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Stormy's fingers latch around the woman's wrist and palm as she helps pull her onto the Rapidash. She offers her a small smile but the warmth is fleeting as the impending sense of doom weighs heavily on her shoulders. She glances over her shoulder when Noelle calls out for Perse, but by the time she pulls her hair and Rapidash's from her field of view, the elite four and her Drifblim have fallen behind and risen above them a considerable distance it seems.[break][break]

But she appears to be safe for the time being, not attracting the hungry attention of the Guzzlord. Instead, that attention remains transfixed on Bailey. [break][break]

Kyle comes up with a plan on the spot and, as they continue to veer away from danger, he orders his Furfrou and Whimsicott to set a trap for the Guzzlord. The woman chews the inside of her lip as she fights to concentrate, to come up with some way of helping. [break][break]

Unless they really were planning on sacrificing the woman to this horrible fate, they needed to make her disappear. They all needed to disappear, pray that the Guzzlord couldn't smell them out. Maybe they should have rolled around in the dead bodies of those Kartana like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie.[break][break]

If only her Rapidash had wings to carry her and Noelle the fuck out of there.[break][break]

But she reaches for a different pokeball anyway, throwing it and revealing a Clefable. The Pokemon blinks at it's unfamiliar and daunting surroundings, but Stormy gestures to the path that the Whimsicott and Furfrou have created.[break][break]

"Help them! Do what they're doing."[break][break]

The Clefable does as she's told, creating a path of SUBSTITUTES that she then COPYCATS with COTTON SPORES. Hopefully, it would be enough.

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They wouldn't be fast enough.[break][break]

Knots refused to unwind as Bailey Cooper bawled her hands into the hide of the Darmanitan; she was squeezing until the blood was displaced from the skin, letting it shine white from the knuckles. “Fuck, Bumbo—” and her mouth was so dry, it made it hard to muster words.[break][break]

Second encounter, and yet she felt more scared than the first. Maybe it was her prior experience that was coming back to haunt her.[break][break]

Or, maybe it was because she was in her pokemon's embrace, and it rang true to the death of her first pokemon—screaming with a broken limb, hand outstretched to catch the remnants of a ghost.[break][break]

She closed her eyes, breathed, and thought of Piggie Smalls and knew that little bastard was living high on the hog. Somehow, that grounding thought worked to clear the static.[break][break]

The furfrous darted across her vision, and she can see the suspended cotton that took to the air. “Flare Blitz. Jump on my mark with everything you fucking got,” and her brain finally overcame the panic, latching madly onto the onset of adrenaline with a ready hand.[break][break]

As the explosions sounded, the darmanitan would unleash his raw strength—a dust cloud remaining where he once was , breaking free from the ground to gain height just above the treeline—fire bursting from an open hand, just to add propulsion to the pokemon's wild leap.[break][break]

With one hand, Bailey would withdraw the fire-type. With the other, she would deploy her Togekiss.[break][break]

Gravity would take its hold, and what was once a rapid ascend would certainly lead to a downfall. Her hand would seek the unconcious man's body, snagging him by the collar just as her fairy-type would swoop in to grasp her.[break][break]

“Extreme Speed.”[break][break]

And the air seemed to scream as Bailey Cooper found herself functioning as a tether. Her head had been jerked from the sudden whiplash of explosive speed, but it might just be enough to gain distance.[break][break]

tldr: darmanitan uses flare blitz to spring into the air. Is withdrawn and exchanged for togekiss, who uses extreme speed. bailey is holding onto kingsley.

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[attr="class","mareep-post"]
her name catches persephone off-guard like a leash pulling her to a sudden stop. she tightens her grip on the drifblim - a command requesting that it slow its advance. unable to identify direction nor speaker, persephone thinks she's imagining things, maybe willing the voice into existence. [break][break]

below her, her companions leave clamour in their flight from the guzzlord, though their retreat is concealed from direct sight by foliage and undergrowth. for a moment, persephone bites her lip and contemplates following them at a slight distance, hopefully kept safe by their comparatively unassuming presence. [break][break]

a rustling from the location where she thought she heard human speech redirects her attention, and persephone narrows her eyes in a bid to discern any movement. tugging gently at her drifblim's arm, she directs the pokemon to descend so that she could investigate further. [break][break]

"who's there?" she ventures the question hardly expecting an answer. already her eyes were trained back on the guzzlord as it raced ahead, ready to initiate evasive maneuvers if required. [break][break]


» perse kinda hangs back to scan for where the speaker is[break]
» will try to fly high up into the air if the guzzlord nears them


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There are still things unseen: the lonely sea, the sky

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[break][break]
None of them outright abandon their comrade in order to escape and their reward is a glimmer of success. Team work compounds on the efforts of many and the Guzzlord finds an obstacle too steep for it to brute force. [break][break]

kyle lopez's assortment of SUBSTITUTES manage to encumber the beast with a momento of COTTON SPORE. His best friend, Stormy Silph, copies his plan and imitates him to a tee. Her progress is meager in comparison since her Clefable cannot hope to maintain the same output as the combined efforts of Kyle's two Pokemon, but her contribution has a visible effect as the COTTON SPORES latch onto the Guzzlord's legs. However, the slow is abysmal; enough for Bailey to remain out of its clutches and gain some ground but not anywhere close to evading the beast from continuing its pursuit. [break][break]

It is Noelle Lane who puts an definitive halt to the Guzzlord. The notched arrow of her Decidueye radiates with a sinister aura long before it fires. Upon release, the arrow pierces straight through the Guzzlord's flesh, incorporeal, until it lands on the floor and tethers the beast to its shadow. The power of the SPIRIT SHACKLE does little damage to the Pokemon itself but the secondary effect is enough to reel it back in. This becomes noticeable when the Pokeon struggles to continue forward, tugging in an eternal struggle to rip itself free and devour its prey. [break][break]

They buy Bailey a window to break pace and take to the skies. Her FLARE BLITZ vaults her well beyond what would have been possible back on earth. Perhaps it stems from her Darmanitan's desire to live, but the end result is an impressive distance that gives her ample time to return it, bring out her Togekiss, and still soar upwards before gravity starts to take hold. The EXTREME SPEED afterwards marks an amazing getaway that's well hidden behind the smokescreen of dust from her previous attack. A remarkable job by all accounts. [break][break]

But Ultra Beast do not accept defeat. The tenacity of the Guzzlord that had attacked Mossdeep would prove a prime example of how undeterred these Pokemon are from standard methods. The further the EXTREME SPEED takes her away the less the Guzzlord is willing to struggle. Eventually, the Pokemon would be able to break free from the effects of the SPIRIT SHACKLE but that would mean potentially losing its prey. So it addresses its concern with the only way it knows how.[break][break]

As if able to track Bailey's whereabouts, the Pokemon opens its large maw and anticipates her current position and where she'll be if she continues to travel at its current speed. The netherworld of the Pokemon's innards flash brilliantly several times before cracking with the sound of thunder. The heat of the HYPER BEAM expands into the air around it, creating a low pressure vacuum which exacerbates the sound into something louder than the Guzzlord itself. [break][break][break]


[break][break]

The HYPER BEAM trumps the one from Mossdeep. The Guzzlord may be smaller but there are less limitations in Ultra Space. The impact of the power is a beam wide enough to vaporize League Headquarters in one fell swoop. It blots out the sky in a show fit for the heavens, blessing those in a blinding display before the energy fizzles out and the world returns to something other than bright yellow. [break][break]

Kyle's Pokemon continue down the trail and avoid being directly blinded by the attack. They snake between the trees and lead them deeper into the forest where vines and foliage serve as hurdle to overcome in their never-ending sprint. Eventually, the smell tapers off into the desert which finally takes a linear path deep into the sand dunes. They're still a distance off before the forest clears out but once they exit they can see a horizon that promises nothing but sand. Sandstone ruins jot out into the skyline but they're carved out to be for something much larger than humans. The scent leads to the largest of them all. [break][break][break]


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"Perse?" [break][break]

The question is more inward, as if in self reflection. It isn't until Persephone calls out for a response that it answers with something other than her name. An unfamiliar white head sticks out from treetops and stares at her in muted curiosity. "A phony?" It takes a moment to register before the Ultra Beast lights up with a look of acceptance and excitement. Both antennas vibrate, releasing a mild hiss that resembles a harmless BUG BUZZ. [break][break][break]


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Her strength would be distance. Her strength would be height.[break][break]

Flight at such speeds came with its disadvantages—it was hard to breathe in the vacuum that the extreme speed created, and it became even harder as Togekiss breached at a subtle angle upward, driving thin air thinner with each adjustment of this incline. Bailey had been told that inexperienced trainers would pass out from this strain—that the collective force acting upon the body could displace the flow of blood and leave pilots slumped against the very pokemon that helped them achieve such speeds.[break][break]

But, she had been training for this.[break][break]

Extreme Speed was followed by extreme speed, pushing the fairy to her very brink as power exhausted itself from Tink's marshmallow like body—but it had to be done. Adrenaline burned with its impossible high, letting both trainer and pokemon become in-tuned with one another. Each breath, each wing-beat, until their senses sharpened in sync.[break][break]

That could only happen from years of experience—a lifetime spent working with one another had collected into this—twenty years would not be broken by what was going to come next.[break][break]

Memories of Mossdeep may have left her frozen when the Guzzlord had made its appearance, but it would be that same memory that had told her to take to the skies.[break][break]

Extreme Speed continued to build its momentum, creating more distance, as she could see the star of condensed, unbelievable light gather from the Ultra Beast—at this distance, the creature looked more like a black drop of ink against the canvas of never-ending trees in this foreign, unfamiliar landscape. [break][break]

“Tink! Get ready!”[break][break]

Because it felt like this one would be bigger than all of its predecessors; her hands trembling as she felt her fairy's claws dig deep into the flesh to keep her from slipping.[break][break]

Extreme Speed came to its end, letting the fairy type pokemon gently glide as velocity was rapidly lost. When that happened, Bailey Cooper could breathe—she could hear the sizzle of the air, the unspeakable friction, like the smell of rain before lightning would strike.[break][break]

There was something called the motion parallax—a term that had seemed complicated to Bailey, but existed to describe a phenomena that people were all aware of.[break][break]

It was a funny name for a very simple concept.[break][break]

When you were in the backseat of a car, watching the horizon as it passed at rapid speed, objects in the distance would drag slower than those that were up close—when a plane would fly high in the sky from the Slateport airport, it would always seem to drag so slow that it could be followed with a finger.[break][break]

Because of how far away it was, the eyes would play tricks in its suggestion as to where that object was.[break][break]

She was the airplane. She was the mountain in the horizon.[break][break]

Tink built distance not to run away, but to prepare herself for what would come next.[break][break]

Because it would be impossible to avoid an attack of such scale up close, Bailey had replayed the events of Mossdeep to ponder how she could avoid them. If an event like this were to arise again, what could be done to make it different?[break][break]

What could she weaponize?[break][break]

And that answer dawned on her with its simplicity.[break][break]

She was small—so very small against the endless sky that stretched beyond her.[break][break]

Nothing but a speck of white, moving at impossible speeds. It'd be like shooting a gun at a flea. You could point in its direction, but what were your chances of actually hitting it?[break][break]

Could a creature like an Ultra Beast aim accurately, even if the scale of the attack was at such a massive scale?[break][break]

She remembered the battle with the first Guzzlord—how it struggled to navigate without bulldozing in a straight line. The creature's cumbersome anatomy would work in her favor.[break][break]

Because as the beam began to materialize, as the hairs on the back of her neck rose in recognition, she knew that the creature would not be able to easily adjust its aim. It was limited by the range of its head—up or down. Extreme shifts to the left or right would be hard to account for.[break][break]

If it wanted accuracy, it should have used the little heads upon its hands.[break][break]

“FUCK! YOU!” She screamed in the face of an impossible attack, with every fiber of her being knowing that she had the chance to dodge it.[break][break]

Just a chance.[break][break]

Extreme Speed was executed one more time, and it would drag Bailey in a drastic direction. To the left of the beam, at a sudden and sharp snap, pokemon and trainer would move at such speeds with the hopes of escaping the radius of the attack.[break][break]

Distance gave time to reach the right speeds. Height gave time to react[break][break].

At such speeds, she felt her stomach flip, and wondered if all that effort had bought them enough time.[break][break]

tldr: distance makes bailey cooper a tiny target. togekiss uses extreme speed to capitalize on that distance in an attempt to avoid the attack, moving to the extreme left.

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she stares at the head when it emerges and has to fight every muscle in a bid to not recoil and flee in a bid to seek cover in the undergrowth again. the drifblim remains stoic and still above her, and persephone opts to borrow its resolve. [break][break]

even if the small ones they encountered moments ago curled like paper to flame, this is still a beast and it needs to be treated like one. [break][break]

persephone is acutely aware that the thundering steps of the guzzlord are retreating, along with her friends and colleagues, but coming face to face with this beast - no matter how unassuming - feels like she's in a different type of trap. it's as though any movement or action would have an unpredictable reaction. [break][break]

"persephone," she repeats slowly, using the same intonation as the beast. then she adds, gingerly, "hello?" [break][break]

she's thinking about running - gaze breaking eye contact with the beast to study the branches and distances between her and the ground, her and the group. how far can she drop, knowing that the ghost-type can reappear in an instant from the shadows to catch her? [break][break]


» says hi to the UB! kinda awkward about it[break]
» thinks about making a break for it


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There are still things unseen: the lonely sea, the sky

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Sometime along the way, Clefable has turned back to run back to Stormy. It falls into step, bouncing behind the crew as they continue to run. It seems they're following a path, but honestly, Stormy is just following Kyle's lead. Out here she's a fish out of water. [break][break]

The woman glances over her shoulder to the woman behind her. Her own expression is pinched with fear but she forces a smile, forces her shoulders to relax even a little bit. Fear could be a motivator, but it could also be her demise.[break][break]

It occurs to her then, however, that there's a party member missing outside of Bailey. Stormy glances about in confusion, brows furrowing with growing concern.[break][break]

"Where did Perse go?"[break][break]

The woman's Galarian Rapidash exhales sharply as if in an answer of equal confusion. [break][break]

Kyle's Toucannon opts to attack the Guzzlord, and Stormy chews the inside of her lip a moment before ordering her Clefable a similar task. [break][break]

"Moonblast, Clefable. Please."[break][break]

Somehow, somewhere, the Clefable conjures some sort of fairy power, pulling strength from whatever moon there might be in this empty void. She sends the MOONBLAST careening toward the Guzzlord in the hope that it might help distract the Guzzlord or drive it away.

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Her strength is many things but most importantly her strength is her own. [break][break]

Bailey Cooper had heard correctly about applying that much force out of her Pokemon. Without proper training or adjustments, she would've been plastered against her Pokemon like a bad night as Rascals. Once her consciousness fades, her speed will steal her from her mount, dragging her to an untimely doom. Fortunately, she's able to hang on with tooth and nail, white knuckles flexing underneath stretched skin. [break][break]

The same cannot be said for her cargo. Bailey's harness is her grip. Holding onto Kingsley proves impossible when his arms and legs flail against their increasing acceleration. Eventually he slips out of her grip. His body becomes like paper, hurtling backwards in a descent that last way too long. [break][break]

Until the HYPER BEAM evaporates him. [break][break][break]


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There should be nothing left once the attack subsides. Yet a green cocoon plummet in his place. Numerous cell shaped membranes conjoin into a single structure shell. The polygons crack due to the attack's magnitude but they last until he hits the ground. It completely shatters upon impact, kicking up enough dust that makes it impossible to tell what remains of Kingsley's body. [break][break][break]

[break][break]


By now, the Guzzlord manages to break free from the SPIRIT SHACKLE. The Ultra Beast continues to power through everything they throw at it, expunging the arrow like an aborted fetus. The attacks that follow do little to dissuade it. The BEAK BLAST and MOON BLAST land a clean hit but it's impossible to tell how much damage they truly do. Not when the Guzzlord rampages with impunity. The only deviation to its behavior is what it no longer chases after Bailey. Instead, it continues to pursue where Kingsley landed. [break][break]

Without assistance, Kingsley becomes prey for the near unstoppable Ultra Beast. It SWALLOWS him whole by sucking up everything within its vicinity, chomping down until it meets resistance. Several rows of teeth grind like chainsaws but another green barrier is erected from Kingsley's body. It only lasts for a moment before it gives way. The sound of ripped flesh rumbles between the walls of the Pokemon's open jaws and blood splatters everywhere. Feasting only takes a few seconds and the Guzzlord thanks the tiny morsel with a satisfied BELCH. [break][break]

The theory that a smaller target makes an attack harder to land has some merit. Despite being ripped apart, the Zygarde cell manages to escape in one piece. The fist sized organism is launched by the Guzzlord's BELCH right onto the heiny of Stormy Silph's Galarian Rapidash. The equine neighs at the sudden slap, rearing up as both passengers buckle underneath the sudden shift. In the mix up the Zygarde cell launches itself to Stormy in a bid to find a new host. [break][break]

It slips in through her ear but never makes it past her ear drum. The moment it tries to penetrate her skin her body reacts in accordance with her current host. Her bond with Moltres punishes the offender with a sharp burn, forcing it to eject and look elsewhere. [break][break]

Noelle Lane is the only other choice. It tunnels on an entry point before sharpening its tail to pierce clothes and skin alike. This time it won't fail and launches itself at her navel. [break][break][break]


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The feeling will be nauseous at first. Her stomach will collapse with the feeling of something worming inside, readjusting in an attempt to assimilate. It's the same sensation That Kazimir Wynter suffered through in Mossdeep but Noelle has less room to work with. The cell has to share room with something else — something unneeded? The moment it realizes that the extra organ doesn't belong to the host it apprehends it, using it as both a bonding agent and source of power. Kazimir may have had to collect the power of additional cells before realizing Zygarde's power but Noelle may be able to access it by stunting the growth of her own cells. [break][break]
For the moment, the Guzzlord doesn't realize that its true target has escaped. The party has a small period of time to escape before the Ultra Beast detects the foreign Legendaries. This time, it'll sense both Moltres and Zygarde. [break][break]

kyle lopez's Pokemon reach where the forest meets the desert. The expansive environment comes with a sudden change in climate, dry heat permeating from the unnatural sun above. Surprisingly, the sun is accompanied by a moon as well, evident by the fact that the smaller orb doesn't give off the same amount of light. It sits there, observing them, as the desert leads them deep into the sandstone ruins. [break][break]

Bailey, who broke off from the rest of the party, finds that distance puts her at the head of the pack. Her bird's eye view allows her to find that the sandstone ruins are littered with small holes. They seem reminiscent of a Durant hill but magnified for something three times the size of an average human. She can't distinguish anything from her height but it's obvious that nothing it within view. If there is anything within the ruins they're much deeper than surface level. [break][break][break]


[break][break]

Ultra Beast are an unknown phenomenon. No one understands them. They bring havoc wherever they go. Should they even be considered Pokemon? If it wasn't for the fact that Barcelona was captured, you could make a real case that they shouldn't. But there's still a lot to learn about them and their various behaviors. [break][break]

Persephone's answer is met with a shake of the Ultra Beast's head. It dismisses her words because they make no sense. "Perse," it repeats, as if correcting her. The Pokemon tosses its heads backwards, running a hand through its scaled hair. "A-phoney!" It ends with what seems to be a hair flip and the scales glisten at the gesture. [break][break]

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