Chapter Nine: Best Laid Plans
"You're insane!" Tiff hissed at me as we skulked up the stairs of Arabella's brothel. To be fair, she sort of had a point. Here we were, hostages recovered, totally free to escape our previously enforced stay with the criminal group. And I was heading up the stairs instead of out the door.
"I'm not leaving without Arabella," I growled back softly. "No one is making you come with me."
"Oh yeah, I'll just slip on out and leave the guy who saved my Pokémon from slavery all on his own," she hushed as I held up a hand for silence, but continued as if I had never interrupted when I signaled the all clear to move into the hall, saying "Not gonna happen."
"Then quit your bitching and keep your eyes open," I said, a little rougher than intended. So close now, I kept thinking. I could all but smell the wine I'd poured down the bitch to make this possible. Tiff didn't seem taken aback by the tone I'd used. Thick skinned, that one.
"Take a right here. She has a whole suite here on the south side of the house," she directed, nearly matching my tone. "And you keep up," she all but growled at her handcuffed and gagged uncle, who she was stealthily dragging along by a grip on one ear. He looked clearly pained, but one death-glare from each of us plus Spitpyre had quieted him back in his own room.
"Gotcha. 'Pyre, keep your talons up," I whispered. The fighting bird didn't bother to huff at me, he just stepped more lightly. The too-loud to my overly hyped hearing tap of his footsteps ceased. Say what you will about how brazen and hot-headed Blaziken are, if you train them right that cushion of feathers makes for excellent sneaking. "Tiff, what sort of defenses are we looking at up ahead?" I was lucky as hell that I'd managed to make an ally out of the ex-Aqua. She'd been able to point out several alarms I might have otherwise tripped on the route to the quarters of Arabella and her higher level subordinates.
"Not a clue. I've never been in her suite before, she always accepted reports and handed out orders in her office. I've heard about the layout of her suite from one of the Galactics who got stuck keeping the place clean when she's out on business, like when you found the Survival Area base, but never actually been there." Great, for all I knew I was walking into another ambush.
"Goody. Didn't want this to get too boring," I sighed. I kept a hand on my sword and kept creeping down the hall in spite of my desire to sprint forward. So close now. Almost got her.
"Shut up before you jinx us again you doof," she glared at me. The repetitions of so close and gotcha now bitch and so on inside my head fouled my thinking for a moment before I remembered the incident on the way back from our visit with Cresselia. I gave her a grin of acknowledgment as we stopped in front of a heavy security door.
Oh, it was as fine and fancy as everything else in the big old house, but I'd seen enough fortified doors to know one on sight. It looked a lot like mine, actually, though the rich maple shell might have hidden its nature a bit better than my more obvious choice. Sadly, even heavy steel doors aren't all that secure without all the pesky security fittings. At my urging, Tiff called out her Lanturn and directed the big fish through freezing each lock with Ice Beam. Then, moving ever so carefully, Spitpyre would tap them with a single talon, shattering them with a soft crack. I held my breath after each of the six locks cracked, waiting for the alarm to sound.
Oh, other means of bypassing the locks were open to us. Spitpyre could have melted the locks into slag in seconds, but that risked starting a fire. It would have been much quicker, but not the best way to be sneaky. Given time I might have been able to pick the locks, though at least one of them looked fancy enough to be potentially beyond my ability. But that would have taken much longer, more risk of one of the doctors on the other side of the floor spotting us should one decide to head downstairs. With the whole suite to herself and her bed beyond the dressing room inside (assuming Tiff's intel was reliable), this seemed like the best compromise between speed and silence.
After bypassing the last lock, Tiff called her Lanturn back into her ball and replaced her with a dopey looking but friendly Slowbro. The big pink Pokémon looked to her for instructions at once, seemingly not even noticing me but reacting appreciably quickly for his species when Tiff signaled him to keep the Shelder attached to his tail up high and off the hardwood floor.
"Alright, we're gonna try to go in quiet and snag the target," I reminded my allies in my all-business voice. "But if any alarms get raised, we hit whoever is inside fast and hard. Take 'em down quick, grab the target, and then smash the wall out to take off via flight. Then we gotta get word of this operation to someone we trust on the double so the rest of these people can get taken down and sorted out. But whether we can fix this place or not, we get the target and get gone in a hurry. I am not getting my ass kicked in like when they caught me."
"Course not," Tiff giggled softly. "They don't have me and my big bad Gastrodon to flatten you this time." I gawked at her briefly, not having made the connection before.
"That was you?" I was more shocked than angry. Then I lifted an eyebrow in thought and smirked at her. "You owe me a new lighter and a pack of cigs. Possibly my PokéGear too, but the lighter comes first." We shared a quiet laugh. Spitpyre and even the Slowbro (who I later learned was named Bazooka Joe) just stared at us like we were fools. Like I said, the lady had a point when she called me crazy. "Alright, get ready. And whatever you do, don't kill or mind-wipe Arabella," I intoned sternly to everyone present. Partly to myself. So close. I fucking gotcha now.
The door opened smoothly on well oiled hinges as I eased it outward into the hallway, easing icy shards of metal out of place and pocketing them silently before they could slip free and clatter all over the floor. As the thick steel and maple door swung slowly towards us, I held up a hand to keep Spitpyre from slipping inside. The moment the door had cracked, a loud rumbling had met my ears. Snoring. Loud, abrasive snoring. From a throat that sounded absolutely filled with phlegm.
I peeked around the door frame, and saw what I had expected. A Swalot, less than a foot shorter than myself and almost my own weight. Its beady yellow eyes were hidden within the folds of its blobish purple skin, shut tight in sleep, and its barbels drooped. I could see runnels of venomous drool leaking from its wide, snoring mouth with every breath it took. That accounted for the sticky wet sound of it snores. I stepped back and motioned for my friends to look as well, putting a finger to my lips to remind them of our need for silence.
So, Arabella was trusting her Swalot to guard her chambers. The very same Swalot she had once threatened to feed me to, on the day we first met. If I'd been doing what my raging temper demanded of me and charging into battle, I could put it down easily enough. As a pure Poison-type, the big lump of stomach would go down with ease to Maiden's Ground moves, and as a Steel type she'd be immune to its Poison techniques even if it got a shot off. Spitpyre could burn it alive if need be, though I was worryingly short on antidotes for such a venture. And of course, Tiff could ask her Slowbro to turn its Psychic-type powers upon the beast, always an unpleasant experience for a Poison-type Pokémon.
But I wasn't charging forward with abject violence in mind. I was sneaking in quietly. And Maiden's methods, while effective, would not be quiet. Bazooka Joe could probably have been more stealthy with his Psychic attack, provided he didn't use anything overly flashy, but even if he smashed it in a single shot the Swalot would have time for a death cry.
"I don't suppose your Slowbro there has Dream Eater?" I whispered as softly as I could and still be heard over the snoring Swalot.
"Nope, Joe here never learned that one. They wouldn't let me use Yawn, since they didn't want me catching more mons for myself, so it didn't seem useful. Shoulda known better," she shook her head.
Crap, there went any chance of taking the thing down without waking it up. Maybe we could just tiptoe past it and grab Arabella, then make her recall the freaking thing. I signaled the gang and headed in, managing my sword carefully. I certainly didn't want to go tipping something over in the dark, even if the blob did seem to be so deeply under that a herd of Rapidash could stampede through and not wake it up.
I was halfway across the spacious dressing room when one yellow eye popped open and the Poison Bag Pokémon seemed to grin. I realized the obnoxious snoring must have been an act just as it hocked up a mouthful of purplish gunk and spat it at me.