“Hello everyone, and thank you for coming,” the young, willowy girl said. She stood at the entrance to the Lilycove excavation site, a pair of scissors in one hand and a length of ribbon dangling from the other.

She was the last person qualified to be giving an opening speech, but she’d taken it upon herself to add a little ceremony to this historic endeavor. “I’d like to, of course, thank everyone participating. Misters Soup, Billi and Shimizu - this could never have come to fruition without your cooperation.” Her eyes gleamed, hiding some secret mischief. “I’d also like to thank our marvelous sponsor, the AdvenTours! What a blessing, truly, to be given this opportunity.”

She pretended to curtesy, then straightened up again. A hundred feet behind her or so was a yellow-eyed Claydol, levitating mutely in front of a sheer rock wall. Chryssa snapped her fingers, then smiled brightly at her companions.

“If I may have the honor: I’d like to set this marvelous excavation off with a bang.”

She snipped the ribbon. The Claydol detonated behind her.

Involuntarily, Chryssa cried out when the surging wave was reduced to a sheet of ice, one hand thrown up to shield her face. She lowered it and immediately seized the rail as the boat turned, Priam driving them beyond the ice and closer to the Creature.

Her stomach lurched. Funny. I didn’t think motion sickness would be a problem on this mission. She turned her head to look back behind them. What had that Ice Beam been before? Had it been Ness, or had it been the Creature?

Speaking of which, she didn’t see the researcher’s Corsola. Oh, well. It was bound to happen. Last she’d seen, Ness had been playing with it in the water. Had the Lapras taken it down to the depths with him?

Chryssa shivered. The warm, balmy ocean had taken on a strange chill, and not just from the dual sheets of ice now floating behind them. She checked the GPS and blinked in surprise. The dark core seemed to have spread, and a multitude of tendrils were branching out from its center. “Something’s happening,” she murmured, then louder, “I think it’s coming to the surface—”

The waves shuddered, then bristled suddenly with what Chryssa could only describe as spines. Moving on thick, jagged branches, they broke the surface of the water like the tentacles of some enormous monster, blindly grasping for its prey.

The strangest part was that they were translucent— like it wasn’t quite there. They looked like they were made of mist, risen and given sentience from the depths. And worse, the boat would soon be surrounded.

^{corsola conservation | priam conrad}

Chryssa wasn’t sure what qualified one to get a boating license, but at least Priam had enthusiasm. She’d been hoping to stand at the prow, laughing victoriously as they sped towards danger, but the ride was so bumpy she’d been forced to stay in the back of the boat near the motor instead. There was no way her legs could take that much stress.

Ness kept pace with the boat as it drove, long neck outstretched. He opened his beak in a wide grin as he made eye contact with her, then dipped it again to scoop up the researcher’s Corsola by one horn. It squeaked, stumpy legs wriggling, as Ness swished it around it in the water before tossing it playfully at Priam’s Samurott like a game of water polo. Oh, well. I’m sure it’s fine.

Chryssa looked away, squeezing her watering eyes half-shut as the boat skipped across the water like a stone. The balmy ocean air suddenly seemed stinging, and her cheeks were turning rosy from the cold. The book she’d been reading earlier slid off the seat beside her. She made a halfhearted grab for it, but movement on-screen of the GPS caught her attention instead.

“It’s changed course towards us, ten o’clock!” She pointed ahead and to the left, wind whipping at her hair. “ONWARD, BRAVE PRIAM! Ness, dive down and see if you can flush it out. I wish to see this fiendish creature with mine own eyes!” The Lapras’ blue head dipped and the creature submerged, disappearing down below. On the GPS, Chryssa watched him swimming towards the dark, amorphous shape.

A moment later, a flash of blue light lanced from beneath the water. Ice Beam? Chryssa had time to think before the waves surged and a long, crackling sheet of ice broke the surface like a hidden iceberg, sending a wave of water rolling towards them.

^{corsola conservation | priam conrad}

Chryssa sat demurely in one of the waiting chairs, hands folded delicately in her lap. In front of her, a heavyset, mildly sick-looking Slowbro with a spiked shell affixed to one hand was waiting on its stumpy haunches to be examined.

“In elementary school, they taught us that Poison was weak to Psychic,” the teen said casually to whoever was next to her, wrapping a strand of long brown hair around one finger. “We had a little rhyme: poison worsens over time, but it’s no match for strength of mind. It’s cute, isn’t it?”

Her fingers curled around the head of her cane, toying with the tassel as her turn finally came. “This creature is only able to survive Shellder’s toxins in the first place because of its Psychic resistance, right?” Galarian Slowpoke was reportedly psychic-type rather than water-type. It made Chryssa wonder, fiendishly, what happened to normal Slowpoke who suffered the misfortune to be bitten somewhere besides their tail. “A lucky combination.”

She settled back again with a distant smile, letting the professor examine the creature. She was even more interested in the Galarian Slowking she thought she’d seen another volunteer bringing in, which seemed to have gone one step further and taken on an almost parasitic relationship. Even strength of mind can’t keep the poison away forever…

^{pokejob | poison/psychic}

The lights dimmed, but for the next contestant, they did not turn back on. Not even when her name was announced, not even when an insectoid shape could be faintly seen crossing the hall and taking its place in the center of the glassy stage, round and dark as a moonless pond.

And then a ripple passed across it. A ring of darkness, traced imperceptibly fast by a spinning claw. Then again. The NIGHT SLASH traveled out to the edges of the stage, washing and winking away the last vestiges of light, until the hall was completely dark.

Chryssa’s whisper, amplified, resonated from the speakers. “By day golden, by dusk gray. What is autumn, but the dying breath of summer?”

The air seemed to grow cooler. Perhaps it was the absence of light. Perhaps it was the girl’s wispy, reverent tone, as soft as secrets.

“Listen. Look with your ears.”

A hush fell. At first, there seemed to be nothing. If one didn’t listen, fixated on visual beauty, they would only see a faint, mirage-like shimmer from the center of the stage.

But then a single note would seem to drift by, almost imperceptibly, and from it hummed the unmistakable sounds of cricketsong.

All across the audience, the phenomenon continued as scraps, wisps of sound played and then dissipated, sang and then faded, from every direction. Despite there being only one Kricketune playing in the darkness, for a few moments the tapestry of SING made it seem as though hundreds filled the Contest Hall. Their voices rang out like bells, and were swiftly silenced.

Because the power of SING was so diffused, its effect, too, was reduced. The show of sound was like a memory, a dreamlike trance— a lament to the end of sunny days, and foreshadowing to winter.

As the crowd was at its most transfixed, the lights began to fade back to life and the audience was momentarily surprised by the sheer number of visible, paper-thin red and orange notes hovering among them, drifting like dead leaves. They streamed from the center of the stage, where Laina the Kricketune was cloaked in a dome of PROTECT, muffling her audial performance. With the tips of her claws, she had poked small holes in the translucent shield, allowing a controlled number of bell cricket calls to escape in all directions.

As the notes faded, so did the lament, until only the Kricketune was left on stage, a last, lonely chirrrrp dying in the hollow bell of her body.

And then, quiet.

QIr65M3O

She had come not so much to assist as to investigate, to search the ruins of what had been Meteor Falls for signs of any truth to her visions. It was hard to recall specific details of what she’d seen happen here—and harder yet to see anything at all through the destruction.

In any case, reconstruction efforts by the local building team had caused quite a stir, and Chryssa found herself drawn like a Carvanha to blood when the beams of psychic energy began going off from the half-exposed caves within the mountain.

Floating on her Probopass, legs arranged delicately over the top of its cap, Chryssa reached the site in time to see a swarm of panicked, crudely-shaped creatures fleeing one of the still-smoking openings. The sight was phenomenal— alien and unnerving, it send shivers of delight down the girl’s spine.

They were levitating by some psychic power, but so many were emerging that they threatened to collapse one newly-constructed tunnel. ”Oho, what's this?” Chryssa called wickedly, triumphantly. ”Arran, use Gravity—Fall, creatures of the earth! Back to the clay which birthed you!”

The Probopass’s red cap shuddered down over its eyes as if the girl had pressed a switch. There was a hum of energy and the Claydol in the tunnel sank to the ground as if borne down by a tremendous weight, stacking up like dominoes as they jostled and struggled against one another. More piled up in the tunnel beyond. Still astride her mustached steed, Chryssa counted them with her little finger, posed as if thinking carefully. She was clearly enjoying herself.

”Eenie, meenie, miney mo...”

She tossed the ball like a grenade into the swarm. Regrettably, none of them exploded. Too bad. I was hoping for a dramatic exit.

DPo4JdW4

“Just the one,” Chryssa answered with a sunny smile, waiting for the dependable-looking Samurott to join the “bait” Corsola in the water. She aimed her own capsule carefully at the ocean and released Ness. The Lapras formed already half-submerged and the boat rocked slightly at the sudden displacement of water, causing Chryssa to teeter slightly into Priam. Her smile disappeared for a moment before she righted herself. ”Ah, my apologies,” she said, easing herself back into one of the padded seats on the boat. ”I must not have my sea legs yet… so they say.”

There was a sharp twinge of pain in Chryssa’s legs, but the girl ignored it. She would not show weakness here, at the peak of their mission. Things were just about to start getting good.

The smart thing to do would be to split up - send the Pokemon off as a fortified diversion, while the humans finished escorting the Corsola colony to their breeding grounds. I can’t exactly let a mystery like this go unsolved, though, can I? She wanted to see more than a shadowy blob on a GPS screen.

“Mr. Researcher,” she said clearly, not caring to know his actual name, “I think you’re capable of handling the Corsola school from here, aren’t you?” The man sputtered something half heartedly and Chryssa went on sunnily as if he hadn’t spoken, ”Mr. Priam and I will be carrying on ahead. Fear not, we’ll return your Corsola in one piece. For now… the danger in the deep calls!”

The man returned to his speedboat and slowly motored off, leaving the two of them and their water Pokemon bobbing in his wake. ”Let’s get moving. Where’s the... thing?” Chryssa asked Priam, who still had the GPS. ”More importantly, what should we call it? The Creature? The Beast?” This was what was really on her mind. ”I suppose The Monster is overambitious...”

Well, she’d had enough of waiting. From her seat on the back of the boat, she pulled the throttle and heard the motor roar to life, chugging water. She had no fear the Pokemon could keep up. ”One last question: who’s driving?”

^{corsola conservation | priam conrad}

She did not see the Shuppet again. It was no surprise-- the ghost could surely pass through mirrors as easily as walls, after all, and it had already done its job by leading her here.

She was being led, Chryssa was sure of it. Ahead of her, the Purrloin trotted with its tail held high, unperturbed by the images that danced and refracted away from it. The fur was an unusual color, Chryssa noted-- she hadn't been able to tell in the dark earlier, but here it was hard to ignore. The creature she'd caught was not violet, but a soft, denim blue.

"I wouldn't go too far ahead," she said out loud, and saw an ear twitch back at her. Leaning on her cane, the tip of the sword clicking on the mirrored flooring as she walked, Chryssa caught up with the feline Pokemon. "This may be a maze. Funhouses often are." Darkness, mirrors-- all tools to make one question their own senses. But where did this one lead?

The common strategy was to choose a direction and stick to it, but Chryssa was more creative. If you can't trust your eyes, trust your other senses instead. She trailed her fingers over the glass, her own pale face looking back at her as she passed through panels that stretched her forehead impossibly wide or squashed her features close together.

It would have been easy to miss the small, shoulder-width gap between two mirrors, but Chryssa's prying fingers found it. "Here we are," the girl said lightheartedly, and slipped through the gap. She popped her head back out after a moment to see the Purrloin looking around, startled. "Come along, Cam," she called, and retreated back inside.

A haunting, reverberating hum had begun from somewhere inside the labyrinth, and so Chryssa followed her ears. At this, Cam was much better than she was, and eventually the pair arrived at the middle of the maze where the spectral moaning was coming from. There, like an egg nestled in a nest of broken silver glass, was a bleached, thorny creature Chryssa just barely recognized as a Corsola.

"We're feeling very woeful, aren't we?" she remarked out loud once it seemed like the creature wouldn't be a threat. Cam stood on her hind paws at the ready, tensed for an attack. The ghostly coral didn't move and Chryssa prodded it tentatively with the tip of her cane. The jolt of cold, spiritual energy that lanced up her arm was remarkably like unsheathing Murdock, and she recoiled from the creature instinctively. 

Wiping her hand on the side of her dress as if to remove the feeling, shaken, Chryssa tried to make her tone lighthearted. "I might know someone who can help you, I suppose." She withdrew a Safari Ball. Her heart was still pounding from the experience-- fear, and fascination. She had to have it. For the same reason she carried the Honedge, the ghost-type called to her. 

She tossed the ball, and the strange Corsola disappeared inside.

No sooner had she collected the capsule and rejoined Cam then she heard the buzzer-- her time in the haunted mansion was up. Chryssa sighed wistfully, regretting her experience ending so soon-- but that was why it was a paid service, after all. And it had been satisfying enough. Who knows, perhaps I'll come back again next Halloween.

She looked down at the ball in her hand. Her fingers tightened. Until then, I think I'll still have my fill of near-death experiences. 

Characters: chryssa glasgow[break]
Request: gachapon roll (reward from historia round 3) if possible! [break]
Thread: pkmn-hoenn.boards.net/thread/11228/chryssa-gachapon [break]
Moderator: staff completes this field