An Outlaw's Shenanigans, an Explorer's Horror

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(Energy - 5)

The Icy Lands were just as cold as Sova remembered them. Actually, it was colder since this time he was much farther in, nearing Mt. Frostmeer. Luckily, the snow wasn't obstructing vision, or he might have gotten lost trying to find it. Why was he even here? He thought about turning around, but the idea was quickly discarded as he was reminded of a voice echoing through his head.

His recent hallucinations brought on by the peak of Black Mist Mountain hadn't lasted with him for more than one day, yet he was still hearing the voice in his head, insulting him, calling him weak. Not because of any drug, but just because he couldn't forget it. The only thing he felt would ease his mind of the voice was to prove it wrong. What better way than risking death to climb a mountain for no sensible reason?

Even though he felt exhausted already just getting there, he didn't let up even for a break. He had to prove to himself that he wasn't weak. Though....proving something that isn't actually true in the first place usually isn't easy.

Mirage was surprised as another Shadow Ball seemed to appear, and had originally thought hers to be deflected until she saw that the Frosslass had been struck. She was startled as a blast struck towards her, she managed to avoid it just barely, keeping away from the dangerous damage the attack would have caused. She heard the name of her species be called, she grew rather irritated with the Eevee's care for her and decided to force him to focus on the task at hand.

"Stop calling me that you f*ckin' idiot! I am Mirage the Outlawed of Many, only a fool, blind with morality, could have not realized this by now," she barked before firing another Shadow Ball at what she thought was the Frosslass, however it was a mere clone that she had spotted. It seemed that the hail was lightening up, as the move was fading out and in need of a renewal.

Finally, this zorua, "Mirage", had stopped pretending to be someone else. "Yeah, I know what you are! But I didn't know your name for the obvious reason of YOU WOULDN'T TELL ME!" He thought about ranting more, but was cut off by what seemed to be the froslass speeding by right in front of him. He chased with Quick Attack until he was close and fired a Shadow Ball, which made contact and....destroyed the clone.

He spotted another likely clone a distance away in front of him, slowly backing away so that the fading hail could just barely obscure vision of it. Something in his mind decided giving chase would be a good idea. Mostly the refusal to run from anything. He was so intent on ending the fight and proceeding to yell at his companion that he didn't even think that perhaps he was being baited somewhere.

"Sure he did," Mirage snorted, preparing to launch yet another Shadow Ball towards what she thought to be a real Frosslass, however something struck her from the side. A Frosslass that was farther down the cave had used a rather powerful Blizzard attack, and the Zorua found herself being swept off of her feet and blown deeper into the cave, passing out as she collided with the ground upon landing.

When she woke, she was in a brightly lit cavern, she looked up, looking for the source of the light to find that they were in some kind of air socket in a large icy enclosure. The sun could be seen above and the room was lit enough for her to see. She looked around, spotting the frosslass humming and swaying itself in front of a wall of ice, above it seemed to be two pokemon frozen into the ice, a Leafeon and an Absol. Their faces seemed to be contorted with pain, and each seemed to be reaching out for each other. She wondered who they were...

Being closer to the froslass, Sova had the misfortune of being hit by the full force of the attack. He would have fainted as well if he hadn't slammed into a wall. The pain was far too great for him to pass out. It felt like he'd probably fractured something, though just a fracture from a hit like that would be lucky. He slid to the ground against the wall, his eyes shut too tightly from pain to tell where he had been blown to. Then he forced his eyes open when he heard a familiar voice humming. His vision was a bit blurry, but he could make out the froslass calmly floating into the cave and over to a wall. There seemed to be something in the wall....

Suddenly, the eevee's eyes shot wide open as he realized what he was looking at. His vision was clearing to reveal a familiar leafeon and absol frozen in the icy wall. His parents. He tried to speak, but it seemed that he couldn't make any sounds other than sad moans. What would he have said, anyways?

Then, to make things even worse, the froslass switched from humming to singing, the same tune....

"She knew a place of fantasy / Where the moon and stars all dance / And everyone is happy / Through their fortunate luck and chance. / She knew a place of fantasy / Still now it stands above / Never to fall, it's a place of hope / With Laughter and Peace and Love," the frosslass requited before looking to the Eevee, giving a chuckle before continuing.

"However, I know a place of fantasy,
Where the moon and stars all dance
And everyone is happy
Through their fortunate luck and chance.
I knew a place of fantasy
But now it reigns no more
Beyond repair, it's corrupted
By blood and malice and gore."

The frosslass snickered, looking up to the Absol and the leafeon, "So do you like my trophies? They were rather difficult to keep still, and things tend to rot with age, so I encased them in ice, forever preserved and forever mine. Teehee~"

Mirage looked to the eevee, who was emitting some rather strange sounds, "Uh..Sova?" she spoke, only really worrying about her temporary battle partner being injured to the point of keeling over and leaving her to fight this monster alone.

Sova wished he was deaf at that moment. The lullaby his mother used to sing him....this twisted ghoul was warping such a good memory and beautiful melody into something from a nightmare. Actually, the entire situation seemed to be his own personal nightmare. He couldn't help but begin to cry. He was too shocked to sob, but tears were another story. He backed himself into the wall as if it would help, hoping it would somehow get him away, maybe even reverse time.

He didn't even notice Mirage speaking to him, or that she was there. With how the battle was going, they were doomed to lose. There was no way he could possibly avenge his parents. The familiar hail began to flow through the cave, but the cold sting was nothing to the eevee now. He already felt cold. Not from the cave or the constant assault of hail and blizzards. He felt cold inside.

The froslass summoned another blizzard with a wave of its arm....things, aimed straight at Sova. He planned to just let it hit him, but something caught his attention. An odd looking stone on the ground near the froslass. Probably something it had collected. The eevee was knocked out of focus and against the wall with a whimper as the blizzard hit him, but this time he did not fall. If he just gave up, Mirage would be left to fight alone and would likely lose....

....Besides, if he gave up, he wouldn't get to kill the froslass.

Mirage stopped for a moment, watching the pathetic display the eevee gave off. She rolled her eyes, not understanding the situation and focusing more on the task at hand rather than thinking about why the Eevee was acting this way. She approached the eevee as the Frosslass seemed to be distracted by its own cackling.

"Hey, I'm going to go make myself look like that absol up there, if I can convince her that it came back from the dead for revenge it'll surely scare the shi* out of her. Got it?" Mirage asked. She was already studying the absol, making sure to note every detail of it so it would not end up looking different from the normal absol and failing to fool the frosslass.

Not even looking at Mirage to acknowledge her existence, Sova began walking slowly in the direction of the froslass. "....You don't deserve to be my father." He muttered back to the zorua before darting straight for the odd rock with Quick Attack. The froslass brought its arms back in preparation for another Blizzard, but was met with the eevee's Shadow Ball before it could attack.

As Sova neared the stone, he felt the familiar cold sting of the Blizzard hit his side, knocking him off his feet and causing him to slide into the rock he was so desperate to get to. The froslass then turned its attention to Mirage, or at least where she last saw Mirage.

Wait...this idiot thought she was trying to actually BE his...oh...so that absol was his father. Well that explained quite a bit! However the comment did not stop Mirage from her plan. A black mist had surrounded her, and completely blocked her from view of the Frosslass, when it had looked to her, it had only seen the dark mist and the figure of an absol stepping out of it. She smirked, watching the frosslass's eyes widen, "N-no! You couldn't be!"

Mirage lowered her voice, making it sound more gruff and different, "Back from the dead, b*tch," she snarled before sending a Dark Pulse in the direction of the Frosslass. The pokemon screeched as it was struck by the powerful attack, having been caught off guard due to the surprise of seeing a "ghost" come to protect "his" "son".  The "absol" snarled before dashing towards the Frosslass, however it seemed to be in a bit of a blind panic and attempted to flee. Mirage had quickly caught up with the frosslass, who somehow stumbled as pain from the previous attack reminded it that its wound still existed, and stood in front of it, "No turning back now."

During the chase, Mirage had accidentally kicked a strange icy stone towards the eevee, causing it to be less than a foot or two away from him.

For a moment, Sova laid on the cold ground. Then he looked up to see what was happening....of course Mirage was living up to her name. So zoruas really could transform.... Then he noticed the stone. It had been knocked away from him when he slid into it, but fortune seemed to favor him. The zorua in her guise knocked the stone back to him while battling the froslass.

"Heh...." He laughed to himself as he stood and put a paw on the stone. A bright light began emanating from it, turning the froslass' attention to him. "I don't know if you know what this is, but it's an Icy Rock....it lets eevees evolve into...." The light enveloped him, temporarily blinding anything that would try to look at him, the froslass included.

When the light faded, there was no longer an innocent eevee. There was instead a rather angry looking glaceon. The air around him seemed to freeze, creating ice. It was almost as if he had a light snowfall around him.

Mirage, instead of being distracted by the bright light decided to continue the attack on the Frosslass, using another Dark Pulse on the Frosslass, dealing a fair amount of damage as the attack struck it critically and knocked it out of the air. It gave a cry of pain, and seemed to back away, trying to get away from the ghost and the son. The tides had turned, and it had turned against it, it was too fearful of the situation to make a move against it, "D-Don't come any closer! I-I-I'll actually kill her! The Leafeon! She's not actually dead, just frozen! I'll actually kill her if you come close!"

"Bullshit." Mirage huffed, still mimicking a older male's voice, "Nobody could survive being encased in ice like that. No food, no water, and no heat. Repent you stupid beast."

The newly evolved glaceon took a few steps towards the grounded fiend. "And I bet if the leafeon rose from the dead, you'd have threatened to kill the dead absol instead. Is that right?" He spoke in a cold tone.

"N-no, she-" The froslass attempted to defend its self but was cut off by Sova lunging forward with dark energy cloaking his mouth and biting onto one of her arms. As she struggled to get free, the glaceon spun and released, throwing her into a wall and following the attack up with a Shadow Ball, which was a direct hit. He approached the froslass, who tried futally to hit him in the side with an arm surrounded by a whirling Blizzard. Instead, the arm was met with fur frozen and pointed like spikes, scratching her hand. The attempt at a blizzard didn't do much to phase the now heavily resistant glaceon.

"Huh....that's neat." He said as he looked back at the fur on his side, now returning to normal.

Mirage stayed back, watching the eevee attack the frosslass. She remained as an absol, glaring at the frosslass as its eyes kept turning to her and looking at the illusion. Mirage could see the disbelief in the Frosslass's eyes everytime she laid eyes on her, Mirage had to keep herself from laughing, the look on the ice type's face being priceless. This was hilarious! She would have to do this kind of thing more often, it was just too good! Her tail flicked as she took a seat, watching the show of the Glaceon beating down on the Frosslass, and the frosslass being thrown off so much by the revival of a dead adversary that it was likely to lead it to its own demise.

The froslass lifted its self back into the air, whipping up a Blizzard in Sova's direction. Instead of trying to dodge like most sane pokemon would, he simply Quick Attacked through it and kept going. Sure, it hurt, but nowhere near enough for him to care. As he neared the enemy, he decided to PROPERLY test the new ability he had found. With a quick spin, his tail fur bristled and froze over as he smacked it into the froslass' face, knocking her back to the ground and leaving bloody scratches.

"You killed my parents...." He spoke to the frightful froslass, almost whispering.

"Y-you can't kill me! You're a member of a rescue team, you can't kill, it's not right!" The froslass pleaded, noticing the rescue team badge on Sova's bag.

"I don't CARE what's right!" Sova replied. And with that, he decided to end it. His fangs again emitted the eerie black energy and he bit onto one of the froslass' arms as she attempted to flee, dragging it back to him. He then spiked out his mace tail yet again and swiped the specter in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her and causing her to collapse. He then bit onto the froslass' neck, his teeth still emitting the darkness, and bit down until a snap was heard, followed by the body of the enemy ceasing to move and going limp.

The glaceon tossed the body aside and turned to his "ally". There was a stain of blood running down the side of his mouth, which was not his own. He had a blank look on his face, making it hard to tell what he was feeling or worse....thinking.

Mirage watched the scene unfold before her, the death of the frosslass was no shock to her. It was a simple case of revenge it seemed, as she figured that the frozen Leafeon and Absol above were the parents of the eevee. She would not have done the same for her own, she did not quite care for her own. They were stupid, thinking that living an honest life was the only way to live. Dark types HAD to live off cheating and stealing. That was the rule of life, hell they were probably dead right now, starved to death for refusing to steal or take what they needed for survival.

The snap of the neck echoed throughout the icy cave, she watched the eevee face her. She wondered if the eevee was trying to intimidate her? It was not going to work, the pathetic display from earlier had destroyed any chances of her being intimidated by him any time soon.

She noticed, however, that things seemed to get warmer. Things were beginning to melt, and the roof above opened up to allow fresh air and heat from the sun to enter ice in the area seemed to melt, having been held there by the power of the now-dead Frosslass, however his parents didn't seem to be freed from the ice. They were not in the direct sunlight, they were forever there, on display to tell the mysterious tale that had unfolded.

"So," she began, dismissing the illusion so now she appeared as a normal Zorua, "I know you're weak. You know I'm weak. This situation has two solutions. We fight one lives and soon dies of cold weather or another pokemon, or we travel out of here together and go out separate ways and both live. I'd like to live to be honest, but what is your choice?"