The world revolved around pokémon, and humans were just living in it. It was a simple truth, though difficult to grasp for many. Nature bent and catered to pokémon, shaped by their mighty whim. Entire ecosystems could live or die by a single pokémon. Humans had to take great care not to be the instigating factor behind those eco deaths, lest they invite disaster and ruin.
It was why Aidinza had told Skyla what had happened in Chargestone Cave, why he travelled there with her despite it potentially being a several-day journey without her plane. He knew how important it was to make sure that the delicate balance was not disrupted.
Poachers did not understand that. Or, perhaps more detestably, they did not care about the damage they were causing. They set up traps and nets and hunted with pokémon trained to capture rather than fight, trained to injure rather than win. They tore apart delicate systems that had lasted centuries as they seized hundreds of pokémon. Left young unprotected, or entire native species without their next generations.
The Ya'an-ah desert was not an uncommon target for poachers. Close to the ports of Castelia and full of thousands of pokémon, many of which were nearly entirely unique to the harsh dunes of Aidinza's home. It was unsurprising it was such a tempting target.
But no matter how withdrawn and sullen the Ya'an-ah would become, they would never let their beloved mother be plundered easily. Aidinza could remember with crystal clarity hunting through the dunes with his tribe, scouring for any hint or sign of those who were tearing apart their home. Could remember the fury his sister brought down upon them in a terrible whirlwind of crushing steel. Remember the dreadful potency of Tsesei's last remaining pokémon as it ripped the sand into a furious storm that cut off any hope of escape.
Remembered the vicious satisfaction as he picked the locks of cages full of terrified sandile - most barely more than a week old - stolen from hidden burrows and set them free. Knowing that he had tracked down the poachers, he was responsible for this.
Aidinza glances around the green forest, slick with sleet rain. It was far from his home, far from dry dunes and pounding sun. But as his eyes caught on a boot print, he knew it did not matter.
These poachers were cut from the same cloth, and skulking in their veins was the same rotten, sluggish tar-blood.
No terrain in the world would hide them from Aidinza.
-
The forest was riddled with traps. Many triggered, most empty. Some not. But what became quickly apparent was that these traps were not meant for the average pokémon. They were far too high quality for scum-like poachers to waste money on if they were just going after Liepard. No, the rope quality made it very obvious to Aidinza that the poachers were hunting a specific type of pokémon. Steel-types.
This meant that the many non-steel types they caught as a by-product had to suffer through being ripped into the air violently by rope designed to find purchase on steel-skin.
Aidinza did what he could for those pokémon he found still in the traps, having Astazhei saw through the tough rope and doing what he could with potions and stitches. He was no healer, but it was better than nothing.
He did not linger long, doing as much as he could for the pokémon, before moving on. He would tell the league about the injuries once he was done here, and they would deal with the rest.
Besides, if scum thought like scum, then he was confident that whoever had set these traps was not far. They would not want to leave the pokémon hanging in their traps for any longer than they had to.
Not out of any sympathy, but purely to make sure that whatever injuries sustained by the pokémon did not permanently mar their product.
The Ya'an-ah boy knelt in the wet underbrush, eyeing a crushed plant. Unlike his home, he could not follow trails carved into dunes by unsure footing in the sand. But the forests had their own stories to tell, and Aidinza dragged those stories out with a single-minded focus. Admittedly it was made easier by the traps themselves all being set up in the same way, all facing the same direction, artlessly brute forcing their way into effectiveness by sheer weight of numbers.
It made it easy to guess where the signs of the poachers would be.
Aidinza brushed his fingers over the plant and let his eyes drift upwards. In the distance, hidden in a grotto of thick trees, was a cave entrance. If Aidinza ever cared to sully his hands with a bet, he would place it on that being exactly where the poachers were staying with their product. Aidinza spits to the side and straightens up, hand ghosting over the pokéballs at his side.
The sun might be setting in the sky, and he might have trudged through hours of wet flora, but he was here now, and soon he would do the honoured duty of anyone with a beating heart.
-
The cave entrance wasted no time in digging steeply into the earth, the path dropping several metres at an absurd angle. If Aidinza had to say how it formed, it was most likely at the hand of a family of ground-types carving out a den deep in the forest, or maybe even a nest of durant.
But that was something to care about later; what Aidinza cared about was the marks left in the topsoil. Something heavy, or several somethings had been dragged down this… ramp.
The final confirmation.
Aidinza's footsteps were light as he strode further into the cave, the less warning he gave the poachers, the less likely they were to find a way to scurry somewhere he could not follow.
Soon the cave widened into a large cavern that was the focal point of dozens of different tunnels, confirming his thoughts that this was a durant nest. Or once was. Where there should have been hundreds of steel-bodied insectoids glaring down at him with red eyes for daring to intrude on their nest, there were dozens of stacked cages filled with strangely silent pokémon.
Aidinza let his eyes rove over the cages, categorising them as best as he could. It was predominantly the iron ant pokémon, most likely the once occupants of the nest, but among the higher stacked cages were pokémon covered in black and dark red plates, pawniard, Aidinza knew, few lived in the Ya'an-ah desert, but those that did were rarely seen far from a bisharp. There was even a pokémon that Aidinza did not recognise, a blue-furred pokémon kept in a cage off on its own, and a pokémon with a massive black jaw curled around its yellowish body protectively.
Silent steps took him through the tall cage walls, and the reason for their silence became clear; all of them were unconscious. None of them even stirred at his passing.
It was unnatural.
Aidinza did not let it distract him for long, slinking past the cages as his eyes caught a steady glow emanating out of one of the many tunnels that made up the once-network of a durant nest.
Inside was another chamber, what had probably been the durant's food storage, smaller than the main chamber, and leading deeper into many essential rooms. The acrid scent of smoke touched Aidinza's nose as he peered around the corner. A man and a woman sat at a table with their backs facing Aidinza, and the staticy noise coming from beyond them told him they were watching some form of TV.
The man was lanky, all harsh lines and bones as he balanced his chair on its back legs, feet firmly on the table. He had brown hair, and his left arm was in a rough brace tied tightly to his body.
On the other hand, the woman was broad; even from behind, Aidinza could see that her crop top was exposing lean muscles. She was the one smoking, arm slung around the back of the chair as she gestured with her cigar at whatever they were watching.
Between the two of them, they had five pokéballs, three for the woman and two for the man. It would have been a worry for Aidinza, but the enclosed space meant that leveraging the weight of numbers would be difficult at worst and actively detrimental at best.
"Astazhei, Nihanlo, go." It was all the warning that Aidinza gave the poachers, but it seemed like it was all the warning that the woman needed as she spun around in an explosive motion and matched the twin red flashes of Aidinza's pokéballs with her own. The man, for his part, overbalanced on his chair, swearing as he crashed to the ground with a painful snap.
Aidinza did not recognise the pokémon that came out; it was a large short-furred black canine with two wicked horns jutting out of its head and three exposed almost rib-like protrusions growing from its back.
"Gust, Powder Snow." Aidinza snapped out, and as Astazhei's prideful screech filled the room, he beat his wings in one powerful motion, ripping the stagnant cave air into a furious gale that sent the strange pokémon skidding backwards before Nihanlo's own wind, glittering with powdery snow in the dim light illuminating the cave followed it, crashing into a thin layer of frost over the pokémon.
"Flamethrower, take the flying-type out. Rocky, get your head out your ass and help." The woman's voice was gruff, sneering at Aidinza as fire burned in the back of her pokémon's throat. "I don't know who the fuck you think you are, kid, but you picked the wrong cave to stumble into."
The lean man, having picked himself up, throws his own pokéball. However, the flash of it is masked underneath a powerful stream of fire that the canine spat out, bathing the entire room in an intense orange glow.
Astazhei did not need to be told to avoid the move, snapping his wings closed and letting gravity rip him from its path, letting the flamethrower splutter uselessly on the ceiling. It seemed to be a costly miss for the dark canine, its tongue hanging out as it let out short, gasping pants.
"Wing Attack." Aidinza did not want to give the canine any time to recover; if a fire attack that powerful actually landed, it would be enough to put either Nihanlo or Astazhei out of commission.
"Eelektrik, thunder wave." The smell of ozone fills the cavern as the male - Rocky? - joins the fray, his pokémon an almost skeletally thin blue-black eel, a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and two fins that lit up with a harsh yellow light.
It screeched as the electric building up in its fins lashed out, engulfing Astazhei as the bulky bird lunged at the canine with glowing wings. It was not enough to stop his momentum, but it was enough to remove any control Astazhei had over himself afterwards. He slammed into the canine in a terrible crash of flesh, and both tumbled into a tangle of limbs.
Aidinza grit his teeth. He had overextended, not respecting the second poacher's release. The thunder wave was far from enough to spell Astazhei's end, but it meant that his muscles would betray him in close quarters with another powerfully built pokémon. Already Aidinza could see the bird and canine struggling against each other, and Astazhei's disadvantage was quickly made evident. The electricity arcing through his nervous system would paralyse him whenever he was starting to overpower the canine, ripping away any progress he had made.
"Astazhei crush claw, Nihanlo rapid spin take the eel out." He had overextended, and the only way to avoid disaster was by committing harder. Astazhei could not fight two pokémon at once in his condition.
Thankfully the cave was small enough that Nihanlo's slow speed was hardly noticeable as she threw herself at the eel, building up a potent spin in only a single bound. The electric-type was too gangly and awkward to avoid the attack; there was no chance it would avoid being slammed with all the force of a hundred kilograms of ice. "Eelektrik, bind." Aidinza's grin touched on feral as the male gave the worst possible order. The eel, moments before Nihanlo hit, snapped forward in a shocking burst of speed, its wickedly sharp teeth digging into the bergmites thick top-ice, anchoring it as the rest of its body was slammed backwards.
Aidinza saw the very moment that the eelektrik realised how terrible what it had just done was, as the freezing cold that permeated Nihanlo's body, enough to freeze flesh to itself in a moment, registered. It shuddered in pain, twisting and writhing to free its mouth, unable to even manage a scream of pain.
"Discharge." Not that its trainer seemed to care, the lanky man already reaching for another ball as his first pokémon writhed, struggling to obey through the pain.
Two flashes of red filled the cave, and a wave of confusion hit Aidinza. Rocky had yet to grab his second ball.
"Flamethrower, Houndoom ." The woman snapped as her canine - Houndoom? - appeared again, a bare metre away from Nihanlo, with fire glowing between its sharp teeth. Aidinza felt panic seize him, freezing in place, as the implications of the Houndoom reappearing dug at him.
Fire blasted over Nihanlo, engulfing her and the eelektrik wrapped around her in an inferno. Her strange warble, pained and scared snapped Aidinza out of his panic, and he returned Nihanlo with shaking hands. Then Astazhei's furious cry filled the cave as he slammed himself back into the canine, powerful claws closing around its neck. The Houndoom yelped as it was ripped into the air and crashed into its terribly burned 'partner' pokémon, unable to move.
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The man cursed and glared at the unconcerned woman, who simply unclipped another pokéball. The two of them released their next pokémon; the first Aidinza had no trouble recognising it as a whirlipede, though he noticed its hard shell was remarkably thin. The second was a strange grass-type, with eight overbitting 'teeth' that jut out from its jaw and a tangle of red and white vines making up its 'legs'.
"If you give up now, kid, we'll do you the courtesy of not breaking your fingers after we kick your teeth in." The poachers were certainly confident, even if it had taken two of their pokémon to put down one of Aidinza's.
Aidinza had the perfect response. Shandíín appeared in a whistle and a flourish, the flames that flickered over his feathers brightly illuminating the cave.
"Astazhei gust, Shandíín, follow up with flame-charge on that grass-type." Astazhei, despite the electricity still twitching his muscles, gave two powerful beats of his wings, once more sending the stale cave air into a fury.
A fury that Shandíín rode like a breeze, as the flickering fire dancing through his orange feathers burst into a thick corona, and he thundered towards the grass-type as its leg vines latched onto the wall and attempted to pull it out of the way.
"Protect." Aidinza blinks as a weakly shimmering green bubble appears in front of the grass-type at the woman's order. Shandíín slammed into the barrier, causing it to buckle and warp but hold. The fire-type's offended screech fills the air, his flames igniting to an even harsher white, before he pulls away from the grass-type, back into the air. "Vine whip."
The grass types split, lashing out at Shandíín's tail feathers, unable to move fast enough to keep up with the speed of the fletchinder, even limited as it was to the tight, enclosed spaces of the cave. But before he could find himself too satisfied with himself, Astazhei's cry tells him that it was just one part of the attack. The grass-type's vines had also gone after Astazhei, and half paralysed as he was, the rufflet was far from mustering anywhere close to Shandíín's speed.
Thick grasping vines wrapped around Astazhei, awkwardly pinning his wings to his body and forcing him to the floor.
"Toxic." Aidinza tried to return his first caught pokémon, but the red flash of light sputtered out as it clashed against the entangling vines. So he was forced to watch as a viscous blob of foul-smelling ooze splattered over Astazhei's feathers, as he was forced to wallow in the thick muck.
The scowl that twisted Aidinza's face was terrible and harsh; getting poisoned was an issue that all trainers had to deal with at some point, but he had never seen it so cruelly inflicted. Never had an opponent held his pokémon in the muck and filth.
"Agility, flame charge. Burn that grass-type to cinders." Shandíín did not even give the woman time to open her mouth as agility shuddered through his body. He was in a hard bank to avoid the wall in one moment. The next, he was a flaming comet smashing into the grass-type, searing away its vines and crushing it to the wall.
Aidinza returned Astazhei the moment the vines went slack. It was far beyond cruel to expect him to keep fighting between the electricity and the poison in his system. Naazin took his place, placid yellow eyes taking in the room brightly lit by a furious Shandíín.
"Gyro-ball." The male poacher snapped out, and the whirlipede, hereto immobile, surged forward in a tight ball and met nothing but air as Shandíín took to the roof of the cave, avoiding the move with casual grace.
"Water Pulse." Naazin's skill had only grown since his breakthrough against Brycen's powerful Beartic, and it only took a moment for the ring of pulsating water to crash into the whirlipede, sending it flying through the air, as a thin layer of dirty water filled the cavern. It was not down just yet - whirlipede was a hardy bug - but nothing Aidinza had met could casually shrug off an attack from Naazin.
The woman lets out a piercing whistle, and a moment later, a strange pink and purple pokémon floats up from where it had been hidden beyond the TV. The Pokémon's pale pink head had a short trunk, and at its base was a dark pink oval oozing out a sickly purple gas that weakly flickered with strange and terrible shapes. But strangely, it did not seem like the pokémon was focusing on the present, its eyes distant.
"Oi, we're not meant to disturb the Musharna, you stupid bitch." The gesture that the woman replied with was foul, and the two of them glared at each other.
"If you shut your disgusting fucking mouth, then there won't be a problem, will there be, cunt?" She spits out, eyes flashing dangerously as the two of them seem to lose track of the fact they were in a battle.
Aidinza did not make the same mistake. "Acrobatics, finish the bug off." His eyes flick to the purple pokémon, he would have to be blind to not recognise the Musharna as a psychic, and for the first time since he had left Nimbasa, he found himself lamenting that he did not have access to dark pulse. While few pokémon enjoyed dealing with the caustic energy that empowered dark-type attacks, psychic types were particularly vulnerable.
"Water Pulse." He ordered, and a second pulsating water ring blasted out of Naazin's claw once more.
"Psychic." The woman snapped out in response, and the musharna's eyes glowed a harsh purple, the sickly gas leaking from its front trembling as it formed into a perfect mimicry of Naazin. The water pulse slammed into the psychic type, sending water crashing everywhere once more, but the creature's levitation held it firm against the blow, and the mimicry of Naazin in the sickly mist rose into the air before slamming back down. Moments later, the real Naazin found himself the mimic as he rose into the air, engulfed in a purple glow. The force that sent him crashing to the ground cracked the cave floor, and Aidinza winced. Even through his thick shell, that was a brutal blow.
Thankfully, the other side of the fight went better for Aidinza, as Shandíín slammed into the whirlipede from several angles, ending the already weakened bug. "Eelektrik, thunderbolt." Something sick lurched in Aidinza's gut as the realisation that they had not even returned their defeated pokémon hit him. They had left them to suffer and wallow in pain, leaving them out for a last-ditch attack.
Shandíín, surprised by the heavily burnt eel even being able to move, could not avoid the harsh yellow, and flying as he was, there was nothing to ground away the electricity. The fletchinder shrieked in pain, crashing to the ground in a spasm of feathery limbs.
Aidinza returned him and was not sure which was causing more disgust to build in his stomach. The poachers hurting his pokémon with dirty tricks, or the poachers actively leaving their pokémon out to suffer.
Two flashes of red fill the cave as the woman sends out her last pokémon with a scoff towards the man, and Aidinza sends out Sandile. Aidinza's scowl deepens as he recognises the poachers' final pokémon. The bipedal lizard's distinctive red crest was unmistakable by any desert dweller. A hoodlum in poké form, the creature was a terror of the sands. Forming massive networks of thieves and robbers that stole and pillaged with impunity from both humans and pokémon. The way the scrafty's pinprick black eyes slid over the cave, including its own injured teammates, with cruel indifference, told Aidinza that the pokémon was much the same as the rest of its species.
"Sandile, Sand tomb, Hone Claw. Naazin, keep them back, Bubble Beam." Between using Water Pulse twice and being slammed into the ground with enough force to crack it, Naazin had to be feeling the strain. Exhausting him further would just turn this two-on-two into a two-on-one.
The wet-dusty floor surged strangely underfoot as Sandile ripped the sand from the water and trapped the scrafty in a dervish of biting sand. At nearly the same time, a stream of chemically viscous bubbles slammed into the bulky form of the musharna, hardly rattling the psychic. It was clear that it was in a far better condition than the other pokémon.
"Psychic, stop that reptile." It was also clear that the poachers were using the pokémon as a bludgeon, unskilled and unfamiliar. As the rasp of keratin on keratin filled the air, caustic energy flooded Sandile's body, which lashed out and devoured the psychic energy that the musharna attempted to bring to bear as a tiny figure of sandile was thrown into the wall in its mist.
"Flex on it." Sandile did not give a moment for his opponents to process his trainers' orders, shooting forward through the thin layer of water coating the cave, his infused muscles flexing underneath his scales, glittering in the cave's dim light.
"Brick break." The Scrafty imposed itself between Sandile and the Musharna, cruel eyes glittering as his hand shone with fighting-type energy. Putting itself directly in the path of Naazin's follow-up bubblebeam, the sharp-eyed crustacean taking the initiative to cover for Sandile. The bipedal bandit went sprawling, and Sandile effortlessly bounded over him as he let a deep growl drip into the cave, rattling Aidinza's teeth. He lunges at the Musharna, the caustic energy empowering him bubbling to the surface as his claws catch on the Musharna's thin purple coat and tears it to the ground.
"Get up, low sweep, you stupid fuck." The two's relatively unconcerned air broke for the first time, and the woman's eyes grew panicked. The scrafty attempted to dive for Sandile, but the thick chemical mixture of Naazin's bubblebeam made him sluggish, limbs all but glued together.
It gave Sandile all the time in the world to finish off the Musharna, dark claws pumping darker energy into the psychic type, its eyes clearing as the energy that fed its power was, in turn, fed upon by Sandile's. It was too much for the Psychic type, and it went limp underneath Sandile.
"You stupid fucking bitch." Rocky swears as the scrafty reaches Sandile at last, its leg glowing as it aims a kick at his stomach. Under normal circumstances, it would be an intensely dangerous position for Sandile; the scrafty line had evolved over centuries to compete over the same sands as the krookodile line and did so with tightly controlled savage blows that could pulverise flesh through scale.
The growl that filled the cave did not just rattle Aidinza's teeth but rattled his bones, as triumph over a rival sent a potent cocktail of adrenaline and norepinephrine racing through his veins. Sandile turned on a dime, leaving its conquered opponent to spasm on the ground as his teeth lashed out, closing down on the scrafty's skin-covered leg. Sandile ripped his head back, tearing the scrafty off balance before he slammed the creature to the floor with a brutal crunch.
And just like that, it should have been over. All five of the poachers' pokémon had been beaten, plus their psychic type. While Naazin was tired from the fight, Sandile was nearly entirely fresh, and with Hone Claw and two victories racing through his veins, he was in top form.
"Galvantula, discharge." Then a third voice filled the cave, and red warred with brutal yellow, sending pain searing up Aidinza's legs. He drops with a scream, dirty water soaking his clothes as he falls to his hands and knees, unable to resist the electricity as it burns through the water. After a moment, it mercifully stopped, and with his eyes blurring from pain, Aidinza lifted his head.
The first thing he noticed was the musharna had been returned, the purple pokémon nowhere to be seen. The second was that Naazin had not been spared the electric shock; the water-type slumped on his side, unconscious.
The third was a cacophony of noise coming from the cave behind him, the sound of steel clashing on steel, and the bray of angry pokémon.
The fourth was the massive form of a Galvantula wrestling with Sandile, as a lithe man watched with dark eyes. The Galvuntula disappeared in a flash of red as Sandile's jaw closed around one of its many legs. The desert croc snarled as its challenger was ripped from it before it could break it like it had broken the last two.
The man scoffed, running a hand through his poorly cut, short, flat dark hair, and a moment later, another pokémon appeared, a short white and green bipedal pokémon that almost looked like it was wearing a ballerina's outfit. "Kirlia, disarming voice." The kirlia giggled, a light, airy sound that seemed to strangely bounce around the cave, ringing in Aidinza's ear as it grew louder and louder and turned painful. But not physical pain; no, something foreign was ripping through his mind, a forced guilt that tightened Aidinza's throat and set his fingernails digging into the flesh of his palm.
But whatever he felt was nothing compared to what it did to Sandile, the empowered reptile screamed, thrashing underneath the noise. "Finish him, dazzling gleam." Another giggle filled the air as the kirlia's red eyes shone for a moment before a rainbow-hued glow began emanating from two red-horn-like protrusions adorning its head. Aidinza forced his aching, spasming muscles to move, and twin flashes of red filled the cave as he returned Naazin and Sandile.
Leaving him alone.
"Do you know how long it takes to get that many pokémon to go to sleep and stay asleep?" The kirlia's trainer's voice was rough, the sort of gravelly voice that only a lifetime of abuse could get you. But the tone was casual, almost amused. "Hours, and kilograms of valuable dream mist."
The man stepped forward, his pleather shoes splashing in the dirty water Aidinza was kneeling in. He was sharply dressed, Aidinza noticed in a moment of insane, panicked clarity. A pressed grey suit, with a soft pink undershirt that somehow fit. His face was surprisingly soft for a poacher, almost looking like a kind teacher, but his eyes… Those dark eyes told all the story of danger needed.
Aidinza struggled to his feet, his heart hammering in his chest. He had been blinded by a hatred for poachers, and now he was alone, with no combat ready pokémon, in front of one the lowest scums of the earth.
His heart began to race.
"That's a lot of time, and a lot of money." The man's amused look fell away, and he loomed over the boy despite only being slightly taller than Aidinza. "Do you want to guess how you will pay that back?"
Aidinza was not sure he was meant to actually answer the question, but thankfully a tremendous crash in the next room meant he would never have to find out.
The man's eyes flashed with a dangerous fury, and his hand clutched at a ball by his side. "I told you two to never disrupt Musharna's concentration."
The harsh sound of steel rending steel fills the cave, bouncing off the walls at an ear-piercing pitch.
"Hypnosis on the boy. Revy, go get the fucking dream mist. Rocky, get the potions." Kirlia's eyes glow for a moment, and Aidinza felt the exhaustion that had been pulling on his limbs since he had been electrocuted become almost overwhelming, his eyes slowly drifting clo-
The whistle of a blade slicing through air snapped Aidinza out of his daze. His eyes slowly open, the aftereffects of two pokèmon moves being used on him exhausting him. The source of the whistle made itself evident in moments, a short black and blue plated pokèmon, with two wickedly sharp blades on the end of blue-steel coated arms and a large horn-like blade jutting from its helmet.
The pokèmon - pawniard some distant part of him, taken far away by exhaustion, notes - glanced over its shoulders, yellow eyes categorising Aidinza's condition at a glance.
It glanced back towards the Kirlia, falling into a light-footed stance. Its blades clanged together, sending a brutally disorientating metallic sound ringing through everyone's ears.
"Dazzling Gleam." The lead poacher orders moments before the pawniard bursts forward, blades lighting up with a harsh grey gleam. "Teleport." The Kirlia, already glowing with the light of Dazzling gleam, disappeared. In one moment, she was there. In the next, she was elsewhere. Specifically, she was now behind Pawniard.
"Behind you." Aidinza managed to yell out, but it proved to be pointless. Pawniard had already turned on a dime, one blade arm stabbing into the ground before it threw itself at the glowing Kirlia.
The Kirlia, for her part, danced back, graceful limbs lithely carrying her through deceptively sharp footwork. But the pawniard was relentless, and every attempt to squirrel away seemed to be preempted before it even began. The short ballerina's dazzling gleam had even sputtered out as it desperately attempted to avoid the sharp point of the pawniard arm blade.
"Teleport." The poacher instructed again, a harsh frustration in his voice. But it was too little too late; the pawniard's gleaming blade stabbed in the Kirlia's front, cutting through the thin white garment that made up its leotard and digging into the sensitive skin underneath.
But the pawniard was not satisfied with just that, its second arm swinging forward to continue a flurry of debilitating blows.
However, it was not given a chance to. A yellow blur slammed into the pawniard's side, sending it skidding away from its target. It was the black jawed pokèmon that Aidinza had seen before; it was slightly taller than the pawniard, but only by the crest of its massive black jaw. It stared down the pawniard, its head held high and its stance wide, a long metal pole held like a flag by its side.
The sight of it squaring off with pawniard sent a sinking feeling through Aidinza's stomach. The poacher having more pokèmon - or a way to control the pokèmon they were poaching - would end terribly for him.
"What the…?" Though the poachers seemed just as confused by the appearance of the pokèmon as Aidinza was. However, the lead poacher did not let the opportunity go. "Kirlia, teleport."
Kirlia's eyes flashed with a scarlet light, and with the pawniard on the other side of the new arrival, it had no hope of stopping it before it got away. Not that the new arrival was keen to do anything that made sense, as its metal pole snapped out and smashed into Kirlia's cheek with a gratifying crack, sending the psychic type sprawling into the cave dirt.
The yellow furred pokèmon returned to pointing its blade at the pawniard, a stream of meaningless grunts and tones spilling out of its tiny mouth. But meaningless as the noise might have been to Aidinza, the meaning in its bearing was unmistakable. This pokèmon wanted a fight, and it was going to take one.
Or at least that was what Aidinza thought before it let its pole drop to the ground and pressed its hand dramatically to its head, its grunts turning distinctly dramatic as it turned from the pawniard.
The pawniard, for its part, looked baffled by this turn of events. It had been just as ready as the twin-mouthed pokèmon to throw down. Now it was sneaking glances towards where Aidinza swayed on his feet, confusion writ in its yellow eyes.
Aidinza shrugged back at it, and the pawniard seemed to take that as an instruction to blitz away, dancing around the lamenting pokèmon and then out into the wider durant cave system.
It took a long moment for the yellow furred pokèmon to realise the other pokèmon was gone, and the moment it did, the dramatics stopped immediately. It glanced around, eyes locking on the pawniards footprints, and twisted around to race out right after.
Aidinza, needless to say, was confused.
"Well, punk, it's three on one, and there are no pokèmon." Aidinza glanced over; he had not realised that Revy had returned. The female poacher was carefully holding a tightly sealed container as she sneered at Aidinza. "If you start running now, maybe you'll esca-"
Aidinza releases Nihanlo, whose cheerful greeting cry utterly lacked any trace of the defeat she had suffered.
"Get on your hands and knees and place any pokèballs out of reach." His voice was firm, the last traces of hypnosis leaving him, and relatively recovered from the discharge he indirectly took. Even a small pokèmon like Nihanlo was more than enough to keep three humans in line.
It seemed that the poachers realised it and realised that the disdain in Aidinza's eyes as he glared down at them meant he would not hesitate to leverage his power over them.
It only took a few moments for Aidinza to collect the pokéballs, stuffing them into different pockets of his bag, and tie rope around the poacher's hands. "We're days away from any rangers. You think you can keep us imprisoned for three days with just some rope?" The lead poacher's - the only one he did not know the name of - voice was a persuasive croon, sweet and seductive. "If you just let us go, we can head our separate ways. If you don't, we get free." His voice turned dark, eyes flashing with a fit of dangerous anger held back by only the rope restraining him.
"No." Aidinza rejected him firmly as he examined the sealed container Revy had been holding.
"I've picked locks in maximum security prisons; you think these fucking knots you learned humping the sand is anything compared to that?" He struggles against the rope, hands shifting an almost imperceptible amount in the tight bonds. Aidinza pauses and places the container down, disgusted at even having to interact with a filthy poacher. If he was in his home desert, nothing would stop him from throwing them all to a bask of Krookodile. In the Ya'an-ah's eyes, there was only one fitting punishment.
But he was far from home and in the Pheyan'atho's territory besides. It was not his judgement to pass, as much as it would simplify things.
But the poacher had a point; keeping them bound for the days it would take to get to Opelucid would be difficult. Especially if Aidinza wanted to keep a decent pace on the way to the city. Aidinza approached the bound poacher.
"Yeah, just let me go, let me go, and we'll forget all abo-." Aidinzas boot stomped down on the poachers' fingers, the crunch of bones snapping filling uncaring ears. "Fuck! Shit! Fuck! I'm going to fucking strangle you with your starter's fucking intestines, you prick!"
Aidinza stared down at the writhing poacher, feeling nothing but hate towards everything about him. He turns back to the container and ignores the swearing poacher. With broken fingers, he would not get far even if he escaped on the way to Opelucid.