Chapter 3 - Hive of Scum and Villainy
Location - Crossroads
"So, what's the map say, Green?" Erin asked, they had been travelling down the road for a good long while now, a few days at least, and now a three way fork in the road presented itself. Cereza, as the only one with arms, had been delegated the item carrier.
"My name is Cereza." she said, with barely restrained anger, "And the only city near here is straight ahead. Some place called Riero City." Erin knew Riero all too well. You won't find a sleazier city on this side of the planet. He had never been there himself, but word travels.
"I-I say we head there." Terry said, "It would be n-nice not to sleep on the ground."
"You... really don't want to go there. Word on the street says it's practically falling apart." Erin warned.
"Well, I need an Arceus-damned drink and I'm not about to take up moonshining." Cereza said, "We're going to Riero and that's that." Erin gave an exasperated sigh. He was really not looking forward to this, but he had pledged his loyalty to Terry, and there was no overturning that.
As they made their way toward Riero, Cereza thought to herself about this situation she found herself in. Terry was an idiot and Erin couldn't be trusted. That much was obvious. So why did she continue to hang out with them? Why did she let him join her in the first place? Maybe it was because she wanted to protect him? That seemed to be the most likely case. Something about the way he carried himself, the way he stuttered when he talked. He seemed like someone's lost little brother and that let him sway others.
"S-so, what's this about me being n-nobility?" Terry asked, not exactly feeling noble. It's hard to feel noble when someone you consider a friend is really angry at you for making friends with someone they didn't like.
"You're a shiny, right? That means you're a noble. It's considered your right to lord over Pokémon, and most cities have a noble who leads it." Erin explained, "Though many of them aren't that good at it."
"So it's society's fault we get asshats like you?" Cereza said, unable to hold herself back any longer, "Asshats who try to crush anyone and anything beneath their heel and expect everything to be fine and dandy when someone says 'stop fighting'?!"
"C-Cereza..." Terry started, but Erin talked over him.
"Look, I apologized and I'm going with you to Riero even though I really don't want to. I don't know what else I can do to make it up to you!" he said. This inopportune outburst of hers rubbed him the wrong way. Even if he did try to enslave her, there's not much you can do to make up for that within the first few hours you're teamed up with someone!
"E-Erin..." again, Terry tried to speak again, but nobody seemed to have heard him.
"Oh I don't know, how about you go away and never bother us again?" Cereza shouted, "We don't need you!"
"I'm not abandoning Terry. I promised myself I'd stay loyal to the first person to show me decency and I'm not about to go back on that now!" Erin countered.
"Like I'd believe that! You'll betray us the first chance you get!" Cereza yelled.
"STOP ARGUING! PLEASE!" Terry cried out. Cereza and Erin turned to face him. Tears were running down his face.
"This...sniff...this s-sucks. This sucks so hard! The p-people I like hate each other and I can't do an Arceus-damned thing about it!" Terry sobbed, feeling the worst he'd felt yet. He hated it when people he liked yelled at each other.
There was a long pause in which Cereza and Erin looked at each other, then back at Terry, then back at each other. Nobody spoke for ages, but everyone looked like they had something they needed to say immediately.
"We'll continue this later." Cereza eventually said, "Don't talk to me until we get to the city."
"Fine. Whatever." replied Erin, and the party continued onward to Riero. Terry cried for an entire half hour afterwards.
Location - Riero City
By the time the party had made it's way to Riero, the sun had begun to set, darkening the already dark alleyways and giving the place a rather hostile atmosphere. The buildings looked like they had been cobbled together from assorted debris and detritus laying around and the road was covered in broken glass and papers. Pokémon shuffled about under the gloom, whispering secrets as if everyone else was some kind of threat. An unpleasant stench like vomit and mold permeated most of the air and made Cereza gag a bit.
"Here we are, Riero City. A bigger slum than any other." Erin said.
"I-I can see why you didn't want to come here, Erin." Terry commented, "I-it feels like at any moment w-we might be attacked."
"Let's just find an inn or something." Cereza added, "I can't take the stink any longer."
They made their way through the city and eventually stopped at a sleazy motel. The sign had since rusted over and one of the walls had a big hole in it, but it had a bar a reasonable distance away from it and stank significantly less than the rest of the city, so they checked in and headed to the bar. When they got there, they found what seemed to be a Golurk bouncer guarding the place.
"Let us in." Cereza said to the bouncer, who looked her over.
"SCANNING... NO COMMONERS ALLOWED." it said.
"Excuse me?" Cereza replied. She was not in the mood for any more Tauros-shit.
"NO. COMMONERS. ALLOWED." the bouncer enunciated in a very irritating fashion.
"So this is supposed to be some expensive bar for the higher ups?" Cereza asked,
"AFFRIMATIVE." the bouncer said. Cereza clenched her fist tight and gritted her teeth. If this was what passed for upper class,
"Cereza, l-let's just go." Terry said. The last thing he wanted was a fight.
"You listen here you stony shit. I want an Arceus-damn drink and I will get it whether your fat ass complies with my request. You do not want to know what will happen if you don't comply." Cereza said, with equal parts hostility and desperation.
"THREAT DETECTED. ENGAGING COMBAT MODE." it said. Cereza sighed scornfully. Why was it that everyone wanted to do things the hard way?
The bouncer opened with a Shadow Punch barrage, decking Cereza in the chest and Terry in the face, sending them reeling in opposite directions. Erin, being a Normal type, was left unscathed, and he leapt for the bouncer's face, sinking his teeth into it with a Bite.
"OPTIC OBSTRUCTION. ATTEMPTING REMOVAL." the bouncer said, making grabs at the Persian. Terry and Cereza regained their senses and charged forward to take advantage of the opening. Cereza chucked Leech Seeds, which stuck into the Golurk's hip and started draining its health, and Terry followed suit, using Absorb to suck the bouncer dry. The Golurk eventually grabbed Erin and threw him to ground, then pounded him with a Mega Punch. Erin recovered and attacked with Feint Attack, creating an opening in which Terry shot Dragon Breath attacks and Cereza blew Leaf Tornadoes. Suddenly, the Golurk stomped the ground, performing a Magnitude attack, hitting the whole party; but then, there was a shaking sound and before anyone could react, the bar and the buildings next to it collapsed into piles of rubble.
"No...!" Cereza said, reaching her hand out in futility. All that beer, gone! A funny feeling swelled up in her heart. She was angry, yes, but not heated. It was the kind of angry that made you whisper instead of shout, and act instead of say. There was no way this guy was an actual bouncer. Too powerful. Hiring a guy who could destroy your business with relative ease was too risky for anyone to consider.
"Now it's fun." Erin whispered. A fight this difficult always made him feel tingly inside. Obviously he'd get angry if they managed to subvert him, or simply refused to give up, like Green, but he loved it when a fight was hard enough to challenge him. The tension in his muscles, the adrenaline pumping through his veins, it all felt so good. And he wanted more.
"But all those Pokémon...!" Terry shouted. A pang of guilt swept through him. Pokémon who had nothing to do with him had gotten caught up in his struggles. Even if Cereza started the fight, he still felt like it was his fault it started. That he should've tried harder to stop her from starting it. That maybe she would've listened to someone else. He had to redeem himself, and he knew just how to do it. He had to stop this guy.
With their health in the red, they made one last stand. The Golurk closed the distance and readied a Mach Punch, but at the last second, all three of them put everything they could into a single attack. Cereza shot a Leaf Tornado, Terry blew Dragon Breath, and Erin used Bite, the three in perfect sync with each other, and all four clashed at once.
When the dust cleared, all parties involved stood perfectly still. Muscles tense, body stiff, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"SYSTEM ERR...OR..." The Golurk sputtered, breaking the silence and collapsing on the ground.
"Looks like we win." Cereza said, breathing heavily. She was not sure how much longer she could've kept fighting.
"G-good, now help me search through the rubble, w-we need to look for survivors." Terry said.
"And beer. Lots of beer." Cereza added.
All three combed through the rubble as well they could given their condition, but turned up with very little, aside from a few relatively undamaged bottles of an alcoholic beverage called "Gummi Brew", and bodies. Lots of bodies. Every one Terry saw made him feel worse, compounding on his already shaky hopes, but then, he heard a moaning noise coming from under some debris. He moved as fast as he could toward where the noise was coming from, and found a still living Seel trapped under part of the collapsed ceiling.
"Cereza! Erin! There's someone alive over here!" Terry shouted. And together, they pulled him out and brought him back to on of their rooms at the inn, which thankfully managed to stay standing, even if a number of things inside had been knocked over and the Pokémon inside were hiding under furniture. They plopped the Seel on one of the beds and had a long talk about what had just happened.
"Anyone else think that guy was a little too strong for a bouncer? No one would hire a guy if they were worried he'd level the building." Cereza started.
"That is a bit suspiscious... we can ask the guy we rescued." Erin said.
"I-I'm just upset we weren't able to save more..." Terry moped.
"Look, we saved a guy, beat the shit out of the guy who killed the others, and we're knocking back booze. I don't know what else you want." Cereza said. Terry looked at his untouched bottle of Gummi Brew. It's a bit hard to drink with no arms. In fact, it's a bit hard to do many things without arms. He could shake trees by ramming into them, yes, but anything doing anything delicate was right out.
"Well, you did provoke him..." Erin replied. He had not touched his drink, either.
"Don't you start, now!" Cereza shouted, "I needed to forget for a moment and he got in my way." She had not had a drink since she had come to this place a week ago, and had been too busy skirting with the dangers in it to have any time for one. Her love of alcohol had been the one memory she kept aside from her name when she woke up back then, and going without it for as long as she had made her irritable. More so than usual.
"T-there's going to be investigations, y-you know. A building doesn't just c-collapse by itself." Terry said, "And if that guy w-wasn't a bouncer, what was he?"
"Part of a conspiracy, I'll bet." Cereza said, "But conjecture won't get us anywhere. Our only source on the 'bouncer' is out cold, so let's just sit down and drink our Arceus-damn drinks, alright?"
"Slimey's right, though. What law there is here is incredibly draconian." Erin replied, "If what you say is true, we're dead meat. We'll be executed for attacking an official."
"So what, should we just indulge ourselves and wait for the secret police?" Cereza asked. She was all for another round of drinks, but there was no way she'd let herself be someone's prisoner again.
"There is one thing we can do. Form a team." Erin said.
"A t-team? Like, a r-rescue team?" Terry asked.
"Sort of. The technical term is 'vassalage team'." Erin explained, "If you led us in one of those, Slimey, we'd be able to use your nobility to give us immunity to certain types of prosecution. We wouldn't be able to commit crimes in your name... but we'd be able to go places where normally only you could go, and if anyone tried to give us flak for it..."
"We could kick their ass?" Cereza asked. While she normally would reject any idea that had her serve someone, if it meant a license to smack others around if they pissed her off, it would all be worth it.
"Yes. Vassalage teams were devised as a way for normally weak nobles to exercise control over things. A notable and particularly large one is Team Ocean, headed by a shiny Corsola. Others include-" Erin began, but Terry, fearing for time, cut him off. The police could barge in at any moment.
"Y-yes, um... I say we f-form one." he said, almost literally pushing the conversation to its destination.
"But what to call it? Team Misfits?" Cereza asked.
"T-that. We'll c-call it that. T-team Misfits." Terry said, very fast.
"You sure about that?" Erin said, "I'll throw a message to the Pelippers, but that name's kind of..."
"It's fine, we just need to be a team, right? It's better to pick a name that's less likely to be taken." Terry replied.
"Fine, fine, we're Team Misfits." Erin said. "I'll write up an application for us."
"You do that. I'm gonna sit here and chug." Cereza said, taking a large swig of Gummi Brew, "Oh, that's strong..."