My heart thundered in my ears as I stood there at the top of the ravine, listening to the monstrous Rhydon stomping around the clearing up above. I had seen my share of terrifying Pokemon so far in my travels through the past – that Onix from Union Cave, the crew of pirate Pokemon when they had first ambushed our ship, Lugia and Ho-oh – but there was something different about this Rhydon. Lugia and Ho-oh were intelligent and could be reasoned with, at least a little. The creature up there? Somehow, I didn’t think it was even capable of listening.
Florence was tugging on my sleeve, so I finally looked over at her. She looked a little pale as well, but she still motioned for us to move a level down to a place where we didn’t have to crouch to stay hidden. We put our heads together with Isaac and Charity, who had followed us up the path and had taken turns to peek up above as well, so we could discuss the plan.
“It does look bad,” Florence whispered with a frown, “but I think we can still defeat it.”
“It’s at least ten feet tall,” I whispered back. “Rhydon aren’t supposed to be that big!”
H̶e̴r̴ ̵ m̴i̴n̷d̸ ̵ i̸s̴ ̷ s̴t̸r̷a̴n̶g̴e̵ ̶ a̶s̸ ̷ w̴e̵l̷l̵, Pausso thought to me. W̵r̸o̷n̷g̸.
I passed that information on to the others, but Florence just shrugged. “That should not matter if things go according to plan.” She turned to look towards Isaac and Charity. “We need Oddish and Slowpoke to help Drowzee put the majū to sleep.”
Isaac immediately nodded and handed off Oddish’s poke ball. Charity hesitated for a few moments, but then she nodded too and picked up Maisy, handing her off to me. I nearly dropped the pink creature at first; she was heavy, much bulkier than I had expected given her small size.
“Good,” Florence whispered. “The two of you should retreat to the front of the ravine, just in case. If it comes to a fight, we will do better if we do not have to protect you.” Then she turned to her team, who had gathered in a cluster next to her. “Snubbull, go with them, keep them safe.”
The little bulldog nodded and puffed out her chest, then glanced over at Skiploom, obviously trying to see if he was impressed. But the grass Pokemon was watching the top edge of the ravine with eyes that burned brightly. Clearly he was excited to try battling that Rhydon.
Isaac hesitated before he left. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he finally murmured. “That majū looks like nothing I have seen before, though the eyes… I do believe I have read something about eyes like that before. Still, this is dangerous.”
That made me raise my eyebrows. Isaac had routinely gone out into the wild with no Pokemon for protection before we caught Oddish. He had never seemed worried about danger before.
“We have to try,” Florence replied quietly. Then she turned to look at me. “Ready?”
No, I was absolutely not ready, but I didn’t really have a choice, did I? Not unless I wanted more deaths on my conscience in the future. I nodded to Florence in reply.
We waited until Isaac, Charity, and Snubbull had made it safely back down to the base of the ravine again. While we waited we had Pausso and Natu use Calm Mind to boost their psychic powers, because we certainly needed every advantage we could get. When they were prepared we crept up to the top edge. A peek showed me that the Rhydon had moved towards the rock wall next to the cave’s entrance. She was continuously scraping her horn against the rock – was she trying to sharpen it? The drill looked plenty sharp already.
Pausso peered over the ledge to my right, and Florence lifted Oddish so she could see on my left. I hefted Maisy up so that her eyes were above the edge in the middle. I felt awfully exposed with my head in plain sight as it was, but there was nothing that could serve as cover in the clearing, so moving up onto the broader ground would just put us more at risk.
“Zubat, support Oddish,” I whispered to my girl, and she squeaked oh-so-quietly in confirmation. Then: “All together. Ready… set… now.”
Pausso sent off a Hypnosis attack, Oddish let out a spray of Sleep Powder, and Maisy opened her mouth to emit a giant Yawn. Both the Hypnosis waves and the Yawn crossed the distance to the Rhydon on their own, and Echo swept her wings forward to blow the Sleep Powder in the same direction. I held my breath as all three attacks hit the Rhydon at the same time. Would it be enough?
The giant Pokemon paused her sharpening briefly. She stretched her arms out to the side, then scratched her stomach and let out a huge yawn.
Then she casually glanced around the clearing, and she saw us.
Any drowsiness that had gripped her before vanished in a heartbeat. Before I could say a word the monster drew in a breath and roared. It wasn’t just a sound – it was like a whole wave of pressure had been released, pushed out from the Pokemon. It physically shoved me backwards, and I fell onto my back with Maisy half-crushing my ribs.
“Bullet Seed and Night Shade, keep it back! Oddish, you help too!” Florence yelled, all subtlety abandoned.
The Rhydon had started stomping towards us, every footfall shaking the ground. I forced myself back onto my feet and gritted my teeth. “Psybeam and Absorb!” I yelled to my team. Then, for good measure, I hefted Maisy into the air and placed her on the ledge above me, pointed right at the Rhydon. “Water Gun!”
In moments the monster was being peppered by six attacks all at once, but it didn’t seem to matter. She shook the grass and water moves off like they were nothing. Weren’t Rhydon weak to those types? Was she really that strong, that type advantages didn’t matter?
The Rhydon paused halfway across the clearing and leaned down, then punched the ground. A set of rocks about the size of my head flew out of the dirt and clattered in a loose spread around the Pokemon’s feet. Before I realized what was happening, the Rhydon had grabbed one rock in her giant hand and thrown it right at Natu.
The tiny bird teleported away just barely in time, reappearing behind Rhydon so she could continue sending attacks her way. The next rock missed Echo, who was able to dive under it, though that meant that she hit the dirt hard and had to thrust herself into the sky once more with no time to recover. But the third rock went straight towards Maisy and hit her dead-on, which sent a spray of gravel down onto my face. I spat the dirt out of my mouth and hurriedly pulled the Slowpoke down from the ledge, then gulped. One attack and she had already been knocked out cold.
The rock-blasting attack Rhydon was using was too effective, we couldn’t afford to let her keep attacking us from a distance. “Drowzee, Disable!” I yelled. “Zubat, Bite from behind, same trick you used on Skarmory!”
Luckily for us, Pausso was very fast at Disable these days. He shot off a set of blue rings at Rhydon and tagged her right before the wild Pokemon threw another rock our way. That meant that when the stone clipped Pausso’s side, it didn’t do much damage at all. Sure, having a rock thrown at you would always hurt, but when that rock was devoid of additional energy it didn’t pack quite so much of a punch.
I got to be pleased about my strategy for all of five seconds before the Rhydon revealed another ace up her sleeve. She started roaring and stomping about, which quickly shook Echo off of her back, and the ground underneath her started to shake. Moments later, all the surrounding ground was shaking in a way that made it impossible to stand upright for long.
“Earthquake!” I yelled, not that I knew why I bothered saying anything. I hefted Maisy up more securely in my arms and turned to Pausso, who was now so unstable that he couldn’t start firing off Psybeams again. “Try –“
Suddenly the natural ledge underneath our feet gave out. I staggered down the cascading dirt for a few seconds before I fell and tumbled the rest of the way. Dirt and falling rocks flashed past my eyes as the world spun over and over again, and it felt like every angle in my body managed to jam itself against the ground as I tumbled down.
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It had taken us a few minutes to climb up the side of the ravine, but in less than ten seconds we reached the bottom again. I groaned and forced myself to stand up, even though my whole body was aching from the ride down the side of the mountain. At least I could tell that Maisy was still breathing in my arms. That was good.
That horrible roar echoed around me again, and the acoustics of the ravine made it sound like it was coming from more than one place. I looked up just in time to see the Rhydon crouch down and jump, aiming right for us. A stab of fear rocketed through my brain from Pausso, who had just gotten up on his feet next to me and was staring up at the descending beast in horror.
There was no time to think; I simply reacted. I hefted Maisy up over my shoulder, reached into my satchel, pulled out one of the empty poke balls, took half a second to make sure it was pointed the right way, and chucked it up at the Rhydon as hard as I could.
The ball hit the Pokemon perhaps fifteen feet above us and, thank Mew, it sucked the monster in before she could crush us. It shook wildly even as it fell back to the ground, but that gave Pausso and me enough time to run over to where Florence crouched next to her team. As we ran I noticed that Florence had tear tracks on her face, and she was holding her left arm awkwardly with her right, cradling her hand. Had she gotten hurt?
The Rhydon burst out of the poke ball behind me before I could ask. Another roar and another burst of pressure knocked me forward again, but this time I knew to expect it and managed to stay on my feet.
“Natu, distraction! Skiploom, Oddish, Absorb!” Florence yelled in a strained voice from next to me. Then she turned to look at me. “Monroe, keep throwing balls, keep the creature off us!”
“I know!” I yelled back as I swiveled around. Pausso had gone back to sending Psybeams in Rhydon’s direction, though they barely seemed to phase the beast at all, and Echo had backed off so she could join Skiploom and Oddish in sending Absorb attacks from a distance. At first it looked like the Rhydon was going to run straight at us, but then Natu appeared on top of her head and let out a loud cheap. The rock Pokemon whipped a glowing arm right above her head, but Natu had disappeared again before she could be hit.
That bought me just enough time to stuff Maisy under my left arm, drag another poke ball out of my bag with my right hand, and throw it at the monster. That one shook three times before bursting open, but I was more prepared now; I already had another ball in hand. The moment the Rhydon turned to look at us and lowered her head, her horn glowing a blazing white, I threw the ball.
Maybe the attacks had done more damage than I thought. Maybe we just got lucky. Whatever the cause, that last poke ball worked. It rolled around madly for a few seconds, then lay there in the dirt, completely still.
For a moment, everything was quiet. I felt like I could collapse into a limp pile on the floor of the ravine. Instead I forced myself to look back at the others. “Is everyone –“
Another roar echoed through the ravine.
My heart skipped a beat as a shadow fell over our group. I looked up, back to the edge of the clearing where we had first seen the Rhydon, and my heart started thumping in triple time.
There was a second monster.
This one was even bigger than the Rhydon had been, similarly gray but with bright orange plates over stomach, shoulders, and head. The drill that served as its nose was already whirring. Was this some kind of evolution that Rhydon had? If so, I had never heard of it before. But oh, its eyes, they were the same glowing red that Rhydon’s had been, haunting and terrible and wrong.
The horrible Pokemon let out a massive bellow as it hefted a giant boulder above its head. Then it hurled the boulder right down at us.
I screamed as I dove to the side, curling up tightly with my head down and Maisy held protectively under my body. A series of small rocks pummeled me from behind, and one particularly sharp stone sliced through my clothing and against my back, leaving a line of fire where I had been cut. As soon as the shower of rocks ended I looked up again.
Echo had dodged out of the way; she immediately winged over to me and landed on my head, squeaking her concern as she checked me over with her echolocation. Pausso was favoring his right leg but seemed okay otherwise. Florence and Oddish looked fine, but Florence was already using her good hand to return Natu, who had gotten nailed by one of the rocks and was knocked out. Skiploom – where was Skiploom?
Florence looked up and gasped, so I followed her gaze. Skiploom was flying straight for the monster with a furious look on his face and had already started peppering it with Bullet Seeds.
The fight was over before it could even begin. The monster formed a small rock from nothing and hurled it down precisely so that it smacked into Skiploom in midair. He immediately started to fall out of the sky, but Florence was able to recall him before he hit the ground, thank goodness.
This was an absolute disaster. There was no way we could defeat the strange new monster with half our Pokemon knocked out and the other half injured. “We need to retreat!” I yelled at Florence as I motioned for Pausso to follow me to the ravine’s exit.
I expected Florence to fight me on it, but instead she just nodded. Actually, she looked pretty pale. Was it from her hurt hand, or the fact that she only had Oddish left to fight with? Maybe a bit of both.
It didn’t matter. I had barely taken two steps forward before a giant form crashed into the ravine in front of me and let out a resounding roar. The sound pushed Pausso and me back several feet until I slammed against one of the walls. That sent a new lancing pain through my back, where I had been cut before.
Should I try throwing the poke balls again? Probably that was our best bet, but I doubted they would do much good when we hadn’t done any damage yet. Still, I dragged a poke ball out and threw it at the monster, forcing it into its energy form.
It took barely half a second for the great beast to burst out again, and it seemed extra mad now. When I tried to immediately follow the first throw with a second, the Pokemon knocked the new ball out of the air with a thrown rock, which sent the broken device tumbling off to the side.
My mind felt like it was racing even faster as I tried to make a plan. All the Pokemon with type advantages had been knocked out except Oddish, and Oddish wasn’t a battler, not really. Florence looked scared, really scared, and that made me feel more than a little panicked as well. I could have Pausso and Echo keep attacking, but the beast was practically made of armor, so how could we do any damage?
Wait. We didn’t need to do physical damage.
“Confusion, Supersonic!” I yelled to my Pokemon. I felt a burst of pride through the panic as they both focused forward and attacked the monster with everything they had, despite the overwhelming odds. Echo even flew right up in the monster’s face to properly hit it with her Supersonic waves.
Then the monster reached out a giant hand and smacked her down with contemptuous ease, sending her straight into the dirt.
I felt like my heart would burst right out of my chest as I saw Echo lying there, splayed out on the ground. I was able to breathe again when I saw her tiny chest flutter; she was still alive. But she was right next to the monster, which had now raised its arm as it charged up some kind of attack that made the limb glow with a faint orange light. If it just took one step towards her –
Pausso suddenly ran past me, his gait awkward due to the limp in his right leg. I turned to yell at him to come back, because I couldn’t bear to have him get hurt too, not when Echo was lying there limp and unconscious already. Then I stopped.
Pausso had started to shine with a brilliant light.
He was evolving.
I watched, mouth agape, as white light overtook Pausso’s body. He grew taller before my very eyes, and his arms and legs, always so stubby before, lengthened out to more human proportions. His presence in my mind, our mental bond – it practically sung as he changed.
The glow dimmed and I could finally see him. He was taller than me now, though not by much; maybe half a foot. He was yellow all over instead of brown on his lower half, and there was a new ring of fluffy fur around his neck that had never been there before. And he now gripped something in his left hand, a pendulum that had appeared from nowhere.
Run! he sent to me, making me blink in surprise. His mental voice was clear as a bell now, and it didn’t hurt at all. Then the situation hit me and I scrambled into action, taking full advantage of the opportunity his evolution had bought us.
Florence had already returned Oddish and was running past the monster, still cradling her left hand carefully. I veered to the side to pick up Echo before I ran after her. That put me dangerously close to the monster, but Pausso had things under control. He had already taken the hit that the monster had been charging, and now he was waving his new pendulum in the creature’s face, keeping it distracted. It helped that Echo’s Supersonic attack must have done something, since the beast looked a little unsteady on its feet.
As I scooped Echo up and placed her on top of Maisy, my girl stirred. She was waking up already? Maybe she had only been stunned by the monster, not truly knocked out. That gave me an idea.
I ducked down to avoid the monster’s arm, which had swung wildly to the side as it attempted to swat Pausso away. Then I raced after Florence, joining her at the entrance to the ravine. She jabbed her head towards the exit, but I held back. Escape was right there in front of us, so very close, but there was still one thing left to do.
I stuck my hand into my satchel and felt around until I found the cool metal of Pausso’s poke ball. As I pulled it out, I yelled “Pausso! Dodge to the side!”
My starter listened, bless him. He ran to the side of the ravine with long, limping strides, though he did trumpet in pain when the monster managed to Stomp on his foot as he passed by. As soon as I had a clear shot, I pointed his poke ball out and pressed the button, sending a beam of light out across the ravine so that he could be safely returned.
Then I nudged Echo up into the air. “Mean Look.”
She was exhausted, but she still had one more attack in her. My little Zubat flew up into position a few feet ahead of me, then let out an almighty screech that was occupied by a threatening display, all spread wings and bared fangs. The attack sent a strange aura out through the space as well, more powerful than I had ever seen her produce before. It washed over the ravine and made the monster grumble in surprise.
Could it actually hold the beast back? Only one way to find out.
“Okay, now we run,” I told Florence as Echo landed back on my head.
And run we did. We ran and ran, all the way to where Isaac, Charity, and Snubbull waited further down the path. Then we kept running with them in tow. We didn’t stop until several minutes later, when the echoes of the second monster’s roars finally stopped following us down the mountain.