Poke Wars belongs to Cornova.

There had been a lot of things that had tried to take Alexander away from Kara over the years. The Company, people, Ops. She wasn't able to keep him safe; more often then not it was luck that let him see another day instead of her own actions. She was weak and fearful- if she did anything, the Company would have taken him away and retired her from service. So, she compromised. She recorded the things that happened to Alexander and reported it in the hope that something would be done. She did that for a long time, and it made her feel like nothing every time nothing was done.

But now that wasn't the case. She was strong, stronger than at any other time in her life. Whatever had granted her this gift deserved her praise even if it wanted her human dead, but it wouldn't get that praise for that exact reason, and it was going to realize it had made a grievous mistake giving her this gift when it came for them.

No longer would Kara stay at the wayside when Alexander was in danger. Everything that had laid a hand against him was dead, and everything that tried was going to die.

This creature attacking them was going to die.

She pushed down the panic that she felt and examined the information she had at hand. If this was the one responsible for the collapsed tower, then it used Bulldoze, a ground-type move. It wasn't struggling to breathe in the debris cloud-like the officer, trainer, or the Rhydon, and she could feel the energy rolling off it like a thick fog; this was a ghost, one that could use ground type moves. Her chances of hurting it with an electric attack were unlikely.

"Don't look down," Kara ordered firmly, and with a blink, the transceiver screen flashed brightly. It glared off the cloud around them and blinded everything for a moment, and a deep roar rattled the bones of the group as whatever had loomed over them recoiled.

As Alexander began to scrambled away- no doubt as startled as the creature- Kara got to see the beast in its entirety. One made of sand, shaped in a way similar to some kalosian castles. The officer shrieked a word she had not heard before and began to run, babbling as he did and ending her reservations about actually being attacked by a child's past time. One of the towers that appeared to function as an arm came slamming down in a rage and shattered the pavement, sending large chunks into the air and throwing everything to the ground save the Drill Pokemon.

Definitely a Ground Type. Kara kept her panic locked away and began to assess her assets. Most of my heavy-hitting moves are useless... Rhydon would fair better, I'll just give it some time to react.

The castle shook and glared at Alexander as he scrambled to his feet until its attention fell to the glow on his arm. The light quickly started changing colors until it became a distorted and constantly shifting field of static, and the glowing stones that appeared to be eyes seemed to vanish for a second as it slid backward.

"It's distracted, Alexander. Get out of here!"

Alexander rose to his feet and began to put space between him and their attacker. Another roar shattered the silence and ended in a thunderclap of clashing metal as something was pulverized into oblivion, and tremors shook the ground as it smashed everything in its way. He saw the Rhydon trying to keep pace from the corner of his vision and staggered to a halt as it began to lag behind.

The officer was nowhere to be seen, so the kid had only him to rely upon. The Drill Pokemon's attempts to keep him safe were in vain: it was going too slow. He'd bleed out before he got to the hospital, if they made it at all with the creature bearing down on them.

"You can't get him to the hospital quick enough; just buy us some time to escape and I'll get him there!"

The Pokemon gave him a conflicted look barely veiled by a glare, but Alexander didn't back down. Another deep roar made the earth quake and forced a groan out of the surrounding buildings; glass shattered as the concrete buildings weathered the damage being inflicted on them, and the once pristine road morphed again as it was forcefully rearranged. A street light snapped off at its base and fell towards the trio, and seeing its trainer in danger the Rhydon turned its back to take the brunt of the fall. It bounced harmlessly off its back and deflected into the ground beside the two, but the kid still cried out as the Ground and Rock-type held him closer out of instinct and crushed his arm.

Horror crossed its face as the trainer began to struggle, and Alexander felt the resistance it had melt as the brute eased off to hand him over. The kid didn't weigh much and was easy to carry despite his weakening struggles, and a sharp grunt from the Rhydon made him look up.

Please, keep him alive.

The grunt blinked as the language barrier broke, uncertain if he had actually heard what he thought he had.

"Duck!" Kara half ordered, half screamed, breaking the grunt's speculation. He obeyed without question and felt something cold pass over his form, missing him and striking the ground somewhere beyond. Rhydon stomped its foot and a wall of stone erupted from the earth, bursting underground water lines and cutting off the street completely. Almost immediately after the wall crumbled as something struck it, and as water began to spray from the cracks in the concrete it dug its heels deeper and roared.

Alexander needed no further order from Kara and ran. Loose rubble was kicked into the air around him as he evacuated the area, carefully hugging the kid close as falling debris cut through the cloud around him. He sidestepped a falling desk that exploded across the terrain where he had been moments before and kept on, focusing between listening to Kara's directions and keeping his footing every time the ground quaked. He couldn't see in the dust and found himself dodging abandoned cars, rubble, and every other obstacle he came across in his blind sprint. The only thing he could clearly see was the dying kid in his arms, who's struggled and whimpers were weakening with every passing second.

There was no chance for this kid. Packing the wound had only slowed the inevitable, but the Rhydon had not known that. It blindly bought into the lie that there was still hope for its trainer, and was only buying the grunt time to get away.

Alexander felt dirty. He hadn't even realized what he had done until then, but he was already across that bridge. He needed to live.

Then, the air around him illuminated as headlights peeled out of the dark. Tires squealed as an SUV came to a halt beside them, almost on top of them, and Alexander heard the doors unlock before a familiar face leaned out the broken window. The officer's bark was nearly inaudible over the cacophony of groaning infrastructure and the growing clamor between the pokemon they had left behind: "Get in the damn car!"

He didn't remember getting in the vehicle, but his muscles worked on their own and pushed him into the backseat. Alexander was applying pressure to the boy's stomach before the vehicle lurched to speed away from the escalating conflict, and the officer began to talk in a disjointed, rambling panic.

"I thought it got you- we gotta get him to the hospital! We're not ready for this; the city needs to be evacuated before- is the kid gonna make it man? Get that sand off 'a him! Get rid of all the sand! The forest will be safe- I need to get home, I'll drop you two off and..."

The man was running out of breath, a problem Kara would never have. She was going to make this man regret trying to ditch them when she could, but he knew information she didn't. "What was that creature?"

The officer nearly hit his head on the ceiling and swerved, cursing aloud as he regained control and narrowly avoided rear-ending a van looming out of the dust. "Who else is back there!?"

"Answer the question!"

The man flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror a few times in a fruitless attempt to see Kara and remained silent for another second to gather himself. "It's a Palossand- a ghost and ground type. The bastards are never this far inland." The officer stopped talking to deftly avoid another obstacle and the debris cloud began to fade enough for light to start filtering through.

Kara had a name and typing. Her guess had been correct, and she started to try to access her sources for more information before she could help it; there was nothing to access.

Ever since waking up, it felt like she had gone deaf; she wasn't used to it, and it was frustrating that it kept getting past her. There were no communications that reached any further than the edge of the city, the points of access and infinite flow of information that she had always possessed and taken for granted had been stripped from her. There were simply no satellites or long distant servers she could reach: the fabric of communication had unraveled.

All she could still access were the local networks, and with a heavy drone, she realized that too was beginning to slip away block by block. No, not now. Determined, Kara began to dig into the signals she was receiving, passing radio broadcasts from the rapidly collapsing police and military presence until she found municipal stations and connected sensors.

From what she could tell through the static, it seemed that the main power leading into the city had begun to fluctuate. She could only trace it a few miles north until the sensors ended, and with a start, she realized that the signal had collapsed somewhere up the line. She couldn't troubleshoot what had happened from where she resided and would need to access the system to physically check, which wouldn't be happening anytime soon as another fluctuation came down from the mountain and scrambled the signals. The Rotom shook off the disorientation and began to troubleshoot what was happening in the city, and she pieced two things together then:

The energy fluctuations were damaging sensors as inconsistent power either overloaded or underloaded them, causing resets that dragged down the rest of the system or make it completely shut down. Localized systems that had their own power were doing better than most public systems, and as an entire section of the city suddenly fell away from Kara's perception some of the emergency systems remained online.

Then there were the pokemon actively attacking the city. She could hear it over the radio chatter: Palossand were taking over the south, and with it communications were falling silent- the communications ahead of them were down already, and the same was happening to places further inland; the furthest inland areas were full of gunfire, orders, and retreats from a separate assaulting force that she had been unaware of. With a start she noticed a program activate in a channel she had dismissed as weak, and multiple emergency services across the city responded in kind.

"To the people of Hau'oli city: please find a secure location indoors. Do not approach windows or doors, and remain in that location until instructed otherwise..."

Kara tuned out the message as it broadcasted, noticing that only a small fraction of the city was receiving it in the midst of the power surges.

Having lost interest, she continued looking for data on the situation. The longer Kara searched, spanning only a couple seconds of tense silence, she came to see that any servers or data banks holding information on Palossand were offline and not apart of the systems meant to keep the city functioning. Why she couldn't gain access to the police department's files was beyond her, but she was in the dark, and her next target was the only source of information.

"I take it they were dangerous before yesterday."

Despite the situation, the man managed to laugh. "You can say that, yeah. Hundreds of tourists are attacked every year by their pre-evolution stage alone. The force was constantly fighting the things to keep them away from the popular beaches, but they still managed to snag one or two a year."

Kara absorbed the information and started formulating plans. She needed to get Alexander away from the city, and the first thing that she considered was the officer himself. He was rattled enough to be thinking of deserting to the forest, and it wouldn't be difficult to tag along and make him get Alexander to the hospital. She'd have to be fast to diagnose what was wrong, grab the proper equipment to help, and then get away from the city before it fell, but it was possible. And if the officer was still with them, she would deal with him then, when they were alone.

If he refused to take them to the hospital, she could just deal with him now and take the car; a scan confirmed that there were enough electronics for her to control the vehicle if she pleased. She'd be able to get Alexander medical attention and away from the conflict, and from then they'd have to figure out what happens next. Moving on, she continued:

"How did the force fight against Polassand?" Kara needed strategies and plans that had worked before. They could be less effective now, but it was a base that she could build on if the Palossand made it to the hospital before they could get out.

"You must be joking- we can't fight that!" The officer lamented. He gripped the steering wheel tighter and grit his teeth, clearly distressed. "Look, the people that fought Polassand are either ashes or under a couple meters of concrete, alright? Who didn't die yesterday isn't trained for defending against these monsters- the moment they realize what they're up against, they're gonna bail."

"Like what you're doing now?" Kara dug, annoyed that he had failed to give her anything useful. "Do you know any of the strategies they used? Anything useful at all?"

The officer didn't speak, and Kara registered that her tone of voice had pissed the man off. Something about the situation egged her on, and despite knowing that it might end any chance of her getting more information from him, she spoke in the same condescending tone. "I take it you do not, since you are planning on running for the hills. How many people are going to die because you're too afraid to fight for them? Your brothers and sisters in arms don't know what is coming, and you are more than content with letting them find out on their own."

A dark chuckle escaped him and the officer sneered in the rearview mirror, looking for her. "You're a piece of work, I tell ya. You want to live? Run. Don't get close to these things or you die. You end up in sand near them, you die."

Kara was pleasantly surprised that the officer gave her useful information and archived it, working out what she could do with it in the back of her mind as she considered pushing the topic more. Her attention shifted slightly as Alexander's heart rate increased, and as she began to focus on him the officer's tone and posture abruptly changed:

"Oh, Tapus have mercy."

Alexander had been ignoring the noise the best he could. He was focused solely on the kid under his hands, and the blood working up through them. It was everywhere: smeared on the back of the seats, soaking his arms, and spattered on the opposite window as the kid struggled against him. He was holding onto the grunt's arms tightly and whimpering still, but the empty panic that had long flooded the trainer's eyes was weakening.

Too late. Alexander peeled a hand off the wound and gripped one of the kid's hands reassuringly, feeling something start to crack inside him. This was undeserved- it should have been a soldier under him, not some child that had been recruited out of a Center. It made him angry. The grunt closed his eyes and started to focus on breathing in a pattern to keep himself calm, but he could feel it in his chest. Something was working its way up, rumbling with enough force to make his arms tremble.

Then, the air sharpened.

The grunt looked away from his dying charge and sat up, already preparing his Scizor. He didn't register anything at first as he scanned the abandoned street, but as he looked harder something came through the broken window and passed his face. He snatched it up before it could get past him and looked down at his clenched fist, turning it over and opening it to examine his catch before the wind could blow it away.

A solitary, smooth grain of sand rested in his palm harmlessly. The grunt let his hand fall as he leaned up against the back of the passenger seat to watch the air. More sand was building under the wipers, he noted, and the lights from the buildings illuminated even more falling from the sky like light snow. A pit formed in his stomach, and both grunt and officer were suddenly on the same page.

They needed to get as far away from there as possible, now.

"Do you understand?" The officer muttered uneasily, slowing down to turn onto an unblocked road. The intensity of the storm increased slightly, and the man began to tap his fingers rapidly along the steering wheel as he immediately turned again. Whatever path he was taking remained unknown to the foreigners as they examined the storm intently. "Us personally?"

A scoff. "There's nothing we can do that won't get us killed. I've got people that I need to get back to, and it seems you might as well. I promised a lot to my city lady, but there's a point where you have to look out for your own. They still have an army to get them out of this, but my... friends, don't. And if this gets as bad as I know it'll get, then they won't notice I'm gone for a long, long while. You were thinking the same- don't deny it. You're no different than me, alright?"

Alexander listened to the man's excuse and realized with a start that figuring out what was wrong with him wasn't his only priority. Connor was still outside that cafeteria; he left his extraction behind without so much as a second thought. The grunt closed his eyes in frustration, but shook it off and opened them. Kara was more important than the weasel; he just had to hope that he hadn't slipped away on him.

Alexander felt a trembled go up the kid's arm and looked in the rearview mirror to catch the officer's chest, reading his name embroidered on the uniform: Scott Ada. The heat started creeping back again, and the grunt decided he needed to make a point to this man.

Meanwhile, Kara was rejecting the comparison Scott made. Their motives were in no way similar. Her job was to keep Alexander alive, at all costs. There had never been a promise to protect this city; it had been forced on them. The only thing she had promised protecting was her charge, and the weight behind that well surpassed whatever petty pledge this officer had sworn to. His thoughts were worthless.

"We're nothing alike." She commented, and in return Scott's face tightened. His mouth moved to say something but the words died on his lips as he shook his head, the muscles loosening after a couple seconds as he moved on.

"Will the kid make it?" He hesitated, swinging the SUV around another corner and shooting down a side alley. It was as they exited onto a new street did Alexander answer, and Scott's face evolved many times over within the space of a second as he registered the grunt grabbing his arm with his bloodied hand. It was first confusion as he felt the warm liquid, then a flicker of disgust that was quickly crushed by dread and realization as he registered how much of it was on the grunt. Steel settled in the man's eyes- already preparing himself to handle the worst as he listened to the faint breathing behind him.

His hand slipping free, Alexander leaned further forward and growled in his ear: "You cut an artery pulling the glass out."

The steering wheel protested slightly as Scott gripped it harder. The lines in his face deepened as he restrained something growing inside him, and he turned to the grunt. "You think I killed him? You were not there- Remember that. You chose to run, and you were not in the back of that truck when it rolled." The officer seethed, ending his glare with the emotionless void that was Alexander's helmet as he focused back on the road.

There was silence as Alexander stared at Scott. Slowly sitting back he felt the kid's grip loosen, and looking at the now silent trainer, the grunt sighed internally. It was over for him, at least. He was free from his fear and suffering. Are you the lucky one, kid?

Alexander became rigid at the thought. What was happening now was only the beginning. He couldn't forget that. Scott wasn't apart of the big picture; out of all the trouble and pain that was coming, this officer's actions meant nothing to him. This child's death shouldn't be bothering him; the grunt had not even bothered to learn the kid's name; he wasn't attached in any way to him. He was just a young face in all of this, one of the many children that were surely dead by now.

The grunt decided then that he needed to get over it. It didn't affect him, and he needed to focus on his own things. It didn't matter what had killed the kid in the end; he was dead, and Alexander was not. It wasn't worth pursuing any further.

The SUV rounded a curve and slowed as Scott pressed his foot on the brake, eyes narrowing as they approached a blocked off intersection. Nearly a dozen silent cars were parked on the sidewalk on each side of the road, slowly creeping onto the street to funnel traffic into a checkpoint. It seemed that the force had used a bus as a gate to prevent anyone from trying to ram their way through, seeing as how it was parked perpendicular on the street and essentially blocked the entire stretch of asphalt. Metal police barricades and tape were set up in the spaces between the vehicles, notably cutting off foot traffic as well to what lay beyond the bus.

They came to a stop well before they reached the funnel, and Scott shook his head slowly. "This road is a straight shot to the hospital; we kept everyone except emergency personnel off of it unless they needed medical attention." The man closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, resting his head further back in his seat. When he spoke again, his voice was brittle.

"The kid's dead, but I need to know if you are still going to the hospital."

"We are." Both Kara and Alexander answered at the same time. The grunt eyed the checkpoint for movement, but the area seemed abandoned. "Is there any way around this?"

Scott shook his head. "Not a chance. We did a good job securing this road, so we'd just be wasting time for the Palossand to catch up by looking for another way around." He tapped the gas lightly and scooted forward, turning the wheel so they could squeeze through a space at the rear of the bus. Alexander tightened his grip on the Scizor as they approached, and the officer seemed to notice.

"Word spreads fast, so we're probably not the only ones trying to escape. Whoever was supposed to be keeping the area secure at least did us a favor by leaving the gate open."

Word is traveling fast. Kara scanned the remaining channels again to double-check, but Scott wasn't wrong. She turned her attention to the barricade next and searched for anything that could be useful, and was surprised to find six signals with a familiar frequency. She examined them closer and recognized their tags matched the police department's identification information, one of the few things that were still accessible and traceable. She started tracking their exact locations and realized that they were not stationary, and one was rapidly approaching from the other side of the bus.

"Scott, your officers are still here," Kara stated warily, causing the breathing humans in the vehicle to tense. Alexander leaned back and switched the MP90 to its burst setting, and upon hearing the click Scott flinched and shook his head sharply.

"Don't you even think about it! Look, I know these people and they'll let us through. We're family." He hissed, glowering at the grunt before leaning out the window and calling out. "Sergeant Willia, it's Scott Ada; sorry to roll up on ya, but we gotta go through here. I take it since none of ya are in position that you heard the news and are from here?"

The SUV began rolling past the bus and an officer came into view, not even a foot from the open window, but hidden behind the bulk of the larger automobile until they were directly alongside it. Darkness pooled under the helmet the officer wore and darkened the top part of his chiseled face, hiding his eyes in the void the light missed. An insignia on the man's shoulder didn't match that of a sergeant and glinted, catching Alexander's eye a moment before the same light glinted off the barrel of his assault rifle.

They didn't see Scott's face, but his tensing muscles was their only warning before they had even seen the gun. Alexander began to raise his weapon but the other man squeezed the trigger first, and Scott jerked in his seat as bloodshot from his head and sprayed against the grunt's visor.

Alexander fired blindly through his door, the bullets more than enough to punch through the steel and into the assailant. The tires screeched as Scott's foot slammed down, muffling the gunfire erupting outside. The vehicle surging forward caused him to fall into the seat, and in a swift movement he shoved against it and crammed himself between the front seats as bullets cut through the doors and windows; he could hear the kid's corpse take the brunt of the hail as he grappled with the steering wheel and cranked it to avoid plowing through a lobby window, instead crushing one of their attackers who had strayed too far into the road.

A volley of bullets stitched up the grill as the person went down shooting, cutting grooves into the hood before punching through the windshield. Alexander felt a round strike his shoulder harmlessly and gripped the wheel tighter as he jolted over the body with a crunch. The engine began to idle as the tension in Scott's leg eased up, so the grunt reached down and shoved down on the limb until the engine began to roar again.

He needed to get away from the ambush before the car was crippled. He couldn't afford losing it or he wouldn't have enough time at the hospital.

Kara counted seven officers firing on them from surveillance cameras, minus the one under the tires and the other that Alexander had gunned down. Their positions were strategically placed for the ambush behind cars, trees, and storefronts along the empty stretch of road, and the SUV was directly in their killing lane.

For a microsecond, she tried to understand why this was happening. The ambush was an act of malice by the police force- they had abandoned their posts and left the gate open instead of keeping the checkpoint secure. They were trying to trick people into believing that the post was abandoned and lure them into a trap. They had shot one of their own members at point-blank range after he announced his presence, and despite what Scott had said, they didn't exactly treat him like family. She noticed no visible reaction from them as two of their own fell, or any reaction at all. It wasn't natural; humans are expressive creatures, but their faces remained blank slates as they emptied rounds into the back of the fleeing vehicle.

They were not seeing their actions. It was too late to ask Scott about how capable the ghosts were with possession, but she was figuring it out herself by watching how the hostile group move like clockwork.

She could kill all of them. It would be easy, humans were slow creatures, especially now. But yet, she hesitated. Alexander could get pretty far before she would be able to catch up. Every time she had left him alone something tried to kill him, and with the forces attacking the city she could clearly calculate the likelihood that he would run into something that wanted him dead.

She found herself losing interest in leaving Alexander for even a moment, and instead turned her attention to the SUV. She could take control while Alexander returned fire, and if it was compromised, which was growing more likely with every second, she could just find another.

Then, something grabbed her attention in a very literal way as a humanoid figure ran in front of them, glowing a light blue. Alexander, and in turn her, were thrown into the front seat as they slammed into it, stopping the car in its tracks with a screech of crumpling metal. The armor on the grunt's chest took the brunt of the impact and compensated so his ribs didn't shatter, but the dashboard and radio didn't fair the same as nearly three hundred pounds crushed it into oblivion.

Kara's sensors nearly failed her as she was thrown around, but she managed to piece together that they had hit a pokemon. She couldn't see it at first because the sensors in the transceiver and Alexander's helmet were buried in plastic, but as she switched back to the surveillance cameras on the street she felt a spike of panic as the Machamp pushed against the screaming vehicle with two of its arms, using the other two to smash the engine down into the pavement with a solid blow. The burnout from the tires faded as the car was killed, and the Rotom began changing her calculations from the likelihood of finding something wanting to kill Alexander to the likelihood of him getting away from it.

The aluminum body crumpled under the Machamp's grip as it got a better handhold, and without effort, it gripped at the frame underneath and lifted up. Alexander was shaken from his hole as the wheels left the pavement, but Kara momentarily paused her thinking as she noticed that the glow had yet to leave the superpower pokemon as it began to spin, staring blankly at the grunt that barely managed to rise to meet it.

This isn't possible.

"Oh, what the fu-" Alexander began, startled by their new company.

It was possible. The blue didn't leave as the Machamp made a full spin, then another. It bent its knees and lept upwards and out of the security camera's view, making examining the phenomenon more difficult as Alexander dislodged from the dash completely and was thrown into the backseat, beside the fallen trainer.

It's using two moves. We could never do that before. Kara thought. There have been more restraints cut away than what I first thought, then. How many restraints are- were there? Are they all gone now? How powerful have we become? What am I capable of?

She pushed aside the thoughts as the spinning grew more intense while the move picked up heat. She worried about Alexander, who was suffering from many things, now including vertigo. The armor would be able to keep him alive from the upcoming impact- she had figured out the rating and knew that his chances were good, although the chance that he wouldn't be good was still there. If he survived the impact, it appeared that he wasn't going to be able to recover quick enough to get away. She kept her panic controlled because it would do her no good to panic, and would only make his survival chances slimmer, noting that they were near the end of the move.

It seemed that she was going to get a chance to answer her questions soon enough.

"Alex, close your eyes and brace." She ordered, and her human complied to the best of his ability. He groped blindly for a seatbelt and clutched it harshly, but by then the Machamp decided it had built up enough momentum. It tossed the SUV towards the ground, the change in direction enough to cause everything that wasn't bolted down to rattle around the interior, Alexander included.

The hatch imploded into the backseat as the rear end struck the ground first, the momentum crushing part of the roof next and the tires as they went into a roll. Alexander bounced off the sides of the interior, losing most of his senses as his armor struggled to keep him from breaking. The blur of colors that was his environment darkened as his helmet cut off the video feed and tuned out the noise in an attempt to keep his senses from overloading. It was somewhat effective; being thrown around without any control was disorientating no matter how protected you were.

Kara reminded herself to keep calm as they glanced off a light post, crushing the door that Alexander had been bouncing off of for the past couple of rolls. The impact changed their trajectory, swinging them directly into a large window pane that had survived up until then. Another rollover, and a dividing wall stopped their tumble, crumbling under the force as they slid forward another few feet before finally resting.

Knowing they wouldn't have much time, the Rotom ejected herself from the transceiver and into the electrical grid of the building. She lost the ability to manipulate the street cameras as she did, but she already knew how many assailants were coming and when they would arrive. The lights in the building flickered as she scanned it for information, uncovering that it was a restaurant with many exits, security cameras, and appliances she could use.

Alexander's chances were improving.

Alexander gasped weakly as he settled, squinting as his vision and hearing were returned. The vehicle was resting on its side, letting him see up through the passenger side windows and at wooden rafters making up the ceiling. It was spinning, but the grunt couldn't wait for it to go away as he struggled to raise an arm. Seeing his obstacle, He shoved the broken body of the trainer off his chest, grimacing at the wet sound of flesh striking metal when the kid rolled off and hit the door beside him. His mind glossed over the damage to the kid's face as it stopped in front of his visor.

Rolling away he checked to see if he still had his Scizor, which he did. Concluding that he could defend himself, he gripped the driver's seat and pulled himself up. His arm tried to give out and he closed his eyes, blocking out the queasy rolling of his organs as he pushed over the seat, grasping the bloodied steering wheel next. He was resting on Scott's shoulder when he felt the man move below him and groan. Alexander hesitated and looked down, seeing the man's eyes rolling around in their sockets and the torn flesh along his cheekbone. Bastard's still alive. Barely, but he's alive.

Focusing back on his goal, he left the officer belted in as he tugged, slipping on the bloodied material a couple times before getting a firm grip and pulling himself further along until he had to squeeze past the crushed dashboard and out the broken windshield.

The grunt swallowed as he crawled past a crushed table, finding a wooden chair to prop himself up. Getting onto the thing would have cost more energy than he wanted to spend, so he used it as a stepping stone and got to where he could lean against the remains of the table. He was in a large serving area, with a bar on the adjacent wall. It looked like a pretty nice place to eat, before the car crashed through it.

"Alexander, you cannot stop right now." Kara buzzed in his ear, a welcome voice that he responded to with a small chuckle.

"Am I at least getting an A Plusle for effort?" He wheezed, obliging as he started pushing himself up. The smile he owned wavered slightly as he strained. Sweat beaded his face as he managed, wavering slightly once his feet were under him. Noting her silence, he shook his head: "Bad timing again, sorry. I'll try sometime else when things are not so Gloomy."

"Alex, focus!"

"Aw, come on. I am focused! There's no need to be Krabby!" The grunt huffed, putting on a brave face and taking a step forward, then almost immediately falling into another table. Huffing he started again, only to stop as the remains of the SUV shuddered. Kara buzzed something frantic and the grunt responded without hearing it, leaping to the side as the vehicle shot forward. The furniture he had been using was smashed into pieces as it slid along the wooden floor, tearing up the boards as it grated along, slamming through the bar and knocking down the shelves of alcohol as it slammed into the wall. Taking up his gun from his spot on the floor, he turned towards the Machamp who stood at the hole.

"That wasn't very effective, asshole!"

I feel that I owe the people that read this an apology. Two months off in a slump wasn't cool to start with, not to mention the chapter before was kind of weak on a prior promise. However, the next chapter will make up for it, I assure you all. As always, I like reviews. Tell me if I'm doing things right. If there's errors, or something that is unsatisfying, or if you think that my writing should be smoother, let me know.

Until whenever I update this next,

See ya then.