DISCLAIMER: I once owned Pokemon, but then some nobody called Satoshi Tajiri stole it off me. Jerk.

Greetings again, mon amigos (I THINK that's how you use it)! Took a while longer than usual to get this chapter properly running since it's actually nearly 8000 words! That makes it the single longest chapter so far and the largest chapter I've ever written for a fanfic! Kekeke.

Lots of action this chapter, involving our favourite witty hero and snarky heroine. I'm sure you'd rather I cut to the chase, so I'll end this author's note here.

Enjoy the show.

Orbhunt - Chapter 10

Greenlush Valley - Magma Regen Site

"She's being rather belligerent about this," Yural observed blandly.

The human – Brendan, was that his name? – slowly shut his eyes. "She snapped at me a couple of times earlier in annoyance, but that didn't seem all that out of place for her. Now she's just gone straight-up berserk." He indicated the curious flowing tendrils of energy within the mess of pipes in the centre of the room. "It was probably that stuff in there. She can't stand looking at it. Even I can't stand looking at it."

Yural glanced over at the nexus, cocking his head in curiosity. "I don't see anything special, just more work of evil humans."

Brendan gave him an odd glance, possibly trying to gauge the subtext in his statement. "Just so you know, bro, we're not ALL villainous fiends looking out only for our own selfish goals."

"I know, I know, you're living proof of that." Yural grinned at him. "The clan in general's quite tolerable of your kind, which is unlike most of the other Pokémon in the forest. Apparently it was a group of humans who saved the lives of a few of the clan elders, before I was born. You're lucky we were the ones to find you or you otherwise might have just made a pleasant snack for some lucky scavengers."

Brendan blinked. "Hazal never told us about that bit. The human rescue, I mean."

"Oh, they don't like to talk about it that much." Yural waved a claw and snorted. "Want to maintain appearances, or something silly like that. Not that their policies don't make it painfully obvious anyway."

"Huh. Interesting," the human mused. He turned his back to the Linoone. "Well, as fascinating as this discussion has been, I should be going. May's probably already raised a dozen alarms everywhere by now, and time's of the essence." He craned his neck to look back at Yural. "Thanks for the warning, but don't wait for us. If we get out, we get out. If we don't…" He shrugged.

He nodded his head in understanding. "For what it's worth, good luck. Don't let those black-dressed humans nail you."

He paused. "Black-dressed humans?"

"Oh, you don't know about them?" Yural shuddered. "Terrifying fiends on the battlefield. Have a fetish for knifing everything in sight. Dress rather conservatively."

The human's eyes widened in recognition at the knifing comment. "Oh, THOSE humans. You mean there's more than one of them?!"

"Why, yes," he said slyly. "You already met one?"

"More closely than I ever wanted," he muttered. Brendan seemed extremely agitated about the topic. "Alright, thanks for the info. I'll be out of your fur now." And with that, he stomped off.

Yural did not bid him another farewell. The tension had already gotten thick enough to silence a Loudred.

Although still smouldering from earlier, May's footsteps were by contrast rather more subdued and careful. While her temper was dealing mostly with her more emotional restraints about attacking another human being, the logical part of her brain was still telling her that attracting the attention of every Magma in the vicinity was probably not the best of ideas.

Around her, the machine hummed with immense power that she still didn't know the source of. The constant source of background noise hadn't been audible before with the two of them stalking around the narrow corridors with their less-than-subtle footsteps, but now, it was wildly apparent. But this hadn't been the case when she'd gone solo on her previous time in the machine, either… May slowly focussed her vision on each and every groove and bolt set into the flooring, ceiling and walls. The details she could make out were incredible, being perfectly sharp and defined. Were all her senses improved, too? Was this another consequence of effectively being part-Pokémon now?

Well, at least that part she didn't have a massive problem with.

Ahead, the storage area she'd been consisted of dozens of door on the same hallway, which had two corners in it, forming a Z shape. It'd take ages to search them all. But she'd have to, anyway.

Approaching the first thick-set steel door at the end of her particular strait, she gave the handle an experimental tug. It didn't budge. She went back a couple of paces to stare at it some more, going over things in her head. Then, she reached forward, grasped the handle and gave it a HUGE tug.

She succeeded in wrenching the entire hunk of metal straight off the door.

Chuckling at her newfound strength, she then gave the door another tug with her other hand using the small circular hole left behind. It still didn't budge. Now thoroughly annoyed, she dropped the handle and scowled as she tried to think of another method.

At least until she heard the telltale signs of footsteps echoing from behind her.

She whirled around so fast her hair smacked her in the face, but she couldn't miss the perfectly weighted throwing knife tumbling through the air heading for her neck, almost as if in slow-motion. Twisting her entire torso, she just barely managed to avoid being impaled as the knife whistled past her and clattered into the door at her back, clattering to the ground a moment later.

Her assailant, who had evidently snuck up on her while she had been distracted and now resolutely stood several metres away, had not decided to follow up his unsuccessful sneak attack, so May took the time to take in his appearance. The man was dressed in a very heavily-modified version of the traditional Magma attire, with the uniform considerably more form-fitting and sporting much more black in its palette. At his thighs, a holster for several identical blades was hanging, as well as various tools like a walke-talkie, keys, a security card and (strangely) a pair of fuzzy dice. The man's face was mostly obscured with his hood and scarf wrapped around his mouth, but his eyes were twinkling.

"And what have we here?" he asked in an amused tone.

May slowly straightened and let out the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding. She quietly fingered the sachet of water she had at her waist, reassuring herself that it was there. "Who're you?" she demanded coolly.

He spread his hands, decidedly rather relaxed about the whole thing. "The name's Jaeger! Black Souls division! And to whom might I have the honour of speaking?"

He clearly wasn't taking her especially seriously. She decided to humour him. "I'm May," she said shortly.

"May…" he mused, putting a hand to his jaw in thought. "A pretty name for a pretty girl! I like it! But what's a lady like you doing out here? Sightseeing, I suppose?"

She didn't have a clue where he was going with this. At best, he was probably toying with her. "What's it to you?"

"And she's got attitude, too." He yanked the scarf down to expose a face-splitting grin. "Well, I'm sorry, ma'am, but the tour guide changed his route. Can't let you just wander around here and ruin everything. Or did they not tell you this was off-limits to tourists?"

"And you think chatting with me is going to make me leave?" she asked, exasperated. This guy just rubbed her the wrong way, right down to the lecherous smile.

"Well, no, of course not!" he chortled. "But what are you gonna' do if you don't, anyway? You haven't even got any Pokeballs," he added lightly, pointing at her empty belt for emphasis.

She gave a very quick, pointed glance at the twisted handle at her feet.

She smirked when he blinked in surprise. "Huh. Maybe you got a couple of monkey wrenches stashed away somewhere on you. With a chest like yours you could probably get away with the whole toolbox." His grin returned in full force. "Anyway, much as I'd love to have a gander at that secret compartment myself, the boss would probably cut my heart out if I did that. She's pretty feminist like that. So, how about I make this easy for you? I knock you senseless, get her to supervise while we all rough you up some – just not in that way – to get the point across, and then we toss you on the nearest route with a cardboard box and a pair of carrier bags to wallow in your own self-pity?"

Her lips pressed into a dangerously thin line. "Your boss?" she asked, ignoring pretty much the entire rest of his tirade.

He frowned for just a moment, but continued on his idiot streak the next. "Yeah, my boss," he said, just a little hesitantly. "We call her the Reaper! Makes sense, given how she leads the Souls and kills people for a living. And her name fits, too." He chuckled, presumably at some inside joke. "Oh, good Lord Groudon, her name."

"And that is…?"

He managed to keep his mirth under control for just a second. "Scythiona Vidon Xiona," he spluttered, hysterics seemingly barely a moment away.

Despite herself, May couldn't help but smile in amusement. "Sounds like something out of Star Trek."

"Oh, we always assumed it was based off a medicine," he said, wiping a tear from his eye. "Rumour has it the last guy who said her full name around her ended up with his head being mounted on a pike somewhere in Ever Grande. Caused quite a scene. Ah… Scythe…" He suddenly looked worried. "Just, er, don't tell her I said any of this - she'll probably castrate me or something if she found out." He fully regained his composure and stuck his hands in his pockets, grinning once more. "So! I've talked enough. You going to come quietly? Or do I have to drag you kicking and screaming the whole way?"

She paused, and then slowly began to feign shivers of terror. "Um, there's a guy behind you with a rock and a funny wig."

The moron gave her a look of mock horror. "Oh, gods! I've clearly been caught completely and utterly unaware. Whatever shall I do?" He turned to glance back at the empty corridor behind him. "Oh, my, looks like there's nobody th-"

May shot her hand out, with a thick tentacle of water following it and shooting out from her canteen.

Hearing the sudden movement, Jaeger turned back, frowning. "Woah there, lady, no funny stuff or I'll have to-"

The jet of water slammed him full in the chest with the force of a Hitmonchan's prized punch. He didn't even have the time to exclaim an astonished, "What?" before he landed heavily on the floor, completely winded.

May whirled her hand as the tendril of water formed itself into a sharp spike and she abruptly sent her palm downwards, with the spike mirroring her movement and accelerating towards his torso. Seeing his life in immediate danger, he scrambled to his feet as the blade skewered the floor next to him. "Ha, you missed!" he crowed, even as his hand went to his belt to withdraw his walkie-talkie.

He didn't find it. Blinking, he stared down to see the device conspicuously absent from his waist and finally spotted its current location of being stapled to the floor with a foot-long spike of liquid. "You bitch."

May lifted her hand again, watching the water slowly yank itself out of the ruined radio and dissolve into a floating orb. "You're a jackass, do you know that?"

He spat a glob of saliva at her, falling about four feet away from him. "I don't know what you are, you freak, but I'm gonna' kill you." And with that, his hand blurred for his knife belt.

Once again in slow motion, May watched and took in every detail as she stared at his hand. Judging by the angle at which he was moving it, it looked like he was going to throw two knives at once. Briefly doing a quick assessment, she surmised she couldn't attack him at her range just yet.

The movements just seemed to come naturally to her, as if she'd known them her whole life and then some. A few minute twitches of her fingers quickly split her water sphere into a pair of identical smaller ones. Moments later, after he'd snatched up his blades and was about to hurl them, a subtle movement of her whole hand manoeuvred them both into place.

The two orbs disintegrated and were splattered all over the place, but both knives went completely awry, veering off their intended path to hit the ceiling and wall instead. Jaegar probably hadn't even realised what had happened before her hand was flexing again to recover her lost water droplets into a half dozen tiny blades of her own. With a forceful push, she sent all of them hurtling towards the assassin.

To his credit, Jaeger looked fairly experienced with dealing with unexpected attacks, but even he couldn't dodge six attacks at once. Four of the watery blades whiffed, passing harmlessly by, but the other two struck home, impaling his uniform easily to sink perhaps a couple of centimetres into his body before their own momentum squashed them out of shape instead.

May silently snapped open her closed fist, causing those two masses of water to suddenly form vicious spikes inside his body.

Jaeger let out a gasp of pain as the two water blades suddenly tore the wounds open further, bleeding freely. They were minor, as far as wounds went, but it seemed he'd realised he certainly couldn't afford to go all-out offensive on her. Palming another two knives, he sent them in her general direction to buy himself some time.

Recalling her six water masses to intercept them in midair, Jaeger used the brief respite he had to backpedal. His knives could cross the distance far easier than her cumbersome shapeless blobs of water.

Of course, he only had so many knives. She just had to outlast him.

Jaeger suddenly began hurling knives at an incredible rate, seemingly trying to overwhelm her defences with sheer numbers. But it wasn't much use. Her mind was in overdrive, analysing every path each one took thoroughly and her subconscious did the rest by shifting her fingers by just the right amount to block each toss. Each time they did, the water splashed the corridor but reformed moments later. With a few subtle shifts, she had one of them slowly close the distance between it and him.

When he ran out of knives on his waist belt, he started pulling them from the inside of his jacket too.

"And you say my compartment is roomy?" she asked in an accusing tone.

He didn't respond, instead frowning and pausing for just a moment. Evidently deciding he wasn't going to get anywhere just tossing knives and couldn't close with her fast enough, he quickly turned around and bolted.

Immediately realising that him getting away would be spelling absolute doom for her, she made her move. The lone water sphere she'd been advancing crossed the four or so metres between them in a half-second, knocking out one of his legs from beneath him. His eyes widened and he stumbled forward to catch his footing – and fell prey to another water blade she'd pulled forward to fully trip him up. The last blade she'd deliberately ignored whistled past her side with a slight rush of air.

Now on the floor, Jaeger only managed to get to his knees before a thick tentacle of water snapped itself around his neck. His eyes widened in horror and he reached up in a desperate bid to tear it off, but May had other ideas. She abruptly bent her arm at a ninety-degree angle, with the tentacle – and Jaeger's head – following it. The assassin's forehead smacked into the steel flooring with a sickening clank. May then twisted her arm and promptly bent it the other way. Now it was the back of the dazed Jaeger's head to smack into the ground with an even louder clank.

For a few moments, there was silence as the girl stared at the unconscious man, trying to discern any signs of trickery. Once she was satisfied, she slowly let out the second breath she didn't realise she'd been holding in as many minutes. Her hand twitched, letting the tentacle slide off from its point on his neck. No sooner had she done so than Jaeger's body collapsed into a heap.

Gods, had she killed someone?

No, no, she hadn't. His chest was still rising and falling a little erratically as he shakily drew in breaths. She sighed as welcoming relief flooded her body.

So too did the agonising migraine throbbing in her brain.

Her smile changing to a grimace in an instant, she threw a hand up to her temple, groaning. "So that's what it feels like," she mumbled. Damn, that hurt. She felt a brief pang of regret for basically forcing the role of transportation on Brendan outside. Granted, it had worked, and the idea had probably saved their lives, but still…

Trying to move her head as little as possible to avoid aggravating her splitting headache, she leaned down and snatched up the keys and security card from the assassin's belt. They'd almost certainly come in handy.

Turning around and marching back down the corridor with her original intention now in her mind, she carefully unlocked each door as they came. In the first half-dozen or so, she found nothing other than a few empty rooms full of utilitarian items. In the seventh, however…

May heard the lock quietly click open. There wasn't anything out-of-the-ordinary to suggest there was anything in this room. She still had several more to go. All thought of that fled her mind once she peeked in through the doorway, which she promptly flung open with enough force to cause the hinges to screech in protest.

Her Aggron was lying slumped in the middle of the room, with a small pile of Pokeballs to one side. The Pokémon's impressive bulk had shoved the other living occupant to the back. That same occupant stared back at her, slack-jawed with a mixture of fear, disbelief and shock on his features.

"May…?" Butler whispered.

"You," May hissed, familiar anger now contorting her delicate features.

Something serious was happening. And very close by.

Brendan had been traversing the Magma machine on his way to the armoury when he'd heard some very inauspicious noises emanating from the cold metal walls. A halt and a hand to his ear revealed more details – vicious thuds that couldn't possibly have sounded very pleasant up close.

Although he knew May had gone to the other side of the place in her half of the search, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of worry and curiosity – if she was or wasn't involved, respectively.

Quietly making his way towards the source, he found a thick portal door as the last obstacle in his path. It slid open on perfectly oiled hinges, as they always did.

A gust of cool afternoon air wafted into his face.

Surprised, he pushed it open further and stuck his nose around the corner. A short corridor with a dead end to his left and an opening to a large circular room greeted him. What he could see in the room intrigued him – a long, winding spiral staircase extending down from the floor to the forest below. So this was how Magma normally got up here.

A badly battered, bruised and bleeding Scizor stumbled into his view of the room… followed by none other than that terrifying red-eyed woman from earlier. She still wielded the nasty black knife that she'd plunged into his heart in her hands, which she was twirling manipulating with cruel efficiency.

The Scizor, looking completely delirious, swung a clumsy pair of claws in a vague approximation of an X-Scissor. The lady smoothly sidestepped the attack and raked the back of his leg. The Bug-type fell to its knees, drawing in sharp and laboured breaths, before the assassin finally put him out of his misery and stabbed the blade directly into the spine, just underneath its neck. The Scizor convulsed madly as if its entire body had received a jolt of electricity, and then crumpled stiffly to the floor, unmoving.

Everything, Brendan included, went deathly still as the woman stared down at the body. It was only then he realised she was quite audibly breathing hard. Evidently the battle had taken a lot out of her, but he still wasn't quite ready to test himself in a battle of life-and-death.

He was just contemplating backing off when the woman whirled, her arm a blur as she tossed a knife directly at him. His eyes hadn't finished widening before he reflexively yanked his head back out of sight. The black sheen flew past where his head had just been to clank against the steel walls.

"You're rather poor at hiding," a drily voice noted from the stair room.

He locked up as his body went to disturbingly cold in a matter of moments. That was impossible. How had she known he was there?!

"Come out. It's either that or you run and die tired."

His body trembled as he slowly stepped out into the corridor, carefully keeping the door open in case of any emergencies.

The lady stood at the entrance to the corridor from the room, adopting a carefully prepared stance as she finally got a look at him. Superficially, she looked completely different to her last appearance, but as she curiously lacked Magma's trademark red jacket, he finally got a good look at her face. Jet-black hair hung in knotted tresses down just past her shoulders, framing a very sharply-angled visage that might have looked quite pretty any other day of the week were it not for the look of sheer contempt she wore. It was impossible to mistake the way she carried herself, though, not to mention the very same wicked knife she was holding a little loosely in her fingers as she had previously. A handful of smaller knives were attached to a belt on her waist.

Her expression was increasingly becoming one of disbelief and shock, however, as his identity finally clicked within her.

"You?" she whispered.

Butler shivered. "… me?"

He counted his blessings that the Aggron had been out at the moment. Were it not his body being directly in between him and the murderous-looking May, he feared there wouldn't be anything stopping her from simply marching over and cutting him to shreds with her bare hands.

"Yes. You," she replied. Her icy composure was practically making the water vapour condense out of the air, it was so cold. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just kill you, here and now."

Had he not been currently occupied with saving his life, he might have wondered why it was that the water really DID seem to be condensing out of the air. "I… I…" he stammered.

She began taking slow, deliberate steps around the Pokémon towards him.

So, this was really it? Being killed by a vengeful spirit of a trainer he'd not only betrayed, but also had killed? His head sunk in defeat.

May seemed to recognise his resignation. "A little late for regret, now, don't you think, Butler?"

"Do whatever your heart desires," he said morosely. "I deserve all of it."

She faltered, stopping her advance a couple of steps away from him. She stared down at the simpering man, her angry look now being replaced by one of abject despair.

"Why?" she asked hoarsely.

He stared at her. "I… I wanted recognition from the team that shunned me. But it's been the stupidest decision I've ever made."

"You wanted to stay back in Forina and protect it," she said quietly. "I thought you'd left it all behind. Yet here you are, helping one of the most genocidal teams on the planet help bring about the end of the oceans as we know it."

He looked down, unable to meet her gaze. "Diane eventually left, after a while. I don't think I could have stayed there without her."

"But she's not here."

He closed his eyes. "We… we broke up."

"With your track record, you'd think she'd have done it a while ago."

He grimaced at her bitter remark. "I think I was part of the problem. She always found my shows entertaining, but I think she must have realised I was becoming increasingly obsessed with showing up Magma, who'd made so much fun of me before. She probably didn't want to attract any undue attention, so she ended our relationship peacefully."

"And then you went back to Magma."

"I was depressed!" he protested. "I needed something to… to validate my existence, or something. So I found an old friend I had within Magma and got her to give me… an audience. And that started the whole thing. We've been planning this operation for years. I'm not sure I ever really thought it through."

The girl sighed and sagged on her feet. "And now, because of your stupidity, there are Pokémon and Magmas out there dying by the dozens and countless more being injured beyond what they can heal." She turned to stare at the miserable form of her Aggron. "… how are my other Pokémon doing?" she asked hesitantly.

"Your Aggron is doing the best of them," he said quietly. "I did my best, but some of them are never going to be able to battle ever again."

Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut in grieving. "You have a lot to answer for, Butler."

He was silent as she retrieved all the Pokeballs from the pile on the floor, filling her belt to capacity. Her Aggron was the last to go, transforming into red light and vanishing as she clipped it on.

"I don't think I can ever forgive you for this," she whispered. "But at the very least, you spared my friends. I'll spare you in return." She pointed down the hall. "Get out of my sight. I don't know where your Pokémon are being held, so you're on your own there. Find them, and then go and find some little dark corner in the world and stay there. Enough people have suffered because of your actions already."

She was walking off before he could even find the words to thank her for her mercy.

"Yes, me," Brendan said calmly.

The woman – he vaguely remembered her being referred to as 'Scythe' but that just HAD to be a nickname – opened and closed her jaw several times as words came and died on her tongue. Finally, she blurted out, "But… I - I killed you."

"Apparently not," he said laconically. Damn, he was enjoying her confusion too much.

Scythe shook her head. "This doesn't make any sense. Your eyes didn't adjust, you had no pulse, your heart had stopped, everything…"

Her gaze hardened and she shook her head more vigorously this time. "No. You know what? Screw it. I don't know how you survived, but I'm going to do it again and make damn sure you stay with Giratina this time. Let's see you live through being carved up into four pieces for a change." And then she lunged.

If there was one thing Brendan had been acutely aware of in his new form, it was that periods of extreme stress tended to cause him to zone out. Time would slow and his reactions – at least, that's what it looked like to other people – would increase in speed tenfold. Watching the battle in the forest when he'd been terrifying aware of just how little it would take for something to misfire and leave them all as roasted charcoal had let him view the whole thing practically in slow motion. Magma troops mouthed orders at a snail's pace. Every last drop of magma exploding out a Camerupt's back was visible to him. Nothing short of the exceedingly rare Pidgeot and Swellow had been fast enough for him to miss a decent look… and even then he'd been able to make out some finer details on occasion. Using that as a baseline, he could tell one thing right away about the woman before him.

She was damn fast for a human.

She managed to cross the distance between them from a standing start in barely more than a few moments and was taking the first motions of a wild blade swing. Suddenly acutely aware of what exactly he was dealing with, he ducked, letting the blade pass over him, and twisted, scooting under her arm and dashing for the staircase room. He wasn't attempting to run from her – as enticing an idea as that sounded – but he knew he wasn't going to match her in close combat. Not at that speed.

He turned his head just in time to dodge a throwing knife aimed at his torso. Okay, at range probably wasn't too safe either. Time to unleash his secret weapon.

Turning around fully to see her hurtling for him again, knife in hand, he fingered open the pocket containing the rock he'd picked up from earlier. Unlike May, who could spontaneously generate water whenever she needed from the atmosphere, Brendan had to carry his own ammunition with him.

He swung his arm up to point it at the incoming assassin, and the stone flew out of the pocket, a flying chunk of hard silicon oxides.

Scythe seemed to stare at the rock for only a moment before deciding a collision of stone on bone was not on her most-wanted list, but even so she was just a hair too slow in avoiding it, with it clipping her on the temple as she dodged to the side. Stunned by the blow, she promptly tripped on her own leg and crashed to the floor, where she didn't move.

Brendan let out a sigh of relief. That had been too close.

"Good toss."

He blinked and looked down again to see her picking herself up, only a little dazed. Celebrating a little too soon, much? "It wasn't a toss."

"Then what else?" she asked him irritably. She stood fully, rubbing the bruised area with a hand. "You suddenly gain telekinesis powers overnight?"

"… you could say that."

"I don't care enough to ask what you're talking about." She readied herself again. "Let's see you try it again."

"Okay." He flicked his hand backwards.

She tracked the movement of his appendage in bemusement, not having a clue what it was meant to do, and was rewarded as the same stone flew back from where it landed to smash her in the small of her back. She faceplanted magnificently into the floor.

Grinning, he hovered the stone lightly in front of him as she groaned and picked herself up again.

"How… how did you…?" she asked incredulously, staring at the levitating silica.

"I suddenly gained telekinesis powers overnight," he replied mildly. Yep, way too much.

"No, that's not it," she snapped, starting to haul herself up. "Tell me the truth."

He debated telling whether telling her the full story would have too big consequences for him later. He decided on an abridged version, if only because it'd get her off her pedestal of superiority. "I have Team Magma to thank for that. Groudon's power now flows through my veins. I don't imagine he'd be especially happy about how you've misinterpreted everything he stood for."

Scythe went silent, staring in shock, but then her face contorted and she hissed at him, "Idiocy. You think Groudon would not want this? After all the wars he has had against Kyogre for the express same purpose? Even today, they still would do battle."

"Trying to represent him? Big words coming from someone who tried to enslave their own god," he retorted. "My friend informed me once of a time many years back where you tried to use a blue orb to get Groudon under your control. I guess just that wasn't good enough, though, since now you're shooting for Kyogre too."

She waved a hand, clearly angered. "I wouldn't expect a thick-skulled child like yourself to understand. Just die." And she punctuated that last word with another lunge.

He realised too late that he probably should have been more pragmatic about the whole thing. She wasn't an opponent to be underestimated. Backpedalling, he sent his stone forward to hit her in the chest. She responded by ducking and promptly sliding straight under the projectile, using the smooth metal to her advantage. She quickly palmed a knife and hurled it to keep him off guard and unable to respond.

He wasn't about to entertain her. His mind now working at top gear, the knife missed by a large margin as he sidestepped and called the rock back as she closed the last couple of metres.

She swung at him in a direct attack. He dodged that one, too, but her free hand also came around and gripped him by the neck. With her blade hand still high in the air from the swing, she hauled him around to block the incoming rock.

Or, she would have, had Brendan not subtly adjusted his hand and sent it crashing into her fingers instead. She gave an unladylike yelp of pain and stumbled back a bit, more than enough time for the teenager to dash forward again, putting distance between them, with his rock following.

Clenching her fist in pain, Scythe's expression was one of pure hatred, a frightening visage when combined with her scarlet irises. She charged again, but a more controlled movement this time. She didn't want to fall for his silly tactics again.

She thought he was all about rocks? She thought wrong.

She closed the gap between them in less than five seconds, and made to swing her blade at his neck. His rock flew forwards from behind him intent on striking her on the head. With a blur of deft movement honed from years of fighing Pokémon one-on-one, she deflected it, the cold steel ringing as the stone sailed off on some random trajectory. She nearly grinned.

Until Brendan's fist sailed through the air between them to sock her straight in the face.

He'd guessed the results might have been a little ugly due to his increased strength, but even so he couldn't help but wince at the gruesome cracking noise her nose made as her entire head snapped backwards. The rest of her body continued moving forward from its inertia, causing the back of her head to hit the floor with a loud thump.

Brendan stood back, debating on how to finish her off while still remaining sensible and humane (or inhumane?), but she was already getting to her feet, groaning in pain. Her nose had gone a cringe-worthy purple from the bruised flesh, a fact she seemed to be appreciating all too well as she lightly touched a hand to it and grimaced.

"You mad?" he asked.

Her face darkened. "Mad," she ground out, "was a minute ago. Now I'm just pissed."

As she charged once again, he wondered idly if pissing off someone hell bent on killing you was the best of ideas. On one hand, they might be so enraged it would impede their usual logic. On the other hand, it might make them deliberately ignore whatever consequences abounded just to see their target ruined at all…

The stone flew out once again, on target for her. With a contemptuous flick, she knocked it aside again, never once taking her eyes off him. He shifted his hand to send it into her back…

She contorted her body and the rock sailed past, missing by inches.

Now barely a couple of feet away, he twisted himself, catching her blade arm as his elbow closed in on her face. Simultaneously, his other hand shifted again, calling the rock forwards to strike her legs.

Her knee came flying up to smash him in the jaw as she tilted her head just enough for him to only brush her with his elbow. His head snapped up slightly painfully, so he was off balance when her other leg came up nearly 180 degrees to kick him in the chest and knock him over. The stone went sailing underneath to clatter uselessly on the floor. She then shook herself loose of his grip on her arm and held the blade high as his back met the steel panelling with her standing over him.

His eye twitched. She couldn't possibly have seen all that coming. Was she learning his patterns this fast?

Terror gripped him as he spotted the knife now starting to descend. His hand convulsed and the rock blasted upwards with absurd speed to hit her in the side. The blade promptly stopped its descent as she lost her balance and stumbled, but still had enough sense to swing out a leg and kick him harshly in the side in an attempt to keep him from rising.

Nonetheless, rise he did, just as she regained her footing and speared the knife forward, trying to impale him. An open palm intercepted her lunge and the black blade was smacked flying, saving his life, but leaving him vulnerable as her hand came up and sunk her fist into his stomach. Even with his increased resistance to physical attacks, he still felt pain blossom angrily in his torso. He doubled over, and was quickly followed up with a knee smashing into his face. As he went straight from leaning forwards to leaning backwards from the force of the blow, she sunk another fist into the side of his head, knocking him even more off-balance. She would have sent another punch into his body again had he not lashed out blindly and slapped aside her arm. Before she could resume her assault, he shoved a palm forward, which had the double effect of roughly pushing her away and calling his rock one last time, which diced painfully into her thigh.

Both combatants stumbled away from each other.

For a moment, Scythe was purely content to just breathe hoarsely through her mouth. The last lucky hit had driven the air from her lungs, which burned painfully. She felt the lacerations dotting her body from all the sharp stone strikes she'd sustained.

After a moment to regain her composure, she looked up. Her opponent didn't seem particularly healthy, although she gave him credit for lasting as long as he had. Blood slowly trickling down formed a thin red line into his shirt from his newly ruptured nose and temple. He too was red-faced and breathing hard.

It hadn't been too difficult to figure out his general thought pattern… after she'd already thought the same thing before and gotten a bloodied nose for her troubles. She wondered with some trepidation if he was still holding back or if he'd really exhausted his list of capabilities so soon. Judging by his rather worried look, he apparently didn't.

"You must think I'm some sort of affront to nature, right about now," he confessed.

Her eyes narrowed. "No, not really."

"No?" His brows rose. "No statements of heresy? Blasphemy? It sounds just like you."

She snorted. "I don't care either way. I've just been raised to do my job and do it efficiently."

He paused, slowly furrowing his brows, thinking of something. "You asked me, before you… killed… me why I decided to fight against Magma. But why do you fight for them?"

"Because I enjoy the work." She smirked. "I've been asked that question several times before. There's little need for a woman like me elsewhere. Not exactly very many agencies out there looking for an assassin to work for them, huh?"

"But you don't actually fight because you agree with Magma's ideals?"

"Not particularly." She reached up to try and finger her sunglasses only to find they weren't there. Frowning, she twirled the knife in her hand instead. "Most of the people in this team aren't necessarily here because they agree with what we're doing, I'll tell you that much. It's more because they can't find anywhere else to go. Like me."

He looked appalled. "But think about what you're doing. Do you really have to effectively commit genocide of everything living in the oceans just to satisfy your stupid need to kill things? You can't just do that and expect everything to turn out just fine afterwards!"

"Doesn't concern me." Scythe smirked. "And at the very worst, at least in the anarchy afterwards there'll always be a place for people like me."

Without warning, she lunged forwards for the last time that fight. Caught completely off guard, his eyes widened and he'd only just started to raise a retaliatory strike when her fist promptly met his face and crushed his ruined nose flat. His head snapped back, but Scythe was already dropping to the ground to do a vicious leg-sweep. The teenager's legs were knocked out from underneath him hard enough to make him hover horizontally in midair when she swung her fists down like a hammer to slam him into the floor, forcing the air from his lungs. He immediately tried to roll away, but she grabbed him by the nape of his torn shirt and hauled him bodily into the air again.

"It'll the death of us all!" he snapped, though his tone was laced with exertion.

She lost her smirk and narrowed her eyes. "Then time to prepare for yours." Twirling her knife into a ready-position, she raised her arm to deliver a fatal stab…

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" came a voice from somewhere behind her.

Her eyes didn't have time to widen before a jet of water as hard as steel punched her in the side, jerking the boy from her grip and causing her to stumble painfully into the railing of the stairs leading to the forest floor. The droplets of water from the dispelled attack in her vision abruptly halted and coalesced into a long thin tendril. She gasped and turned to regard the female newcomer, but didn't manage to get a glimpse of her assailant when the tendril lashed out again, striking her hard in the chest. She bashed into the railing again and she felt something break.

It wasn't her, though.

For a moment she flailed madly in the air in some vague semblance of regaining her balance, but gravity soon prevailed, and she tumbled over the edge of the chute towards the forest below.

She held the briefest sense of weightlessness as the air tore at her, before nature cruelly interrupted that too when she crashed heavily through the boughs of a smaller tree. She promptly felt at least three limbs jar agonizingly against the branches, which snapped in twain at the collision, but she managed through her daze to reach out and grab something, which met rough wood. Her palm was promptly sliced in several places, but it managed to arrest her fall just enough to make her landing somewhat survivable.

Not that it didn't hurt. Scythe hit the forest loam hard enough to elicit an excruciated gasp as her old wounds from her previous fight immediately began hurting to nearly unbearable levels.

After several impossibly long seconds of just lying pathetically on the floor, waiting out the first few searing moments, Scythe groaned and propped herself up on one elbow. Checking her body over mentally, she was semi-pleased to find she still hadn't broken anything. It must have been divine providence, she surmised. Not even luck could explain falling four stories and not even snapping a bone somewhere.

Standing again a little weakly, she glared at the spiral stairway she'd somehow not managed to land on during her fall. It was a shame. She'd have to kill the pair of intruders later, it seemed. She was in no shape to start taking them on as she was.

A bush rattled behind her. Eyes widening, she whirled around, reaching for her knife instinctively… only to find it wasn't there. "Damn it," she muttered.

She focused again on the brush. After a moment of staring, a single lone Weedle hopped out, returning her gaze inquisitively.

She gave it a disdainful look. Really…?

Around her, several other bushes rustled.

She twisted her head to see a variety of Pokemon from Kanghaskan to Vileplume to Beedrill all leaving the undergrowth to surround her.

Angry Kanghaskan and Vileplume and Beedrill.

Scythe scowled coldly and raised her fists.

"Bring it," she said icily.

The creepy woman had only just vanished over the edge of the broken railing when May, with Yural following, rushed over to Brendan with alarming haste.

Inwardly, Yural grimaced. The male's skin had been cut in several places and the similar expression of pain that seemed painted on to his face indicated broadly of various other injuries he'd sustained. Despite the terror of his prior situation, he managed a grin. "Perfect timing as always, May."

Not bad, for a human.

May was practically babbling incoherently about how sorry she was for forcibly splitting the two up again despite her previous promises. "... and I had this ridiculous urge to just seek some kind of… of… justice for what they were doing and that's why I left in the first place…"

"Woah, slow down!" Brendan piped in quickly. "You'll pass out of oxygen deprivation if you keep going like that."

She visibly struggled to slow down her hyperventilating. "Okay, sorry."

"We should get you both somewhere safe," Yural interjected. "I've taken enough liberties to stay as long as I have. Most of the ground-based Pokemon in the assault have already been cornered around this area and they probably won't make it out, but we might still be able to get away through the treetops if we hurry."

They both stared at him for a moment before Brendan winced. "Ah, May, did you find anything?"

She blinked, but nodded furiously a second later. "Yes, I found them." She tapped the Pokeballs at her belt.

Yural had the faintest inkling that she wasn't quite telling the full truth there, but he decided not to press her. After all, Magma was closing in on all sides and the day was fast losing its light – when the Zubat and Golbat so common to Magma would be at their strongest.

With a few more choice words and some significant help from May to get Brendan on his feet, the trio promptly left the stair room, ambled back up to the balcony from earlier, and leaped back down into the branches to make their way back north.

Freedom.

And there you have it. Rest assured it's not all over for our plucky heroes just yet - do you think Magma is going to be pleased at their enormous interference? And are they really beaten yet, for that matter?

And so we will find out... next time. Until then, stay tuned.

Signing off,
grammaguy