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Rhys jerked at Yumi's shriek, and what should have been another methodical curl of metal from the blackened corpse turns into a grotesque squeal as the scalpel swung inexpertly over the body. "Would you hush?" Rhys hissed irritably, carefully sealing the samples and stuffing them into his satchel with a growl.
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"Yeah, and they suck," he affirmed, "And I still have no idea what happened here. Zombies was one thing, but people turning into metal sculptures? How is that even related?" He stood, throwing his hands up in exasperation with the laws of this place. "You can't have two surreal mysteries happening at once, that doesn't even make sense in books!"
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His tirade was cut short as something stirred in the alleyway, and he froze. A humanoid shape shuffled from the deepest shadows, and he reacted instinctively, ordering Jude forward with a gesture. He wasn't about to be caught on the back foot in this forsaken city again.
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The Toxtricity jogged forward, an OVERDRIVE rippling through the air as waves of electricity coursed toward the shape. It ducked the attack crazily, in a contortion few humans could have pulled off, and then its...head detached. The spherical orb launched skyward, bursting in a beautiful display of colorful fireworks.
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Gaping, Rhys tore his attention from the fireworks back to their originator, only to find that another head was inflating itself in the space above its shoulders. Prancing about, the colorful thing - was it even a pokemon? - twirled past Jude as though the lizardlike pokemon didn't even exist, and launched its head again, preceding another pop of fireworks.
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"Shit," Rhys cursed, ordering Jude to deliver a POISON JAB that the Blacephalon evaded as easily as the first attack, countering with another firework overhead. "Get it," he pled toward Yumi, "It's gonna-"
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But his warning came too late, as more shapes began to shuffle out of the nooks and crannies at the edge of the ruins, blackened and deformed Megalopolans that lurched toward Rhys, Yumi, and their pokemon with mindless singularity. Spotting these new arrivals, the Blacephalon offered a wordless, cheery wave to the nearest before bounding off on one foot, a final fireworks display its parting gift.
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Rhys whirled, taking Yumi's hand and pulling her toward a crumbling section of street that seemed the only passage not currently hosting a hostile threat. "Go, go, go, go," he chanted, the air behind them thrumming with another Overdrive as Jude attempted to cover their escape, to what sounded like no avail whatsoever.

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Rhys drew up behind Yumi cautiously, peering down at the corpses with - it had to be said - more interest than revulsion. "Well, they don't look like robots, that's for sure." he commented. He gave the nearest body an experimental prod with his toe, and when the shape did not immediately lurch upward to slay him for his insolence, he crouched down to examine it more closely.
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"It's not armor, I think, but the way they're dressed makes me think they weren't always like this." He reached out to tug the deteriorated shirt free of the specimen he currently examined, and it came away with scarcely any resistance at all, revealing a smooth, unblemished expanse of black metal. He poked at it experimentally, which offered no scientific insight other than the notion that it was, in fact, metal, and that metal was more or less intractable to a human finger.
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Rhys glanced up to Yumi and jerked his head to the side, indicating the nearby alleyway that loomed at the edge of the ruins. "I'm going to see if I can get a sample, would you keep an eye out with Jude for any uninvited guests?" He dug into his satchel as his Toxtricity gave an affirmative growl, moving to stand next to Yumi with an easy grin.
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Rhys withdrew a small file with a triumphant smirk, moving to the fallen being's arm and setting to work, small flakes of metal dropping away as he dug for more substantial leaves and filings. "Oh, right," he commented without looking up from his task, "They're zombies. Please advise if you see zombies. Not kidding."

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Rhys ducked as soon as he saw the eyepatch, and couldn't say one way or the other whether the sudden, inexorable wash of exhaustion that hit him was the result of a potential concussion or the fact he'd run into this asshole yet again. He was a doctor, not a fighter, and he'd thought a knife and a couple of canny pokemon on the other's repertoire were quite difficult enough to deal with. Now he had bombs?
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As Tavish and his Farfetch'd approached, Rhys gave a mental curse, his hand instinctively going to his hip for a satchel that...wasn't there. White-hot fear darted through him as he glanced to the backseat and saw the bundle lying on the floorboard. Great. Die now or die later, he thought bitterly.
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One was as good as the other, so he stretched his arm around the front passenger seat slowly and quietly, grasping and flexing his fingers until he caught the strap of his satchel. Seizing it, he jerked it back and tore open the flap, digging until he produced a miniaturized Ultra Ball.
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By the time Sir waddled to the window and made his way through it, he'd encounter a faint flash of pink energy and the whiff of displaced air, barely disturbed in the nick of time. Rhys and his Alakazam reappeared from the TELEPORT at the road proper, overlooking the wreckage of the car and Tavish himself, next to the open trunk.
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"Get him, Perry," Rhys growled, haggard and wounded from the encounter yet managing - so far - to hold himself up on his own two feet. He held out his Tera Orb, and a wave of shimmering energy engulfed the Alakazam, who emerged from it dotted in brightly-glowing pink crystalline growths.
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The pokemon hovered forward onto the embankment, and with a raise of his spoons, unleashed a PSYCHIC assault on the vehicle itself, waves of force distorting the air around it with no thought of man or bird being caught in its radius.

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Rhys braced himself as he passed through the wormhole. To say he was nervous would be inaccurate, but he couldn't help thinking of his last foray here with Marianne Lovelace - they'd escaped, but only barely, and in his case not without injury.
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Still, with Jude at his side and Yumi Hasegawa along for the expedition, he was decidedly more prepared than his first, naive journey into this bleak metropolis. More mature, certainly, though not by his choosing - he couldn't remove the abiding sense of loss he felt knowing he'd essentially lived half his life again without experiencing any of it, thanks to the distortion at the Giant Chasm, but moping about it wasn't something he could entertain when headed into a den of monsters.
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As ready as he was for what to expect, he still blinked at the location the wormhole spat him out at. Instead of a complete - abandoned, worn, rugged, but complete - cityscape, the quadrant he found himself in was ruinous, buildings fallen into piles of rubble, roads and pathways sundered and cracked atop strangely hard soil beneath.
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His tentative walk turned to a sudden stop, and his Toxtricity nearly ran into his back. At the fringe of the city, instead of wilderness or even a blank, unremarkable stretch of land, the darkness of space loomed heavy, stars too close and too bright burning within its vastness.
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"Where...what the hell is this place?" he wondered aloud, agape.

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Although he'd prefer not having to set foot in the Giant Chasm for some time after the events of the previous month, Rhys had to acknowledge the fact that his last foray into Area Zero had left him with precious little data to go on, given that his observations had been enthusiastically derailed by tavish rose.
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This excursion's efforts had been considerably more successful, and Rhys made his way leisurely toward the mouth of the chasm, even humming to himself slightly, so proud he was of today's results.
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As though to spite him, the skies began to darken, and as he felt the first drops of rain, he cursed, running for the cover of the trees. No, he couldn't have one moment to himself to be happy without something else screwing it up, but that was his lot in life. He shouldn't have expected more.
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The thunder sounded distorted, almost as if it were coming through some kind of pipe system, and he chanced a glance out from his arboreal refuge to look skyward. The darkness of the thunderclouds was overlaid with a rippling sort of energy that expanded outward in a dome, and Rhys's luck being what it was, Rhys was square in the middle of it.
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The air crackled, and he blinked, suddenly soaked from the rain; the tree he'd been standing under was abruptly no more than a sapling that barely reached his knee. Drawing back in alarm, he moved to progress through the thicket. The crackling pierced the air once more, and the next tree he passed was a centenarian mammoth, covering the entire enclosure in its broad leaves.
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He gaped, fumbling for his phone, but when the next sound pierced the air, he abandoned all thought of investigating and turned instead to run for the mouth of the chasm - he couldn't gather reliable scientific data if he was dead.
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As he dashed through the foliage, a gnarled root arrested his progress, catching his foot and causing him to crash to the earth with a cry and a snap of bone. "Fuck!" he howled, and without even looking he knew he'd just broken his ankle. Gritting his teeth, he dug into his hip satchel and released his Clefairy. "Come on, Callie, fast," he urged, pointing a finger at the mangled ankle that currently sent fiery lances of pain up his entire leg.
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The Clefairy chirped in worry, toddling around him to focus on his ankle and holding her hands out, a glowing LIFE DEW beginning to coalesce. As Rhys breathed a sigh of relief, feeling his bones mend, a sharper light cast its radiance on the area, and this time the crackle of the distortion sounded right next to him.
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Briefly, the world went white.
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He blinked, fumbling to stand, damn his sore ankle, and almost tumbled to the ground. Clearly his Clefairy hadn't done the trick, for now it wasn't just his ankle that hurt, it was his EVERYTHING. Every joint, every muscle felt as sore as if he'd been put through a taffy puller, and he turned to reprimand her, only to find a Clefable standing in her place.
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"...What?" he spoke aloud, his voice coming as a growling rasp. He patted his hands down his own torso, feeling for wounds, then up to his head - had he been concussed? No, but the hem of his trousers hit just above his ankles, his shirt tighter in places and looser in others than it should be. His fingers skated along his jawline, his cheeks, his nose, and none of this was right. It was him, but it wasn't the him of a moment ago.
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"No....no, no, no," he chanted, glancing skyward once more. The storm had yet to abate, nor had the periodic crackles of dimensional energy, and the sounds of riotous wild pokemon echoed from deeper within the Chasm. He turned to stare at the Clefable once more, uttering, "Callie?"
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The Clefable nodded, chirping happily, and tottered over to him, extending an arm to pat him reassuringly. Feeling faint, he returned the pat absently before recalling her, willing his aches and pains to subside long enough for him to make it out of this triple-cursed place alive.
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If he could make it out alive, he thought helpfully, as he began to run.

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