Arms of Arceus

The ocean was vast and terrible. Bloated zombies swam aimlessly through the water only to be eaten by the zombie megalodons. The giant, rotting fish couldn’t tell the difference between living flesh and dead flesh, and so they swallowed whole everything they could find that wasn’t another shark. Down on the sea floor, the zombies shuffled around the Jellicent and Frillish. Some attempted to bite the Pokémon, but they phased through the ghost-types harmlessly. The jellyfish Pokémon tore them to pieces and used their body parts as bricks in a macabre castle structure they were building. Some of the swimming zombies found Bartholomew and Suzuki as they attempted to make landfall, but their badly decaying forms were easily destroyed by the Jellicent that escorted them to the surface.

“Be safe out there,” Bartholomew said as they walked out onto shore. “I walked out a ways after the Greninja went scouting, and I learned a few things. The zombies we fought down below were weakened by rot and bloat. There will be far more dangerous opponents to come. The more flesh a zombie has, the stronger and more intelligent it is.”

The water behind them bubbled and shook with the sounds of their Jellicent guards killing zombies beneath the waves. Before them loomed a large, natural stonewall, with the broken bodies of the zombies who had fallen off the cliff littering the small beach.

“I’ll be back with Master Ryu soon,” Suzuki said as she approached the wall. “Dead or alive, I’ll bring him home.”

Suzuki began leaping up the wall face, her movements swift and sure. As she reached the top, she disappeared. She stuck to the shadows of rocks, dashing between areas clear of cover as quickly as she could. Twice she encountered groups of zombies, and both times they seemed to smell her, but she avoided being found and slipped past them through the cold, stone outcroppings. Their grunts and hungry screams followed her for miles as she made her way through the undead wilderness. The zombies were unnerving, and their conversations made her cringe, but she had overcome her fear of monsters long ago. Not even these abominations would prevent her from performing her duty.

Master Ryu and the scouts that followed his teachings always left a trail for their allies to follow. This was something that wasn’t known to many, and it took a skilled tracker to find it. His methods were simple, but the clues he left took time and patience to track. The first sign Suzuki came to was a small cut in a rock a mile from the shore where she had left Bartholomew. The cut was deep and even, having been made by Master Ryu’s water katana. It identified the place where the Master had begun to leave his clues, and it was the easiest to find. The next sign came a mile away, in between a series of tracks left by zombies marching to The Shield. It was small, and intentionally intermingled with the pre-existing trail, but Suzuki knew what to look for. After an hour of following his footprints as they jumped from one trail to another, Suzuki finally came face to face with Master Ryu near a grouping of large rocks.

He turned to her as she approached, as if expecting her. Suzuki noticed that the Master had cut through a group of weaker zombies recently, but it was the creature that he held by the throat that startled her.

“What is a young Frogadier doing out here, Master?” Suzuki said as she approached. Her eyes narrowed at the squirming Pokémon and she snapped her claws in frustration.

“Not so loud, child,” Master Ryu whispered. “This one snuck out of the city as my ninja went to investigate the surface. I found this on his person.”

Master Ryu reached in a pouch at his waist and flashed a red badge with a symbol of Arceus in its center. The symbol was made of a black metal that hurt to look at, and its meaning angered Suzuki.

“Where did you get this, traitor?” she asked, her voice soft and deadly.

“Where do you think I got it?” the Frogadier asked in defiance.

“I only just captured him,” Master Ryu said. “He’s lucky I did, or these zombies would have eaten him whole.”

“You will tell us what you were doing out here, and you will tell us now!”

“I’d rather die,” the Frogadier said. Suzuki heard fear in his voice, but she wasn’t sure who he was more afraid of, God’s Breath or his master. It was a choice between immediate pain, and pain that would last an eternity. She wasn’t sure she could overcome the fear of the dark god in a captive, but she knew someone who could.

“No one said anything about dying,” Suzuki said, menacingly. “We have much worse in store for you, youngling. Tell us what you were doing out here, or we’ll give you to Mistress Ann when we return home.”

“I’d rather die!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, his eyes dialating in panic. The silence that followed was deafening, but it didn’t last long. The three Pokémon soon heard the sounds of moaning, angry cries, and the padding of bare human feet running on solid stone.

“Great,” Suzuki said, angrily. “Now you’ve drawn them to us!”

“I’d rather become one of these things than face Korish!”

“Is that the name of your leader?” Master Ryu said, softly.

“Yes. Not like it matters now. One bite and you become one of them. We’re all going to die out here!”

The Frogadier in Master Ryu’s grip began laughing hysterically as the zombies closed in. The Master hit the frogling’s head with a light chop, and the spy fell unconscious.

“We have to move!” Suzuki whispered.

“There’s no time,” Master Ryu said as he looked up at the rock above them. A group of zombies was gathering there, looking down upon the Pokémon with unspeakable hunger in their eyes as more closed in from the sides. Each one wore a torn, black suit with a large X on the shoulder. Their leader raised a bony hand to his head to lower his visor and fired a massive beam of energy at the Pokémon. Master Ryu took his unconscious charge and leapt out of the way, while Suzuki dashed forward to engage the zombies. A muscular, hairy beast lunged for her, his claws outstretched to drag her into his open mouth. She dodged underneath him and cut his abdomen as she slid out of his reach. He watched her move with a wicked smile as his allies ran to intercept her.

With lightning-fast reflexes Suzuki cut the encroaching zombies with an X-Scissor, severing limbs and opening new wounds in decaying flesh. One of the zombies had turned her skin hard as diamond and Suzuki’s attack glanced off of her harmlessly. Suzuki jumped as lightning struck nearby, fired from the hands of an eyeless flying zombie who sniffed the air to locate her prey. Suddenly, the bug-type leader was assaulted by a mental attack that threatened to bring her to her knees. The Beast zombie climbed up the sloping boulder and lunged for her once more as a rock creature grabbed for her left claw. Suffering from the psychic assault, she barely dodged their attacks, but was struck in the chest by a heat blast from the visored zombie. She flew backward to land at the feet of Master Ryu, who held his katana at the ready as more zombies closed in.

“This seems rather hopeless,” Master Ryu said, calmly. “These ones have a bit less rot and a bit more brains.”

“Are you bitten, Master?” Suzuki asked, her chest still smoking from the heat blast.

“No, but I don’t expect to hold that condition for long with these odds.”

“There has to be a way out…”

Suzuki searched desperately for some form of deliverance, but saw none. She feared that someone would be bitten if they attempted to fight their way free, but it seemed to be the only means of escape. She considered taking to the sky and gliding on the strong wind, but feared that the flying zombies would catch them as she tried to carry the others to safety. It wasn’t until the Beast zombie jumped for her throat that she realized that, like Master Ryu, she had been sent help.

As the Beast zombie fell through the air to land atop her neck, its shadow reached out, grabbed it by the neck, and slammed it hard to the ground. Its skull cracked upon impact and its body bounced twice before falling still. The sudden disruption shocked the rest of the horde, stopping them momentarily. They watched as the shadow leapt to another zombie. Soon, that one was slammed to the ground with the same bone shattering force as before. A familiar laugh filled the air, followed by the cries of a swarm of Shedinja as they descended upon the undead.
Desperate to eat, the zombies attempted to bite the Shedinja but found only a hard, empty shell protected by Wonder Guard abilities that caused their mouths to bounce off harmlessly. The Shedinja responded quickly and decisively. Shadow Balls and Shadow Sneaks tore through the weaker zombies and knocked the tougher ones back. Blasts of fire and heat beams were launched at the swarm, but the Shedninja dodged or used Protect to defend themselves. One of the more powerful zombies was lifted by his shadow and used as a club to beat the others with. The force of the collisions tore off pieces of his steel armor, along with his limbs until there was nothing left of him but a rotten torso. Moments later, the shadow released him as the last zombie fell and the fighting ceased. None of the zombies remained, only the Pokémon who had defeated them.

“Glad to see you’re still in one piece, Ryu,” Trickster said as he emerged from his shadow form. “The others aren’t far off. These things got a good sniff of Bartholomew and they were closing in on him when we arrived. They’re smarter than they look, but not as smart as they were when they were living, I’d bet.”

“Brain rot will do that to you,” declared a severed head wearing a black and red mask. “Can’t say I blame them for attacking, though. Those frogs do look juicy. I’ll tell you more if you give me a bite.”

“You’ll tell us more regardless,” Trickster said. He lifted the head from the ground and placed it in the crook of his arm. “Is that little frogling all you’ve found out here?”

“No,” Master Ryu said as he put his free forefoot on the pouches at his waist. “I’ve been to the place they call The Shield. While they were occupied with an attack, I managed to grab a map of this world from their headquarters. It seems as if a local commander is missing, and her absence has caused quite a bit of chaos in the ranks of defenders. I found this little scamp on my way back.”

“Why do you smell like smoke?” the severed head asked as it sniffed Master Trickster’s armpit. “Yeah, you smell like smoke and poison.”

“I am a spirit made of smoke and poison,” Trickster said.

“Wait, you’re a ghost? So that’s why you don’t seem edible! Man I’m hungry!”

“You’re talkative, too,” Suzuki said as she held one of her Shedinja to her chest. “That’s good, but there will be time for you to explain yourself later. Master Trickster, what brings you out here?”

“Princess Twilight, of course. Shortly after you left, she called for me to take some ghost-types to ensure your safety. That child is fearful of the responsibilities she carries.”

“I’m sure we would have pulled through, somehow,” Suzuki said, blushing. “We are not so inept as that…”

“No, but neither are we ghost-types,” Master Ryu said. “This place will eat even warriors as powerful as you with all the eagerness of a Seviper biting a Zangoose. We made a mistake in keeping this frogling conscious, and that would have cost us our lives if not for the concerns of the princess and the aid of our friends.”

“You’re quite right, master,” Suzuki said, bowing her head humbly. “However, the princess has another concern. She worries that you are angry with her, and her kind, over the loss of Dark Arceus.”

Master Ryu was silent for a moment, his eyes turning pained and tearful as he considered his own emotions.

“I am angry,” he said. “I argued with myself all the way to the Shield, unsure if I should continue on alone, unsure if I could find a means of fighting Dark Arceus in this world if I abandoned our… our leaders. I am angry that we lost that which gave us purpose. The destruction the dark god will cause if it is released is beyond imagining. This world, and ours, will suffer greatly.”

“And who do you blame for the loss of the evil one’s prison?” Trickster asked, his smile falling into a more serious expression.

“Who should I blame, old friend?” Master Ryu pleaded. “I turned back because of that very question. I don’t know if I should blame myself for not realizing the danger, or if I should blame the ponies for failing in their duty.”

“They failed,” Master Trickster said. “They were thrust into a dire situation they had precious little time to prepare for, and they failed. We failed, as well. Thousands of psychics in the city, all of them actively predicting the future dozens of times a day, and not one saw a threat from the Aegislash. The entire Elder Council, with our centuries of experience, never once thought that we were sent to that world for anything other than death. We knew Octaria was a trap from the beginning, but its purpose was not to kill us. We failed to see that, and not one of us stepped up to take the proper precautions to secure the prison. So focused was the city on surviving the conflict with the enemy outside, that we failed to see the enemy inside. Assigning blame is necessary, but in this instance we are all deserving of it. We all have a lesson to learn.”

Master Ryu listened to his friend’s speech and nodded his head sadly when it was over.

“I was… a bit short with the princess when she dispatched me. I should apologize.”

“Her majesty worries only for your safety, master,” Suzuki said, kindly. “Her heart is in the right place.”

“Really?” said the severed head of Deadpool. “Are you sure about that? I can make sure for you! Just throw me at her chest and I’ll find out exactly where her heart is, scout’s honor.”

“Actually, I think I’ll keep hold of you for now,” Master Trickster said as he lifted Headpool before him and grinned. “Ann’s been getting presents in the form of prisoners, lately, and Lynn feels a bit left out. You’d make a lovely gift for her.”

“Does she have tasty, buttery flesh?”

“No, but she will sew your mouth shut and wear you from a chain at her waist.”

“But I’m funny! I’m great comic relief, I swear. She doesn’t need to sew my mouth shut!”

“Convince my wife of that, not me. You’re going to be her trophy, after all.”

“Speaking of trophies,” Suzuki said as she bent down to grab a shield on the ground and place it on her back. “I think I’d like one for myself.”

“That’s Captain America’s shield,” Headpool said. “A Captain America’s shield. I don’t know which one since we’re all kinda from different realities. It’s indestructible, for the most part. See? I’m helpful!”

“But do you ever stop talking?” Suzuki asked as she leapt into the air and caught the wind beneath her wings to glide alongside her Shedinja.

“Not unless you sew my mouth shut! Wait, that wasn’t helpful…”

The Pokémon laughed as they set off for the shore where Bartholomew waited to lead them home.

Korish watched the council members take her spy and leave the area. The Frogadier would suffer for his sins against God’s Breath, but he had served his purpose and Korish had no concern for him. Her master had spoken of gems of immense power in a kingdom not far from these blood-drenched wastelands. They sounded fascinating, but they were not her goal. Her god had decreed that she wreak chaos from the shadows of this world, and that was what she planned to do.

A moment of hesitation came as she considered the sheer scope of the suffering she was about to cause. She knew that her friend wouldn’t like it. That Feefee would be saddened to hear what Korish had done. But Dark Arceus was awake, and had been for months now. She could never have ignored the god’s will, even if she had wanted to. The moment of hesitation passed. Her joyful song of death carried through the air as she entered the kingdom of New Xandar.