Chapter 780: CH160 (774), That’s Not Good
Well, at least I was assuming that Palossand had eaten those Sandygast and was planning on doing that to the one I caught. To ascertain whether that was true or not, I would have to interrogate Palossand first, but looking at the facts I already knew I honestly was not worried about getting the truth out of Palossand since I had zero hesitation about invading its privacy. Honestly, Palossand's modifier and talent had distracted me at first, but the fact that its gender was undetermined if nothing else showed that something was wrong with this one since Palossand were usually either male or female.
'Species: Palossand
Gender: Genderless
Type: Ghost, Ground
Potential: Deep Green
Stage: Dark Gold-stage (Low)
Modifiers: Desert-variant, Amalgam
Abilities: Storm Drain, Sand Veil
Talents: Cannibalize
Affinities: Ghost, Ground'
Not that anyone seeing a modifier like Amalgam and talent like Cannibalize could not infer that even without Palossand's gender issue. Not to mention the malice it exuded passively since it could not suppress it in its frozen state. The fact that it oozed such dense malice passively was definitely a red flag. Honestly, even though I saw nothing wrong with invading Palossand's mind, its state, as in it being a malice oozing amalgam, and its strength made me hesitant to enter its head on my own, so I brought out Horus/Xatu, and Tatsumaki/Alakazam for support.
While we could not really blend our psychic probes into a single super probe, we were able to use our bonds, with them using my bond with each of them as a bridge, to synchronize our psychic energy. This allowed our probes to work together without interfering with one another and in the worst case they would be able to support each other while withdrawing from Palossands mind. I saw this as a necessary precaution since I was not sure what we would find inside that mind, though I was certain that it would not be anything nice.
When I explained the situation at hand and what we were going to do to the two, Mothra/Butterfree declared that she wanted to join in as well. I had, probably subconsciously, excluded her since she was not a psychic type, but then again, we were talking about Mothra here. Given her full psionic affinity along with her pretty high psionic energy mastery, she was pretty much a Psychic even without the official typing, so after thinking it over for a moment I told her that if she could synchronize her psionic energy with ours to the same standard as Horus and Tatsumaki, then she could join in.
Mothra happily agreed, and when I released my psionic energy, which had Horus and Tatsumaki do the same, she followed suit. I watched as Horus and Tatsumaki adjusted their psionic energy to match mine and each other as much as possible with Mothra trying to do the same. While the two managed to complete the adjustment within less than a minute, Mothra failed to do so, though she was getting better at it with every passing moment. When the other two stopped adjusting their psionic energy, Mothra asked them to keep going regardless since she was watching them adjust their energy to copy what they were doing which allowed her to get better at it.
Horus as well as Tatsumaki just sighed at her outrageous words but still did as she requested, and incredibly enough Mothra actually got better and better at adjusting her psionic energy. Yet, after 5 minutes passed without her achieving synchronization, I decided to put a stop to it since it became clear that it would take her at least a few hours to reach the necessary level, which was still absurd. Sadly for Mothra, I was not planning on waiting that long, and I told her as much which had her pouting. She still accepted her "failure", though she swore to master this soon enough so that she could join in on the fun the next time something like this happened.
I could not help but tell her that we would probably not come across something like this again since cases like this had to be impossibly rare. Mothra just giggled at that and waved me off by saying "Yet, we keep coming across impossible stuff again and again", leaving me without a way to refute her since she was kinda right. I mean we did come across Palossand didn't we? Anyway, Mothra sprawled lazily but triumphantly on my head after her counterargument while we went ahead and invaded Palossands mind. Unlike its frozen body, Palossand's mind was still very much active, though my previous assumption was unfortunately proven right since what we found was not nice at all.
Palossand's mind space was chaotic, and multiple distinct thought streams were actively interfering and clashing with one another, including the strongest one, which we assumed to be the original belonging to Palossand. Consequently, it was not hard to infer that the other thought streams belonged to Palossand's Sandygast victims. This took the term self-hate to a whole new level. Frankly, Palossand's situation was a bit odd since while it was not nice to hear, it was a fact that Pokemon ate Pokemon, and that included ghost types as well. However, even if they consumed others, a case like this one usually did not happen, at least I had not heard about anything like this before.
The Pokemon with the closest likeness was Spiritomb, but even there we knew how that happened, and it was not because a ghost ate its fellow ghosts. After observing the clashing "minds" for a few moments we began to dive into Palossand's memories, though the chaos was making it very hard for us to search for what we were looking for. Even after nearly 10 (mindscape) minutes, we only got to look at a bunch of random memories that were pretty useless to us. Deciding that we could not go on like this I told the others to do this the brute way, which was to overwhelm all minds/thought streams present and take control of them, forcing them to listen to us.
Horus and Tatsumaki hesitated for a moment since this was something psychic types of their lines would dislike doing because it practically turned the target into one's puppet until the control was released. It was practically the psychic version of an Imperio, and honestly, most would probably prefer to kill instead of doing that. Nonetheless, they understood that the situation demanded some drastic measures and agreed, so we flooded the mindscape with our psionic energy and captured the 8 minds that were wreaking havoc. Well, more like the one "intact" mind and the 7 fractured minds that were messing with the intact one.
Once they were tied up, we ordered Palossand's mind to bring up its memories of the first time it came across the first Sandygast it saw, along with the other encounters it had with the Sandygast. Following that, the relevant memories came to the forefront, allowing us to view them. We got to see how Palossand, who had been normal until then, suddenly felt a deep-seated urge to eat when the Sandygast formed close to her home. She got the feeling that she would not only be satiated if she ate Sandygast but actually get stronger, which was not what usually happened even for ghost types, especially not if one ate weak newborns.
Still, due to the fact that only a handful of Pokemon species had no reservations about eating their fellow species members which did not include the Sandygast line, Palossand ignored what she was feeling and left the Sandygast alone, at least for a while. Unfortunately, the feeling that she could get stronger if she consumed the Sandygast grew as Sandygast grew stronger, along with Sandygast's appeal. Yet, Palossand ignored the urge coming from within and stayed away from Sandygast. She focused on getting stronger instead, and it worked. At least it did until she failed to get stronger no matter what she tried.
Yes, shortly after Palossand reached the (mid) silver stage, she stopped growing no matter how much she trained, and we could see that she did train consistently. It was clear to us/me that Palossand must have had deep orange potential at the time, which limited her strength ceiling to (mid) silver. That was interesting since Palossand currently had deep green potential. Either Palossand had gotten lucky multiple times and stumbled upon potential increasing items or eating its fellows had raised not only its strength but also its potential. Honestly, if that was the case, then Cannibalize was an even scarier talent than I first thought; Obvious negative repercussions aside.
Either way, we saw how Palossand watched the Sandygast that had at that point already broken through to the bronze stage get stronger as she failed to do the same. She watched as Sandygast evolved to Palossand while she was stuck, and she watched as it reached the (high) bronze stage while she remained the same. All the while she could feel the appeal from Sandygast/Palossand increase, telling her that she would be able to get stronger if she ate it. Given the circumstances, I'd say her patience was kind of impressive really, but everyone has their breaking point, and Palossand reached hers when she witnessed the other Palossand breakthrough to the silver stage while she was still stuck at the (mid) silver stage.
It took roughly 20 to 30 years, it was a bit hard to determine the exact length using just these memories, but Palossand ended up giving in to the desire to devour Palossand for the strength it would give her. While the other Palossand basked in the joy of having broken through, Palossand sneaked up on it and ambushed it while it was unguarded. The other Palossand tried to resist but disadvantaged as it was after the successful ambush, it fell to Palossand, who began to devour it. Both Pokemon being made of sand made the process rather easy since all Palossand had to do was add the other's sand to hers and truly integrate it.
Palossand was able to actually feel her strength increase as she assimilated more and more of the other Palossand's body, and she ended up advancing to the (high) silver stage after devouring just a bit more than half of its victim, though that obviously did not stop her from doing the same to the rest of its body. The increase in strength did not stop just because she advanced and she could still feel herself get stronger as she continued to devour the Palossand. Honestly, if things had stopped there everything would have been wonderful, at least for Palossand, since Pokemon eating Pokemon was nothing new.
However, things went from great to shit right after Palossand devoured the last morsel of its victim. From what we could tell objectively the problem that arose was not even truly Cannibalize's fault since it did what it was supposed to which was to allow its holder to assimilate its food's power. The food in question being members of the same species/line. The unfortunate complication arose because of Sandygast/Palossand's nature as ghost types. While any other type of Pokemon would have had just their body digested and then the power in the body integrated into the eater, ghosts had a little thing with their souls being either essentially one with their bodies or their souls infusing their bodies, which made them so hard to kill. Consequently, when Palossand finished devouring the other Palossand's body it also ended up swallowing up its soul.
Had it been any other kind of Pokemon that had Cannibalize, the soul of the Pokemon would have simply moved on to the afterlife as soon as it died. However, most ghosts did not die that easily which really messed things up for Palossand and Cannibalize. After taking in the soul, Cannibalize began to try to integrate it into Palossand and it actually managed to digest a part of it, which I believed might be why its potential rose a bit during the process. What it also did was damage the soul in the process and hence the psyche that was part of that soul. Getting ingested was no doubt not a pleasant experience for the damaged soul/psyche, and it was no wonder it was in conflict with Palossand.
Still, had Palossand stopped there, things might still have been okay for it, but things didn't stop because fate chose to play a joke by dangling a carrot; No, a tasty steak before her proverbial nose.
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