Act 73: Interrogation

Easani takes a deep breath as he prepares for his interrogation. "Soooo..." He says to his Decidueye girlfriend next to him. "I've never done one of these before..." He rubs his temples in a little bit of frustration. "I'm still not sure why they don't have you doing this again?" He gives a little groan.

"Well, from what I heard she looks like she would cooperate if someone were to be persuasive." Duci explains what she knows on this as she walks along with him. "Perhaps you could convince her to give over the information with less forceful means. Frankly I'm only better at beating the information out of a mon by force, and being intimidating. And honestly i think you are good with your words, you managed to get me to open my eyes and join up with the Avali after all."

"Well, if you say so..."
Deep down though he seems to think he was not really all that pervasive in her decision, and that Stic did more to convince her than he really did.

"Want me to go in together with you just in case?" She offers. "They didn't say anything about you having to go in alone."

"That might be appreciated" He smiles back at her.

They both now stand in front of the door to the interrogation room, the Nidorina is waiting inside. Decidueye smiles back and nods to him. "Ready when you are."

He nods, and opens the door. He doesn't say anything as he enters the room, and sits down at the table in front of the prisoner.

The prisoner in question is calm, unlike the last one that Duci had to question. She watched them come in. "Hhhmm...Grass-types huh? Were you from the Grove too? You would be surprised at how many Grove soldiers turned to banditry after having been basically left in the desert. But I see that whoever you work for wasn't above recruiting Ex-Grove too." It almost sounds like she is mocking them.
"We have no time for small talk, tell us what you know." The Owl glares at the other female.
"What? Did I hit a nerve there?" She raised a brow and huffs. "Whatever...if you want me to share what I know with you, I only ask for some simple things. I want to know that I won't simply perish after telling you what you want to hear."

"What exactly makes you think we're going to do that?" Easani asks.

It would appear that Easani got her to cooperate somewhat, which is good so Duci decides to stay quiet for a little bit to see where this goes.
"Well, I don't think many of my fellow bandits made it out of that little attack you did on our little 'castle'." She says. "I do understand that there is a distinct dislike for bandits like me. So I need to hear that you will be more forgiving to me...But the truth is I'm not scared of just you people."

She leans forward on the table a little. "Well it's whoever we got those 'gun' things from. Gotta say, if it wasn't for them we probably wouldn't be standing a big chance against the republic. At least until you people came into the picture with your own guns." The Nidorina huffs again. "Seems like we really took our new toys for granted..."

"Whoever you got those guns from." Easani rubs his chin. "Yes, that is the big question, isn't it? So are you going to spill the beans on that?"

"I do not have their exact names, only word of mouth on who they look like when the boss was going on about giving us those guns." She says. "But I do know some of it that you might be interested in. Now the real big question is would it be worth it to tell you? Now you might not kill me if i tell you this, but what about them? I have heard some bone chilling things about them, and would rather not have them get me for spilling the beans."

"What kind of things have you heard?"

She exhales through her nose and glares at him a little. "Alright, I will let you in on a little something. All those pokémon we are capturing? It's more than we can feasibly hold, too many mouths to feed, so we can't keep them for ransom or anything like that. Instead the idea is that they are 'tokens' to be traded in bulk. So the prisoners are to be handed over to them so they can cut them up." she then shrugs. "Though it is strange, they want to cut pokémon, but not cut them for meat...they are a weird bunch. But I do know that messing with someone that cuts others for fun is not a good thing for one's health, so you can understand why I am concerned about telling you too much, right?"

"Some sort of slave operation..." Easani growls just a little under his breath. "Any idea what your... 'benefactors,' let's call them, though I don't think they're very 'beneficial', look like at least?"

"Yeah I have a good description I could give." Nidorina leans back on her seat, looking at Duci for a moment...who looks like she is ready to start hurting this other female if she tries anything. She looks to Easani once more. "Well, let us negotiate, shall we? I will give you a description of our 'benefactors', and how about you...let me join you. It looks like your 'benefactors' are very forgiving to pokémon from the likes of the Grove, surely they would allow me to join your ranks, no?"...She might be trying to set a bar too high there with that attempt at hustling. Clearly such a request is too much for some simple information, no?

"I'll put in a good word if you do." Easani says. "That's the best I can give. Though you do have my assurance that either way, no harm will come to you."

"Hhhmmm, what kind of 'protection' would I be getting exactly then? If I cooperate?"

"Well, you'd be getting protection from... whoever these guys are... hunting you down for starters."

She blinked. "Well, alright. This protection should be good, then." The Nidorina leans on the table again. "These 'benefactors' from what I heard from the boss once, they looked like that 'thing' that put me inside of that weird ball thing. They walked up straight and wore a lot of pointless-looking garments on their bodies...And apparently they were quite hairy too." She eyes the owl once more. "...What? You think i'm lying or something? That's pretty much all there is to it. Those are the ones that the three...well two now...bandit leaders are trading living pokémon for guns with."

"So they're basically really hairy humans?" Easani replies, momentarily forgetting that she, along with most other mons in this world, really don't know what humans look like and have only heard of them in myths and legends.

The Nidorina gives a big shrug to that and gives him a weird look. "Humans? I don't even know what those are, or look like for that matter...never heard of those." And on top of that it looks like she didn't heard about myths and legends in the first place, or didn't bother to remember as those are just myths and legends.

"You should know, one captured you." Easani comments offhandedly. "Or at least that's what I heard in the report."

"Oh, so what is that thing called? a 'human'? Alright then. Yeah it was that human that captured me." She says. "But it wasn't as hairy as the so-called 'benefactors', that human thing had a very underwhelming amount of fur, just some on the top of it's head."

"I see." 
Easani thinks of what else he was supposed to ask her... Suddenly he remembers.
"Let's move onto another topic... namely, the identities and locations of the other bandit leaders."

She tilts her head. "Well, where are they? I have a vague idea but nothing very accurate, this 'alliance' they formed mostly consisted of focusing their efforts against the republic and not each other...the guns help morale too I suppose. One of them was Nita, who you already killed...I guess she overestimated her what she could do with her brand new toys, but no one could beat her without iron as far as i know." 
The Nidorina said before going to the part that Easani wanted to hear. 
"Then there is Eyeye the Sableye, He is creepy and very untrustworthy, i mean would you trust a mon that laughs madly?" She huffs. "As far as i know he and his band are more adept at finding themselves in places they aren't supposed to be in without anyone noticing. From what I heard...they are basing themselves somewhere within the center of Republic territory...crazy right? I guess they follow the line of thought of staying under people's noses."

"I see...." He replies without much emotion, he's content to let the avali, who are surely listening in on this conversation, or so he was told, to jot this all down somewhere. "Are there any other bandit leaders? Because it sounds like there's more than just two of them."

"There is Rio the Lucario." She began. "He is sticking to the north of the Sands. I know he is focusing on capturing and keeping prisoners. He might be the one who does business with his 'benefactors' first and foremost."

"Any others?"

She shakes her head. "No, those are the only other two big names calling the shots out there."

"Hmmm." He rubs his chin, trying to think of something else to ask, but nothing seems to be coming to mind at the moment.

"...You think she is telling the truth?" The Decidueye asks, taking Easani's lack of words as a sign of doubt. "Of course I am." The Nidorina sounds offended at that idea. "I already told you all I know anyways."

"Then... I think we are done here." Easani gets up from his chair slowly. "The Avali Reborn Illuminate thanks you for your cooperation.. miss... ??" 
It then dawns on him. He did indeed have one last question to ask after all, and he feels a bit silly for not asking it straightaway. "I do apologize, but I don't think we ever caught your name."

"Rina." She says before crossing her arms. "You better put in that 'good word' about me like you promised..." Seeing this seems like it's done, Duci begins walking to the door to wait for Easani so they can both leave.

"I'll be sure to do so." Easani replies with a nod, before following his girlfriend out.

Once they are both out, the owl begins speaking again now that she doesn't have to put on an air of seriousness. "Well, that went pretty well. You handled that pretty well." She praises him. "What she said worries me though, bandits hiding within the republic itself ready to cause problems...It can't be good." Duci would know about this since sending mons into enemy territory to lay in wait for the perfect time was something she used to do.

"Yeah... definitely." He replies. "By the way, do you think we can trust her?"

"I honestly don't think she would be able to make up all of that without fumbling with her words." She says. "So I think she is telling the truth. If she knew what's good for her, she would have done so."

"Yeah, that's the feeling I'm getting too." He says in return. Now all that's left is to give his debriefing and keep his end of the bargain and put in a good word for their cooperative prisoner.

Back on the Sandgun command tent, after all that information from the interrogation was submitted. Mattias finds himself sitting down at the table to talk with the commander once more. "So...what do we have?"

"Well, our prisoner was quite cooperative, unlike the last one fortunately. She has told us quite a lot in exchange for her safety." The commander begins. "It appears as if there are 3 bandit leaders, one of which we've killed already. The other two, one is capturing slaves and seems to be the one behind the caravan attacks. The other is doing some sort of infiltration operation within the Republic cities themselves. Stic will have to be informed of infiltrators. And..."
The commander lets out a long sigh.
"They've been  indeed getting help from somewhere, and their description indeed matches the MIniknog"

"Hhhhmmm... speaking of Stic, he is starting to have his hands full. Having to closely monitor the trading routes and limiting them is causing some unrest amongst the population. This has been choking the economy somewhat, so it is unavoidable that this would start boiling." He gives an update on the Republic's situation. "...If the Miniknog is really involved in this, what do you think it means?"

"It means they're trying to start a proxy war, obviously." The commander says with a sigh. "And I highly doubt they'll stop at simply arming rando bandos with old USCM surplus."

"I see, that sounds bad. And if they are really willing to try to take this world for themselves, then their efforts won't be just this either." He laments this fact. "I'm surprised their initial strategy wasn't a full-on invasion.

"They tend to run by the old axiom of 'create a problem, invent the solution' when it comes to these kind of things. My guess is that they were quite happy with their little 'experiment' here, just watching them struggle with each other like this, until we budded in, and now they're trying to get us to leave without directly interfering too much, hoping the costs will outweigh the benefits for us and cause us to go home. Basic proxy-warring 101."  He explains.

"Hhhhmhmmm..." He thinks this could really complicate things to very great degrees. "If they are the sort to experiment, then things could really get ugly if they start touching something they shouldn't...You are probably sick of me repeating this over and over again. But if beings that the locals worship turn to be real, things might really get intense for everyone." He once again stresses this fact. "But about the business at hand, we need to start thinking about how to deal with the other bandit leaders."

"Yes, that would be prudent. We're going to need some other specialists to deal with the Miniknog anyway, as we don't even know where they are operating from."

Mattias takes in a breath of thought before putting in some proposal. "...Those up to the north, if they are the ones handling hostages then they must have some sort of fixed base, taking in the fact that we are in the desert they would need a steady supply of water. I find the intelligence of the bandit leader we previously dealt with...questionable, it looks like her idea to sustain her band was constant pillaging. But if Rio is smarter, then he must settle in some place where there is plenty of water. The most well known river, the same one that goes through the former capital, runs northwards."

"That's still quite a long stretch to search." The avali comments. "Any possible ideas where along it we might begin our search?"

"I'm afraid that at the moment that is all we got to go with. Just searching along the river while going up north." At least right now this is all he thinks they got to go with, but Mattias has the feeling that this narrows things down significantly for when it comes searching for the next bandit leader that they could deal with...if they could get a beat on him. "We are still looking into the Emera situation too. There is a growing suspicion that it wasn't the Novel who gave out those stones of power. If the Miniknog are as much of a fish out of water as you when it comes to this world, then chances are it's not them either."

"Well, the incident with the ... Bayleem was it? ... Proves that they've been at least around here for some time. Though then again, we haven't found any records, either here in the sands, over in the rust buc- I mean black isle, or anywhere else of them growing ultra-big like this, so I'm not sure where or how they would have found out about it. Outside of a LOT of trial-and-error of course."

"There is also the fact that Emeras like that are not exactly easy to come by. There are many other types. And the one that the bandits have are the rarest." He says. "I must say, I was really looking forward to happier things to do with your kind before I was forced to provide support in this. I was planning to go to the Black Isle to provide demonstrations on pokémon species...also information about the other parts of the world, such as the land of Snow, has been piling up as of recently too."

"And I assume synthetically creating these 'Emeras' is either very difficult to do, if not out of the question entirely? Or at least I hope?" He replies to the first part. 
"... And yeah, the Miniknog ruin everything. That's kind of what they do. Wreckers, all of them." He grumbles, adding onto the second part. 

"They are not exactly that easy to work with, let alone mine them. They form underground, yes, but they are as easy to shatter like glass, it's not uncommon for them to just shatter for seemingly no reason when they are found too. That said, shattering is not exactly the end for them, the resulting dust is attracted to each other and can form new Emera if it's able to gather with enough Emera dust. But the thing is when an Emera shatters, some of the dust that makes it doesn't manage to maintain itself so it is impossible for an Emera to reform on its own, more Emera dust would need to be introduced. And when there is enough Emera dust to reform into an Emera, it is impossible to tell which result it will be until the Emera is formed, in which case it can be around little more than 70 other things." He explains. 
"So, if we are speaking about feasibly gathering this rare type of Emera in particular, one would need to either search for it far and wide, or acquire a large amount of other Emera to 'recycle' in the hopes of getting Awakening Emeras. Not exactly as easy as you might imagine. This also isn't the only method for Pokémon to acquire a sudden burst of power...but it's the easiest. While we are at it, I should probably tell you a little more about the process that Awakening Emeras themselves cause on pokémon, that being Mega Evolution, I don't think I ever went into much detail about it. You uuhh...wouldn't mind if I used the Avali as an example, would you?"

"Sure go ahead"

"Alright, let's go over what it would do to your body and possibly your mental state. There are two theories about this topic, one says it brings out some sort of ancestral form of the species that lived in harsh times and the other points to a forceful evolution focused entirely on fighting. I think the latter holds much more ground, so that's what i am going with." He began. 
"If it were you, I theorize that your body would be forced to evolve into something that in theory would have to fight to survive every moment of its life, think of it as your body, in species, leaping millions of years ahead of you. Mentally you are still you but...we will get to that soon. Now...I gotta really theorize here, you ready? "

The commander nods in response.

"Ahem. So you will end up with a body that is twice your size, we are not done yet though. You would also have long legs for running, ending with taloned feet that each have a single, large, curving claws that you could use to kick into prey, easily hook and tear them, or more easily get a grip by digging into a prey that you are pinning under your feet. Now on your hands you would probably get sharper claws, probably some muscle on your arms too so you could better use them to fight either as is or using heavier weapons than you could normally carry. And you would get a longer muzzle so you could sink more of your teeth into the prey too. You would likely still have feathers but I'm not sure you could fly. Oh, and most importantly you would be introduced with new strong instincts, aggression is one...but it's likely that the 'pack mentality' wouldn't go away unscathed, at worst it would become the opposite of what it is, at best it would retool to be something where only the dominant member would lead the pack. So your mind would have all that to contend with, sounds maddening right? Yeah." 
Though since he doesn't know that much about the Avali on such a deep, biological level he can't hope to be sure. "Again this is just a very wild theory without base."

"That..." The commander tries to find the words to respond with. "Sounds like a massive step down instead of up, if I am to be honest."

"...Yeah, perhaps my vision of it is not really that good." He can admit that much, he just went kind of wild imagining it. "Then what would you think would be a step up instead?"

"Erm..." THe commander is a bit caught off guard by this question. "To be honest, I never really thought about this. I'm not really sure what couldn't be improved by existing implants and augmentation. I guess... not having to have implants for every world we visit would be nice?" He scratches his head.

"Hhhmmm. Well that's all i got for explaining it. Mega Evolution is often like that to pokémon. Some get their jaws permanently dislocated, others are at the risk of melting and some become heartless fighting machines." He shrugs. "Regardless that should be all i have to explain for this. I'm going to go back to-" They then hear a ruckus coming from outside, it sounded like some large metal part falling to the ground. "...What was that?"

"I don't know." He replies, he quickly gets up, and goes outside to check it out.

When him and Mattias go outside they see that the dropship that Neso's pack uses to deploy to missions just had it's wing fall off, which would explain that noise, from this side they can see it, but there is the noise of wires being cut and parts falling to the floor. From the other side of the dropship comes walking someone, it looks like a humanoid, one that seems to constantly emit an orange glow, or rather it looks like they are made of that glow...like they are made of energy, with the exception of the metallic omega symbol 'brand' that they have on their face. This...this is a Novakid, another one of the starbound ones, that matter manipulator on his hand and that advanced technological form-fitting armor of his also give a big hint that he is not from this world. "...Oh, i guess i was a little too noisy there, wasn't i? Sorry, did i woke you two up? Didn't meant to tarnish your beauty sleep, nope, not at all." For someone who was clearly sabotaging their dropship, and being in a place he has no business being in, he is acting pretty innocent. "What the hell are you doing?!" Seeing that he is responsible for this, Mattias is already not sounding friendly to this newcomer. The Novakid looks to the dropship once more, seeing it's other wing dangle before falling off. Then he looked back to the human again. "I mean...it is what it is, friend."

"Guards!" The commander shouts, "We have a sabetour!! On him!! Raise the Alarm!" And only a few seconds later, alarms are blaring throughout the compound. Those with guns on their persons are gathering around the sabetour, guns drawn upon the offending Novakid, and those without are rushing to the armory to get ahold of one quickly before joining their comrades in the armed circle forming around them, the commander likewise has his own gauss pistol drawn and aimed directly at the intruder. "Yes, yes you were a little too noisy, cowboy. Though then again, we do have quite good hearing."

The Novakid calmy looked all armed guards gathering encircling him. And even that human besides the Avali commander drawing a sword of electrical energy blade generated from a hilt. "I think you people really need to learn how to relax a little bit. It's kind of bad for your health to get this worked up." "Commander! what is this?! I know that it's not a pokémon!" Mattias asked the Avali. "...Rude." He sounded a little bit annoyed there. "Anyways don't come any closer okay? You wouldn't believe the sort of ordinance i have in my matter manipulator."

"That's a novakid." The commander explains, not keeping his eyes or his guns off the intruder. "I'll explain later, Matt. But I'll say this, if he draws his guns, don't think twice, put him down where he stands. Novakid gunslingers are not to be underestimated."

"If you are sabotaging us...then that means this certainly goes deeper. Who are you?!" The human asks this 'Novakid'.
The Novakid stands there all proud, with a hand on his hip. "I don't mean to brag but...I'm Dynamo, mercenary extraordinaire. Your friend is right, you know? If I had been holding a gun in my hand, you'd have eaten tungsten at any moment." He slowly raised one his hands, pointing it at Mattias...then pulling his index finger back like he is pulling a trigger, but nothing comes of it. "...Bang. Just like that, you could have gotten a shot to the head."
This is certainly an odd fellow...but the human is heeding the warning of the Avali and taking this seriously. "You don't expect to get out of here so easily, do you?"
"Actually...I kinda do."
"What?"
Dynamo begins looking for something in the inventory of his matter manipulator.
The human is starting to get...concerned, he has the feeling this guy is about to do something, he has a feeling it will be something that will help him escape but he doesn't exactly know how. "...He can't 'beam' out of here so easily, can he?" He whispers a question to the Avali commander, he wants to be sure.

"I don't... think so?" The commander replies, not quite sure if he should open fire at this point or not.

Mattias looks up at the Novakid again. Dynamo has something on his free hand now, and he is holding up for everyone to see. "Oh, here it. Look at this shiny thing. You know what it is, right?" It looks like some sort of sphere, like a bauble that if one were to look into it they would see a pretty light shinning from the end of a tunnel.

He tilts his head and looks around at everyone pointing their weapons at him still. No answer? "...Soooo no one then?" Mattias looked at it, and got alarmed all of the sudden. He was going to raise his weapon to point it at Dynamo to order everyone to fire upon him. But unfortunately the mercenary was way quicker on the draw, he held up that orb in his hand and then just like...he was gone in a flash of white light. Didn't look like he beamed away to a ship though, like one might have expected. But he was gone before the human was half-way in telling the guards to open fire on him.

The commander covers his eyes as the flash goes off. Once he removes his hand from his eyes however, his foe is gone!
 "W-What?!" The commander looks around, as do his troops. "W-Where'd they go?!"
His eyes narrow. 
"He could still be here. Fan out, and look for him!" He yells, his winged arm stretching out as his soldiers scatter in all different directions to try and find the Novakid saboteur. "If you find him, call for backup, DO NOT take him on by yourself!" He orders.

"The Entrance of the dungeon! Check the entrance of the dungeon! we might still be able to catch up to him!" Mattias says that he knows exactly where that saboteur might have ended up. Though given how deep into this dungeon the Sandgun base is located, getting from here to the entrance might be a bit too much.

"The dungeon? Why?" The commander asks.

"That's where he got sent to!" But if Dynamo already teleported all the way to the entrance of the dungeon that this base is currently located inside of, it might already be too late to go after him.

"Even if I were to buy that, there's one problem..." The commander points to the wrecked craft.

Looking at the craft, it looks like he will have to relent. It would appear that the Novakid took important parts of the dropship, making sure it wouldn't have been able to fly without replacement parts, perhaps he didn't have the time to blow it up.
"Using an escape orb is new..." Mattias sighs, then he looks to the Commander. This is likely going to be another little class he is going to have to give him, huh? "You saw that object he used just now, right...?"

"Escape orb?" The commander asks. Indeed, it is.

"It's one of the many types of orbs one can find around dungeons." Now he is going to go into detail about what those are exactly, and their history as far as he knows. "They are objects with magical effects that only seem to work at all in dungeons. In theory they aren't that uncommon but most of pokémon-kind barely knows of their uses because of how much they shun dungeons, outside of them they don't seem to be usable. As far as most pokémon care, these are mostly fragile, fancy-looking orbs that you can put on a shelf for it to look pretty. The wide usage of seeds notwithstanding, I thought Pokémon-kind would realize on their own that those orbs are more than just for show..." 

"And of course the ones inside the dungeons would have no use for them..." The commander adds in thoughtfully.

"Yeah." He nods." Thought that brings more questions than just answers. He knew how to use that orb, how could he have that knowledge...?" Though that question is probably going to be way harder to answer. "...Let's go over the damage report and call it a day then."

"Very well." He sighs in frustration, turning to head back into the tent. The commander decides not to call off the search for now, just on the off chance that someone might turn up something, slim as that chance is.