CHAPTER 10

I guess the Pinsir was expecting me to stop. I didn't.

WHAM!

I slammed into that Pinsir. The momentum took us both straight under the door. Under the closing door!

˂YAAAHHHH!˃ I cried. I quickly leaped outside.

CRUNCH!

I didn't even dare to look back. The door had closed on that Pinsir, and I didn't want to see what had happened to it.

I ran, trying to catch up with my friends. They were slowing down because they were demorphing.

I caught up with them. But we kept running.

I quickly glanced over my shoulder. The door was opening again! Scythers and Pinsirs charged after us, followed by Parasecter One.

But then Parasecter One stopped. He went back inside. He was hurt from when I poisoned him! Maybe... maybe he would...

No Blitz, I told myself. Don't be foolish. Team Rocket will certainly have Antidotes. He won't die.

We ran into the forest. But then... Scythers! Pinsirs! They leaped from the bushes in front of us.

They were the ones we had chased off with the Beedrills.

My human friends remorphed. But they morphed slowly. They were tired.

Bounce and I remained as Mews.

We whipped our tails around, slamming Scythers and Pinsirs.

I decided to try a different approach. I picked up a stone off of the ground. I threw it up in the air, then hit it with my tail.

It flew through the air, hitting a Scyther in the eye.

Cool!

We backed away as we fought, going deeper and deeper into the forest.

Once my human friends had finished morphing, they joined the fight.

"Vvvvictreebellll."

I looked over my shoulder, just in time to see a huge, open, teeth-rimmed mouth coming straight for me!

I leaped aside.

A Victreebel! We quickly backed away.

"Victreeeeeebel!"

˂AAAAAAHHHHH!˃ A Scyther yelled. I looked just in time to see another Victreebel snatch it up.

Victreebels are over 5 foot, while Scythers are over 4 foot. Not exactly easy prey.

But that was one hungry Victreebel. The Scyther was gone within 5 seconds.

More Victreebels! They were everywhere!

In our battle, we had stumbled into a Victreebel colony!

˂AAAAHHH!˃ I cried, dodging another Victreebel.

We started fighting the Victreebels. We hit them, electrocuted them, whipped them with vines, and set them on fire. But there were so many!

The Victreebels were fierce and big. And there were a lot of them.

The Weederpies quickly scattered. Bounce, Lisa, Boris, Rachel, Michael, and I ran. I don't think the Victreebels followed us. But we still ran.

Finally, we stopped.

I sat down heavily. ˂That was too close!˃

Lisa, Boris, and Rachel demorphed. I noticed that Michael had a huge cut across his back.

He couldn't demorph though. He couldn't just get rid of the cut.

We morphed to birds-of-prey and flew back towards Cerulean City, with Michael following on foot.

At one point, he fainted from the loss of blood.

Bounce and I morphed Scythers and carried him. When we finally got there, we headed for the Pokémon Center.

We landed behind some of the little hedges outside and demorphed.

"Okay, here goes," Rachel said. She picked up Michael and went inside.

Author's Annotation: Oh dear, a Beedrill colony and a Victreebel colony? Either there are Pokémon colonies everywhere in the wild or the Weederpies picked a truly awful spot for their facility.

I knew that I was going to have to deal with the possibility of Michael getting hurt at some point. As this was the Pokémorphs' first big battle, this seemed as good a time as any. Tobias in Animorphs was trapped as a hawk, which meant he could keep himself out of harm's way most of the time and just dive in for opportunistic strikes, but Michael is grounded and in the thick of things. Though I do feel like I didn't make as much use of his climbing abilities as I should have.