The secondary entrance held.
On the surface, Miyuki fought the way Miyuki did everything, with precise, clinical efficiency that was more devastating than aggression.
Ryu owned the sky.
The Salamence circled the Ruins at an altitude that gave it complete surveillance of the valley, its Dragon-type senses mapping every movement on the ground, Aether vehicles approaching, operatives deploying, equipment being positioned. When an Aether transport attempted to establish a perimeter around the ruins' western approach, Ryu descended with a Dragon Pulse that cratered the road and sent the vehicle into a ditch. When a squad of operatives tried to reach the ruins' supply entrance, Ryu's Flamethrower cut a line of fire across their path that they couldn't cross without committing Pokémon they didn't have available.
The Salamence fought with the fierce protectiveness of a creature defending its family. Miyuki had raised Ryu from an egg, had been the first face he'd seen, the first hands he'd felt, the first voice he'd heard. The bond between them was not just partnership but parentage, and a Salamence defending its parent was a force that rational operatives reconsidered engaging.
Miyuki directed from Ryu's back with the calm authority of a field medic, assessing threats, prioritizing targets, communicating positions to Kasumi and Sasuke through the radio links they'd established. Her medical training gave her a strategic advantage that pure combatants lacked. she could read the Aether operatives' body language the way she read patients' vital signs, identifying exhaustion, injury, and the specific physiological indicators that preceded a unit's decision to withdraw.
"Southern approach clear," she reported. "Eastern squad pulling back, Ryu's perimeter hold is working. Main concentration is at the primary entrance. Sasuke, they're stacking everything against you."
Inside the corridor, Sasuke felt the weight increase.
Torune had committed his reserves. Every operative not engaged at the secondary entrance or pinned by Ryu's aerial denial was converging on the main approach, their combined Pokémon assault battering Landorus's earthwork with the cumulative force of a dozen species attacking simultaneously. Dark Pulse from Mightyena packs. Sludge Bomb from Weezing batteries. Air Cutter salvos from Golbat squadrons. The stone barriers held, but each impact eroded them, the limestone that Landorus had raised being ground down by sustained bombardment.
Then Torune sent his personal Pokémon.
The Drapion materialized in the corridor with the contained malice of a Poison/Dark-type bred for exactly this kind of close-quarters combat, its segmented body navigating the chokepoints with arthropod efficiency, its massive pincers strong enough to crack the stone barriers that Landorus had raised. Behind it, a Bisharp advanced with mechanical precision, the Dark/Steel-type's blade-arms carving through earthwork obstacles that Drapion's pincers loosened, the two Pokémon working in trained coordination that spoke of years of partnership in operations that didn't make it into official reports.
Landorus engaged the Drapion, its Ground-type attacks devastating against the Poison-type but complicated by the corridor's confined space, Earth Power risked collapsing the ceiling onto everyone beneath it, and Stone Edge had to be calibrated to avoid sealing the passage entirely.
Sasuke recalled Landorus and released Victini.
Not the obvious choice for a corridor battle against two serious opponents. The Fire/Psychic-type was small, fragile by legendary standards, built for speed and precision rather than the raw durability that defensive combat demanded.
Victini blazed.
The small Pokémon's V-crest ignited with a fire that filled the corridor with orange-white light, the shadows of the stone barriers leaping backward as if afraid. Searing Shot erupted from its palms, not a single blast but a sustained wave of fire that pushed Drapion back through the chokepoints, the flames carrying the specific intensity that Victini generated when it was fighting for someone rather than something.
Bisharp advanced through the fire, its Steel-type resistance absorbing the heat, its blade-arms raised for the close-range combat that would neutralize Victini's range advantage. The Dark/Steel-type moved with the murderous efficiency of a Pokémon that had been trained to end fights quickly and without theatrical preamble.
Victini met it with Confusion, psychic energy wrapping around Bisharp's blade-arms and holding them in place, the telekinetic force insufficient to move the heavy Steel-type but sufficient to prevent it from striking. A stalemate measured in seconds, Victini's psychic strength against Bisharp's physical power, neither yielding, the corridor between them vibrating with opposed energies.
Then Torune himself moved.
He charged past his own Pokémon, a decision that shocked even his operatives, who had never seen their commander engage physically when Pokémon were available. He moved through the chokepoints with the fluid efficiency of someone whose body had been trained alongside his mind, covering the distance between the Aether line and Sasuke's position in seconds.
Sasuke saw him coming and made a choice.
He stepped into the doorway. Not behind Victini, not beside Landorus, not protected by any Pokémon. He stood in the entrance to the Unown Chamber with his body as the barrier, because behind him Kiyomi was speaking the twenty-third syllable of a chant that would seal the Iron Serpent's Fourth Fragment for eternity, and some doorways are defended not with Pokémon but with the person who stands in them.
"You'll have to go through me," Sasuke said.
"Gladly," Torune said, and the word was the most honest thing the man had said all day.
The physical confrontation was brief and brutal. Torune was a trained operative, military conditioning, combat techniques, the particular fighting style that Aether taught its senior personnel for situations where Pokémon were impractical. Sasuke was a nineteen-year-old trainer, but a nineteen-year-old trainer who had spent three years in the Crown Tundra's merciless environment, where physical conditioning wasn't optional but survival, where the cold and the terrain and the wild Pokémon demanded a body that could endure what the mind required.
Torune struck first, a precise, efficient blow aimed at Sasuke's solar plexus, the kind of strike that drops an unprepared opponent. Sasuke took it. Not blocked, took, the impact driving the air from his lungs but not his feet from the ground. He returned with an elbow strike that caught Torune's jaw and staggered the operative sideways, the force behind it carrying the accumulated strength of three years of mountain training.