“Oh Misty…” Nina sighed in disappointment at the sight of the drunkard drooling on the sofa. “Honestly, it’s impressive how she’s able to sleep through all this commotion.”
Nina tried to rouse the woman and even asked Tini to squirt a small Water Gun to her face. But the Gym Leader simply scowled and waved at her in annoyance.
“Well at least she kept her Pokeballs with her.” Nina looked down to Misty’s belt and saw the three Pokeballs she had brought with her on the trip. After carefully inspecting them, she grabbed the two that she needed, leaving one for Misty if she ever decided to wake up.
The girl then ran back to Melanie who was currently struggling with keeping the Rocket thugs contained. The woman was simply too timid in not wanting to see any of the Pokemon under her care get hurt.
As a result, Nina could see a couple goons rushing up the stairs for some reason. Probably hoping to attack Melanie from above. “Dammit, I have to stop them!”
Nina threw out Misty’s Pokeballs revealing two figures in a flash of light; a Kingdra floating in the air and a Slowking wearing a Shellder crown atop its head. “Kingsley, Eric, I need your help!”
Kingsley looked around in confusion after noticing the absence of his trainer, but looked down at Nina and Tini in recognition. Slowking on the other hand just looked as derpy as usual. But Nina could tell that the Psychic Pokemon had already done a scan of his surroundings and understood the situation.
“We’re under attack and Misty is unconscious,” explained Nina simply. “Kingsley, I need you to go and help Melanie take down those Rocket goons. They’re really weak so it should be easy. Be careful above you though, I saw some assholes run up the stairs just now.”
Kingsley nodded and with a loud whinny, threw himself into the air with a Hydro Pump to the ground and crashed into the three Rocket goons that Melanie was facing in a surge of Dragon Type Energy.
She then turned towards Eric the Slowking. “Eric, you probably have a better idea of what’s going on than I do. But there’s some sort of jamming in place that’s preventing us from calling for help. Do you think you can pinpoint it?”
Nina felt a wave of assurance caress her mind in response as Eric closed his eyes and focused on pinpointing the pesky jammer. “Once you find the jammer, teleport to me. I don’t want to risk you going after a powerful Dark Type on your own.” She said, eliciting a wave of mental affection in response.
“In the meantime… Tini, you and I are going after those two that ran upstairs. We can’t risk them hiding away and screwing with us.”
“Tiin!” Cried Tini as he wrapped himself around Nina’s torso.
After seeing that all of her enemies were preoccupied with Kingsley, Nina dashed towards the stairs and ran after the two Rocket goons she saw earlier.
***
At the same time, Ali was struggling to pin down the assault team that he was facing. There were about a dozen Rocket goons opposing him. And while they were all individually weak, they had the lost Pokemon as hostages, meaning he couldn’t afford to use any moves that were too devastating to avoid collateral damage.
Not to mention the ingrates were clearly stalling for time. Because despite having poisoned their Pokemons repeatedly, the grunts would just play it safe and rotate their Pokemon in and out so that they could cure them with Berries they stole from the farm.
Looking up, he could tell the same thing was happening around Martha as her opponents kept their distance to avoid being taken out.
Ali gritted his teeth. “Dammit, Martha could have ended this with a single Hurricane! I need to get the hostages out of the way.”
A plan began to form in Ali’s head as his Drapion struggled against a group of Houndours that kept harassing him with Flamethrowers, Ember and the occasional Crunch from behind. Individually, they were no threat, but they were extremely coordinated thanks to the Houndoom that was keeping a distance and guiding them.
Going after the big canine would be a waste of time since Dark Types were extremely wily, which meant Keith the Drapion needed to take out the little ones first. His trainer was clearly too preoccupied to direct him, but that was fine. He knew what he needed to do.
Keith had been spewing Toxic all around him since the start of the battle. The spread of the move might have seemed random and reactive to the untrained eye. But in reality, Keith was slowly boxing in his opponents and setting up for a finisher. As evident by the fact that the Houndour were instinctively avoiding and jumping over the Toxic splotches on the ground.
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As the time approached, Keith began sharpening his pincers with a Swords Dance. And predictably, the enemy trainers began panicking at the act, calling out orders for their Pokemon to be more aggressive and even sending out Koffings in an attempt to obscure the Drapion’s sight.
Ali smirked when he saw what his Drapion was doing. “Sneaky bugger as always, Keith. I knew I could count on you.” He was unconcerned about his Pokemon’s predicament because the toxic fumes weren’t going to affect the final phase Poison and Dark Type. If anything, it would cause problems for the Rocket goon’s own allied Pokemon.
So instead, Ali took advantage of the distraction to begin whistling a tune. The canine Pokemon on the field could probably hear him but it meant nothing if they couldn’t decipher the code. Next to him however, Elizabeth the Gardevoir nodded in understanding while Martha began churning up a barrage of wind up in the sky.
The moment that Ali gave the signal, Keith crossed his pincer arms together and let loose an X-Scissor at a Houndour who was misled into the Drapion’s range, sending the unfortunate Pokemon flying towards another one of its companions like a cannonball.
Having opened up a path for himself, the scorpion Pokemon made a rush towards the Houndoom, or at least he pretended to. The moment that the Houndoom was about to react, Keith made a pivot and aimed a Venoshock at the Rocket grunts who were guarding the nets containing their ill captured Pokemon.
That was also when Elizabeth let go of the barrier she was maintaining over the mansion and teleported into the midst of the enemy trainers to unleash an absolutely blinding Dazzling Gleam that she had been charging for a very long time.
The Rocket grunts and their surrounding Pokemon cried out in pain and instinctively shielded their eyes. Meanwhile, Keith, who had already known what to expect, simply closed his eyes and endured the searing pain to make a rush towards the nets to get them out of the way.
Up above, Martha was watching the proceedings intensely. And the moment that she saw her teammate skitter off with a bundle of Pokemon in his hands, the Corviknight let out a furious screech and swooped down onto the enemy humans with her body coated entirely in condensed Flying Type Energy.
The enemy flyers tried to stop their foe, but Martha’s Brave Bird simply knocked them aside with ease. Her momentum only slightly diminished as the humans she was targeting were all knocked into the air, all bloodied and bruised.
One of the unfortunate Rocket goons were even clipped by the Corviknight’s steel feathers in an unfortunate angle and ended up severing half of an arm. Ali sighed at the sight, there was nothing worse than having to waste medicine to keep these sorts of scum alive.
Seeing the unfortunate fate of their trainers, the enemy Pokemon faltered, only to be held in place by a furious Howl from a scuffed looking Houndoom. The senior Pokemon had not gotten out of that exchange unharmed, largely due to Elizabeth’s Dazzling Gleam. But it looked pissed and commanded its subordinates to directly attack Ali in revenge.
Unfortunately for Houndoom, their assault was intercepted by Elizabeth who teleported back to Ali’s side the moment that she had finished unleashing her Dazzling Gleam, clearing the field for Martha who began flapping her wings forcefully to conjure up a Hurricane to sweep up the remaining Pokemon.
***
Back inside the mansion, Tini coiled his body up and launched himself at the Raticate and Golbat blocking his way.
Coil was a Poison type move, but it was also a move that Milotic knew for some reason. Misty’s Milotic was very adept at incorporating the move in its own movements, seamlessly using it to zoom around, much like how Kingsley uses Dragon Dance to dodge.
So naturally, Tini, being the impressionable little Dragon that he was, asked his senior serpent to teach it to him. The end result wasn’t quite the same since it was physically impossible for him to harness Poison Type Energy. But he learned the movement side of the equation and substituted Poison with Dragon Energy instead.
The end result was a bastardized version of Dragon Rush crossed with Coil as he surged towards the Raticate with a blaze of purple aura.
The Raticate tried to negate the damage using Protect, but it did nothing to diminish the momentum of Tini’s charge as the Pokemon was sent flying back to its trainer.
Golbat tried to swoop in and blast Tini with a Supersonic, but the little Dragon simply countered it by crying out as loudly as he could. “TIIIIINNNNNN!!!!!!” He yelled.
As an avid abuser of Supersonic herself, there was no way that Nina did not teach her partner about how to deal with that move. Especially since the Golbat line were such common Pokemon. Soundwaves canceled out soundwaves. And while Tini could not match the same high frequency of Supersonic, his cries did enough to deafen him from the effects of Confusion.
After the noise had ended, Tini fought back the mild discomfort he felt from the Supersonic and lashed out with a regular Dragon Tail at the Golbat. Unfortunately, his sense of distance was still a little off as he only managed to clip the Golbat slightly.
“Fall back and Dragon Pulse while you recover!” Commanded Nina, to which Tini readily obliged by ‘swimming’ back with a flourish. Tini hasn’t learned how to air swim perpetually like Kingsley just yet, but using it in short bursts does give the little Dragon a lot more options when it comes to movement.
By this point, Nina had also released Espy, recognising that her opponents might attempt to bypass Tini and get at his trainer. That said, Nina held the Eevee back in reserve by her side since neither of her Pokemon have learned to coordinate with each other in battle just yet.
It was a good thing that she did, because with an aggressive cry, Espy suddenly slammed a Quick Attack into an Ekans who had somehow snuck up behind Nina.
“Thanks, Espy!” Exclaimed Nina in surprise. “Go in for a bite around its neck and don’t let its fangs touch you!”
Espy did as she was told, using Swift to keep the Ekans down while she closed in and bit the snake Pokemon, violently shaking the Ekans left and right like a dog with a chew toy.
“If you can, try to throw it off the balcony. Kingsley should be able to handle it.” But right as Nina said that, there was a flash of light behind the two Rocket goons, revealing a Slowking who had just teleported in and grabbed hold of the two rogue trainers with Psychic.
Eric the Slowking yawned and began mercilessly slamming the two humans against the wall over and over again until they lost consciousness, before tossing them off the balcony to be handled by his teammate downstairs.
It also turned out that the earlier Yawn wasn’t superfluous, as the Raticate and Golbat began exhibiting signs of drowsiness, allowing Tini to slam into them in one fell swoop using his special Double Tail attack.
Just as Nina was about to breathe out in relief, she heard a yelp from Espy behind her who was now wrapped up by the Ekans she was just fighting.
“Espy!” Cried the girl in panic. But just as the Poison Pokemon was about to sink its fangs into Nina’s princess, a Psychic aura held the snake in place, pried it loose, before swiftly dispatching the Ekans and throwing it aside as well.
Nina sighed in relief, picking up her Eevee in a gentle caress and thanked the Pokemon who had come to their rescue. “Thanks Eric. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
“Slow…” Moaned the senior Pokemon in response.
“Have you found the source of the jamming yet?” She asked, to which the Slowking responded by sending her a mental affirmation.
“Do you think you, me and Tini can take them on or should we go get Uncle Ali as backup?”
“Slow…” The Psychic nodded while also sending out another mental pulse of affirmation.
Nina steeled her nerves and returned Espy into her Pokeball. “Well let’s go then. The longer we dally, the more dangerous things might become.” She also held on to the gem dangling around her neck and let out a silent prayer as well as a curse.
“Damn you, Mew! I better not catch you laughing your ass off at my misery somewhere. At the same time, I’m counting on you to swoop in and save my ass if I do get in trouble one day.”