The long, inhuman grin remained on its face. "Come on... surely you're not scared of me. You've faced worse before, haven't you?" Its head moved forward tauntingly on its long, flexible neck. "Well, I guess I'll just have to start this again for you. Catch!"
The long cloak flapped as it spun and tossed a fireball at the group. Jess managed to break out of her trance to counter it with a bolt of ice; the two attacks collided and fizzled out.
"Oh, so you can attack after all. How about physical combat?" It leapt forwards, apparently speeding across the ground without needing to actually touch it. Jess didn't have time to react before the huge being was in front of her, and unleashing a punch from a fist about three times the size of her own... and stopping, a sliver away from her body. She looked up into the lizardine face in suprise, and he gave her a confident, sneering grin, a wink... then moved down and spun, and kicked her feet out from under her.
Even as Jess went down, it managed to sense the crackling of electricity behind it, and leapt up to avoid. An amazing aerial maneuver resulted as it apparently ignored the laws of physics, jumping far higher than its own height and performing a deft spin and flip that shouldn't be possible for something of that bulk. But it did, and landed heavily... before leaping again, this time coming down on Rob. Although he managed to avoid the majority of the blow, he was still sprawled flat.
"These are the legendary amulet-holders that are spreading fear and destruction through the pokemon peoples?" The creature sneered. "I don't believe this."
"Well, how about this?" With a running leap, Liam suprised the creature from behind, and latched onto its back, arms around its long neck. It roared in surprise, and struggled and snapped at this unwanted hampering. After the shock of it had disappeared, it seemed to calm.
"Hmm? Can you hold on if I set you on fire?" It twisted one hand around to point at Liam's side. A small bolt of flame shot out and hit him - Liam barely winced.
"I'm rock-type. Fire doesn't hurt me." He grinned, and pulled back on its neck until it was basically staring at him upside down. It grunted in pain and suprise.
"Maybe you do have some fight in you after all... tell me then, rock-type, how do you like heights?"
Liam was taken aback as there was a frantic rustling all about him... and suddenly he felt a jolt, and looked down to see the earth far below.
The earth, and the main source of his power. He couldn't do anything from up here... no... He felt his grip begin to weaken as the creature onto which he was latched began to do some fast spins and twists... until he felt two heavy gloved hands close around his arms, pull them over the long neck and head, then suddenly he was falling, falling...
He didn't take much damage from the fall, but looked up to see the being floating down. The others were in just as much shock. The cloak that had wrapped the thing was no ordinary cloak, it seemed, but a huge pair of dragonlike wings... although, like the rest of him, they were swathed in black material. He held the wings around, in a smothering manner, ready to attack again.
"For god's sakes... every time you see something unexpected, you just sit there in shock until I make a move against you. I can't understand how any of you lasted ten minutes out there."
"Just shut up and fight." Liam snarled, brushing himself off. His opponent laughed.
"Fight? Okay..." He reached behind his back, where the wings joined, and they saw him drawing two things out... a flash of green, the shine of moonlight on a razor edge... but then he slid them back down, and brought his arms back empty-handed. "You're not worth using the blades."
Liam's eyes darkened further at this. "Come on then, freak. Let's see what you've got." He stood in a fighting position. The inhuman adversary laughed.
"Foolish human. One on one? If I must." He walked up, heavily. Liam was tall, but rather thin and bony, even if he was strong... but this thing in front of them had the build of a Machoke, and the fire powers on top of that. And the wings too.
Liam attacked first, but the creature knocked the punch away with almost a dismissive wave. It retaliated with a lazy chop, which Liam blocked... although his arm wavered slightly.
"Hmm... a little stronger than you look. How about this?"
On the word 'about' he gave a low sweep, which Liam jumped with ease... and quickly followed by an uppercut. Liam managed to stop the attack hitting his head, but was still thrown backwards... but he managed to turn the momentum into a flip, land on hands and feet, and quickly brought himself up.
He had no time to prepare for a powerful shoulder charge. It hit him full in the chest, and he was thrown back head over heels until he crashed into a tree... which toppled down on top of him. The victorious winged freak snorted as Patrick raced over to Liam's aid, but made no effort to stop him.
"Now... any of you others want to try your luck? Come on... you can all attack at once if you want. I don't care."
Jess aimed an Icebeam at its feet, in an effort to freeze it to the ground. One wing flashed in front of the beam, however, and it did little damage. She leapt back as a fireball was thrown at her feet in retaliation, and was damaged little.
James and Keira attacked together, Keira's Razor Leaf mingling with James's half-invisible blades. A small ball of fire negated most of the leaves, but the etheral weapons continued. The creature roared in pain as one of them embedded itself in his arm, and went to remove it to find it had already faded into non-existance. He held out one outspread hand towards James - the humans noticed at this point there were only three fingers beside the thumb on his hands, though their thickness made it look normal. But the Fire Blast that flew towards James was quite normal, and quite powerful... his Barrier was pushed back as he worked to prevent the heavy blast coming towards him. Jess had the presence of mind to leap at him, tackle him out of the way, and the attack shattered the barrier and continued on into the forest, exploding upon hitting a tree and setting a good section of the forest ablaze. Jess held out a hand to it, and shot a Blizzard; the flames were extinguished as a layer of frost covered the plants.
Their opponent grinned and waited for the next attack, but a tinge of pain, a note of forcedness in the smile was evident. But suddenly it straightened, looked away from them, off into the forest.
This behaviour puzzled the humans no end. Their opponent, who had been out for their blood a moment ago, was now staring off intently into the trees, motionless. Rob began to power up an attack while he was distracted... but he shook his head, waved his hand at Rob as if to say "No, wait, get down."
Rob was very confused at this, but he let the electricity die out. A few moments later, the creature looked back to them. "The bugs are coming this way. They must have picked up on our fight."
"What do you care?" Keira retorted rudely. "You're on their side, aren't you? Reinforcements?" The humans all prepared to fight once again.
The dragon-like head grinned at them again. "I wouldn't have stopped the fight, then, would I?" It said, then leapt in the air, wind catching under the huge wings, even though he didn't appear to be flapping them much.
It hovered level with the canopy, holding both hands up as fire pooled around them. Everything was deathly quiet...
A Beedrill burst from the trees!
The flying creature simply pointed his hand at it, and a burst of flame hit the bug, making a small explosion on contact; the creature's blackened husk toppled to the ground.
Two more Beedrill and a Venomoth met the same fate, before it let the fire drop and reached behind again, this time pulling the green blades all the way out.
The blades from the Scyther he'd killed earlier. The long, curved, razor-sharp appendages were held ready...
Bugs burst from the forest! Beedrills and Butterfree, Venomoth and Pinsir, swarms of lesser pokemon crawling across the ground...
They were quickly eliminated as the strange being on nobody's side spread an Ember attack over the ground, and while the resulting flames were low and weak, they represented death to Caterpie and Weedle.
Speeding through the air, the blades flashed... wings and limbs and parts of bug bodies fell useless to the ground. A butterfree unleashed a stun spore... which simply ignited in midair, along with the Butterfree's wings, and the poor insect fell screaming to the ground.
"Hey, you lot, wanna give me a hand?" The creature called from on high. They looked at each other. He tried to kill us, now he wants our help? Liam growled.
"No." He called back up. The others had been intending to think about it for a moment, but now that Liam had said it they decided to agree...
"Fine then," It muttered. "This is fun anyway..." More bug parts piled up beneath. The others watched in fascination - at least he wasn't attacking them now.
Suddenly another Scyther burst through the trees, straight at the flying creature. It managed to dodge a Flamethrower before closing in - while it wasn't nearly as large or powerful as the last Scyther faced, in blade-to-blade combat it had the skill advantage, and probably the speed too.
Suddenly the confident dragon-like being was forced to fight for his life with this mad lawnmower, green blades flashing around wildly until nobody could tell which was which and who was winning. And in the meanwhile, more pokemon were coming into the clearing, and the humans were forced to defend themselves from the bugs...
Concentrating on its fight with the Scyther, the creature never saw the Beedrill coming up behind it. It probably would have run him through, but at the last moment it was hit by a heavy blast of electricity... the being was still bumped by it, and it proved a moment of distraction...
It only just managed to avoid the Scyther's strike by pounding both wings forward, throwing itself backwards. Now it had a bit of breathing space, it took a long breath... and unleashed a fireball, which exploded on the Scyther in a storm of sparks and flying flames...
The Scyther was amazing still alive, though somewhat the worse for wear... but the followup kick rammed it into a tree, and it slid down, unconscious, its razor-sharp wings stripping the bark as it went.
Now the resistance was taken care of, it went back to dismemebering bugs left, right and center... until the remaining pokemon ran away in terror and confusion. Soon not a bug pokemon could be seen - or not a full one anyway. After checking there were no more in sight, it dropped down, wiping the bug innards off the Scyther blades before resheathing them and folding the wings around once more, and replacing the hood. There was once again no sign this thing was anything other than human, besides the glowing red eyes... but they weren't nearly as bright as before.
"That wasn't too bad, but I expected somewhat more." It said. "I'll be coming with you."
If they were confused before, this completely threw them off. "What? What is with you? First you try to kill us, then you want to join us?"
"I wasn't trying to kill you. I was merely testing you."
"Pretty tough testing."
"It was better that way. If you thought I was trying to kill, you'd fight harder."
"What the hell are you?" Keira finally blurted, the question the others had been avoiding asking. The hood turned towards her.
"Something you'll be seeing a lot of in future." The eyes flashed. "Ash is meddling with the pokemon gene pool, mixing types and all that. But I am... was... his crowning achievement. Half pokemon, half human. With somewhat more power than either, as you've seen."
"Mixing humans and pokemon?"
"Ash named me 'Damian'. I'm half-Charizard. If you haven't guessed that already."
"Then why are you helping us?" Liam asked, his eyes narrowed. "If you're half pokemon, then..."
"Because Ash screwed up. And I'm not listening to that freak." They were surprised to hear the voice, which had been ever calm and confident, suddenly fall into a heated rage. "He's an idiot. And he's gonna die."
"Oookay..."
"He sent me to kill you. But I'm going with you. And I'm going to kill him. Got any problems with that?"
"Err..."
"Not that it matters. I'm coming with you anyway, and you can't stop me."
Stunned into silence, the humans gaped as this unpredictable freak turned away and moved back the way they'd come. He'd actually gone completely out of sight, before the hood turned back to them.
"Look, I saw a couple of packs back at the bug base. There shouldn't be much resistance there right now. Do you want to go back and get them? I'm sure you'd prefer to have your gear."
Rob was the first to nod and move forward. Pat followed him, though rather hesitantly, then Jess and James. Liam and Keira looked less acceptant, though Liam's face showed distrust and anger while Keira's showed disgust and fear.
"Hmph..." Liam snorted, then stalked off after the others. Keira hesitated before running after Liam, before he left her sight - as much as she didn't want a Charizard accompanying them, she didn't particularally want to be left behind in the forest either...
