"What happened?" Jona asked nervously. She kept calling out, "B, B?"
'Hm,' Unown B responded, but its expression looked strained.
"Are you all sick?" she asked in a hurry.
'There's a strange psychic power inside us…' Unown B replied in an odd tone. It struggled to describe the feeling. It was like eating a tasteless pile of filth that somehow got digested perfectly. Even so, the evidence of having eaten it could not be erased. The four Unown only had to look at themselves to realize something was wrong.
Both inside and outside their bodies, there were traces of psychic power that did not belong to them.
Each strand of that strange power was tiny. It was impossible to notice without a careful inspection, but once they checked seriously, they found those traces scattered throughout their bodies.
"A strange psychic power?" Jona wasn't a psychic herself, so she couldn't understand what it meant.
Unown B stayed silent as it carefully removed the foreign psychic energy while trying to remember when it had entered their bodies.
Was it during the battle in the underground arena? Was it Unown A's doing?
Since all four of them were affected at the same time, that seemed to be the only explanation.
Unfortunately, they had been defeated by the Articuno created by Unown A back then. Their injuries had yet to fully recover and they still needed time to return to peak condition. Otherwise, after merging, they could have removed all the foreign psychic power instantly.
For now, it would take some time.
'And...' Unown B said gravely, 'Jona, I'm afraid that person is coming after us.'
"That person?"
Jona froze for a moment. It wasn't until Unown B used psychic power to create the image of a man in a black cloak that she remembered the one responsible for her injuries.
"Hunter W... Shiro!"
The moment she blurted it out, she hurriedly searched through her backpack, hoping to find something that could hide her tracks for a while.
The floating Unown were busy checking their psychic power and recovering, so they were no help at the moment.
Too bad she had already used that item. As one of the Sootopolitans, she hadn't brought any other life-saving treasures. Aside from medicine, her backpack only contained various weapons and a few tricks to hide her appearance. None of them could escape psychic detection.
In only a few moments, her joy had turned into despair.
Should she abandon the Unown and leave alone?
Jona stood there, lost in thought.
Perhaps...
* * *
'Whew. So it's the Snowpoint Temple!' Unown A whistled from the air.
"Hunter J and the Unown are injured. There's no way they could have traveled this far so quickly. Maybe the Hunters Guild headquarters is somewhere near the Snowpoint Temple."
Shiro spoke as he carefully scanned the surroundings. After confirming the area was a desolate wasteland with no one around, he signaled for Unown A to continue.
A flash of psychic power later, they arrived in front of the Snowpoint Temple.
Woooo...
Powerful winds roared across the land as clouds of snow rose from the ground. With a single sweep, snowflakes the size of beans turned into sharp chunks of ice that stung anyone's face.
Fortunately, Shiro was protected by psychic power and moved through it as if nothing stood in his way.
Half a meter of snow had piled up on the marble pillars before the temple. The gloomy sky hid the magnificent structure behind them, leaving only its outline visible.
Deep within the dark hall, five soft pink lights stood out brilliantly.
"Five Unown?"
Shiro was surprised, but quickly realized the fifth one was probably hidden inside the Snowpoint Temple and had only recently been found by Hunter J.
Hunter J's original four Unown were B, H, L, and M.
The fifth one was C. Although it was inside the hall with them, it remained separate from the others. Their relationship was clearly still distant.
'C, join us. We can definitely bring Him back to life!' Unown B urged anxiously.
Unown C showed little emotion and calmly replied, 'You and I both know He has already disappeared... or rather, He is dead. I can feel the power growing stronger.'
'No. We can definitely still bring Him...' Unown B quickly argued.
'What's the point?' Unown C asked in return.
Its calm, indifferent attitude, as if none of this mattered to it, left Unown B speechless.
At that moment, Shiro rushed into the hall with Unown A.
'Hahahahaha...' Unown A laughed happily. 'B, stop trying to persuade it. C is definitely coming with me!'
Unown C answered without hesitation, 'I really don't want to force myself to follow a fool whose brain is about as sharp as a Slowpoke's.'
Unown A's body twisted with anger.
"So you've come."
Standing before the statue of Regigigas, Jona spoke calmly. She had no intention of fighting and had already prepared something to negotiate with.
Shiro frowned and cautiously surveyed the surroundings. After confirming there were no hidden ambushes, he immediately shouted, "A, Articuno!"
Already prepared, Unown A transformed at once. Streams of light shot past him and gathered in the center of the hall. Wrapped in icy blue frost, they took the form of Articuno.
The instant Jona saw Articuno, the calm she had worked so hard to maintain shattered. Fear filled her face as she hurriedly shouted, "Wait. Shiro! I know you're Galar Champion Shiro!"
"That gives me even more reason not to let you live," he replied coldly. "Ice Beam!"
Articuno A raised its head and began charging the attack.
The four Unown immediately gathered together and positioned themselves in front of Hunter J.
Because they were still injured and had not fully recovered, they couldn't transform into a Legendary Pokémon. Even after merging, their strength was still one rank below Unown A's Articuno.
That single rank was the difference between Champion and Master.
Zzzzt...
The icy beam shot forward as the four Unown raised a psychic barrier.
However, the barrier rapidly froze before their eyes. Cracking sounds echoed through the hall as ice spread across its surface. It would shatter in a short while.
"Wait! I have a deal I want to discuss with you!" Jona shouted with all her strength.
Hearing her, Shiro thought for a moment before saying, "A, stop for now."
The Ice Beam instantly ceased, though Unown A clearly hadn't had enough. It glared fiercely at Unown B, eager to continue.
Shiro had attacked first because he feared the other side still had hidden tricks. They had calmly waited inside the temple and had even escaped the underground headquarters, where Psychic Pokémon had been completely helpless. There had to be something they were relying on.
Besides, he knew Hunter J belonged to an ancient people, the Sootopolitans.
Those ancient descendants had lived as nobles for thousands of years. Who knew how many valuable treasures they had accumulated?
"What can you offer in exchange for your life?" Shiro asked while silently signaling Unown A to stay alert. If the other side made even the slightest suspicious move, it would attack immediately.
Jona's answer caught him off guard.
"The Sinnoh Hunters Guild!"
**
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