Ranger HQ Ranger Union HQ

[Jackie Cat]

"There's home," called Nico, softly.

It had been a long trip. The ranger's voice was tired, even for one used to this sort of regular long patrol. He'd spent the whole time watching over the party of Wayfarers, of course – and they'd pressed hard to arrive without having to camp overnight.

"Not sure who'll greet us when we get there, but most rangers are pretty hard to offend," he chuckled. "Comes with the job. You meet all sorts, often in tough situations when they aren't their best selves. So don't worry too much about being presentable."

 

[Inkedust]

Ever since the retrieval of the Relic of Timeless Oasis, Sybil had been hard at work in her study doing everything in her power to make heads or tails of it. With the Relic rendered inert in the expedition's aftermath, progress had been slow but steady.

Until today.

Sybil made no effort to mask her excitement as she waited for the Wayfarers to filter into her workshop. It was a small room, cramped for even the small group that came along. Piles of books, scrolls and all other knickknacks outlined the perimeter, topped off by a modest work desk bearing many stains from past research endeavours. At a glance, it was easy to tell that the desk had been hastily cleared to make room for the Relic which sat gently atop a small pile of notes. Beside the desk was an odd object, far longer than it was wide, bound tightly in wrapping paper. The paper was heavily dusted and on it was barely legible text that read PRESERVE WITH D-DUST.

The wyrdeer didn't seem to pay it much mind, she sat down, watching the door and when she saw the first Wayfarer through the frame, exclaimed, "Ah! You finally came! Come on! Come on in! There is much to speak about."

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

The meeting in Sybil's workshop ended successfully enough for Steven's taste. Not a complete success, given the minor setback with Leona, not to mention he was still rather unnerved by his own strange reaction to the Relic. But neither of those were enough to deter him from finally finding Koa to deliver a long, long overdue apology.

With the whirlwind of the last several days, there had hardly been time to speak with the young trainer, let alone privately. But with the small group of Wayfarers dispersing after the meeting, and Koa seemingly still winded after the Relic's handiwork, it was an easy matter to catch up to the Electrike in the halls of the Ranger HQ.

He knew Koa had to be tired and probably wasn't in the mood to have a conversation right now, but Steven couldn't let it linger any longer.

"Koa?" he called, hesitantly. "Do you have a minute? There's something--" a lot of things "--I've been meaning to speak with you about."

 

[Ambyssin]

It had been eating away at Nova's insides since the fight with the void swarm. Even if these void shadows things naturally existed on Forlas under Powehi's command or whatever... why was Alexander able to seize them for himself? Why was he able to seemingly corrupt an entire mystery dungeon to more closely resemble his home? And how could he just suck out his victims' powers?

As the battle was further and further in the rearview mirror, other thoughts joined what was already festering. That entropic crisis from a few decades back... a human had to be summoned to solve that. Cipher forced their way through — they weren't even summoned to help with anything! — and still were given tremendous boons in strength.

It wasn't just shadows putting these in his head. These were his thoughts. And Nova wouldn't let them fester any longer. He'd already met a Saint. And the Saints had come up as a subject now and again. But he needed to know more. He had to know if there were legends comparable to the data he'd been fed back home. Those with power over the world itself. If Powehi and Aurelia existed, then surely legends like that did, right?

He recalled there was one Ranger who was particularly devoted to the Saints: Sybil. That was a good place to start. So, Nova trudged off to find the nearest dungeon that could connect him to Ranger HQ.

... Which was also a dungeon. Right. He knew that. And the Chief — the heart or core or something of the dungeon, apparently? — was kind enough to give Nova directions to where the wyrdeer was currently working.

"Hi," Nova said, his voice a bit scratchy. "Sybil, right? I was wondering if you might be able to help me out."

 

[Chibi Pika]

29th Rot

Evening dawned at the Ranger HQ as the squad of Wayfarers arrived, responding to the request for guard duty. Ayda had filled them in--there'd apparently been a suspicious figure spotted lurking around the plaza late one night, and then again the following night, and both times they'd fled when called out to. Enough to suspect that they'd probably return. Normally, the possibility of a single wayward wild mon or bandit wasn't much concern for the Rangers, but the non-zero risk of there still being rogue Shadow mon in the area meant better safe than sorry.

"Not sure whether or not I'm expecting anything to happen," Jade admitted, resting her elbows on a wooden crossbeam as she kept her eyes out on the plaza, tail swishing gently. "At least, I figure if anything does show up, we can probably handle it?"

Not Owen, her brain helpfully reminded her. But like, why on earth would he--or anyone else with the void swarm--be out here anyway? The quarry was miles away.

Jade was stationed along with Laura at one of the second level awnings. The rest of the party had taken up various other watch positions, scattered between the other awnings, down in the plaza below, and the lookout tower.

The light of the full moon spilled over the plaza. At least good visibility would help with keeping watch.

 

[Phoenixsong]

It'd been hard to nail down for a bit, why being a for-real ranger felt so good. Easiest, at first, just to say it was miles better than bad-luck job board pickings and pothole patrol. Really it was millions of miles better than waiting. Something would need doing, or someone would need help, and Leaf could get it done. Getting to see more of the countryside (and the dungeons) in the process was icing. Definitely not as easy as pothole patrol. Wouldn't feel anywhere near as worth doing if it was.

(How close was this, she wondered, to what rangers did back home? No dungeons, obviously, but patrolling the deepwilds off-route had to be kinda similar. When Chief Ayda had given her the badge she'd felt the tiniest little sting of sadness, knowing she'd done all this work to get here and was just gonna have to leave it behind when she went home. But maybe... in a couple years, maybe not.)

Between the jobs that involved actual ranging she'd check in with the refugees from Terminal Two. There were still a lot of pokémon at HQ waiting for Sybil's research with the Stone to help them come back to themselves. (They wouldn't be getting that help at all if Stalkeralsen'd had his way. Asshole.) The damage Cipher had done was the kind of problem that she couldn't just Fix, which was eternally frustrating, but at least this frustration was one she had plenty of experience with. You had to get used to being satisfied with the little things. Make sure they were aware of the little things, how they were adding up, how they mattered.

"Hey, Leona," she said, poking her head in to the lycanroc's guest quarters. (She'd been doing better, mostly, Sybil had said. Less likely to get badly spooked by someone just showing up, and so on. The measured tone of voice was still a force of habit.) "Been holding up okay?"

 

[Phoenixsong]

Leona probably already knew that one last (please last) big raid against Cipher and Alexander was on its way. Chief Ayda and the other Rangers had agreed to help out, after all, and having a ton of dungeons to lock down meant having to do a ton of prep; likely impossible not to hear about it. But it felt wrong not to check in anyway. Had to make sure she knew that the Wayfarers were going to shut both of these shadow disasters down once and for all.

So, with Miror B. and his peanut gallery put away for now and all the fingers she no longer had mentally crossed that they'd stay there, Leaf rode the waypoints back to HQ a little while later. Archie'd had a similar idea, seemed like—Seth was still hanging around the Rangers these days, too, wasn't he—so they'd hit the waypoint for the pueblos at the same time. Then it'd just been a matter of Sinopa shuffling a few things around to make it easier to bring them and the two lycanroc together.

"We're gonna be heading back to Malantau soon," the rapidash explained, looking past the watchtower and to the north, as if she could see it there. Snow, and mountains, and a killer horse, and whatever terrible things were waiting for them at Terminal One. "Got a shortcut set up and everything. Won't be long before we're shoving them all back through their stupid portal." (And hopefully, hopefully, someone'd figure out how to use that portal to send Leona back to her own home, and her girls, and an open desert perfect for long motorcycle rides.)

 

[Shiny Phantump]

It had occurred to Gladion that he should probably talk to Leona a while ago, but he’d been putting it off of a while. He had a hunch it was gonna be an awkward conversation and it was so easy to put off in favour of other, more pressing things.

Now, Matthias was asking them to try to “find Betel” in the Coven. Even though he had no fucking clue what that would entail, it would definitely be of interest to Leona, someone who was there should tell her. Sure, he could ask someone to pass the message on for them, like Leaf or… just Leaf actually, asking Archie would just tip him off that Gladion hadn’t had the conversation with Leona that he’d said he would.

But he’d put off properly meeting Leona for long enough. So finally, he made his way down to the Ranger HQ. The place was… a lot to take in, but he managed to find Leona in there.

“Hey, Leona, you got a minute? Got a development you might wanna hear about.