Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Destruction- Chapter 9.3- Guild Under Siege
The final part of chapter 9.
Obnoxious fumes of foliage and chlorophyll invaded the land sharks' nostrils as they entered a small room housing no more than a hand-grown garden of various colors, and a desk; it was like walking in to an Aromatisse parlor! What a bland, little office: nothing gave the room any sort of personality, aside from the few cornrows of dirt that sprouted a plethora of different flowers.
"Where could it be?" Pele asked.
Her brother responded, "She said she kept a treasure box under her desk."
"Oh, really?" She walked up to the dark oak desk; placing her claws underneath its ledges, she tossed it at a nearby wall, smashing it into a broken heap of wood. There it was, begging to be taken: a wooden box with a dark finish, large enough for the both of them to carry.
Bending over, Pele tried picking it up by herself. It wouldn't budge, her single-clawed hands were unable to get a solid grip; very time she pulled up, it would just slip out of her grasp.
"You can do better than that, Pele," Lono remarked.
The sister took several huffs, not of exhaustion, but out of frustration. "Oh, forget this!" She reeled her left leg back, and delivered a swift kick to the box, its top exploding into a spray of fine splinters. Inside were several sacs, some big, and some small. "Lono, fill your bag up with these," she told him.
Lining the inside of his bag with the numerous coin purses, its single strap thrown over his right shoulder started choking him from its accumulating weight. Just one big sac of Poke was almost enough to fill his pouch entirely! "I don't think they can all fit."
"Shut up, and do !" the sister exploded, startling her brother into a faster pace of scooping up the loot.
By the time he was finished, his bag was overfilling with Poke; he felt like he was put in a chokehold by the strap over his shoulder. "Okay, Pele, let's go," he wheezed, "you have no idea how uncomfortable this is."
Ambipom crashed into the face of a large tree back first, kicking all air out of his lungs. Black spots littered his purple body, and a massive shiner closed his left eye entirely; his body became too weak and broken to even stand himself up. Consciousness came as quickly as it went, often blurring his vision of the dragon towering over him.
"I'm surprised you still decided to stay and fight," he told him, "considering I've crippled your only means of effective attack. Either: you stayed out of obligation, or desperation."
Ambipom said nothing to him, focusing his remaining energy on breathing, albeit they were very weak.
Ku looked down upon the hurting creature, with not a single shred of regret. But something about the sight of him disgusted the Dragon-type: his broken appearance reminded him of his own pain from long ago.
"Look at you," he snarled, "all broken and vulnerable; you disgust me. You are probably thinking to yourself: 'if I were any stronger, I could have prevented this'. Regardless of how many times the weak convince themselves they're strong, there's always something to prove them wrong. You think relying on the guild makes you strong? Look-" his right eye shifted to the downed Fairy-type, "your caretaker couldn't do anything to stop this. What does that say about your dependency? Such a reliance is why weak spirits as yourself exist." He turned back to the monkey, "And that reliance on her got you in the state you are in, now. I can see it in your eye: you want it to end. Don't worry- it will." Extending his right fin, he placed it firmly across the battered Ambipom's throat.
All the monkey could do was grip at the fin, kicking up mounds of dirt to try and break free. Breathing soon turned to constricted gurgling, and tears tread down his open eye. After a few seconds his strength started failing him, his grip on the dragon turning limp. It didn't take long until his arms fell to his side, hanging lifelessly as he drew a long sigh. As soon as Ku let go, the monkey flopped onto the ground.
Ku stared at the lifeless husk, now sleeping peacefully on the grassy floor. He wanted a formidable fight from the guild; in the past ten minutes, he had nothing that even resembled a fight. Three members have died, while three more remained critically injured. All the while he stood victorious without a scratch. The Inverse Orb was to blame, for the most part: it made all those "fights" boring to him. No wonder why it was banned from use in the first place.
"Ku!" A male voice broke from the background calling for him, grabbing his attention. He saw both Lono and Pele back from the Guildmistress' office, but with no aforementioned chest. Instead, Lono's satchel was full to the brim with its loot. "Our time is up," Lono cried, "We need to go!"
"I couldn't agree more," he shouted back, "it's no fun fighting these worms, anyways."
Ku felt like he was forgetting something. As he stepped over the unconscious body of the guildmistress, he gazed down at her from his shoulder. Florges looked so peaceful in her sleep, except her left arm bent in a twisted, mangled way. She was left wide open; he could kill her in an instant, and she won't even know it. But that would be no fun. "I'll let despair do the job for me," he told himself as he turned away from her.
When he stepped back into the destroyed assembly hall, the soft sand covering the ground, getting in between his toes, reminded him of the desert he used to call home. But now wasn't the time for reminiscing.
"My taste for battle has grown stagnant," he told his team members in an unsatisfied growl. "I expected them to give me a fight, but apparently that was asking too much of them. Even killing them felt like I was doing them a favor. Disgusting." He turned to Lono, and asked, "Do you have all of it?"
The Gabite flipped his faded brown pouch open, revealing the many sacs of Poke stacked over its brim. "Pele couldn't lift the chest," he told him, "so she had to improvise. But, yes, we got it all."
"Good. Very good," Ku said. "Now, I don't have to spend another second meddling with these degenerates."
"There, there, good," a mysterious female's voice rung through the eastern hallway, accompanied by the quiet screech of an object grazing against a wall. Telling by her tone she was rushed, like she quickly needed to be somewhere. "You're doing fine," she said to someone unknown, "just a little further, then we'll make it with everyone else."
Seconds later, two Pokemon emerged from the corridor: one of them was a Blissey, adorning a pure white gown and nurse's cap. She hovered next to a Scyther, directing him as he slowly made his way through the hall. The Bug-type looked taped together, many little white strips and bandages patched all over his mint green exoskeleton. They must have been late to taking the evacuation call.
"Just keep walking," the nurse told him. "We're almost-" she stopped in her tracks.
"Nurse? What is it?" the Scyther asked. "Why did you stop?" When he looked in front of him, he found himself speechless. Three Pokemon unknown to him stood in what used to be the assembly hall, which was now a makeshift wasteland. To his horror, he noticed Azumarill and Delphox buried under a mound of debris passed out, or possibly even worse.
"Who are you three?" Blissey demanded them in a frightened squeal. "What have you done to the guild?"
"You two were late to the party," Ku told the nurse and her patient. "We don't take kindly to latecomers."
Gazing around the room in shock, it didn't take the pink egg very long to realize the dragons' sheer strength. Her muscles locked up in tension, only being able to tremble. "C-could you let us pass through, please?" she asked them in a quivering voice. "I-I-I wasn't trained to fight; I-I'm just a nurse!"
"All the more reason to quash you!" Pele snapped at her, sending a shock down her spine. A stream of intense fire left the Gabite's mouth, roaring straight for the nurse with the intent of cooking her like the frightened egg she was.
In a quick moment of selflessness, the Scyther stepped in front of the Blissey, taking her place to be engulfed by the flames as her shield. His blood-curdling roars drowned out the crackling of the flames, and he collapsed to the ground rolling, hoping to use the soft earth to snuff out the blaze. But the Flamethrower still persisted, constantly adding new fire before the old inferno had a chance to die out.
It only stopped after a few seconds when Pele interrupted it with a sudden cough. Puffs of smoke now bellowed from her maw as she hacked up a storm. "Man, what was up with that just now?" she asked herself in a scratchy voice, before clearing her throat again.
Scyther's bonfire dissipated to just a few embers, revealing the full horrors of his condition to the Blissey: his bright lime skin was now charcoal black. His thin wings completely burned away like they were made of paper. His body raised and lowered faintly, showing her that he was still conscious- for now.
"S-Scyther!" Blissey shouted as tears ran down her cheeks.
Before she attempted to touch him, Ku barked, "You there: run! Do you want to share a similar fate?"
The Happiness Pokemon stood frozen in fear, overloaded by her thoughts. She wanted to do as he said and run; on the other hand, she couldn't just leave Scyther by himself in his burned state.
"Run!" Ku barked at her even louder. Eventually, she gave in to him before he gave in to his rage, and waddled out to the forest where everyone else was.
"Why'd you let her go?" Pele questioned him. "Do you know who that was?"
"I'm well aware," Ku answered. "She would have been a nuisance had we fought her: even with our combined efforts, it would take all day just to scratch her. My patience has been stretched far enough with this pathetic place. We have what we came for- so let's just leave."
One moment, the team hid behind a violent vortex of sand; in the next, they were gone, with a large gaping crater appearing where they used to be.
For the past ten minutes, strange noises and smoke emitted from the guild. The occasional screams of familiar voices got on everyone's mind, even Oran's. From the sounds of it, something interesting was happening, and here he was, suspended five feet in the air by Loudred, only able to observe the clouds above. If he wanted to free himself, he had to devise a quick plan.
"Hey, Loudred," he said, "I have to pee."
"HUH? OH, OKAY." The moment he placed him on the ground and let go, the Riolu dashed straight for the guild! "ORAN, YOU LITTLE LIAR! WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS ON YOU!" the Loudred shouted, finally realizing what the blue jackal pup was planning. "DON'T GO THAT WAY! ORAN!"
"Loudred, what's going on?" Pecha asked, taking time off her practice to notice almost everybody had gathered outside. "What's happening?"
"NOTHING, NOTHING'S HAPPENING," Loudred assured her nervously. "I ASSURE YOU, I HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL; THE GUILD ISN'T BEING DESTROYED, AND OUTLAWS ARE DEFINITELY NOT ATTACKING US. JUST KEEP PRACTICING YOUR IRON BARBS, WHILE I FETCH YOUR BROTHER." Loudred gave chase to the little Riolu pup.
The trees zoomed past him like brown blurs as he made his run. Suddenly he put on his brakes, sliding across the dirt floor before stopping in front of his first warning sign. Ambipom's body laid in front of a tree, while his severed tails were strewn everywhere. The guildmistress herself was in no better condition, having fainted in the middle of the trail, with her left arm bending in a naturally impossible angle.
Hovering above the downed leader, he saw Blissey flipping Florges' unconscious body around to examine every bruise and broken bone. "No fatal injuries, as far as I can tell," she said to herself, "but you need attention, pronto."
"Hey, miss, what happened?" Oran asked, startling the nurse from her work.
She took a large sigh of relief, "Oh, Oran, you startled me. It was those outlaws- they did all this! First, they burned Scyther right in front of me, and now I see they've knocked Guildmistress Florges unconscious, and killed Ambipom! And I'm sure that's not even all they did!"
"What?" His tightening fist croaked loudly and trembled; anger swelled inside him like a boiler under pressure. He couldn't create a single consistent thought about the scene before him, but one: "unforgivable". Who could have done such a thing? But one thing he was sure of: whoever did this must be very strong.
Leaping over the leader's body, he dashed straight for the guild, without a second thought. Most rational Pokemon would turn away after witnessing what he saw; he used it as a reason to push forward.
"W-wait, Oran," Blissey cried for him, "don't go in there! You don't know the danger you're getting yourself into!"
Oran tuned her out.
Oran's hind paws sunk into the soft sand that flooded the floor as he entered the assembly hall- or what's left of it, anyways. The stone dome that once sheltered him was converted into a sun roof, while large chunks of ceiling laid on top the ground like monoliths sitting in a wasteland. The surrounding walls showed varied signs of erosion, from light scratches, to deep, compromising scars.
A strange object caught the edge of his eye: it was black, charred, like a large piece of charcoal. He ran over to it to have a closer look: he noticed two thin blades laying beside the object, singed to a toasty brown color.
"S-Scyther?" The pile of ash still had a recognizable form, and it still showed weak signs of breathing. But even just the softest touch from Oran sent the bug in a screaming frenzy, flailing about like he's gone mad from the pain.
He startled the Riolu into backing away immediately, tumbling onto his butt. For a few seconds Oran's heart galloped, calmed by a gulp of air.
The bug finally calmed from his tormented rampage. A mellow wave of guilt formed at the bottom of the jackal's stomach; Scyther would have been better off had he not decided to touch him. "Scyther," Oran said to himself under a low voice, "who did this to you?"
He turned to his left, and spotted a massive hole that took up at least a third of the floor that he somehow missed. Lightly jogging toward it, he peered down from its edge: not much of the bottom was visible within the thick veil of darkness. Though it seemed shallow enough to jump in without much injury.
"ORAN! ORAN! COME BACK!" Loudred's roaring cries grew louder as he approached closer; from the sounds of it, he was almost to the entrance.
Oran gazed down the darkness once more. "If I let Loudred catch me, I won't find who did this," he told himself. "No way I'm gonna let'em get away with this! If no one can beat these guys- then I will!" Lead by his determination to avenge his fallen home, the pup reeled back a step, before leaping into the crater of darkness.
"ORAN!" Loudred burst into the destroyed room, shouting for the little pup, but Oran didn't respond back. Light sweat soaked his lavender skin, giving it somewhat of a shine in the bright sunlight. His winded panting sounded more like disgruntled roaring. For just running a few miles, he felt like he was about to pass out.
His eyes scanned the miniature wasteland for the blue pup- nothing but sand, sand, and more sand. But he felt his stomach drop at the sight of a blackened, charred husk, sickening him that he immediately recognized it: Scyther. "O-OH, NO," he told himself in a slight panic, shaking his head multiple times. "OH, NO-NO-NO-NO. THIS AIN'T GOOD; THIS AIN'T GOOD AT ALL. EVEN SCYTHER, THEY GOT SCYTHER, TOO?"
A discomforting groan from within the large hole tugged at the Normal-type's ears. Peeping down, he noticed the defiant Riolu hiding in the dark, rubbing his calves to massage the pain away. "ORAN," his voice reverberated down the hole, somehow becoming louder than it naturally was, "ARE YOU OKAY, KID?"
"Y-yeah, I'm fine," he answered back in a sore whimper. "I just hurt my legs a little; it's nothing much. This hole was deeper than I thought!"
"WELL THEN, GET YOUR BUTT BACK UP HERE," the Normal-type told him. "YOU'LL BE SAFER UP HERE!"
Oran sprung back up to his feet, and argued back, "Well, I'm not doing this to be safe: I'm doing this to get back at whoever did this to the guild! Are you telling me you're just gonna let'em get away with this?"
"YES!" Loudred bluntly shouted.
"Where's your guild pride?" Oran asked.
"KID, WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT 'GUILD PRIDE'?" Loudred asked back. "WHAT YOU'RE DOING ISN'T GUILD PRIDE- IT'S SUICIDE! DIDN'T YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID TO AMBIPOM, SCYTHER, AND THE GUILDMISTRESS? YOU'LL-!"
"Yeah, I know- I'm gonna avenge'em!" Oran told him with a confident smile. "Don't worry, I'll save some bad guys for you, too; come down here, and join me!"
"NO THANKS," the Loudred said, "I'D RATHER STAY UP HERE, AND HAVE YOU COME UP, SO I CAN CATCH YOU."
"Suit yourself!" The Riolu didn't turn back. Even with the Normal-type calling for him several times more, warning him to come back, Oran blocked him out as he dashed deeper into the one-way tunnel.
Loudred stood motionless from the edge of the hole. He had one simple job- and he blew it. But the job itself wasn't what riled his nerves to hardened steel. "WELP, I TRIED," he told himself. "I GUESS THIS IS THE END: WHEN LOPUNNY FINDS OUT ABOUT THIS, IT'LL BE GOODBYE ME, FOR SURE. WHAT A WAY TO BE DONE IN."
Team Sharktooth landed themselves into a strange cave that emitted its own light, which eliminated any darkness that would otherwise be considered normal. They quickly concluded it was a Mystery Dungeon, though it was the smallest they've been in. A Graveler tried throwing them a welcome party; he became no more than a heap of rubble.
Piles of gold coin were spread in front of the dragons in small piles. The male Gabite's eyes widened slightly in surprise as he finished counting each one. "Whoa, fifty-thousand Poke," he exclaimed in the most astonished tone he could muster, which could easily be misheard as sarcasm. "We were actually lucky, for once: we must have pillaged them on one of their good weeks."
"Hmm," the standing Garchomp on lookout hummed to himself. "No, it's still not enough."
"What do you mean, 'this still isn't enough'?" Lono asked. "It's enough for us to retire right now, though I prefer to have a little more: Pele could blow through this all too easily-"
"Hey!" The sister jumped from her sitting position to approach her brother in a hostile manner. "If you got something to say, say it straight to my face!" Pele screamed above him.
Lono only gave her a side glance from his sleepy glare. "You're so loud," he told her, "You don't need to blow your top off so close to me-"
"Stop arguing!" Ku burst into a furious roar almost loud enough to collapse the cave on top of their heads. "You two are getting on my very last nerve!" The twins remained silent to prevent from provoking him any further. After a moment Ku's burning, venomous glare softened to a collected calm, and he told them, "That Poke is not enough; I want more. We're not gonna stop until we hit every guild. We were sloppy the first time; this time we won't be."
"Then let's hit Slowking Guild, next," Lono suggested. "It's the closest one to Florges Guild. And from what I've heard, they're rolling in Poke- practically drowning in it-"
"We are hitting Machamp Guild, next," Ku said.
"What? Why?" Lono demanded, raising his mellow voice to a somewhat frustrated growl. "They're located in the heart of the Espectro Badlands: even if we dig our way there, it's at least gonna take us a week to get there! Azul Shores will only take us about a day to get there, maybe even less! Don't tell me you want to go all the way to Espectro just because you're bored!"
"That is exactly my reason," Ku told him. "Florges Guild left a bad taste in my mouth; they were weaker than I anticipated. I need something to rekindle my taste for battle- and Machamp Guild will do exactly that. I don't care how long it takes us to get there; it'll be worth watching that guild tumble and fall."
A suspicious sound bellowed from their tunnel, like an intruder was trying to climb their way to them. A few seconds later, a strange dog-like Pokemon emerged, small in stature and clad in blue and black, with his crimson eyes hiding behind a mask-like fur pattern. "Whew, I finally made it," the pup huffed, catching his energy from the elevated climb.
He stared down three hammerheads from the other side of the cave, all three looking back at him in various degrees of confused silence. Who was this strange Pokemon? For that matter, what was this strange Pokemon?
"You should head home to your mommy, little one," Ku finally broke the silence. "If you came here to fight, it's not in your best interests. I've had enough weaklings to deal with to last me a while."
"That's why I'm here," Oran shouted at him, "you guys trashed my home pretty bad!" The young pup raised his fist to the dragon leader, and shouted once more, "None of the other members could stop you- but I will! Believe it or not, I had a dream like this, once: I faced a Pokemon that looked just like you, but with less scars. That was the first reason I wanted to fight you, because I couldn't finish that dream; now you gave me an even better reason! I won't let you get away with what you did to the guild!"
The Garchomp left himself in a stupefied daze, and his face froze in an expression unable to fathom the sheer idiocy he was fed. Something was loose in this child's head, he just knew it.
"Can you believe this kid?" Pele whispered to him. "The audacity on this one; it's just unbelievable!"
Ku broke free from his stupor, morphing his face into a listless grimace. He decided how to deal with the intruder: the boy wanted a fight, so he'll get his fight. "Very well, child," Ku told him, "I will grant your wish to battle- just you and me."
"Ku, you can't be serious-" Lono whispered to him.
"At least let me fight this pipsqueak," Pele growled.
The Garchomp ignored them, continuing on, "I will give you one free shot- use any move you wish against me- make it count."
The Riolu didn't even need to think about the move he was going to use. Blue mist swirled in between his paws, collecting and condensing into an orb the size of a grapefruit. It was no ordinary Aura Sphere: he poured all of his determination, all of his hopes of defeating the enemy within this one attack. Once ready, he let it loose in a blue blur, the sphere screamed with a loud whisper-like wail before burying the Garchomp in a violent explosion of dust and earth.
Lono's face froze agape, and his eyes widened from their tired gaze. "What an attack," he said to himself, after witnessing his leader being smitten in front of him. "I didn't realize this Pokemon knew such a powerful technique." Telling by his sister's same expression of surprise, they were on the same page for once.
A quiet, yet unsettling chuckle came from within the thick veil of earth. The dust settled, unraveling the Dragon-type with not a single scratch on his body. "Pathetic, I didn't even feel that," Ku hissed at the pup.
"You were supposed to blow up!" Oran shouted, pointing at the dragon. "Why didn't you blow up?"
"I gave you a free shot, and you wasted it so casually," he remarked. "Now, it's my turn."
Lopunny's snoring roared through all of Unido. Taking a day off from her explorer duties she decided to spend it sleeping in- ever since this morning arrived, she fell into a heavy, coma-like slumber. Every now and then a girlish groan escaped her mouth, following her tossing and turning in bed from whatever indecent dream her lewd mind cooked up.
Something tickled the inside of her nose, irritating enough to disturb the Normal-type from her wonderful dreams; snorting only made it worse. Her thunderous sneeze rumbled the surrounding foundation, causing her to scramble around into sitting upright in a blink of an eye.
Her crimson eyes couldn't see a thing in her room: everything hid behind a dense fog of dust. "Ugh," she groaned in disgust into her elbow, covering her mouth, "where did all this stuff come from? How long have I been breathin' this in?" Unrolling her cloak from its pillow form, she tied it around her nose and mouth, then walked out of her room.
"Oran? Pecha?" Lopunny called out, muffled by her mask, but no response returned. No matter where she went, the air was heavily laced with dust; It seemed to her the farther she walked into the guild, the more sand she tracked in her cream colored feet. "Ugh," she groaned to herself, "so much sand laying around; I'd rather be in bed, than deal with this."
She reached the end of the hallway, and the full horror kicked in: the entire assembly hall disappeared, turned into a field of rubble with only the walls remaining. Nurse Blissey roamed about with several of her Double Team duplicates, clearing debris, and pulling the unconscious bodies of both Delphox and Azumarill from the wreckage. One Blissey kept herself busy analyzing what looked to be a burned up, shriveled corpse, while a handful more gathered three bulky, bloodied tarps, laying each one side by side. The real nurse remained with the guildmistress, mending her left arm back in working condition underneath a strange pulse of energy.
"Whoa, what happened here?" Lopunny asked. "Did you guys throw a party? Without me?"
"LOPUNNY!" Loudred sprinted towards her as if his life depended on it. From the looks of him, he was short on breath, and about ready to suffer a nervous breakdown. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THIS ENTIRE TIME?"
"Sleeping," she told him in a tired, disgruntled tone. "What did I miss?"
"THREE OUTLAWS CAME OUTTA NOWHERE, AND DESTROYED US- THAT'S WHAT!" Loudred shouted. "AND WORSE THAN THAT: ORAN RAN OFF TO FIGHT THEM ON HIS OWN! OUR BEST EXPLORERS COULDN'T EVEN SCRATCH THEM; WHAT DO YA THINK THEY'LL DO TO A KID LIKE HIM?"
"Yeah, that does sound kinda bad," Lopunny replied, scratching her left cheek. "All right: I'll go get Oran, then." She gazed to her right, spotting a ginormous gaping opening near the entrance to Verde Forest. "Lemme guess: he went down there, right?" she asked him, pointing at it.
"YEAH," he said. "I TRIED STOPPIN' HIM, BUT HE JUST WOULDN'T LISTEN! I'M TELLIN' YA, THOSE OUTLAWS WILL BE TOO MUCH FOR HIM; HE'S GONNA END UP HURT, OR WORSE!"
"I gotcha, no need to say more! I'll go rescue him!" Darting for the hole, she hopped down its gullet, descending about thirty feet into its dark belly before hitting the bottom.
She glimpsed down its pitch black corridor, running faster than her like could muster towards the faint glimmer of light at the end. Her voice echoed, "And maybe while I'm at it, I'll even take care of those outlaws!"
From the dragon leaning slightly toward him, the Riolu knew he was about to do something. In a quick decision he reverted behind his arms, which were stiffly crossed in front of his chest in a defensive stance.
Ku smirked, recognizing the formation his opponent instantly adopted: his foe was attempting to Counter his attack. "Smart boy," he said, "but you jumped too quickly to assumptions!" Swinging his right fin with tremendous force, he kicked up a ravenous Sand Tomb which devoured the blue pup in no less than a second.
He broke from his stance, moving his arms in front of his face to keep the rapid streams of dust from blinding him. Trapped inside a merciless vortex, he felt his body being stripped of his fur one strand at a time by the plucking sands.
All of a sudden the storm stopped, disappearing as if it never happened. By the time Oran opened his eyes and realized why, it was already too late: the Garchomp was just inches away from him, too close for him to react in time. The dragon swerved to his right, slamming the full girth of his tail into him, knocking him off his feet with little difficulty.
Oran was thrown as easily as a ball into a right side wall many feet away, the sudden collision taking most of the air out of his lungs as he flopped back on to the ground. He gasped loudly several times like a Magicarp out of water, grasping his throat.
Looking up with shaky eyes, the Garchomp was already towering above him. Ku spun around for another whip of his tail, throwing the young pup off the ground once again, and violently tumbling across the hard rock floor many feet away from him.
The impact knocked the wind right back into his lungs, but the pup's cerulean fur became dotted with innumerable scarlet scratches and cuts from skipping and rolling across the rugged surface. His breathing spotty and rough, Oran struggled to push himself back up to his feet, as if a tremendous weight was strapped to his back. Even as he stood, he seemed barely conscious, often fighting back a collapse; his determination alone kept him awake.
"You picked a fight with the wrong shark, boy," the dragon told him.
Oran let out a desperate roar as he charged at the Mach Pokemon. While being flailed at his left knee, Ku felt nothing, not even a slight thumping from each hit, before punting the jackal away from him. "You disappoint me," he told the Riolu, walking towards him from his side. "Where has all your pride gone? I wanted to see more of your ambition, but it was nothing but talk."
Defeat never sat well with the child. While pushing himself off his belly his feeble arms trembled, ready to give in to his own weight. Blood dripped from the Riolu's snout onto the floor beneath in a little red puddle. Faint grunts of frustration and anger filled his breath, accompanying an occasional painful cough that left his throat aching after clearing.
Even with a young body as ragged and broken as his, he still remained adamant to fight; the boy confused desperation for gallantry. "You are a waste of my time," Ku growled. "Now that I think about it, I don't know why I chose to battle a child, if there was really nothing to gain from it. At least that mutt and monkey put up something resembling a fight; killing you won't even be pleasurable."
"You...you killed Ambipom," he growled in a wrathful whisper. "You killed Granbull. You keep hurting my friends!" Oran roared to the sky, "There no way I'm gonna let you get away! No matter what I'll beat you, here and now-!"
Ku dropped his right foot like a sledgehammer on both of the Riolu's legs, crunching them between a hundred pounds of weight and the hard, rocky surface, silencing the pup for a moment. When the pain caught up, hurt accompanied his roar instead of rage, his cries for the pain to stop was like nails on a chalkboard. Tears fell out of his eyes like waterfalls, while he screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to rake his way out of the dragon's hold.
"It disgusts me watching someone cry during battle," the dragon bellowed. "You wanted to fight me; the least you can do is have some dignity while in pain." Slowly twisting his foot around, the jackal's screams grew to a deafening screech. Oran soaked the rock floor beneath in a heavy flow of tears, while the painfulness compelled his unrestrained body to flop about for freedom from the dragon's foothold; once again, his efforts were in vain.
"Enough crying!" the dragon exploded in a fit of rage. With all of his unbridled fury, he delivered a kick to the Riolu's stomach with almost enough power to break him in two. When the blue pup finally hit the floor ten feet away, he became unable to left himself back up to continue the fight. Instead he laid broken, with only the occasional muscle spasm to indicate he's still alive. "Pathetic," Ku remarked.
He stepped closer to his beaten prey, his claws wishing to spill more blood to cure his displeasure. He had no qualms with having a child join his list of victims- he had it coming.
Just as he approached the broken pup for the finishing kill, the Gabite brother rushed to stand between his leader and his victim, wearing a mask of disapproval and disgust.
"Out of my way," Ku demanded in a calm demeanor.
"Not not letting you kill this one," Lono told him.
"Oh? Then tell me, are you going to finish him off for me?" the leader asked.
"Watching you kill all those Pokemon was one thing," Lono said. His usually laid back tone erupted in a roar of anger, "but this is a child you are wanting to kill! Does he really need to die just because he made a stupid decision to fight you?"
"Yes," The Garchomp said bluntly. "He was wanting to fight me: this is merely his punishment. Are you going to stop me?"
the Gabite hesitated to speak, deciding to first gulp down his nerves. "I'll try," he muttered. "I'm done playing outlaw with you; I'm done watching other Pokemon suffer because of us! If you want to kill this child, first, you have to get through me-!"
Ku made sure he made his disobedient team member regret those words. In a heavy, yet swift motion, he swung at the Gabite with the back of his right claw like a hammer to his rib cage, throwing the smaller dragon out of his sight.
Fifteen feet away the Gabite crashed back onto the hard surface back first. He coughed into the ground beneath him, splattering it with little droplets of blood. He gritted his teeth together as he pushed himself back up, but a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest kept him pinned to the floor.
"Don't be so impatient to die, Lono," Ku told him, "you'll have your turn: after I'm finished with the child, I'll kill you next."
A suspicious sound of quick footsteps came from the tunnel Ku dug earlier- another guest was soon to be expected. A blur shot straight from the tunnel's mouth, and soon after, a Lopunny landed back onto the cave floor with the grace of a trained gymnast. Even in this cavern she couldn't escape the heavy blanket of dust wafting in the air, heavy enough to fog up her vision somewhat. But what she could make out was her son, appearing broken and near death to her laying on the ground, with a hulking dragon towering over him.
"Hey, you," she shouted at the Garchomp, pointing straight at him, "get away from my son!"
"Oh? So this odd creature is your son?" Garchomp asked. "Funny, I don't recall Buneary looking like this. But no matter: he wanted to fight me, and I obliged him. Sadly, I'm not in the mood for company." He the remaining Gabite, "Pele, be a good girl, and take care of our unwanted guest."
"Right!" Pele charged straight for the Normal-type, accompanied by a fierce battle cry.
In a blink of an eye, Lopunny disappeared in a bright light blueish flash, and suddenly Pele's body went numb, and was unable to move. It happened in a blink of her eye and didn't feel anything, but she found herself encased in a thick chunk of ice, with only her head being able to move freely. "H-hey! How did you do this?" Pele wiggled about frantically, but it wasn't enough to loosen herself out of the ice. "This isn't funny," she shouted, "it's actually starting to get really cold! Get me out of here!"
The downed Gabite watched with amazement. His sister may not have seen what happened, but his eyes were able to identify the move: an Ice Beam, weaker than most he's seen, but it served its purpose.
Underneath his angered grimace, the incident lit some intrigue into Ku, though he refused to show it through his perpetual frown.
"I'll tell you one last time," the Lopunny warned in a stern tone, "get away from my son."
She could make all the warnings she wanted to him, he knew she was just a Lopunny: her kind was below him. What was the worst she could do? "And if I refuse-?"
In under a second she appeared before him as if teleporting to him, lodging her right foot into his chest, too fast to react to. The kick shot him into the face of a cave wall, digging him deep enough to meld with it.
The look on Lono's face witnessing it morphed from surprise to utter terror, his eyes shooting wide open and jaw dropping to the floor. One second he saw Ku, and in a blink of an eye, he disappeared into a side of the cave. Never had he seen the kind of power she displayed: even Dragon-types had to train for years to even reach that kind of strength. Just thinking about what else she was capable of sent an arctic chill down his back, distracting him from the stabbing pain of his broken rib.
Lopunny kneeled down to Oran, who still remained a twitching husk. Both his legs were flat and crinkled from the knees down like paper cutouts plastered below his hip. She held him in her gentle caress, feeling the tears form behind her eyes at the unsightly mess that dragon turned her son into. Stripping her lower face of its makeshift mask, she bundled the Riolu in her cream colored cloak, and pinning her explorer badge to keep the wrapping from uncoiling. She tapped its brilliant sapphire eye, and her son vanished from her hold in a blinding glare.
Slowly getting up from her knees, she started walking to the tunnel back to the guild. A voice cried out to her, "Hey, you! Help me out!" She turned around, now realizing the beaten Gabite she missed earlier laying on his belly across the stone surface. "Can you help me, please?"
"You one of the outlaws, huh?" Lopunny asked. "Why should I help you out-?"
"Because if it weren't for me, your son would have already!" Lono shouted in the strongest voice he mustered. "Look, be mad with us all you want: but if you help me out, I'll turn myself in; I'll tell the authorities everything I know!" A dry, troublesome cough interrupted his plea, irritating his throat. "Just before you showed up, I defended that Pokemon from him- that's why I look like this, now. The least you can do is help me out!"
"Rrgh." An angered growl escaped from the Garchomp, catching the Lopunny by surprise that he was still alive. He peeled out from his earthly mold, planting his knees into the solid ground below. Blood spilled into a growing puddle around his knees from his now opened chest scar, ruptured wide apart at its seam from the kick he earlier received, with some trickling down his bottom jaw, in between his jagged teeth. "And where do you think you're going?" he snarled at her in a weak undertone.
"Back to the guild," she replied. "I already did what I came to do, so there's no reason to stay. But I gotta admit, you're a pretty tough guy if you can take one of my kicks the way you did. Props for that."
The Garchomp's scowl turned to a toothy grin, exploding into a fit of disturbing chuckles that echoed throughout Pequeño Cave, and not long after a moment, the giggles evolved into roars of laughter.
"What's so funny?" she asked, feeling left out from the joke.
"This pain," he told her in a jagged smile, "it's finally starting to sink in. It's been so long since I last felt something like this." His heart galloped like a wild stampede of Bouffalant, a feeling he thought long went extinct. Each beat stretched that toothy smile more and more, allowing him to soak in the adrenaline his mortal wound brought.
"What power you have," he praised the Normal-type, an acknowledgment he rarely gave out. "In all my years, I haven't met a single Pokemon with strength like yours. I never knew a Lopunny, of all Pokemon, was capable of such power! For most of today, I failed to find a single battle that satisfied me. But in a single moment you made prey out of me- and it excites me! Stay and finish the job; show me more of that power of yours! Don't hold back!"
Ku lunged forward, soaring above the floor like a jet. He was hooked on a single taste of the Lopunny's strength, and he wanted more. As respect for his opponent he held nothing back, because she gave him something he searched long and hard for: a worthy foe.