[Graceful_Suicune]

“I don’t know, but those guys are trapped. We have to get them outta there,” I informed him, although I sort of hoped he would already have been able to pick that up; only someone with brain damage couldn’t have guessed that much.

Azure, standing behind us with a face of concern shaped by angled eyebrows, whispered something to Splash before she looked to hesitate, and then burst into the room from between us, screeching with what I thought was unnecessary volume, her shrill cry flooding the entire room as she unleashed beams of ice that struck the ground types and fanned out on their behinds. The quagsire was similarly quick to react, firing columns of gushing water into more of the wild pokémon.

Azure leapt over a rhyhorn after springing upwards, turning while airborne and firing shards of ice one after the other and watching as they split on her target’s armour. The rhyhorn grunted in a half-roar, trying to shake off the cold as he backed up and attempted to free himself of the ice that crusted his rocky skin. His thick brow came down over his eyes, the rage on his face flaring and revealing itself as a motive to hunt the glaceon down as she darted off, weaving between other pokémon and spurting short spears of ice to assorted targets from her jaws.

Splash spewed out rows of water at a rapid rate, soaking a pair of geodude who had rounded on him and tried to attack. Another one followed, but to Splash’s contentment, slipped on a puddle which had been transformed by the water he produced. It had also influenced other parts of the tunnel’s floor, turning several patches into muddy puddles. Due to this, the rock pokémon slid over time and again, landing with wet, sloshing thuds.

A number of the diglett began to surround him, some of them ramming into him from underneath. He aimed and fired, missing as a diglett ducked and the projectile continued on toward the barrier, pounding its shell as it ricocheted a little and then met the earth after losing momentum. A dugtrio emerged from the ground to the quagsire’s side, and while busy with the others, he didn’t notice as the pokémon began pumping in and out of the ground, the three conjoined bodies creating a quake while working off each other and took turns hammering the earth with precise movements. The entire room was victim to a wobble, but the ground near the quagsire in particular gained a crack, one of his feet slipping into a tiny crevice. I could clearly see it scrape along the sides of the rock and cringed; that was how Zhol had ruined her foot, and the end result had not been pretty.

“We have to do something,” I decided, and the houndoom didn’t protest as I waited for a reply, so I went ahead with my plan and sped into the room, coming upon a dugtrio while blowing a hot jet of flames. I could tell the attack injured the pokémon to an acceptable extent before he disappeared and more diglett swarmed me. One of them vanished with a deliberation that I certainly recognised, and waited for about the time it would take to get from its hole to me, and bounced at what I had calculated was the right time, landing on the ground a few paces away and blowing more fire at the ground types. I moved back, close to the shield, and nearly turned around to slip behind the shield, which was close to the back wall, as I fended them off.

Taking the chance and beginning to run behind the shield after turning around, my ears pricked up in response to the sound of constant thumping before I saw, from the other end of the shield, that Azure was nearing at a quick pace. As I identified the thundering as a rhyhorn stampeding after her, not yet in view, I widened my eyes. She was darting rather quickly, and I wasn’t sure exactly where to go in order to avoid her, or worse, the charging rhyhorn which would surely appear from around the corner of the barrier any second.

“Move!” she shouted, and I registered just before she came through, squashing against the barrier as she passed between me and the wall with just enough space. Preparing to propel myself around to follow her, hardly interested in coming in contact with the rhyhorn, I quickly rotated around. I barely had a chance to move as the diglett from before erupted from the ground, throwing me to my left and directly into the barrier with a thump. I landed on my side and groaned as the rhyhorn swerved around and into the space between the barrier and the wall, beginning to charge my way in pursuit of the glaceon. For one foolish moment I imagined that the rock and ground type would ignore me and power straight past, but after realising how ridiculous that would have been, I cursed logic and returned my glance from over my shoulder.

The pokémon thudded my way, and as quickly as I could I got to my feet, only to be rammed against the barrier a second time as the diglett head-butted me while I had been busy focusing on more pressing matters, and in that moment, I knew that I was going to be swept away by the charging dual type behind me.

The pokémon’s rocky body slammed into my side, carrying me in its charge as it failed to turn and headed straight toward the wall—the same one we had emerged from that was connected to our tunnel. “Wait, wait!” I called, my voice failing at first as I found myself a little winded. “Stop! You don’t wanna do that. You’re heading straight for a wall!”

Apparently that fact didn’t concern the pokémon as he continued to charge, and with a sickening feeling, I tried to scramble off his head, finding it difficult to move at all. However, I managed to slip away once I wedged myself off, crumpling once I hit the ground and tumbling for a short while. I got to my paws and shook off, feeling a new pulse in my side. The rhyhorn wheeled around and with ongoing annoyance, I realised that there were more diglett powering through the ground in my direction.

“We need he-elp,” I sung agitatedly, throwing a glare to the houndoom who looked on without much of an expression. He stood at the entrance still, and I found myself growing more serious as the seconds passed.

I threw my head to Splash and Azure, noticing that they were doing fairly well, yet to our horror, the opening above invited more pokémon to drop down onto the barrier upon hearing their friends in danger, and I was completely unsure if the influx of enemy pokémon was able to be held off. However, I had my own problems to deal with, and turned back to the houndoom, demanding his presence as I felt my respect – or all I could muster in the days I had known him – for him steeply plummet.

The pokémon were approaching with increasing speed, and I knew that I was unable to face them alone. As I looked back to them and tried firing a ball of flame, which simply dissipated as the diglett ducked and it instead came in contact with the ground, I realised that if I didn’t come up with a new strategy on the spot, I was in for some serious damage.

“Zaion!” I shouted, and although the houndoom acknowledged my call, he still did nothing. Instead of jumping to my rescue and looking to act as some kind of saviour, he just looked on.




~GS.