Sorry again for the time taken to update. I think the more... violent ones amongst you will enjoy this chapter.

Please R&R

-Ship-

Chapter 7

Dena opened bleary eyes, seeing only black. As her vision cleared, she saw a minuscule red light, giving a red ambience to a centimetre-wide circle of grey metal. Upwards was the occasional star briefly breaking free of the clouds that shrouded the land, darkening the already moonless night.

She stood, and turned around. As she reached out with her hand, a sharp burst of pain pulsed through her, forcing her arm to retract. She stumbled backwards and hit a bar, another shock racking her body. She fell to the ground and pulled her leg in as yet another shock caused her to spasm on the dirt floor.

Dena lay, shivering, her mind blurred by the three successive shocks. She remembered the sight of the ranger, trapped in the cage. Outrage burned in her heart as she recalled being attacked, and, finally, the man trying to lift the door free of it's frame.

She surmised that she, too, was in a cage, and she quickly felt for her bag. It was not there, at her side. They had taken her pokémon. Dena growled and shoulder barged the now visible side of the cage. Electricity ran through her and she was thrown to the ground again. A hoarse voice came from the darkness.

"Dena?"

Dena pulled herself to her hands and knees warily.

"Dena? Don't touch the bars. It hurts."

"I got that, thanks." She squinted for the source of the voice, "Adrian? Is that you?"

"It's me. What's going on on the outside? Are people rebelling?"

Dena recognised the man's voice the second he had spoken. Adrian, a ranger, had competed in the Hoenn League against her, and won, but he lost against Oscar later on in the tournament. The man had become good friends with the trio, especially after finding that he had lost to the brother of Jack, who had also defeated the ranger.

"I – I don't know – Jack left Littleroot, and I followed. There were soldiers there..." Dena's eyes teared up as she remembered the plight that Littleroot had been left in. "I don't know. I don't even know if they're still alive... Mum, Dad, Dale, Max, Rose, none of them."

"I'm sure they're fine," Adrian asserted forcefully. "Don't worry about them, Dena, they've got as good a chance as we have, if not better. We-"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off as a door banged open. A bright torchlight shone into the black night.

"Awake, are we?" A sneering tone came from the direction of the torch. A switch was flicked on, and a lamp bathed them in light. Dena immediately looked down into the crook of her elbow, shielding her eyes from the light. As she looked up again, she saw that both her and Adrian were in separate cages beside a trailer. The cages were powered by a lead snaking it's way back to the ranger station. The bearer of the torch was a lean soldier, a gun strapped across his front. He was tossing a small grey ball up and down.

"Custom balls, eh? Clever." He scowled at Dena. "You may as well get some sleep, scum. Tomorrow's a big day."

Dena became more and more frightened of the man as his mouth broke into a thin grin. He dropped the ball onto the floor, spat after it, and sauntered back into the station, turning the light back off as he did.

Dena reached her arm through the barely visible bars of the cage, and closed her hand over the ball. She tapped the button on the front, and it swung open. No light came from the empty capsule, and fresh tears welled up in her eyes.

Dale sat on the bench, Rose beside him. "Don't you worry." He told her gently, "We're safe."

She sniffed quietly. "Dale?" She asked, "What if they do come back? What then?"

"Well," Dale hesitated, "That's why we blocked off the road. Besides, the pokémon are more than a match for a few soldiers."

At that precise moment, a shout went up from the lookout post. Dale snapped his head up to see Fearow diving down towards the village's gateway.

"Rose, go and wait inside for me, ok?"

She shook her head, suddenly terrified. Dale reached to her side and took a pokéball. "Marshtomp? Could you take Rose inside?"

Marshtomp quickly looked around, saw Rose's tears, glanced towards the gate where people were already gathering, and understood. He nodded firmly, and took Rose by the hand, slowly leading her indoors.

Dale stood hurriedly and ran to the gate, muttering multiple curses under his breath. "Hey!" He called, "What's going on?"

Silver turned as he saw his son. "Dale, good." He said, before turning to address everybody There's a lot of trucks coming down Route 101. Fearow's going up again to watch them, but we need all hands on deck." He was calm, as if dealing with a much simpler situation. "Somebody man the turret, and get ready to repel them. Normally, we should run. This isn't normally. First, we have nowhere to run to, and next, we have four full teams of pokémon, plus those usually left with Max, Simon's Grumpig, Tom, you have your team of Machamp, and Max, you have a fucking army. They probably don't have anything more than a few Combusken. So, we have the advantage."

Max chuckled, "I've more than an army of pokémon. I'd like to let them deal with my mortar." he said, hurrying back to his lab before anybody could question him.

Fearow took off again, spiralling upwards. Dale recalled his team, vaulted onto Tropius and followed; the thick, leafy wings labouring to bring them up to the same altitude. A convoy of perhaps fourteen armoured cars and trucks rolled down the hilly route, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them. Tropius soared at high speed to reach the convoy, slowing to circle above it.

Dale unhooked a ball from his belt and held it to his lips. "Torkoal, match 5 in the Hoenn league? You beat the shit out of Golem and Swampert, remember?" He smiled at the memory, "You're going to do exactly the same thing, but this time, there are more of them."

Dale lowered the ball again and waited. The convoy was moving quickly, but it would take a minute for them to traverse what was left of the route, so he contented himself with simply observing the oncoming storm of wheels and bull-bars. Fearow was slightly higher than Tropius, and Dale could see the sharp, calculating eyes of the fierce pokémon.

"Fearow!" Dale called. The bird jerked it's head in his direction, fixing him with one eye. "I'm going to call out Torkoal, do you think you could catch him and hold him up?" Dale was struggling to make himself heard over the howling of the high winds, but he saw Fearow nod once, and drop slightly, so she circled beneath them. Dale held out the ball, pushed the button and watched the light form into the shape of Torkoal. The shape suddenly assumed solidity, and Torkoal was falling unchecked.

Fearow dived alongside hooking Torkoal's shell with sharp claws. She straightened out, flapping to keep the heavy weight still.

"Now, Fearow, let go!"

Fearow nodded once more, dropping Torkoal down. Tropius followed, stopping fifty feet above the ground, and Dale saw Torkoal crash down onto the ground sending up an explosion of dust. The convoy stopped in the face of this new arrival, short of the town by twenty metres, and everybody watched. As the dust cleared, Torkoal reappeared, and Dale could have sworn the gnarled old pokémon was smiling, even from his lofty vantage point. Dale smiled, too, and shouted, with all the strength in his lungs: "Eruption!"

Great plumes of fire burst from Torkoal's shell, enveloping the area with a mushroom of flames. Torkoal, Dale knew, would be under the destructive shell of the mushroom, charging up his most powerful attack. The flames dissipated, and the foremost of the convoy was burning, engines issuing black smoke. A small sphere of bright light was forming in the agape mouth of the fire pokémon, and as the soldiers, evacuated from their vehicles with practised speed, looked on, they realised what was about to happen.

The smarter ones got out of the way. Those less fortunate were caught up in a beam of pure energy that stabbed through the air, destroying most of the vehicles and leaving a sizeable strip of charred grass extending as far as a small ridge, beyond which the ground had been protected by the mound of packed earth.

From the town, twenty or so pokémon ran to assist Torkoal. The soldier's, now with their weapons ready, began to fire at the wave of incoming assailants. Tropius landed on a pair of soldiers, who, back to back, were crushed beneath his feet. Dale jumped from Tropius' back and called out the two other pokémon who had been taken on the short flight; Mawile and Manectric. Dale turned as a soldier aimed a gun at his head, a moment of fear arising in his heart, but a flaming foot clouted the man and he fell still. Blaziken landed in his place, and glanced towards Dale, winking.

Dale picked up the man's gun, cursing his thoughtlessness at leaving the rifle he had been using in the town. He aimed towards the main cluster of soldiers, hidden behind five comusken and four Machamp (all four of whom were locked in deadly embrace with their counterparts in Tom's team).

He released a shot, missing a soldier by a hair's breadth, and the man snarled. He turned, and Dale saw a broad cut across his cheek, shallow but bloody. Perhaps it had been closer than he previously thought.

The soldier whom Dale had shot at reached to his belt and threw a pokéball. From the ball emerged a colossal mass of blue and grey. Dale recognised the pokémon as a Metagross, and looked again at the man. A lopsided grin appeared on a weathered face as he looked back at Dale, a grin that Dale recognised too well. A grin that took Dale back to Oscar's death.

Dale walked forward, gun held tightly in his loose arm; walked forward through a battlefield of fire, grass, water and thunder; walked forward towards the man, heedless of a great cry from above him as the dragon that mothered his friend's partner crashed into the cold steel giant that killed that same pokémon; walked forward, lifted his arm, and shot, four times. One bullet met a shoulder, another impacted high in the chest. The third shattered a collarbone, and the fourth, as the man fell, broke through the thick bone of the skull, and buried through and out the other side, spraying blood and flesh onto the man's comrades.

Dale dropped onto his knees, repeatedly shooting at the fallen corpse across the route, tears falling from his face. He closed his anguished eyes against the bloody mess of the open grass, and against the terrible fight that raged.

He opened them again as an eerie silence fell. The last of the soldiers were dead. Their pokémon dead or incapacitated. Only Salamence and Metagross still fought, and the fight was short lived, for Salamence closed her teeth around one leg of the fearsome pokémon, and tore it free. She brought it to the ground with an almighty roar, hammering the beast to submission. The rock vice grip or her jaw split the solid iron body of the pokémon, and, with a cry of triumph, she reared up over the empty body.

Anger wracked Dale's body as he saw the man, lying dead on the cold ground. Plautius.