Grant was sitting in the pokemon center reading an article on the rarity of dragon scales on one of the free terminals when the screaming started. People and pokemon alike ran terrified into the pokemon center. Grant grabbed the sleeve of a passing man.
“What’s happening?” Grant demanded. The man’s face was a ghostly white.
“There’s a huge swarm of dustox attacking! There must be hundreds of them!” Grant let the man go, who joined the throng of panicked people. Slowly, Grant sat back down, his own face had gone white. Grant knew that every village, town, or city had a wall and dedicated guards to defend from wild pokemon attacks. However, those defenses in a village like this were more meant to push back the occasional troop of mankey, not beat back a swarm of dustox that numbered in the hundreds. Hell, even Pewter City would struggle to beat back a swarm this big. They would manage it, but civilian trainers would probably need to help.
Grant didn’t know what to do. He wanted to help fight back the dustox, but horsea was still with the nurses. He could demand horsea’s early release and go fight, but would it even help? With numbers like this, Grant doubted he and his horsea could make a significant impact. Grant firmed his jaw and shook his head. No if everyone thought that way then nobody would help. That kind of thinking is exactly what landed Grant on the streets, only because of the foundation giving Grant a chance did he have a chance to improve his lot in life. Grant stood and started pushing through the frenzied crowd.
Tangela was in the middle of a nap when she heard the buzzing. She was resting, after an unsuccessful hunt, in the grass outside the village, waiting for the human to emerge like he promised. Her first thought upon waking from her nap was fear that the human had come and gone already, and she missed it. Her second thought was petrified horror as she spotted the wall of dustox descending on the village. They were a shifting mass of purples, greens, and yellows and everything inside tangela told her to run away as quietly as possible. There had to be two hundred of the pokemon. Tangela silently rose to her feet, taken a few steps away from the city, and froze as she realized something. What about the human? Tangela had followed him long enough to know he would fight. If he did though there was a decent chance the dustox would kill him. There was a decent chance the dustox would wipe out the entire village. Tangela didn’t understand why they were attacking, but should she do anything? She was strong, but was this her fight? Could she leave the human to die? Tangela, turned back to face the village. They were nearly upon it now. In a couple more seconds they would be in the streets. With a deep breath, tangela made her choice, and took a step towards the village.
The village was in chaos. There were too many people and too many pokemon. It had taken Grant far too long to fight his way through to the front desk, demand his horsea, and for the nurse to return with him. The dustox had already gotten into the village by the time Grant got outside, and he exited the pokemon center into pure chaos. People and pokemon alike screamed and bled. Grant watched as ten dustox swarmed over an onix and left the towering pokemon with dozens of status conditions.
“Focus.” Grant told himself and released horsea. Horsea looked wide eyed around the village at the battle taking place. Grant snapped his fingers in front of horsea’s face to get the distracted Pokémon’s attention.
“Can you fight? We need to try and support the defenses.” Grant asked. Horsea gave a firm nod. Grant noticed that his tail was still bruised pretty badly, and he definitely wasn’t at 100%, but that couldn’t be helped. Grant spotted a trio of dustox fighting a nearby lotad. Grant pointed it out to horsea, and they ran in to help.
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Entering the village was easy with the guards distracted by the dustox. She just walked right through the front gate. It didn’t make much sense to close it when your opponent could fly Afterall. After entering the village, tangela was instantly under attack. A pair of dustox through a concoction of stun spore and sleep powder at her, but it had no effect. The two dustox seemed surprised by this, which gave tangela the time she needed to throw out a pair of vines to smash the dustox out of the sky to land in a heap on the ground. Tangela dismissed the pokemon from her mind to look around the village. Where was the human?
The human, or Grant was busy fending off a pack of ten dustox with a group of four other trainers. Between the five of them they had 7 pokemon, which seemed like a lot, but this was already the third group of dustox this size that they had fought. The group was slowly growing tired. Even as Grant thought that a dustox got in an attack on one of the other trainers abra, and it went down.
“Not good.” Grant muttered. The abra had been helping to move their pokemon to areas they were most needed on the battlefield. With it out of the picture Grant knew things had gotten a lot more precarious. Still, of all the pokemon in this group Grant had formed the two that were doing the best was a magby owned by another trainer, and somewhat surprisingly horsea. Horsea fought like a pokemon possessed, as he had eliminated six dustox all on his own. Grant thought horsea somewhat figuring out how to charge water gun played a roll, it had enough force to knock the dustox out of the sky if it connected when charged up, but still he was proud of horsea.
“Behind you!” Grant called to horsea. A dustox had come swooping in from nowhere at horsea’s back. Horsea was quick to turn and launch the water gun he had been charging. Grant noted the deep breaths and signs of exhaustion horsea was exhibiting. His tail drooped, and the spines on his back lay limply.
“I don’t think we can keep this up for much longer!” One of the other trainers, Ethan, said. Grant nodded; he knew horsea couldn’t last another ten minutes like this.
“I think we’re winning.” Another one of the trainers said, Grant didn’t know his name. Grant hadn’t really been watching the whole battle, but after they took down this group, Grant had a chance to look. He had to agree it looked like they were winning. Grant even saw a few dustox fleeing.
“I think we got this.” Grant said with an exhausted grin. That was the exact moment, a huge shadow fell over a quarter of the village.
High above, surveying the battle, was a dustox. Where a normal dustox was the size of a medium sized dog, and some could get as big as a large dog, this dustox was in another league. With a wingspan the size of a house, and deep royal purple and green coloring, the emperor dustox surveyed as his children battled.
“I don’t know if we have anything in the whole city that can beat that.” The trainer next to Grant muttered. Grant knew better than most how truly screwed they were. The pokemon grading system was known by all, even a kid off the streets like him. What most people didn’t know, and he only knew because of a chance encounter, was that when pokemon grouped together in the wild, often an alpha pokemon would appear. Alpha pokemon were bigger, stronger, and could command the group to act. The thing was there were different kinds of alphas. They ranked from knight, baron, lord, king, and finally emperor. Grant would have bet all the money in his bank account, which admittedly was only 40 pokedollars, that this was an emperor dustox, and also that they were all completely screwed.