Interlude - The Beast of the Sea
Under the grey waves, the beast of the sea beat her great wings and picked up speed. Her feathers flashed silver-white when they caught the weak rays of dawn. Forty feet long from her draconic head to the tip of her tail. The sea surged at her passing, waves clashed in her wake. The beast was old, old and strong. In the open ocean nothing could match her - she could swim fastest, dive deepest, and never tire. In the shallow waters off Blue Point Isle, however, things were different.
The pursuing humans kept pace, the saw-toothed buzzing of their jet-skis filling the beast's ears. They had ambushed her in the grey half-light before dawn, twelve of them, appearing out of nowhere with a roar of engines. Try as she might the beast couldn't outrun them, not in these waters. Raising her voice above the din, she let out a high, lilting cry. For those that could understand, it meant: I am here! Be somewhere else!
In a flurry of light the hunters finally released their own pokémon – a whole flock of golduck, almost thirty of them slashing their way through the water. They spread out rapidly, taking up position above, behind, below. The beast instinctively threw up a Safeguard. A group of golduck closed in on Aqua Jets – the beast swept them away with a beat of her wings. Psybeams stabbed into her back, burning away streams of feathers that glittered like silver cinders before they dissolved into the sea.
Chased by Psybeams the beast twisted, undulating like a serpent in an effort to dodge the worst of the attacks. A brace of Water Pulses battered into her belly. In her youth she might have been nimble enough, but now she was old, strong and long. The golduck flock continued to harass her, spreading out to attack from all angles.
This was not the first time that the beast had been hunted by humans. On these islands her kind was well known to humanity, the beast knew. Most of the islanders venerated her kind, but some would always try their luck and try to capture her. These hunters were clever, and had brought cunning pokémon. One-by-one the golduck's eyes shone blue. The beast beat her wings, but it was an effort to move, like swimming through oil. She remembered a time when she was young, when hunters had chased her into the shallows and then used psychic pokémon to pin her down. Driven to near-exhaustion, she'd been forced to unleash the Aeroblast …
Roused to sudden fury she thrashed and writhed like a maniac, her rage churning the sea into froth. They had pushed her too far! She would tolerate these hunters no longer. The beast let out a deep echoing whale-cry, its dreadful harmonics shaking the sea. It was a call that even the gyarados feared. The golduck scattered. They knew what was coming.
Beneath the jet-skis of the hunters, powerful new currents flowed, met, and turned.
Whirlpool! It swirled into savage existence, grabbing the hunter's watercraft and dragging them down into the vortex. The humans were torn from the saddle as the raging waters tossed them around like toys. Those lucky few who were thrown to the edge of the whirlpool were rescued by their golduck, left adrift for a long day until they washed up on the Blue Point shore. The unlucky majority were swallowed by the maelstrom, never to see the shore again.
The silver-white beast leisurely beat her great wings. As she lost interest in the destruction she had wrought the maelstrom calmed, leaving behind nothing but open sea and abandoned jet-skis. Now she raised her voice in lilting whale-song, sweet and melodious as taillow calls at dusk. For those who could understand, her song meant: I am here. Come back to me.
Under the grey waves, the beast of the sea swam on …
… followed by her children.