The campfire burned, crackling as it split the firewood Chloe gathered and kept their soup (a mix of some of the ingredients that remained plus some savory berries Chloe had found and Ash was able to vouch were safe to eat when she brought them back) piping hot, even as the the cool night air wafted into the nook.
The two of them (with Ash carefully sitting up) ate their soup, along with Eevee. The small Pokémon sat next to Ash and practically jammed her face into the bowl. She looked up with soup dripping off her face, making Chloe burst into laughter.
'Eievui?' Chloe's Pokémon asked.
"Eevee, you seriously CAN'T be doing that!" she said between bouts of laughter.
Smirking, Ash turned to the Normal-Type. "Yeah, Eevee. It's like this." And then he stuck his face in his bowl, and immediately came back up with a face covered in soup, making a silly face that just made Chloe double over in laughter and fall backwards onto the ground. To that, Eevee just flipped over and rolled across the ground, mimicking Chloe's movements.
"ASH! I almost spilled my dinner!" she protested, though her laughter gave away her true feelings. "You can't do that, too!"
Ash smirked, amused. "And why not?"
"Because you might wake up tomorrow…" She said, trying to give her words the creepiest inflection she could before sticking her own face in her bowl. The salty, savory scent of the soup caught in her senses and she felt a few slices of the berries sticking to her face. "AND YOU COULD LOOK LIKE THIS!" she shouted, sticking out her tongue and making a face of her own.
Ash guffawed, his laughter echoing in the small cavern. Eevee did the same, sticking her face in her bowl again before hopping onto Ash's arm and making a face at him.
"C-C'mon, Eevee!" Ash laughed. "Don't scare me like that!"
"Yeah, Eevee," Chloe quipped. "You know the scariest thing to Ash is wasted food!"
"Oh yeah?" Ash chuckled. "Well, Eevee also knows the scariest thing to you is your teacher givin' you a pop quiz!"
"Not even close!"
Ash smirked confidently. "Then what are you afraid of?" Ash asked in that somewhat surly, overconfident way he could get when he feels like he can't lose.
'Handsome country boys stealing into my life and into my heart,' came the snappy, flirty response, but Chloe withheld it, feeling comfortable but not bold. "If I said falling from heights, would that make you laugh?" she joked, clearly referring to the events of the past two days.
Ash snorted his laugh in reply. "Maybe. Falling can be pretty scary, though," he said, smiling at her with the flames flickering in his soothing brown eyes.
'You have no idea,' she thought, staring back at him, a completely different "falling" in her mind. Despite the soup still on his face, she had to admit that there was something roguishly handsome about him, like the movie stars in her magazines that always looked a little rough around the edges.
Ash, who must have thought that she was staring at his messy face, picked up a nearby towel and wiped his face clean before turning to Eevee and wiping her face clean as well. He then tossed it to her. "Here. You've still got soup on your face."
She laughed and wiped her face clean. "Thanks, Ash."
"You're welcome, Chloe."
The warmth of the fire spread into her cheeks, and she looked away from his gaze toward Eevee, who was already starting to play another game.
The next morning came in gently, causing Chloe to slowly open her eyes. The sun was only just peaking over the mountains around Pallet Town, so the scene outside the cave was tinted with the yellowish hues of early sunrise.
She sat up in her sleeping bag to see Ash and Eevee sleeping gently. The two of them were drooling slightly as they dozed, and Chloe smiled gently at them. Having Eevee with him in Pikachu's absence did a lot for helping Ash's mood stay positive. Between the peace and quiet of the past day and the hilarious double act of Ash with Eevee copying him, Chloe was slowly getting more and more used to spending time out in the wilderness. 'This is so much better than how things were before,' she thought, brushing her hand idly through her hair.
She froze and felt with her hand again. 'My hair…!'
It was just what she had expected after taking her hair down the night before - a fluffy, frizzy, completely unpresentable mess. She strangled the gasp in her throat and as quietly as she could manage, moved over to her bag and pulled her hair brush out of it. She quietly began brushing her hair as best as she could, eyes locked on her sleeping companion and the gently dozing Normal-Type whose legs were waving gently in the air as if she had some sort of dream.
She watched Eevee's hindpaw kick ever closer to Ash's face and the sweat began to pour down her face as she tried to get her hair in something resembling order before the inevitable kick to the face.
Her eyes widened as Eevee's hindpaw kicked Ash in the cheek. She froze at the contact, waiting for Ash to groggily awaken but after a few moments of stillness, she sighed in relief as it seemed like it would take more than an errant Eevee kick to force him awake.
"Eikew!"
It was the gentlest sounding, cutest little sneeze Eevee could have possibly done in her sleep, but Chloe's appreciation of it turned to dread as Ash's bleary eyes opened, catching her with her hair down. She quickly pulled her sleeping bag up and hid behind it with an "Eep!"
Ash blinked, clearly not thinking clearly yet. "What're you doin'?"
"Don't look! My hair's a complete wreck!"
"Izzat all?" he asked, sitting up. His slurred speech indicated to Chloe that he wasn't completely awake yet.
Despite this, she didn't drop her guard. "Yes!" she protested. "I look terrible! My messy mop is going in every direction! I'm unpresentable!"
"You're fine," Ash said, finally sitting up. "Besides, haven't I seen you with your hair down before, when we were at the Pewter City Pokémon Center?"
She felt her cheeks burn as the contradiction in her behavior was brought up. "S-So?! That's different! I hadn't been sleeping so it was at least mostly still straight after letting it down!"
"Look, why don't you let me help you out?" Ash said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. "I've helped my Mom and some of my friends when they needed it."
Her face burned even hotter. "Y-You can't be serious. Do you think I'm letting you even SEE this, much less brush it?!"
"Euei!" Eevee chirped, hopping around happily, as if to say "Yeah!"
"Don't you start!" Chloe automatically replied, even though her conscious mind knew she didn't know what Eevee was saying.
Ash's gaze was level and unperturbed. "C'mon, you're clearly not gonna make breakfast until you've got your hair done and if this helps get breakfast sooner, just let me help, alright?"
Unable to debate the clear logic(from Ash! Of all people!) Chloe sighed and let down the sleeping bag, revealing her messy, curly hair to Ash. He didn't respond, but she could tell his eyes went to her hair.
Sighing, she walked over and sat next to him, turning her back to him. She held out her hair brush. "Alright, just get it over with," she said.
Ash took the hair brush and began gently brushing her thick, curly hair. The gentle way he managed the hair brush caught her somewhat off guard, but the feeling of having someone else attend to her hair helped her relax. She could feel the blush across her cheeks burn a deep crimson, but with no audience besides the small Eevee this morning, Chloe was going to do her best to enjoy it.
"Can I ask you a question?" Ash said as he continued to brush.
She shrugged. "Yeah?"
"Why don't you like it when your hair looks like this?" he asked.
The question caught her off guard, so she didn't respond immediately as her mind took a few moments to think up the reason.
"I guess I ask because I don't ever really do anything with my hair," Ash said, shrugging behind her as she thought. "I just put my hat on and get a haircut every so often. I don't think about it very much, but I know girls take their hair really seriously, so I thought you could explain it. Since you're good at explaining stuff, I mean." There was a charming nervousness in his tone that Chloe could only smile at. Clearly he was worried about offending her.
"Well, I can't speak for any other girls," she said, but for me, it's because hair like this isn't popular."
There was a grunt of confusion from him. "It's not? Why not?"
"All the models in magazines and on TV have straight hair, or it's only wavy enough to give it a full, mature appearance. Curly hair like this…" she said, a frown growing on her face. "It's not cool. If people saw my hair like this, they'd think I'm disorganized or a brat. If I get it braided, though, it looks like it's straight, and I can be more popular at school as a result of having a mature, smooth hair style."
"I guess," came Ash's response. "You'd know better than I would. Only…" He hummed.
She raised an eyebrow. "Only what?"
"Well… I guess this hair suits you," he said. "Your hair's really soft, just like you are on the inside. It's friendly and kind."
Chloe felt her entire face begin to burn. "N-No, I'm not," she said. "Everyone's always saying how I'm no fun. Mika always treats me like I'm such a busybody."
"Well, you probably don't let her see this side of you," he responded. "You're usually always in serious-focused-student-school mode. But the Chloe I saw last night? The one who joked around with me an' Eevee? That's the real you, I think."
She tried to silence the pounding of her heart in her chest. "The real me…?"
"Yeah! I like this side of you, the side that lets you relax around your friends. And all of this that's happened? It just means we're better friends than before!"
"Eievui!" chimed in the Pokémon in agreement.
She giggled, in spite of herself. "You know, maybe you're right," she said.
"I think I'm all done back here. You should be able to braid it now right?"
Chloe reached a hand out, and Ash put her brush in her hand. She pulled the brush through it once to check, and it seemed that her wild mane was tamed enough to allow the brush to pass through it smoothly.
"Yeah. Give me a second and I'll get breakfast ready."
As the three of them ate breakfast (really just the reheated soup from the previous night), Chloe sat looking at her bowl, The light of the day filtering in allowing her to see her reflection in it. The face she saw looking back at her was a bit rough; clearly she had been roughing it with Ash for about four days at this point, away from civilization, but in her face she saw the same girl that used to be described as cold. She couldn't help but be reflective of this trip she had been on, despite its unforeseen twist.
'Is that the true me?' Chloe thought, looking into the bowl at her reflection, tented by the nearly clear broth. 'Or is it the kindness that Ash says he saw?' She once again felt very small compared to him. He was watching Eevee eat and chitter away, the Pokémon having a conversation with some invisible partner.
'Pokémon…'
Her own words rang painfully in her ears.
"You're always going on and on about Pokémon! You don't seem to ever think about anything else! Maybe you should have come all the way out here by yourself, you Pokémon-obsessed freak!"
The sick shame she felt when the words first left her mouth twisted her stomach anew.
She looked up at his smiling face as he watched Eevee, and in her mind's eye she could still see his rain-soaked face recoiling as though he had been struck.
"Hey, Ash?"
He turned to her, looking away from Eevee now. "Huh? Is everything okay?"
She sat down the bowl, appetite fully dispelled, and nodded. "Yeah, I've just got something to say."
Ash blinked in her direction, and she could tell that he tensed up, even if he didn't say anything.
"I… I wanted to apologize for what I said the other day. About the really hurtful words I used."
Ash's face flashed between confusion, pain, and realization in quick succession. 'He must have just forgotten about it,' Chloe thought. 'But I can't let things stay as they are now without apologizing.'
"I got really upset, not just because it seemed like you were trying to force me to do things your way, but…" she sighed, knowing this would make her feel foolish. She looked up at him, and he watched her closely with his warm brown eyes. '...it's okay. I can tell him. I trust him.' "...but when I saw all your gym badges and trophies and heard you were the Champion of Alola… I guess it really shocked me. Not that I doubt you could do any of that stuff, but more like… what have I been doing? We're practically the same age and all I've been doing is going to school and studying. You've been all around the world, meeting people, making friends, living your life in pursuit of your own goal. And… I felt like I wasn't worth being friends with. Your mom said you have lots of friends who are Gym Leaders or Pokémon Coordinators and I'm just… some girl who grew up in the city who didn't even want anything to do with Pokémon for a long time."
Chloe went quiet, so Ash took the initiative. "...so you're saying that I seem way too important t' be friends with you?" he asked.
She felt like she just wanted to shrink away in embarrassment, but she stayed put. "...yeah."
Ash thought to himself for a moment, and looking at him, Chloe could tell he was trying to work out exactly what to say next. Whenever he acted like that, he always seemed to say something that caught her off-guard, so she prepared herself, steeling herself for whatever he could say.
His words came. "...but that's just wrong, you know?"
Even with her mental preparation, she wasn't ready for it. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's like…" he frowned, thinking more. "It's like, do you know how big the ocean is?"
Chloe furrowed her eyebrows, confused. "What are you even talking about? What does the ocean have to do with what we're talking about?"
"The ocean is huge, Chloe," he explained, gesturing wide with his hands. Once you get past a certain point, it's super deep. Like, so deep that you can't even see th' bottom of it! But if it were just deep, we wouldn't say it's huge! Just deep! It's wide, too! Like it goes so far that you can't even see the otherside across the horizon! The ocean is deep AND wide!"
She nodded along with him. "Okay…?" She wasn't really following his train of thought.
"Well, I know a lot about Pokémon. I've done a lot of stuff with Pokémon, 'cause my dream's to be a Pokémon Master. I have a deep connection with 'em. But outside that…? I don't really know a lot. I'm no good at cooking, I get lost without a map, I'm not really good at Math and stuff…" He frowned, growing frustrated with talking, trying to explain this metaphor. "You could say that while I know a lot about Pokémon, what I know isn't very wide past that."
The implication snapped into place for Chloe, and his metaphor instantly made a lot of sense.
"...so while your knowledge is deep, it's not wide. But while I don't know a lot about Pokémon, I know a lot of different things, little pieces of information I've picked up here and there, little skills I've got that you don't have any idea of."
Ash stood up. "Yeah that's it!" He then grimaced in pain as he put pressure on his injured ankle and fell back down on his butt.
"Ash! Take it easy, okay?!" Chloe stood up and held a hand out as he fell down.
Ash chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I forgot why I was sitting on the ground…" He looked up at her with confident, glittering eyes. "But yeah! That's exactly it! Like when you won that trivia game, or all the stuff you've done out here. You knew what those flowers were called, and you were able to set up camp AND give me first aid! Chloe, you're not someone who hasn't done anything. Everything you've learned helps you do even more stuff! You're amazing!"
Chloe sits in stunned silence for a moment, absorbing what he said. Her stunned frown began to crack into a smile before bubbling up into a fit of giggling. Ash looked back at her, his own eyebrows furrowed. "Did I say something wrong…?"
She shook her head. "No! No, Ash, I-" she broke into another fit of giggling. "It's just… the Ash who understands and explains things with metaphors, who thinks carefully and picks his words slowly… I think that's the side of you I like best."
Ash relaxed and laughed to himself. "I wonder if that's who I really am…?" he asked jokingly.
"Well, there's a way we could find out," Chloe said, smiling at him, ready to continue bantering with him.
Before she could continue, however, there was a loud crash outside the small cave. Ash and Chloe looked at each other, and then to Eevee, who had been standing there watching them the entire time as Chloe and Ash had leaned closer towards each other during their conversation.
"...I should see what that is," she said. Ash nodded in response.
Chloe stood up and with Eevee walked the short distance outside the cave. Standing not too far away, bashing it's head into a tree was a large, purple, and very spiky Pokémon.
She took out her phone and pointed it at the Pokémon, hoping that the Pokédex function still worked even without a signal. She exhaled a sigh of relief as an image of the Pokémon appeared on the screen.
"Nidoking," the Rotom inside the phone said, identifying the visitor. "The Drill Pokémon. A Poison-and Ground-type. Nidoking prides itself on its strength. It's forceful and spirited in battle, making use of its thick tail and diamond-crushing horn."
Chloe watched Nidoking step away from a nearby tree, pulling out the large horn on his head from the tree he had bashed into. The horn was dripping a thick fluid - Nidoking's venom, if the Poison-type was anything to go by. The venom seemed like it was burning a smooth hole in the tree, pierced by Nidoking's horn. Chloe looked at the hole and gasped.
"Wait… that's the same as the mark on that tree near the river…!" she said, gasping at the realization. "Does that mean we've been in Nidoking's territory the entire time?!"
The noise from her phone and her mouth made Nidoking flick his ears, and he turned to the cave. As soon as he saw the human girl standing there slack jawed, he began stomping forward.
"H-Hey, Nidoking…!" Chloe said, holding up a hand. "We-We're not trespassing! We've been stuck here. My friend is hurt, and so-"
"DOUKI!" came the angry response. Nidoking snarled at her and stomped in her direction.
"This is bad…" Chloe said. "Nidoking definitely isn't in the mood to talk…"
"Eievui!"
Chloe looked down and Eevee began pawing the ground, like she was a charging Rhyhorn, herself.
"Eevee wants to help protect you," Ash said. "She's saying she wants to battle Nidoking!"
Chloe turned around. "Ash?!"
Ash had crawled to the mouth of the cave on his hands and knees, making sure not to put pressure on his ankle, though Chloe could see that his eyes reflected some pain from his injuries still lingering.
She looked at Eevee. 'I have to protect all of us somehow… is battling the right way…?" Staring into Eevee's back, she shook her head, dismissing the negative thoughts. 'Wait, I'm not here alone. I've got Ash and Eevee here.' The thoughts of her companions lit a flame of confidence inside her, and Chloe gestured forward. "Alright, Eevee. If Nidoking doesn't want to listen, then we'll have to make him listen!"
"Eie!"
Nidoking growled out a challenge and Chloe answered in kind. "Eevee, use Tackle on Nidoking!"
Eevee kicked off from the ground, propelling her small body forward. Nidoking stood ready for the challenge as the attack crashed into his armored belly. Nidoking's confident expression vanished as Eevee crashed into him, knocking the air out of him. The Drill Pokémon stumbled backwards before charging ahead. His legs began to glow with an amber energy.
"The legs… Eevee, dodge those legs!"
Eevee responded to Chloe's shout as the Double Kick came out, leaping over one leg and darting under the other. The powerful Pokémon that set himself as Chloe and Eevee's opponent found himself stumbling as the small Pokémon darted around his body.
"Now, Quick Attack!"
With her speed already disorienting Nidoking as she hopped around him, Eevee built up power inside herself and shot out like an arrow, darting around the Poison- and Ground-type before leaping in and crashing into Nidoking's side, sending him toppling over.
"Alright! We did it!"
Eevee returned towards Chloe's side, but the Evolution Pokémon's steps became tipsy as she approached before falling to the ground in front of Chloe. "Wait… Eevee?"
"She's poisoned!" Ash called out from the mouth of the cave.
Chloe balked. "How? Nidoking hasn't touched us!"
Ash shook his head. "Nidoking's ability is called Poison Point! If you touch the needles, even if you're just attacking it, you can get poisoned!"
"E-Eievui…" she stammered, rising to her feet.
Nidoking roared, not willing to let the opening go to waste. He plunged a claw that glittered with a power that looked like sand on a beach into the ground. The ground split open from there and the glowing fissure approached Eevee. When it caught up to her, a blast of that same golden power erupted like a geyser under Eevee's feet, launching her into the sky.
"EEVEE!" Chloe shouted.
The blast from the pillar launched much higher than the roof of their shelter was. Chloe's mind began to race as she stepped out and caught her Pokémon in her arms. "If a blast like that comes out and hits where Ash is…" she thought out loud before her imagination filled in the rest with an image of the golden pillar shooting into the roof of the cave, causing the cliff to collapse on top of Ash.
Eevee struggled out of Chloe's grasp and stood, though injured from the poison and the attack, ready to continue. Chloe shook herself from her thoughts and looked at her Pokémon. Her concern and doubt began to mount. 'Is there any way we can run away…?' she thought. 'No, Ash can't even stand up, much less run…!"
"Vui!"
Eevee stood firm and confident, even through the pain, and Chloe realized that they were both trying to protect what was important to them. That moment of realization brought back that familiar feeling of battling against Ash in Cerise Park, all those weeks ago. That day she had made the decision to reach out to him for help, that seemed to change everything.
"I don't know what that move was…" Chloe said, "but we can do this! Let's go, Eevee!"
Eevee raised her tail into the air and she began to glow with the same glittering golden power that Nidoking utilized. She raised her forepaws into the air, and they began to glow with a golden power. She brought them to the ground and another glowing fissure opened up, arcing it's way across the ground and right under Nidoking's feet. The golden pillar of energy erupted, sending the Drill Pokémon top-over-tail as he flipped and landed on the ground.
"Is that enough…?" she asked.
Nidoking was quick to answer. Standing on all fours, Nidoking fired a blast of acrid, foul smelling venom at Eevee. The blasts caught Eevee off guard, crashing into her and covering her with the burning, sickening goop.
"That's Sludge Bomb, just like Zeke used…" Chloe said. Once again, Nidoking was approaching the cavern mouth, standing up and charging ahead, horn ahead and ready to gore anyone who stood in the way.
Chloe began looking around. 'Think! Think! There has to be some way out of this…!' She gestured forward. "Eevee, Tackle!"
The small Normal-type charged forward with her entire body, but this time Nidoking seemed prepared. Cloaking himself in an aura of force, he began swinging his claws and tail indiscriminately around him, thrashing over a wide area. Eevee collided with his powerful tail and was knocked across the ground, tumbling as she fell at Chloe's feet.
"Eevee, no!" Chloe fell to her knees and picked Eevee up in her arms, the despair growing in the pit of her stomach as she clutched her Pokémon to her chest. "You've gotta hang on, Eevee!"
"Chloe, just run!" Ash shouted from the mouth of the cave. "You and Eevee have done all you can! If you try to battle it any longer, you could both get hurt!"
She turned, tears already starting to form in her eyes, looking at him. "We're not abandoning you here! You could die, Ash!"
"If you don't, then we could both die!" he shouted back, his tone completely serious. He raised his fist to her, shouting "Just go!"
Chloe looked at Ash's fist and gasped as the gears in her head began to turn. On the wrist of the arm Ash raised to her was his glittering black Z-Ring.
"That's it…" she whispered. "That's it! Ash! There might be a way for us to survive this!"
Nearby, Nidoking was suffering from the Thrash, crashing into trees in confusion as his defensive maneuver ended up giving Chloe and Ash just a few moments. Chloe sat Eevee down, and the little Normal-type stood with all of her strength. 'If we're going to make it through this, then I need Eevee's help, too!'
"Ash, give me your Z-Ring!"
Ash's eyes went wide at what she was suggesting. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the clear crystal that he had used with Dragonite and replaced the yellow crystal he used with Pikachu before sliding the Z-Ring off his wrist and tossing it to Chloe. As Chloe slipped it onto her wrist, Ash called out to her. "Do you remember the pose I used when I was battling Charizard? That's the pose you have to do to make the Normalium Z work and use a Z-Move!"
The Normalium Z glittered in the sunlight as Chloe turned her attention forward. Nidoking looked up, the confusion lifted from his face as he began to stomp once more towards the mouth of the cave.
Chloe thought to herself, trying to remember the pose. She crossed her left arm, wearing the Z-Ring, over her forehead and her right arm over her chest. "Go, Eevee!"
But there was no brilliant light. No surge of power like she saw surrounding Ash. Eevee rushed forward with a Tackle attack, crashing into Nidoking's stomach. The Poison- and Ground-type brought forth another glittering golden claw into Eevee, plunging the Evolution Pokémon into the ground. The pillar of light exploded instantly, launching Eevee back at Chloe. She caught the injured Pokémon in her arms. "Eevee…!"
With her last ounce of determination, Eevee squirmed out of Chloe's grip and stood defiantly against Nidoking.
Chloe looked around. She was backed up to the mouth of the cave now. Any further and Nidoking could simply use that attack and knock the cliff down on top of both of them. "Why… why didn't it work?"
"Chloe…!"
She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Ash?"
Ash's face was twisted in pain from standing on his injured leg, but the determined look he had on his face showed through it. "You have to do the full pose. The entire thing. Do you remember it…?"
Chloe closed her eyes, seeing the movements in her mind, just as Ash performed them. The slash. The brightness. "I've got it." She put her hand on Ash's and smiled. "Thanks, Ash." She lifted his hand off her shoulder and stepped forward. Eevee as well, shook her body, her own determination flaring up.
Ash smirked. "Looks like Eevee's so fired up, she got over the poisoning on her own."
"Eevee," Chloe called out. "Let's put everything we've got into this!"
She crossed her arms over her chest, and the Z-Ring responded by erupting into a glowing light. Chloe felt the warmth of the light as it flooded over her and Eevee's bodies. Eevee raised her tail into the air and began to glow with the golden energy, as though she was copying Nidoking's move once more. Chloe crossed her hands, one over the other in front of herself, pointing directly towards Eevee. Like a razor sharp claw, she brought both of her arms down at a diagonal before slashing her left arm upward. She brought her right arm to her chest and her left arm to her forehead as the light began to expand to envelop her entire body, filling her with an intense warmth as the power surged within her. The light began shifting and moving from her to Eevee. The feeling felt like her very spirit was being yanked out, but when the light collided with Eevee, she felt a sense of connection with her that was far and above what she had felt with the Normal-type before now.
"We can do anything if we try…! We can go anywhere if we want! Eevee, let's do it!"
Eevee absorbed the light that flooded around her into her small frame, and even the telltale glow of her copying a move had vanished.
"Let's go! Our Z-Move!"
The powerful light surged through Eevee's body, and just like she copied that move before she raised her paws and brought them back to the ground. Only this time, instead of a glowing fissure, the ground split open where Eevee's paws landed, and this opening crevice quickly spread across the ground before ending up under Nidoking. Only, instead of blasting him up, the earth beneath the Drill Pokémon's feet gave way, and he fell in. Eevee surrounded herself with the same golden glowing energy and dove into the crevice after Nidoking. Chloe couldn't quite see what was happening from her angle, but the ground rumbled and shook, the quaking growing stronger and stronger by the second. Yet somehow, unlike when she was witnessing Ash's Z-Moves, she didn't feel off balance or blown away. It was as though her connection to Eevee was giving her the strength to stand strong through the apparent earthquake. Even as the light faded, the connection the Z-Ring provided her and Eevee felt just as strong as ever.
The ground near the river began to swell, like a blister forming out of the earth itself before it erupted into a pillar of light and force. The bright light of the eruption went even higher than the tree tops or the cliff they were next to. It hurt to glare through it, but Chloe spotted two shapes exiting the light. One, the larger Nidoking, was launched far, far away into the trees much closer towards what she could only assume was the base of Mt. Hideaway.
The second, smaller shape, spinning as she landed in front of her, was Eevee.
"We did it…" she whispered to herself. "We… WE DID IT!"
"EIEVUI!"
Chloe scooped up her Pokémon into her arms, cheerfully smiling as the tears began to form in her eyes once more. Eevee rubbed her dirty face against Chloe's, trying to express her joy as well. She held up her Pokémon and smiled widely. Eevee smiled back, wagging her tail happily.
Ash smiled at the sight. "Thank goodness…" he said, gazing at the two of them.
"PIKAPI!"
Ash's breath caught in his chest as he looked skyward, and Chloe followed his gaze. There were three shapes in the sky, two of them that Chloe recognized on sight as Dragonite and Charizard. The third was another draconic Pokémon with large ears, a purple underbelly, and black wings.
"PIKACHU!" Ash shouted, hobbling out of the cave, waving at them. "DRAGONITE! CHARIZARD! NOIVERN!" Even through the pain, Chloe could see the joy and relief on his face as the three Pokémon landed nearby the torn up battlefield Chloe and Eevee had just battled upon.
Hopping off of Charizard's back was another familiar face, this one belonging to Professor Oak's assistant, Tracey. "Ash! Chloe! You guys really scared us, sending Pikachu back by himself!" he said, the joyous laughter choking on the relief in his chest. "When he showed up, he was exhausted, so we had to wait for him to wake up, and then we had to search for you guys! If we didn't see that huge pillar of light, we'd have never found you guys!"
Pikachu leapt from Dragonite's back and raced across the ground before leaping into Ash's arms. He held the Mouse Pokémon close, nuzzling his cheeks against the red ones of his partner. "I'm so happy t' see you, buddy. Thanks for running for help. You're a life-saver."
"Pikapi! Pi-Pikapi!" Pikachu was just as beside himself with emotion as Ash was.
Tracey approached Chloe. "What even was that?" he asked, his eyes already darting around the area. "And what happened here?"
She smiled. "It's a long story. One I'm sure we can talk about once we're back at Ash's house in Pallet Town."
Dragonite flew over to Ash and embraced him as well, hugging him tightly. Noivern approached Ash as well, but Charizard hung back, looking at Chloe and Eevee. The Flame Pokémon smirked at the two of them before crouching down.
"I guess you're gonna be our ride back?" she asked.
"Growr," he replied in the affirmative.
"Well, you'll need to give us a second to take down our camp," she said. "But… I'm glad we made it through this." Chloe looked to Ash, who was smiling and laughing at being reunited with Pikachu. Her heart beat strongly against her chest, the happiness she felt in that moment feeling even brighter and warmer than the Z Move.
"It's the least I could do for him, after all."