Annoski

Annoski or An-noski was an Obscura wizard and the main villain of the Infinity Keystone Arc.

History

Early Life

Annoski was born around 1,000 years ago to an unknown Obscura sensitive. During this time a purge of Obscurics was taking place, with the Obscurics being forced to Sinnoh after most were driven off the rest of Pokepan via getting exterminated. During a battle on the site of what would one day be known as Jubilife, Annoski's mother and her partner Houndoom were overwhelmed and killed, but not before leaving a pile of bodies on top of them. Alphonse and two other Aura Guardians managed to rescue Annoski from being killed by a Pokepanese general, the child getting his name from a necklace found on his person.

Aura Guardian training

Annoski was then raised an an Aura Guardian under Alphonse, gaining a Pokémon partner in the form of a Spiritomb and living with his fellow human apprentices Sarah and Alois, who had partners in the form of a Lucario and Ninetales, respectively. Though the Aura Guardians treated him well, Annoski was often feared and hated by others for his powers. At the age of 12, the trio and their master worked together to stop a rampaging Tauros in a small Sinn village, only for some villagers to remark that in their eyes Annoski was little more than a freak.

A few hours later during a discussion on the keystone and its attendant staff in the Aura Guardian's possession Annoski discussed possibly using its powers for good, only to be sternly reprimanded by Alphonse regarding its dangers.

Turn to Darkness

Over the years Annoski became more and more obsessed with proving his worth to the people of Sinnoh, leading to him studying scrolls in order to discover secret arts. At the age of 17 Alois found and confronted Annoski about it, only for his Spritomb to pin him to the wall with Shadow Sneak. Upon heading over to get the Keystone he was confronted by Sarah and her Lucario, but ended up getting the upper hand in their confrontation until Alois' Ninetales showed up to distract him after freeing the Aura Guardian.

However, even this wasn't enough to deter Annoski, and Alphonse was forced to step in after he was about to kill them all with a Dark Pulse. During their fight, however, Annoski managed to shoot Alphonse in the face with a Shadow Ball, scarring him permanently. This act managed to temporarily get Annoski back to sanity, but his friends weren't having it, with Sarah just yelling at him to go away and take the Keystone with him.

Annoski did so, and created an army of the spurned to augment his own Spiritomb Army made up of disaffected Obscura users, People of the Vale, and others. Alphonse and his apprentices fought against Annoski's forces, near the end causing him to hole up inside The Cathedral. After a titanic battle, Alphonse marked Annoski with Aura before using a powerful technique to destroy his physical body, before sealing him inside the Keystone. The trio then buried him underground, where he would stay for 1,000 years.

Release

About a year before being released, Annoski's Keystone was discovered by Tagg and DS in the Sinnoh Underground, the former getting a weird feeling about the Keystone but taking it anyway. During the events of the AU Arc, OI Arc, and Hoenn-2 Arc Annoski fed off of Tagg's despair, and ended up being released when Tagg took the Keystone to the ruins that used to be the monastery used his group of Aura Guardians. After using some Spiritomb minions to distract Tagg's mons, he engaged him in combat, revealing himself to be a Soul of Silver as well. After toying with Tagg with a while, which got rewarded with a slash that severely injured him, Annoski telelported behind Tagg in a rage and shot him in the back with a Dark Pulse. He was prevented from finishing off Tagg due to his mons managing to get him away in the nick of time. Soon after, Annoski placed all of Sinnoh under his Twilight.

Due to his injury Annoski opted out of fighting the J-Team directly for most of the arc, instead using his Spiritomb minions and in one case the Family of Blood of Sinnoh to combat the J-Team, as well as Pentigan under the moniker of Hex, though the latter would untimately end up betraying him.

Defeat

Following the J-Team managing to get back all the Tears and passing the final test of the Aura Guardians, Tagg ended up encountering Annoski once again, and was forced to travel to the Cathedral alone or his Wondertombs would kill all of Tagg's friends. Upon Tagg and his mons reaching the Cathedral, Annoski explained about the existence of Aura Nexuses with him before starting their final battle.

While Tagg was able to put up a better fight thanks to the help of Alphonse's training, and proved to be the physically superior combatant, he still managed to have most of the upper hand until the others showed up and his attention was separated between Tagg and everyone else. When Pentigan showed up Annoski ordered him to kill Tagg to prove his loyalty, but Hex stalled while Tagg managed to summon the power of the Nexus himself in order to shoot Annoski with a massive blast of Aura.

Annoski managed to survive only by using the power of the nexus himself to create a barrier, but was left extremely weakened as a result, which allowed Pentigan to reveal the location of the Keystone in his staff using a failed Soul Trap attempt. At that moment Serge and Plumps managed to break the Keystone, and Annoski was reduced to a spirit once again. After lamenting his failure, the Aura Guardians showed up, and Annoski was carried off to the Spirit World to face judgement for his actions in a flash of golden light.

Personality

Annoski could be best described as having an all consuming desire to protect Sinnoh and prove his worth to those who thought him a freak, which brought him to the dark side in the first place. Following his turn he became extremely arrogant and self-assured, often toying with his opponents until they managed to piss him off, at which point he would mercilessly dispatch them. Despite this he did appear to start showing some remorse for his actions following his defeat before the Aura Guardians took him to be judged.

Powers and Abilities

Annoski was an extremely powerful Obscura sensitive, and Tagg regarded him as the strongest human Obscura user he had ever encountered up to that point. Aside from his ability to create the Twilight, he was also capable of levitation, barriers, and teleportation as well as the other abilities afforded to Obscura sensitives, and could use the Keystone to augment his already impressive natural abilities.

Despite this, Annoski was rather squishy physically, and Tagg managing to injure him crippled him for most of his return.

Trivia

• An-noski is the Ainu word for "midnight".
• XANADOS chose Annoski as one of the digital replicas she set against the J-Team in Kalos.