Ch. 44

Battle of Hearthome

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Nearing Beartic, Zangoose got behind Dmitri and jumped onto his shoulders as the young battle ace stood strong while supporting her weight as the cat ferret pokemon leapt at the ursine with a feral look in her eye and the polar bear, not one to simply stand in awe at such a display, let out a fierce, booming roar and clawed at the much smaller pokemon. Zangoose, seeing her foes attack, leaned back in such a way that she only received a small cut on her cheek and just as Beartic's paw was passing by the rest of her face, she wrapped her arms and legs around the bear's meaty arm and wouldn't let go. Dmitri, remembering his training with Marshal and watching Maris fight countless times, threw his whole body into a strong, fierce cross with his prosthetic arm…and quickly howled in pain as he fell to his knees from said strike.

Clutching his ribs, he gritted his teeth and slowly climbed up to his feet once more as although Beartic did let out a surprised grunt and stumbled back a bit, the polar bear seemed none the worse for wear as Zangoose started slashing Beartic's wrist relentlessly causing first blood to be drawn by Dmitri's side. The ursine let out agonizing screech as it found it couldn't move its paw anymore no matter how much it tried to and angrily narrowed its eyes at the small creature that caused it such pain and fighting back the drowsiness that it was feeling, raised up its arm and attempted to smash Zangoose on the ground.

The cat ferret, however, proved to be nimble and like a professional gymnast jumping from one pole to another, sprang from her opponent's arm and latched onto the other one tightly. Zangoose, gritting her teeth and shifting her posture every time Beartic slammed his arm on the ground in an attempt to get her off, proceeded to stab straight into the bear's wrist eliciting a sharp cry from the polar bear.

"I'll just have to use my other arm then," Dmitri thought to himself as he ran toward the mighty polar bear once more with renewed resolve and like a sledgehammer slamming down on a cinderblock, smashed his fist down onto Beartic's foot causing the big bear to hiss, but nevertheless kept its attention on Zangoose who the polar bear deemed a more credible threat.

"Good, Beartic is ignoring me," Dmitri mused as he waited for Beartic to make another attempt to shake off Zangoose who continued to hold onto the larger bear's arm with an iron grip and when the polar bear tried to grab the cat ferret, Dmitri punched down onto the polar bear's foot once more when it was still focusing on Zangoose.

Letting a soft growl escape its lips, the polar bear briefly diverted its eyes from Zangoose giving her the chance to right herself and like a pair of scissors cutting straight through a piece of paper, made a long, deep cut on Beartic's other wrist causing the polar bear to throw its head back and let out a pained shriek felt by everyone in the dome. Beartic, however, had no chance to recover as it felt another sharp sting on its foot once again causing the ursine to stagger backwards and when it attempted to stomp on the battle ace like a bug, Zangoose stabbed her claws through Beartic's arm once again causing the polar bear to let out another agonizing wail.

Working in tandem, Zangoose would plunge her claws into Beartic's arm every time Dmitri would punch Beartic's foot and to Zangoose's relief, she was seeing that the polar bear was beginning to tire and was struggling to maintain consciousness from losing so much blood. Just as Dmitri was about to slam his fist down onto Beartic's foot once again, the battle ace saw the polar bear's other massive claw hurtling toward him and knowing he wouldn't be able to dodge in time, covered his head with his arms and hands as he felt like he was hit by a speeding train.

"Hooph!" Dmitri shouted as he felt the air leave his body from the devastating blow and unfortunately couldn't recover in time to properly roll with the impact to lessen the damage and thus harshly tumbled across the ground like a person being thrown through the windshield of a car.

Blacking out temporarily, the battle ace groggily opened his eyes and felt like his whole body had been crushed underneath a bus, but seeing that his friends were still in danger, spat the glob of blood forming in his mouth on the ground and waited for the blurriness to settle. Inhaling and exhaling, Dmitri bit down on his lip and got up to his feet once again only to stumble around briefly and collapsed on his knees, but seeing his friends fiercely fighting on despite the odds caused him to shake his head and run towards Beartic once again.

Pov shift

Haxorus howled in pain with his teeth clenched tightly as he felt his shoulder being pierced by sharp, jagged teeth reminiscent of militarized knifes, but fighting off the pain wrapped his arms around his foes waist and kneed him repeatedly in the gut causing the enemy Hydreigon to let out erratic snarls with each successful strike. Haxorus, seeing that his foe wasn't going to let go, turned his head and forcefully turned it back, striking out with his sharp, axe like tusks causing Hydreigon to break off the bite and fly backwards to avoid being cut.

Hydreigon hissed when it was lightly cut by his opponent's tusks on its neck causing the three headed dragon to growl at Haxorus and just as it was charging energy in its maw, the axe jaw pokemon threw an uppercut at Hydreigon causing the dual type to hiss as its jaw was forcibly shut and the energy it had collected exploded in its mouth. Hydreigon clutched its jaw in order to mitigate the pain and Haxorus, not one to pass up an advantage, coated his claws in azure energy and slashed and stabbed at Hydreigon like an expert knife wielder.

Feeling his claws being coated with a wet substance when his initial strikes succeeded in making contact, Haxorus continued to force the enemy Hydreigon into a corner, but his assault was finally broken off when Hydreigon twisted its body to avoid another slash and forcefully whacked Haxorus on the side of the head causing Haxorus's head to snap to the side. Haxorus grunted as he flowed with the impact and awkwardly stumbled off to the side to prevent his neck from being snapped and before he could right himself, he felt like he was hit by a stampede as Hydreigon tackled him with a sinister, dark blue aura coated around it like a bubble.

Haxorus wheezed when he felt tremors go through his body, but keeping a level head, twisted his body in such a way that used his foes forward momentum against it as they both skidded across the ground like stones with Haxorus on top of him. Harshly crashing against the dome, Haxorus put a claw on his head and had to take regain a sense of balance causing Hydreigon to wrap its arms around the axe jaw pokemon in a crushing bear hug causing Haxorus to growl as he felt himself being lifted into the air.

Haxorus didn't even get a chance to process what was happening before he felt his head being jarred downwards due to colliding with the top of the dome causing him to snarl in pain and let out a booming yell as Hydreigon fired a concentrated beam of pitch black energy that overwhelmed the axe jaw pokemon and set him rocketing to the ground. Lying half-conscious in a crater, the Haxorus weakly looked up and saw Hydreigon menacingly floating above him and firing a volley of blasts at its helpless foe.

Pov shift

Sparkplug gasped and summoned a bolt of lightning that struck the ground in front of her, forming a barrier that just barely managed to hold of a large stream of fire that caused sweat to stream down her body and onto the ground while Kiera seeing that other attacks were well on their way, raised her foot up and stomped on the ground. A multitude of huge stone pillars jutted out of the ground, blocking a strong, condensed sphere of mental fortitude and large plume of fire resembling a gigantic, feral moth and grateful for the cover, Sparkplug and Kiera continued to lay down cover fire for their friends.

To both the lioness and the gigantic centipede's shock, Mienshao had erected separate barriers resembling a rectangular shield for its allies, but shaking off their confusion, Kiera and Sparkplug combined their attacks together forming an electrical, poisonous glob that they fired at their foes. Sparkplug just managed to hear over the chaos that Mienshao and its other allies were thrown back a bit from their attack and felt minor tingling in their bodies, but were otherwise fine, having avoided most of the poison.

"(Maris can't make stuff out of chi so how come Mienshao can?)" Sparkplug thought to herself worriedly as she briefly turned her head to see how her allies were doing only to see Zangoose being roughly thrown from the polar bear's arm and harshly collided with Dmitri's chest knocking them both to the ground in an immobile heap.

Snarling, Sparkplug quickly shifted her glance once again and saw Haxorus, who was previously lying in a crater from what she assumed to be from that shock wave she felt in the ground earlier, rolling off to the side to avoid a hailstorm of blasts raining down on him causing her to sigh in relief. Kiera, seeing Sparkplug's concerned look being cast at Zangoose and Dmitri who still had yet to move while Beartic angrily stalked toward them, gruffly clicked at her friend causing the electric lioness to smile gratefully and run towards her helpless friends.

Kiera, in the meantime, picked up the slack and fired off poisonous blobs resembling grenades at her foes while sharp, purple needles barreled towards them like bullets from a minigun. Beartic, despite being cut and stabbed by Zangoose a multitude of times over the course of battle, sealed them up with ice and which slowly started healing its injuries as the polar bear let out a breath of frosty air, combining the icicles that came out into a sharp, pointy javelin and stood over Zangoose and Dmitri. Seeing this when his eyes slowly fluttered open, Dmitri placed Zangoose behind him with his arms outstretched and at this action Beartic, for a split-second, let a small, respectful grin come to its face before plunging the javelin downward, intending on skewering them both.

Fortunately, Sparkplug, having covered herself with a condensed, electrical bubble, rammed Beartic's elbow causing the polar bear to cry out and as the sharp icicle went off course causing Dmitri to desperately rise up his prosthetic to block the blow. True to its use in the days of old, the metal the prosthetic was made out of held strong as the pointed tip broke off though the battle ace was still knocked to the ground from the force of the blow while Zangoose, having regained consciousness just as Beartic intended to impale both of them, saw her patient's protective act.

"Ow," Dmitri grumbled under his breath as he felt like his upper back had a sledgehammer slam down onto it as Sparkplug and Zangoose helped him to his feet as Beartic frantically moved its arm around to get some feeling back into it before glaring at the trio angrily.

"Haxorus, Zangoose, switch jobs with Sparkplug and Kiera!" Dmitri called out causing Haxorus to trap one of Hydreigon's heads when it had attempted to land a vicious haymaker on him under his armpit and threw his head forward causing a Hydreigon to float back erratically from the blow giving the axe jaw pokemon the opening it needed to fall back to the cover Kiera had created.

Zangoose, coating herself with an angry crimson aura fueled by her rage when the polar bear nearly harmed her friend, rushed forward the polar bear with a white streak behind her and landed a brutal punch on Beartic's already wounded elbow causing the polar to let wail and fall to its knees giving the cat ferret the opportunity to support Haxorus. Firing off a few more electrical javelins, Sparkplug ran out of cover and stood side-by-side with her trainer and both saw to their dismay that Beartic had recovered relatively quickly from its wounds and stood poised to do battle.

Pov shift

"Mother and I are needed here so we can synchronize our power with Haxorus; everyone else needs to find out a way to disable those attacks under the ground," Delia shouted over to her allies as both her and her mother had a bloody red aura surrounding them and were extending their hands to Haxorus while Catherine and her team already set out to work doing just that.

"(Found one guys!)" Graveler hollered to his team from the hole he had dug as a glowing spike was firmly planted in the ground while Floatzel steeled himself for the task before Luka's outstretched arm prevented him from doing so.

"(Sensei, please! I want to show you I can do this!)" Floatzel shouted vigorously, wanting to shut down the energy spike that could go off any second, but Luka simply sighed softly and reassuringly put a paw on the weasel's shoulder as her eyes shined a bright gray and her appendages on the back of her head rose in the air while scanning the mines.

"(Catherine, I think the mines will detonate if tampered in any way,)" Luka informed her girlfriend solemnly causing the former heiress to narrow her eyes and rub her chin deep in thought before nodding and turning to her other allies.

"Alright, everyone listen up! I want all the pokemon who can sense stuff through aura or any other means to start scanning the ground for mines while all the pokemon who're capable of digging will help the scanners to dig them up. All of the strongest pokemon in our group will carefully detonate the mines in a controlled explosion so that way we don't level the city!" Catherine ordered causing everyone to nod in affirmation as all the pokemon formed into small teams to do just that as the former heiress heard the wails of the police siren blaring outside of the stadium.

"We have to tell them," Catherine muttered under her breathe as Jet nodded at what she said and opted to follow her outside in order to confront the police on this matter and hopefully gain their assistance as the double doors suddenly burst open revealing Cynthia with a concerned look on her face flanked by members of the police wearing body armor.

"They're mines under the ground and our pokemon are looking for them; sending out some of yours will certainly help in the matter," Jet quickly informed Cynthia's task force causing the champion and her task force to immediately send out their own pokemon and start looking for the explosives while Cynthia briefly looked at the dome and widened her eyes when she saw Dmitri fighting for his life in there before focusing on the task ahead.

Pov shift

"(Gah!)" Zangoose hissed under as the giant rock that she was using for cover was suddenly impacted by a bolt of electricity turning some of the rocks into shrapnel which cut her shoulder causing her to seal up the wounds her with paw coated in fire while carefully peeking over her cover,

"(Damn it,)" Haxorus grumbled angrily as Mienshao, Eelektross, and Volcarona, using the shields that the martial arts pokemon had made for them, slowly advanced forward causing the cat ferret to clash her claws together and send a spark caused from the friction towards the trio while Haxorus, carefully peeking over the cover, fired off a condensed beam of draconic energy in front of the trio.

Mienshao and its allies cried out as the continuous beam of energy knocked them back and kicked up dust, obscuring their vision, and Zangoose, seeing her enemies attention elsewhere, clashed her claws together and prepared to send off another friction blast until she screamed bloody murder when an unseen malevolent, dark purple orb of energy pierced her shoulder and sent her crashing to the ground.

"(I got one of them; now is the time to advance!)" Mienshao cried out to his allies causing them to nod and hurriedly charged forward while still behind their shields while Haxorus deflected and dodged any return fire coming his way and with the tender care an older brother would give to a younger sibling, pulled Zangoose behind the rocks he was taking cover behind while sending back attacks of his own.

Doing a quick scan of the battlefield to see how his other friends were doing while blindly firing in the direction of the trio and saw that Sparkplug had her fair share of scrapes and bruises from battling Beartic while Kiera had large burn and bite marks along her large frame which didn't stop her from fighting against Hydreigon with all her might.

"Sparkplug go help Zangoose and Haxorus help me take out Beartic!" Dmitri commanded causing Haxorus to slowly and cautiously move out of cover while barely managing to bat away a dark purple energy sphere that Mienshao had fired at him and dissipated a combined attack consisting of a large plume of fire covered with lethal sparks of electricity by creating an air pressure with a slash of his claws.

Finally reaching Dmitri, the battle ace punched down onto Beartic's foot once more causing the ursine to cry out and hold its foot in its paws giving the axe jaw pokemon the opening it needed to spin around and used the momentum to brutally strike the polar bear in the back of the knee with his tail turned into a durable metal. The polar bear crashed to the ground with an earth shaking thud and not one to pass up an opportunity to attack a vulnerable foe, Haxorus stomped down onto Beartic's arm, trapping it, and let loose with an assault of chops like an axe coming down onto a piece of wood while his tail repeatedly struck the polar bear in the side causing some sounds of cracking to be heard from the dragon.

Beartic, however, did not give up so easily and furiously fought back by biting, hacking, and slashing at Haxorus's face and upper body causing blood to pool down the axe jaw pokemon's body and onto the polar bear's fur while Haxorus, suppressing a howl of agony that desperately wanted to be let out from the multitude of injuries he suffered, started using his tusks in his relentless attack. Dmitri was striking the polar bear as well, but the bear's attention was completely on Haxorus as Beartic parried a chop coming down on its throat and using its giant, meaty paw, grabbed the side of Haxorus's face and jabbed its thumb into his eyes.

Haxorus hissed in pain, but nevertheless did not stop in his attack until Beartic's paw dropped in heat so much that it started to burn him causing the axe jaw pokemon to try to resist its affects, but soon the pain became too much and let out a howl as he desperately attempted to pry the claw off of his face.

"Haxorus!" Dmitri yelled as the small human tried to do the same thing Beartic was doing to his friend minus dropping the temperature to burning levels, but the polar bear, pressing its advantage, grabbed Dmitri's face with its other giant paw that completely enveloped the battle ace's head and threw the dragon aside.

Slamming Dmitri onto the ground with such force that a large crater was formed on the battlefield that sent rocks hurtling in every direction, Beartic, keeping its grip on Dmitri's head, mounted the battle ace while being careful not to force its whole weight onto the tiny human. The polar bear, taking in deep breathes to regain some strength from the exhausting battle, grabbed rocks that had been produced when making the crater and placed one gigantic boulder one onto Dmitri's prosthetic and another one on Dmitri's feet.

Wrapping its other massive paw around Dmitri's head, the polar bear smashed Dmitri down onto his back and squeezed hard causing Dmitri to give a muffled cry of pain and with his one arm that wasn't trapped, wildly clawed at his foes giant paw in order to break free to no avail.

"(Shh…it will be okay; just relax and it will be over soon,)" Beartic informed the human in calm, caring tone while increasing the pressure of its grip on the battle ace's head eliciting a smothered, ear piercing scream from Dmitri as his efforts to free himself doubled, but Beartic was having none of that and forced more of its weight down onto the smaller human causing Dmitri's struggles to briefly stop before they violently started again.

Beartic shook its head sadly when it saw light trails of water streaming down Dmitri's neck and distinctly heard and felt the battle ace's sobbing from underneath its paws, but steeling its resolve, it shook off any doubts it had about this matter and focused on what it had been briefed about on this mission. The spawn of the Legend Killer was part of the Legend Killer's bloodline and needed to be persuaded to give up on making hatchlings and while attacking wasn't part of the mission briefing, the polar bear swore on Arceus's name that it would do this, no matter how heinous, to protect any Legendary pokemon from the fate of the Swords of Justice and protect all of its other brethren from these powerful humans.

Dmitri's thoughts as of this moment were to get some air back into his system and stop the excruciating pain his cranium was being subjected to, but he couldn't do either. He punched, scratched, and pulled with all his might, tried to shift his body in order to slip away, but Beartic's grip remained strong and Dmitri let out the loudest scream everyone could hear even with his face covered with the polar bear's paws when Beartic increased its pressure around his head once again.

"(Sleep little one; you don't need to fight anymore. Just relax,)" Beartic said in a soothing tone as a little stream of blood flowed down from its paws and onto the ground below as Dmitri tightly gripped the polar bear's paw so tightly that his hand turned white and unfortunately, despite Dmitri's efforts, his team was finally beaten back.

Sparkplug, breathing heavily from the battle, lay barely conscious next to Zangoose with a nasty gash running down from the top of her leg to her chest while Kiera lay unconscious on her side with various scorch marks and bite marks that pierced her tough shell. Haxorus still hadn't recovered from Beartic's last attack and lay on his belly with his teeth clenched so tightly that they threatened to break while he clutched the side of his face firmly like his life depended on it. Falling back on his training, he slowly breathed in and out which mitigated the immense pain somewhat, but he knew he would have to do it a lot more if he were to rejoin the battle despite Dmitri's agonizing wails assaulting his ear drums.

"(Good work everyone, but especially for you Beartic; when we return to Bisharp I will be sure to inform him of your valor in combat,)" Mienshao praised the polar bear sincerely causing the ursine to snort and shake its head as it briefly looked down on its helpless victim and then to its leader.

"(There's nothing commendable about killing a hatchling and assaulting misguided pokemon that cared for him,)" Beartic snapped back indignantly, appalled its leader would say such a thing, while Mienshao folded its arms and raised a brow at its subordinate.

"(If you don't want the honors, then that's fine. Just finish off the human and we can return home,)" Mienshao replied coolly as Volcarona, Hydreigon, and Eelektross joined them, looking down at the polar bear expectantly, causing the ursine to sadly look down on the battle ace who was still trying to break free despite knowing it was pointless, but continued to do so if only to be defiant in the face of his enemies.

Hardening its heart, Beartic increased the pressure on Dmitri's head one last time causing one final wail to be let out from the young human before his grip slackened on the polar bear's paw and landed on the ground with a thud. The only indication that Dmitri was still alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest and taking Beartic's advice, Dmitri relaxed and waited for the end to come.