision, and if the others had their settings enabled to see party members' alerts, they would see them, too.
Information> Ixion reaches level 17. Information> Ixion reaches level 18. Information> Ixion reaches level 19. Information> Ixion reaches level 20. Information> Ixion is now eligible for evolution. Information> Exposure to a FIRE STONE has triggered Ixion's EVOLUTION.
The horse Josh embraced glowed with a brilliant white light, growing in size and sprouting a magnificent and fierce-looking horn. Her muscles rippled, the fire-type rearing high and whinnying proudly, lifting the child off the ground and startling him. "Ixion... It's really you..." he shed tears of joy for the newly-evolved Pokémon, her saddle morphing to adjust to her new and larger body. The fire-type's height was now a problem. "I never thought I'd say this, but now I might need a few TINY SEALS from the Arena Shop."
"I could just crouch, you silly Swanna!" the Rapidash laughed, startling Josh from PokéSpeech she had never voiced until now.
"Wait, you can talk, too?!" he replied, perhaps a bit too loudly, as the large horse lowered herself to let the boy comfortably climb on.
"Of course I can! But we don't have time to chitchat. I don't know where they took him, but Granmarg's here somewhere, too. We should find him."
With a nod, Josh followed Sarah Lee and Braixen, also pausing seeing the piles of living Corruption. "That's what my Dewgong's been turning into ever since I accidentally went through a door to deep Mistra in the Doortals," he pointed, not risking exposing his Dewgong to Hearteater. "He's already lost a quarter of his hit point maximum from it. I'm really hoping that getting to the bottom of this and defeating Hearteater will reverse the Corruption--"
The Poké Ball containing Dewgong glowed a sinister black and red from within. Checking his UI, he saw that Ulysses' hit point maximum had been reduced to ten. "That was from him defending and healing the rest of my Pokémon during the battle with the Mega Pidgeot when I did a solo Tower of Worms to prepare for coming here..." he gasped. "Hearteater is feasting on his wounds, isn't he..." As he rode alongside Sarah, his voice, too, quieted, again realizing the need to advance undetected. "This means he's got one heal left in him, then he's a goner. I'll do my best to make it count."
Their conversation would be interrupted by an orange UI message at the top of Josh's vision:
Warning> Kyukon has entered combat. If he falls, your party will be ejected from Hearteater and captured. You will not be able to Log Out. If your connection is interrupted, you will not be able to Log In and your avatar will be left vulnerable.
The rider began to sweat as he turned the horse around to follow Sarah back to the top level, returning to where Kyukon was engaging two Kartana. Their leader boldly declared she was going to sacrifice herself so that the rest of the party could make it to the end of Hearteater. "No, Sarah, you can't!" He wanted to say "Let me fall back instead", but lacked the courage to say it aloud. The terror of being digitally trapped was too much for his heart to bear... at least until his Internet provider was to perform some maintenance that would cause his connection to blip. "We need your wisdom! Your guidance!"
She already made up her mind. "Don't die on me, Sarah!" Obeying his Commander, the Specialist spurred his horse to speed, the whiplash-inducing acceleration leaving him with quite the headache. The boy sped onward and deeper into Hearteater, feeling like he was shooting toward its core at the speed of a race car. Even with that distance, @sarah's final explosion sounded like it had detonated right next to him.
"SAAAAAAAAAAAARAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
At Josh's scream, the horse gradually slowed to a stop against the trainer's orders. "Sweetie, get ahold of yourself," the Rapidash initiated a pep talk with her trainer. "Sarah knew what she was doing. She sacrificed herself so we can carry on her mission. I won't let her sacrifice be for nothing."
Raiden and Ares came out of their Poké Balls as Kyukon and Ruby caught up. While the Zebstrika remained silent, Ares was vocal.
"Do you want to end up like her, Josh? No? Then get yourself in gear, get down there, and let's kick Hearteater's [tangent=ass]{CENSORED}[/tangent]."
"But Granmarg--"
"There's no time to look for him. We're getting to the core, learning what we can, and getting the [tangent=hell]{CENSORED}[/tangent] out of here. Period."
"I'm not leaving him behind!"
The Charizard's tail crackled loud and bright, perhaps making Ruby uncomfortably hot. "YES, YOU ARE!" Ares barked. "It's not just our lives that hang in the balance. It's those of every single Pokémon in the world. You want every Pokémon in all of UNOVR to wind up like Ixion?! Then get your [tangent=shit]{CENSORED}[/tangent] in gear!"
The boy was terrified. Rattled. This was the first time one of his Pokémon had genuinely been mad at him. The entire time he had been in-game, he had assumed that tamed Pokémon were friendly and understanding. Ares' outburst sounded like a father about to order his son to stand in the corner for an entire hour. The fire dragon shook his head before crouching next to the other Kindler in the party.
"Kyukon , hop on. We might need to retreat at any moment," the Charizard said to him, placing a claw on his shoulder if he allowed it. "My trainer's not high enough level for me to wear a proper saddle, so it might get a bit rough." Raiden would likewise offer his back to Ruby.
Seeing his Pokémon take such action on their own, Josh shook his head, defeated. "Fine. We... leave Granmarg behind. And you two better be ready to go fast once we're out of time."
Roll: Dungeon rollProgress 63 and Progress 19 {Party}Trainer Subclass: Kindler 5, Bolter 5, Ironsmith 1 Tank: HP 3, Attack 3, Moves 3 || Escape Sweeper: HP 3, Attack 3, Moves 4 || Dodge, Escape Support: HP 3, Recovery 3, Moves 3 || Buff Team: Josh 500/500 Apollo the Celesteela 500/500 Izoni the Naganadel 250/250 Raiden the Zebstrika 210/250 Ares the Charizard 210/250 Ulysses the Dewgong 10/10 Ixion the Rapidash 170/500
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