Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon.

…

It wasn't until the gyarados that Rex really started to appreciate the full gear.

"I didn't even DO anything!" he frantically shouted back at the raging monster as he scrambled along the cliffs. Well, that wasn't totally true. The southwest side of the small island had been all soft sand and tide pools, and he really wanted a quick rest before he took on the climb north across the western rocky shores. He probably should have guessed that the three blue horns coming out of the shallow-water sand weren't coral, and definitely weren't a good place to sit down on. Live and learn, right?

Treasure Island's shores came up out of the ocean at a much sharper angle here on the west side of the island, worn away by years of erosion and monsters, and plateaued into the island's forest about thirty feet above Rex's head and forty feet above the water. He was clambering his way across the rocks on small divots and jagged paths, on four limbs almost as often as two for the sake of something to hold onto, while Blair flew a short distance ahead and directed him to the safest paths and footholds with panicked squeaks. He was pretty sure she was squeaking, at least - the sound was kind of drowned out.

Rex spared a morbid snicker. Drowned out. At least the panic didn't dull his sense of humor.

"Alright, Blair, we - gah!" he yelped and turned the corner of a curved cliffside. An azure-blue fireball flew past him, heating up the side of his face. Still too slow to hit him, but getting closer every time. Blair had been using gust in small bursts the entire chase to keep the monster and its attacks back, but the real reason it hadn't caught them yet was because it was groggy from waking up, and they knew that wouldn't last forever.

Adrenaline fueled Rex's thoughts as they flipped through possibilities. He could stop running. Likely outcome - very bad. Blair wasn't at full power, and he honestly wasn't confident they could beat this thing even if she was. He had taken some of the burst from an exploding blue fireball already - he was alright, thanks to his gear, but it had been like a punch to the face just from the shockwave of the explosion. This thing was definitely too strong for him and Blair to try and stand their ground against.

He could try to send out a distress signal. Likely outcome - too little, too late. Even if he could fumble his way through his backpack while avoiding the sea monster, there was no way a ranger would come in time. One way or another, the chase would already be over once help arrived.

He could stay on the original course and flee forward across the cliffs around to the north side of the island. Likely outcome - better, but still not good. The cliffs would only get less traversable as he headed further north, and they were already losing ground to their pursuer. He didn't know what this gyarados considered to be its territory, so he had no idea how much farther he would have to go before it would stop trying to chase him away, or if it would fully wake up from its grogginess before then.

There was also the chance that it wasn't trying to chase him off its territory at all, and instead it actually wanted to catch him. But that wasn't something he was willing to consider at the moment - even he could only handle so much morbidity.

That left one final option: up. Ironically, the place he went around the island to avoid in the first place was now his best chance at escape. There was no way the gyarados would follow him into the forest up on the plateau, meaning if Rex could make it to the tree cover, he'd be safe. He would happily take the potential of getting lost over the certainty of a raging ocean-dragon bearing down on him.

A roar boomed around the cliff's bend. Speak of the devil.

"Blair, over here!" he called, and she swooped back to him from her cliff-guide position. "We have to find a way up to the forest. I know we're kinda close to the water level right now, but we'll start moving diagonally up and forwards as soon as we can, alright? For right now, get ready to blow any fireball it sends at us off its trajectory."

Blair chittered something softly, and Rex set off at a faster pace. A few yards to his left and several yards down, the ocean churned like it was just as angry as the gyarados. Rex tried not to think about falling in as he started the climb up to the treeline - instead, he focused on the path ahead of him. The rocks were sharp and jagged, but thanks to his thick gloves, that just made them better handholds. He had gone the whole chase so far with at least some sort of solid footing, thanks to the irregular angles of the cliffs instead of one solid slope, but now he was losing that luxury, and he couldn't spare any of Blair's energy to have her help him up. Just a couple more feet to the next big shelf…

Then he heard a splash like a cannonball, and saw ocean water spray up in an enormous burst even around the bend. The shoreline receded, and Rex's eyes widened. Not good.

The gyarados's roar raised to a howl as its thrashing reached a fever pitch, and the ocean raised with it in an enormous surf wave preparing to crest into the rocky cliffs. Rex fought down a very un-manly(*1) whimper of fear and scrambled to pull his backpack up between him and the rocks - if that water slammed him into the wall without something to cushion the impact, even full gear might not save him.

"B-Blair! Wing attack!"

Blair screeched and swooped in, wings glowing lilac. With two lightspeed cuts, an X of water fell over Rex, still glittering softly with the energy from Blair's wing attack, and the rest of the wave crashed home around him, shaking the cliffside.

Good news: Rex and Blair were wet, but unharmed. Bad news: Rex was still hanging off a handhold twenty five feet below the forest cover he needed to reach, and the gyarados was finally around the bend, fully awake and staring at them dead-on.

Rex knew how this would go. With the wave (and the monster energy powering it) spread wide enough to cover such a huge swath of the cliff, it had needed to be thin, and puncturable by even a zubat's wing attack. But now that the gyarados had a line of sight, it didn't need to do another stretched-thin surf wave - it could focus on them, and Blair wouldn't be able to cut through that one. If Rex's brain had previously ran through options at sonic-speed, now it was moving at lightspeed, frantically flashing between ideas and thoughts and plans to find something, anything that could work -

For some reason, it settled on his desk back home. His notebook, full of scribbles and doodles and half-finished homework. Learning, his mom insisted. As if today wasn't proof that he could learn a hundred times more out here than stuck in there. In fact, with everything he had learned today -

Like the clear chime of a single bell, the idea hit him. A grin spread across Rex's face, with teeth as sharp as the gyarados's.

Yeah, that'd work.

Rex's feet found purchase, and he turned to face the wall again as he prepared to haul himself up the final couple of feet onto the shelf all in one jump. His instincts screamed at him to turn back around, to never ever look away from the giant sea dragon, but he ignored it. He didn't need to see to trust his monster. All he needed was his ears, and as soon as he heard the thrashing begin, he shouted out to Blair.

"Mean look!"

Blair's eyes flashed crimson from the shelf ledge, and the gyarados froze.

Zubats are not big creatures. Blair was utterly dwarfed by the gigantic sea monster - no matter how much force she put into it, a mean look attack from her could only hold the gyarados for a couple of seconds, and therefore could only prevent it from churning up another surf wave for a couple of seconds.

But Rex had two tricks there. First, he remembered the look on the monster's face once it passed the bend - it was staring straight at them, meaning Blair had full eye contact. More importantly, he knew it was angry. It didn't want to wait a couple of seconds, it wanted this tiny invader off of its territory, now. So instead of biding its time, instead of taking the few moments it would have needed to break out of the freeze, it decided to fire at him with the attack it didn't need to move for. Stock-still, the gyarados's gaping maw began to glow blue.

Rex flashed back to Kate falling for his taunts and entering a battle he had rigged from the start. Lesson number one: angry enemies made dumb mistakes.

Rex heard the thrashing stop as soon as it had begun, and took his cue. With all his might, he hauled himself up to the rock shelf and rolled on his side to get as far from the ledge as he could. The gyarados had decided to attack instead of breaking from the mean look, meaning it couldn't correct its aim anymore and would still shoot at where Rex had just been instead of where he was now. But he thought about the shockwave that hit him, and the fireball that nearly singed the hairs on his neck. He knew that level of power couldn't be stopped by a mean look. In fact, he was counting on it.

"Nix the mean look, Blair! Gust, and give it everything you've got!"

Blair's eyes faded to normal, and the gyarados released its attack. The fireball screamed through the air, slammed against the bottom of the shelf where Rex had just been hanging, and burst into a cloud of blue fire and monster energy. But before it could dissipate, Blair began to swirl it into a spherical air vortex just below the shelf.

Rex flashed back to Kate's trump card, turning powder snow into a spinning barrier. Lesson number two: monster power could be caught and pulled into a tight spiral of energy.

The gyarados, free of the mean look and even angrier that its attack missed, began to churn the water once more. Rex knew they had less than ten seconds before the next surf attack came. Blair flapped her wings furiously, racing against the clock and the blue fire itself, while Rex hurriedly gathered his backpack and rushed to the edge with her.

He hadn't forgotten the blazing heat of the fireball that soared past him at the cliff bend. Dragon power wasn't hot - blue or not, that gyarados shot fire, not dragon rage. A fireball was heat. A fireball could be swirled into a whirlwind by a strong enough gust attack. A fireball could warm that air until it was blazing hot and make it into an updraft.

Rex flashed back to the smoochum, slipping head-over-heels on ice it froze with its own attacks. Lesson number three: an opponent's power could be turned against them, in his favor.

The air currents in the vortex, already colored a dull purple by Blair's energy, were turning blue and glowing with heat. As soon as Blair ended the gust attack, it would spiral upwards in a rush of air, fire, and monster power.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rex saw the spray of seafoam - no more time to let the air cook. He slung his pack over his shoulder and prepared to jump.

"Let's go, Blair - we've got an elevator to catch!"

Rex flashed back to jumping over a ferry railing, twice. Lesson number four: he could fly.

With a cry that almost sounded like a giggle, Blair released the vortex and grabbed Rex's hand just as he leapt from the shelf. Underneath them, the swirling air burst. Rex's arm socket was yanked painfully (for the third time that day), and his stomach dropped as they shot up. The surf wave crashed into the stone below them, but they were long gone - Blair angled her flight as they soared up the cliffside, and the two went tumbling over themselves into the thick underbrush of the plateau. Rex couldn't quite tell over the ringing in his ears, but he was pretty certain he was laughing like a crazy man.

For over a minute, they just layed there, recovering. Rex distantly listened to the gyarados roar in victory while he scratched behind his zubat's ears. They were waterlogged, bruised, and utterly beaten, but they did it. Forget getting away safely, they had even been chased so fast that they didn't have to worry about being late for their ferry back to Knot anymore. Rex could make his way through the woods up to Treasure Beach, catch his boat, swing by the bakery for his cake pop, and be home before anyone even knew he was gone.

"Blair, I owe you so many treats," Rex declared. Blair chittered in exhausted agreement.

No, not agreement. Fear. Rex recognized that sound from his monster - she was scared. And the gyarados was still roaring. Why…?

Then it hit him. That wasn't a roar of victory at all. It was a roar of fury.

And it was getting closer.

…Oh.

Before he could even make it to his feet, water erupted up the side of the cliff like a geyser. The colossal gyarados hit the ground in front of them, shaking the earth, and released an ear-splitting screech. Rex rolled over his shoulder and up to his feet, just barely not slamming into a tree trunk at his back.

The monster coiled like a snake, fuming so hard it was breathing out boiling steam. Maybe at some point it really did only want them out of its territory, but that was before it was utterly humiliated by this human child and a zubat of all things. No, now it wanted payback.

Rex's mind automatically started measurements and calculations - he was twenty feet from the cliff, and ten feet from the gyarados. Blair was all out of stamina for at least another minute from the quick succession of mean look, gust, and flight, and Rex couldn't outrun it now that it was fully awake. Even if he could get away for a few minutes, this thing had just left its ocean and shot up a cliff to hunt him down - it wouldn't let him escape, no matter how far it had to chase him. He had nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.

Rex jabbed a finger back towards the woods behind him, unimpressed.

"Sorry, big guy, but you're not the first person I've pissed off today. Take a number and wait your turn."

The gyarados was utterly confused, and somehow even more annoyed. Nonchalance was odd behavior for something on its last legs, but it didn't care enough to wonder. It reared up like a cobra about to strike -

Before a hoothoot slapped into its face. It blinked, dumbfounded. Then another one hit. Then another. Within seconds, dozens of them began careening out of the trees and attacking the enormous fish.

Rex flashed back to the birds chasing him through this forest, the very reason he had decided to take the cliffs instead of the forest on his way back in the first place. Lesson number five: hoothoots were vicious little things.

Entire flocks of birds savagely swarmed the gyarados in a flurry of feathers and talons, and Rex took the chance to dive into the bushes nearby, hoping to stay as far out of notice as possible. They almost definitely knew he was there, but the hoothoots all seemed to agree that the gyarados was the bigger threat, just as Rex had hoped.

The sea monster cried out in fury and pain, and fired off attack after attack, but every hoothoot that went down was quickly replaced by another in their chaotic formation. Even more importantly, the gyarados lacked its usual home field advantage. Rex had seen how it used ocean water for surf attacks instead of creating its own water like many other water monsters - he knew it wouldn't be half as effective outside of its ocean.

And it definitely wasn't used to fighting in a forest. It bumbled and careened back towards the cliff, trying in vain to get back to the water and away from the onslaught, but the birds had no intention of letting it escape. They swooped all around the gyarados and corralled it deeper into the forest (and thankfully, away from Rex) as the gyarados slammed against trunks and snagged against branches. Meanwhile, its assailants flitted through the trees with generations of experience and thousands of years of adaptation, ducking behind the perfect trees for cover and resting on all the right branches for stationary air attacks. The gyarados was literally a fish out of water.

Rex giggled to himself at the pun. Still got it.

Blair chirped softly from his shoulder as the sounds of battle began to move deeper into the woods.

"Yeah, I wanted to make one off of 'fish in a barrel' too, but it was kind of a stretch," he admitted, and his heartbeat began to slow back down to normal. He carefully stood up from his hiding place and began to creep away - as much as he wanted to stick around and watch the show, he was still on a time limit.

And would you look at that, now his path to the north shore was clear. Rex hoisted his pack up and started to head back north towards Treasure Beach, with Blair panting on his shoulder and a warzone fading into the distance behind him.

Man, why couldn't all training days be this much fun?

…

A/N:

Thanks for reading! This one was a lot of fun. I kinda wish I had done more to set up the gyarados before this chapter, but I guess the gyarados itself isn't really the important thing. What's important is that Rex has officially learned how to fuel one mischief with another, be it repurposing old schemes or setting two of his consequences against each other to take them both out. Also, the fact that he got away with all of this successfully (late to the ferry, beating kate, getting away from the crew, getting to the south end, getting back from the south end, etc) reinforces the idea in his mind that his actions don't have repercussions. What a horrible little gremlin.

Like always, please remember that Rex is not meant to be a role model of any sort. He's a fun character to write, but should not be emulated or admired for his negative traits, and over the course of the story he will hopefully learn that being a Little Shit™ is, in fact, a bad thing.

*1 - Please note that Rex is a 14 year old boy from a socially conservative country, and this chapter is written from his perspective. The author does not support Rex's views on compulsory masculinity and firmly believes everyone, especially boys, should be able to express feelings such as fear.

[Edit 4/30/21 - Chapter Six is being uncooperative, but it's coming along, don't worry.]