[Deleted Thread]

The laptop pinged and Shinx's ears pricked up, flashing rhythmically like a USB in the middle of transferring files.

Sarah peeked at Geodude's screen. "It's over....that way," she said, pointing into the dark void. "I'll bring back the other piece," Sarah promised. "You three just hold tight." Beside her Charmeleon held his tail high, casting crimson light across the low, dark, waves.

The group set out to find the orb.

As they trudged through the dark sea, Sarah could feel herself getting weaker. She pulled herself upright, keeping pace with Charmeleon at the head of the pack. They needed a leader now more than ever.

"We're almost there," she said, as the laptop beeped again and Shinx's ears flashed faster and faster.

There was a low rushing sound from the darkness. The orb? It couldn't be. "Ron! What's that ahead?" Charmeleon shot out a gout of flame, illuminating a truly terrible scene.

Ahead of them was a whirlpool. A slow, ponderous, grinding swirl of murky water, that had sucked in chunks of the deleted world. As the flame shot overhead, Pokemon cried out. A Tepig and a Treecko were struggling to stay afloat on a chunk of wood in the middle of the whirpool. "Help!" cried the Tepig. "We can't swim!" begged the Treecko. The little gecko was holding fast to something blue and smooth and broken: the other half of the blue orb.

Sarah didn't believe in cliche, but she did believe in fate, and poetic parallel.

She steeled herself, looking at her circle of Pokemon. Her band of friends.

They looked weak, and it wasn't from the walk here. No. She knew they were disappearing.

She was too. This place was breaking them down, piece by tiny piece, grinding them away like sands of time blowing incessantly against a statue in the desert.

There was no deathly chill, bloody cough, or even pain. Only the growing feeling that she wasn't quite all there.

Sarah looked down at her hands. They were filled with holes.

"Shinx, you stay next to AXIOM207. If that laptop dies we can't get back," Sarah said. Shinx mewed, nodding their head bravely. "Everyone else, with me!"

The six of them waded into the whirlpool. The dark waters pulled and tugged. Charmeleon roared, Pignite shouted out in pain, and Dunsparce and Treecko stuck together the best they could, the clump of warriors were sucked towards the salvation at the center of their Charybdis.

Sarah grabbed the piece of wood, which broke down under her touch. "Grab hold!" she ordered the two Pokemon. "We're getting you out of here!" Druddigon offered his broad arms to the pair, and six became eight.

"That was the easy part," Sarah said, feeling herself struggling for breath. She felt light. "Now we've got to get out." She looked to Pignite and Charmeleon. They didn't say anything witty, or roar with determination. They were silent. Panting alongside her.

"Hey! Get ready you two we only have one shot at this," Sarah said, her throat right. She cleared her throat. "Ron! Chell! Look at me!"

The pair looked up, their eyelids heavy. Square chunks were missing from their bodies, and a their flames were dimmer, trailing off into little streams of grey code that disappeared into the void. "Yes we CAN, okay? YES WE CAN!" She rounded on the others. "YES WE CAN!"

"Yes we can!" said the others, their voices only just rising above the rush of the whirlpool.
"Then what are we waiting for?" asked Bernie. "Let's do it!"

Sarah forged back out of the whirlpool, the others heaving alongside her. The rushing waters sapped their strength and pulled them backwards, turning steps into half-steps and shuffles into backslides, and turning the few meters between the center and the edge into a trial of minutes.

Minutes that they just. Didn't. Have.

---

They reached the edge, and hurried back to the others, but this time no fire lit their path.

"We got the orb," Sarah said, holding it out for someone to take. Her voice was gray. Tired. As if even her words were being slowly deleted.

What remained of their group was lit by the flashing of Shinx's ears, and the saved Treecko and Tepig rode on Dunsparce beside her. Of the other four, there was no sign.

CHELL WAS DELETED
RON WAS DELETED
TAFFY WAS DELETED
DRUDDIGON WAS DELETED

---

2x Locate the Orb (Shinx + Geodude)
3x Retrieve the Orb (Charmeleon + Druddigon + Dunsparce)
1x Save Tepig (Pignite)
1x Save Treecko (Treecko)

Pignite (Chell) - Tank/Sweeper - 0/350 HP
Charmeleon (Ron) - Tank/Sweeper - 0/350 HP
Treecko (Taffy) - Tank/Sweeper - 0/350 HP
Dunsparce (Bernie) - Tank/Sweeper - 200/350 HP
Shinx - Support - 50/150 HP
Druddigon - Support - 0/150 HP

It was a grueling time to wait for the arrival of the orb. Lucky would sit and watch everything unfold-The way that others came and went in their quest for the half of the orb that they all so desperately needed, the way that Lucky's own Pokemon came and went to pick up those who were lost in the dissolving sea, and how the other players began to panic as time went on. Most of all, he could see why that very shock settled into the people. All Lucky had to do was sit and watch, and so he could watch how the world was slowly disappearing.

He felt like it wasn't really being deleted. Lucky's first theory was that, since they were in a sort of obsolete trash bin they were being converted to space-saving .ZIP files not meant to be seen by the human eye or some such. All that mattered to the players here, however was that those parts that slowly faded away were things that couldn't be used anymore.

For instance, Lucky was missing half of himself. It was the left half of his body that didn't usually have the golden Pokeball hooked onto the belt, which also happened to be the side that wasn't his dominant one. Lucky presumed that it went first because most of his actions came from the other side when things really came down to it. Except walking-He kind of needed that left leg back...

That leg wasn't coming back, and Lucky had to accept that. He sat in the comfortable embrace of Omen's comfortable wingspan as the Decidueye fretted over his health. He didn't find himself looking up at her comforting gaze as often as he otherwise would. Every time he did, he also bore witness to the growing hole that spanned her torso core and grew from there. Omen, surprisingly, didn't seem nearly as bothered by the lack of a midsection as Lucky was. Lucky could almost even feel feathers where there were otherwise none.

They are coming, Omen assured, they will be here soon. I can feel them.

Lucky didn't respond. He understandably didn't like talking with a third of a mouth. It seemed that the spread on his body began with his head first-something he found to be supremely irritating. Lucky wasn't even sure if he could see out of his other eye or not, as the first person perspective felt uncomfortably unchanging.


The first Pokemon to return were his own. Will'O had led a party of Lucky's unoccupied three to the sea of devastation to see whom he could pluck from the Styx. They were quite successful, returning around the same time as Scraggy and Bulby had. In their arms were the faces of many groups of Pokemon. A legion of turtwig followed the example of Lucky's own, a mass journey taken to the top of the Kyogre. Bulbasaur were clambering atop the Delphox Will'O who had lost his head yet continued to walk unhindered. Only Ammit had little need to convince any of the Pokemon to come with him-The chikorita came with him naturally, as if still knowing by heart the commanding presence of the Midas Temple. It also helped that the Cofagrigus had a lot of arms and the small quadrupeds had a little of a choice to be picked up by them.


The next who arrived were the three heralds of the orb-Thank god for that much. Lucky didn't know what he was going to do if all he had to watch much further was nothing but the human digestion program. The heroic three that returned with the Orb soon arrived and attatched the two pieces together...

To no avail whatsoever. It was a broken rock. What had they all expected to happen? a miracle?

Some did-and some still intended to make that happen. Skydow, slowly unravelling under the code, used precious string that he could be using to preserve himself to instead wrap the two together neatly. It looked put together and all, but Lucky knew it was still fractured in minute ways. All that had happened was that the people here had put a broken vase together. Nothing further would come of it. Essential data was missing that would probably never return.

Of all the people who thought of what to do about it, Lucky hadn't expected his little Seedot to think of an idea. And yet, he had.

"What... are..? Leshy, stop..!" Lucky tried to get the little seed away, yet it was to no avail. Leshy was too intent on fixing what was broken now. The little thing only had access to a few little moves, bare values in the code. Leshy merely thought to use one, Absorb, in a different way. In reverse, naturally.

The seed that had once seemed to be resisting the melting code found damage come to him in another way. Leshy fuelled the structure of the sacred object with his own personal data, fueling himself into the revival of the Orb. Everyone could see him slowly falling apart chunk by chunk, his very structure channeled into the Orb.
It was done. The Orb was whole again. All that remained of the Seedot was his little acorn hat. Leshy was gone...

Then the hat rolled around a bit in the digital wind that the other Pokémon were making with their movement.

What?

Was he still even there..? That seed was really small in that big acorn hat. Wow, what a tiny guy... According to data standards, Leshy was clearly deleted-there weren't stats over his head or anything. He also wasn't really moving. It was like he'd been .ZIP filed into being an actual seed. Maybe that's what actually had happened? Maybe Lucky would have to plant that seed later or something?


An ominous thought occurred to Lucky. It was as if the object simply was without ID, just as the Gengar Statue had been. Could it even be called a Pokémon anymore? Was it nothing more than a trinket of an acorn now?


For now he picked up the acorn shell and put it on his head to serve as hat-based coverage for his unsightly face as he pocketed the inert seed made of tiny bits of nigh-nonexistent data. Omen took note of this and the saved Pokemon in relief. She had little more to worry about. Now was the time to focus. Taking hands with the Grookey and Treeko, the great paragon of the Canopy did what she must-she deigned to give her power away-back to the orb where it belonged. The three began the arduous task of returning what rightfully belonged to this God back into their hands... Fins, to Kyogre's fins.

Heed me, Kyogre. It is not yet time to rest. You have lashed out at us in your pain, and we struck back in anger. All you wished was for our land to be a part of your own.

But now a false idol has appeared. He does not want the land to belong to anyone. He seeks to remove it, so that none may ever set foot nor fin upon it again. Please, Kyogre, awaken. For all of our struggles against eachother, all of the challenges we have made to you-We need you now more than ever.

If only once, please lend us your aid. I don't want to die. I don't want Lucky to die. He was a man of the sea from what he told me. He spoke of the 'Formorians' and how they left on a great journey to the ocean. I don't know if you are one of them, but I know he hopes for you to save him now. He looks up to you. He enjoyed our brief battle against each-other.

Please... if nobody else, save my trainer. It's all I can beg of you to do.

And the Orb would soon respond.

Rundown of actions:
Cascoon uses String Shot to Heal the Orb. - 7+20+6+20+2+20+1+20+7+20 = 123 Healing
Seedot uses Absorb (In reverse) to Heal the Orb. - 10+15+11+15+12+15+8+15+8+15 = 124 Healing!

In total, the Orb was healed for 247/168. The Blue Orb was restored.

Omen uses the Buff action on the Orb as she channels the primal power she's built up into it, probably giving Kyogre a +20 to all future rolls-As well as much power as she can channel into it, moving as many of her own buffs into the orb as she can to strengthen his will, up to an additional +195.. She hopes that, one day, Kyogre may be friends with us who now share a common goal. She hopes that Kyogre may one day remember Lucky fondly.


For the Pokemon rescues:

Delphox saves the Bulbasaurs!

Cofagrigus saves the Chikoritas!

Turtwig saves the Turtwigs, the absolute MOSES of his own kind!

HP Tracking:

Decidueye - 188 HP (288-100 under the erosion = 188) - Buffed for + to all rolls total
Cascoon - 143/300 HP - (243-100 under the erosion = 143) - Buffed for a +20 to all rolls total
Seedot - 0/150 HP - Deleted!

Delphox - 50/150 HP (150-100 under the erosion = 50)
Cofagrigus - 200/300 HP (300-100 under the erosion = 200)
Turtwig - 50/150 HP (150-100 under the erosion = 50)

Blue Orb - 247/168 HP - Restored!

Kyogre - 47,688/50,000 HP (47,788-100 under the erosion = 47,688) - Buffed for a +20 to all rolls total, with an additional added on top from Decidueye and the infusion gang!

Round 5: [DELETED]

---

The cracked orb seals, the halves clicking together like a hard wound becoming whole.

Primal energy flows like breath, drawn easily from Treecko, Grookey, and Decidueye and back into the pristine, sapphire sphere. It already sits on Kyogre's back, and the orb sinks straight down, through flesh and blubber, into the belly of the beast.

In the dimness lit only by a failing Shinx and AXIOM207's laptop, an eye snaps open.



Searing lines of power carve hope into the darkness, as the dissolving titan rises from its shallow grave.

I̵̦̹͉̜͒̀ ̴̝̫̎̎̌̎̕Ḁ̸͓͖͖̩̭̀M̴̦̭͐͛̊̎̂̕ ̴̮̎̿͝W̶̹͑Ḧ̶̡͈͔͍́̿͒͘Ȍ̵̙͑̇͂͒͗L̷̟̼̯̫̑E̷͎̞̼̗̿̈́̾̌̂

roars Kyogre, its words shuddering through the water surrounding them. The liquid jumps and stirs. It's full of chunks of dissolving island. Dissolving Pokemon and players.

Primal Kyogre's health jumps up to 48,894/50,000, and a dull, warped version of its boss music plays. It's slower than before, and skips beats. Impossible to vibe to, and impossible not to notice.

The titan throws its dissolving body backwards, hurling off any players and Pokemon and sending them into the dark waters. Around you, zones reform in the darkness as the battle with Primal Kyogre enters its final phase.

You have no way of knowing how this battle is affecting C0D13. Whether he is even aware of the titanic struggle going on in the recycle bin. You can only hope you've done enough.

---

ZONES & BATTLE MAP

• You may start in Zones A, B, C, D.
• A Pokemon may use its ACTION (no attack, heal, etc) to move 1 zone.
• Pokemon with the ESCAPE special ability may move 1 Zone without using an action.
• Your Pokemon may start in any zone, but 1 Pokemon must remain in the same Zone as you to assure safety. If you are alone in a Zone and are targeted by an attack, your character will instantly white out.

ZONE A

ZONE B

ZONE C

ZONE D

START OF TURN

Primal Kyogre rises and the dark sea around you is pulled skyward, whipping into a pair of massive, towering Water Spouts that pull in all Pokemon in Zone B and C, dealing 2d100 Water damage (104) to anyone who starts in either of those zones. These Water Spouts can be disrupted.

DURING YOUR TURN

The deletion eats away at your Pokemon, dealing 100 Damage over the course of your post. This is NOT a sudden hit. It is a slow, inevitable, decay. It cannot be disrupted, guarded, healed, or escaped in any way.

Kyogre's Hyper Beams are devastating. They burn the air with primal energy, tearing into the darkness and testing the limits of this mechanical void. Each beam deals 20d20 (+195) damage (413), and must strike one of your Pokemon. This attack cannot be disrupted.  

The remaining water clumps into freeing, ice-tipped waves that orbit like comets, knocking all players and Pokemon one Zone clockwise at the end of their turn. This happens before Kyogre's end of turn attacks hit.


END OF TURN

3 Gyarados appear in Zone D. With so little water in the void they thrash and flail, attacking furiously with Crunch (128) and Ice Fang (119) as they are slowly deleted. Pokemon in Zone D at the end of the round are hit by one of the two attacks, taking 4d50 (+10) damage.

Ice Beams gleam in the mouth of the leviathan, and it exhales, carving silver death across the recycle bin. Pokemon in Zones A and B take 10d20 Ice damage (88) at the end of the round.

---

BONUS RAID POINTS

SURVIVE +10 / WHITE OUT +10

GLACEON HAS BEEN DELETED.

The last vestige of Kath Ulu's UI hung in the black air. Her eyes shook with each of the Ivysaur's steps, and she tried to blink it away.

"Glaceon…" she said, hoping the enigmatic ice pokemon could still, somehow, hear her. "Shit. I'm sorry I said you weren't charismatic."

"Kath, man, pull yourself together," Bulby held her close, cradling her parts above the waves of deletion.

"She's gone… oh I'm such a bitch!" Kath would have kicked herself, if her legs hadn't already been deleted.

"Kath." Bulby held her eyes up to where the mountain of water and muscle was coming back to life.

"Bulby?"

"Y'know, despite everything," Bulby started to turn. "I think we should run away."

***

Treecko felt the world move beneath her feet.

Grookey whooped. "Yes! Kyogre's back, baby! Wait…"

"Yeah, not good," Treecko grabbed Grookey and pulled him closer as the Blue Titan lifted itself from the depths of the dark ocean. Immediately they fell, and AXIOM207 fell with them.

Treecko landed in the water, and the waves of deletion washed over her. She felt… empty, inside, like a drained grape, nothing left by skin. She looked for her friends.

Grookey was sitting a few feet away. He shook his head and sniffed, recovering from the impact. Despite the deletion chipping away at him, he was still mostly together. Perhaps it was his naive optimism that gave him a resilient advantage, but Treecko wasn't about to question her cynicism this late in the game.

"Geodude," she said, turning to the pokemon near her. "We aren't going to make it."

AXIOM207 was silent behind his laptop.

"We have to do what we can to make sure someone does."

Still, AXIOM207 didn't respond.

"Axiom?" Treecko reached out to him, and he crumbled into dust.

Before she had time to process what had just happened, her world lit up with beautiful and lethal cyan. She held up her hand to block the light, but it filtered through her disintegrating body.

The Kyogre's Hyper Beam was locked onto her position.

"Save… Grookey…" she said, clasping her hands together in prayer. She tried to buff him, heal him, anything she could to keep what life she knew he still had left afloat in this ocean of nothingness. She had to save something.

"Don't worry, baby!"

"No, no!"

"I'll save you!" Grookey yelled as he leapt in front of the beam. He had in his hands the Sacrificial Goblet. He'd been waiting for the right time to use it.

The beam caught him in the chest, and he went skipping across the waves like a soft stone.

"Ah!" Treecko waded with what little strength she had left to his little body. The two of them made small ripples in the dark ocean as the ice closed in.

"You… you idiot!" Treecko said, holding his head above water.

"Did I help?"

"Help?" She looked in his eyes.

They still had hope.

"Yeah… yes… yeah, Grookey, you did," Treecko lied, as she felt herself fading.

"I saved you, right?" He reached out to hold her hand, but it wasn't there.

"That's right," Treecko said, as she was washed away.

***

GEODUDE HAS BEEN DELETED

"What?!"

TREECKO HAS BEEN DELETED

"No, no-"

GROOKEY HAS BEEN DELETED

Kath would have cried, but her tear ducts had already been deleted.

"Kath?" Bulby was paddling with what was left of his legs. Behind them, an ice wave rose from the negative space.

"Fucking idiot! Idiot!"

"I know, man."

"He should have run away! Why didn't he run away?"

"It's not like him. Hell, it's what we do, man. We fight or faint, unless we're a flying type."

"You're running!"

"Yeah, I learned it from watching you."

A Hyper Beam shot out in the darkness, lighting it up like a warzone.

DUNSPARCE HAS BEEN DELETED

"I can't take this!" Kath yelled.

SHINX HAS BEEN DELETED

"Shut this fucking thing off!" Kath tried not to look, but her eyelids were gone.

SARAH LEE HAS BEEN DELETED

"Fuck!"

"It's alright Kath we'll get away, we'll get away, it's you me and Scraggy-"

SCRAGGY HAS BEEN DELETED

"-alright, it's you and me," Bulby yelled, "hold tight!"

He wrapped Kath Ulu into his bud, and she watched the recycle bin race by through the cracks that formed in the bud as Bulby too began to fall apart. The ice wave pushed them forward, out of the way of Kyogre's silver breath of death. Bulby didn't stop, letting the momentum propel him into motion and he charged through the murky depths.

Toward what? Neither of them had any idea.