DISCLAIMER: Ain't not grammaguy don't never own no Pokemon series! (quintuple negative, try and make sense outta THAT one!)
Well, what do you know! I DID update before the end of the year! The fact that I've gotten out a regular update for once is making me squee with delight. I've missed creative writing, I really have.
This chapter actually hit a bit of a roadblock halfway through it which left it sitting around uselessly for several days as I tried to find some possible answer to the problem, but not too long ago I just said, "Oh, **** it," and wrote my way around the issue instead of racking my brains to find some silly shoehorned solution. I would have liked to make the chapter a wee bit longer (at 3,900 words before author's notes its one of the shorter chapters), but this felt most appropriate to end it at. You'll see.
Enjoy the read, folks!
Orbhunt – Chapter 9
Greenlush Valley – Magma Regen Site
Deep in his makeshift cell, Butler frowned. While he hadn't left the room since he'd been thrown in there and hadn't had any contact with the outside world since Scythe had curiously loaned him her jacket last night, he was almost positive there was some considerable disruption going on outside. He'd heard frantic yells and the sounds of boots slamming repeatedly into the metal flooring through the door as their owners ran past and – much more ominously – the sounds of distant explosions echoing through the dull grey steel.
The faint glimmer of hope that it was the sounds of a determined task force sent to put an end to Magma's schemes occurred to him, in a few vengeance-filled moments. Sure, he'd almost certainly be arrested as well, but at least he could attempt to atone for his stupidity in trusting the villainous organisation.
He looked down sympathetically at the still form of an Aggron lying unconscious on the floor. The beast's mighty armour, which might probably have gleamed in the light once, was now fractured at so many points Butler wondered how it hadn't all fallen off already. Thankfully, it didn't seem to have as many wounds as the other Pokémon he'd charged himself with caring for. He surmised that the biped's thick hide had dissuaded Magma from doing much to him. Which was just as well, as he had been running out of shirt to give the poor things and he didn't want to test the assassin's good will by ripping up her odd gift to him.
Sighing, he reached out and gave the Pokémon a heavy-handed pat on the head. "When you wake up, I can only hope you'll forgive me for what I've done. I hope your owners are in a better place now."
"Ah… ah…! AH…!"
"Don't you even dare think of sneezing," May roared. "I'm not going to crawl through your germs in this tiny tunnel because you couldn't hold your nose."
Brendan ceased making the pre-sneeze noises. "Nah, I'm just kidding you."
She scowled, the expression sounding unusually loud in the close confines of the vent. "Not. Funny."
"Sorry, I was trying to find SOMETHING to lighten the mood," he said apologetically. "I can't stand this murky crawling all day."
'Murky' had been a bit of an understatement. In a fit of hypocritical impulsiveness, Brendan had chosen to start crawling inside a pitch-black vent instead of taking the time to look for a more comfortable way in. Well, that was assuming there was one.
Plus, the fact that the two were starting to smell pretty badly was becoming nauseatingly apparent in the windless confines of the tunnel. Two days of being hurled into the sea and tromping through thick forest would probably do that to a girl.
Now that she thought about it, neither of the two even knew what the damn thing was for. It was certainly a little too big for just standard ventilation…
She froze as a horrid thought came to her. The pipeline she'd sabotaged yesterday had the same dimensions as this one, didn't it? Roughly?
She felt her face go cold as she started crawling again to not draw Brendan's attention. What reason could Magma have for linking it to the outside world? Or maybe she was overreacting and this really was an enormously overbuilt ventilation shaft…
Reality literally butted into her thoughts as her head met Brendan's backside. She hadn't even heard him stop.
Squeaking, she backed up a little as the boy gave a mildly embarrassed, "Ahem."
"Sorry, I was… thinking about things," she said bashfully.
"Well, stop thinking for a second. There's a grate here. We could get inside through it."
Still feeling humiliated, but eager to be free of the cramped conditions, she leaned as far to the side as the tunnel allowed and got a glimpse at what Brendan was talking about. An odd-looking funnel made a small depression in the pipe, and at the tip of it was a tiny hole through which light was spilling.
Brendan glared down at the room below. "Okay, I have no idea what this is for."
There was a brief silence as May expected him to continue, but never got anything further. She frowned and prompted him with, "And?"
The trainer ignored her and grunted in exertion, shortly followed by a screech of metal tearing. Her eyes widened as the light in the tunnel increased tenfold as Brendan wrenched the funnel free of the roof and dropped it into the room below with a loud clang. She didn't have time to formulate a sentence capable of suitably conveying her astonishment before the unstoppable teenager lifted his legs through the gap and followed the metal scrap, landing quietly on the floor.
Crawling forward to peer through the hole, she saw what looked to be a storage room full of cardboard boxes of foodstuffs, with an doorless frame leading into a small hallway. Brendan grinned back up at her bemused expression. "Surprised?"
"How… how did you…"
"Tear the thing off?" he finished. At her nod, he continued, "I noticed it yesterday and did a small test earlier today. I'm surprised you haven't seen it yet. We're – well, at least, I am – a lot stronger physically, probably for the same reasons we're – well, y'know…"
She nodded again slowly. "Okay." She hurriedly followed him down, relieved to be out of the pipe at last. "Still don't know what that thing is for."
He shrugged. "And now it doesn't matter. Let's go, don't wanna' spend any more time in this place that we need to."
Concurring perfectly, May trailed the boy as he cautiously peeked out into the dark throughways of the Magma machine and, after making a decision on whether or not to split up (look where that had got them), both teenagers made haste in a northerly direction.
Hazal felt the glass creak in protest. "Almost there, my friends! Not much more now."
The trio of Linoone that had accompanied him to the top of the human construction and the Scizor, Heracross and Kricketune that had joined him in his demolition did not utter a word at his statement, instead lighting their claws/horns/pincers with various attacks for one last blow. Hazal himself readied a Slash attack and raised his foreleg. "On three, now… one… two… three!"
The reinforced glass dome making up a small portion of the roof of the machine hadn't stood a prayer against repeated bouts from the likes of Brick Break, Rock Smash and Fury Cutter, explicitly meant for breaking enemy defences. In one giant crash, the sphere of glass shattered into so many millions of fragments, falling into the great hall below.
Several attacks fired back up from the defending Pokémon below quickly returned the favour, with Shadow Balls, Fire Blasts and Dark Pulses alike slicing through the air where Hazal had just been standing. He felt his throat suddenly go dry as the air became conspicuously parched.
As soon as the first volley ended, the Kricketune at his side leapt into the hole, letting out a terrifying Perish Song as he fell. Despite immediately covering his ears, Hazal couldn't help but feel several twinges of pain as his sensitive hearing picked up a few notes nonetheless. He could easily hear the agonised yells of the Pokémon and Magmas the attack was intended for, however.
Without missing a beat, the Scizor on his other side who'd been readying himself with Swords Dance thundered to life with a Bullet Punch, lancing into the fray and immediately knocking out two Poochyenas with solid blows to the head. However, he had to quickly beat a hasty retreat as a pair of Whismur who proved immune to the Song quickly let loose a wave of Supersonic at the Bug-type. The Heracross, not to be outdone, did much the same, beginning to brawl with the various Fire-types in the room despite his disadvantage.
Not one to merely sit back and watch, Hazal and his Linoone brothers leapt down and got to work like a well-oiled machine. Almost as soon as he landed he was back in the air again, lunging at the nearest enemy – a Golbat that had grounded itself from the auditory overload – and set upon it with Fury Swipes. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted his nest mates Yural and Palal making quick work of a Houndour who'd gotten too close.
The scene of apparent wild Pokémon victory was rapidly extinguished. The Golbat in his claws had just gone limp from its injuries when a cacophony of screams – screams of pain – sounded from the other half of the room. Turning, he spotted unusually dressed Magmas pouring in from a hatch that had opened in the wall, hurling sharp blades as they went. A strike force of several Crobat, and a Claydol preceded them, firing precision Air Slashes to cover their entrance.
The Kricketune who'd sacrificed his wellbeing to incapacitate the original occupants of the room was smacked flying by a hail of attacks. The group of Taillow who'd followed them in to the machine but hastily decided that this was a little too much to handle not moments before had several members knocked out of the sky by Rock Tombs from the Claydol and throwing knives from the strange humans, with the survivors not thinking twice in flying right back out the way they came. The Scizor, who lacked any form of quick escape, hurled caution to the wind and lunged for the group with another Bullet Punch… only to pass right by them and make a break for the open portal. His attempt was quickly snuffed when Claydol slammed the thick door shut with Psychic.
Half of the Magmas turned to regard Hazal, Yural and Palal, who were left alone on the chamber floor.
The spike of fear that ran through him was purged along with his rational thought as pure instinct took over his limbs. He quickly conjured a Protect as a storm of Air Slashes began to tear at the ground around him. The volley had no sooner ended than even more attacks were already flying at him, but Hazal promptly used Double Team, obscuring himself in dozens of copies. Each copy then individually made a break for any and every handhold along the wall he could see.
"Claydol, Trick Room!"
The Claydol mumbled a series of hollow sounds which Hazal couldn't understand… and then the walls of the room gained an eerie blue sheen and his body slowed to a crawl. Luckily, so did the other forty-odd illusions around the room, all wearing the same confused expression as he did.
Roaring a challenge, the Heracross, whom Magma had missed by dint of flying up one of the walls to wait out the assault, leapt down, his speed amplified by the Trick Room. Two of the Crobat, already busy with the Scizor, stood no chance at evading him in the odd environment and were punted into opposite corners of the room where they immediately were knocked out. The Bug-type got no further than that, as the Claydol who'd cast the aura in the first place drew a bead on him with one of its many eyes and abruptly smashed the Heracross full-on with a Psybeam without prompts from its trainer. The beetle skidded to a halt with an effort, looking somewhat dishevelled, and growled another challenge. The Claydol made no sound to acknowledge it, its body gaining a light blue aura as it prepared another Psychic attack.
Hazal forced his attention away from the action to focus it on the two Whismur standing in his way.
Opening their mouths and screaming with all their might, the two diminutive Pokémon began dispelling clones left and right with Hyper Voice. Still under the grasp of Trick Room, Hazal had no chance at evading it as the two began to turn towards him…
He felt a surge of energy fill him as Yural, who'd already made it halfway back up to the glass dome, used Helping Hand, and flung what looked like a large chunk of sheet metal at the duo. The left Whismur was promptly bowled over as the chunk connected with its head with a sickening crack. The other, seeing its life in immediate peril, shut up and retreated back to its allies instead.
Or, he would have, had Hazal not used Pursuit and smashed the Whisper Pokémon harshly into the floor. Looking up, he could see the Heracross on his last legs as the few remaining Crobat pelted him with Air Slashes. The Scizor had not been faring much better – his attempts at disabling some of the trainers themselves had met with stiff resistance from the Claydol and, surprisingly, the humans themselves.
Hazal's ears cocked around around as yet another portal elsewhere in the room opened to release another swarm of lesser Pokémon and more Magma troops. Giving up all notions of saving the two Bugs, he called upon his powerful legs to propel him straight towards the nearest wall and nearly halfway up its height before reaching out and grabbing a small tubular vent set into the wall. Turning one last time, he spotted the Heracross now being hurled across the room by the Claydol, not rising after landing heavily on the floor. The Scizor, badly wounded already from his efforts, made one last ditch attempt to use another Bullet Punch to go through the second opened portal. This time, he succeeded, the Claydol not quite having the fortitude to manage the Trick Room and use Psychic from across the room at once. The portal slammed shut moments after the Bug- and Steel-type fled.
Eager to avoid being spotted and eviscerated, he exerted his hind legs and propelled himself back up to the ring housing the shattered glass dome. Yural and Palal were waiting for him, looking somewhat tired.
"Well, that did not work out as well as I hoped it would," he said grimly.
"So we can see," Palal replied in an extremely dry voice that reeked of disapproval. "The humans are gathering their forces from across the forest. Though we will outnumber them still, they are a coordinated force when roused. Our remaining here is a dangerous gambit."
Hazal frowned again. "The two humans we escorted here… where are they?"
The two Linoone exchanged glances, apparently none the wiser. "No idea," Yural muttered.
Hazal grunted. "I assured them I would help them rescue their Pokémon friends. I hope they understand that not letting them perish would be part of that. Yural, get either you or another runner in to alert them of our impending retreat. They will have to try to rescue their friends some other time."
Palal stared at his fellow elder. "You realise, Hazal," he said warningly, "that you are placing the survival of two humans you found washed up on the beach over that of our clan."
Hazal cocked his head. "If you met them personally, Palal, I think you would find that they do not appear to be quite 'human' at all."
The two Linoone only exchanged another glance in unspoken confusion.
They were in that room again.
Superficially, the nexus of thick piping looked precisely the same as it had before, when the duo had first entered the machine to conduct some sabotage of their own. Now, though… Brendan frowned intently at the thin wisps of energy still traversing the pipe, the Murkrow's feet deepening on his forehead. The tendrils inside just struck out to him in a way he couldn't quite understand, with some hidden instinct convincing him utterly that this was an abomination, a defilement of nature that never should have existed.
He supposed this was yet another thing to add to his list of demigod quirks, alongside floating rocks, splitting headaches and superhuman strength. It wasn't much wonder the Pokémon gods so rarely dared to gaze upon the world they presided over. A lesser species effectively playing Arceus? They'd probably fly into an uncontrollable rage and attempt an impromptu genocide of humanity upon seeing something like that.
Neither teenager had said a word since they'd stumbled upon the room in their blind navigating earlier on. The corridors had been conspicuously devoid of any Magma troops this time around, undoubtedly owing that to the raging battle still audible outside.
"I want to kill something," May muttered in a chillingly dark voice.
Startled at both the abruptness of her statement and the rather terrifying content of it, he jumped and turned to stare at her in disbelief. The girl wore on her face a look of smouldering anger as she glared at the energy in the pipeline. Moments later, she blinked, and her eyes widened. "Wait, what did I say?"
Brendan didn't say anything to that, instead focusing on returning his shocked expression to a carefully neutral one. "Something I hope I misheard…"
Her hand shot to her mouth as horror overcame her denial. "I… I can't believe I just said that…"
"I can't either." He sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. "Just… don't give in to any... weird urges that you might get. No matter how appealing it sounds."
She took a shuddering breath. "We'll never be able to go back after this," she said quietly. "Not ever."
Her words were nearly enough to make him wince, but he schooled its outward appearance into a concerned look. "Let's tackle this one problem at a time," he said in what he hoped was an encouraging tone. He gave her a light tug on the arm to pull her over the same console they'd used to orient themselves during the last visit. "If you were Magma, where would you imprison captured Pokémon?"
May slowly regarded the map. "I have no idea," she said flatly. "There's rooms everywhere and I don't know what's labelled what."
"Oh, okay…" Peering down at the map, he knew exactly what she was talking about. "Erm… well, we can steer clear of those two areas," he said, pointing at the two maintenance rooms which the duo had both tackled solo. "No sense in putting prisoners in probably the most important rooms of them all. And that whole bit there," he continued, indicating the general area of where they'd just been, "we can ignore. We just passed that place on our way here, and we checked every room and didn't find anything."
"That's assuming Magma even bothered to let them live," May said weakly.
"You're doing it again, May." Brendan watched her contemptuous expression slowly degrade into a small frown. "And don't think like that. We're not going to just give up on our friends just because there's the chance they've been done away with."
It was her turn to sigh from sheer annoyance. "I've been getting seriously cranky lately."
"It's not hard to see why." He cracked her a weak grin. "Anyone else would be downright pissed off by now."
She gave a derisive snort but declined to say anything in return.
He continued with his deductions. "Now this leaves us three areas. There's this big hall up here -" He pointed at the said large circular room at the top of the schematic. "- we can scratch that one. You're not gonna' keep a prisoner in there. That makes two areas our friends might be in. This group of storage rooms over here, and the armoury over there."
"We're not splitting up, Brendan."
He held his hands up in a placating gesture. "Woah, slow down there, never was gonna' say we were. Which one do you want us to check first?"
"I don't really care." She frowned. "Though going to the armoury sounds like a silly idea. 'Hey, let's try and avoid trouble, but we're just going to walk right into their centre of firepower while we're at it, you know?'"
"Storage it is, then."
Both teenagers blinked and turned around to look at the hallway they'd entered from, hearing a rapid scuttling of claws on the metal. No sooner had they finished their movement when a brown-and-white blur rocketed into the room, skidding to a halt fast enough to give the two an unpleasant ringing sensation in their ears from the sound.
A youthful Linoone blinked innocently back up at them. "Oh, hello," he greeted.
May gave him a confused look. "What are you doing here? How did you find us?"
"Well, gee, thanks for the warm welcome," he said sarcastically. When their stern expressions did not change, he drew back holding a claw sheepishly. "Alright, alright. A Scizor you apparently met earlier told us he opened up an entrance along the side of the contraption for you to get in by. I was sent to bring you back so you could live another day."
"Live another day? What? What's happening?" Brendan dreaded the answer to that.
"We're losing the battle."
Despite himself, he found his face contorting into a grimace at the Linoone's words.
The Pokémon continued, "We didn't manage to spearhead through their defences as quickly as we'd hoped, and now Magma's pulling back all their forces from across the forest. It won't be too long before we'll be overrun and forced back. Obviously we figured you wouldn't want to be stuck here when that happens."
May visibly gritted her teeth. "We're not leaving without our Pokémon. We're this close. We'll almost never get another chance like this again."
"I have to agree with the girl," Brendan added. "Magma's never going to let something like this invasion happen again. It's purely because they've been caught off guard that we've made it as far as we have."
The youngling looked… concerned. "It's funny."
"What is?"
He tilted his head. "Hazal said you'd be different from other humans, but I wasn't expecting it in this way. You just don't seem… normal to me," he added lamely, when their looks became more inquiring.
May scowled. "Maybe that's because we're not," she snapped. Ignoring the Linoone's surprised expression and Brendan's disapproving glare, she turned back to the map. "Okay, seems we are going to split up, then."
That was enough to wipe all negativity from the teen's face. "Huh? But I thought you didn't want to-"
"We're running out of time," she stated matter-of-factly. "We need to cover both of these places, and fast. You can take the armoury, I'll do the storage place."
Brendan was now frowning suspiciously at her. "Why the sudden change of heart, May?"
The girl slowly lifted a balled fist up and regarded it. At a single willed thought, water droplets condensed from the surrounding air and formed a small tentacle of clear liquid, which curled around her wrist and hand. The light twinge of pain at the back of her head was not helping her attitude. "Let's recap. Over the past two days, I've been dunked in primordial energy, barely survived being gutted by a knifing nutcase with bloody eyes, narrowly escaped drowning, found out I'm suddenly this magical Kyogre-human hybrid, spent the better part of a whole morning crawling through thick forest, been forced to listen to another human being being torn apart and killed, nearly got blown to pieces by stray shots, watched a grisly battle that nobody should ever have to see, spent the last fifteen minutes spelunking in dingy pipeline and cramped corridors, found out I'm suddenly getting these aggressive urges like some wild animal, and then I finally found out that the events of the past day might just have turned out to be completely pointless because the Pokémon we travelled with were too incompetent to do things properly."
She looked up at him, her face constricting with fury. "I'm in a seriously bad mood right now. Right now, I need to blow this steam off on something."
She was stalking out of the room before Brendan could even formulate a protest of sufficient magnitude to stop her.
Ho ho! Our resident buxom gal had decided to embrace her power and get dangerous! Plenty of action to be seen here kudos to the third parties involved, but rest assured, things will also pick up next chapter for our heroes (and villains) too. I can tell I'm going to super-enjoy writing the next chapter. I've had daydreams about how much awesome stuff I can cram into those scenes since I conceived them, lol.
But not today! For now, you must content yourselves which that which you've just read. Stay frosty, my faithful readers.
Signing off,
grammaguy
