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This friggin’ rain is welcome to fuck off at any applicable moment.
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Cyg zipped herself deeper into her windbreaker and sighed, sloshing through puddle after puddle. Hoenn was known for its tropical climate and that, occasionally, meant wet, hurricane-like weather-- but this was ridiculous.
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Like the Hoennian Postal Service, come rain or shine, Cyg was out doing deliveries. Though to her credit she really didn’t think Elisabeth knew crazed, weather-altering cultists were running amok throughout the countryside. And what beautiful countryside it was-- high, rocky cliffs to her left, forests looming up and over, everything sloping away to her right, eventually down to the sea.
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All drains lead to the ocean, kid, she thought glumly as her boots slipped in mud and she had to steady herself.
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Up ahead, an individual dressed in black and blue with red lines imitating Kyogre’s painted on their face stood, hunched against the blustering storm, and Cyg grinned. It was nice to see the cultists also suffering at the hands of their work with the rest of them.
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The cultist saw her and tensed, but she held up her hands.
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“I’ve got a delivery,” she said, slipping her backpack off and round her front, “for, uh. Kai Oger. Wow, that’s a shitty fake name.” It was a small, rectangular box that looked for all the world like an urn-- contained within was a strange cocktail of Shiinotic spores and Mismagius dust that she’d helped Elisabeth cook up. It had strong hallucinogenic powers, and was capable of subjecting the user to strong visions on skin contact, though the preferred method was mixing in a drink or snorting, and, apparently, cultists around the region had been using it to up the power of their rituals.
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The cultist looked down at the box, then up at her, and waved her through.
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She followed, hesitant, approaching the circle of ritualists, nerves spiking. She just wanted to get paid and get out of there-- she tried to hang back as much as she could but found her path was barred by people she hadn’t even seen, materializing out of the rainy gloom.
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“Okay, I’d just like my money now, please,” she said, voice strong despite her squeezing stomach as she rolled a Pokeball in her hand. The leader-- she assumed this woman was the leader, she had the biggest hair and the most paint-- turned to her with a sickly smile and spread her arms wide.
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“Come, children,” she crooned, “let us welcome this nonbeliever into the arms of our Mother!”
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Hands gripped her left arm and she spiked the Pokeball down with a grunt, dodging away from the gripping fingers reaching for her right. Her Cofagrigus popped up between herself and the cultist leader, swallowing the woman in the mouth of her coffin and slamming the lid. Unfortunately, right at that time, the cultists holding Cyg jerked her violently, and the box of hallucinogen spores tumbled from her grasp and hit the ground. The ceramic shattered into a thousand pieces and a cloud of psychotropic dust went poofing up into the air like an eruption of shimmering, purple glimmer, fueled by the stormy winds and flowing in the rush of collecting water into her skidding boottracks and the marks made by the cultists bare feet.
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“Fuck!” Cyg yelled, squeezing her eyes shut and holding her breath, but her last thought was they’re not wearing shoes. Why the fuck aren’t they wearing shoes!?

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Cyg squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to breath as the purple cloud of hallucinogenic spores settled around her, and the cultists directly in contact with her. Rumor had it skin contact was enough to feel effects but she hadn’t been there for that part of the trial and desperately hoped that was false.
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The grip on her arms began to slacken as the cultists-- barefoot, she was realizing, to step in puddles and feel the mud, she guessed-- began to feel the effects of the drug. In proper quantities, with the correct mindset, it did wonders for lucid dreaming and gave the user vibrant visions, which could then be interpreted however the fuck they wanted.
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But this amount spelled more like a massive overdose. Two of the cultists spun off, stepping dizzily and reaching for things that weren’t there; one fell to their knees, gripping their face and screaming; and a fourth simply collapsed, body making a sickly, sucking sound as it hit the mud.
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The Pokemon were no less affected, collection of Poliwhirl, Azumarill, and one Slowbro beginning to cry out, either in horror or fascination.
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The two or three cultists not affected by the spore cloud seemed frozen in space, eyes locked on Cyg’s Cofagrigus, who currently held their leader entrapped within her coffin of doom. Currently being mummified, Cyg hoped, as she felt her skin begin to tingle. Amazing that all the rain wasn’t washing it immediately off her skin.
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She should’ve backed out, then-- cut her losses and run. But, Cyg being Cyg, she didn’t. She still needed to get paid-- doubly so, now, because the product was lost and that ceramic urn wasn’t cheap. So she pressed her lips into a thin line and took shallow breaths as she turned to Muirne, who turned to her at the same time.
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“Spit her out,” she said, tasting something bitter on her tongue. She just had to last a few more seconds--
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--Muirne’s coffin opened and out tumbled the wretched, half-wrapped form of the cultist leader. Her mouth and eyes were bound with paper and she smelled like the grave-- and Cyg had spent enough time on Mt. Pyre to know what that was. And worse, she was screaming, a horrible, muffled sound as she scratched and clawed at her skin, as though something was burning her.
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The shock-stilled cultists broke into motion, one ordering their Poliwhirl to attack Cyg, two more running forward to grab their leader and haul her to safety, though their bare feet sucked deep into the hallucinogenic mire that the rain-churned earth was turning into.
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Cyg lunged forward, tackling the cult leader to the ground and avoiding the water gun by the skin of her teeth. She took the screaming woman to the earth and pressed her face into the psychotropic-littered mud, pinning her writhing, pained body to the ground. Somehow the stink of rot and dirt was made heavier by the rain, along with something that smelled like strawberries that Cyg imagined was the impending hallucinations. Muirne hovered protectively over them, a hexagonal-paneled crafty shield popping up around them.
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“I hope one of you has money,” Cyg growled, kneeing in the mud, fighting off the stars at the edges of her vision, “or this is going to end poorly for all of you.”

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Somewhere in the distant swirling void, the power behind Cygne’s actions is desperately trying to keep their response to below 800 words or less. For their own sake.
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Meanwhile, back in Actionville--
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--she thought, at first, that she was hallucinating. She was giving in to the mind-altering effects of the drug, despite the fact that she was doing her best to fight it.
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Because he haunted every minute, every second of her slumbering mind, and a good portion of her waking one, too.
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There was no way he’d be here, in the middle of fuck off nowhere, jumping in to bail her ass out, again.
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"Ugh, go away, brain-Felix. I don't need this right now!"
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He was just a figment, after all.
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She figured the sudden slacking of the rain and the roar of the wind and sand was a hallucination, too. The mud beneath her feet dried as the ground shifted, spiraling out in small waves, to lift and whirl; encased in a funnel of sand, separating them from the cultist rushing in from all sides.
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One of them, affected by the spore mixture, pitched forward and vomited, before falling, foamy-mouthed, into the mud.
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The Dreepy infestation went off like fireworks, and the world around her began to warp and blister, like she was in a sheet of bubble wrap (in reality, Muirne’s crafty shield), rainbow hued curvature drizzled down her globule like sundae syrup. The fireworks burst into little, pink hearts.
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“Arceus on a cracker,” Cyg snarled, reaching down to pull at the wraps around the cultist leader’s waist, because that’s where wallets went, right?
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Admittedly she was not in her right mind.
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She dug her fingernails into the mummy bandages and they went in far too deep, enough where her fingertips could touch the woman’s hipbone.
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A putrid smell like rotting flesh puffed outwards as the skin sloughed from the leader’s body, peeling away when Cyg jerked the bandages. “God damn it, Muirne,” Cyg panted, voice sounding like she was underwater, rubbing viscous cadaverine on her pants, “did you mummify her money, too?”
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The cultist leader was still screaming in pain, probably from the byproduct of being half-mummified.