As Aiden ventured onwards, maneuvering through a myriad of winding paths and battling through hostile crawlers, she eventually managed to come across a flat, egg-shaped patch of land amidst a crowd of towering trees. In the middle of the oval stood a bright red flag which fluttered wildly in the wind. Upon seeing the flag, Aiden immediately sprinted towards the egg's center, plucked the flagpole from the ground, and began waving it in the air elatedly.

"Here it is, Treph! We did it, and the sun's still up too!"

"Yeah, we did it, alright," Trevor cheered halfheartedly, feeling as if he had served no role in getting there.

"Can you believe it?!" Aiden wildly twirled the flag around as she began hopping around in elation. "We're about to ace this test! We're actually about to become official explorers!"

"No, you're not," a raspy, venomous voice declared from one of the trees which surrounded the pair. "Not a weak, pathetic team like yours."

"Huh?" Aiden muttered, dropping the flag and balling her paws into fists. "Most crawlers can't talk. Who are you?! Show yourself!" Trevor, meanwhile, clutched Aiden's satchel while backing away, his eyes frantically darting around in an attempt to find the voice's source.

There was no response. A deafening silence lingered in the air as Aiden bent her knees, steeling herself up for a looming battle. Right as Trevor felt as if he was about to burst from tension, a giant, winged shadow propelled itself directly towards Aiden from a group of trees, which she narrowly managed to jump away from. The shadow's face ungracefully collided with the jungle floor, landing with a loud crash and creating a trail of displaced dirt in its wake. From the tree the shadow had emerged from, a distinctly bigger figure jumped down and threw up its scissor-like pincers in visible frustration.

"Dammit Ave, I told you to wait for my signal!" the bigger shadow vented as he began storming towards the pair, revealing himself to be a hulking, violet colored Drapion.

"Sorry Fang," the winged shadow apologized, popping his head out of the ground to reveal the massive mouth of a Golbat, a giant lump now visible atop his head. "I thought that I could, you know, get a jump on them while they were stunned by your poisonous insults."

Upon seeing the two, Aiden's angry expression transformed into one of startled recognition. "You...you two are from the Bush Burners, aren't you?! The rookie-crushers that disappeared a while back!"

"Course' we are," Fang replied pridefully. Trevor immediately recognized his voice as the harsh raspy one from earlier. "And we're here to do what we do best. Burn garbage teams like yours so they never enter another dungeon again."

In an instant, Fang lunged towards Aiden while brandishing one of his pincers wildly. Aiden managed to duck under the razor-sharp claw before counterattacking with a swift uppercut to the chin, sending the Drapion stumbling backwards in pain. It wasn't long after landing this hit that she abruptly lost her footing, Ave having created a massive gale of wind by aggressively flailing his wings. Fang, upon regaining his composure, went for another wild haymaker and was promptly sidestepped, then counterattacked yet again.

"Hey, this one can actually fight!" Ave shouted, his eyes widening in shocked admiration. "That's more than we can say for most of our targets!"

"Shut up," Fang snapped, "She's just getting lucky! If we can slow her down, she'll be completely vulnerable. Lets immobilize her with poison!"

Aiden barely had an opportunity to rest before both Fang and Ave began spitting out globs of black sludge towards her at high speeds. While struggling to maneuver around the barrage of poison, she managed to notice Trevor edging towards her with a paw in his satchel, a look of desperation etched on his face.

"Trevor, run! I've heard of this team, their leader's still out there!" As Aiden screamed this warning, a large Drowsee suddenly emerged from the thick grove of trees and began rushing towards Trevor from behind.

"Behind you!"

Trevor swiftly spun around to find Drowsee winding up a punch, waves of malice emanating from his presence. Learning from his encounter with the Riolu from before, he was able to narrowly jump away from the attack and flee back into the dark depths of the jungle.

"A runner, huh? Whatever, I'll catch him either way." The Drowsee gave an indignant smirk before calling out to his two teammates. "Ave! Fang! I'll chase down the weak-looking Meowth, so you take care of this cocky loudmouth."

"You got it, Grudd," they responded simultaneously.

"No! Don't touch him! I swear, lay one finger on him and I'll-," was all Aiden managed to scream before being hit on the back by a wave of tar-like sludge.

"Hah! Eyes over here, dumbass! Now my poison will slowly fester inside of you, leaving you completely unable to move!"

As Aiden turned her attention back towards Fang and Ava, she caught a glimpse of Grudd running towards the opening in the jungle where Trevor had gone. "This...this is all my fault! I dragged him into this mess, yet I can't protect him. Trevor's gonna get hurt because of me! Whatever you do, don't let him catch you!"

-

Trevor, still clutching Aiden's bag as if his life depended on it, sprinted as far as his tired legs would take him. He had long since lost track of where he was, turning at every opportunity and not bothering to cover up his tracks. Therefore, despite his best efforts to escape the dungeon, he instead found himself face to face with a giant boulder marking a dead end. By the time he turned around to retrace his steps, Grudd was already a couple meters away, staring with a self-satisfied grin.

"You know, Pokémon teams used to have integrity," he monologued as he began walking slowly towards Trevor. "Back before rescue teams turned into explorer teams, only the toughest and most dedicated of Pokémon were willing to enter dungeons of their own volition. We strove to study and explore dungeons for the sole sake of helping trapped Pokémon in need; being in a team used to mean something. But now? Now we're stuck with Pokémon like you. Weak, pathetic amateurs only concerned about cheap thrills and easy Poké. Disgusting." Grudd's eyes grew manic as his pace steadily began to quicken. "Now I'll break every bone in your body as a message so these dungeons are never sullied with your kind ever again. Both you and that stupid, loudmouthed girl!"

As Grudd closed in, Trevor shoved a paw into his bag and pulled out an wooden thorn, a look of wild desperation etched into his jittering pupils. Grudd stopped with a bemused expression.

"Go for it, just try throwing that at me. See what good it does."

Trevor gripped the thorn tightly to the point where his claws began digging into his palms, staring at his attacker with wild, desperate eyes. In a state wild desperation, Trevor hovered the thorn behind his head momentarily before throwing it with all the force he could muster. Grudd braced himself, preparing to dodge.

Only for the thorn to hit the ground, a few feet in front of him.

Grudd's patronizing smirk instantly dissipated into sheer, unbridled rage. "This is what dungeon teams have devolved into?" he growled bitterly, continuing to storm forwards. "Groups of children incapable of throwing in a straight path?! I never should have taken that hiatus, not when there's trash like you being given a free ride to-"

Grudd stopped his forward ascent upon hearing a faint, yet distinctly audible hissing sound around his feet. By the time he looked down and found the cracked, ash-colored blast seed roped to the now half-buried thorn, it was too late to run away. From just a few meters away, Trevor's eyes glinted briefly as the seed finished its internal countdown.

The sound of the resulting blast thundered all throughout the jungle, releasing a shockwave that hurled stray leaves and branches several feet into the air. The explosion was loud enough to make both Ava and Fang look away momentarily towards the trail of smoke in the direction which Grudd had ran off to. "Boss..." they both stammered dazedly before Aiden swiftly aimed two well-placed kicks onto the backs of their heads, knocking them out instantly.

"Eyes...over here...dumbasses," she managed to mutter before collapsing as well, Fang's poison having taken its toll on her body. Thoughts of Trevor flashed in her head as her eyesight turned black, followed by her consciousness slipping away.

"Ohmygod," Trevor mouthed, covering his mouth with both paws as he gazed fearfully at what the blast seed had done. The bright, spectacular explosion had left a large, smoking crater of charred dirt in its wake. The now unmoving Drowsee laid flat on his back, covered in burns, gunpowder, and a sizable amount of blood. In that moment, Trevor was half convinced that he had committed a murder.

Hesitantly inching towards the still body, he shakily raised a paw towards Grudd's neck, and to his relief, felt a pulse. Trevor let out a comforted sigh before noticing that the heartbeat was exponentially increasing in pace. Before he could react, Grudd sprang up, grabbed onto Trevor's neck, and violently slammed him against a massive boulder, keeping him in an inescapable choke hold. When Trevor attempted to reach for his satchel, Grudd reactively pulled it away. Any attempts to claw his way out of Grudd's grip had no effect as Trevor's eyesight began to fade from oxygen deprivation.

"No...please..." Trevor's whispered plea only served to make Grudd's grip tighter. Bloody, injured, and in an almost zombielike state of delirium, he spent the remainder of his strength screaming, "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!" with seething, bloodshot eyes before releasing Trevor from his grasp and collapsing onto the dirt below. Trevor slid to the bottom of the boulder, pawing his neck and trying in vain to breath as darkness steadily overtook him. Fearfully looking around for the Drowsee's other two teammates and breathlessly calling out for Aiden, he lost consciousness to the sound of sirens blaring in the distance.