Thank you for reading. Hopefully you enjoy. If you REALLY like it, I have a P-a-t-r-e-o-n, under the same name, where you can read 5 chapters ahead.
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The first two days were mostly medical.
Betty's shell repair was the primary concern – not that she'd admit to having concerns, going as far as to try and bite the applicator brush out of my hand the first time I produced the tin of thick gel. I held her gaze until she stopped, which took longer than it should've, leaving us both angrier than when we started, as I brushed away.
The stripped sections were, thankfully, fairly superficial, but the cracks ran deeper than they appeared. The outer layer of a Shelgon's shell was mostly armor – hard, but replaceable, the bone equivalent of dead skin. It was the structural layer underneath I was worried about, the load-bearing segments that distributed the shell's weight across her spine and pelvis, and the subdermal layer that attached to her nerves and gave her a limited sense of touch through it. I'd woken up to a large file on my PokéDex, courtesy of Clair, so at least the bitch hadn't completely abandoned me. The training notes had a specific section on identifying compromised structural segments versus surface damage, illustrated with diagrams that suggested she'd drawn them herself and had a forensic understanding of exactly what Saya was going to do before she did it.
I read it four times. Applied the oil twice daily, and kept a closer eye on Betty's gait than she appreciated, but thankfully, the leg injury had indeed merely been a bad bruising rather than a break.
She was mobile by the end of the first day. Not training-ready, but mobile, which for Betty meant she spent most of both recovery days doing slow, furious laps of the Human Den while I followed with the oil tin as she periodically tried to outdistance me. She couldn't, which she found even more annoying, mean-mugging anything that looked at her wrong.
Or at all, frankly.
We weren't talking. We were in the same space constantly – that was the agreed-upon next step, even if neither of us had said it out loud. If we were going to fix it, we kind of had to be close – but the talking part was still somewhere on the horizon, and the horizon wasn't getting any closer.
The young Dragon-Types helped with that, in the way that genuinely chaotic forces sometimes accidentally improved situations they had no idea they were involved in. They'd stayed away for a while following Betty's and Saya's battle, but eventually their curiosity overwhelmed their caution.
The Trapinch came back on the second morning. Burrowed up through the Den floor within twenty feet of Betty's resting spot and peered at her with the unguarded curiosity of something too young to have developed a functional threat response – or that many higher brain functions at all, I suspected. Trapinch weren't known for their intelligence, and that one wouldn't win any medals even then.
Betty issued a low warning growl, sending it burrowing away again in a spray of sand. Five minutes later, it came up five feet closer, massive head slowly peeking up through the floor like we hadn't seen it collapse into gravel. Betty issued the warning again. It burrowed.
An immovable object met an unstoppable force.
It came up ten feet away.
Betty looked at me with a truly lost expression, forgetting her anger for a second in the face of true ignorance.
"Don't be a dick," I said.
She looked down at the Trapinch, who had moved even closer and sat down by her feet. The Trapinch looked back with its enormous jaw-to-skull ratio, apparently having completed its threat assessment and filed Betty under non-threatening.
I decided right then and there that the Trapinch was NOT joining the team, no matter how friendly it was. It and Sol's brains would collide and fuse into a neutron star of stupidity, killing us all.
Betty made a sound of profound personal offense and shuffled to the other side of the training area. The Trapinch burrowed and came up on the other side, wiggling its head around in joy at the game.
"Awwww, you've made a friend," I told her, entirely non-mockingly.
She was already ignoring me, anyway. So was the Trapinch, for that matter, content to clumsely lumper after its new 'friend'.
By the third morning, we had an audience.
Two Dratini coiled around a stalagmite at the training area's edge, watching with huge eyes. A juvenile Dragonair in the upper reaches of the chamber. Three Vibrava on the overhang. The Trapinch, who had apparently decided its permanent address was wherever Betty's heels were.
And the Bagon. Two of them – young, energetic, and congenitally unable to observe anything from a respectful distance. They'd shown up on the second afternoon and gone for Betty immediately, bouncing off her shell and each other, and the nearest wall with equal enthusiasm. She'd knocked the smallest one sideways the second time it connected with a roar of annoyance. It shook itself, made a delighted squeal, and came straight back.
Seeing as Saya's little 'lesson', as well as my own constant insistence, had her a little… cautious about acting out too much and doing permanent – never mind lethal – damage, there was little she could do to dissuade the younglings.
Sol had lasted twenty-three minutes before the smallest Bagon knocked itself completely upside down, attempting a Headbutt on Betty and getting kicked for its troubles, lying there making sounds of personal grievance at gravity. Sol was across the training area before I'd finished turning my head.
"Sol!"
He let out a protest as he lay down to allow the Bagon to scale him.
"No, training! Come here!" I said, pointing in front of me.
He came back, technically. Just with two Bagon using him as a climbing structure, jumping off his back and chomping down on his tail with weak, infantile Bites.
"You can play after training," I tried to console and motivate him. He wasn't as bad as he was as a Growlithe – at least, not as bad as when I first got him since evolution hadn't done his ego many favors – but 'better' didn't mean great.
He deflated. The Bagon on his head slid forward over his nose and hit the floor with a thump! He looked down at it sorrowfully.
It looked up at him and bit down on his snout, making him shake his head and send it flying across the room, screeching with joy. A third Bagon arrived from somewhere.
Rolling my eyes, I turned back to Siren.
"Alright, gorgeous, forget the dumb dog; he was only slowing us down anyway. Plus, he smells, and he's ugly!" I smirked at the offended bark, right until I got buried under a mountain of fur and muscle, tiny blue dragons climbing all over us.
"Right, serious time," I told the Feebas after getting free and brushing myself off. "While I know we have a lot of work still to do on mixing Hidden Power with your water moves, we have an opportunity here! I can think of no better time to finally unlock Dragon Pulse!"
Dragon Pulse was an egg move, which meant the capacity definitely existed. It was encoded somewhere in Siren's fishy little DNA – or Aura; I was unsure where the line between the two was. Anyway, the Den's saturation with Dragon-Type energy was supposed to do the work I couldn't do manually and give her a starting point, rather than pulling from nothing. The ambient Dragon energy was thick enough that Dragon-Type moves were enhanced – like Betty's Dragon Breath against Clair and Saya – so I had to assume Siren would have an easier time getting the feel for it.
What Dragon Pulse required, as far as I'd pieced together, was compression. Too much energy bottled up in too little space, pushing and intensifying until it was released and blew up somewhere else – hopefully. That meant a steady stream of draconic energy. Not enough, and the Pulse wouldn't form. Too much, and it would blow up in your face.
What that process looked like from the outside was a two-and-a-half-foot-long fish slowly turning purple, eyes bulging as she tried to push something out that she didn't
"Again," I said.
Siren gave me the look she reserved for when I said something she was already doing and found the redundancy personally offensive.
"I know," I said. "But let's set a good example. Again."
She turned back to the section of wall we were using as a target and focused, slowing her breathing and trying to calm her frustrations, as she usually did.
"Hold up," I stopped her. We weren't trying to do something usual. "Don't do that. Let it fill you, the anger, the frustration. If Dragon Pulse required a calm mindset, no dragon would be able to use it." I crouched down beside her, straightening her Prism Scale headband. "I know you're frustrated with… most things, these days. So use that. Dragons are all about confidence and anger, and until we can get the first up, the second will do." It would also just be good for Siren in general. Anger was closer to self-confidence than self-doubt.
She faced towards the stalagmite we were using as a target, eyes narrowing. With a semi-wet slap! she fell to the floor, giving up on her levitation in favor of complete focus. Her lips pressed together and turned white as she glared. I started to doubt my plan when she started trembling, a vein pulsing by her temple, features twisted in a way I didn't think a fish's face could as Siren let her emotions run rampant for perhaps the first time since we'd left the Sevii Islands.
But then I saw it.
A blink, the tiniest little glimmer of something almost entirely green – twinkled in the low, blue-ish light of the Den before vanishing in an instant. But it had been there.
"There you go! Look at you, already seeing progress! That's because you're so smart and pretty!" I praised. She wheezed in embarrassment, cheeks slightly purple as she slapped my leg with her tail.
"You'll get it before Betty does," I added, and not just as an encouragement to the Water-Type.
From across the training area, Betty's shell rotated toward me with a glare, the last of her Dragon Breath lingering along the floor.
There it was. I knew for a fact that it was supposed to have been her own attempt at Dragon Pulse, and she hadn't seen any results yet herself.
"Betty~" I called over innocently. "How's your Dragon Pulse going? Going well? Because Siren isn't even a Dragon-Type and she's seeing results."
The Shelgon's eye twitched, and if she hadn't still been hurting, I was sure she'd have done worse than glaring.
And that kind of left me in an awkward spot. I couldn't just replicate Clair's efforts and beat the shit out of her; she was too injured for that. Even if she didn't get seriously hurt from how hard we would need to go, defeating her when she wasn't at full strength wouldn't get her respect; she'd just think we cheated.
So that left proving how much value I was providing as a Trainer, and Siren beating her to the punch on learning Dragon Pulse would hopefully do the trick.
"Just an observation," I said to the ceiling, keeping my expression neutral. "Take it however you want."
Siren made a gurgling, bubbling sound I'd learned to identify as her equivalent of a laugh as the Dragon's Den shook from the following roar.
—-
On the third afternoon, the Dratini appeared.
I was in the middle of Aurora's training when it slowly slunk out of the river, keeping back even from the rest of the Den's inhabitants who had taken to bothering my Pokémon more and more as time went on.
Still, we were getting used to the crowd and kept at it
The Den's Dragon energy was working against Aurora on multiple fronts – both her Ice-Type nature and the latent Fairy-Type rebelling against the environment – but it also offered opportunities that were more than worth it.
The Ice work was the easier half. Ice Shard was reliable by then, a dozen sharp shards launched with a swing of her six ethereal tails. Icy Wind was wide and strong, and when Siren needed some downtime from her own training, Ice Beam had moved from theory to practice.
The Fairy work was different.
Moon-Soother, Sabrina's Gardevoir, had shown me that it was possible. I'd honestly started having some doubts after a couple of months with nothing to show for it, but I found myself invigorated and struck by nothing less than pure genius.
If we couldn't find the Fairy-Typing, then we'd just have to bring the Fairy-Type to us.
"HAHAHAHA!" I laughed loudly. "Your spiteful flames barely tickle! Behold, the invincible Vulpix!"
Aurora evidently disagreed with me on the 'invincible' part, given the way she fled before the blast of pure Dragon-type energy coming from the Dratini, the Dragon Rage splashing against the stone floor and leaving a few fickle flames behind that quickly faded. Still running, Aurora executed a beautiful pivot, swinging her tails towards the young dragon and peppering it with a handful of Ice Shards, causing it to collapse to the ground with a mournful cry.
The two dozen spectators and waiting combatants, on the other hand, cheered loudly as they surrounded the arena that Betty and Saya had wrecked. There was still a bunch of rubble lying strewn around, but the circle itself had been cleared and repaired. I had the feeling it wasn't unusual for the locals to have to fix their shit, and once they'd seen we weren't there to repeat our performance, we'd been swarmed.
A Graveller stepped forward to remove the Dratini, even as another was shoved aside by a small and overeager green, bipedal dragon with pale tusk-like growths protruding from either side of its mouth. It shook the elongated, banana-shaped top of its head and cried out a challenge – deeper than either Dratini or Bagon – towards Vulpix, Dragon fire flickering along the Axew's tusks.
If we just blasted Aurora with enough Dragon-Type energy, surely the Fairy-Type would come to the forefront, right!?
And yeah, as it turned out, Alolan Vulpix was pure Ice-Type and didn't get the second Type until after evolution, but semantics!
And that's when the shy Dratini slowly slithered closer from its place in the very back. It took a while for the rest to see her, busy cheering as the Axew was turned into an ice cube, but they did eventually.
It wasn't great.
It started with a hiss, another Axew towards the back seeing the Dratini first. The forest-green reptile shied away from the longer blue one, but not out of fear or respect, I judged, from the grimace. That was confirmed when some of the more aggressive dragons started shoving the Dratini as it passed. The shoves became harder, without the Pokémon in question retaliating, until they had completely forgotten that Aurora and I were even there, forming a small circle around their new target.
"Whoa, hey! You'll cut that shit out right now!" I scolded and – somewhat embarrassingly, given my trouble with Betty – the dragons did indeed stop, though they kept their glares up and shifted out of the way. The Dratini kept its eyes on the floor, avoiding any of the others' gazes, lest they take it as a challenge, but didn't stop coming until it curled up across from Aurora.
As it did so, I understood the other's reaction. It was sometimes hard to remember – even for Dragon-Types, who were usually more instinctual – but Pokémon had more in common with animals, the way I'd known them, than with humans. And universally, animals did not like weakness.
I wasn't an expert on Dratini, or Dragon-Types in general – otherwise, I wouldn't have been in the Den in the first place – even if I'd tried to get a better idea of the local species with a little research before bed, but my best guess would put it at a month old? Two, max? The standard size for the serpentine dragon was around six feet in length at maturity. While it was mostly the youngest who kept us company up in the Human Den, they seemed to skew a little larger than average – which made sense after dozens of generations of training and breeding by the Blackthorns.
But the new one was, at best, three feet from snout to tail. Shit, if you included the tails, Aurora was longer than the Dratini.
I hesitated, but continued anyway. I wasn't super comfortable fighting something too young to have started training properly, but as I'd been reminded, dragon mentality wasn't my strongest suit.
"Nothing wrong with letting the kids have a turn," I scolded the onlookers, a little puzzled at their harsh behavior; they weren't exactly mature adults themselves. Then again, dragons. "That being said," I waved my Vulpix over to me and reached into my hoodie pocket. Despite the heat of the Den, I'd kept the jacket on to let the wildly thrashing black mass of fur that I pulled out of it keep her favorite hiding spot. "Maybe we should switch it up a little."
Zorua – teeth deep in the flesh between my thumb and index finger, muzzle scrunched up in a scowl – realized she was being watched from all sides by aggressive Pokémon salivating at the thought of a battle. Letting go of me, she squeaked and blurred, the image of a rock overlapping her natural form, even though she was still in my hand.
"Now, now-AW! Stop biting me!" I pulled the 'rock' away from my other hand and held it up to my face, doing my best to orient where I thought I felt teeth towards me. "Listen to me!" The 'rock' stopped trying to tear my arm apart. "If you don't want to fight, that's fine; I'm not gonna force you! But that's clearly not the case!" Zorua had gotten herself involved in both Celadon and the Fuschia wilds. The Game Corner could be explained as being stuck down there, but she only put herself at risk against the bounty hunter. "You're not going to get a better chance than this! I don't know if Clair has closed down the place or what, but there are no humans here. You are safe here – other than the murderous dragons – and while I told the truth when I said you don't have to fight, you can't live like this forever. You'll have to stop hiding one day, and it'll be easier the stronger you are."
There was a long while of nothing, other than the crowd getting increasingly rowdy and the 'rock' just sitting in my hand, motionless. Then, like a flower opening its petals, the 'rock' seemed to unfold as it turned black and furry, and a pair of turquoise orbs looked at me. Her whole body was trembling lightly, but she didn't run away when I set her down on the ground, across from the Dratini, petting her a couple of times to ease her nerves.
"There you go. Don't worry, I'm right here, ready with the PokéBall if anything looks even slightly off, okay?" Zorua was still shaking, but she took a couple of steps forward. "Good girl. Here we go, then. Ready?" I expected the whole-body bow-nod-thing from Dratini, known as they were for their nice nature, but seeing Zorua acknowledge me was heartening.
"Three, two, one! Go!"
The Dratini's eyes narrowed at the black-and-red fox, bright yellow lightning crackling along her slender frame. The Thunder Wave crackled out, low and fast, a lance of yellow-white electricity piercing through the air with a static sound. My own eyes widened. That was more than I'd expected from a practical infant.
But Zorua was fast, leaping sideways, and let the Electric-Type move slip past. Running straight towards the serpent, Zorua's shape blurred against the dim cave and – almost like my eyes crossed and lost focus – the lupine Pokémon seemed to slip to both sides. Suddenly, three Dark-Types were rapidly approaching the Dratini, who started slipping backwards to escape with surprising speed for something with no limbs.
I was impressed. That was way more aggressive than I'd thought the fox had in her.
And then I was even more impressed.
Green flecks winked into existence, twinkling as they coalesced into a small ball in front of Dratini's oval snout. The sphere – green with a core of light blue – wobbled unsteadily, undulating as the energy fought to escape Dratini's control.
It was barely the size of my fist, but it was undeniably a Dragon Pulse.
The trio of Zorua was almost upon it, cautious features twisted into a snarl, when Dratini shot the Dragon Pulse straight into the floor in front of it. I thought it panicked and accepted hurting itself to get Zorua away, but once again I'd underestimated it. When it hit the ground, the poorly formed shell shattered, unleashing a surge of energy. Despite my initial thoughts, it was closer to a remotely detonated Dragon Breath than a proper Dragon Pulse, but it was uni-directional, and Dratini knew its moves well. The ripple of green shone turquoise under the fungi's blue light as it rose to swallow all three Zorua, the wave just wide enough to take them all. Caught off guard, the foxes didn't even try to stop or dodge, crashing headfirst into the attack-
-and vanishing like smoke as the Pulse plowed through their illusory forms and continued past them, running out of steam and dissipating halfway towards me.
"Wha-!" I gaped at the empty arena, Dratini cocking its small head at its missing opponent. "Son of a…"
I'd been had. That little bastard.
"SOL!" It didn't take long for the large canine to appear, yawning mightily. A little further exploration – inside the 'safe areas', for now. – had revealed several chambers similar to the battle one, so I'd acquiesced to another one for training. "Find Zorua, please?" The Arcanine's tail wagged at the thought of having an excuse to do something other than training. Massive head low, he sniffed the ground furiously and walked away swiftly, but as he did so, my attention was caught by his fur. It was clean and healthy, but with a certain messiness that wasn't usually there.
Combined with his worse-than-normal slugginess, I made a mental note to take him outside for some sun before long.
Leaving the tracking of the Dark-Type to the Arcanine – and if he didn't find her, she'd probably show up when she saw a shadow and got scared – I returned my attention to the Dratini. The small – for a Dratini – dragon seemed to have taken Zorua's little trick personally, slumped over sadly as the crowd heckled it. It had just turned around to start slinking away again when I stopped it.
"Hold on!"
The serpent froze, head down and 'neck' raised, like a dog waiting to be hit.
"Hey, it's okay!" I tried to soothe it. I grabbed one of Betty's treats from my pouch – not like she deserved them at the time – and held it out. Dratini stared at my hand like it was an Ekans, eyes darting between my fingers and face. Instead, I just put it down on the ground and backed up a step, crouching down on my heels to be closer to its level. "I'm starting to get the feeling you're not a baby, are you?" Dratini still didn't do anything to acknowledge my existence, just lying there frozen. "Oookay. Uh, anyway, that was a pretty good Dragon Pulse!" The eyes shot up to me again, filled with surprise, before looking over at the watching crowd again. I tried to shoo the younglings away, but it wasn't until I stood up threateningly and took a step that they skedaddled. "Not your friends, I take it?" The question was rhetorical, but I got a shockingly dark look in response. "Gotcha. You don't want that?" I nodded to the treat. "It's fine if you don't, just, you know, bad manners to leave food lying around. Generally, don't want the locals to get too used to it and start bothering people."
The Daratini stared at me for a long moment. Then, ever so slowly, it unfurled, eyes constantly on me, and crept closer to the treat. I'd thought it would lunge like a snake once close enough, but it never did. Instead, it opened its jaws, took it as cautiously as everything else, and retreated to its starting position glacially.
Conversely, it gobbled up the treat with enthusiasm and clear delight once feeling safe again.
"Good, huh? Billionaire diet ain't nothing to sneeze at," I chuckled and threw a couple more to keep it sticking around. "Listen, I actually wanted to ask you about something-" it froze again. "Man, you're more skittish than Espeon used to be. Calm down, it's nothing bad. As I said, that was a pretty good Dragon Pulse, but it looks like you need more power. Well, power is something we have in spades," as if he heard me, Sol came plodding up to us, mouth open in a strange way as he panted happily in an oddly muted way. I poked the air in front of his mouth and was rewarded with Zorua appearing out of thin air, already hitting me with the puppy-dog eyes. "Yeah, yeah, you're adorable. We'll talk about it later." I jerked my head to tell Sol to leave Dratini and me to it, something he decided was best done by putting Zorua down, letting her go invisible and run off, and then start tracking her down again, a small dust cloud following him from his rapidly moving tail-turned-fan.
At least they were both getting some training with that game: Sol in tracking and Zorua's illusions had to become more convincing to fool the dog.
"But what we need," I continued, pretending not to notice Dratini curling up again at the sight of the large Fire-Type, "is control, something you have. So, I wanna make you an offer. We're gonna be around for a little bit, and I want you to train with us. Help my Pokémon learn Dragon Pulse, and I'm sure your own will get stronger as a result." Dratini stared up at me with a blank expression, like it didn't believe a word I was saying. "I'll also feed you and keep the others off your back while we're here. Uh, if you finish up Dragon Pulse early, I'm sure we can help you with something else as well." Slowly, Dratini's large eyes widened even more and took on a wet sheen, the realization that I was serious setting in. "Hell, I guess you don't have to finish learning Dragon Pulse if you don't want to; it just seemed logic-"
"DRAAAUUUUUU!" Dratini let out a long, wobbling cry, tears leaking from its eyes.
"Whoa, hey, it's okay, buddy!"
Why was it crying!?
—-
Later that night, I woke to the empty space where Betty should've been. It would've been impossible to stay asleep while she escaped, but she had still been out by the time I laid down.
I figured she was still being dramatic and chose to sleep outside of our room, and I'd been content to ignore her and not give her the satisfaction.
Apparently, I'd been wrong.
Sticking my head out the door, I couldn't find her anywhere in sight and had to actually leave the room, rubbing my eyes and yawning. The never-sleeping Honedge hanging out in my shadow was expected, as was the paranoid Siren waking up and following, but I hadn't expected Hercules to get up and follow as well. I wasn't complaining, though. While the young Dragon-Types had mostly behaved, there was no reason to tempt them by running around alone in the dark.
I checked the training areas and the upper passages that connected them. Nothing of note drew my attention, however; just some of the more nocturnal inhabitants – many of whom were Zubat. During the day, they clung to the least traveled tunnels and small caverns up high, the dragons being a little too fond of trying to snipe them from the air for them to hang around in their usual numbers. I even spotted some Golbat among them, as well as a few flashes of enormus, pink ears with strange, circular patterns on the inside.
But still, no sign of Betty, which was crazy because she was fucking huge.
At least, until a faint tremor swept through the caves, followed by a distant roar. I hurried back into the large, main room, head on a swivel, and saw it in the distance.
A Trapinch sitting on a boulder, right at the edge of the incline, looking at me with the blankness only something insect-adjacent can manage.
"Did she go down there!?" I pointed forcefully, trying to make the Trapinch understand.
Thankfully, I didn't have to rely on that uncertainty. Another roar, much closer and followed by an equally angry choir, echoed up from the shadowy deep, a second shake sending a small rock slide of Pebbles down over the edge.
"Of course she did," I said, rubbing a hand down my face.
I turned to Hercules as the fastest Pokémon with me – and the one most likely to follow the incoming order.
"Go get everyone else up!" I demanded, already looking for the smoothest trail down into the dark. "We've got a situation."
Without waiting for an answer, I picked my spot and bent my knees, one hand to the ground behind me for support as I slid down into the Dragon Den proper.
—-
I heard Betty before I saw her.
The thudding impacts, the crack of shell shattering stone, the roars of annoyance and anger. Short Dragon Breath bursts illuminated the dark that swallowed us as we descended, an undulating mass of moving shadows dancing across the walls from the sudden lighting.
I went in with Honedge and Siren and told myself that would be enough.
The slope evened out, and I barely noticed the transition from sliding to running. The Pit opened up ahead, a massive cavern that seemed to stretch forever in the dim light. More of the bioluminescent fungi grew down there than up top, but there were no torches to aid them. Most of them seemed to grow along the bottom and edges of two massive pools of water that dominated the center of the Dragon Den, like algae, fluttering geometric shapes swaying across the rock as the river ran through the two lakes and vanished deeper in. Stalagmites and stalactites met and formed columns from floor to ceiling, dividing the enormous room like bars – except where they'd been shattered in one of the countless struggles that had occurred down there. Craters and rubble littered the landscape, and I saw white protrusions through the thin layer of gravel covering everything.
Bones.
The implications weren't lost to me, but were shoved to the side when I saw the Graveller lying motionless on the floor, left side shattered by something large and heavy, top arm on that side nothing more than a stump. I grimaced but forged on towards another roar and flash of green-blue light.
It wasn't hard to find her.
Betty roared, rocking forward with force and meeting a large, bipedal Pokémon head-to-head. There was a brief struggle as their feet dug into the ground, rock splintering under them as the short horn on the other Pokémon spun with a whine and tried to dig into Betty's shell, but, with another bellow, she forced the Rhydon back and hit it with another Headbutt that cracked its rocky armor and made it sit down with a thump!
No sooner had she dealt with that than another humanoid figure leapt up on her shell, thick digits worming into the largest crack from Saya's beat-down. Steel-hard muscle flexed beneath grey skin as the Machoke grunted, trying to wrench Betty's shell apart. The Shelgon roared beneath the Fighting-Type, but there was nothing she could do as a long, thin shape darted forward and struck her with a blinding flash of electricity. Betty cried out, limbs spasming from the Thunder Wave, but the Dragonair made the mistake of getting too close as Betty tilted sideways and landed on the serpent-like Dragon. Both of them shouted in pain – the Dragonair from having its tail crushed, and Betty from the crack! of the Machoke staying on and continuing to try to tear her apart.
In the shadows, dozens of shiny eyeballs, pupils slitted more often than not, looked on as a third bipedal, medium-sized Pokémon tried to lunge for the downed Betty, dual protrusions on either side of its head emitting a high-pitched noise. Unfortunately for the blue and red dragon-like Pokémon, Betty still had plenty of strength to drown it in a wave of Dragon Breath, the Gabite falling back and jumping into the nearest lake to escape.
The locals had NOT appreciated a Titan trying to move in. The Dragon's Den was a constant struggle for dominance, and nobody wanted someone with that kind of advantage to set up shop.
The Machoke went for another mighty pull, but had to let itself fall down when Honedge appeared and carved a thin wound across its forehead. The Fighting-Type landed and stumbled back with a snarl, one hand pressed to the cut as it ducked to avoid Siren's steaming Scald. I took the opportunity to get closer to Betty as she struggled to get up, ignoring her groan of protest and trying to help push her up-
A white ball came out of nowhere, hurling at me like a cannonball.
I caught it out of the corner of my eye first, a blur of pale light spinning through the air faster than anything that size had any right to move, and some distant, stupid part of my brain wasted time wondering what I was looking at even as I realized that I was too slow to get away. Honedge got the message before I did, swinging his blade into the thing's path on pure instinct.
The clang! upon impact was like steel-on-steel, Honedge vibrating from the force as he was pushed back. He spun sideways to divert it, and even in the dim light, I could see the fresh chip along his edge, a little divot of missing steel where there hadn't been one that morning.
"Honedge!"
He lifted himself up protectively in front of me, just as the white ball finally lost momentum and rolled to a stop a few feet away. It sat there a second, completely still. Then, it rocked back and forth before four stubby, grey legs pushed their way out from under the shell like a turtle deciding it was done pretending to be a rock. Yellow eyes blinked rapidly as they opened in the bone shell, trying to focus.
A Shelgon. Its scarred shell spoke to its age, but it was the long scuff marks that really had my interest.
That was Rollout. That was very interesting.
Betty saw it too, and I saw the reluctant awe be born, die, and turn into apocalyptic rage.
"Siren, water gun, anything, just slow them down!" I shouted, hand moving for Betty's PokéBall to prevent her from making shit worse.
That left me distracted.
I didn't even see it coming. One second I was fumbling, the next there was a mouth the size of a bear trap clamped around my left shoulder, serrated teeth grinding against the bone. The pain hit about half a beat after the pressure did, a white-hot burst that made me scream something that probably wasn't a real word. The Pokémon hung on my back as dead weight, jaw locked as it began to wrench its head from side to side. Blood ran down my shirt as whatever it was snarled, something grayish-blue visible out of the corner of my eye. Straining, I saw the long fin atop its head and the black eyes roll back into the Gible's skull as they turned white.
I did the only thing I could think of.
Punch it.
Repeatedly.
Right on that stupid shark-like snout, right fist rising and falling again and again. The rough skin scratched my knuckles, but I kept at it until the Gible finally yelped and let go, taking a chunk of my hoodie and possibly some of my actual shoulder with it. I punted it into the darkness, the small dragon screaming as it rolled away.
I looked down, gritting my teeth. Two teeth, maybe three, were still stuck in the meat of me, little white points glinting in the fungus-light.
"Fuuuuuuuuck!" I hissed. A sound drew my attention, just in time to see the bravest Bagon in the world jumping at me with a screech.
Something small and black slammed into it mid-air and forced it away. I nearly kicked it on reflex before I registered the turquoise eyes glaring up at me, equal parts terrified and furious.
"Zorua! What are you–did you follow us down here!?" She hadn't been anywhere near me when I left, I was sure of it, but apparently 'cautious' was a relative concept when your trainer went sprinting into a cave full of murderous dragons. She pressed herself against my leg and didn't answer, her whole body trembeling.
Great. Not the Pokémon I'd been hoping would get there first.
The Shelgon tucked back into its shell, and despite myself, I kept half an eye on it as it began revving up before rolling forward again. Betty met it head-on, but I could see the exhaustion creeping into her movements, the way her Headbutts were coming half a second slower each time, the way she was leaning on that back leg more than she should've been. She was strong. But strong didn't mean invincible, and there were a lot of teeth, horns, and claws down there that didn't care how tough she was.
With only three Pokémon beyond Betty, things were looking pretty grim.
Thankfully, I had more.
"Hercules!" I bellowed the second I saw the flash of yellow fur skidding down the slope, Espeon's violet form wrapped around his shoulders, ears flat and eyes already glowing with Psychic energy. "Cover me!"
Hercules didn't ask questions. He never did in a fight – other than back with Surge – just barrelling straight for the Shelgon and caught it with a Thunder Punch that sent it shooting sideways like a soccer ball, long enough for my PokéBall to snatch up Betty. Sol arrived a breath later, fur bristling with embers, and blasted a wall of flame across the widest gap in the crowd, more for the light and noise than any real hope of hitting something, and finally Aurora came skidding down the slope on all six tails, already losing Ice Shards in every direction, Icy Winds covering everything in a thin layer of frost as she went absolutely nuts.
"RETREAT! EVERYONE UP, NOW!" I didn't wait to see if they listened; I just grabbed Zorua under one arm and started climbing, with Honedge and Siren covering my back. Sol and Hercules stayed at the bottom with Espeon until the rest of us were mostly up before following, allowing the long-ranged specialist to lay down covering fire – consisting mostly of Ice and Water.
The wild Pokémon didn't follow past the incline. Whatever unspoken rule governed the Pit, it apparently didn't extend to the upper passages, and one by one the eyes in the dark blinked out of sight, leaving only the echoes of a few last, disappointed roars behind us.
I collapsed the second we hit level ground, chest heaving, shoulder screaming, three dragon teeth still lodged somewhere in shredded muscle I really needed to look at soon.
Despite that, my first move was to release Betty. The Shelgon looked around, another challenging roar obviously on her lips when she found my finger in her face.
"You," I gasped at Betty, tone seething. She at least had the decency to look faintly sheepish under all that armor plating. "That. Right there. That is why you need me! Because left on your own, you go pick fights 20-to-1 in the dark, and you'll fucking get yourself killed, you DUMB FUCKING-"
"Bad time?"
I stopped mid-yell and turned around. Clair stood at the edge of the passage, a full backpack over her shoulder, and Saya the Dragonair looking at us quizzically.
I held up a finger.
"Give me a second."
Then I turned back to Betty, who clearly thought that Clair FINALLY deciding to show up would prevent her from getting screamed at.
Nope.
"YOU DUMB FUCKING BALL-!"
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Thank you for reading. Hopefully you enjoyed. If you REALLY liked it, I have a P-a-t-r-e-o-n, under the same name, where you can read 5 chapters ahead.