Frontier Town The Wanderin' Zera

[Butterfree]

Dave smirked at Odette's incredibly straightforward approach. Better yet, it actually worked. Sure, just get Moltres some enrichment where she can go to town wailing on a world-ending scumbag; why not?

"Sure. You'd be the only Saint in your location. Maybe some Wayfarers'd accompany you. Head in there and beat the shit out of whatever cronies or tentacles he's got in there, purge the corruption, show him what for."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade couldn’t say she’d been expecting the direction Odette decided to go for, but there was no denying its effectiveness.

“Riiight, yeah! You could totally just let loose against him!”

Except… wasn’t the Hydreigon supposed to be some master of Shadows? The rest of them had Powehi’s blessing, but… Jade still had her doubts regarding Moltres’s grasp on her own Shadows.

 

[Sinderella]

Odette cast a subtle look over to Dave and Jade, quietly clicking her tongue, as if to say, “Piece of cake.” Because it was. Moltres, while astronomically less homicidal and a little less liberal with F-bombs, she really didn’t seem much different from Odile. Wrath gods were built similarly across all worlds, apparently.

She appreciated the other two pivoting into Moltres’s newfound excitement about the escapade, and couldn’t help but grin.

“I’d be happy to tag along on your side of things. Try to help make sure there’s always something for you to hit,” she suggested. “Besides, two angry flamethrowers are better than one. More carnage, you know?”

And, perhaps, try to make sure her Shadows didn’t get too far out of control again. A battle for the fate of the world was the last place anybody needed to have a Shadowy meltdown.

 

[Inkedust]

Moltres leaned her head back slight and clicked her beak a couple times. "If you're that eager to go, fine," Moltres said. "I could carry you if I wanted.

"Buuuuuuuuuut," Moltres added, dragging out the word for emphasis, "you're still taking about me going to a random dungeon and where's the catharsis in that? I want to fight the bastard himself. Directly. Face to face."

While it was great that the trio had managed to bring Moltres on board, it would be apparent from the outset that her suggestion might cause some problems down the line given Alexander's command over Shadows and Moltres' own partially-Shadowed status.

"So point me right at him and we can leave as soon as possible," she finished, shaking her wings out, getting ready to take off.

 

[Butterfree]

That was quick. From one banal position to the next. Maybe what Moltres needed wasn't so much to be reasoned with like a normal person. "Well," Dave said, "aren't you always talking about teaching mortals to take charge of their own shit and act? We're planning to act, heading right in there, taking him down ourselves, with some necessary assistance because of the can't be in two places at once thing. But if you just waltz in there and beat the main event for us, you're kind of undermining your own principles, aren't you."

This was either exactly the right approach to Moltres or exactly the wrong one.

 

[Sinderella]

Odette nodded along with Dave, pursing her lips in agreement even as she sipped her tea again.

“Also, if you think about it, you are technically fighting him directly. When I last fought him, he was able to shove his Shadows in any which direction, however he saw fit. We were never really that far from him. You'll get a chance to fight him...and any other Shadow lacky he decides to yank out of the void."

 

[Inkedust]

"I'd be doing it for me, not for you," Moltres huffed at Dave's comment. She rolled her eyes. Obviously there was a big difference between the two according to the Saint's logic. "And fighting him 'by proxy' is still not fighting him directly so, if I'm stuck with just the dungeon, all three of you are coming with me, I'll make you miss out too."

While Moltres thought this to be an ultimatum, to the Wayfarers this was nothing short of ideal. In her odd, roundabout way, the Saint had agreed to give them her aid.

"So?" she asked, beating her wings a couple times. "What will it be?"

 

[Butterfree]

Dave rolled his eyes a little. Well, they could use more people in each dungeon anyway. Why not? Probably better to do this with Jade and Odette than go fight the nightmare Malamar at Terminal One.

"Sure, fine. We'll all cover a dungeon, and then hopefully converge on Alexander from there."

 

[Sinderella]

Moltres really was just like Odile. Sighing, Odette rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, fine. That works for me. Whatever coverage we can get going into it is helpful. But," she raised a finger, "if we end up close to Alexander, and that causes a surge in those Shadows of yours and you start going nuts on us, you either have to fall back, or we have permission to lay you out. I'm totally for you curing your boredom, but the world kinda sorta still needs to be around for you to do that, so we'd like to try to keep this attack as clean as possible. Is that fair?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Well, in a roundabout sort of way, they’d done it, and to be honest, Jade didn’t mind tackling a dungeon rather than heading back to Malantau. It was still important either way.

Except she got the sinking feeling from Moltres’s posture that the firebird meant now, and had just enough foresight to tie her bike to the Zera’s front porch before giving her answer:

“Alright. We’ll go with you, then.”

 

[Inkedust]

"Hmph. Fine. Have it your way then," Moltres grumbled, sounding disappointed. "And my Shadows are fine, thank you very much."

With no chance of exchanging another word, Moltres took off in a flash of black and magenta rising high into the sky. With a tuck of her wings, she shifted into a dive, in less than a second, the Saint had descended upon the trio of Wayfarers. Before the three knew it, they were soaring, the ground rapidly departing from beneath them.

Dave and Jade would find themselves caught in each of Moltres' talons; she had a tight grip on their midsections, leaving their limbs to dangle in the air. Odette, however, was not so lucky and she would find herself – specifically her nape – clamped within Moltres' beak.

Begrudgingly, Moltres would leave it to the Wayfarers to direct her to where she needed to for the duration of their flight. Hopefully they would be able to find an infected dungeon sooner rather than later.

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