Much to my pleasant surprise, my Journey didn’t end with me being splattered across the rocks in the Grand Underground by a raging Tentacruel.

Zetian, the amazing, wonderful, magnificent Pokémon she was, managed to throw herself underneath me just in time to interrupt my fall.

It wasn’t a perfect landing, not by a longshot, but instead of being dashed upon the stone floor, I merely crashed into it, sending both myself and Zetian rolling across the ground.

I laid there, dazed, staring up at nothing while stars danced in my eyes.

Everything hurt, except for the leg that the Tentacruel had grabbed. That leg was completely numb, and I couldn’t feel a thing, which was more than a little bit worrying.

An explosion knocked me out of my daze, and I lifted my head up to see a bedraggled Lucas standing next to Sunny, his Monferno, and somewhat drunkenly pointing at the Tentacruel.

That’s stupid. I thought to myself. Bad type matchup.

But Lucas and Sunny were a lot smarter than I gave them credit for. The monkey-like Pokémon took a deep breath, then released another burst of flames - literally.

The attack was a small orb of fire that collapsed on itself a few feet away from the Tentacruel, the implosion causing a surprisingly large fireball and thunderclap of noise.

Sunny’s attack didn’t do any actual damage to the Tentacruel, it didn’t even hit the other Pokémon. But what it did do was create a very big, very loud, and incredibly distracting explosion a mere foot or two away from the Tentacruel’s face.

I didn’t know how good the squid-like Pokémon’s eyesight was, but I would have put money that even the blindest Deino would have been affected by Lucas’ equivalent to a flashbang grenade.

Then Ted was standing next to me, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me to my feet.

“We gotta get out of here!” He was shouting, and I nodded numbly.

Sunny took another breath, and let out another explosion, the sheer force of the combusting air pushing all of us back a step.

“He can’t do this forever!” Lucas said, eyes wild. “Two, maybe three more times - max!”

I grabbed Zetian’s Poké Ball, and withdrew her from where she was laid out on the floor. I hoped she was alright, but we couldn’t take the time to make sure.

Mayfly was also disappearing into her ball, as the explosion from another one of Sunny’s flashbangs rattled the air.

The Clefairy and the Cleffa were already on their way out, the Clefairy leading the flight deeper into the cavern, skirting around the edge of the underground lake.

“Let’s go!” Lucas shouted, and we all started our retreat.

Ted pushed me to go first, and although I stumbled a little bit with my numb leg, I managed to start following the Clefairy without falling on my face. Ted was right besides me, steadying me every now and again with a careful arm as I staggered across the cavern floor.

Lucas came next, Sunny giving the Tentacruel one last explosion before disappearing back into his Poké Ball. His long, gangly legs and seemingly endless energy allowed him to catch up to us, then pass us to run next to the Clefairy.

Then one of the Cleffa, running as fast as they could on their stubby legs, tripped over a rock, and tumbled to the ground.

The Clefairy hesitated, turning to look as the little Cleffa squeaked in fear, then stolidly returned back to running, leaving its companion behind in the dust.

One of the other two Cleffa, the one I was able to recognize as the brave one, skidded to a halt, and ran over to its fallen companion.

Lucas didn’t see any of it happen, he was too far ahead to have even seen the Cleffa fall.

I was barely able to run, my head still swimming from when I had crashed against the rocks.

Ted looked at me, swore, and with barely a pause, knelt down by the fallen Pokémon and swept both of the Cleffa into his arms.

A jet of water smashed into the ground near my foot, and it was my turn to swear.

With a shared look to Ted, we both nodded, and I did my very best to steady myself as we picked up speed, leaving the raging Tentacruel behind.

/^\

We stopped nearly ten minutes later, all of us panting and hunched over in exhaustion as we leaned against the wall of the cave.

The exit the Clefairy was trying to lead us to was still beyond us for now, but we all had to take a break and catch our breaths after the desperate flight away from the underground lake.

Thankfully, no other pools of water were nearby, although Lucas had an almost manic gleam in his eye as he frantically cast around, making sure that no Pokémon were sneaking up on him again.

My leg had stopped being numb some time ago, although now it was hurting just as much as the rest of my body. Every now and again there would be a faint sensation of numbness, followed by an awful feeling of pins and needles, but I was able to run on it, and that was really what counted.

With a grimace, I pulled aside my ripped tights to stare at my leg. Even the vaunted Spinarak silk leggings hadn’t stood up to a Tentacruel, and they were in tatters now. Underneath the dark silk, were bright red circular welts where the Tentacruel’s suckers had latched onto my skin.

In the center of some of the welts, a thin stream of blood was dripping down my leg, and I vaguely remembered hearing that some squid and octopi had razor-like teeth in their tentacles to latch onto prey.

I guess Tentacruel had them too.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Even more worryingly, one of the welts had a nasty hole in the center where the skin and veins around it were turning a disgusting shade of purple.

A wave of bile rose out of my stomach as I saw it, and my vision wavered as a pulse of pain and wrongness rippled throughout my body.

I barely managed to turn around in time to throw up away from the rest of the party.

“Poison.” Ted said as he saw the wound. “Take an Antidote, it’ll be a few minutes for it to kick in, but it should stop the worst of the effects.”

He turned to Lucas, who was gingerly poking at the tatters of his shirt where the Tentacruel had grabbed him. There were welts all across his own torso, and I shuddered to think what he must be feeling.

“You too.”

Lucas nodded, and we both reached into our backpacks. I had stocked up on status cleansers after the fight with Gardenia, but I had never expected to use them on myself.

“So what the hell was that all about?” I said, spraying the Antidote on my leg.

It stung like the worst bee-sting I’d ever had, but hopefully I wouldn’t be feeling so nauseous soon.

“Beats me.” Lucas said. “All I know was that I was standing on the edge of the lake one second, then I was underwater the next!”

“I’ve heard of territorial Pokémon before,” Ted said, holding his side as he rested his head against the cool stone of the rock wall. “But that was something else! How is a Tentacruel even able to live down here, I didn’t think it would be able to get enough food to survive!”

I eyed the Clefairy, a little bit of resentment bubbling up in my chest. “Maybe this is how it manages to get enough to eat. It waits until a herd of Pokémon, or humans in our case, comes along, snatches them all up with its tentacles, and makes out like a bandit.”

It wasn’t strictly the Clefairy’s fault, but some part of me felt like it could have warned us of the danger before we had stepped right up to the Tentacruel’s lair.

“I guess so.” Ted said, frowning. “It still doesn’t explain how it got down here in the first place. Maybe there’s a larger underground cistern that it lives in?”

He shook his head, then fixed the Clefairy with a gimlet eye. “It doesn’t really matter. Why did you leave your Cleffa to die?”

The Clefairy didn’t react right away, merely staring at Ted with a flat expression.

“Wait,” Lucas said in the tense silence. “What happened?”

“One of the Cleffa tripped, and the Clefairy kept running.” I said.

“It didn’t even stop?”

“No.” Ted’s voice was ice cold. “It didn’t.”

After a long, agonizing silence, the Clefairy sighed, and shrugged.

I closed my eyes for a second, the exhaustion of the last couple of days washing over me. Did it really matter if the Clefairy left the others behind? I mean, it all worked out in the end anyways so-

Another wave of pain and nausea roiled through my body from the poison in my leg, but my head felt clearer somehow. Like a fog had just been lifted off of my mind.

“Hey!” I said, snapping my eyes open. “What was that?”

Ted and Lucas both looked over at me, their eyes slightly glazed over.

The Clefairy on the other hand, blanched, its pink skin turning even paler.

Lucas gagged, sprayed more antidote on his chest, then his eyes seemed to refocus.

“Yeah! Wait a minute!”

Ted looked at the two of us. “What are you talking about?”

Lucas reached out and slapped Ted across the face. The taller man took a step back, blinking in shock, then frowned.

“Son of a-” Ted cut himself off as he stared at the increasingly panicked Clefairy.

“You- you tricked us!” Lucas accused, pointing at the Pokémon.

“Mind control?” I asked, but Ted and Lucas both shook their heads.

“Mind control doesn’t work like that.” Ted said.

“Yeah, this was more like… more like a nudge.”

A wave of fog tried to roll over my mind again as the Clefairy concentrated on something, but now that I was aware of it, I was able to spot what was going on.

I wanted to see the Clefairy as cute and innocent, but the more I concentrated, the more I could feel an alien presence lingering in the back of my mind.

Some Fairy-types that GameFreak had created really played into the whole “mysterious fae-like being” that a lot of mythological fairies had, but I had never suspected that the Clefairy line would be one of them.

Then again, they were supposedly aliens, so what did I really know?

“All of this time, it’s been playing us for fools!” Lucas said angrily.

The Cleffa were now staring up at the Clefairy, a wide range of emotions on display in their faces. Two of them seemed to be a little confused by what we were talking about, but the third, the brave one, seemed almost angry.

It squeaked something out at the taller Clefairy, who responded with an angry chitter and a tap on the head.

That seemed to make the Cleffa even angrier, and it went on a long, squeaky tirade at the other Pokémon, at one point gesturing to one of the other Cleffa - the one who had fallen.

“Uh, maybe we should do something?” Lucas asked as the two began to get into an argument.

The Clefairy seemed to be getting angrier and angrier, and a soft glow started to surround its body. It tried to hit the Cleffa on the head again, but it bounced out of the way before the blow could connect.

“Enough!” Ted said, stopping the fight for a second.

“What you do from here on out is up to you.” He said. “But we need to go south, not east.”

The Clefairy bristled as he spoke.

“Yeah! If you had been honest with us from the start, we might have helped you!” Lucas chimed in. “But no, you had to try and be all sneaky and mind nudgy!”

It was a fair point. I couldn’t really look back and see any point where we would have really changed our actions in the bigger scheme of things. It’s not like we would have left the Clefairy alone, hurt and partially buried under the stones with only some Cleffa to try and take care of it.

If it had simply asked us to help it get the Cleffa to their home, wherever that was, we probably would have said yes.

A part of me still wanted to see them wherever they were going, and I had to take a second to interrogate myself to see if it was stemming from the Clefairy.

I was pretty sure it was just my own thoughts, not wanting to see the Pokémon hurt from whatever awaited them past this cave.

And yet… while I wasn’t strictly angry that our minds had been played with, I certainly wasn’t happy about it either.

At this point, I couldn't be sure exactly what was my own emotions, or the Clefairy's, and I wasn't going to be taking any big risks on that anytime soon.

I cast a look towards the southern wall of the cave. It was a little bit away, but I could vaguely see the darker openings of tunnels.

And the eastern passages were a lot closer now that we had gotten away from the central underground lake with the Tentacruel. The Clefairy line had managed to cross this cavern at least once before without our aid.

“We go south.” I said, agreeing with Ted and Lucas. “What you do from here on out is up to you, but we’re not going to get played with like that again.”

The Clefairy seemed to struggle for a second, then its shoulders slumped in defeat.

Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel the last lingering traces of its mental presence remove themselves from my mind, and while I didn’t necessarily feel any different, it was a relief to know that we weren’t being messed with.

“I don’t wish you any harm.” Ted said sternly. “But this is where we part ways. If you ever run into any humans again, maybe try finding a way to ask them for help first instead of messing with their minds.”

He started out towards the southern wall of the cave, followed shortly by Lucas.

I sighed, looking at the Clefairy and the Cleffa. Two of the Pokémon seemed to be relatively fine with the situation, but the brave one still looked disturbed.

“Goodbye.” I said awkwardly. “I hope you get to wherever you’re going safely.”

With that, I turned on my heel and followed my friends away from the mess that we had found ourselves in.