The Path of Destiny

[Scytherwolf]

The Path of Destiny
Chapter 57 - The Fighting Ring

Thunder could see the stands, the hundreds of jeering trainers. She could see their excitement and smell their food and drinks over the scent of blood wafting around her in the arena. They were waiting to watch her make a kill, but not for the purpose of hunting as would be normal for a scyther. She would not be allowed to eat her defeated opponent, even though the tauros was a prey species. She was starving, but she knew the body would just be dragged away like the others after the fight. This only drove the point further as to how cruel and pointless the pit fights were. It was a disgusting mockery of both nature and pokémon battles.

She could see Master, and the tauros’s human, standing above the arena on their platforms. She could smell the blood even stronger as she paced, but the scent of it didn’t make her hungrier as it normally would. It made her furious.

The floor of the arena was wet, as if one of the pokémon who’d last fought had been a water type. From the look of the blood smears, it seemed as if one of the fighters had been slammed into the ground. Perhaps that was how that pokémon had died.

However, as she continued to take in her surroundings, they started to register in only a distant, mechanical way. Even her anger subsided, giving way to what she could best describe as indifference. This was a situation she had been in countless times before, yet this time, she realized, something was different. When she had first been sent out of her poké ball, she had raced around her half of the arena frantically, but more at the opportunity to run and move around than anything else. Now, it was all too clear what she was actually facing, the place she had hoped she would only ever have to return to in her nightmares.

This was just one of the arenas. They were all the same to her. She couldn’t even remember which battles she had fought in this particular one, and she didn’t think it mattered.

As the trainers readied themselves, her thoughts still drifted back to the day Master had captured her again, those same events that repeated in her head over and over every day since it had happened. And perhaps it was the taste of freedom she had found when joining the growlithe and her group, but there was something about being recaptured that made the thought of being under Master’s control even more unbearable than she could remember. At least, it had at first. Now that she was actually here, she felt numb, disconnected. She couldn’t even bring herself to fear for her life as she stared at the tauros on the other side of the line breaking the arena up into two halves. The whole thing suddenly seemed incredibly pointless, an endless cycle of pain and misery for her, that tauros, and every other pokémon forced into this terrible place.

And she knew at any moment, the horn would go off and she would have no choice but to fight. Growling, she raised her scythes and stared at the tauros, but it was a halfhearted effort, and the pokémon did not seem intimidated at all. As Thunder tried to prepare herself for what she was about to do to the pokémon, images flashed through her head of the last time her blades had cut through a pokémon’s flesh.

It had been Nightshade. The heracross who, she had come to realize, was probably the only pokémon she had ever considered a friend.

She had attacked him. She might have even killed him. Yet even now, she couldn’t help but wonder why she had done it. She had told herself that she had lost control, slipped into the ‘attack mode’ Master had forced into her since she was barely older than a hatchling. She had told herself it was something she couldn’t control.

But that wasn’t right. Some part of her mind had given her that instinctive reaction, but it had been her choice to act on it. She had barely even made an effort to hold back the rage, the drive to wound and attack that Master and his pokémon had taught her so well. She had begun to realize this one day several weeks ago when she had recalled something Nightshade had said to her. He had told her, days before the attack happened, that she did not have to be a slave to Master; she could make her own choices, and she would always have that ability. She had thought, back then, that he was just stating the obvious, the things she already knew. But the meaning of those words had dawned on her. She had chosen to attack her friend. And she had regretted it even the moment after she’d done it. It was the worst mistake she had ever made.

As she waited for the horn to sound, she caught a glimpse of one of the television screens overhead. Master’s three poké balls were clearly laid out beneath the image of his face on the screen; her, his serperior, and a third unknown pokémon. Yet what caught her eye was that the serperior had a red X over its poké ball image. The match had just started and Master was down by one. One more loss, and all the money he had put into the tournament would be lost.

One more loss…Master would lose the fight.

Her eyes narrowed in hatred at the man standing on the platform above her. Her claws dug into the ground. She was done fighting for him. He would not own her anymore. Thunder did not want to die, but she didn’t want to continue serving that cruel human either. And if there was one thing she could do, she could bring him down in his moment of glory, even if it meant that defying her Master would be her final act.

The sound of the horn came suddenly, and Thunder realized that what had seemed like several minutes had really been a much shorter period of time. She caught sight of the tauros charging toward her, its eyes filled with the same boiling rage she was sure had filled her own eyes when she attacked Nightshade.

Before, she had always been afraid for her life during these battles. She was sure it didn’t show; to anyone else, she was just another crazed, violent pokémon out for blood. Yet that was what they all appeared like. There was rage in these pokémon, yes, but it masked the fear. Even in Master’s other fighters, the ones who supported and praised him. The cold blooded killers these humans wanted to see were not what pokémon were really like.

Now, however, she felt only a strange sensation. It wasn’t quite calmness, and it certainly wasn’t peace. Maybe it was just satisfaction, the thought that she was doing something to make things harder for her tormenter, even if only temporarily. Maybe it was the satisfaction of messing up the rules of their stupid little game. But when the tauros came at her, all she felt was that strange, weak sensation of satisfaction of how she was exerting what tiny amount of choice she had. And she let the pokémon hit her.

She barely registered being thrown into the air over the tauros’s horns, but she felt the impact when she hit the ground. She had managed to avoid landing on her scythes, but one of her wings was bent beneath her. She flexed it; it seemed functional enough, not that she planned to use it.

“Thunder!” Master cried from somewhere beyond the arena walls. “Get up! Now!”

She ignored him. The tauros struck again, this time catching her side with its horn as it flung her over its head again. Thunder didn’t know if she was hurt badly or not; she hardly cared. There was nothing more she could do anyway, unless she wanted to give Master his victory.

The maddened stomping of her opponent caused her to glance in the tauros’s direction, and it was then that she realized that, in tossing her, the bull pokémon had gotten one of its eyes slashed by her blades. It whipped its head from side to side, shaking droplets of blood onto the arena floor. Its trainer shouted some angry words, and Thunder couldn’t help but notice that, compared to Master, he sounded incredibly inexperienced. How he managed to get this far was a mystery to her. Perhaps his tauros was one of his lesser-trained pokémon, because the normal type certainly didn’t look like it was prepared for an arena fight. If that was true, it would be all the more humiliating for Master when he lost.

Thunder stood up, but kept her scythes lowered as she watched the other pokémon. Then, hoping Master was watching carefully, she looked away from the tauros and casually glanced around, scanning the trainers in the arena as if she was simply admiring a pleasant day. She didn’t even listen to Master’s increasingly infuriated shouts.

And then, to her shock, her eyes locked onto someone familiar. No, two of them. She stared incredulously as she spotted, in the stands, near the edge of the arena itself but raised enough above it so that she could see, Snowcrystal and Nightshade. She could recognize Nightshade anywhere, and he was alive…injured, but alive. And Snowcrystal…Snowcrystal was orange now. Some human thing must have been done to her, Thunder figured. But there was no mistaking her eyes. Both members of her former traveling group were looking at her, a mixture of horror and sadness on their faces. Not for their own sake, but for her.

And then, in a split second, Nightshade’s words, from what seemed like so long ago, came back to her mind. And for the first time, she thought she understood them.

It wasn’t like what she had figured out all those weeks ago. She’d known that it had been her own choice to attack him for a while now. This time, the full meaning of those words was clear.

Nightshade was right; he had been right about that. And probably many other things too. She was not some twisted creation of Master’s; she never had been. Her actions, her choices, were her own. Maybe even Nightshade didn’t believe that now. Maybe he had come to believe, like many of the others, that Master had warped her mind beyond any sort of redemption, turned her into something evil. She wouldn’t blame him if he did. But he had been right before. She had the ability to choose for herself. Not even Master could take that away.

She did not have to kill this tauros. And she did not have to die.

Her attention snapped to the charging beast that was now barreling in her direction. She braced herself, and then, at the last instant, darted to the side and let the pokémon charge past her. It whirled around, charging again, this time readying a hyper beam. However, the blood in its eyes and resulting loss of vision caused it to misaim, and Thunder had no difficulty dodging the new attack as well.

As she continued to dodge attack after attack, she caught glimpses of Master’s barely-concealed fury, could hear the shouts of both humans as they tried to spur their pokémon on to greater efforts. It was to no avail; the tauros was tiring, and the loss of vision seemed to be inciting a sort of panic in the pokémon; its attacks were more and more off target.

Then, when Thunder felt as if she had dodged a hundred attacks or more, the tauros came to a sudden stop. Thunder waited in anticipation, but the pokémon only drew in shuddering breaths. It looked exhausted, and she then noticed that some of its scars were actually wounds – fresh ones – as if it had been in recent battles. Perhaps the tauros wasn’t inexperienced, but instead a victor who had been put through too many consecutive fights. Maybe its trainer did not have as many pokémon as Master, so to compete in the tournaments, he needed to reuse some of them soon after a battle. Well, that worked to her advantage.

“THUNDER!” Master shouted, his fist pounding on the rail surrounding his platform. His eyes were wide, the usual calm and collected attitude he presented to other humans completely gone. “Listen to me! Attack!”

Master looked so comically enraged, so utterly helpless to do anything to her while he was up there, competing in a tournament with rules set by other humans, that Thunder couldn’t help but smile. It was an odd thing for her to do; in fact, she wasn’t sure she remembered the last time she had smiled. She hoped that Master could see her smirk.

“Tauros, attack the scyther!” the other trainer shouted, sounding just as stressed as Master.

Obediently, the tauros turned toward her, but its movements were clumsy, and it stumbled, falling onto its side. At further demands from its trainer, it climbed heavily to its feet.

“Go ahead,” Thunder told it. “Try to attack me. I’ll only dodge again. I’m not going to fight.”

The tauros stared in her direction with its one remaining good eye, blinking as blood obscured its vision again. Then, it gave a weary sigh and kneeled on the floor of the arena.

Thunder’s head jerked up as the horn sounded out again. After it faded, she could now make out the angry shouts and booing from the audience around them, which only drove Thunder to stare in defiance at the stands. A few trainers threw pieces of garbage at them – empty bottles, cartons that once contained food, or styrofoam cups – which only bounced off the arena force field and shattered or crumpled at the feet of the trainers in the front rows.

A booming voice sounded out over the arena’s intercom system. “You have thirty seconds to get your pokémon to attack. If you fail, you both forfeit.”

Thunder wasn’t sure this had ever happened in the arenas before. At least, it hadn’t in any event she had heard about. She knew that most of the pokémon acted out of fear of death or fear of what their trainers would do to them if they performed poorly. But in the grand scheme of things, nothing Master could do to her would be worse than living in the hell of the arenas again and again for the rest of her life. And now, with this one act, she was sure she had likely ensured that Master would never use her in an arena battle again. His hold on her had slipped, and he would not want to take the gamble of sending her into a fight he had poured a lot of money into ever again.

The tauros seemed to have realized that attacking his opponent would only tire him out at best, and at worst, finally provoke an attack. He knew that he would have lost; he had been weakened, he was exhausted, and he could hardly see. He looked so weary of the fighting. Even as Thunder watched him, he gently lay his head down on the ground and closed his eyes.

Amidst the angry cries of the battling trainers and the hundreds that surrounded them, another horn sounded. “Trainers, return your pokémon,” the announcing voice said, and Thunder stared defiantly at Master as he, shaking with rage, held out her poké ball and the red beam surrounded her.

-ooo-

It was clear to Nightshade, Snowcrystal, and Damian that Mausk’s humiliating defeat was not something anyone in the audience had expected. He could hear cries of rage from trainers who had bet money on his victory, and excited shouts from those who had bet on trainers other than the two standing at the arena. The television screens showed the two opponents side by side, before their images turned to black and white, signaling a double loss, which triggered an enraged uproar from the crowd.

They watched as the tauros’s trainer angrily stormed off the platform. Mausk, however, stayed where he was, Thunder’s poké ball still in his hand and his eyes wide in disbelief as he gripped the rail of his platform. He looked as if he wanted to murder the nearest person, and if the three of them hadn’t been so relieved for Thunder’s sake, they probably would have been afraid of such a look.

Another trainer, wearing a uniform that set him apart as one of the people running the arena, climbed up onto the platform next to Mausk. Even through the noise, Snowcrystal and her friends caught a few of his words.

“Mausk…your pokémon…what was that…”

“I paid money for this!” Mausk shouted back, rounding on him. “Three pokémon! I paid to battle three pokémon. You let me fight one more battle…I will impress you!”

From what they could see, the other trainer gave Mausk an amused smirk. He grabbed a small microphone he carried with him, suddenly taking over as the announcer. “Did you hear that, folks? Mausk says he wants one more round. Three rounds per trainer is what you paid to see, right? So how about this? He shows us something truly impressive and wins? He can carry on. How about that?”

The cheers that erupted from the stands were deafening. Snowcrystal glanced to Nightshade in alarm. “Why are they letting him fight again?” she asked. “I thought they just said he lost!”

“That trainer overrode the decision,” the heracross began, looking in the direction of the human who had spoken to Mausk. “The trainers weren’t happy when both battlers were disqualified. This place runs on their money too, so the people who run the fighting ring want to keep them satisfied…and to do that, they need a winner. They certainly realized that as soon as all these people started reacting badly to them both losing.”

Snowcrystal nodded numbly, tensing up in anticipation as the tauros’s trainer returned to the stand. She felt Damian grip the fur on her head tightly, but she didn’t object. He pulled her closer to him, taking the backpack with her, and she leaned out further to lick the side of his face.

Snowcrystal watched as Mausk placed Thunder’s ball into the machine that would teleport it. In a moment, it vanished, and Snowcrystal knew that Thunder would be sent to where the other pokémon were being watched over. She only wished there was a way to get there, but at the moment, they had to wait and see what would happen; they couldn’t afford to leave just yet.

The horn sounded, and the tauros’s trainer sent out a new pokémon, a male pyroar. This one looked at least in better shape than the tauros had, and let out a thundering roar as soon as it emerged. Though Snowcrystal knew the roar was fake, just some trick its trainer had taught it rather than something the pokémon did of its own bidding, she still felt chilled to the bone at the sound of it.

Instead of releasing his pokémon immediately, Mausk stepped forward, closer to the edge of the platform. Grabbing the microphone attached to the center of the rail, Mausk stated, in a very eerily calm voice, “This is what I’ve been waiting to show you. I hope you’ll all be…impressed.” Taking out a poké ball, he held it up for a few seconds, as if admiring it himself, and threw it at the force field.

Instead of hitting it, the poké ball opened up before it reached it, but the beam of light passed through it, and a pokémon formed on the arena floor. It morphed into a tall, four legged black shape, and within seconds, a canine pokémon was standing there. Its head, adorned with large, curved horns, was lowered, and its body shook. It was a houndoom, a houndoom with red markings in contrast with Wildflame’s orange. A houndoom that immediately jerked its head up, its gaze darting around the arena in terror. Snowcrystal, Nightshade, and Damian each took a horrified look as their worst fears were realized.

The houndoom was Blazefang.

Like Thunder and the serperior, Blazefang was also collarless. He looked dazed and confused, as if he didn’t know where he was. However, it didn’t take long for him to figure it out, and at the sight of the pyroar, he yelped and backed up toward the arena wall, his tail tucked between his legs. This prompted more angry shouts from the audience.

“What is he playing at?” some trainer near them called out. “That houndoom doesn’t look like it could beat a caterpie! And against another fire type?”

“He doesn’t even have a mega stone!” another cried.

“Is he kidding?” a third grumbled. “That pokémon looks too scared to move!”

Snowcrystal could easily tell that the rest of the audience felt the same way. She had no idea how they would get Blazefang out of there, and she saw Nightshade tense up, as if he was about to fly off and try to break through the arena’s force field himself. Luckily, he did no such thing, but she could see him scanning the room for any sign of something that could possibly help them. However, she didn’t have long to focus on that, because it wasn’t more than a few seconds before the horn signaling the start of the battle went off.

With a roar, the pyroar barreled toward Blazefang, who gave a high-pitched yip and dashed along the wall of the arena, trying to circle around the enemy pokémon. However, the pyroar easily outpaced him, and, knowing his fire attacks would not be as effective, picked up speed and charged toward the dark type with a crushing take down attack.

With a panicked shout, Blazefang darted to the side, and by some small miracle, managed to get out of the way. The pyroar, however, stopped the attack, and with hardly a break in his stride, raced after the fleeing houndoom again.

Blazefang looked panicked, as if he could clearly hear the pyroar right behind him, but he didn’t dare look behind as it approached. Snowcrystal watched in horror as the big cat pokémon got closer and closer, and then chomped down on Blazefang’s tail.

Blazefang let out another yelp as his momentum was suddenly halted, his claws skidding uselessly on the floor as he was pulled back. He glanced over his shoulder at his long tail as if only just remembering it was there, and his eyes widened in horror as he met the pyroar’s glare. Snowcrystal really feared for him, the Forbidden Attack momentarily forgotten, as she thought about what the fire attacks of a trained killer could do. Regardless of Blazefang’s own type, all fire pokémon had a limit, and even if the pyroar couldn’t reach Blazefang’s limit with fire moves, he still had devastating teeth and claws.

Blazefang’s attempts to pull himself from the pokémon’s grasp were useless as he was dragged backward by the tail. His legs slipped out from under him and he crashed to the ground. The pyroar took this opportunity and released Blazefang’s tail before lunging forward and sinking his claws in the houndoom’s back.

The howls that Blazefang released shook Snowcrystal to the very core. The fear, pain, and hopelessness in that howl was unlike anything she had ever heard from another pokémon. It spread through the arena, seeming to prompt nothing but jeering shouts or angry cries from everyone but her and the two friends beside her.

They could only watch, helplessly, as claws tore through Blazefang’s black fur. Luckily for the houndoom, the bony ridges on his back deflected the worst of the slashes, but the pyroar soon had his shoulder in his teeth, and bit down hard, causing blood to flow to the ground and Blazefang’s shouts to grow more frantic and desperate. Then, in one blessed stroke of luck, Blazefang managed to pull free and limp away from his attacker.

The houndoom truly looked like a wreck; the pyroar’s claws had sliced him all over his shoulders and back where his bonelike armor couldn’t protect him, and the skin on one of his hind legs was badly torn. He was staggering, as if barely able to keep on his feet. He was far beyond the stage where the battle would have been considered lost in a normal trainer battle. Shadowflare had to have been triggered, but Blazefang seemed to be fighting the urge.

“Blazefang…” Snowcrystal whispered as she watched his wounded form race away from the pyroar again. “Nightshade, what do we do?”

From Nightshade’s expression, he was clearly thinking the same thing she was. If something was not done, either Blazefang or countless innocents could die. Blazefang was too weak and inexperienced to pull off a stunt like Thunder had, and the pyroar was far from exhausted. “Stay here,” he told her, the back of his armored shell opening to reveal his wings.

“Nightshade, wait! They could kill you!” Snowcrystal shouted, but the heracross had already flown off directly toward the arena. She knew that a pokémon who actively tried to interfere with a fight would be dealt with severely, and these humans certainly didn’t value pokémon life. At worst, it could give Damian away as well.

Already, she could see trainers shouting and pointing at Nightshade, and a couple of the humans who looked like they were in charge were sending out pokémon to detain him. She knew there was no way Nightshade could find the arena’s controls in time, but that did not stop him, and he instead headed toward the platform Mausk was standing on – where the trainer was gripping Blazefang’s poké ball.

She saw Thunder’s “Master” turn and give the heracross a furious look, reaching into his pocket – probably for a pokémon he had not entered in the battle – as the arena workers’ pokémon who had been called to stop Nightshade closed in. At the rate they were moving, they would reach the heracross before he ever had a chance to take Blazefang’s poké ball.

Neither Master nor the pokémon from the arena had the chance to strike Nightshade. For at that moment, everyone in the audience had noticed a sudden change come over Blazefang.

To Snowcrystal and Damian, time seemed to slow down as she watched Blazefang whirl around, facing the pyroar that was charging toward him from the other end of the arena. His eyes were closed, his body relaxed, as if he were completely at peace. But there was something strange, unnatural about it, and for the brief second she saw him like that, Snowcrystal felt as if her whole world was crumbling beneath her. She knew exactly what was about to happen.

The houndoom’s eyes shot wide open. Now glowing an eerie yellowish-white, they seemed to pierce through even the light provided by the stadium lights above them. And then he fired his attack straight at the pyroar.

Snowcrystal had seen Shadowflare before, but this time, the inferno was much larger, a raging wildfire that raced through the air above the surface of the arena, causing the ground to crack from the heat. The light was so blinding that she wanted to look away, but found her eyes glued to the scene before her. The massive inferno of blue-white and purple-black flames completely engulfed the pyroar, and Snowcrystal didn’t even hear a shout of pain as she saw the shadow of the lion pokémon’s body jerk once before collapsing to the ground in a heap of warped flesh.

Yet Shadowflare did not stop. The flames reached the other end of the arena. Having nowhere to spread, some of the fire flickered out, but the topmost flames raced along the upper part of the wall, leaping into the air.

Snowcrystal watched as the force field suddenly revealed itself, and a high-pitched alarm-type sound went off as she watched giant holes eat through its surface, allowing the white-hot flames to catch and race up the platform toward Mausk.

Mausk, however, had sent out a talonflame the moment he’d realized something was wrong. He leapt on the pokémon’s back and it took off moments before the Shadowflare flames jumped to the machine where the poké balls were transported from. The machine burst into flames, its metal coating melting from the heat, as the fire began to spread around the innermost circle of the room around the arena. It found purchase in anything flammable, namely the wires and machinery connecting the platform to the ground above the arena. Snowcrystal saw something on the other side of the platform catch fire, and the Shadowflare flames raced along a section of the ground that led to the groups of seats lining the front row.

The trainers in the stands had stared in shock for the first few seconds, many probably not even aware of what it was they were looking at. But they soon broke out in panic and scrambled from their seats, knowing that the fire was about to connect with the wooden benches of the stands. They scrambled over one another, trying to get to the exit, but it was so crowded, only those who had brought flying pokémon with them were able to leave in any sufficient frame of time. Damian had already stood up, and he grabbed the backpack where Snowcrystal was still waiting, and slung it over his shoulder as he fumbled with his belt to find his tropius’s poké ball.

Nightshade, who had been forgotten by the arena workers’ pokémon in the sudden confusion, attempted to shield his eyes from the strange blue smoke that was pouring from the Shadowflare flames and filling the room at an alarming rate. It stung his eyes, and he could only hope the pain was temporary, and that it wasn’t causing damage that would never heal.

Nevertheless, he spotted the hazy shape that was Blazefang, standing in the midst of the billowing smoke in the arena. He dove down, his wings buzzing as rapidly as they could, picking up speed as he shot toward the houndoom’s shadowed body.

As he neared the worst of the smoke, he closed his eyes, unsure what sort of damage could be done if he didn’t. If he were blinded, he would never get himself or the others out of the arena room. He felt his claws meet short fur and thick, bony ridges, and he wrapped his arms around the houndoom’s belly. Blazefang gave a weak, fearful cry, likely thinking Nightshade was an enemy, but it was clear that the dark type’s energy was too spent to fight back. He did not struggle as Nightshade lifted him into the air.

As soon as he felt the worst of the smoke lift from him, Nightshade opened his eyes and spotted Damian and Snowcrystal down in the stands. Damian’s hands were shaking so much that he was having trouble unclipping his poké ball. Nightshade flew straight for him, shifting Blazefang’s weight to one arm as he reached out for the human.

As he scooped up Damian as well, knowing that he already had Snowcrystal and the backpack in his hands, he heard sudden screams as he realized that the fire had hit the wooden stands. He faltered in midair, halfway to the upper walkway where the elevator was currently being crammed with trainers desperate to escape. He suddenly jerked around and flew downwards, aiming for a few trainers who were trapped in the middle of the room, caught between the burning rows at the bottom of the stands, and the blazing edge of the arena.

“Are you crazy?” Blazefang shouted, struggling in the heracross’s grasp. “You’re going to get yourself killed! Take us up there! Get us out of this place now!”

Nightshade ignored him, making a beeline for the trainers. There were three of them, and as they didn’t have the uniforms the workers had, Nightshade assumed that they were trainers who had been participating in the battles or had some special seat closer to the arena than the rest. While they were standing on concrete, the Shadowflare flames seemed to be building higher and higher; the heat would kill them before long. Flying high enough to clear the flames, he focused on the group of trainers before landing in the clear patch.

He momentarily released Damian, and the trainer stood upright, shielding his eyes from the smoke. They each felt as if they’d stepped into an oven, and they could tell that if they stayed any longer, the flames would be large enough and close enough to do real damage; the room was rapidly heating up already. Snowcrystal, even as a fire type, flinched in pain at the heat. Only Blazefang was unaffected.

“Fernwing, help anyone you can find!” Damian shouted, releasing his tropius, who took a look at her surroundings and cried out in terror, but nonetheless obeyed, flying over the wall of flame as Damian indicated. The young trainer turned to Nightshade. “They need all the help they can get,” he explained. “You can take us all out of here...right?”

Nightshade nodded, and motioned for Damian to climb onto his back, and once he did, two of the trapped trainers had raced toward him, not seeming to care who he and Damian were. Nightshade grabbed the smaller of the two, allowing the second to climb up on his back behind Damian, where he gripped the pieces of the heracross’s shell that served as wing covers, not having much else to hold on to. Nightshade winced as he aggravated the still-tender wound Thunder had left on his exposed back, but remained still.

He lowered his head toward the third one, who was running toward him from the other side of the arena, indicating that the human should climb behind his horn. He knew it wasn’t an ideal solution, as there wasn’t much room for any of them to hold on, but he knew he was strong enough to lift them, as long as they could get a good enough grip for the several seconds he’d need to fly up the elevator shaft.

Snowcrystal watched the wall of fire as it spread rapidly through the stands around them. She had no idea how many humans had gotten out, how many were close to the fire, or worse yet, how many had already perished. She knew the only reason the flames hadn’t consumed the entire room yet was that there were sections of solid concrete between each row of stands, slowing Shadowflare down. But once it reached the elevator…she knew the deadly fire would begin to creep through the other rooms of the underground. She didn’t know how far it would spread before it reached the underground’s sealed doors and ran out of things to burn.

As the third trainer finally reached them, Snowcrystal suddenly realized that this was the trainer who had sent the heracross into the battle earlier. From her position at Damian’s shoulder, she could see that Nightshade recognized him too, and from the look in his eyes, she was suddenly almost certain that Nightshade was just going to take off and leave him there. She could tell that her friend was no longer sure he wanted this human to be saved.

Yet, after a moment’s hesitation, he lowered his horn, allowing the trainer to try to climb awkwardly behind it. Nightshade was sturdy enough to carry him, but there was simply too little room for another trainer to ride. When his attempt to find balance failed, the frightened man desperately wrapped his arms around Nightshade’s horn, clinging on for dear life as the heracross lifted off the ground, this time heading straight for the elevator shaft.

As they passed the flames and emerged into more open, less heated air, Snowcrystal could now see that the majority of the trainers were crowded at the topmost part of the room, waiting for the sole elevator to return. The elevator itself was massive, but it certainly wouldn’t be able to carry all of them. Fernwing was nowhere in sight; she had to be carrying trainers up to the higher floors. Looking at all the ones remaining below, Snowcrystal didn’t think there was any way for them all to get out in time, and she could only see a few other flying pokémon trying to bring trainers up; most of the humans had fled and left the rest behind.

Even though these people were responsible for horrible things, she wasn’t sure they deserved to be burned alive. She remembered that part of the reason they had come here in the first place was to prevent deaths by Shadowflare, even if the lives they were saving weren’t exactly innocent.

She could also see that the Shadowflare flames were growing bigger. They had been quite small when they first made the leap out of the arena, but as they found more to burn, they were steadily growing to be a raging inferno. The fire was taking far less time to leap from row to row now.

Her view of the fire vanished as Nightshade darted upward toward the one exit. He zipped by Fernwing as he began to fly up the shaft, passing the massive metal frame of the elevator as it slowly, far too slowly, made its way down. He hoped Fernwing could lift several trainers at once fast enough; the tropius was bigger than he was, but not nearly as strong.

Luckily, Nightshade cleared the distance to the upper room fast, depositing Blazefang and the trainer he was carrying onto the floor. He flicked his horn, dislodging the arena heracross’s trainer, who sprawled to the ground in an ungraceful heap. He then straightened himself so that the other slid off his back. Damian carefully dismounted, holding his backpack which was now halfway open, Snowcrystal’s head in full view as she stared around with wide eyes. The heracross gave all three of the trainers an unusually fierce glare as they ran off down the hallway. Snowcrystal could see that he still looked a bit conflicted about saving them.

“Nightshade, we’ve got to get out of here,” Blazefang barked, looking at the heracross with a panicked gaze. The houndoom looked frantic; he wasn’t able to be hurt by Shadowflare, but he clearly wanted to leave its devastating remains behind.

“Blazefang, we came here to try to save them from Shadowflare; we can’t…leave them to die,” Snowcrystal replied before Nightshade could answer. She knew that Blazefang was unaware they had come for any reason other than just to retrieve him. The idea that they would want to save all those trainers from such a fate probably would strike him as very strange. The way the underground was built, strategically modified so that it was cut off from the levels above ground by large amounts of concrete and metal, the Forbidden Attack would die out before it reached the surface, much like it had out in the rocky wilderness beyond Stonedust City. Blazefang probably wouldn’t understand why they would risk so much to stop Shadowflare from killing the spectators of a bloodbath, trainers who he probably thought deserved such a fate.

Blazefang looked at her with a mixture of surprise and astonishment. She expected him to protest, but instead, he gave her a pleading look and mumbled, “What do you suggest, then?”

Before anyone could speak, Fernwing reappeared, a few trainers clinging to her back and neck. She faltered, unable to fly properly while carrying so much weight, but managed to land safely beside the others to let the trainers descend from her back and flee down the hallway.

“Nightshade, you can’t go back down there!” the tropius cried. “It’s like a furnace! All of a sudden, half the stands were up in flames. Any second now it’s going to-”

“What about the ones still down below?” he asked.

“The elevator should be big enough to carry them out…they’re getting on right now. But you don’t understand…we have to leave now!”

“But the elevator-” Nightshade began.

“Er…if it’s all the same,” Blazefang interrupted, sounding uncharacteristically timid, “I’d prefer they didn’t die in, uh…that…”

As the houndoom continued to stutter, Nightshade turned his attention to the cables that were pulling the elevator up to their floor. They were attached to a massive pulley that he could see resting on a ledge jutting from the wall above them, forming a partial upper story above the main floor of the hallway.

Flying up to it, Nightshade gripped the pulley in his claws, using his strength to try to rotate it faster and bring the elevator up to the higher floor at a quicker pace. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Shadowflare flames reached the machinery at the bottom of the shaft and either set the elevator ablaze or sent the whole thing crashing down.

He was surprised when he was suddenly joined by other flying pokémon – a pidgeot, a staraptor, a charizard, a salamence, and a braviary – pokémon he didn’t even recognize. Whether they were here on orders from their trainers or of their own accord, he didn’t know, but he was grateful for the help regardless, especially in a place where he expected the pokémon spectators to be as cruel as their trainers.

“See if you can fly beneath the elevator and push it up,” he told them. “Fall back if the heat is too much!” He watched as the pokémon nodded, and vanished down the shaft.

Damian, Snowcrystal, and Blazefang watched anxiously, their instincts screaming at them to run as smoke began to trail up from the massive room below. But like the flying pokémon, they held their ground. The other trainers had all fled down the hallway into the larger room where the betting booth was, but the flying pokémon remained there. Even Fernwing, despite her terror, had vanished down the space that served as the elevator shaft with the other winged pokémon.

Nightshade gave the pulley another push, straining against the weight of the elevator machinery. He could tell that the entire thing had malfunctioned and come to a stop, and it was only himself and the flying pokémon pushing the elevator upward now. Despite how many pokémon had joined in to help, he knew that pushing such a massive frame of metal crammed with countless trainers was still a tremendous feat of strength for all of them.

Snowcrystal and Damian watched as the elevator climbed upward, much faster than it had previously; Nightshade and the flying pokémon were doing their job. Within seconds, the elevator had climbed high enough for the trainers on the side of the platform facing the hallway to leap up, grab the upper floor’s edge and haul themselves out.

As soon as the elevator was level with the floor, the remaining trainers raced out into the hallway, many of them leaping over the rails of the elevator instead of using the usual entrance space. As soon as they had all fled, the flying pokémon abandoned the platform and quickly swerved through the space in the shaft not occupied by the elevator. All of them, save for Fernwing, flew off down the hallway toward freedom.

“You can let go!” Snowcrystal called to Nightshade, who released the pulley and allowed the elevator to drop a few feet before it came to a sudden stop and held still.

“Fernwing, return!” Damian cried, and a red light enveloped the tropius, bringing her back inside her poké ball. He knew that there would be little space for a large flying type to maneuver in some of the smaller hallways.

Nightshade flew back down to them as they began to back away from the elevator shaft, already feeling the heat climbing at an alarming rate. Damian chanced a look downward, seeing that flames had enveloped the machinery near the bottom of the elevator, and were steadily climbing up anything they could find to burn. He was sure that the only reason the whole place hadn’t gone up in flames yet was because Shadowflare had been slowed down by having to leap from row to row in the arena stands. Now, however, it was probably a raging inferno, and even if the main flames were contained, he didn’t want to see what would happen to the rest of the place as smaller fires began to spread.

“Are any of the humans still down there?” Blazefang asked, his voice still sounding terrified.

“If they are, there’s nothing we can do for them now,” Snowcrystal replied grimly.

“Let’s get out of here,” Damian muttered, unable to understand what the pokémon were talking about. He secured the backpack containing Snowcrystal tighter around his shoulders before he, Nightshade, and Blazefang took off.

It was immediately apparent that Blazefang was having trouble. He was limping badly, gasping for breath as he tried to keep up. One of his hind legs as well as his shoulder were badly wounded. Damian turned to him, concern making him instantly reach for an empty poké ball.

However, he quickly remembered that Blazefang technically belonged to Mausk; he couldn’t catch a pokémon who was already caught, even if he was separated from his trainer.

“Slow down,” the houndoom gasped, his breaths coming in labored wheezes. “I can’t keep up.” He was shaking, and looked as if he could pass out at any minute.

“No need for that,” Nightshade interjected, lifting the houndoom over his shoulders and ignoring any protest Blazefang made before hurrying after Damian.

They soon emerged into the large room which contained the betting booth. To their surprise, there were still a few trainers there. A few were arguing on the side of the massive room that contained the three stories of doors – presumably leading to the fighting pokémon – and several were rummaging around in the betting booth, heedless of the danger that could be heading their way. Damian stared at them in shock. There were primitive, open electrical wires wiring the lights together in all the hallways and rooms, and he was sure that was all a Forbidden Attack would need. It would stop at the sealed exits, but no one was safe inside.

Snowcrystal noticed that the humans paid Damian no heed as he shouted to them, though after a few moments the arguing ones seemed to have settled their dispute and ran out. The ones trying to loot the betting booth merely shouted back angrily, but seemed aware enough of the danger and the risk they were taking.

Seeing there was no convincing them, Damian and Nightshade, carrying the canine pokémon with them, headed toward the stairs that clung to the wall and led to the first level of doors. Upon reaching the first door, Damian gripped the handle, only to realize with dismay that it was locked. A panel next to the door had a device that was clearly meant to read a card, along with a keypad of numbers.

“Uh…” he muttered, turning his head and gazing all around the massive room. “We need someone with a key, or someone who knows the code…but we’ve gotta-”

With one powerful swing of his horn, Nightshade knocked the door clear off its hinges, sending it clattering to the ground and leaving the way clear.

“Or use a pokémon,” Damian continued as they raced through the doorway.

The room was full of large, cube-shaped containers. They looked almost completely clear, but Damian knew that the force fields blocking them were far stronger than they looked. To his relief, there seemed to be no guards in the room anymore; they must have fled when they heard about the fire.

Yet there were no pokémon either.

All of the cages were empty, many of them not even having an active force field at all. The room was eerily silent, driving that fact home even more.

“We’ve gotta get to the upper floor,” Damian stated, making a beeline for a set of stairs positioned on a wall opposite of them, Nightshade obediently following. “Maybe there are some pokémon up there!”

After clambering up the second set of stairs, they were met with another empty room. Going up to the third floor, however, brought them close to the fearful cries of panicked pokémon.

Around half of the cages were full on this floor. Pokémon were pacing back and forth, aware that something was wrong but unable to escape. They could hear human voices as well, but they were coming from the direction of the doors leading out of the room, and they were fading away.

“They’re abandoning them,” Nightshade whispered, as the sound of the trainers grew more and more distant.

“Their trainers?” Blazefang responded, shocked.

“The guards…the ones who can open the cages,” the heracross responded.

“Well, break them open, then, oh mighty fighting type,” the houndoom said tensely.

In response, Blazefang was placed rather unceremoniously on the ground, and Nightshade opened his back shell and spread his wings, heading for a cage that held a scared-looking blastoise. Picking up speed, he rammed into the force field. The impact knocked him backward, causing him to wince in pain as shockwaves ricocheted through his horn and down into his body. He hovered in the air, shaking his head to clear the momentary dizziness that accompanied it, and stared at the force field ahead of him, which remained completely undamaged. “I thought so…” he growled.

As Damian caught up with him, Snowcrystal wriggled her way out of the backpack and leaped to the ground, running until she stood beneath the heracross. “Well, there’s the control panel,” she said, pointing to a small square made up of buttons positioned at human height on one half of the force field. “Let Damian get a look at it. He could figure it out.”

Blazefang and Damian reached them, the houndoom taking more time as he trailed behind. Damian watched Snowcrystal motion up toward the buttons, and shook his head.

“I don’t know the code,” he said desperately.

With a growl, Blazefang reared up on his hind legs and, using what little strength he had, rammed his curved horns into the device as hard as he could. A few sparks littered the ground, and when he stepped back, several of the buttons were crushed, but the force field did not weaken or change.

“That won’t do any good. What we need to stop is the power source…” Damian stated.

“And if it’s not on this floor, we won’t have time to find it,” Blazefang growled, despite knowing the human couldn’t understand him.

“Well, we’ve got to try,” Snowcrystal interjected. “No one’s paying any attention to us; we could split up!” She took off running down another line of cages. “Let’s find a pokémon who knows something!”

“Hey, Snowcrystal! Wait!” Blazefang called, a clear message of concern behind his frantic words. “You can’t just-”

Snowcrystal didn’t hear what he had to say next. She had stopped dead in her tracks, realizing that the force field several cages down the row contained a scyther. Turning her head, she cried, “Thunder! It’s Thunder! Over here!”

The other three came running; this time Blazefang wasn’t complaining when Nightshade lifted him up to carry him. The white growlithe sped toward the cage containing the scyther, desperation spurring her onward. Thunder had done some horrible things in the past, yes, but she had also done great ones. And Snowcrystal refused to let any pokémon die such a horrible death if she could help it.

However, when they reached the cage, it was clear they’d been mistaken. This scyther wasn’t Thunder at all. For one, it was male. For two, it was missing an arm. That wasn’t what surprised Snowcrystal the most. What surprised her was that she recognized him.

“Darkfang?” She asked incredulously.

Darkfang, a scyther they’d met shortly before reaching Articuno’s mountain, the pokémon who had told them that Articuno had flown there in the first place, was trapped in one of the cages along with the other pokémon. He looked even worse than Blazefang did, with various wounds all over his body, and Snowcrystal realized that he had to have been in the arenas too.

“Growlithe…” the scyther said weakly from behind the force field, turning to Snowcrystal. “I recognize you, growlithe…”

“It’s me, Snowcrystal,” she began, suddenly not sure if Darkfang would remember any of their names in his state. “My friends…Nightshade and Blazefang are here. Do you know how to open the cages?”

“Friends…” Darkfang began, seeming as if he was totally lost in thought, or even half asleep. He swayed a little, his gaze focused on nothing at all. Snowcrystal wondered if he’d had some sort of head injury, or was merely so weak he was close to passing out. “The swarm…” he continued. “How long ago was it…before the battles…it couldn’t have been that long. I need to stay and train the pokémon who are going into the arena. I need to stay here in this cage so they can practice on me before he sends them out…even the other scyther…”

In the midst of his ramblings, Snowcrystal noticed two things. One was that Darkfang must have been taken from his swarm, probably sometime soon after they’d left it, and possibly with some of the other swarm scyther too. He hadn’t been taken to this place to battle in the arena. His purpose was to be nothing more than a punching bag for stronger pokémon, as Redclaw once was. The underground arena probably had a practice room somewhere, and this room served to hold the pokémon used as target practice for the stronger ones as well. The second thing she noticed was that the trainer that had captured him was very likely Nathaniel Mausk.

“The other scyther…” she said, pressing her paws against the force field. “What was her name? Where is she? Is she here? Was her name Thunder?”

“Thunder? Yes, I think that was her name…” Darkfang continued on, retaining his listless gaze.

“Snowcrystal, look!” Blazefang’s voice interrupted, and she looked to see him and Damian pointing toward a cage behind a row of others that she could barely see. “We found her!”

She turned around followed Nightshade, who had headed in the same direction, toward her friends, but not before turning back to the one-armed scyther and whispering, “We’ll be back.”

They wound their way around multiple cages before coming to the one containing the female scyther. Thunder was backed up in the far side of her cage, her blades raised at Damian and Blazefang. She didn’t seem to recognize the houndoom, and Snowcrystal realized with a sinking feeling that Thunder had never even met Damian; she would have no reason to trust him.

“Thunder!” Snowcrystal shouted, skidding to a halt in front of her cage. “Thunder, you have to listen to us! You have to trust this human.” She motioned toward Damian. “But we need your help. Do you know what powers the cages? How we can shut it down? There’s a fire coming and-”

Thunder, however, was looking straight past her at Nightshade as the heracross landed in front of the cage. Her gaze took in his bandages and her eyes widened. However, it was only for a second before she looked to Snowcrystal again after her gaze briefly flicked back to Damian. “Past this row of cages. There’s a generator. An electric pokémon could probably destroy it but there’s always guards.”

“Not anymore there isn’t,” Nightshade assured her, and turned to Damian, pointing in the direction Thunder had indicated.

Getting the point, Damian released Todd and Scytheclaw, who looked around in confusion. “Head over there!” he shouted, pointing down the row of cages. “Find a generator and shut it down. Hurry, there’s a fire.”

The eyes of both pokémon widened, but they didn’t waste time trying to question their trainer. Scytheclaw sped off toward the other end of the room, the elekid following him. Snowcrystal, Blazefang, Nightshade, and Damian remained.

Blazefang backed uneasily away from the cage. “I’m not sure we should let her out…” he muttered.

The others ignored him. Damian, sensing that Thunder was uncomfortable with his presence, backed up to stand beside Blazefang. Snowcrystal could see that Thunder was far less intimidated by Damian once she got a good look at him, or she was simply so desperate to get out that she didn’t care. The scyther turned her attention back to Nightshade.

“Nightshade,” she asked, her voice sounding demanding but beneath that, somewhat scared. “Is…Stormblade still alive?”

Nightshade nodded his head. “Yes.”

Thunder was silent for a moment, her expression leading Snowcrystal to believe that she didn’t quite know what to think of that. She looked conflicted, and Snowcrystal suspected there was more than just Stormblade on her mind. Then, Thunder looked Nightshade straight in the eyes, looking as if she wanted to tell him something. But a moment later, she turned away, shaking her head.

Before anyone could say anything else, the force field comprising Thunder’s cage suddenly vanished. Snowcrystal turned around in time to see all the force fields on the cages shutting off, the pokémon immediately fleeing their prisons. Thunder was no exception. She darted out of the cage area, glancing left and right as she tried to find the nearest exit.

“That way!” Nightshade cried, pointing toward the stairwell leading down to the room below. “Go down both stories and head away from the arena! Find a way out!”

Thunder ran off before any of them could even see her reaction. Only moments afterward, Todd and Scytheclaw reappeared, looking startled.

“I heard shouting,” Scytheclaw told the pokémon uneasily. “I think the fire’s spread to other rooms. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Blazefang muttered.

The scizor shot a glare at him. “You! You’re the reason we’re trapped in this-”

“Scytheclaw, stop!” Damian cried, stepping between the two pokémon. He took out a poké ball, aiming it at his elekid. “Todd, return!” The electric type vanished in a beam of light, and Damian replaced the poké ball on his belt. “Scytheclaw, stay out here with us,” he instructed. “We might need…”

His voice trailed off as he caught sight of something moving further down the row of cages, many yards from where they stood. As it stepped into view, he could see that it wasn’t a pokémon, but a trainer. A trainer he recognized as Nathaniel Mausk.

“…Protection…”

To be continued…