Pokémon Chronicles 零 (ZERO)

Episode 29: The fourteen year-long plan

I kept staring. I couldn't take my eyes off of Shelly, even though his miraculous feat had won us a battle that we were set to lose. He was the first of our group to truly take on his anima form and use it in a battle, but his new form did not look the slightest bit new to me, and that left me shuddering, whilst the others rushed over to congratulate him.

"Okay, start talkin'! What was up with all that, how did Fionn not notice you?" Megan was the first to squeal, waving her arms about. "You're wearing that super heavy armour and stuff. There's no way he couldn't hear you!"

"Yeah, but only if there wasn't a snowstorm howling in the arena," Shelly pointed out, smiling confidently. "I might be a little wrong, but I don't think Fionn could hear us at all."

"Wait, what? D-don't say something dumb like he could see us in a snowstorm!" Megan gasped. Shelly shook his head again, and pointed to the middle of the room. I tilted my head in confusion, not noticing anything out of the ordinary from when we entered. The piles of random junk were in even messier piles than before, but that was a given, due to our big battle.

"Fionn was listening for the stacks of items placed around the room. We couldn't see them once the hail started, but we kept knocking stuff over with our attacks or approaches," Shelly explained. Lucca beamed up and hopped over to one of the piles, this one being a bundle of books. It didn't take him long to pick out an arrow of mine, and he waved it at us.

"Oh. So Fionn was tracking our position with the sounds of the junk, rather than reacting directly to the sounds of our attacks?" Brine summarised.

"He was doing both... he was able to react more precisely because of the junk piles though, which is why I thought of confusing him by having everyone attack the piles," Shelly clarified, turning to Karol for clarification.

"I... w-wow, you guys really figured it out? Y-yeah... Fionn knows this room like the back of his paw. So when you started confusing him by messing up the piles, I just had to step in..." he gasped in astonishment. Fionn barked some dialogue at him, making him growl and look away in embarrassment. "I... I know! But this was your chance to get back at them... they made you blind, master! They made it so that you could never leave this place... do we really have to give them the amulet?"

Fionn gave another round of feral language towards him, making him hang his head and go bright red. We all gathered around when he began to address all of us together, even though most of us had no idea what he was saying. In fact, trying not to look rude in front of Fionn as he sincerely bombarded us with growls, whines, and barks in literal fashion, was more concerning than somehow feeling familiar about Shelly's anima form. Thankfully, the moment ended without a need of translation, as Fionn turned around and pointed his tails at Lucca.

"... I... see..." Lucca replied, sweating awkwardly.

"That's a pretty dangerous place to keep a legendary amulet," Azeth joked, walking over. Lucca sighed and hung his head as well, and then reluctantly reached his hand right into the fluffiness of Fionn's tails. His touched something that made him violently cringe, quickly withdrawing with the amulet in tow. This one was an icy blue, and reacted to Lucca's touch with a glow.

"Wait a second, the amulet is Lucca's? Shouldn't it be Mimia's?" Brine pointed out. "I mean, this trial had more connection to Mimia than it did Lucca..."

"It matters not. I was not even the one to discover its solution," Mimia smiled. We were quickly distracted by the awakening of the actual bestia fountain, which turned out to be outside of the building. We could only tell due to the way the visible bestia particles began to rise up through the ground, visible in greater abundancy outside the window. We blindly wandered over to it, finding ourselves bathed in the healing radiance of it the moment we stepped outside.