Arms of Arceus

They called it the Mixmaster, and Trixie had found it terribly confusing. The system of tall roads and bridges that criss-crossed through the city of Dallas had been too much for the unicorn to follow. Signs pointed in directions toward places far in the distance, though all she had seen while passing them had been more roads. At least the people that traveled the Mixmaster seemed to understand what it all meant. She would have enjoyed a chance to explore it more, had the city not been a massive fortress holding out against an army of undead. Yet, that was the case, and she hadn’t complained about it while riding alongside the humans in their large transport truck.

Their first meeting with the humans had been strange, to say the least. While none of them knew quite what to make of the Pokémon, they had all recognized Trixie as a unicorn. They had marveled at her existence, and if she hadn’t seen so many strange sights recently, she might have been just as awestruck at them. To the humans, Trixie’s species was a myth passed down through generations. She had tried to explain herself, though Equestria seemed a foreign concept to them, one that they had trouble believing. She had given up trying to convince them after the first five minutes, especially when they had shown such difficulty in accepting the simple fact that she could talk. It had taken Welshi to convince the human leaders to force their soldiers to stop pestering Trixie. The Whimsicott had threatened to remove her forest, despite the moaning of zombies echoing across the plains. That had been enough to convinced them to accept that Trixie wasn’t a pack animal, but a creature worthy of as much respect as any of them.

They’d had a similar experience at the castle, though that had been handled more quickly when the human commander from Fort Maria explained the situation to her king. The humans realized the importance of their new Pokémon allies to their cause, and if it meant treating a pony like a person, they would do it. Trixie couldn’t blame them for their shock, considering what unicorns were in their myths. She certainly wasn’t any horse they were used to. Even so, she wished that the palace guards wouldn’t stare so much as she wandered the grounds alongside Welshi and Sasha.

“Joan said she felt something strange in this direction,” Welshi said as she rode on Sasha’s back.

“She said it was a particularly violent thought,” Sasha replied as she scanned the area cautiously. “Like the feeling you get when you see someone you know wants to kill you. It disappeared, as if hiding, though she thinks whoever thought it was still here.”

“Did you feel something strange, too?”

“It was impending disaster, and I still feel it.”

“Did Lady Joan say what the thought was about?” Trixie asked as she followed along nervously. Buakaw and Namsak stood at her sides protectively, where they had been since leaving God’s Breath.

“I heard it!” Ragnuk said, happily. “She said that the thought was about eating flesh! That means it’s a zombie, right?”

“Uh… yes, that would likely make it a zombie.”

“How did one infiltrate the city’s defenses, though?” Sasha said.

“Our defenses are strong, but not foolproof,” said the calm, cold voice of Princess Laura. She walked up to the group like a cat hunting a mouse. Her demeanor gave Trixie pause, though that didn’t seem to be the case for her companions.

“I’ve got my Liligant and Gourgiest running around looking for the intruder,” Welshi said, indifferent to natural threat in the woman’s posture. “Maybe we can interrogate them? We might even be able to talk some sense to…”

“Zombies don’t understand ‘sense’,” Laura said, with a small growl.

“It’s worth a shot, though,” Welshi responded, her warm, happy attitude never faltering. Laura’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing more. She sniffed the air, turned from the group and leapt over the castle’s railing into the garden below.

“Please forgive her,” Queen Ororo said as she floated down to stand beside Sasha. “My stepdaughter is the quiet type. She only wants to protect our people. Daken is a bit better at conversation, though he’s currently leading a scouting party in the north.”

“He left right before we arrived at the palace, didn’t he?” Sasha asked.

“Yes. The zombie’s actions in the last week have appeared desperate. I never thought I’d say this, but they seem almost fearful, as if they’re running from something.”

A small Gourgiest flew up to Welshi and whispered in her ear. Her eyes widened, and her happy expression was replaced by one of deep concern as she quickly turned to Ororo.

“Gallah’s found the zombie near your children’s playroom,” Welshi said, urgently

Ororo’s eyes widened in fear, and she dashed away as fast as she could, rising into the air to follow the path Laura had taken. Sasha was already running behind her, leaping over the railing without hesitation. Trixie wanted to follow, but leaping two stories seemed a bit beyond her. Before she had time to question her fears, Buakaw had already picked her up. He and Namsak leapt into the garden, following the council members to the first floor playroom.

They arrived to find a nightmarish charnel house. A gore stained mess covered the carpet. Bits and pieces of maid cloth were thrown about; some cut cleanly, some with jagged tears in them. Gallah stood near the doorway with two crying children in his hands.

“Thank goodness,” Ororo cried as she took her boys from Gallah. “I was terrified that…”

Her words failed her as she looked out across the room. Tears began to fall as she recognized the bodies of seven maids, cut to pieces with expert precision. Gallah’s guards stood around a limbless zombie that began laughing manically when Storm noticed her.

“The maids were already turning when we arrived,” Gallah said, solemnly. “We met Princess Laura here. Together, we saved the children, but we couldn’t save your staff. I’m sorry.”

“Seeing our friends turn is a common enough occurrence for us,” Storm said, her voice tight with grief. She took a moment to breath as she regained her composure. “I thank you for protecting the children.”

The queen hugged her children close. Then she turned to look at the laughing corpse.

“Callisto!” she cried. “How did you get in here? There’s no way you could get past our sentries.”

“I didn’t bring myself here,” she said in a cooing, singsong voice. “I’ll tell you who did if you give me a child to eat.”

“She couldn’t have projected the thought that alerted us,” Gallah said. “I’ve scanned her mind, and despite the difficulty of gaining information from a creature that thinks only of depravity, I know who to look for. There’s a powerful psychic here, a woman in a green uniform with a golden bird on the chest. She teleported this one and two others inside the palace.”

“I destroyed the Jean Grey of our universe myself,” Storm said, thoughtfully. “It must be someone from another universe. We’ve seen several, but we’ve killed all that we’ve found.”

“Welshi and I will question the prisoner,” Sasha said as she walked over to the zombie. Welshi raised her tiny arms and roots sprang from the ground, covering the laughing zombie and holding her still.

“Lord Gallah, I ask that you continue to help me find the source of this intrusion,” Storm asked as she patted the crying toddlers in her arms to try and calm them.

“It would be my honor,” Gallah said with a gracious bow. “Joan and her Clefable still search the castle. My soldiers will stay here, to aid and defend Sasha and Welshi.”

“As for you, Lady Trixie,” Storm said, turning to the unicorn and bending down slightly. “Would you mind watching these two? Your guards seem reliable, and I need the children to stay out of danger.”

“I, uh…” Trixie stammered. “Of course I will. The Great and Powerful Trixie will keep them safe and happy. You have my word.”

Trixie bowed as Storm smiled down at her. Then she took the children with her magic and placed them on her back in front of Ragnuk. The young Sableye squealed in delight as he helped the children maintain their balance. Storm paused for a moment, seeming to struggle between uncertainty and trust. Soon, however, the children began to calm as they pet Trixie’s mane. For the first time since coming to this place, Trixie was glad for the way the humans saw her kind. She promised the queen that the children would be fine, and her companions voiced their own vows of protection. With a smile and a word of thanks, Storm and Gallah ran off into the depths of the castle.

“Now Ragnuk has little brothers!”

“Treat them well, Ragnuk,” Trixie said as she led her group into the children’s large bedroom. “These poor foals have seen too much. I dare say we should have their memories altered before all is said and done.”

“Suffering makes warriors strong,” Namsak said as he strutted through the door. “Survive the suffering and it makes you stronger!”

“These two aren’t warriors, they’re children. They don’t need to be strong, they just need to be cared for.”

“Start ‘em early and they’ll get strong,” Buakaw said with a shrug.

Trixie sighed as she set the children down and nuzzled up next to them. They had stopped crying, but she could tell that they still weren’t happy. There was a dark, melancholy look on their faces that was far out of place for a toddler. They babbled a bit, and said what few words they knew. They understood what a pony was, which made Trixie happy. Though they didn’t quite understand what a unicorn was. She began talking to them, and helping them pronunciate their words properly, with Ragnuk chiming in when he thought it appropriate. It was enjoyable, until Buakaw and Namsak began exchanging glances at one another as they monitored the room.

Trixie watched as Namsak nodded while staring to his right and Buakaw followed his gaze. Trixie followed, as well, and was greeted with the sight of a bony hand sticking out from behind the lush, tan couch. A head peaked out, with a torn, yellow bandana covering its face. The window behind them opened slowly, and Trixie turned her head to see a red, multi-armed humanoid spider creature crawling through.

“Too many armor wearers,” the masked zombie said as he snuck out from behind the couch. “Too hard to chew through while remaining discrete.”

“Too hard to add to numbers for invasion,” the Carnage zombie said as it crawled onto the floor. “Work quick, Iron Fist. We turn the soft-skinned ones; then we eat the babies. That’s why we came to this room, afterall.”

“You eat nothing,” Buakaw said as he moved to stand in front of the symbiote.

“Our fire will destroy you, monsters,” Namsak said as he took his stance opposite the Iron Fist zombie.

Trixie wanted to utter words of encouragement, of defiance, but her voice caught in her throat and all she could do was pull the children closer. Then the room erupted into furious movement.

Though slower, Namsak matched Iron Fist blow for blow, the fire of his arms clashing against the chi energy of the zombie. All Trixie saw was a blur of movement as the monsters traded punches and kicks. Behind her, Carnage had transformed his hands into axes and was busy trying to pin Buakaw down. The Blaziken parried axe strikes while dodging the zombie’s gaping maw. Each time Buakaw’s claws made contact, be it a parry or a punch he burned his opponent’s skin. The zombie screamed in frustration, and more arms formed from its bloody, fluid-like flesh, forcing Buakaw to focus his attention in many places at once.

Suddenly, Trixie heard a loud crunching sound and Namsak was sent flying across the room. He crashed into the wall, coughing violently even as he forced himself to his feet to dodge a bite from Iron Fist. The rotter laughed as he lunged for Namsak once more, only to be dodged again more easily than the last time. While Iron Fist had been the faster of the two previously, he was quickly being outmatched as Namsak’s movements seemed to gain speed. Trixie turned her head to see that Buakaw was speeding up, too. With each strike their enemies made, the Blaziken gained momentum. They quickly had the advantage, their foes struggling to defend themselves from the escalating onslaught. Soon the zombies were forced back to back, their skin cracked, blackened and burned.

“Enough,” said a dark, emotionless voice from the doorway. A woman in a green outfit floated through, held aloft by means that Trixie couldn’t readily see. She had a great deal of flesh, for a zombie. The bones of her elbows stuck out of holes in her sleeves, and a chunk was missing from her left cheek, but beyond that she seemed strangely whole. Her body didn’t seem to have succumbed to the deterioration the others had suffered, and Trixie couldn’t help but wonder why.

“I’m well fed,” the woman said as she read the unicorn’s mind. Two orange blazes darted for her before the last syllable was uttered, their fire incinerating the floor beneath them and the ceiling above, only to be stopped a foot from Jean. They hovered in the air, held in place by Jean Grey’s mind as she turned her head to examine them.

“We bite them now!” Carnage said, his voice a little too loud in his eagerness.

“Shut up, you fool,” Jean said, angrily. “You two were losing badly when I arrived. You’d be charred pulp if I hadn’t come when I did. The first bite is mine!”

“No!” Trixie yelled, desperately. She took hold of her friends with her magic, pulling hard to free them from the monster’s hold. They floated to her side as she pulled, but Jean only smiled with grim fascination. Then the Blaziken began moving back toward Jean, and Trixie felt her hold slipping. Hateful images began playing in her mind; things she had never seen, or ever wanted to see. The death of a world as its inhabitants devoured each other, the cruelty of the undead as the plague drove them into space to feast on other civilizations. The scenes made Trixie want to cry and be sick at the same time, but she couldn’t afford to be weak.

She tightened her grip on her friends and pulled harder, determined to save them or die trying. This time, it took a great deal more effort for the unicorn to move Buakaw and Namsak. Slowly, they inched towards her only to be pulled back once more by Jean. The zombie was smiling now, but Trixie could see the strain of concentration in her eyes. She suspected that the zombie’s brain had suffered more in death than the rest of her had, and her psychic powers had been weakened. The tug-of-war continued as the other two zombies watched, a strange fascination on their faces as they weighed their boss’s order against their own hunger. Out of the corner of her eye, Trixie saw Carnage lick his lips as he prepared to leap for Buakaw.

She screamed in fear and tried to pull her friends out of the way with all of her might. A dark shape darted across her vision the instant before the symbiote leapt. Carnage was thrown off course by the sudden attack, his headless body crashing into Jean with bone jarring force. Ragnuk grinned broadly as he walked up behind Trixie, his shadow still returning to him, and a new prize in his grasp.

“Food!” screamed the head of Carnage as it tried to bite Ragnuk’s face. Its teeth passed harmlessly through the Sableye, who stared at his prize with great pride.

“I got a trophy like Mistress Lynn!” he squealed in joy. “Do you think she’ll be impressed if I show her, big sis?”

“I’m sure she will,” Trixie said, trying her best to turn her grimace into a smile. She released the Blaziken as Iron Fist launched himself toward them. They reacted flawlessly, dodging under him before rising together to tear him to pieces with their flaming kicks. Jean threw the body of the headless symbiote off of her, and pulled herself to her feet. She opened her mouth to utter a curse, only to have her head set ablaze by the fists that had suddenly appeared at her temples. Her skull cracked in-between their simultaneous strikes, the sound of it both sickening and satisfying to Trixie’s ears. Buakaw and Namsak tore Jean to shreds as she screamed, then burned the symbiote’s remains with Flamethrowers, for good measure.

“What’s going on in here?” Sasha yelled as she and Welshi ran into the room. Ororo, Laura, Gallah and Joan came up behind them moments later. They looked at the charred bodies on the ground, and at the still intact people in the room as surprise and relief flooded through them.

“It’s alright, now,” Trixie said, still holding the crying children tightly with one hoof. “They’re dead now.”

“Technically, they’re deader,” Buakaw said with a proud grin.

“In the end, they were weak,” Namsak said with a chuckle. “So we turned them into ashes.”

“I got a trophy like Mistress Lynn,” Ragnuk repeated as he held his prize aloft. “I’m gonna name him Tim!”

“I am Carnage you insolent wretch!”

“Shut up, Tim!”

“No, I think we should hear from him,” the king said as he walked past the group at the door. He wore samurai armor, and his claws were unsheathed as he took the severed head from Ragnuk.

“Are there any others?” he growled through clenched teeth. The threat of violence poured off of him in waves, and his breathing was heavy with subdued rage.

“Not now,” Carnage hissed. “My group is all dead. More will come, though. God hates you too much to save you from that.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Gallah said from the doorway. “I can feel it in his repulsive mind.”

“Can I have Tim back, now?” Ragnuk asked.

“You’d better not let him bite you, or anyone else if you’re going to keep him as a trophy.”

“I’m a ghost-type. Spirits can’t be zombies. I’ll sew his mouth shut, though. Promise!”

Logan dropped Carnage into Ragnuk’s waiting claws. Then the king sheathed his claws as he turned to Trixie and the Blaziken that had returned to her sides.

“On behalf of my family, I thank you. I’ve lost four sons to this wretched curse. I don’t think I could take losing my youngest.”

“It’s our honor, your majesty,” Trixie replied as she rose to her feet. Ororo walked over to her and gathered her children, adding her thanks as she did so. “Overpowering that psychic was a bit of a challenge, I’ll admit. Though it was nothing the Great and Powerful Trixie couldn’t handle. Of course, I wasn’t alone.”

She motioned to her friends, who bowed before the king and queen.

“King Logan,” Sasha said, concern still covering her face. “We’ve learned what’s driving the hordes southward so desperately.”

“Oh?” Logan said, raising an eyebrow at the news. “From the one that we captured, right? What did you learn?”

“The enemies of God’s Breath have built two towers in the north, near a place called the Sandia Mountains.”

“Towers?” Joan said, confused. “What towers?”

“According to Callisto’s description, the forces of destruction have recreated the Bell Tower and the Brass Tower,” Welshi said, solemnly. She let the news sink in as Joan and Gallah looked to one another, speechless.

“The armies of Dark Arceus are fighting with the lone zombie city up there, and the zombies are losing,” Sasha continued. “These ones are fleeing for their lives, as strange as that might sound. The… cloning technology their kind had previously used to create food has been destroyed. There is no meat for them up north, and so they come here.”

“We only spoke for a few minutes when you first arrived,” Logan said with a tired sigh. Suddenly, he seemed much older, and much more weary. “If this… Dark Arceus gets a foothold in my lands, what will that mean?”

“We believe Dark Arceus wants a foothold in your world, though for what purpose, we still don’t know. The evil one brings only destruction, however. We fear that, if Dark Arceus succeeds with whatever plans it has, only death and tragedy will follow. All who live on Battleworld will suffer.”

“A storm is building in the north,” Ororo said, her eyes narrowing as she stared out the window. “I feel a massive hurricane building and… pillars of fire disrupting the wind currents?”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Queen Ororo,” Joan said as she followed the woman’s gaze. Trixie looked out the window, as well. She hadn’t been sure where she fit when this whole adventure began, but as her ears heard the faint sounds of birds crying on the wind, she knew where she wanted to be.