Evia Saga - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: Demented Distortion

To put it bluntly, Mote was rather displeased to find that Blossom was going to be joining him in getting on Anbu's nerves. Only Spere - who threatened to, as Joltia had put it the previous day, 'drag him to Meteor Valley and say his name' - stopped him from raging dracapyra across the Bellossom's skin.

"Fine, I'll work with her," Mote complained. "But you owe me, outlaw."

Tamashi chose that moment to step into the entry hall, where the confontation party waited. "Everyone have their positions?" she asked.

Everyone nodded. Tamashi set her staff against the floor and called out a long incantation that would teleport Shinkans and Evians alike directly to their agreed positions - and with the brightest flash of mind magic anyone had ever seen, they vanished.

At the same time that confrontation party vanished, Umbria woke up. Zero was asleep in the chair he had taken at her side. Umbria, with the Black Silk dangling like a cape on her shoulders, didn't hesitate to beat away the blanket that covered her.

She hated it. She hated being trapped on that bed. She hated being devolved. She hated being away from her sisters in arms. She hated being weak. From her necromancy to her nocturnal instincts - everything was gone. And for what? To empower a swarm of Umbra Hearts who couldn't back off.

Zero woke as she started to rise. "Easy, there," he warned. "I don't want you to pass out."

"I'll be fine," Umbria snapped. Zero recoiled, and the ex-mancer sighed. "I'm sorry, Zero, I just... I hate being trapped here." She got to her feet. "I'm going to stretch my legs."

The Shinkan of Umbra watched her drop off the bed and make her way out. He sighed and flexed his fingers, watching his necrozasia flicker around his claws. If it was just him, he would already be gone. He would be ripping out Anbu's heart with his bare hands. But he put Umbria before himself. She was in no condition to be confronting the Umbra commander.

The necrozasia swirling around his hand brought realization to widen his eyes.

Unless...



Everyone was already in position.

Dracio and the Gilded Gladiator would retain the positions of critical measure. Desukiri, Glacia, and Crycifix were taking refuge at the Glaciate cannon, with Koba and Flaria nearby. Leafia and Rae were hidden in a sphere of leaves that protected them from the icy cold of the river. Plate and Joltia were on the other side of said river - with Plate having had new swords forged to repair the keychain of blades around his belt. Espia, Vaporia, Tamashi, Blade, Mote, and Blossom would be speaking with Anbu himself.

Every Umbra still around had been subject to Glaciation - frozen bodies were the only protrusions from the cryous ore. The pillar of Antimatter force had vanished, but Tamashi had a feeling that it would only take a name before it returned.

Mote was quick to leap atop a frozen Beartic and perch loungingly. "Hey, sunglasses! You there?!"

The sky darkened.

A chuckle from Mote. "See, that's what I mean," he taunted. "All you're doing is turning down the lights. Come on. If I wanted to be in the shade, I'd have brought an umbrella!" He turned to Blossom, who had made her way to the top of another Umbra nearby. "They use umbrellas for shade, right?"

"Only at the beach," Blossom replied. If it weren't for the fact that the Glaciate was a hundred times colder than anything else the Bellossom had felt, they may as well have been taunting the Beartic on which Mote sat for all the reaction they showed to the Antimatter their opponent held. "Which reminds me - do Umbras know how to swim?"

"I don't think so," Mote mused. "See, Umbras run on instinct. Not brains. They don't know Mulch." He gave a single loud laugh. "I don't even think they know how to Mulch."

The air started to tremble with darkness.

Blossom shivered mockingly. "Woah, do you feel that?"

Mote shrugged. "Feel what?" he asked. "Idiocy?"

Blossom resisted the urge to snap at the insult he had managed to slide under their truce and spoke. "Actually, I think that's the half-necran white mist that Mister Master Moron down there-" and here she pointed at the icy metal beneath them before continuing "-calls darkness."

"What's the difference?" Mote asked.

An Antimatter cry echoed across the ore.

Blossom chuckled. "Listen to him whine," she mused. "Rar!"

"I think it's more of a 'hrr'," Mote replied.

"Or a 'brr'," Blossom countered.

"Yeah, he's probably cold," Mote agreed. "Don't think a half-wit Umbra could set up central heating!"

A flare of Antimatter force razed up in the same place as last time.

Mote howled. "Hey, look at that!" he laughed. He drew from a pouch he had packed purely for this purpose a snack bag full of Blast Seeds. "Snacks for the light show?"

Blossom pulled one out of the bag, looked at it, and flicked it at him, recognizing the texture that marked its danger. "Flame poison?" she asked. "Come on, that's the oldest trick in the book."

"Well this moron's probably older," Mote countered. "He probably couldn't even set up cassette music!"

The leather shadow wings unfolded, the bloodred spikes standing out a thousand miles away.

Brushing her hands on the ice, Blossom gave an expression of false dismay. "Aw, come on," she mused, "we're missing the movie!"

"Ah, who cares," Mote snickered. "With this, it's more like a commercial! Hey, sunglasses!" This last part was directed at the wings and shadow. "Best save the playacting for the nursery!"

Then Anbu swept out of the darkness, the wings vanishing.

What Blossom said was: "Hey, look, it's the one eye band!"

What she thought was: Mulch just got real.

Mote wasn't fazed. "Naw, more like a one eye clown," he countered. "Outlaw got better entertainment than this in a hangover. I mean, come on, if trees and icy just needed to cover their mouths they'd only need one leaf." This joke caused both Glacia and Leafia - two Evians who would be down and out against a Litwick - to turn Cross Flame red.

Antimatter whips lashed from Anbu's hands.

Tamashi, Blade, Vaporia, and Espia stepped away slowly. "Come on," Tamashi murmured, "come on, come on..."

"Look out, Mote!" Blossom called with false horror. "He's got sticks!"

"I'd say stones," Mote replied. "If it weren't for all that hot air, he'd sink like a rock."

Anbu slowly hovered forward, descending minutely every second. "You insult me," he growled.

"I don't insult you," Mote contered. "I say your darkness is the shoddy half-necran Mulch that it is and call you a storyteller. Yeah, I insult you. So what?"

It happened too fast. There was no way Mote should have been able to counter it. Anbu lashed out with his right hand. The Antimatter whips that trailed from it sheared a gaping cut across the iron ore, tearing Umbras in half. Tamashi's scream died on the way out - the moment an Umbra was struck, the Pokémon dissolved into the striking whip.

Mote smirked as the strike neared him.

The moment the whips connected with his hide, he was gone. His image dissolved into dragon mist, and the real Mote arced through the air, flaring into a barrel roll as draconic energy coursed around him. A Draco Meteor materialized around the Garchomp as he slammed into the Umbra commander and floored him.

Blossom gaped.

The Shinkan of Claws got to his feet and turned to Blossom, brushing dragon mist off his shoulders and brow. "Now was that so hard?"

A storm of Antimatter force wrapped around his neck, lifting him off the ground. Anbu rose, his eye flaring as he started to choke the Shinkan.

"That will cost you," he growled.

It was now that Blossom leapt off her Umbra perch, hurling psychic energy towards Anbu. The strike pierced his Antimatter chokehold and sent him reeling back. Mote dropped to the ground, leaving Blossom to leap into the air and surge mental power straight at the Umbra commander, paralyzing him with a deadly Psyshock.

Blossom dropped to the ground and gathered a mixture of psychic energy and various spores around her hands, keeping in battle position. "That really all you got?"

Anbu's eye opened, and he surged his hand forward, Antimatter whips arcing towards Blossom. She surged her palms out, sending a smoke screen of spore and psychic around her; the strike hit iron, for when the spores faded, Blossom and Mote were gone.

"Come on!" The voice echoed from everywhere. "Can't you do better than that?"

"Show yourself," Anbu growled, his gaze drifting. "You know not the power you face."

A laugh that was halfway between a giggle and a cackle. "Really?" Blossom asked. "I know I'm facing a half-dark faker who can't show me some real power."

The Umbra commander was seething. "I am the darkest necran this planet has ever known! I use the power of-"

"Of what?" Blossom asked. "Sunglasses? Ooh, no, this must be the almighty Lord of the Shades I've heard rumors about! What'll I do? Ohh, what'll I do?"

"I am Antimatter!" Anbu roared, his rage snapping. "I am the blackest force of the Distortion World brought to this realm! I am vessel for the force of Giratina!"

They did it.

They actually did it.

They made Anbu say the name.

Anbu paused, as though realizing his mistake. Then his gaze narrowed in confusion. He glanced at his palm as the whips started to recede into it, the tips fading last. The moment the third and final spike of the longest whip entered his spectral flesh, a bloodred crimson began to stain across his hand - and he glanced at his other hand to find the same thing happening there. The crimson started at the center of his palms, slowly expanding outward and wrapping around his hands. It eventually reached his wrists as the rest of the hands were coated, and the Blaziken-esque flares of shadow dimmed slightly.

The Dusknoir's eye widened.

Darkness erupted around him, surging from his wrists like explosions. He gave a wordless shout, the darkness arcing around him and enveloping him in an ovum of Antimatter force. Everyone, hidden or visible, near or far, pulled away for cover, with Tamashi, Blade, Vaporia, and Espia taking leaps and dropping to the floor. No one, Evian or Shinkan, had expected anything like that.

Then that force unfurled as a pair of shadowy leather wings tipped with bloodred spikes.

This time Tamashi's scream made it all the way out.

Anbu had been transformed. His skin was bloodred, and the face on his torso was necrous gold. The wings were joined, if only just, to the eyes of the face on his back. His arms had been replaced by six whips tipped with bloodred that dangled at his sides, giving him the eeriest resemblance to the master of illusions beyond the stars. His face was guarded by an articulate semiring mask that spiked at the back, and the eyes behind them were blazing cryopyra.

Everything was silent for a few moments, the only movements being those of the Antimatter whips as the movement of the cold air around them caused them to sway slightly. Then, slowly, Tamashi rose with her left hand before her, staff braced back. Blade hesitantly followed her lead as the Mind Mystic stepped forward.

Slowly, the altered commander's gaze drifted towards the whips. They slowly began to rise, curling before him and then slowly uncurling to the side.

Niiice.

Then the turned to Tamashi, and the whips surged forward, racing towards her. Tamashi swung her staff before her, mind magic forming a flaring barrier before its caster. The strike hit the barrier, force shearing from it with such power that one would think it were the psychic master and the Newmoon nightmare blazing against each other in the land of cryous ore.

No one knew how long the confrontation would have lasted if a shadowy black blur hadn't chosen that moment to leap the river, barrel across the ore with no care for the Glaciated Umbras around him, and leap through Tamashi's barrier.

Kuekuatsheu slammed into the transformed commander.

Everyone gasped as the sentient Umbra sent the Antimatter vessel flying. He arced backwards and landed swiftly before Tamashi's barrier, the Umbra fading from around him as he raised his gaze.

"Zero?"

A pulse of force arced from the fallen transformation, but Zero dropped low and then dove into the air as the energy struck Tamashi's barrier. He spun in midair, gathering darkness, before arcing back, spreading his arms, and sending a surge of Umbran darkness pulsing a dome shockwave around him. Then that dome consensed into a sphere in his hands, and Zero hurled the Night Burst like a baseball. It hit the Antimatter victim at two hundred kilometres an hour and struck him with seven surges a second for half a minute.

Then the strike faded, and Zero arced through the air, connecting with the ground before the barrier Tamashi had yet to fade. She started to disperse the mind magic, but Zero raised his hand in a manner that meant wait.

There was silence for one... two... three...

A chuckle emerged - but it emerged in the strangest way. It came from everywhere, every beat heralded before its arrival and lingering once it had arrived. The unworldly vessel rose from the ground, his body flickering in and out of the realm.

The voice was Anbu's voice.

It would seem that I was wrong. I had heard that when one granted power by the Original One calls his name, they will be submit to bodily posession. And when I realized that Antimatter's power rivals that of the Alpha, I assumed that the same terms applied. But I was wrong.

The mask split down the center and arced back, revealing his face. At first it was blank, but then Antimatter force gathered around it. A Dusknoir's cyclopean eye gathered in the center of his face - but the pupil had turned icefire white, and it was seperated from the spectral purple cornea by a ring of gold.

The eye of an Umbra Heart.

The Alpha restricts himself by various laws. They prevent him from initiating any physical transformation. They prevent him from permanent spiritual immersion. But Antimatter is restricted by no laws. My body may not be my own...

His body vanished.

But believe me when I say I prefer it that way.

Anbu reappeared behind Tamashi, wings curled around his body. She only had time to turn and scream before the wings unfolded in a flare, sending her flying. The Mind Mystic hurled through the air and would have breached the pillar of Antimatter if Zero hadn't interrupted her flight with his own body.

Tamashi was spiked like a meteor.

Zero tumbled into the Distortion World.

Kuekuatsheu barrelled out.

Anbu lashed the Antimatter whips forward, but Kuekuatsheu arced around them, dodging the strike with more precision than an illusion beyond the stars. He rolled swiftly when he hit the ground, then flipped into a back-rolling kick that bent the strings like a boneless arm.

The moment his feet touched the ground, he kicked forward, his mane screaming emerald like a cape behind him as he dove under a swipe of the Antimatter wings, kicked off his hands, and flipped into a falling kick that knocked Anbu out of the sky.

Tamashi knew that Zero - twisted, sentient Umbra as he was - couldn't fend off Anbu on his own forever. She spun to the ridge on which the Wuji cannon waited and screamed with her mind, Glaciate!

Then she rushed forward, her staff shining with mind magic as she lifted off the ground. Anbu lashed a strike at her, but Tamashi wove around it and surged a bolt of pure psychic energy at the transformed commander.

Glacia began to gather her cryomancy atop the cannon.

As the mind strike connected, it left a stinging, physical pain in the commander's torso as he raised an Antimatter barrier to defend against the next bolt. Kuekuatsheu followed the attack up with a swift one-two slash, and as Anbu's wings whirled at the sentient Umbra, he dove around the strike, his claws searing through the Antimatter folds and clashing with the bloodred spikes.

Desukiri's cryokinesis formed a sphere of icicles around the cannon.

Enter Blade in full-howl battle mode - Silver Fold and Sunset Fold turned full battle armour, Aqua Mantle a thick helmet of crystal to match the Bolt Fang and Flare Fang in his hands. He struck out with a blazing stab and a backhanded slash of lightning, clashing whip-against-wolf with the deadly vessel.

The ice concentrated into a single burst in the center of the cannon's barrel.

Vaporia and Espia surged forward as well. The hydromancer's body became liquid, forming an aquatic barrier around the psychomancer as she hurled burst after burst of mind empowered with water at their foe. Anbu tried to block with the spiked wings, but with his wings occupied with the Evians, his whips occupied with Blade, and his mind occupied with Tamashi, it left an opening so that Kuekuatsheu could flip, slam a kick into the commander, and send a Night Burst coursing through the Antimatter.

A flash of ice emitted from the top of the wall.

Everyone came to a stop. Blade and Tamashi touched the ground. Vaporia solidified. Anbu lowered his whips. Then swordsman, mage, mancers, Umbra, and Antimatter all turned to see Glacia and Desukiri glaring from a sphere of icicles as pure cryomancy shone from a barrel crafted in ice.

"Glaciate!"

A surge of pure ice tore from the cannon, raced through the air, and impaled the Antimatter vessel in the mouth on his stomach. Ice ripped through the air around him in an endless blizzard - but that blizzard was not so much snow as it was pure, unmatched crya.

Vaporia and Espia raced away, throwing mancer's shields behind them that did little to slow the ice. The Sunset Fold emit a thousand flares of Sacred Fire that formed a dome around Blade, and Tamashi slowed time as much as she could - and even then her incantation was racing to shield her in time, forming an arcane, articulate barrier around its caster. Kuekuatsheu became nothing but Umbra-dark mist as the ice neared him, the necrozasia contrasting brilliantly with the ice.

Seven seconds passed before the Glaciate shockwave dispersed. Tamashi lowered her barrier, touched down, and would have fallen flat on her rear if Blade - who had been made to stand on fresh ice during battle once - hadn't caught her swiftly. Zero solidified, the Umbra dropping from around him as he raised his gaze.

In the middle of the land of cryous ore, the transformed Anbu was now completely and utterly frozen. Glaciate coated his body, turning the Antimatter black a stunning Winterbird blue. The wings were spread, the dangling whips now a support to keep him in the air, and the bloodred spikes and gold platinum of the helmet had been turned Rukh silver.

From atop the Wuji cannon, the cryomancer and cryokinetic whooped. "That looks so epic on an airborne target!" Desukiri called.

"Hell yeah!" Glacia cheered. "Take that, you Umbran Febass!"

It was at that moment that the crya that coated Anbu started to tremble. Everyone stepped back in shock as the Glaciate began to mist. The three Antimatter whips on Anbu's right side rose, ever so slowly, and slowly began to retract. When they arrived at a length that fairly suited the commander himself, the three strands paralleled with each other and merged.

Three bloodred claws became a bloodred arm and hand.

With pleasure.