To Meet A Fallen Comrade (Emiri & Liz)

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There was nothing quite like feeling like she had the freedom to go out traveling again without having to worry about too much, just like when she had very first started on her travels... Sure, everyday she was having to push down memories here and parts of her past there, but for the most part recently, Emiri just felt almost at peace with just purely existing and traveling. Having spent some time in the valley that she'd met Aero in, Emiri was enjoying spending time with him and Galahad as some of the newest members of her team. There was not much else that Emiri could think of that was a good bonding experience than some long distance travel and some flight conditioning, which was what had prompted her most recent flight out to the Alola Region. She remembered a series of mountain ranges on one of the islands that would prove to be quite excellent practice for the terrain.

Knowing that Aslan would watch over Racion, considering too that the creature would likely benefit from some solid time to be at peace and exist, Emiri had left some of her Pokemon to rest and relax while the rest of her Pokemon went out for a flight journey. Rhydon, Blastoise, Venusaur, and Flareon all were not adept in flight in the slightest, so they too opted to stay behind, leaving Emiri still though with a fitful battalion of flying types with her, plus Burst of course who always wanted to stick close to Emiri.

Soaring over the vast oceans from the north, Emiri recalled that there was a nice quiet city at the edge of one of the islands to take a small stop at before heading into the mountains. She was situated on Charizard’s saddle, with the baby Chifaera in her lap, Kovu flew beside them with Cerian sitting observantly atop him, and Azuran kept close like always. Salamence and Lynno flew off to the side, always keeping up with each other and making sure they were poised for whatever competition they chose to embark on next, while Nimbus hovered along with the group keeping close to Flix who was always getting better in keeping up with the rest of the team for being one of the youngest still. Burst was out and about, hovering just as Nimbus was with his strange abilities, but he chose to keep close to Hantu who had saved him during their time in the canyons out to the far west. Aero and Galahad were the newest to have started traveling with Emiri, they didn’t quite have any interpersonal relations yet so they strayed a bit off to the sides, but that was just what Emiri was hoping to start working on in having some of her most experienced fliers out for some time, to try and get them integrated into their family.

The island of Ula’Ula was in their sights, and Emiri motioned Charizard down as the head of the group, leading the way in a descent to come closer to the city below. While Emiri remembered vividly traveling to this city to receive her stamp for the race around the world, she wished that she had stopped to visit the garden that they were now flying over.
”This is the Malie Garden, it’s very famous in Alola,” Nimbus spoke as he looked down at the familiar land.
”It’s so pretty here, did you come here a lot,” Flix asked, knowing that the Raichu was native to this region and had traveled around well before he had met Emiri.
”Why is the water shaped funny,” Cerian questioned, looking over from Kovu’s shoulder as he glanced at the ground beneath them.

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Slowly descending towards the garden and the city below, Emiri knew that this would be a nice stop to make before heading into the mountains that were to the west, the central part of this island of Alola. Just as she recalled, Malie City was quiet, and reminded her so much of Violet City and other cities in Johto, it was almost like she’d never left. Even the garden had some similar elements, and as she looked out over the gardenscape beneath them, musing over Cerian’s question, she couldn’t help but attribute the river to a familiar shape.

”The river, it… It looks like a Gyarados, doesn’t it,” Emiri spoke aloud, knowing the shape in her mind’s eye, smiling a bit for her own Gyarados that was staying on Marcellus’ property.
”Interesting, why do you think they would do that,” Hantu commented, recognizing the shape then as Emiri had mentioned it, it was quite clear now as they flew above ground coming closer still to the surface.
”This city is one of the oldest in Alola,” Nimbus replied, hovering a bit closer to Hantu now as he spoke to answer his question.
”It looks very similar to the places in Johto, I realized it when we were traveling through there. They say these humans came from the east when they found this island,” the Raichu continued, putting the pieces together then about what knowledge he did have of Malie City.
”That explains why it all looks so familiar,” Azuran nodded, they’d traveled the Johto region many times in various ways, he was familiar with the idea now.

Emiri motioned Charizard further down still, there was a clearing among the foliage in the garden just past the river bank that she was aiming at to land, when Emiri felt a sharp spike in the energy around her, enough to make her hair stand on end. Kovu felt it too, his innate instincts being that much more heightened and sensitive to supernatural things, his eyes narrowed and he hissed low with bared fangs. Just as quickly as Emiri felt the drastic change around them, there was a crackling pop around them, and a short but wild scream. All of Emiri’s Pokemon stopped in the air, holding themselves on their wings, looking around in every which direction to find what had just happened.
”I don’t see anything,” Salamence hissed.
”What are we supposed to be looking for,” Lynno leered.
”Whatever it was didn’t stay around,” Galahad mentioned, his keen eyes too unable to see anything. Only seconds had passed, Emiri was almost dizzy trying to look in as many directions as she could while she clutched the baby closer to her, but then there it was again, that crackling pop of energy, the same wild scream, and Emiri had no time to brace for impact as the wind was knocked clear out of her upon being pushed off of Charizard’s saddle. Her reflexes and the experiences that honed them were her saving grace, barely managing to wrap one arm around the baby that now hung at her side, and her other hand managing to grasp the foothold at the side of Charizard’s saddle. Her entire fleet was in panic now, there was roaring and snarling and flailing wings at the notion that they were being attacked. Nimbus reacted quickly, moving forward towards Emiri and trying to dodge Charizard’s beating wings as he narrowly managed to grab the baby from Emiri’s arm, only in time for her grip to fail as she started to fall again. She screamed, but only before Charizard caught her outstretched hand with her own, when in that same quick moment the other screams stopped with a drastic splash of water beneath them.

”What was that, what happened,” Charizard snarled, clutching Emiri as she steadied herself, looking around with sharp eyes and smoke billowing from her jowls.
”It’s a human, look,” Flix shouted, catching sight of the rippling water and finding a human treading water beneath them.
”Oh, are they alright,” Nimbus remarked, looking down to find the human in question then, and they were clutching something close in their arms, much like Emiri was with the baby, he could recognize that.
While Azuran wasn’t thrilled with what happened, he was the first to land with a hard and heavy thud on the ground, his large, broad figure looming over the riverbank now. He intended to determine if this was a threat or not so it could be dealt with swiftly as he moved his long tail into the water, aiming to fish this human out of the water.
”Emiri, are you alright,” Charizard asked as she moved them to the land below, setting her trainer down carefully then as she moved to land, her wings kicking up dust and stray grass, the beginning of the cacophony of blustering wind at Emiri’s Pokemon landing one by one. Emiri winced, rolling her arm and her shoulder at having caught her and the baby’s weight before falling, it was definitely sore and her hand hurt, but nothing was broken.
”I’m okay,” she commented as she moved towards the water to see what or who had just potentially attacked.

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Flexing her hand a bit still to try and work out the strained muscles at catching the foothold of Charizard’s saddle, Emiri walked slowly towards the river bank as Azuran made swift work of fishing the assumed attacker out of the water. The hastened shriek that pierced the otherwise quiet air was a bit alarming as Kovu and Cerian flinched, and the rest of Emiri’s Pokemon that had now landed moved to gather around the river bank too. Charizard didn’t seem phased by this human trying to appear more vulnerable as they clung to Azuran’s tail in supposed fear, she was ready to have a fight if it called for it. There was no reason for them to have been almost knocked out of the air for anything other than an attack, and the dragon was ready to see the end of this encounter quickly.

The Aerodactyl swept the human out of the water then and unceremoniously dropped their sopping figure onto the river bank, and Emiri could see then that it was a person, a girl, who did not seem to be concerned with them in the slightest as she looked down to a small Pokemon she held in her arms. Emiri wasn’t sure what it was, she hadn’t seen anything like it before, but whatever it was almost made her dizzy initially at the incredibly powerful, and incredibly chaotic aura it had about it. They were both oozing power and energy, and that still made Emiri cautious about this whole thing. Kovu too could sense it, as he moved closer to Emiri with Cerian crouched on his back. The black dragon hissed low in his throat as it looked like the small Pokemon might come to, but Emiri held up a hand to his muzzle, staving off any confrontation for the moment.
”What is that thing,” Lynno huffed, looking through the hunched and prepared group of his teammates as they all looked at their potential attacker.
”There’s no way that small thing was doing the teleporting,” Hantu snuffed, he knew what kind of power it took to teleport, having met some incredibly powerful psychic type Pokemon in some of Emiri’s earliest travels, and that small, dripping orange thing did not look like it had the capability.
Emiri and her Pokemon had stayed otherwise quiet, trying to assess the situation, when obliviously so, the girl stood and looked around her, locking eyes with Emiri, and giving a bright greeting and thankfulness, devoid of any notion that she had knocked Emiri off of her saddle. Emiri stood there, wide eyed almost, having been prepared to start defending herself against this power she could feel, but Charizard even coughed a bit on the smoke billowing from her throat, each and every one of her Pokemon looking at this human incredulously.

”You’re welcome, glad you’re okay,” Nimbus was the first to say, moving closer into the middle of the interaction. While he too could feel the immense power emanating from the pair, he wasn’t threatened by it, and he could at least feel the lack of animosity or hostility… From the pair, not from Emiri and her Pokemon… Emiri was taken aback, she wasn’t sure what to make of this, and was trying to formulate the words to make this strange and bizarre interaction stop, when the girl started rambling and mentioned… A friend’s Mewtwo? Those of Emiri’s Pokemon who were familiar with the mention stopped altogether, even Charizard stammered beside Emiri at just the thought. Still, this girl rambled on a bit more while Emiri stood there frozen, moving forward and introducing herself as Liz.

”... You know Cronus? And Marcellus…,” Emiri questioned then, her eyes a bit glazed now, she hadn’t seen Marcellus for quite some time at this point, though she knew Cronus was always around, always present, should she need them. And the odds of there being another Mewtwo out there, she would have known, Cronus would have mentioned, there couldn’t be any other Mewtwo that were with a human… And she called him a friend? Marcellus didn’t use the term friend lightly, did she mean it in the same way? They were actually friends, and she was familiar with him and Cronus?
”Uh, uhm… Wh-what… Why did you do that? Why did you attack us then…,” she asked then, overwhelmed at both the mention of Marcellus and having not seen him for a while, and the chaotic power that still surrounded this girl and the small Pokemon, she hadn’t even moved at this point, barely even blinked, and certainly didn’t pay any mind to the outstretched hand that was supposed to be a greeting. She was confused, if this girl was a friend of Marcellus’, why did she knock her off of her saddle?

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Completely taken aback by the situation at hand, Emiri’s older Pokemon were concerned that this girl knew Marcellus, or was it some ploy to get close to them for something? It wasn’t out of the question, Emiri had been victim to her friends being used against her before, there was no telling what the likes of Team Rocket or otherwise would stoop to.
”What is the significance of this Marcellus,” Galahad asked aloud, trying to understand the weight of the situation, and why it had caused such a dramatic shift in addition to the hostility of it all. He and Aero both had little to no idea on the kinds of perils that Emiri and her Pokemon had faced, and while Aero himself wasn’t fond of just any human choosing to separate himself from them when his own humans were gone, the Rapidash too was confused.
”It’s just a human… Let’s just move on,” Aero huffed, his hooves shifting in the dirt beneath him as he looked upon the situation.
”If you stick around long enough, you’ll learn that nothing happens by accident or coincidence to us. We can’t trust anyone,” Lynno sneered, having seen and experienced some of the worst of their experiences traveling with Emiri for so long.
”Marcellus is one of the few humans that we can trust, and this outsider just shows up out of nowhere,” Salamence growled, the sheer odds of it all were far too great to ignore. This kind of stuff doesn’t just happen.

It seemed to take the girl long enough to realize that this wasn’t a fancy free encounter for making new friends, Emiri still didn’t flinch or blink at the girl who called herself Liz went on to say that Marcellus was in fact the person she was referring to before, but she was just as cautious now as the rest of her Pokemon were. A realization came upon her then, acknowledging over her own narrative that this was perceived as an attack, and the girl fell quiet before bursting into a fuss. The red head was erratic, apologizing first before turning into regret, then turning to accusing as she shook the small orange Pokemon. It was still unconscious, but it’s power pulsed with each shake, clearly a sign of its powerful psychic capabilities, a consciousness beyond base lucidity. Emiri winced and Kovu recoiled with a hiss at the sudden pulse of energy, and in that swift moment for the girl to take another drastic turn in thought, Emiri hadn’t realized that she’d rushed forward the rest of the small gap between them and was now touching her.
Almost instantly Emiri began to panic, being in such close proximity to the power emanating from both the girl and the orange Pokemon, and now she was being poked and prodded at with little regard for anything else.
”W-Wait, wait! Don’t!” She began pushing back against the hand prodding at her, panicking in a very strong flight instinct, and in that same instant Emiri’s Pokemon burst into a rage at the sound of her distress. Wings flaring, smoke billowing, tails thrashing, and fangs at the ready, each of them poised at the first open chance to attack.
”Wait! Don’t attack, that will just make it worse,” Nimbus tried to intervene, raising himself into the air to try and get the attention of any one of Emiri’s Pokemon. Trying to stave off the flurry of pokes, Emiri panicked again at the incited fury she could feel from her Pokemon, this just became a very high pressure, high stress situation. She held her arms out, brushing against the outstretched arm of the girl, and turned to hold one arm out against her Pokemon’s haste.
”Stop! Everyone,” Emiri shouted in panic, trying to get everything to stop around her, trying to get everything to slow down so she could just think and focus for a second. Kovu was poised behind Emiri, ready to attack, but his green eyes focused on her outstretched hand towards them and his hissed furiously at the sight of blood on her hand, concerned now that Emiri was bleeding. He shook his head vigorously, he knew he wasn’t responsible for it, but the last time he saw Emiri’s blood, he was the one that had caused it… Azuran roared at the chaos, his size and his imposition over everyone causing Emiri’s Pokemon to stop.

Drawing her hand back, recognizing Kovu’s erratic concern, Emiri realized that there was blood smeared on her hand, but she knew that she wasn’t bleeding. Turning though with her hand out to the girl, looking back up at her, she could be the only other source of blood that she made contact with…
”I… Please… We don’t want any trouble…” she breathed after a moment, trying to calm herself. She was visibly shaking, her eyes were glazed and a bit cloudy at everything that was daring to come to the forethoughts of her memories with the onslaught of chaos, she just wanted it to stop.
”I think you’re bleeding… Are you okay,” Nimbus asked aloud then, looking up to the red headed girl.
”If you didn’t attack us… Then what happened,” Emiri asked then after another moment, vaguely recalling in the last couple of moments her mention of teleporting like Cronus, what were they trying to do if their intention wasn’t an attack? If this orange Pokemon was as powerful as she felt it could be, she needed to make sure that they weren’t a threat at the very least so they could leave this safely…