He awoke to whining and growling.
Getting up to a seated position, Longwei looked between the two sources of noise. Poochyena was whining on the floor, looking between Longwei and the hotel's partially open window, while Luxio was on the bed, rumbling a quiet warning to the newest disciple. '… If this is because Poochyena tried to take a spot on the bed, there will be discipline in store for them both.'
Luxio had been adamant on making Poochyena sleep somewhere other than the bed last night. Longwei had tried talking her out of it, yet she insisted. After a series of questions he discovered it was allegedly because Luxio would not trust Poochyena so quickly, but Longwei knew that wasn't the only reason. Luxio clearly felt Poochyena had not yet earned the privilege of sleeping on the bed yet and also harbored some resentment towards them. Longwei knew he would have to address that soon.
However, the urgency in Poochyena's behavior made it seem as if sneaking on the bed wasn't the problem. "What is the matter, Poochyena?"
Poochyena responded by looking anxiously to the window, the door, and him in turn.
Longwei's eyes narrowed as he considered the possibilities. Perhaps Poochyena heard some foul actors approach? To think the Jubilife Sect would already be upon him! "Enemies are approaching?"
Poochyena rapidly shook his head up and down, then ran to the door and started pawing it.
'How could they have found me so quickly?' the tall old man with bright white hair, white eyes, and white clothing thought to himself. 'How determined are they to find a single old man!?'
Longwei shook his head. "They will be expecting that." He walked over and picked up Poochyena, tucking the small pokémon over his right shoulder and keeping them held securely under his robe such that Poochyena's head and forelegs were poking out.
He then moved to the window, signaling Luxio to follow. "We will be making our escape. Luxio, stay close to me and only use techniques when necessary. Do not separate under any circumstance. Poochyena, you are to alert us if one of them nears."
The doorknob to their room began to jostle as if someone on the other end was putting in a key. Without looking, Longwei opened the window all the way and leapt down the multi-story drop, channeling Qi to his legs as he fell. He landed harmlessly in a crouch, and Luxio landed next to him a moment after.
Several nearby humans reacted with shock. "What the—!" "Is that—!" "It's him!"
But before any could make a move, Longwei broke into a sprint down the night street, turning into an alley to break line of sight. Even then, he did not stop.
He was faster than any powerless human—which Longwei was beginning to suspect was every human in this world, owing to the complete lack of practicing cultivators he has seen thus far and with how the scientist from earlier specifically only mentioned pokémon when talking about spiritual growth—but their spirit beasts were still a concern. The fact Luxio could keep pace with him so easily despite him putting his all into moving quickly was proof that he could not simply escape in a straight line. He had to lose his pursuers in the maze of streets and alleys.
Poochyena barked a warning, and Longwei made a quick turn down another alley. A large dark blue bird-like pokémon—a honchkrow—suddenly slammed into the path that he would have run down without the warning.
Longwei continued sprinting. Even if they could not shake all of them, they should shake most. Once their numbers had thinned and reinforcements were far away, he would strike down his immediate pursuers.
They were in a straight alley now, and Poochyena barked another warning, sounding far more urgent this time. But there were no turns to make, so Longwei could only continue sprinting forward.
Recognizing she had no choice, Luxio wreathed herself in electricity and without leapt several feet into the air. A blinding flash of light was produced overhead at the same time a shrill avian squawk sounded out, and a moment later Luxio landed on the ground beside Longwei while the same honchkrow from before landed some distance ahead.
The honchkrow righted itself quickly despite the serious damage it had taken, then spread its wings and flapped a powerful and continuous Gust of air their way.
With nowhere else to go but forward, Longwei pushed through the wind to the best of his ability, his spirit stinging from the attack more than his body. But fortunately he did not have to endure for long, as Luxio then fired a Thunderbolt which brought an end to the honchkrow's attack and sent it toppling to the floor in a charred heap. They continued forward, running past the fallen honchkrow.
Alley through alley and street through street, their escape continued. Pedestrians on the streets were confused, especially whenever Longwei jaywalked at speed, but none moved to stop him. Similarly, many startled alley pokémon crossed their paths: trubbish, meowth, glameow, and more, but none intervened.
Running through another series of alleys, their path soon opened up into a small basketball court tucked in-between towering buildings.
Longwei sprint straight across towards the only other alley path, when suddenly Poochyena yelped. A honchkrow touched down, blocking the only exit with its body and producing a Gust of wind immediately, stopping Longwei in his tracks. This one was clearly different from the other honckhrow, being larger and undamaged. But more than that, it had a heavy man on its back wearing an unbuttoned black t-shirt, black shorts, and sandals without socks.
The large wide-set man jumped off and released the rest of his team right before Luxio's Thunderbolt struck the honchkrow and interrupted its Gust. A cacturne, a sneasel, and a murkrow all materialized, each taking up positions that would obstruct Longwei's path forward.
The moonlight shone down as the shorter man spread his arms wide in mockery and challenge. "Thought ya could get away ya—" he ducked his head, narrowly avoiding a powerful Thunderbolt that was aimed directly at him! "bastard!" The alley behind him lit up as the attack struck nothing, briefly lighting up the night sky.
The man moved behind his cacturne with a scowl.
Longwei mentally reviewed how far he'd run from the hotel. 'It should be possible, if we are quick.'
"Return your pokémon and hand over everything ya got!" the man shouted from behind his cacturne. "And I promise we won't hurt ya!"
"Ohhh, alright." Longwei said with his practiced old man voice. He then returned Luxio and Poochyena to their balls, ignoring their looks of shock, and walked forward with a hunch and a hobble, holding his bag of holding out ahead of him with a shaky hand.
Cacturne began walking forward with the thug right behind him. "Smart call old man."
Once they got close, the man walked out from behind his cacturne and approached Longwei. He snatched the bag out of his hands and made a show of looking through its contents. "Tsk. I'm afraid this ain't enough. Gonna need more if you wanna walk outta here."
"Hmm? But that's all this old man has, why, I can't—"
The thug suddenly grabbed Longwei's arm and yanked him down closer so their heads were at level height. Malice shone in the thugs eyes and he grinned with teeth visible. "In fact, even takin back yer poochyena aint gonna be enough." His free hand wound back, then swung forward—
Longwei's arms moved like a blur. His free hand caught the thug's swing by the wrist, while his grappled arm yanked itself free and braced itself on the thug's shoulder. Longwei moved each in separate directions, forcing the man's thick arm out of its socket with contemptuous ease.
Before he or anyone else could react, Longwei delivered a Qi-enhanced fist straight to the thug's face, sending him rocketing him back into his cacturne and silencing the beginnings of his pained scream. Cacturne caught him and looked down at the now unconscious man in shock!
Longwei then released Luxio and dashed forward, delivering another Qi-fist to Cacturne's face while they were still processing what happened. But instead of being rocketed away like the thug, it managed to hold its footing and only rocked backwards slightly.
Longwei's fist and spirit stung heavily from the impact. Compared to the weak cacnea he fought before, this cacturne's spiritual barbs were much more potent. He took a step back to reconsider his approach, teeth clenched in pain.
Cacturne carelessly dropped the thug and took a step forward, using the movement to put all its force behind a straight Dark-infused punch. But such a telegraphed attack had no hope of striking a master like Longwei, who easily avoided it with another step back and a lean of his upper body to the side.
But then the sneasel appeared from behind Cacturne's blind spot, its claws wreathed in a dark energy as it sailed towards Longwei. A joint strike, utilizing Sneasel's smaller form to attack without being seen! Longwei's hand shot out like a viper, catching the small sneasel by the arm an instant before claw met face. Longwei then turned around, exploiting the sneasel's momentum and slamming it into ground!
The area lit up briefly and a pained squawk filled the area, but Longwei had no time to concern himself with that. He enhanced his fist with Qi and knelt down, intent on taking Sneasel out of the battle immediately, but a quick buildup of Qi behind him convinced him to abort that idea. Longwei broke into an evasive roll forward, and just in time as a crushing blow was delivered onto the area he just was, cracking the concrete below.
Longwei grabbed the sneasel by the red feather on its head as he stood up, then spun around and swung them at Cacturne like a weapon. Cacturne, shocked and not sure how to respond to this, simply held its arms up to guard itself. Longwei got in one, two, three full swings before the sneasel began trying to break free, forcing Longwei to toss the sneasel away mid-swing lest he get clawed. There was another flash of light, and another, much higher-pitched squawk that cut off quickly.
Longwei closed in towards Cacturne while the sneasel was still airborne and delivered a Qi-enhanced uppercut. The strike barely slipped between Cacturne's guard and found purchase on its chin, making it stumble back a couple steps as the force discombobulated its mind. Longwei's spirit stung immensely from the attack, and trace amounts of blood began to seep from open cuts on his fist and arm. But he had no choice, he had no melee weapon to use other than his own body, and his cultivation was too weak to form Qi projectiles without draining himself excessively.
There was another flash of light, but this time it wasn't followed by a squawk. Instead, there was a guttural scream as Cacturne was struck by electricity. It slipped and fell onto its back, but when the electricity cleared it was still conscious.
Longwei sensed another buildup of Qi to his side and leaned back just in time to avoid a Metal Claw that grazed across his cheek, only an inch away from turning him into half a jokester. He snatched the sneasel's leg as it passed by, then threw them down at the still-recovering cacturne before they could lash out.
The basketball court lit up as another Thunderbolt stuck Cacturne, this time catching the sneasel as well due to their proximity. Their cries of pain lasted only a moment, and when the attack cleared they were both still.
Looking around, he saw the murkrow and honchkrow had also been defeated. Their feathers were in disarray, and thin lines of smoke were rising from their electrically singed forms.
"Excellent work disciple." He shook his numbed hand and pressed it against his bleeding cheek, then hurriedly began fulfilling his right as the victor to the defeated's belongings. He walked over to the downed thug, took back the bag of holding he had handed over, and looted everything of value the thug had. Everything except for one thing: his phone. Longwei remembered phones could be tracked on Earth, which was reason enough to avoid them, but he also remembered something about Pokémon phones having maliciously invasive spyware in them. There was no point in taking something that would only endanger him. Besides, it probably had a password that would make it useless to him anyways.
Spoils obtained, Longwei quickly pat the preening Luxio on her head and praised her once more. He'd count the money later—
A door attached to one of the buildings around the ends of the basketball court slammed open, and a familiar thug stepped out with a look of fury. "What the hell's goin on out here?" The first thing the thug saw was Longwei, the white easily visible in the night lighting. His furious bravado immediately gave way to horror. "Holy shit! Holy shit it's him!" he turned his head back into the building, "Guys he's here—"
A sandal slammed into the back of his head with incredible force, sending the thug named Blair into his second involuntary bout of unconsciousness in the last 24 hours. Longwei, able to put two and two together, realized that these thugs were likely not sent by the Jubilife sect, and that Longwei's petty scheme earlier had simply earned him a few small local enemies.
How they tracked him to his second hotel he had no idea, but now Longwei knew they were just common bandits. None of the thugs had shouted something about a powerful backer either, so he knew they had no one but themselves.
Greed flashed in Longwei's eyes. Bandits without backing were merely piggybanks waiting to be cracked open by the first passing rogue cultivator.
Longwei quickly circulated his cultivation base to gauge his reserves. He was a little over half full. And, if his hunch was right, he had already seen the best of what the gang had to offer — assuming the honchkrow on the back of the large-set thugs shirt meant anything compared to the murkrow on the others.
Mind made up, Longwei told Luxio to stay hidden by the entrance to stand watch. He ran inside the building, which opened into a small closet-like space that lead directly to stairs going downwards. A moment was spent to make sure the unconscious sandal victim was moved such that they wouldn't be visible to anyone outside, then he quickly went down the flight of stairs.
He reached the bottom in an instant, which opened into a long hallway. Four doors dotted the sides, while a double door was situated at the very end. The lighting was dim, and what few functioning bulbs there were were flickering, casting the messy hallway into the sort of atmosphere you'd only find in a horror movie.
Which explained why the two thugs that were walking over to ask Blair what the fuck he was shouting about suddenly let out shouts of their own. A scarily tall figure barreled towards them with inhuman speed, his form flickering in and out of vision from the busted lighting's flickering.
Their screams were cut short as Longwei grabbed them both and slammed them together, knocking them cold immediately and dropping them to the floor.
The first door to Longwei's left opened and Longwei charged in without warning, taking the curious thug who'd opened it by the neck and throwing him at the first thug he saw in the run-down living room. The several thugs in the room scrambled to get up from their board games, but Longwei gave them no time to breathe and was upon them in an instant.
"Hrah!" A fist went out, catching a thug by the stomach and launching him across the room.
"Tsu!" Longwei dropped to a knee and swept his leg in an arc, and two more fell to the floor.
"Torya!" He grabbed one of the two falling thugs by the leg as they fell, then used them as a club to smash another thug into the ground.
The last three standing thugs made to charge Longwei as a group, roaring like typical bandits. "Graaaaaa!"
But their clumsy, weak attempts were no match for a cultivator. With speed impossible to base humans, Longwei weaved between them all and struck each with a chop to the back of the neck. "Toh toh toh!" The three then fell to the floor like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Longwei casually kicked the final still conscious thug on the head, the one who he had tripped but didn't grab, sending them to sleep before they could even get back to their knees.
Their wallets were found and their valuables looted with practiced ease. Longwei found some other potentially valuable items, but he didn't he want to run the risk of selling jewelry that might be flagged as stolen to a pawn shop, so he left anything that looked exceptionally valuable or sentimental behind.
Longwei quickly checked the three other side rooms, but found they were mostly empty save for a single sleeping thug in what looked to be a filthy communal bedroom. He filched the money from the familiar sleeping thug's wallet, but otherwise didn't bother searching any of the rooms for valuables and instead ran straight to the end room.
He kicked open the double doors, alerting the lone murkrow inside which gave a startled squawk from atop a sofa chair that had a whole bunch of broken furniture piled up behind it. Longwei did not hesitate, and ran straight towards it full-tilt.
It's eyes shot open in alarm. Flapping its wings, it tried to hop away and get on top of the mound of broken furniture, but Longwei jumped onto the sofa chair and caught it by the leg before it could get to that awkward position. Its other leg reflexively shot out and clawed his arm, drawing further blood, but Longwei ignored it and pinned the bird to the top of the headrest before delivering a quick Qi-infused chop to the top of its head.
Dropping the unconscious bird, Longwei quickly scanned the room with spirit sense, a much cheaper form of spirit sight. Spirit sense has a number of flaws to it when used as an active scanning ability, most notably the ease with which it can be deceived, its difficulty with seeing through surfaces, and its complete inability to read spiritual systems. But its range and speed is considerable even with a weak cultivation base, making it valuable when searching for treasure if stealth enchantments are not at play.
And sure enough, none were at play here. Longwei broke the back off the sofa chair and reached a hand into the pile of furniture behind it, pulling out several handfuls of cash from the secret stash within and depositing the money in his bag of holding.
Spoils obtained, his job here was done. He turned to leave, but next he saw Luxio running down the hallway towards him in a hurry. Longwei's pupils constricted and he sprinted down the hallway, quickly meeting Luxio halfway and continuing forward.
Longwei reached the slightly-open doorway and peered outside through the peephole. Just as he feared, there was a large group of thugs rushing into the opening to check on their large friend and his downed pokémon.
"What the hell happened here?" "Who took down the boss?" "Was it the old man?!" "He's missing a sandal!"
Flashlights waved about the area as the thugs tried to figure out what happened to their boss, some even lingering upon the door Longwei was hiding behind for a few moments before turning elsewhere.
He looked to the alley he originally intended to escape down, and to his dismay that alley was now being blocked by a group of thugs. 'I was only inside for a matter of minutes, were these bandits sprinting after us this whole time?!'
There were around 20 thugs total, and unlike the thugs inside the building, all the thugs here had pokémon with them. Some of them even had evolved pokémon in their midst; mostly a couple skuntanks and mightyena, but there was even a houndoom and a bisharp as well. Longwei got the feeling that none of them were as strong as the large thug's pokémon he fought earlier, but that didn't matter much when quantity could be a quality all of its own.
A pair of fingers pointed towards the building he was hiding in. "Check the base! Either the old man did this, or we mighta been raided by the Bidoof Boys!" Several thugs began to cautiously walk closer, one of them with a mightyena.
Longwei instinctually suppressed his Qi signature to nothing, then tapped Luxio to get her attention. He spoke in a whisper. "Charge up your energy as much as you are able. We will make a break for the alley there," he pointed in the direction of the alley they had originally intended on running down, one now guarded by a skuntank and several weaker pokemon, "and you will need to Spark through any who block our path."
Luxio nodded silently and began to use Charge, a serious look on her face as he she tried to suppress the electricity from externalizing and giving away her position. Longwei waited, stealthily observing the thugs from the peephole and keeping an especially close eye on the approaching party.
Several heartbeats passed, and the group drew close. Mightyena suddenly stopped and sniffed the air, then growled at the others and forcibly took point. It's snout nudged the door open, sniffing the air inside.
Before it had time to react to the thick human and luxio scents right behind the door, a hand reached out and pulled Mightyena inside, making it yelp in alarm before it was tossed down the flight of stairs.
The thugs shouted obscenities and in the same moment Longwei burst out the door. Longwei shoved the closest human thugs aside, clearing a path for Luxio who ran out right after him.
Several flashlights immediately turned to their position as they ran, and shouts began going out as the thugs realized what was happening. At the same time, Luxio ran ahead of Longwei, her form glowing from the Charge'd Spark.
She was over halfway to the alley now, her greater speed able to clear the distance much faster than Longwei could. The skuntank and the smaller pokémon in her path didn't appear confident in their ability to stop her and even looked like they would break before then—
A deafening bang filled the area, and everything went white.