Our search proceeded for a few more hours. We did not meet anybody else throughout the entire duration. We did take short breaks in between every now and then, mainly because it was getting harder for me to properly breathe the deeper we go and I had to rely on the oxygen mask function of my combat suit to carry on. I needed time for my body to acclimatise to the harsh conditions of the underground, but I also cannot spare too much time to do so because there were lives to be saved.

'I think this is the deepest floor.'

"I think so too," I spoke back in a soft voice. We encountered lesser and lesser wild pokemon as we headed deeper but there's no telling whether any pokemon made their homes here so deep underground and if so, what kinds of pokemon they were. I would prefer not attracting their attention to us as much as possible.

"Found anyone?" I asked Rena, who merely shook her head. The heavy miasma of ghost and dark type energies made it hard for Rena to sense anything around us unless it's in close proximity or harbour very negative thoughts at us. There's a limit to what she can do here.

Dolly suddenly pulled at my arm excitedly and pointed in a specific direction.

"You found them?" I asked, and Dolly immediately nodded a few times in excitement, taking care not to make too much noise lest we gave our presence away. Under Dolly's lead, we soon found the people we were looking for, the seven Plasmas and four nosy reporters.

They still hadn't detected us yet.

From where we were observing them behind a wall hidden by the dark we could finally spot the hostages we were here for, looking very subdued and in fear. The Plasmas were visibly nervous too for having ventured far deeper than they planned. I'd imagined that they had encountered their fair share of wild pokemon, traps, and close calls on their way here as well. Personally, I felt that it's a miracle that all eleven of them made it so far down without any visible injuries or anyone dying because judging from the pokemon I spotted the Plasmas had released to accompany them, none of the Plasmas or their pokemon looked particularly skilled or strong.

Can we take them on alone?

'Rena, how many pokeballs did you spot?'

'I think each of them has a minimum of four. They don't look or feel particularly strong to me, but enough to give us trouble in this dangerous place.'

Right, we need to come up with a plan. The only advantage we have now is the element of surprise. Preferably, we could come up with a plan where the Plasmas would not be able to access their pokeballs at all the moment we spring our ambush. Joy's Gravity would come in handy here. When used properly, it will have them pinned to the floor and unable to even move a single finger, much less release their pokemon from their pokeballs.

I had Rena linked me up telepathically to the other pokemon that were currently beside me, also hiding and staying silent in order not to warn the Plasmas of our presence.

'Okay, here's what we are going to do-'

My train of thought was broken when we all heard a very soft shuffling noise from an unknown source. We slowly turned our heads around, spotting a snout poking out of the ground behind us, the nose of this unknown creature taking a few sniffs of the air before burrowing half of its body out of the ground. A sandslash stared at me in visible shock, slowly blinking its large black eyes at me. It clearly wasn't expecting anyone to be here so deep underground.

Drats, this is the worst thing to happen now of all times. Hopefully, the sound of sandslash burrowing out of the ground hadn't alerted the Team Plasma members nearby.

I slowly raised a finger to place it in front of my lips in a universal gesture of silence, hoping and mentally begging that the sandslash would understand. The Relic Castle had been buried and closed off from the world for more than two thousand years, I wouldn't be surprised if the wild pokemon here had never met a human being before, which might explain why the sandslash was staring at me so curiously.

The sandslash continued to stare at me as we stared at it back in return. The sandslash was barely a threat to our eyes, but it would be very problematic if it did something to alert everyone of our presence because the element of surprise was the only thing we can leverage on to raise the success rate of the rescue.

Please just go away quietly please just go away quietly-

The sandslash looked at my pokemon, then back at me, then back at my pokemon. For a moment I thought I successfully conveyed my silent message to it and it would simply lose interest in us and go away quietly. However, I knew things would go south when it suddenly curled up in a ball of spikes and bodily launched itself at us.

Fine, I was hoping for too much.

Lily easily smacked the sandslash away and it immediately scurried away in fear after realising the difference in power between Lily and it, but the resulting din had alerted everyone to our presence. Those few seconds were enough to get the Plasma grunts to release their pokemon.

Just my luck.

"Joy, Gravity!"

I released Joy and Archer immediately. Joy unleashed a Gravity upon my instruction but that was easily countered with a Bullet Punch from a toxicroak, interrupting Joy from casting the move with immediate effect. The Plasma did not choose to stay to battle, but rather immediately dragged their captives along with them into the deeper parts of the castle while leaving a few pokemon behind to stall us for time.

Cowards.

"Archer!"

Archer easily defeated a few pokemon left behind by those Plasmas as Lily took care of the rest, sucking them dry with Giga Drain. Even so, those Plasma grunts did succeed in delaying us long enough for us to lose sight of them.

As for me, I was disgusted by how they just left their pokemon behind to their fates while they made their escape. Weren't they pokemon activists that championed for pokemon rights, huh? Weren't they planning to execute their plan of liberating all pokemon in order to build an utopia for them? Yet, they abandon their pokemon at the first sight of danger? And they call themselves pokemon activists?

Wow, I'd never seen anything more hypocritical in my life.

Despite my inner disgust I cannot do anything for these unfortunate pokemon we defeated because my task was to rescue the hostages. I cannot spare any time for them because I simply cannot risk it. The hostages' lives were in danger and heaven knows what other things lurk at the depths of the Relic Castle.

So, we pushed forward.

Barely a minute had passed in our pursuit when we suddenly heard screams. A very bad premonition filled my body the moment I heard it.

"This way!"

We hurried and followed the sound of those screams. We soon found a long corridor and at the other end of it, I spotted white hot flames being spewed in the room at the other end of the corridor where the exit was.

There they are.

We quickly traversed the long corridor and found ourselves in a very huge room that was at least two to three stories high in height. To be more accurate, it would be more fitting to describe this place as a huge hall rather than a room. The Team Plasma members and the reporters were huddled together in fright, with the Plasmas frantically commanding a handful of pokemon to fight against one of the most gigantic pokemon I ever saw for its species.

My eyes widened and my heart dropped. This species of pokemon is known for its rarity and famed for its strength. Champion Alder has one of these monsters and it is the cornerstone of his team. Even Kratos had lost to one of these before in our Ever Grande conference despite the superior type advantage he held over it.

Volcarona

At that moment I finally understood what the murals I saw depicted, what the ancient civilisation really worshipped thousands of years ago and the true identity of their "sun" which they revered as their deity. The volcarona in front of me was definitely the largest volcarona I'd ever seen with my own eyes or read about in books, easily many times the average size of its species, so much that I would wholeheartedly believe if anybody told me that this overgrown moth had been here for centuries. Its flames were so hot, so intense, that even at this distance I could feel the scorching blistering heat licking at my skin. The light from its flames lit up the huge room like a sun within the dark room. The power I could feel emanating from it in its rage felt very suffocating, the feeling of fear it pressed upon us was very much like how I felt when I saw Kanto's Legendary Birds making their appearance at Olivine for the very first time.

The foreboding sense of doom.

I was rudely snapped back into reality when the volcarona easily defeated the Plasmas' pokemon with a huge wave of flames, causing the Plasmas and the hostages to let out fearful screams. Now, there's nothing left between them and the enraged volcarona.

I have to do something. We need to do something before the volcarona burns everyone to ashes.

I released my entire team without hesitation.

"Stop the volcarona!"

My plan was simple. We just have to attract the volcarona's attention, lure it away from the Plasmas and more importantly, the hostages, and then quickly Shadow Sneak everyone out of here when the volcarona least expected it. Simple and to the point, almost foolproof even. The volcarona may be strong but my ghosts have a full bag of tricks waiting to be pulled.

Looking back, I had naively underestimated just how absurdly powerful pokemon can be.

I had my rude awakening when a simple flap of the volcarona's wings was enough to send my entire team flying backwards. That caught us all by surprise, including the stronger members of my team given how shocked they were by this incredible display of power by the wild volcarona. The overgrown moth did not give us a chance to catch a break, however, as another huge wall of flames was already threatening to swallow us whole.

"Bigblue, Protect!"

Bigblue casted a huge defensive wall of Protect upon my command and even then we were really cutting it close. Volcarona's attacks were swift, brutal, powerful, and ruthless. Even if we had only briefly exchanged blows for a few seconds I could already tell that just a moment's hesitation will cost us not only this battle, but most likely our lives too.

This is no time to hesitate.

"Dolly, Wacky, Curse! Kratos, Lily, Snap, trap it in stone!"

Numerous stone pillars burst forth to entrap volcarona, violently crashing against it and interlocking with each other to create an elaborate prison of stone. My ghosts manipulated the surrounding shadows and let it rise as I mentally instructed them to through my ability. Right now, our positions were such that the volcarona was physically in between us and the Plasmas and civilians. I have to get around the volcarona to reach them and subsequently make our quick getaway. Now is the perfect time to sneak everyone out of here while the volcarona's momentarily immobilised, even if it's only for a few seconds.

I was proven wrong once again. I had no idea what happened or how volcarona had done it, all I knew was that we were suddenly sent flying away by a powerful gust of wind and I would have crashed painfully into the wall if it wasn't for Hulk safely catching me in his arms.

What is wrong with this volcarona?

Whatever it just did, it was probably a Bug Buzz or a Gust, but what made the situation immediately go downhill for us was what turned out from that attack.

My entire team had been forcefully scattered by that unexpected attack. We cannot properly coordinate with each other like this so I gave Dolly, who was keeping close beside me the entire time, another separate set of instructions.

"Shadow Sneak again, get the hostages out of here- ah!"

Dolly manipulated the shadows once more with a ghastly shriek and this time I managed to catch a glimpse of what happened. Once again, volcarona was somehow able to sense and disrupt Shadow Sneak right away, just right before the move could take effect and we can shift our positions. No matter how many times we tried Shadow Sneak just doesn't work as intended because volcarona would never fail to disrupt it. I don't know how the volcarona managed it and there's no time to figure out the how and why. In the first place, there's very little the world knows about this particular species of pokemon due to how incredibly rare it is.

All I needed to know was that in front of this volcarona, one of my most valuable and relied upon escape options was no longer viable. This is bad news.

"Joy, try Teleport!"

Mum had Holly teach Joy how to learn and use Teleport right before we embarked for Indigo to join the interpol, but Joy had never been really that good with Teleport as she is not a psychic type to begin with and she's still really young to be really be using such a delicate move without reservation. Teleport requires the user to have a lot of refinement and control over psychic energy, something that Joy had not quite yet mastered. However, Teleport is the next best escape option we have now that Shadow Sneak has been rendered useless. We have to try something or we will all be burnt to cinders.

I saw Joy trying to cast Teleport, but no matter how she tried we never felt the signature displacement of space that shifted us through the fabric of space. Joy kept waving her arms, getting more and more frantic with each passing second that Teleport didn't manifest.

"Forget it Joy, it's not your fault," I quickly told her as Hulk carried me away, constantly leaping off from wall to wall to avoid volcarona's indiscriminate attacks. We knew from the start that this place was heavily shrouded with ghost and dark type energy, I shouldn't have expected Teleport to work here, much less from an inexperienced user like Joy.

The rest of the team were trying to run circles around the volcarona, taking turns to try and attract its attention so that a separate group could sneak in a potshot from a different direction and hopefully hit its blindspot. It was when Wacky managed to smash a huge Shadow Ball right in volcarona's face that I started to notice that something's amiss.

That volcarona seemed to be aware of everything that's happening around it and react almost instantly. Be it when Dolly was trying to use Shadow Sneak, where each and every of my pokemon was at, when attacks were being fired at its blind spot, and so on. Ever since the start of this battle the volcarona had managed to defend and attack with precise ease and return fire with greater power. It's like it had an extra sixth sense to help it keep track of everything going on around it.

If that's the case, why hadn't it sensed Wacky until he smacked a Shadow Ball in its face? Wacky wasn't hiding his presence, he was just floating right in front of the volcarona but yet it didn't seem that the volcarona knew he was there until the Shadow Ball hit it.

Unless… it couldn't see? Or maybe it just naturally had poor eyesight?

That might make sense. This ruin had been here for approximately 2,500 years. Assuming that the volcarona was born here and had lived here its entire life I doubt it ever had the chance to go to the surface and see the sun. The only source of light it knew was the lights of its own flames but it couldn't be setting itself alight all the time. If so, it's very accustomed to moving around and fighting in the dark. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true that living in the dark for its entire life had deteriorated its eyesight such that its eyes were merely decorative organs at this point.

There are pokemon like that as far as I'm aware. The first other pokemon that came to mind which was also known to live and move around in the dark was the zubat species. At that stage of their lives they don't have eyes at all and rely on echolocation to map out their surroundings. They are extremely sensitive to sound.

I have no idea if volcarona relies on echolocation or other unknown means to sense its surroundings, but at least now I have something to work with. I have to test my hypothesis. I need to know what it can and cannot sense, I need to know what it's sensitive to and what it's not.

'Rena, get Fuzzy to use Flash right behind volcarona and then immediately escape with Double Team.'

Fuzzy happened to be somewhere right behind volcarona at that moment, so upon receiving my instruction through Rena's telepathy he immediately lit himself up in a bright flash of light. The volcarona reacted and lashed out towards the source of light immediately, but Fuzzy had already moved out of harm's way with Double Team like I had told him to.

"Hulk, make a very loud noise now, be prepared to dodge immediately."

Hulk immediately stomped his foot down on the ground in a deafening crash. My eyes couldn't keep up with the action but Hulk had been carrying me the entire time. All I knew was that when my eyes and mind finally caught up with what really happened when everything was moving in a rapid blur, Hulk had moved far away from our previous position. Right where we stood was a smoking crater of molten granite. Volcarona's flames had proved itself hot enough to even be able to melt stones.

"The volcarona's very sensitive to light and sound! Just keep quiet and don't move!"

I shouted that out loud not for my team's benefit, but for the Plasmas and hostages trapped at the other end of the room with no way out. Hopefully, this could allow them to receive the information that my pokemon and I had risked our lives to obtain so that they could hopefully preserve theirs. Volcarona's attacks were fired in my direction right after my words left my mouth after hearing my voice reverberating across the empty room but Hulk had the foresight to cast a Substitute to save ourselves. Our findings didn't fully explain how volcarona sensed its surroundings nor how it could interrupt Dolly's Shadow Sneak before we could move ourselves with it, but now we had a better idea of how to deal with our foe.

Volcarona reacts instantly to any source of bright flashes of light or sudden spikes in noise level, so we need to minimise the light and noise we emit. Heavy pokemon like Kratos would immediately be detected and I'd bet even wingbeats from Snap and Toothless could be easily sensed by the volcarona. In that case, the only types of pokemon who I knew are capable of not making a single sound and do not need to rely on their sense of sight to move about in the dark are my ghosts.

It's going to be risky, but it might just work. Even with my entire team at fullpower we were still hopelessly outclassed so we need a change of plans soon. I need to find a way to grasp for a chance of survival for us.

Dolly, carry me

I recalled every single pokemon except for my ghost types right after I gave that mental command, knowing that Dolly will somehow receive my command through my ability. Dolly wrapped her short arms around my waist and easily lifted me right after Hulk disappeared back into his pokeball, hovering silently in the air.

My gamble paid off because the volcarona looked very lost the moment my pokemon were recalled, continuously turning its head from left to right as if trying to search for us when Dolly and I were simply silently floating in front of it within its line of sight. I was right, the volcarona's eyes had to be blind or nearly blind. Whether this was because it is a trait of its species or whether its eyesight had severely deteriorated for living in such a dark place for all its life remained to be seen, but at least now I'm sure that this volcarona has very poor eyesight. The only thing of note regarding its sense of sight is that the volcarona had proven to be extremely sensitive to bright flashes of light when Fuzzy had used Flash behind its back earlier.

Dolly and Wacky are dark coloured. The volcarona wouldn't be catching a glimpse of them in this dark room with how well they blend into the darkness.

Slowly, move towards the hostages

I knew my thoughts had somehow reached Dolly when she slowly floated us towards the other end of the room quietly, cautiously circling around the volcarona and taking great care not to make a single decibel of noise. Volcarona had proved to be capable of locating us whenever we used Shadow Sneak, so maybe I would have to let Wacky slowly levitate the guys at the other end of the room with Psychic once we reach them and then somehow float ourselves out of this room silently. The entrance which we used to enter the room earlier had already collapsed due to the collateral damage from our brief battle. I would have to find another way out of here but it's currently so dark that I could barely see anything a metre beyond me.

Volcarona had ceased burning once it felt our disappearance, although it's still keeping a cautious watch and slowly flying from corner to corner of the room as if trying to physically search for us through the sense of touch. I'm entirely relying on Dolly and Wacky to ensure that we remain undetected. The other wild ghosts within my shadow wouldn't cut it because they are definitely not as capable to be able to move as silently as they could. I'm sure volcarona would sense them the moment they appeared and we would be screwed, and I think that was something the ghosts instinctively understood as well seeing as how they had never appeared to help in an unspoken show of teamwork and understanding.

It may be dark and I could barely see a thing, but I could feel the volcarona slowly moving around the room. I didn't even dare to breathe or open my mouth, slowly forcing my breaths to be slow and quiet despite how my heart was hammering away within my chest. If it's possible I would even choose to shut my sweat glands entirely because I wouldn't be surprised if the volcarona could somehow hear me if even a drop of my sweat were to drip onto the floor below.

It was a very tense period of silence and I was almost convinced that the volcarona had given up in its search. Once again, this volcarona just loves to prove me wrong.

The first warning that something huge was coming was when I saw the faint shadowy outline of its wings starting to flap in a bigger motion within the darkness. The second warning was when the room started to get brighter at an alarming rate, the source of light being volcarona itself as it began to burn itself up once again. All of it happened within a split second, far too fast for me to give any verbal commands whatsoever.

I recognised the signs of a Heat Wave about to be casted. This time, the flames are going to be far hotter, greater, and more powerful than the volcarona had unleashed earlier. That, I am certain.

Torrents of flames burst out from the volcarona, the ridiculously overpowered moth indiscriminately unleashing its flames in all directions. It seemed that it knew that we had to be here in the room somewhere but had given up on trying to search for us. However, it didn't need to do that when it could simply torch the entire room and force us out of hiding.

The flames rushed at us, arriving just right in front of our faces in the blink of an eye. I didn't have time to think, I simply commanded Dolly to do the very first thing that came to my mind.

Phantom Force!

I could feel the white hot flames trying to lick at my face just centimetres away and I'd thought that we were too slow, that we really were about to die a painful death by the hands of the volcarona.

Then, the world muted itself.

Character and pokemon list:

Velda Vera, Age: 14, Female, Pokemon Trainer, Member of the International Police

Pokemon on hand:

1) Rapidash (Flamel), male

2) Swampert (Bigblue), male

3) Banette (Dolly), female

4) Flygon (Snap), male

5) Absol (Kelsa), female

6) Charizard (Toothless), male

7) Cradily (Lily), female

8) Espeon (Rena), female

9) Pachirisu (Fuzzy), male

10) Tyranitar (Kratos), male

11) Clefairy (Joy), female

12) Nidoqueen (Ness), female

13) Pangoro (Hulk), male

14) Porygon-Z (Jarvis), genderless

15) Scizor (Archer), male

16) Lapras (Chill), female

17) Gengar (Wacky), male