A miniature blizzard saturated in darkness cuts through the mountain air, blowing apart a particularly large crowd of ghosts before they can do anything to the family of cats and pair of Lakitu tourists they'd cornered. As the strange spell finishes, its caster is revealed; a lanky brown cat in strange half-armored red and white clothes and a ragged cape. She turns to address them.
"There's a guard house two streets west, you'll be safer there."
The group makes haste after taking a few brief moments to thank her for saving them, and once they're gone she glares up at the unnatural storm.
After she'd found Tiresias's note, Dapple's fine-tuned adventurer's instincts had intuited that things were about to go to shit, most likely due to whatever the hell Damian must have been doing that involved messing with everyone's heads so they'd ignore the massive red flags he'd been waving around. So, she'd begun making her way through the mountains towards Devos, changing into her old outfit (though not her old species) since her usual dress isn't exactly Proper Adventuring Attire.
And of course, a few hours in, all hell breaks loose, and quite literally from the looks of it. A thick layer of sickly green clouds hangs over the entire continent, blocking out the sun, with the only breaks in it being nine swirling, glowing vortexes that are hemorrhaging ghosts. Mostly cats, of course, but a massive number of the various monsters and magical creatures that inhabit Harmonia as well. If she remembers her geography lessons properly, the nearest of them is somewhere above the border between Magnamiel and Luminos, while the largest is in the middle of Devos, maybe a bit to the west. That one makes the most sense as her target, especially since she'd been going there anyway.
Path now set, she takes off at a run.
...Yeah not sure what to actually put here so I'll just say that Tonio and Piper are making good use of their new ghost-hunting tech and fighting their way across the kingdom towards either the castle or the seal, depending on where Damien/Disc is at the moment. They're being guided by Tonio's "intuition" (aka undiagnosed clairvoyance), so they've got a good idea of where they need to go but I don't.
The battalion of royal guards do their best to keep formation in the face of their spectral enemies, bravely defending the civilians behind them with blade and shield and song as they evacuate to the designated shelters. They're vastly outnumbered, however, the force spread thin across the sprawling city, and they're slowly but surely losing ground.
And then a massive blur of greens and browns surges in, the telltale glint of polished steel on either side of it, and dives straight into the spectral tide, sending the ghosts into a frenzy that causes most of them to take their attention off the soldiers.
After several moments of chaos punctuated by unholy shrieks and the clashing of blades, the ghosts scatter, revealing the battalion's savior.
What they see is a brown, vaguely birdlike creature as tall as a building, draped in a heavy green cloak with a matching (and rather stylish) wide-brimmed hat. A light brown scarf with ragged ends trails behind it, waving in the wind, and in its three-clawed hands is a pair of long bladed weapons with oddly shaped handles... recognizable to some as the separated halves of a massive pair of gardening shears. When the creature is first revealed, one of these blades is stabbed clean through the ghost of a Cymbal Troll, which seems to be absorbed into it.
It looks out over the group, its glowing blue eyes seeming to pierce into their souls, then nods once and runs once more down the street, leaving them to wonder exactly what sort of god just saved them.
As he runs, ClearAll grumbles under his breath. Just his luck that he'd decide to come here for a change of scenery the exact same day that some moron decides to start up some kind of ghost apocalypse. And worse, if he's correctly reading the code signature of the static interference that's blocking his portals, he knows exactly which moron it is. It had admittedly taken him a few minutes to recognize the signature, but to be fair it'd been well over a decade outside the computer and relative centuries inside, and the program in question hadn't been particularly memorable apart from the company they kept. Even now he couldn't remember the poor fool's name.
Rolling his eyes, he briefly goes over his list of priorities. Firstly, the thing he's been doing; traveling through the city and aiding anyone who's being overwhelmed by the ghosts, mostly by gathering the wayward souls into his shears to deposit into this world's afterlife once it's re-sealed. Steps two and three are to actually do said re-sealing and kick the moron's ass, the order depending on which makes sense to do first at the time, hopefully with the aid of this world's heroes.
He'd love to go beyond an ass-kicking, frankly, but while he feels that the moron's time has long since passed his programming disagrees. Of course, given just how many powerful people this scheme would piss off, he felt confident in predicting that their time is at least fast approaching.
His gaze flicks to the side, detecting a mass of incoming deaths that Need Not Be, and he shifts trajectory and readies himself for another bout.
Luminos Castle, moments after the ritual
As the bizarre green clouds roll in, Ash tears his gaze away from the panicking Admin and her patient, closing his eyes to get a good look at what's happening in the sky with Aura Sight, and gasps.
Less than a second later, the vortexes appear and the ghosts come pouring out. While most of them spread out across the continent, large clusters seem to specifically target the Capital cities of each kingdom (except, rather expectedly, in Devos and Desiderio), and as a result the castle is about to get absolutely swarmed.
There's a series of flashes as the three Trainers let out several of their Pokémon.
Miku is the first to start dishing out orders, turning her attention to her oddly green-tinged Dragonair, "Night Concert variation G-7, with light show. Cover as much of the castle as you can."
Dragonair nods and shoots out through the nearest open window, and soon enough the air around the castle grounds comes alive as she weaves together an intricate, maze-like array of barrier moves, Tailwind, Aurora Veil, and even a few seemingly randomly-placed bubbles of Trick Room. While this blocks the main bulk of the spectral swarm, at least for now, several are either fast enough to have gotten past before the full blockade was up or crafty enough to make their way through without having to brute-force it.
Which is where the rest of the group comes in, having already gone outside to meet the ghosts head on.
"Golduck, Bob-ulk, Flash Cannon barrage!"
Exactly as Jet had ordered, the rage-fueled kappa and oversized purple mortar shell fire dozens of orbs of silvery energy up into the swarm which detonate as they hit, causing the weakest of the ghosts to dematerialize entirely and the rest of them to be scattered and disoriented. This makes them prime targets for the projectiles of the other Pokémon, though some ghosts seem to resist or outright ignore some attacks.
With another round of Aura Sight, Ash works out what's going on, "Guys, it looks like some of them have an extra type! It's probably based on what kind of magic they specialized in when they were alive."
That fits with my observations, comes a telepathic reply, Most of the ones that are ignoring our electric attacks are wearing Monaxian fashion, from what I can see.
The telepath in question is Jellibelum, Ash's fully evolved Donandan Water Starter. The Jellyfish part is now as large as Bob-ulk with eight tendrils coming off of it, four coming from the bottom "lip" of the bowl and acting as legs, while the other four come from the sides (as defined by the way the goldfish is facing) and all eight have three finger(or toe)-like phalanges positioned around an opening at their bulbous ends. The goldfish part's brainlike crest is significantly larger, and now attached to the jellyfish by what look like nerves, while the main body is now long and thin, with the tail fins atrophying to almost nothing (they're not exactly all that necessary now that the two organisms are one and the fish outright can't leave the bowl), while the dorsal fin is now long, white, and drapes horizontally like a cape, though with the pectoral fins doing something similar it all comes together to look more like a labcoat.
Anyway, with their new strategic knowledge they make reasonably short work of the ghosts inside the castle grounds, and with the blockade holding for now (especially with Dragonair continuing to refresh and redesign it even as the ghosts keep picking away at it) most of them head back inside to discuss what the hell is going on, and hopefully figure out a plan. Though a few Pokémon do stay outside to help the guards with any ghosts that do make it through, including Ash's Kirlia and Krookodile (because Dark Type) and Jet's Eevee (because Normal Type's ghost immunity).
(Also, Ash finds out about the interference that Disc is causing (whether intentionally or not) when he tries and fails to open a small portal so he can transfer in more of his Pokémon, and it's then confirmed when one of Melody's aides shows up to inform them that the Hyperlink Gate isn't working.)
