<- FIRST | CURRENT

When a Weavile thief shanghaied into an adventuring team joins them in a dungeon exploration, they meet another explorer amidst complications.

A comm for PipePumpkin, featuring characters of Fromso and Kirbu's! It was great to return to Team Doll. Please enjoy.

---

Being a goody-goody sucked.

The famed Weavile thief, Wicked, was not supposed to return stolen goods or help little old ladies cross the street or do any number of obsequious, saccharine tasks. But after she’d inadvertently tried to kidnap—and then merged with—the Mimikyu adventurer Doppel, control over her body was no longer really hers anymore. Doppel’s mantle was draped around her shoulders like a cloak, and he had complete control over everything underneath, including Wicked’s flesh and form. He could churn it into shadows or cause his tendrils to emerge from her flesh if he so chose, and with him effectively holding her hostage, Wicked had no choice but to let the adventurer try and ‘reform’ her.

Augh! It was just the worst!

Team Doll, her new ‘friends’ called themselves. Besides Doppel, the leader, there was Flurry the Rotom—possessing some gigantic, cumbersome appliance focused on cold—and Wendall the Spinda. A cheerier, more naïve bunch of marks would be hard-pressed to exist elsewhere. Normally, these were the types of wannabe-heroes that Wicked would run circles around; but now? Now she had to deal with the fact that they were her cohorts, for lack of a better term.

Awful!

It’d been a few weeks since the fateful merging between Weavile and Mimikyu, and in that time Wicked’s reputation around Hickory Town had plummeted. Once a mysterious, elegant thief, now the townsfolk waved at her as she passed or talked openly about her ‘good deeds’. Pah! Doppel could talk up how good it felt to do good; Wicked would rather have a whispered reputation and a hoard of ill-gotten gains.

But it wasn’t really up to her anymore, was it?

Doppel had forced her to return all her stolen goodies, and since compelled her to performing, for lack of a better term, chores around town. (The indignity!) Wicked tried to scowl and intimidate passers-by, but it was hard when there was a goofy, cheery ghost riding shotgun while her erstwhile teammate, a loopy-voiced Spinda, did his best to direct foot traffic. Insufferable.

Thankfully, the local guild had decided that she’d ‘proved’ herself enough to be let on ‘real’ missions, and she lobbied hard to Doppel and the others to get out of Hickory Town. If she had to spend another day here, it’d be stifling!

“What about that?” Wendall asked, jabbing a spotted paw at a notice on the board. “Someone’s heirloom got lost in a dungeon and they want it back.”

Heirloom? Priceless, then. Likely worth a lot. A good way to rebaptize her identity as a thief. And better yet, the dungeon would afford a great way to get away from the condescending gazes of the townsfolk.

“Let’s do it!” Wicked said, not having to feign her enthusiasm. If the rest of Team Doll misunderstood why she was excited, that was their fault. “I’m on board!”

Wendall cheered, and Flurry smirked. “Wow, actually playing with the team for once?” she teased. “Who are you and what did you do with our Weavile friend?”

Doppel, though, seemed hesitant. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice, as always, was emerging from Wicked’s body. Not her throat or mouth, but just… out of her form. A reminder that her ‘normal’ Weavile flesh was a facsimile made by Doppel’s shadows due to their merging. “It could be dangerous. Are we ready for this?”

“Oh, please!” Wicked declared. She held up her long claws and clacked them together. “You’ve got the great Wicked on your side! What could go wrong?”

Wendall and Flurry both nodded, and Doppel allowed himself to be convinced. Wicked grinned toothily to herself. Step one: complete.

---

The dungeon was a vast tree, one that would put sequoias to shame, that had been hollowed by plant pokemon into a cavernous wood-halled skyscraper. It teemed with hostile pokemon, both dungeon-dwellers skeptical of outsiders and bandits who’d carved out their own little hideaways. Wicked felt her palms itch. She’d wanted to get out of Hickory Town but now that she actually saw the tree standing sentinel before her, she was having second thoughts.

“Okay!” Flurry said, bouncing excitedly. Her voice was spastic and glitchy, spiced with electronic artifacts. “Our first real dungeon! Let’s do it!” Wendall and Doppel both nodded in agreement, and Wicked spoke up:

“I… y’know, are we sure about this? Maybe we should rethink.”

“You were the one who talked us into going!” Doppel said grumpily.

“Yeah, well, a girl’s allowed to change her mind, huh?” Wicked crossed her arms petulantly. “I’m not going and that’s final!”

Flurry and Wendall both looked downhearted, and Wicked felt anger teeming out of the Mimikyu scarf she wore. “Oh, I don’t think so,” Doppel declared. “You promised us, so it’s time to fulfill your obligations!” And suddenly a foreign will was animating her movements; Wicked gasped as her arms and legs began marching towards the tree, seemingly of their own accord, as Doppel puppeteered her body.

“Hey, wait! C’mon, knock it off!”

But Doppel wouldn’t back down, and with Wendall and Flurry both cheering them on, the merged pair pushed into the tree.

---

Finding the lost heirloom, an old bronze-wrought mirror, was easy, as it turned out. What was less easy was getting out once Team Doll had inadvertently hooked the attention of hostile pokemon.

“Lily, with me!” Flurry said, using Wicked’s ‘real’ name. Gah! She loathed that Doppel had found her ID in her hideout and spread her identity around. She was a thief! She was Wicked!

“Don’t call me that!” she complained even as she stood alongside the Rotom. The two of them unleashed a powerful gust of rimed, frost-ridden air that beat back the angry Grass-types advancing on them. Though Team Doll had tried to explain to the dungeon pokemon that they were just here to rescue a lost item, the Grass-types had assumed they were bandits.

…okay, maybe Wicked trying to snatch a berry satchel off of a Sawsbuck hadn’t entirely helped the matter. Even so, they were overreacting quite a bit!

The ice blasts pushed the tree pokemon back, but they were standing between Team Doll and the only path down, driving them higher up the trunk. All the while, Doppel was loudly chastising Wicked.

“Okay, okay, maybe I shouldn’t’ve filched the berries, are ya happy?” she snapped back. “But they’re not taking ‘sorry’ as an answer!”

“I can hardly blame them!” Doppel sounded self-righteously put out. “This is not the rehabilitation we promised!”

“I didn’t promise anything, you bodyjacking spectral parasite!”

Further back-and-forth was cut off when Team Doll rounded the corner and found a group of angry-looking pokemon waiting for them. While most were Grass-types supplemented by a few bugs, there was a Sudowoodo in the lead—a bad matchup for her and Flurry, who’d been doing most of the heavy lifting.

Oh boy.

“Um!” Wendall’s voice was shaky and uncertain. “Could we, uh, talk about this?”

It turned out that so far as the dungeon pokemon were concerned, no they couldn’t. The Sudowoodo launched a ferocious salvo of thrown rocks which Wicked and Flurry had to shy away from, and the Grass-types followed suit with a powerful spray of sharp leaves. Wendall gulped and ducked low, the leaves slicing the air overhead and cutting a few strands of fur from his large ears.

Down in the pit of her body, Wicked could feel something churning—a powerful, undulating, pulsating darkness. Doppel’s power. Would he unleash it? She remembered when Doppel had taken over her before, leaving her ‘body’ a teeming mass of shadowy tendrils. It was a scary memory.

But then, suddenly, something burst onto the scene that made Doppel’s ferocity unnecessary. A long sheet of fire washed through the dungeon corridors. The sequoia wood was too thick and healthy to be damaged by pokemon flames, and repulsed the fire without issue. The Grass- and Bug-type pokemon, however, were not so hardy. They retreated from the heat, hissing and booing as the fire drove them off. Only their ringleader, the Sudowoodo, remained. He turned with a grimace, preparing to launch stone at the interrupting interloper—

But then Doppel took advantage of his foe’s distraction. From underneath the mantle Wicked wore around her neck, a long, claw-tipped shadow whipped out and smacked the pokemon in the back of his head. With an aggrieved sigh, the Sudowoodo sagged sideways.

The fires quickly burned themselves out, and their mysterious rescuer soon showed himself. He was a tall Typhlosion whose friendly demeanor belied the obvious self-assurance and power that he moved with. A rescue scarf was tied around one thigh, and pince-nez spectacles were perched at his snout. Wicked quickly got the sense that this fellow wouldn’t struggle to take all of Team Doll in a fight.

Still, he seemed to be on their side. He strolled up to them after checking to make sure the Sudowoodo was indeed out cold. “I’d heard there was a newbie team here,” he replied. “You lot must’ve got the whole tree in an uproar.” He extended a paw in greeting. “Name’s Flambeau. Freelance adventurer.”

Wendall and Flurry openly fawned over the Typhlosion, apparently recognizing his reputation, Doppel—rendered near-insensate from the shock of seeing such a prestigious explorer—shot a shadow tendril out from Wicked’s body to shake Flambeau’s paw. The Typhlosion’s brows raised in shock, but he kept himself comported.

“Name’s Doppel, leader of Team Doll!” came the voice from Wicked’s body. “And this is my sidekick. Her name’s Lily.”

“No it’s not! It’s Wicked!”

“I see.” Flambeau seemed skeptical of her ‘dashing thief’ cred, which was absolutely unacceptable. “Well, Team Doll, I came here to bring down some bandits on the upper levels. Most of the inhabitants are good pokemon, but they’re worked up into a frenzy by bandit incursions.”

“Understandable!” Doppel noted. “Lily’s sticky fingers filching some berries likely didn’t help matters.”

Flambeau cast a judgmental gaze at her and she glanced sideways, crossing her arms grouchily. “It was just some treats,” she muttered.

“Well,” Flambeau said with a sigh, “the whole tree’s got it in their heads that you’re just more bandits, and have it out for you. Tell you what—how about I accompany you to the base and out of the dungeon? I’m sure we can figure out a way to escape together.”

Flurry and Wendall were both ecstatic, and though Wicked didn’t especially want to pal around with such a goody two-shoes, he did look pretty strong. “Fine,” she declared, proving an amused twitch at Flambeau’s mouth and a sense of wry resignation from Doppel. “I’ll allow it. You can show us the way back.”

“As you say, miss Lily.”

“It’s Wicked!”

---

They slowly maneuvered their way down the great tree, Flambeau in the lead. With the adventurer out front they were able to dissuade most of the harassment that would’ve come their way, and easily chased off those dungeon pokemon who weren’t intimidated. The whole time, Flurry and Wendall all but fawned over Flambeau, each expounding on how famous and well-known the adventurer was. He bore their attentions with good grace.

“What about you, miss?” he asked to Wicked. “How’d you fall in with a crew like this?”

“Oh, it’s a fascinating story!” Doppel cut in. Flambeau still clearly didn’t know what to make of Doppel’s possession of Wicked, but nodded along to the specter’s babblings with good humor. “You see, Lily here was a thief back in Hickory Town. I caught her and convinced the guild association to let me try and reform her!”

“Good luck. ‘Was’ a thief? I still am [i]a thief,” she muttered. Flambeau’s brow furled at that.

“Well. I mostly traffic in quests for more dangerous pokemon, but I still can’t abide by any misbehavior! Thievery makes it hard for everyday pokemon to get by. They want to live comfortably just as much as you do.”

“Hmph! Well, it’s not just about being comfortable. It’s about proving that I’m the best. No one can stop my razor-sharp claws or my swift speed. ‘Lily’? That’s the name of a weak girl. I’m [i]Wicked, and soon everyone will know my name!”

Flambeau looked unconvinced and she felt anger bubbling up within Doppel, but before either of them could make a move there was a sudden flurry of movement. More dungeon pokemon swept out of a low, nearby passageway to attack them.

The leader was a Ribombee, her long ‘scarf’ drifting in the wind as she moved. Angrily, the bee pokemon prepared a Pollen Puff attack and shot it at Wicked. She squealed, jumping sideways as the pollen burst behind her. Doppel extruded long dark tendrils from her body to try and swat the bee out of the sky, but she skirted sideways, easily dodging his blows. Other pokemon, all Bug-types—Spinarak, Durant, Parasect—skittered out of cracks in the walls. “Invaders! Thieves! Bandits!” they all accused, rushing down towards Team Doll and their Typhlosion companion.

“Um, we’re not your enemies!” Wendall said. “Really! We just want to leave—yaah!” He sunk to his knees, clutching his ears as the Durant clanked its metal jaws together, the metallic noise unleashing against him as a sonic onslaught.

“We won’t be able to convince them,” Flambeau said with resignation. “We’ll just need to drive them back while being sure not to do lasting damage.” He flared his ruff of fire and spat a thick plume of smoke. The Smokescreen attack congealed in the chamber, causing the bugs to halt their assault, hacking and coughing, but the Ribombee growled and began gathering fairy energy. The pink glow began to gleam through the smoke.

“We need it darker! Doppel, you and your friend want to help out?”

“Right! C’mon, Lily!” Doppel shot out a long sheaf of dark energy, the umbral power unspooling from a seemingly limitless well that was deep inside of Wicked’s body. For a moment Wicked watched, wide-eyed. She’d known that Doppel was stronger than he looked; after all, he’d accidentally managed to merge their bodies together, right? But this was ridiculous!

The ghostly shadows melded with Flambeau’s smoke and started to beat back the fairy light, but it wasn’t enough. The Ribombee cried out angrily and shone brighter, and Flambeau’s voice whipped over the scene:

“Wicked! We could really use a Dark-type!”

It took her a moment to realize that he was talking to her. For all she insisted that she be called ‘Wicked,’ she was still mostly used to ‘Lily’. Now that she heard it in another’s mouth…

Jeez, was it maybe kinda just a teensy little cringe?

Well, that was for later. He needed her help, and she wasn’t going to let him down. Crying out, she reached deep inside of herself to the inner core of energy that all pokemon carried within. She normally unveiled that power as frigid Ice-type attacks, but it was time to embrace the darker side of things!

Lily shut her eyes and focused. She imagined herself casting a shadow as if she were facing away from the sunset. The shadow passed out of her body and emanated out of her; she felt the energy inside of her solidify into an almost tangible darkness that blanketed the room in a deep, oppressive gloom. Normally calling on such power would have overwhelmed her, but now she felt like it was bottomless.

She continued pushing her energy out and realized that it was tinged with a ghostly mien. The reason her Dark-type powers seemed stronger was because she was drawing on Doppel’s abilities! The two of them united were stronger than either was alone.

“Lily? You’re drawing on my strength…”

Doppel’s voice was uncertain; Lily hissed. Darkness was flowing from her, supplementing Flambeau’s smoke. But the gleam of the Ribombee’s light was still prevalent.

“Yeah,” she grunted. “Give me a little more. I’ve got this!”

Doppel paused, seemingly uncertain, but then surrendered. Part of his power clung to Lily and she felt herself unveil a powerful sweep of darkness unlike anything she’d ever used before. Crying out, living shadow swept from her like cascading water, mingling with Flambeau’s Smokescreen and beating back the Ribombee’s light attack. As the Bug-types wailed in dismay, stumbling and confused in the darkness, Team Doll and Flambeau spirited themselves away.

---

That night, they’d finally exited the dungeon and had set up a small camp just off the trail. Everyone was sore and tired, but in good spirits. They’d made their escape and no one, including the dungeon pokemon, had gotten seriously hurt.

“Thanks for your help, Wicked,” Flambeau said. He had a long stick which he was using to poke the fire. “We couldn’t have made it out without you.”

She grinned. Getting talked up by such an important adventurer was a pretty cool feeling. “Y’know,” she said, “I changed my mind. You can just call me ‘Lily’, I guess.”

Flambeau smiled, the firelight reflected off his spectacles. “No more ‘Wicked’?”

“Hmph! I’ve decided you need to earn the right to call me that,” Lily declared. “Not having my name sullied by some goody-goody.”

He chuckled. “Well, thank you regardless. That was a pretty incredible display back there.”

Lily puffed out her chest, not caring that it led to her fur brushing against Doppel. “Yeah,” she said immodestly, “well, I tend to be a pretty incredible mon.”

“Y’know, in my work as adventurer, I tend to get pretty high praise from some pokemon,” Flambeau noted. “I bet you could do the same with a bit of practice.” He smiled again. “There’s more than one way to build a reputation and prove your worth.”

Lily scowled. “Don’t think I don’t realize what you’re trying to do, Flambeau. The thrill I got from boosting your Smokescreen is nothing compared to the thrill of getting away from a well-crafted bout of thievery!”

“Lily!” Two of Doppel’s shadow tendrils emerged from her body and he planted them on her hips in a really-now sort of gesture. “More of this nonsense?!”

Flambeau chuckled. “No need to get all bothered on my account, Doppel. She’s just speaking her mind. That said…” He pulled out a marshmallow, puffed his fire breath on it to toast it, and popped it in his mouth before handing it to the others. Wendall and Flurry eagerly gathered the treats to start roasting them over the fire. “The thrill might not stack up, but I bet the sense of gratitude makes up for it. Not many mons said thank you for thievery, I’d bet.”

Lily grumbled to herself as Doppel piloted her body and, in awkward movements, made her also begin roasting marshmallows. He stuck two on there, one for her and one for him. Stupid Doppel. Stupid Flambeau. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed of!

Though the bronze mirror was still safe in her satchel. Strangely enough, thinking about pilfering it from under the nose of Team Doll didn’t appeal the way it normally would have.

Doppel raised a toasted marshmallow to her mouth and she snarfed it down without thinking. It was warm and sweet and gooey, and she gulped it down happily. Well… perhaps she could try giving the whole ‘returning missing items’ thing a shot. Just to say she’d done it. Just to prove that it totally wasn’t her thing.

Heh. That’d show ‘em.