I obviously wanted to find out how it managed to sneak up on me like that, so we squeezed the answer out of the ghost jelly balloon, and the answer was as simple as it was infuriatingly logical. Jellicent had a talent that made it the perfect assassin, at least inside a body of water. Despite having obtained the answer from Jellicent, I still opened Jellicent's status sheet since I wanted to read the proper description of the talent that nearly cost me my life.
'Species: Jellicent
Gender: Male
Type: Water, Ghost
Potential: Light Green
Stage: Dark Gold-Stage (Low)
Modifiers: None
Abilities: Water Absorb, Cursed Body
Talents: Water Meld
Affinities: Water, Ghost'
What a Water Meld it was; The ability to fuse/meld with water and perfectly mask its presence as well as energy signature in the process. It was a practical if not relatively simple talent, which despite not being truly powerful, mostly due to its water-bound limitation, could still be extremely lethal as I had experienced myself. Honestly, had I seen Jellicent in any other situation I would have likely ignored it since I would have felt that its talent was not enough to make up for its potential at its current stage.
Yet, such a "lacking" talent and the Pokémon that possessed it had nearly managed to kill me. I took a calming breath before finally closing the talent description along with the status page. We had solved the mystery, confirming the why and how behind the ambush, so it was time to fully close the case. Now that I knew that Jellicent had acted on its own and that there were no other aggressors around, I really wanted to go back to Utopia since I knew that everyone else was waiting for me there.
I told Horus/Xatu to finish off Jellicent in a permanent fashion since simply killing it was not enough due to due to it being part of that annoying to deal with group of ghosts. Horus as a ghost had the easiest time fully eradicating a ghost like that without allowing it to reform at a later date, and in this case, I was not inclined to leave any way out for Jellicent.
I felt everyone's approval of my choice, though there was some regret and envy there as well. It was obvious that quite a few of the Pokémon present would have loved to take Horus' place, but given the malicious glee I felt from Horus when he heard me leave Jellicent to him, I doubted he would be willing to give up the opportunity to anyone else.
Anyway, Horus lost no time and cloaked Jellicent in his astral/ghost-type energy before using what appeared to be a variant of Night Shade to thoroughly destroy Jellicent's spectral body. I noticed that Horus did not allow the spectral energy to escape into the atmosphere, but absorbed it into his own energy as he continued to destroy Jellicent.
No one spoke while this happened; Even when the pain caused Jellicent to regain consciousness for a moment before the damage caused it to slip into a coma everyone remained silent. Yet, I could feel the vindication they all felt as we watched Jellicent's form breaking up, turning into a blob of ghost energy which was steadily being broken up and assimilated by Horus.
I was aware that this was usually something that I would have never allowed my Pokémon to do, not only because it felt rather evil but also because of what happened to Pallosand. However, I could not bring myself to care about the perceived wickedness of what Horus was doing. All I did was ask Horus if it was safe for him, and when he told me that Jellicent's spectral energy alone would not affect him, I let him handle it however he wanted.
It took around a minute for Jellicent to essentially die and turn into a spectral blob, and another 5 or so minutes for Horus to safely absorb all that energy. While no one had dared to stay close to us during that period, I knew that there were still Pokémon keeping an eye on the situation from afar. It was why we made sure to keep an eye on our surroundings while watching Horus deal with Jellicent; We made sure that no one attacked us while we were busy with him.
As for why we did not drive them away? It was because they were already keeping a respectable distance, and we wanted to use them to spread what happened along with the consequences that such actions had to warn everyone else in the channel that might want to attack us. Hopefully, it would make the Gyarados think twice before they chose to act against us.
Frankly, the Gyarados and the Whiscash were the ones I had actually expected to get ambushed/attacked by. Instead, I got ambushed by a ghost jellyfish in a manner that the other two species could never have managed. Either way, the warning was one of the main reasons I let Horus deal with Jellicent here instead of moving all of us to Utopia.
Moving on, Horus declared that he was done right after we saw the last trace of blue vanish, and I let my gaze wander between the Pokémon I knew were watching us from afar before I moved all of us to Utopia. We appeared at my place, and the area was already fully packed with the members of our/my family. They rushed up to me the moment I appeared bombarding me with worried inquiries on how I was and how I was feeling.
I let them crowd me without a complaint since I knew that they had to have been worried seeing me getting ambushed like that through the live feed/stream. I could feel the worry as well as the concern they were feeling now, and I could imagine that it had been a multitude worse during that moment. Seeing them like this, I decided that in this situation visible proof was likely more appropriate than words, so I took off my shirt and showed off my pristine chest to illustrate that my chest had fully healed.
I even did a little deliberate spin to display that I was fully healed up at the front and back before I verbally assured them that Utopia had fixed me up perfectly. I even jokingly said that I was now absolutely sure that Utopia could deal with any physical injuries they suffered during training or battles, though given the frowns everyone threw my way they did not seem to appreciate my attempt at humor.
I could not help but ask if it was too soon which earned me a few exasperated looks for trying to follow up with another gag. Still, it worked somewhat since I could tell that most of them felt a bit more at ease seeing me act silly like that. Yet, I saw that Gwen/Gardevoir, along with most psychics and aura-sensitive individuals, still gave me somewhat corncerened looks, and I could feel that their feelings matched their expressions.
Hence, I spent a bit more time as well as effort to assure everyone that I was feeling fine. I told them that I felt much better after having gotten to the bottom of the ambush and after having enforced swift retribution. Only after that did I get them to loosen up a bit. I led them to the lawn, and we all sat/lay down before we began to talk about what to do next.
There were questions about whether we were going to continue our exploration of the (under)water channel, and some brought up that we had actually gotten carried away by the events that followed Feebas' evolution to Milotic. We had changed our focus to the channel instead of finishing the exploration of the regular chambers connected to the main space/chamber.
That was admittedly true, BUT it would feel too much like I/we were retreating (escaping) from the channel if we halted our current exploration to resume the previous chamber one. Because of that, I felt unwilling to go back even if they were right. We might have gotten ahead of ourselves and skipped ahead to the channel exploration, but it had happened and I was not going to quit now just because of a (painful) setback.
There were words for and against it, along with the very good question/argument regarding the length or depth of the channel. They wanted to know if we would just go on and on if the channel kept extending further and further. We eventually decided to temporarily stop once we roughly reached the 15 km line to return to our previous exploration of the dry/main space(s). Any further exploration of the channel could wait until I had finished our initial search project.
Once we had come to that decision, our conversation began to turn towards potential countermeasures against special talents like the one Jellicent had, but even after everyone brainstormed vigorously, we failed to find a truly effective solution that did not amount to essentially looking for someone with a special talent specializing in detecting special talents like Water Meld. There was honestly not much else we could do because it was extremely unlikely that we could find any conventional detection methods that worked against such (over)specialized talents.
Our conversation went on until it was time for dinner, and I noticed while we ate that Gwen and Anubis/Lucario occasionally gave me worried looks, so I took a few moments after dinner to assure them that I was fine. Yet, they still looked somewhat unconvinced, but left it at that after Gwen told me that I could talk to her, to them. Anyway, we spent the next two hours after dinner playing some games before I finally decided to retreat to my mansion for some alone time.
That caused some whining and pleading to play another round, which was then followed by another round and another until finally an hour later I put my foot down. I resolutely returned to my room, saying that I was going to sleep early tonight, even though it was not even 10 p.m. Once I was in my room, with the curtains drawn and the door closed, I finally relaxed the control I had my thought streams exerting over my emotions and mind.
The moment they loosened their hold, my body started to squirm while my hand shook as I began to feel the panic, terror, dread, fear, fury, anger, as well as nervousness I had felt and promtly supressed starting from the moment my body had registered the blinding pain due to having a tentacle shoved through my chest. Those (negative) emotions had been bottled up until now and were now stampeding through my system/mind.
I was just thankful that I was not (re) experiencing the pain I felt, though there was a bit of (phantom) pain that quickly went away, and I honestly preferred this over the alternative. Even the meltdown-like cocktail I was currently enduring was better than having to experience those emotions at the moment I felt them, because they would have definitely impacted my decision-making at the time, and I was pretty sure that the result would have been worse than the choices I made.
I had made some slightly out-of-character choices as it was, which could also be linked to the emotion manipulation/suppression I had going on at the time. Still, a choice made in a bit more ruthless and slightly uninhibited state was better than one made in an extremely furious and panicked state.
Anyway, I started to take deep breaths and began to focus on the emotions rushing through me one by one. I felt the twitching stop as I worked through, or more like accepted, the negative emotions, letting them run their course without letting them amplify each other. Eventually, my hands stopped shaking and I felt my inner calm return, or at least as close to an inner calm as I could reach right now.
I knew that I was not fully done with those negative emotions since they would not simply vanish this easily, but at least the worst part was over, and Gwen as well as the others would be able to stop worrying about the internal turmoil they were feeling from me. Nonetheless, I could not help but want to talk to Mom, (….) and Dad, so I took my phone out and opened a portal to the outside to make calling them possible.
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