Act 30: Stealth Perfected

While this is going on, a vehicle speeds towards its unsuspecting target in the dead of night. A FCLN-11 Assault Gunship. Knightfall configuration, piloted by one Avali aviator. 

The other three members of the pack are sitting in the transport section. They are equipped with black, very futuristic looking armors, and holding matching black weapons. 

Assault rifles by the looks of things. "I still can't believe we're being called for what is essentially a monkey shoot." One of them, a male grumbles.

"Hey, at least it's something!" Another male, one who's raptorframe has green glowing parts, Ryalo, says, sounding more enthusiastic than the other guy, he must have been raring for some action.
"And we got to save the captives too, so hey, at least it's not just a monkey shoot." A female Avali in an armor with blue lights and glass, like Taluno's, Nesala, adds her two cents to that. "...Which may or may not complicate things depending on what the pricks decide to do with them if they see us."

"Which is why we're doing this as quietly as possible." Their leader, Taluno, replies. Unlike the others his helmet is removed, but he is also wearing the 'default' configuration raptorframe. He is a white-colored avali with a dark blue crest, light black outlines. A single long feather protrudes from his head. 
He says as he attaches a silencer to his rifle.
"Alright packies, listen up. We're on final approach to the drop site. We'll drop a klick or two away from the campsite, and go in on foot. We go in quietly, and hit them fast, hard, and quietly. We do this right, and the bastards will be dead before they even know we're there."
"Is that why we're using these ballistics instead of the stronger energy weapons?" The male from earlier, in the red-lighted armor, asks.
"Quite so Ranyo." Taluno confirms. "Less light, ability to attach silencers. Stick to the pistols though if you can."
"Continuing, our orders are to rescue any captives these 'guild traitors' might have taken. Some of them were civilians the bastards swiped during the recent battle, others were simply guild members who refused to betray the town. Either way, we're called in to bail them out before they reach the next town. They're already on the town's doorstep, so there's no more time to waste. As for the traitors themselves..."
Taluno puts on his helmet. His feather still sticks out the back through a small hole in it, custom designed just for it.
"The counselor wants them all dead. Leave no survivors. Kill everything that isn't in a suit or isn't in binds. However, I'm going to add a tertiary objective."
On their huds, they are reviewing the mission parameters, a third objective pops up.
Tertiary Objective: Remain Undetected
"Well that's great, but what if things go tits up and one of them screams a little too loudly?" Ranyu asks.
"Should push come to shove, Eijyu will provide air support. She will remain with the gunship until called, either for backup or extraction."
"Pos." Eijyu confirms from the cockpit. 
"Remember, these guys might be primitive, but they seem to possess powers which we do not fully understand. What we do know is that many of these 'traitor' guildies are 'electric types', and possess attacks that will fry your suit, and you in them, very carefully if we're not careful. Hence the stealth objective." Taluno explains to the team.
"Alright, any more questions before we land?" Taluno asks.

"Wait wait wait, 'powers that we do not fully understand'?" Ryalo seems to have a question. "Just electricity right? Please tell me they can't melt us with acid or something, I would rather not die like that."
"Doesn't sound all that complicated, unless there are many of these 'electric types' among them." Nesala said as she attaches silencers to her guns as well. She then looks to Ryalo. "Just calm down when we get there okay? can't have the tertiary objective going down the drain the moment we get there because you decided not to zip your mouth."

"She's right. And as far as your question goes, I'd rather not find out. Stay quiet and we won't even have that problem." Taluno says.
"We are approaching the landing site." Eijyu DMs over their nanites.
"Right. Make sure you got your teleporters. You find a captive, you put it on them, and it'll send them to the ship, and then straight back to Sandstone. Specifically, the manor. We'll let that blue cat deal with them when they get there." He says.
"He's going to be getting quite the present when he wakes up, then." Ranyu jokes.
The craft begins to slow down. Once it comes to a stop, the doors open.
Taluno motions them out.

Ryalo zips his mouth, might be better to just talk through DMs for now in his case. "Alrighty then, I guess I got even more reason not to mess this up now." He proceeds to fit his guns with silencers too. 
Nodding, both of them step out of the ship through the doors that just opened, their feet stepping unto the desert's sands. 

Ryalo zips his mouth, might be better to just talk through DMs for now in his case. "Alrighty then, I guess I got even more reason not to mess this up now." He proceeds to fit his guns with silencers too. 
Nodding, both of them step out of the ship through the doors that just opened, their feet stepping unto the desert's sands.

The gunship hovers nearby as they land on the desert sands, their feet making a soft patter.
"One nice thing about deserts... the sands keep your feet quiet. Ranyu notes over DM.
No one responds. 
Once they are all together and out of the ship, they make their way to the camp, the patter of their feet making very little noise as a few fires in the camp get closer. Soon, they are on the outskirts of the camp.
"Alright, here's how we're going to do this. Split up and take a direction. Stealth kill any guildie you come across. If you're spotted, you call in the gunship, and we regroup and go all out. Unless that happens, we'll be more effective if we split up."
Ranyu nods, and draws his silenced pistol, and moves to the south end of the camp, beginning there. Taluno takes the east end.

The last two Avali holster their rifles on their backs and prepared their pistols. Ryalo takes the north  while Nesala takes the west end.
Ryalo was quick to spot one of the guildies, the Pawniard, away and pretty isolated from the others...just stretching and yawning there. A Perfect and easy target here. He simply sneaks up behind him and...Shpff...that's the sound of the silencer doing it's job of silencing the exit of the bullet that just got planted on the head of the guildie mon who is now dead.
As for default, she gets a bit more into the camp, getting to where the wagons with the supplies are. There is the Krookodile but she can't just take him out in the open like that. But she gets an idea to deal with this. She knocks on the back of one of the wagons, making some noise that lures that big dessert croc to the back, then she just goes around, climbs onto the wagon to have a bit of an easier angle to shoot and puts a bullet in the back of his head. As he falls, she decides to be sure that big head of his didn't stop the first bullet from penetrating his brain, so jumps back down and deposits yet another pistol round in his head.

Ranyu spots a Dedenne. Taking a leak in a corner. He draws his carbon knife, sneaking up quickly but quietly. 
"Ahhh... that's better." The fat mouse groans as it turns around, only to find a hand muzzling its mouth. Pain erupts from its chest as the black knife is buried into his right lung. He tries to scream, but a whisper barely leaves its muzzle, as its life quickly leaves his eyes. 
Ranyu looks around, looking for his next target-
"Hey dende, you done over there? I need to ask you something."
A patter of footsteps in the sand grow louder as a Blitzle comes close.
"Dende, what's keeping-"
The bleeding body lay before the Blitzle. It simply stands there, looking at the body, and taking a moment to figure out what to do.
... Too late. An arm wraps around his mouth, preventing him from screaming, while a carbon knife is driven into the neck, and then into the diaphragm, preventing the mon from crying out as it dies in the sand.
"... Idiot." Ranyu says. He moves onto his next target.
Taluno comes in from the North. He hears the grinding of Iron against other iron inside of a tent. Switching on his heat vision, he looks inside of the tent, and sees a few heat signatures. some figures hunched over, their hands behind their back. Captives, by the looks of things. One of them is lower temperature than the others In the center. 
A single figure stands behind them, holding some sort of object that does not appear on thermal. Taluno switches it back off and goes to visual as he listens in on the 'conversation'
"Sorry 'bud', but we're outta food, so you're next on the chopping block it looks like." A male voice says with a menacing chuckle. 
He hears whining, and shuffling.
"But don't worry, I'll let you live a little longer. "
He hears a clatter.
"Long enough for one last little fuck before the end. Ain't you lucky?"
There's muffled cries and shuffling. 
Taluno has heard enough. He pulls out his pistol, takes aim through the canvas... Shpff  "Ugh!" Shpff "urk!"
There's a shuffle as the figure falls over dead. Taluno lifts the canvas, and enters in from the side. There's excited, yet thankfully muffled whines and shouts from the captives as this strange newcomer in even stranger armor suddenly enters.
Taluno's head turns towards his kill. A primeape. In front of him, his would-be victim, a sneasel.
LIFESIGNS: NEGATIVE 
He turns towards the captives, who are now looking upon him with fear, and trying to back away.
"Found some captives. Beaming them out now."
He approaches one of them, and attaches the beaming device to one of them. He activates it, and the captive is surrounded in light, and beamed away.
The others don't know what to make of this. But they can't do much as one by one, they are approached by the strange black creature, and then surrounded in light and vanish, one by one. Until only the Sneasel remains. 
"And now it's your turn, little guy. Don't worry, you'll be safe after this."
"Mmmph mpf?" The sneasel tries to ask through his gag, but nothing comes out.
Taluno puts another beaming device on the sneasel's chest. The sneasel is surrounded in light, and disappears.

Ryalo gets close to some tents, having a look inside one he spots an Elekid and a Minum sleeping, judging from the fact that they are not restrained and seem to be sleeping well, they must be. He takes his knife out and prepares to go 'Mr Sandman' on these two, shouldn't take but a moment.
Meanwhile Nesala comes across something happening.
There is a Minccino and a Tyrogue. They both bound and gagged together, struggling in front of a Scyther.
The mantis-like creature points one of his blades at them, threatening them into stopping. "Listen up you! I'm supposed to be doing this but I need to see if your heads, or skulls, are...'interesting'. Helios' orders." He seems to be more interested in the Tyrogue right now. "Now yours is the most interesting one of course, the one on this other little bitch is too small, probably won't be worth a lot when we get to that." He smirks. "What? You didn't honestly think all of you would be left alive right? We got a surplus of you, Me and Helios will butcher you for your meat and bones."
The Avali watches as the two hostages begin getting terrified by this bug's speech. She was just about to get her pistol ready to fire at him but she is forced to stay in her hiding spot as someone else approaches.
"Hey, I brought another one." A Electrike comes dragging a Pancham captive.
The Scyther doesn't seem too impressed though. "Really? You brought that for the third one?"
"What am I supposed to do? It's not that we got a whole lot of mons with 'interesting heads' around here!"

While "Nesala" is concentrated on that, Ranyu continues on his silent rampage. He's gunning down mons as they sleep, knifing them when he gets the chance.
Yup, so far this is been exactly what he thought it would be. Just another monkey shoot. 
However, he quickly comes across a scene himself. Two mons in a tent aren't as 'asleep' as the others. If the moans and muffled whines are of any indicaton.
He listens closely. The muffled moan is that of a female. The grunting of a male can be heard on top of that.
"Ohh fuck!" He hears the male groan. "Oh fuck you're tight! Mmmgh!" 
The sobs of the muffled female clearly indicate she's not enjoying this.
"I almost regret having to chop you up later... Tell you what? I'm thinking about just ditching these losers and keeping you for myself. Whatcha say about that, my little zorua?"
"MMPH MPPHMHH!" 
"Thought so."
Being quiet, Ranyu lifts the tent, And sneaks in. A houndoor is his target. He sneaks up behind the dark/fire type. Unnoticed, his knife at the ready.
"Oh, Here I-" The hounddoom yells as the shadow looms behind him- 
SNAP
"... Shit." Ranyu looks down, his foot having landed on and snapped a spear by accident, then at the Hounddoom who's attention is now focused on the noise behind him.
"You mind I-" The hounddoom's eyes lay upon the armored Avali. Immediately recognizing that whatever this is, it ISN'T one of theirs. 
"Shit!" He shouts, scrambling to get himself out of his female victim. "GUYS! WE'RE-"
Before he can utter another word, Ranyu is upon him, hand over his mouth. 
"Cum on this!" Ranyu taunts as he drives his knife into the rapist's throat, causing him to drown in his own blood. The dog grasps his throat as Ranyu releases him, but it is for naught, and a moment later, the dog is dead.
"That was too close." Ranyu grumbles to himself.
He turns his attention to the now struggling Zoura.
"No time to explain." Ranyu says as he arms a teleportation device. He places it on the Zoura, and she teleports away.
There is shuffling outside, and Ranyu turns towards the door. He takes out his silenced carbine, and aims. 
"Hey keep it down in here, some of us are-"
*Pfpfpfpfpfpf*
Before the Pignite can even utter another word, he is on the ground, his life blood bleeding out into the sands.
Ranyu decides now's the time to split before more come. 

Nesala has been thinking about how to go about dealing with these two effectively, she gets the idea of Dming Ryalo, He shouldn't be too far away and-
Suddenly two screams ring out through the camp, one from a Hawlucha jumping up high above the tents as it suplexes Ryalo, who was also screaming throughout the whole thing as he was carried through the air. Now this certainly will alert whatever Guildie is still alive.
"What the hell was that?!" The Scyther exclaimed as he looked in the direction the scream came from.
"Damn it..." Nesala decides to spring into action and shoots down the Electrike, being very cautions to not hit any of the other captives. When she aims at the mantis though he quickly flees from where he was, her eyes follow him and she tries to get an aim at him again but he is fast!

Tertiary objective: FAILED 
The words appear on all of the team's HUDs. Including 'Nesala's.
"Well, shit." Taluno groans to himself. He was just about to sneak up on a zangoose. "Well, guess we do this hard now." 
He puts away the knife, and  takes out his silenced assault carbine and blasts him away from behind.
"Blackbird, get in here. Not sure who flopped, but the stealth has gone tits up." He sends out the DM to the awaiting gunship pilot.
"Finally, was beginning to think you weren't going to leave any for me. ETA: 10 seconds." 'Pilot' replies back.
"Pos that. Keep in mind captives might still be around. Properly identify your targets first." Taluno tells him.
"Copy."
'Pilot' soon appears, with the gunship, ready to lend a hand to 'Nesala' and swat down that Hawlucha, who she soon spots on thermal.
"Welp, we're going in hard now." Ranyu already has his carbine out, so he's good to go on that front.

Nesala has no time to reach for her more powerful carbine right now, not with her dodging the blades of a big mantis-creature trying to cut at her. She tries to take some shots at him whenever she gets the chance, it's hard but she hits him in the arm...isn't quite enough to put him down though.
Ryalo is having a tougher time, he must have dropped his pistol because he only has his knife to try to fight this Hawlucha in Melee, and he can't reach for his carbine without having to leave himself open for another wrestling move, the last one was fun. "How much muscle does a bird need to fight like that?" He rhetorically asks as he goes for a stab with his combat knife. After almost having his arm grabbed again, the Avali decides to try to take a step back to have a plan...he will have to do this while avoiding the owl's attacks though.
Meanwhile in the center of camp, a particular Heliolisk has been roused from his tent. He is surrounded by a Torrocat, and Nidorino and a Archeops that seem to be his bodyguards. "What?! We are under attack?! by who!?"
"We are not sure who, Guildmaster Helios! Could be bandits!"
"Hmpft...well where is everyone else then!?" He shouts, trying to get the attention of whatever other mons under his command are out there. He believes that they must be sleeping or haven't heard anything...but he does not know that most of them are dead already.

Unfortunately for the Hawlucha, 'Pilot' has the Hawlucha in their sights. They're suprised that the Hawlucha hasn't caught onto the big noisy aircraft hovering above.
No matter.
Her head, and with it, the gun underneath the aircraft, turns towards the Hawlucha. 'Pilot' wraps her hand around the trigger, and pulls
Brrrrrrrrrtttt
A hail of bullets descend upon the Hawlucha, ripping the 'poor' bird to shreds
"Anyone else need air support?" Pilot asks over DM.
"Neg here, on my way to Tent prime. Going to deal with the leader." Taluno replies over DM.
"Neg here." Ranyu also replies, as a silent rattattat blares from his carbine. "Found Taluno. Also going after target prime."

It took a moment for Ryalo to process what just happened all of the sudden, but he realizes that what shredded this pokemon just now was friendly support from the ship. "...Hah! you got a hole in everything!" He snarks before running off towards the center of the camp, sending a DM while he is at it. "K thanks, going for tent prime now too."
"Neg here." Comes a reply over DM from Nesala. She finally managed to shoot the Scyther down. "Securing some of the captives now." So at the moment she is currently busy and won't join up with them right away.

"Copy that. Let me know if I need more things to shoot" Pilot DMs to the crew.
Meanwhile, Taluno has linked up with Ranyu, they simply wait for Ryalo.

Currently Helios and his underlings have noticed the ship flying up there in the air, suffice to say they are asking each other what that could be and coming up with no conclusion to that, they are scared of it though. Meanwhile their boss is making sure they are ahead of him so if that thing in the air comes to attack them he would rather they die first.
Ryalo joins up with Taluno and Ranyu, with his silenced carbine in his hands. "Alright i'm here, are those four the last chuckleheads that are still alive?" He asks. 

"Pos that. And he has the last of the captives in his tent." Taluno says. "Let's go up and introduce ourselves."
"Pilot, if you want, you can take down the rest of these tents. We've already beamed out the last of the captives, so you should be clear to engage them."
"... Great, leave me with static targets, why don't you? ... Fine, it's better than nothing." The gunship begins to shoot, bullets and missiles, at the now unoccupied tents, destroying any provisions and equipment they might have had left.
"Pick a flunky, and take them down." Taluno orders. He takes aim at the Nidorino, and fires with a burst of suppressed fire, most of the bullets hitting true in the chest. The Nidorino dies before it even hits the sand.
Ranyu picks the Torrocat, with roughly the same result.

The Archeops gets shot dead just as quickly as those other two, courtesy of Ryalo.
"Curses!" Seeing his meatshields have already perished and him himself with no where else to go, Helios runs back into his tent.
"Ohoh! no you don't!" Ryalo starts going around the tent, he thinks his target is trying run away by going through the tent, but when he makes it to the other side he doesn't see the Heliolisk leaving, which means they got him surrounded in that tent now.

Taluno motions to Ranyu, who keeps his gun drawn on the entrance. Alone, he enters.
Inside is Helios. And a bunch of captives. Four to be precise. Three females, one male. All with fluids leaking out of all their orifices. As well as a bag with some bones sticking out of the top. 
It seems he saved his best captives for himself.  Typical. And he's been rather busy with them, from the looks of things.
They are a Helioptile, a Riolu, a Flareon, and a Cubone.

The wicked Heliolisk former guild master had his back turned to Taluno. "Who the hell are you people...?" He then turns around, pointing a long iron sword at this armored creature he has never seen before. "What the hell ARE you?!"

"What difference does it make to an idiot who's about to die?" Taluno replies harshly. "But for what it's worth, we're the operation hired to take you and the rest of your traitor buddies out. Speaking of which, your buddies are waiting in hell. Invite: This gun." He raises his gun, and opens fire.

He charged his sword with electricity and looks like he was about to try going for a stab before Taluno opened fire on him, the bullets piercing through his body and pushing him back. after that burst of gun fire to the chest he actually managed to remain standing for a moment before collapsing dead right front of the captives he was tormenting. And just like that, Helios, Former Guildmaster of what once was the Sandstone Guild, has met his end.
From the other side of the tent, Ryalo pokes his head in to see what happened. "He's dead? He's dead."

"Yeah, he's gone. Alright packies, let's get the rest of these captives back to sandstone and then it's back to the ship for debreifing."
He says as he takes out the last remaining teleporting device he has on him.
"Here kid, present for you." He says to the Helioptile as he sticks the device on her. Before she can say anything, muffled or otherwise, she's teleported away in a bright flash of light.

"Hey, come here." Nesalas voice calls out from behind Ryalo, she is calling him for some reason.
"Huh? Okay hang on. You might need this." Ryalo throws three of his teleporting devices to Taluno so he can secure these last captives. Then he turned around to face the other Avali. "What is it?"
She hands him his pistol, which he had previously lost in his struggle with that Hawlucha.
"Ah! Right thanks!"

"Yeah, can't leave tech like that around here." Taluno says to Ryalo and Nesala. 
He plants the devices onto the captives, and they too vanish into the air. Right straight to Sandstone. Right straight to Stic.
"Welp, they're that 'Stic' guy's problem now." Taluno says to himself.
"We did miss one or two hostiles. Don't worry, I nailed them as they tried to run." Pilot DMs.
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Eliminate all Sandstone Guild traitors: SUCCESSFUL The objective pops up on the screen.
"Did you two rescue the last of the captives?" Taluno asks Nesala and Ryalo. "If so, we can check that objective off and extract."

Nesala nods to Taluno's question. "Yeah, I covered that, I can say with 100% certainty that secured all the captives."

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Rescue all captives: SUCCESSFUL
"Alright people, that's a wrap. Let's extract, bomb what's left of the place, and get back to the ship."
At that cue, Pilot takes the gunship down, close to the ground, and opens the passenger doors.
The team board the gunship. Pilot does one more once-over, dropping a few napalm bombs to burn whatever's left of the camp, and before day breaks, they are already speeding off to whence they came.
----
Meanwhile, back at the mansion, Stic slowly wakes up, feeling a bit of wiggling. As soon as he realizes that he's not alone in the room, he bolts awake, only to see a bunch of bound mons all throughout the room looking at him with equal parts fear, curiosity, and confusion.

A pair of eyes with vision tinted in black watches as the ship flies off into the horizon, then the eyes look to the burning camp, approaching it a little bit. After staring at the inferno for a moment, the eyes look down at the sand, spotting something...A index finger and thumb reach down at it, picking up a bullet casing and bringing it close to the field of vision.
"..."
The bullet casing gets flicked up into the air, being grabbed by that index finger and thumb as it comes back down.
"...heh."
---
Stic stared at everyone in surprise, then after putting the dots together on who all of these must be. Now he wonders...did they really have to show up here? Really? The Meowstic gets off of his bed and goes off to fetch someone to help him sort through all of these mons.

---
All the while, up in the sky, A certain cream-colored Avali has finished with her labor. She finished about 30 minutes ago, and washed the operating area off. Detoxed the surgical area. Now all that's left is to wait for a certain sandshrew to awaken from his slumber...

Shrewn begins to stir from his lumber, opening his eyes slowly and blinking. "uuuuuh..." he groans. 

"Ah, you're finally awake."  Ranii says. "You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Miniknog ambush. Same as us, and that thief over there...."
Ranii watches him as he looks around confused.
"... Na, just kidding. Anyway, congratulations! The operation was a success. You now have a fully functional penis!" She says as she shakes his hand.
"Oh, and you can get out of bed now."

A fully functional penis she says? so it...worked? Shrewn sits on the bed and reaches paw down to his groin and...he feels it, something new there that wasn't there before. He looks down and sees his new penis. "W-woah..." He touches it more, feeling it, yes...yes this does feel like it's a part of him, he can feel his own touch upon it.

"Careful there big guy, or you're going to be walking around town and/or the manor with a huge wang out at all times." Ranii chuckles. She leans in close and whispers into his ear "So between you and me... anyone in particular you plan on testing that out on?"

He blushes brightly. "I...well...I did promise Vaper I would show it to her after I got it." He smiles. "She's gonna be speechless..."

"She sure is." Ranii reassures him. "Anyway, I'm sure you're eager to show it to her, so if you'll grab onto me, we'll teleport back to the manor now."

"Okay!" The excited Sandshrew puts a paw on her shoulder so they can teleport back down to the manor together.

They are surrounded by light, and they reappear in the courtyard of the manor.
"We're back." Ranii tells him. She grins at him.
"Go get'er, tiger." She gives a small chuckle.

He nods. "I...i'm not sure if I will ever be able to thank you for this Ranii." He sighs. "But...thank you." Shrewn said before waving to her and going back into the mansion. When he looked at the main hall he saw a lot of new faces, there were plenty of mons here for some reason and Four Eyes members talking with them. What is happening here? "W-what's going on...?"
"These are the captives that got rescued." Aceo said to him. Looks like he is here too to try to help with this little situation. "They got sent here for some reason, just...out of nowhere!" He sighs. "We are trying to make sure everyone's alright both in body and mind."

"You mean the prisoner transfer, or...no. They're talking about the ones the traitor guild took." Ranii recalls the briefing. "Oh yeah. Guess they weren't really specific about where to send them, so they must have just sent them here."

While all of them being sent here certainly was a surprise, Shrewn has to admit that these are good news nonetheless. Right now he fully trusts that the Avali really are here to help them for the better, they are putting plenty of effort to do what's right after all. For now he goes off to look for Vaper.
The Glaceon looks to the Avali. "Oh yeah, the prisoner exchange, I think that's about to begin too. A bunch of Grove prisoners were escorted out of the dungeon not long ago, pretty sure they were being taken to the entrance of Sandstone."

Ranii sighs. "Sorry Ara, but it looks like you're going to have to wait again." She grumbles.
"I have a bad feeling that this is going to go pear-shaped." Ranii says to Aceo. "Where's Luca?"

"I'm pretty sure he must be there too."

Ranii goes to find Luca. Now that she's back there's no need for him to do this alone...

When Ranii gets there she can see that all the Grove POW have been rounded up near the entrance of Sandstone, but it's within the walls however. There are guards surrounding the perimeter to make sure the prisoners don't escape and to make sure the civilians watching don't over step into what's happening.
Luca can be found talking with an Ampharos guard near the gate, which is closed right now.

"Luca!" Ranii calls out to him as she runs over to him. "Looks like I made it just in time."

He looks at her. "Ranii." Her partner is happy to see her. "Yeah, you did. They are already outside, can you jump up onto the wall and tell me what you see?"

The avali gives her partner a hug, again, being careful to avoid that painful spike in the middle.
"Oh, uh, right."
She extends her wings, and lands on the top of the wall in one careful jump. She looks out and sees....

It looks like a small detachment of Grove forces is waiting outside, those leaf-like capes are unmistakable. That particular owl is also among them.
And it looks like they brought their own prisoners too, just as planned. They look like the type of pokemon you would find here on the land of sands, there are a few odd ones among them too, such as a Kangaskhan and a black and white Linoone. All of them look like they were abused by their captors too, physically it seems so but it's not a stretch to assume that sexual abuse probably happened too.

"It looks like they brought the prisoners, as agreed." Ranii tells Luca down below. "Though they look pretty beat up." 
She narrows her eyes at the result of the barbarity before her. And she still has a bad niggling feeling. 
"Keep the crossbows ready" She orders the gate guards. "I don't trust this."

The guards on top of the wall load up their crossbows, preparing like they were told to in case anything out of the ordinary begins to happen.
"Alright then, I'm coming out..." Luca said before taking in a breath. "Open the gate! We are getting this prisoner exchange underway!" He commanded.
The gates are pulled open by mons inside, and through it walks the Lucario. Seeing him the Ducidueye also begins going towards him. It would appear that the two them are going to meet up to begin negotiation. There is nothing really stopping Ranii from coming down and joining him though.

Ranii takes the hint, and jumps down to be by her partner's side in all this.

"Aaaah, I have been having a feeling I would see the two of you again." The Owl says, her eyes look relaxed and she is smiling.
Luca is far more serious right now though. "So, you are actually agreeing to your end of the deal, aren't you?"
"The agreement was exchanging your people for my people, you still remember that right?" She raises a brow. "YOU do intend to honor it too, don't you?"
He narrows his eyes, he is hesitating a bit here, Ranii isn't the only one who has some bad feeling about all of this, with how easy this is seemingly being.

Ranii extends an arm behind her, showing the prisoners, showing that she does indeed intend to honor it.
"We do. Question is, do you?"

Duci crosses her wings. "Yes, of course I am. But the question is...who is going to trade first?"
"You do." Luca is quick to say that. "You have innocent mons among your prisoners, so I want to be sure they are safe. And then you will have your mons back at your side."
"Fair..." She doesn't even argue with this it seems. She turns around to some grass types near the captives. "Alright, let them go! That's an order!"
Complying, the Grove soldiers begin releasing the prisoner's binds. Now free they start to carefully walk towards Ranii and Luca as their captors told them to just as they were being released.
"...Okay let's bring them inside them." Luca said to Ranii before beginning to walk back to the gate, gesturing to the former captives to come with them.

"The hell have you been doing to these prisoners?" Ranii asks. "... Nevermind, we'll find out later."
Once the captives are inside, Ranii looks back to the Guildies holding the Grove prisoners.
"Alright, they held up their end of the bargain. bring the prisoners up here and release them."

When the captives were within the walls, they were free to go, but if they need medical attention or any other help there are some Guildies here for that.
As for the ones that were holding the POWs, they did as they were told, liberating the grass, bug and water types they were detaining.
Luca, with Ranii, had to escort these mons out through the gate as well. They come face to face with Duci again as their former POW walks past them. "There, that's every last Grove prisoner we had. Now I believe that our business is concluded..." He is honestly surprised that by the look of things, this all went through without anything out of the ordinary happening.

"yes, that went surprisingly well." Ranii says to Luca. "I was half expecting her to pull some sort of last minute trick or something..."
She looks to the ex-captives.
"They don't look too well." She comments. She walks up to one of them, the Kangaskhan.
"Hey, you alright?" She asks the Kangaskhan. She has not seen this mon before, so she wonders if this one is even from here. Then again, it's not like she's seen every single mon in this town, so there's no way she could know.

The Ducidueye doesn't say anything else, she just turns around to leave with the other Grove soldiers...She is smiling even more now.
At the moment Luca is off to help quell some of the pain of the captives by using Heal Pulse so he is a bit separated from Ranii at the moment.
The Kangaskhan jumped a bit when Ranii began talking to her. "Y-yes, i'm alright...thank you for...saving us." The Black and White Linoone is with her too.

She still thinks that this was too easy. And Duci's smile doesn't help matters. Still, she has other things to worry about now. 
"Are... are you from here?" She asks the Black and White Linoone.

This unusually colored Linoone glares at her a little. "Hmpft, yeah, I am...!" 
"She is stressed from what we had to go through, please don't mind her attitude." The Kangaskhan says.

"From the looks of things" She looks around to the rest of the prisoners. "I'm guessing it was none too pleasant... don't worry, we'll let you get some rest, some food, and give you your debriefing when you're ready." She says. No need to stress them out with recalling the details of what they went through in this state, this soon, after all.
Though she makes a mental note to attend the debriefing.

"A debriefing?" The Linoone asks.

"Just us asking what went on over there. That's all." Ranii reassures her. "Don't worry, you're safe now."
She looks to the other ex-POWs.
"Is there anything anyone else needs to say?" She asks to the others.

There ex-POWs being helped all around, but one in particular, a male scraggy, raises a hand to her question. "I...i might have something to say..."

"Go on." She tells the weird... big headed yellow... lizard... thing encouragingly.

"I'm...I'm not from this town." He says to her.

"You're... you're not?" Ranii asks him, surprised? "Well, where are you from?"

"I-i'm from Sunset. A town that the Grove took over. So this...this was some sort of prisoner exchange right? I have no idea why they threw me into the bunch..."

"I see." She looks to the other prisoners. "Who else here is from a place other than sandstone?" She asks. "Raise your hands."

A few more paws or hands are raised amongst the mons.
Luca approaches Ranii, wondering why she asked that to everyone. "Huh? What gives?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Ranii tells him. "Okay, last question... Does anyone know if they still have any Sandstone prisoners in their possession?"

The replies she gets are mostly 'no's and other such negative responses to that question.
Luca is a little confused now. "hhhmmm, i don't get it so we got...a surplus?" He rubs his chin, now is starting to feel something suspicious all over again. "Hhhhmhm, we could have tried to count each and every prisoner to figure where all of them came from but...some of them were pretty insistent on getting home to their families already, I guess they can't be blamed..." He sighs. 

"Hmmmm... seems that way." Ranii says to him. "No matter, their loss. At least they don't have any remaining Sandstone prisoners in their possession. Anyway, follow Aceo here up to the mansion. They'll give you treatment, food, and your debriefing afterwords." She instructs the ex-prisoners. "Though they're probably still processing the last batch from earlier tonight." She says under her breath. She makes a mental note to see what went on there. 

Luca thinks for another moment, then nods. "Whatever the case, I think we better report this to Stic, don't you think?"

"Definitely." Ranii says. 
"Anyway, if you'll follow us up to the mansion..." Ranii corrects herself from her earlier statement of simply following Aceo. "Once there, Aceo will show you where to go, right?"

The prisoners that are still here agree, and when it comes the time for them to go, Luca and Ranii guide them to the mansion, the place is still busy like the Avali had predicted.
Stic is currently awake watching from the second floor as Luca and Ranii arrive, bringing more pokémon with them to be processed.
"He's up there." Luca said when he stopped the Meowstic.

"Stic." Ranii says. "The prisoner transfer was successful, and, against my instincts, it seems that they kept their word... for now at least."

The tired cat blinks. "So it went smoothly?"
Luca shakes his head. "For some reason there were captives from other towns on top of the captives of Sandstone."
"Hhhmmm...strange indeed." Stic begins rubbing his eyes. He was planning on sleeping again but with all that's happening it appears that he is going to be needed for a bit more time. "I will have to look into that with the help of a few other. I think you two deserve a rest for the night though."

"Yeah... I did promise Ara that I'd meet her tonight." Ranii admits, thankful that she finally has time for this. "If there's nothing else..."

"There is nothing else, indeed." Stic confirms that to her.
"So you're off to see Ara huh?" Luca gives Ranii a pat on the head. "You have fun okay?"

"I will." Ranii says. "maybe I can convince her to let you join in next time?" She says teasingly, while giving him a small rub on the face, and a sultry grin.

"Heh, i'm not sure. Don't think she ever looked my way like she was seeing if i was attractive and such."

"Well, you never really showed interest there either. I think we both know why..." She reminds him. "Well, give it some thought. I've gotta run." And with that, she's off to see Ara.
---------

In one of the alleys of Sandstone, two particular female mons are making their way through, but stopping in there and looking back for a moment.
"Alright...we are in the clear now." The Linoone looks to her partner. "You still got all we need for tomorrow morning, right?"
The Kangaskhan pulls open the pouch on her belly, looking at the bombs she smuggled in. "Yeah, i got strange explosive balls we got from the day the Grove attacked...we just need to add fire and we can use this against them." She says.
The Linoone nods. "Alright, some fire, can't be too hard, maybe a bag too..." She smirks. "If Duci is right, by the time we use those on the gate, they won't even know what hit'em."
---
Ranii makes it to Ara's 'Brothol', looks like the place is just closing for the night, so there is definitively still time to meet up with her tonight.