Spiteful Murkrow
Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
- Partners
-
The team slipped back into the darkness from which Nida and Elty came, leaving the overpowered Company Nuzleaf and Hitmonchan behind them. It would only be a matter of time before Pleo's absence was discovered by the other Pokémon aboard, but fortunately for Team Traveller, the sleepy atmosphere in the ship's hold hadn't brought that calamity on just yet. Beyond some footfalls and murmurs beyond blind corners, there were no further run-ins with other guards in that portion of the orlop deck. While by no means ideal, it was perhaps as smooth and peaceful a search Nida, Pleo, and Elty could have hoped for as they looked for the stairs to the next deck. Nida could see moonlight leaking through the grate and cracks in the places where the cargo hold met the weather deck up above, allowing her to recheck her earlier guesses about how far they still had to go...
"There's one deck between us and the top," she whispered. "We just need to find a way up!"
Pleo looked about his surroundings, dimly lit by the moonlight filtering coming from past the grate and the floor below... Why, there were nothing but boxes and corridors in every direction around him! How on earth were they supposed to get out this way? Suddenly, the sound of a faint thud rang out, followed by a Growlithe's voice yipping.
"Here!"
Pleo saw Elty perched on top of a stack of crates, and hopped up with a flap to join him. From his perch atop the crates, he saw a wooden pole that cut down the middle of some short planks fastened on the pole's top. Those were stairs! Honest-to-goodness stairs!
"Nida! This way!" he cried as he flew off for the pole, Nida and Elty bounding after him through the maze. The three clambered up the ladder's steps, Pleo leading the way with fluttering hops, Nida and Elty carefully planting their forepaws on the rungs above them before springing their hindquarters up, one after the other...
"Alright," the Nidoran panted. "We just need to make our way through, and then-"
"Gack!"
... only for the two to run into Pleo from behind after he abruptly stopped at the top.
Team Traveller came to a tumbling stop in a disheveled pile, just past the end of the steps. Nida, Elty, and Pleo dazedly tried to sort themselves out, the Fire-Type in the group thankful that the little spike lump hadn't had her barbs spread out. As he shook out his fur along with some sense back into his head, he whirled around at Pleo, growling.
"Hey! Just what do you think you're-?!"
Before he could get particularly far in his rant, the Growlithe suddenly noticed that Nida and Pleo were frozen in their tracks, wide-eyed. Elty then detected the strong scent of many Pokémon around them, and the sound of…
Zzz…
Snoring.
The entire room was packed with a larger variety of Pokémon than even the guild's sleeping quarters back on Tromba, curled up as they dozed on beds of straw and nestled on perches along rafters. Much to Elty's horror, every last one of them wore the lavender scarf of the Company. The Growlithe grimaced, starting to feel his belly burn from stress while his legs shook nervously.
"Uh… on second thought," he began. "Maybe we should try another-"
As the Growlithe continued on, he saw Nida's ears suddenly flick and her head whirl back towards the steps. Elty then heard it too…
Tromp tromp tromp
The sound of tired, shuffling footsteps heading straight for the ladder from the deck below. Elty gulped and looked around at his teammates. Pleo was starting to panic, looking around wildly for somewhere, anywhere to flee to. All of a sudden, a hushed cry cut through the confusion.
"We don't have any other options here," Nida whispered, her voice tense as she raised her barbs. "Let's just try and sneak through."
The Lugia and Growlithe looked across the room, and saw a faint white light near the end. There was an opening! A way to the surface! Without thinking, Pleo spread his wings and-
"Move quietly!" Nida hastily interrupted, wide-eyed.
The little Protector caught himself and hastily drew his wings back. The Pokémon coming up the stairs was close enough for the team to hear its yawning! They needed somewhere to hide, somewhere like…
"Quick, over there!" Elty whispered.
All eyes quickly darted over to a sleeping Ursaring, next to a Donphan and the Electabuzz from earlier in the day, now with bandages about his head. Without thinking, the three darted over and slipped behind the brown bear, his belly rising and falling with every tired breath he took. The Ursaring's breaths reeked of stale gummis and a good deal of drink, but in spite of the less-than-bearable sensations around them, no one dared to move a muscle beyond the shallowest of breaths in and out their lungs.
The guard from below deck then came up with an audible yawn. The three could hear the Pokémon's footsteps plod along the timbered floor. After a tense few seconds, they heard the muffled sounds of the creature settling down somewhere in the room, and the presence faded below the sounds of the snores floating about. But… was the coast really clear-?
"Gwark!"
Pleo suddenly cried out and bolted forward in a panic, darting past a number of Pokémon before coming to a stop. After hearing the crunch of straw, Nida and Elty realized that the Ursaring was shifting in his sleep. The two quickly ran after Pleo, and braced themselves for battle… Only for the Pokémon to roll over, mutter something about "stop hogging the cookies", and then began to snore again as Pleo panted for air, his heart racing...
... only to abruptly feel something warm and furry swat against his underbelly.
"E-Eh-?!"
"Shh!"
Pleo whirled to see the sound of the voice, and saw Elty scowling at him, the Growlithe none too pleased about the close call.
"Let's try a different strategy, okay?" the dog huffed. "Keep darting off like that, and you'll get us all caught!"
"But the big furry Pokémon was gonna get me!" the Lugia piped back.
Elty gave an irked growl as he racked his mind for some throwaway reassurance. If only Pleo still had that stupid rock! Then he could just throw together some slapdash yarn about how the lucky charm would keep him safe as long as he kept his beak shut and crept along with the rest of them! Wait a minute…
Maybe there was still a card from that deck he could play!
Elty set down his satchel and nosed over a clear sphere near the top with what seemed to be flecks of greenish light glowing in it, pointing the bauble out to Pleo.
"Here," he said.
"H-Huh?"
"If you and Nida rub all of the orbs we picked up from the deck below, then even if everyone around us wakes up, we'll get out of here safely," he explained. "That way, if we have to use them, you'll stay on the right side of whatever their effects are."
"Really?" Pleo asked, tilting his head skeptically.
"Would I steer you wrong?" the Growlithe asked. Elty wagged his tail expectantly, only to frown as Nida and Pleo looked at each other and nodded back.
"Okay, let me rephrase that," Elty grumbled, screwing his eyes shut. "Would I steer you wrong considering that we're probably going to get thrown overboard if we get caught here?"
The Nidoran hardened her gaze into a withering glare for a brief moment. She started to mouth something before pausing, and then begrudgingly took up the Luminous Orb from Elty's satchel.
"I think Elty might be onto something," she whispered to Pleo, in a tone that sounded almost confident. "Come on, let's try it out."
She removed orb from the bag and looked into its translucent surface for a moment, before rubbing it a smidge and offering it to Pleo. The young Lugia took the orb as he shuffled along with the team. As he brushed it with his feathers, he became entranced by the warm glow from the light inside it. For a fleeting moment, he felt far, far away from the danger all around him as he gazed into the round, colorful, and surprisingly captivating bauble. The little Lugia then felt Nida nose at his wing, prompting him to deposit the sphere in Elty's bag and take whatever orb Nida passed next.
The sinister, bubbling green clouds of a Foe-Fear Orb… The vibrant blue of a Petrify Orb flecked with dancing electrical sparks beneath its surface... The orbs Nida and Elty first stuffed in also turned up in the process, including a ball filled with glowing yellow spheres… As he paced forward and looked into the orbs in between rubs, Pleo could occasionally see dim reflections of little bits and pieces of the surrounding room. The rafters above, Elty and the light of the stars ahead, a dozing Slowpoke just behind his shoulder with a crown-shaped rock by her forepaws…
Hold on a minute!
"That's my lucky rock!" Pleo squawked. The Lugia whirled around, dropping the Totter Orb with an audible thud, leaving Nida to squeak and dash after it. As she caught the orb with her forepaws, Elty gritted his teeth and grimaced.
"Hey, wait!" he barked.
It was no use; the little bird had already darted over to the pink and cream mammal, uneasily craning his neck from side to side as he tried to puzzle out how to retrieve his stone from the Pokémon's grasp.
"What do you think you're doing?!" the Growlithe yelped. "You can get another one of those once we-!"
By then, the Lugia had already thrust his beak down and promptly snatched up the stone ring. Elty's heart skipped a beat, and he lowered himself to all fours.
The Growlithe braced himself as Nida fanned her spikes out like a blue Durin Berry. The two set their teeth on edge and waited in dreadful anticipation for the moment the grunts all around them to suddenly wake up and dogpile the team. Except…
That moment didn't come.
"Got it!" Pleo cried, his voice muffled by the stone ring that he was holding in his beak as he crept over, bobbing his head in triumph. The Growlithe shook his head and scowled. Was that bird trying to get them all caught?
"All's well that ends well," Nida sighed, as she quickly snatched up the King's Rock and stuffed it into Elty's bag, making sure to bury it deep for safekeeping.
"Whuh? What's- Hey!"
Elty heard a voice call out, and turned to see that the Slowpoke had woken up and was glaring daggers at the group.
"Kurczę," the Growlithe muttered. The creature hadn't been oblivious to Pleo taking his rock back at all! As was common to Pokémon of her species, she'd simply just had a delayed reaction!
"Oi! Everyone, wake up!" the creature shouted. "We've got stowaways!"
The other guards had a much faster reaction to the Water-Type's shouting, and quickly sprang up to attention. No matter which way they looked in their panic, the three young Pokémon found themselves staring at the glaring and growling mass of lavender-scarved Pokémon about them.
"N-Nida?" Pleo stammered, starting to shrink back. "Wh-What do we do now?"
Nida's mind raced for something to say back. She couldn't sting or kick her way out of this one, not even with the help of her teammates. Pleo's power was nowhere to be seen, and going down with the ship thanks to a fire started by Elty was not exactly her idea of an 'escape'.
If only they'd had the time to stock up on seeds, or Gravelerocks, or orbs or- oh, duh.
Nida looked down at the glowing yellow orb in between her paws and slammed it against the floor. As she felt it disintegrate into shards against the wood below, a mass of yellow spheres burst out and fanned out, slipping past the group and enveloping the Company grunts within the room and throwing the unfortunate creatures into a defocused daze.
"RUN!" she shouted.
There wasn't any time to think after that. As the guards about them struggled to overcome the disorienting effects of the Totter Orb, the three bolted for the stairs up to the deck. Nida and Elty darted along the ground as Pleo flew overhead, haphazardly dodging rafters and half-awake guards stumbling up from their bedding in the confusion.
"Here, stay toasty!" Elty barked, as he spat out a column of cinders at some straw bedding, just in time to catch a Dusclops that had freshly phased himself out of an overhead rafter. The creature was still tired and disoriented as he readjusted to sudden corporeality and the unexpected confusion in the barracks, only to suddenly shriek as he felt a burning pain underfoot.
The Ghost-Type's cries rang out as he recoiled back from the cinders, followed by the realization that the bedding beneath his feet had caught alight, and was already starting to spread to nearby heaps of straw.
Panicked cries of "Fire! Fire!" began to ring out about the barracks, various guards stumbling about in conflicting and often colliding directions trying to get at the intruders, the dangerous flames in the room, or simply away from the confusion to safety.
"Did you seriously just start a fire?!" Nida cried, just as she saw Pleo swoop down to the base of the steps to the top deck, and begin to run up them.
"You're welcome!" he cried, digging out the violet One-Shot Orb and throwing it off somewhere into the confused and panicked mass of Pokémon. "Now are we escaping with the mewa or wha-?"
"Nida! Elty! Look out!" Pleo's voice suddenly squawked.
Nida and Elty bounced forward as a dark blue blur of a beetle zipped past, slamming a long, chitinous horn down onto the floor where they had just been. Ah, it was the Dusclops' companion, and none too pleased about the rude welcome Elty gave him. The Nidoran instinctively reared up and tackled the Heracross as he tore a plank out of the floor while pulling his horn free, her barbs raised to try and embed themselves in between the plates of the Bug-Type's exoskeleton. Elty hastily clamped down on one of the beetle's arms, but while the Heracross seemed visibly stung by the wounds, his eyes were still full of enraged vigor. The creature whirled around towards Nida-
"Gyaah!"
Just in time to be caught mid-stride by a gust of wind and crumple to the floor.
"Gack..."
The gust was sharp and cutting, like the beats that Kiran would blow from his wings in battle, and Nida could see a crack dribbling drops of yellowish fluid along the underside of the Bug-Type's thorax where the wind had struck. But… Who on earth-?
"Eh?!" a Lugia's voice stammered. "But that was supposed to send him flying ba-"
Nida looked over to Pleo, who was now standing at the base of the stairs. She blinked for a moment and looked back at the groaning Heracross, when she put two and two together.
"Nice work, Pleo!" she grunted. "I think that one was stronger than normal!"
"It… was-?" Pleo began, only for a Growlithe's voice to cut him off.
"Oi! Brag about your moves later!" the little dog yipped, gesturing at flames behind him that were now mostly smothered from panicked jets of water from Pokémon about them. "No one else is in our way and the stairs are right there!"
That was as good a point as any. The three dashed up the steps, not daring to look back to see who might be following them. Then came the deck, the sails above them along with the night sky with the Moon, the stars, and Forest Guardian's Traveller shining above. Pleo skidded to a stop to let Nida and Elty hop up onto his back, the white bird stumbling a bit from the sudden weight, when all of a sudden, he wavered.
"Nida?! Is this really going to work?!" he cried.
"It has to!" she squeaked, as she dug out the Foe-Fear Orb from the bag. "We don't have any other options!"
"Hurry up!" Elty seethed. "Just get us out of-!"
"Going somewhere?!" a booming voice bellowed from the stern.
The three turned, and their hearts sank as they saw Lyn perched at the helm of the ship, glaring. The Samurott leapt forward, drawing his blades in midair as he dove down at Pleo, who hastily darted ahead of a slash from a seamitar.
"A-Ack!"
The bird stumbled forward, and batted his wings out uneasily to try and regain balance. Pleo's tumultuous attempts to stay on his feet made Nida lose her grip on the green sphere in her paws before she could throw it. The sphere went rolling on the deck like an oversized marble, making the Nidoran cry out in panic as it slipped out of her reach.
"Pleo, come on!" she pleaded, as she reached for Elty's satchel. "If we take off now-!"
"You'll be swimming right into our fins, missy!" a voice cried from below, which was quickly followed by another.
"And don't think the skies are clear for you either!" a voice taunted from above.
"H-Huh?!"
The three looked down and saw a Huntail, flanked by a number of leering creatures circling in the water, waiting for the foolish little Pokémon to go ahead and try and fly over them. Pleo craned his head up, and saw that the skies were similarly uninviting, with flying Pokémon led by a Crobat near the crossbeams of the masts circling about the group. To make matters worse, guards from the barracks were spilling out onto the deck, Elty's fire having apparently run its course as a distraction and the Foe-Fear Orb lying unbroken and out of reach, now in the claws of a very awake and grumpy-looking Ursaring.
"Really now, how incompetent do you think I am?" Lyn sneered, drawing nearer to the group. "Did you seriously think that my ship wouldn't have any escorts? That they would just let some stowaways slip away?"
Pleo grimaced, he scanned his head around desperately as he inched back towards the railing. There really didn't seem to be any way out of here, or at least not one he could see. But his teammates… Did they see anything he couldn't?
"N-Nida? E-Elty?"
"I think I've got something," Elty whispered. "Follow my lead."
The Growlithe suddenly arched his back and bristled his fur, and proceeded to shout out the mightiest, fiercest roar that his young voice could muster.
"OUT OF OUR WA-!"
Only to be cut off by a much louder, bellowing "SHUT UP!" from the Samurott that made the group's blood run cold, and made Pleo to stumble forward in a blind panic and bonk his head on the deck railing.
"O-Ow!"
As the color returned to Team Traveler's faces and senses to their rattled minds, they could hear jeers going about their gathered captors.
"Pffahaha! Was that seriously the best you could think of?"
"Yeah, that yap's nothing when you deal with a Samurott on a regular basis!"
"Captain, they're clearly desperate if one of them was going to try and roar his way out of here!"
"Didn't I tell you this once already?" Lyn spat, glaring at Pleo. "Your old life is over, move on already! Really, what are you going to do here? Do you think that you can just fly away from us? That we can't swat you out of the sky like a common Wingull?"
The Samurott slackened his grip on his right paw's seamitar, and spun it about his knuckles.
"Or are you going to try and fight me? At the tender young age of what, a moon? With a pair of rookies that most of my subordinates were sweeping back in their days as pups?" he sneered. After a few cycles, the Samurott suddenly stopped the blade mid-spin, bringing it to a stop with a firm grasp at the hilt. "For crying out loud, know when to give up!"
The little Lugia froze. It really didn't look like there was going to be any way out of this one. Everything the Samurott said was definitely true. The powers all of Tromba counted on hadn't come to him when he so desperately needed them earlier… Should… Should he really just give up?
Pleo suddenly stumbled a little. The weight of Nida and Elty on his back was still awkward to balance, especially with the two shaking as they were. He tilted his head back and saw that the two were trembling, their ears folded back. Surely things must have seemed just as hopeless and impossible-
"N-Not likely! I'm not about to give up here!" Elty growled, baring his teeth even as his body quaked and betrayed the fear the little dog felt.
Huh? Elty wasn't giving up? But, why?
"Captain, we've got a clear shot at them-" the Ursaring began.
"Hold your fire!" Lyn interrupted, the bear hastily quieting down at the sound of his superior's snarling.
"We- We're- We're not giving up our friend!" Nida stammered, baring her barbs as she tried her hardest to put a brave face on in spite of the situation. "N-Not without a fight!"
Pleo looked around at his teammates, his mind drawing blanks as to how on earth they could still stand their ground even with how bad and hopeless everything looked.
After the meeting at the guild's grounds fell apart, Kiran quickly hurried Crom to the medics' tent. The Druddigon's injuries were treated and bandaged, and his mother, hearing how one of her children had been battered, came to take the young Dragon-type home to sleep his wounds off.
The wounds ran deeper than Crom's hide, alas- the entire rhythm of the little baker family was thrown asunder, their normal routine of making bread and pastries to sell to their fellow villagers grinding to a halt. The oven went cold much earlier than normal without anyone to kindle the wood with dragonfire, and the flour and dough for the evening rush went unkneaded.
The rest of the day was marked by Gwenith tearfully growling invectives at the Company when she felt sufficiently alone. Cenn also wasn't immune to the heightened gravity of the situation, as his normal adamance (or "brattiness" as Crom often put it) gave way to periodic, nervous pestering of "will Crom be okay?" Even Pyry's ritual complaining subsided, as he spent most of the day uncomfortably running errands outside to try and avoid the oppressive atmosphere in the little hut.
Crom eventually bawled himself dry of tears, but the poor Druddigon remained mired in a quiet, inconsolable depression over the loss of his friends to Lyn's ship. The setting of the sun and onset of night brought nothing to ease the dragon's spirits. The simple dinner of gummis and homemade loaves that his mother brought in was similarly ineffective, and continued to sit on a rude wooden table next to the fresh straw bedding his family prepared. Well after the moon and stars rose in the sky, Crom remained curled up and stared off at a wall next to the doorway of the room he shared with Cenn at night.
"Crom?" a younger voice called from the side. The voice made the wounded Druddigon uneasily shift about, and he looked up to see a fellow young, if smaller, Druddigon prodding him.
"Whuh?"
"We're heading to the shrine now," Cenn said. "The whole town's been stopping by there all day to offer prayers."
Even though his brother's words were devoid of the teasing and naive mean-spiritedness that sibling rivalry tends to slip into, they still stung to hear, and served only to make Crom sink deeper into his bedding and curl up tighter.
"We'll be back soon!" the younger Druddigon hastily tried to reassure, waving his claws. "And you won't be alone here, Kiran came to watch you while we're out! Mom says to call him if you need anything."
Crom weakly grunted back something resembling a response. Cenn lingered around for a moment before walking off uneasily, giving one last look at his elder brother as he slipped past the doorframe.
For a few long, quiet moments, Crom sat there, his only company being the aching wounds under his bandages and the dull and now vaguely mournful sounds of night outside. The Druddigon tilted his head to look out the window in the room, and saw the night sky full of stars, the Forest Guardian's Traveller currently making its arc as the Traveller before it set beyond the horizon.
It was then that the dragon decided, no matter how haggard his condition was, he needed to be at that shrine too. If he had only held his tongue back in that crate! But perhaps, he could-!
"Agh!"
Crom's preoccupation with the shrine briefly faded from his mind as he stumbled and tripped while getting up out of bed. His balance was still weak from his injuries, feeble enough to be overcome by a careless pebble trodden underfoot.
"Eh?! Crom?!" a Swellow's voice suddenly squawked. "What are you doing?!"
"Huh?!"
The Druddigon looked up as Kiran swooped into the room, and settled down before his snout. The blue and white bird ruffled his feathers and promptly lectured the dragon, the Swellow's voice thick with concern.
"You're in no shape to be trying to skimp on rest!" he exclaimed. "Why, from my prior experience, skipping rest with wounds like these will keep you bedridden 100% longer!"
"Kiran, please!" Crom insisted, dragging himself up to his feet. "I need to go and pray with the others at the shrine! To pray that Pleo will come back to make all of this right!"
"Absolutely not! You're in horrible condition! Why, almost as bad as Osmund is right-!" the Swellow cried, before the sound of a crash and footfalls outside rang out.
"Ack! Marley!" the sound of elderly bleating rang out. "This is no way to treat a mayor!"
Hatteras? But, what on earth was happening out there?
"Hatteras! Get back here!" a Nidorina's livid voice rang out. "That's my niñita out there! You can't just 'have nothing' for a way to get her back!"
"Dear! Calm down!" a Nidorino's voice frantically interjected. "Give the sheep some time to think of something!"
Kiran lowered his head and put a wing over his face. Of all the times for Nida's mother to have her temper get the best of her, did it really have to be now?
"Besides, it probably wouldn't be good for your nerves to see Marley in her present state right now," Kiran sighed, ruffling his feathers.
Crom flinched at the racket outside and shrank back. Going out while a scary Pokémon like Marley was so upset out on his doorstep was certainly not what he wanted to get into while still hurt… But-
"But none of this would have happened if I wasn't so stupid!" he cried. "If I had stopped and thought about what we were all getting into-!"
"Crom! Please! don't blame yourself!" the Swellow suddenly interrupted, beating out his wings. "Everything happens for a reason, and-"
"What reason could there be for this?!" the Druddigon growled. "Pleo's gone! And so's the rest of the team! And-! A-And-!"
The young dragon's voice broke and began to trail off as tears started to well up in his eyes again. As he began to sniffle and wipe at his nose with a claw, he was suddenly interrupted by a soft feeling enveloping his chest. He looked down, and saw that his team leader had wrapped him in his wings, or as much as a Swellow could for a creature that was a full foot taller than himself.
"I don't know, Crom," the bird responded, his head drooping. "All I know is that since I was young, I've been told that was how things were. That no matter how bad things might get, the gods that were and are yet to come work in spite of it, to make the things that need to happen, happen."
"H-How do you know that, though?" Crom asked. The dragon's tears stopped coming and his eyes gave way to a piercing, pleading gaze as he waited for some, for any reassurance from his team leader.
"I don't, Crom… It's all a hope," the Swellow sighed as he rummaged through his bag. "And it's all that we've got right now."
The Swellow poked his beak in, and grasped something with it. When he pulled it out, the article was revealed to be a silvery-white feather, its tip split at the end.
"That's one of Pleo's feathers," Crom mumbled. "Why did you bring that here?"
"Well, it's said that Lugia's feathers allow for the pleas of Pokémon to reach him. And that the spirits of the old gods still have power over our world, especially over things related to them, and..." Kiran began, as he held the feather out to Crom. "It's not much, I'll admit… But I knew that you would have wanted to help out with what's going on right now."
The Druddigon paused, and after hesitating a bit, pinched the feather in between his claws and brought it up to his eyes.
"I… I suppose it was easier than dragging the shrine all the way down here…"
The Druddigon stared at the feather and was unsure how to start. Was there some sort of rite for calling to Pleo? Did they have to do some sort of weird dance? Did they have to also ask for help from the old gods' spirits in the Travellers above?
"If you can somehow hear this, Pleo- I mean, Travellers Above-" the Druddigon fumbled for words one after the other, until Kiran interrupted with the pat of a wing on his shoulder.
"Crom. Don't overdo it," the Swellow reassured. "Just say what's on your mind."
The Dragon-Type looked down at the feather in between his claws again, and after a pause, he shook his head before beginning again, this time his words coming out as a desperate plea.
"Please! Whoever I'm talking to! Let our friends come back to us!" he cried. The Druddigon and Swellow stared and stared at the feather, but nothing happened. It was still the same old night outside, the same simple room inside, with the same aching wounds on his body, leaving Crom to hang his head as his heart began to sink.
"We- We just want to know that they're okay..." he murmured weakly.
That's when it hit him. The reason why Elty and Nida were digging in their heels on his back and not backing down was for him, and for the town back home that desperately wanted their Protector back…
Pleo whirled his head towards the sea. For a moment it felt almost as if they were right there! Crom, Kiran, Hatteras, Mosca, and everyone else from Tromba! It was like they were all pleading for him to come back home!
Then… maybe… the proper thing to do for all of them was to stand his ground and try to help them back, to refuse to let things end without trying…
"Let us go!" Pleo squawked to the Samurott, beating out his wings. "We even made it to the deck fair and square!"
"I see that you're too stubborn to listen to warnings," Lyn growled, as he flicked both his blades to his sides in a battle stance. "So be it! I'll drag you into a life of service the hard way!"
The Samurott readied his legs and was about to spring forward when a shrill cry suddenly cut him off.
"No! I don't want your awful new 'life'!" the bird shrieked. "And I won't let you hurt my friends for it!"
All of a sudden, the dimly lit ship deck became awash in a silvery glow. From Pleo's back, Nida and Elty saw Lyn freeze in his tracks. The two looked down at their carrier and saw the markings on the Lugia begin to shine bright, his white plumage glowing softly.
"A-Ah," Elty murmured, his muzzle dropping in startled awe.
"Pleo?" Nida asked quietly. Just then, her ears pricked and her blood ran cold as Lyn cried out to the surrounding guards.
"Take them down!"
The Samurott lunged for the group, just as Pleo shouted back to the approaching Pokémon.
"Let us go!"
The little Protector then sprang up, leaping from the deck and beating his wings below him. The noises of raging winds howled all around the three Pokémon as Pleo shot upwards with his teammates, punctuated by the sound of sails tearing and thick ropes being whipped about as if they were blades of grass. As they sailed higher and higher, they heard the cries of Lyn and the guards around him that had been blown across the deck, some of his underlings having tumbled over the railing into the sea. The fliers in the air were knocked from their places by the sudden gale and fell past them out of the sky, onto the ship and into the sea below. The sea Pokémon that stonewalled the group struggled amid violent waves whipped up by Pleo's winds, some turning tail in a panic and swimming away as fast as their fins and appendages would let them.
All the while, Nida and Elty clung to Pleo's plumes for dear life (with what means their bodies allowed) as they rocketed up and away from the Company ship.
"Aaaaah! Not so fast! Not so fast!" Nida shrieked. "Blasting away hurts the Nidoran!"
And then as suddenly as it came, the glow faded. Pleo's flight slowed and wobbled a little as he poked his head about, leaving his confused and tired voice asked aloud in the darkened skies...
"Huh? What's going on?"
Elty and Nida turned back to see the ship's tattered sails behind them as frantic and disoriented shouts rang out.
That was about where the good news ended, though.
The faint outlines of Company Pokémon still on the deck around the ship began reorienting themselves under the moonlight, along with some of the sea Pokémon who weren't preoccupied fishing out struggling forms from the water. Lyn rushed to the railing, still dripping seawater, and inhaled deeply, readying a burst of water. One after the other, the various shapes followed their captain's lead and readied attacks and missiles to throw at the group.
"Gah! We can't shake them!" Elty yelped. Without thinking, Nida dug a paw into the Growlithe's satchel, eliciting a bark of protest as she dug out a Luminous orb, leaving a berry and another orb to spill out and fall from the air into the sea below...
And then she threw it.
The glassy sphere sailed on into the darkness, before a bright flash suddenly erupted behind the group. For a fleeting moment, the form of the ship became visible, revealing two masts that had had their sails torn to ribbons. The flash swallowed up the ship along with the waters around it in a blinding light, forcing Nida's eyes shut and leaving her to totter forward as spray from a fast-moving orb of water zipped past her ears. As she felt the air beneath her forepaws she fanned out her barbs in a panic.
"A-Ack!"
"Uważaj!" Elty's voice suddenly yelped. "Don't go taking sudden trips, spike ball!"
Nida felt a nip at the back of her neck, and a painful yank back onto something soft and downy- Pleo's back she presumed. The only other comfort in her dazed blindness was the sound of her Growlithe teammate's voice.
"Keep going, mewa! Keep going!"
Slowly, but surely, a darkness with muddled blotches began to return to Nida's vision. They slowly began to reform into the moon, the Forest Guardian's Traveller, the major constellations, the Rainbow Road, and the rest of the heavens. After Nida blinked and cleared away the last of her disorientation, her heart skipped a beat as she began to notice their light reflecting off the world around them, dancing off of waves churning below.
After looking back at the now-distant form of Lyn's ship, the Nidoran could see the faint forms of Pokémon struggling aboard the ship from the water, and hear confused and frightened cries ringing out from the direction of the ship. The Nidoran blinked and stared speechless for a moment, as she realized…
They were free…
They were free!
"We- We made it off the ship!" Nida cried, her voice crackling with excitement as she pricked herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. "Thanks to you and your power, Pleo!"
Pleo squawked and looked around him, and realized that the wind was blowing over his wings, his feet were sailing through the air, and that far, far below him was the sea. Why, this meant that...
"Ah!" he chirped out of overjoyed triumph. "We're flying! We're flying!"
"They'll be busy for a while," Elty grunted as he looked back at the ship in the distance. The Growlithe spat a few embers in the direction of the ship before sighing and sinking into Pleo's feathers. "Talk about your close shaves, though-"
Only for the faint, unmistakeable sound of a bellowing Samurott's voice to ring out in the distance.
"Shoot him down! Now!"
"Huh?!" Pleo cried, as he craned his head about. "What's-?!"
All of a sudden, a bright, searing gout of fire passed by the tips of his wings. The Lugia recoiled, and much as any young Pokémon that has had the misfortune of narrowly dodging an attack of that sort...
"AAAAAAH!"
He screamed and desperately tried to get away. Pleo pitched forward and flapped desperately away from where the light came from. Nida and Elty clung on to his feathers as tight as they could, the sea below suddenly feeling much more dangerously distant than in the initial euphoria surrounding their escape.
"Quick, to the left!" Elty's voice cried out in a panic. "To the left!"
Pleo tilted his wings and lurched abruptly to the left... of all the times to not have this 'turning' thing down… Couldn't it have been sometime when other Pokémon weren't attacking them? While Pleo's passengers struggled to fight off vertigo as Team Traveler's predicament continued, a frigid, slender beam shot past him under his wing and carried on past him, prompting the Growlithe to hastily cry out...
"Your other left!"
"They're still coming!" Nida cried.
A large jet of water, another gout of fire, a coursing bolt of electricity. One after the other, attacks of the like that Nida had only seen the stronger Pokémon back home use, sailed on past Pleo's body. Still, they noticed that with each attack, they seemed to miss the white bird with wider and wider margins.
"Their shots are getting worse!" Elty barked. "We must be getting out of their range!"
"Just hang in there, Pleo!" Nida reassured. "We're almost free!"
"Yeah! We're losing the-!" Elty began, only to see a bright, blinding flash from the deck of the now miniscule ship... and rapidly come closer and closer.
"Aw, kur-"
The next thing that anyone could remember was a sudden, searing pain swallowing up their bodies, followed by the hazy feeling of their bodies getting thrown through the air and the stars in the sky turning into an indistinct, rapidly-passing blur as everything faded to black.
Were they conscious, Team Traveller would have been treated to an impressive view further along their trajectory. Faintly lit by the stars and heavenly bodies, there was an island consisting of a low and worn-down peak that was shrouded in forests, its shores lined with dense mangroves. Much like Tromba, it too was partially covered in fog, though said fog clung to the eastern shoreline, unlike the veil that hung from Tromba's peaks.
And last but not least, there was a settlement among the mangroves a ways west of the fog, one that was most curious in design. Whereas Tromba had been built on firm ground, in this settlement, the docks and the sparsely placed buildings near them were perched on stilts in the water among the mangrove trees. Every so often, a ladder or rickety set of stairs would lead up along one of them, up to a much thicker network of huts and walkways that were nestled among the branches.
The part of the town in the treetops was a bit more active than Tromba would have been at that time of night, if not by much. There was a shop that had been fashioned after a Kecleon's head at a split in a slow, meandering river. Its scaly owner dozed on the counter as a Spinarak, apparently his partner, waited attentively, occasionally calling out to the occasional passing figure.
A few short treetops (and about as many crossings over the river) away from the Kecleon Market was a tangle of roots that crossed the river. The roots, coupled with heaps of twigs glued together with mud, formed a barrier set inland from an estuary whose design evidenced three purposes: its narrow gaps kept aquatic Pokémon passing in and out in a neat and orderly manner, it prevented ships from sailing up the river, and it acted as an anchor to the settlement's docks. In a shack, perched in an overlooking mangrove tree's branches, a Shuckle was busily shuffling around clay cups to tired-looking Pokémon who traded stories about a recent haul, the lot of them apparently sailors that had just straggled into port chattering lazily about a recent offshore sighting of a shifty-looking ship with golden sails and a mast torn off just above the base. And, at around the time Team Traveller was attempting to dodge attacks thrown at them as they flew... a Tepig, a Purrloin, and a Venipede stood a few bends upstream on a walkway among the branches that passed in front of an interconnected collection of huts along the treetops, looking through pieces of paper attached to a wooden board.
"Venner, are we seriously picking through listings at night?" the orange pig asked, giving an unimpressed snort as he looked about the sparse layer of papers on the board. "I thought that you ran a tighter ship than this!"
"This wasn't my plan, Francoeur... We would've gotten them in the morning if Actor here didn't make us waste the entire day waiting on some glorified ribbons at the docks!" the Venipede chittered. The venomous creature paused from rubbing his antennae over a posting about someone's 'lost marbles' to turn and glare at the Purrloin. "And what kind of stupid nom de scène is 'Viroqua' anyways?"
"It was Virokoe. And I'll have you know that I used to have quite the following back among Giotto's culture scene thanks to having an eye for effects like those 'glorified ribbons'!" the violet cat hissed back. "Not that a pair of common Hunters like you two could appreciate it!"
The Venipede and the Tepig traded unamused looks with each other, before the Fire-Type broke the silence with an exasperated sigh.
"Yes, it takes such a refined Pokémon to call Rescue Team members 'Hunters' like a run-of-the-mill sailor."
"Must have certainly been one interesting dive you used to work at, that's for sure-" the Venipede grumbled, only for his words to suddenly die in his mouth. The creature suddenly noticed a faint flash off in the distance from the corner of his eye, and abruptly whirled around.
"Eh? Did you see something?" the Tepig asked. The bug's companions then turned, and also saw further flashes on the horizon, some dimmer, some stronger. And then all of a sudden…
"They just… stopped," the Purrloin murmured to himself.
By chance, 'Actor' looked up at the moon, just in time to see an indistinct shape slip past it.
"Ah! Wait a minute!" he cried out. "I think that's a Pokémon up there!"
The three looked about the sky, scanning here and there for any sign of the creature that just passed in front of the moon. Fortuitously, the group happened to pass their gazes over to the fog that rose up from the eastern shoreline, where they saw three forms suddenly slip into the haze. The trio turned to each other and looked at each other blankly.
"Did… they just fly into the fog?" the Tepig asked, blinking uneasily at the curtain of mist out on the eastern side of the island.
"Whelp, that's someone who's going to need to be bailed out," Venner grumbled.
"Mmm hmm, that's certainly-" the Purrloin said to himself, just in time to hear the Venipede begin to scuttle off on a walkway in the direction of the path to the local Mystery Dungeon. "Hey! Where are you going?!"
"Um… Hello? Rescue Team here?" the Bug-Type chittered back, clicking his mandibles impatiently. "Just what do you think those Pokémon are going to need right about now?"
"We would be able to avoid the competition for the listing if we went out and got them now," Francoeur added. "It's a textbook rescue! Nothing un Gruikui, un Venipatte, et un Chacripan couldn't pull off!"
All eyes then turned to 'Actor', who after an uneasy, scowling pause, finally answered back.
"Bugh, I don't believe you two... I just groomed myself an hour ago!" 'Actor' complained, before he turned back to the sparsely-populated mission board. "But I suppose if we can find them somewhere on the upper floors, it's worth a shot."
"So stop stalling and let's go already!" Venner cried. The Venipede scuttled off to the east, his teammates dashing off after him all the while.
The first thing that Elty felt when he woke up was a faint prick, and another, and another.
"Elty, come on! Get up!"
He heard the spike-ball's voice. So he hadn't been knocked into the Spirit World by that beam, not that 'fire and brimstone with Houndour sniffing at his bottom'- as he had heard an opposing Grass-Type threaten a few raids back- really sounded like a punishment. Unless… Being stuck with the Nidoran for all eternity was his punishment.
"Wha-?! Hey, wait! I never agreed to die with you!" the Growlithe yipped, throwing his eyes open and springing to his feet. Only to yelp out of pain and stumble back down to the ground.
"Elty, stop joking!" the Nidoran huffed back weakly, thrusting her face into the Growlithe's vision. "This is serious!"
Oh great, he was stuck with her in life still. Nida was covered in singed fur and barbs; the incoming beam had not been kind to her at all, and probably not to himself either, Elty guessed. He then looked over and noticed that behind her, Pleo was sprawled out along the ground, still out cold, his breast rising and falling in shallow breaths.
"We need to get him up! Ahora mismo!" Nida cried to the Growlithe. "We don't have much time!"
"What are you going on about-?" the dog spluttered back, only to be cut off by the faint sound of whistling wind.
Elty whirled around and looked up, where he saw a chain of broken tree branches, evidently where they had fallen in. It was what lay beyond that which made his heart suddenly sink.
Beyond the treetops, where the moon and stars ought to have been, was the sight of an inverted forest canopy, a likewise-inverted floor distantly visible in little bits and pieces on the ground. Everything suddenly came together for him.
"Oh no…"
The beam that struck them and sent them tumbling through the air… It knocked them into a Mystery Dungeon!
Into one that neither Nida nor Elty recognized, and in a place that neither of them knew…
And it would not be long before the Distortion's reshaping winds claimed the floor they were all on.
Author's Notes:
- niñita - Spanish: "little girl"
- Uważaj! - Polish: "Watch out!"
- nom de scène - French: "stage name"
- un Gruikui, un Venipatte, et un Chacripan - French: "a Tepig, a Venipede, and a Purrloin"
- (¡)Ahora mismo! - Spanish: "Right now!"
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