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Punz probably shouldn’t feel as satisfied as he does.
For one, he’s still bleeding. His whole face stings, and when he wipes a thumb under his nose, it comes away wet with blood.
Oh, well. He’s no stranger to violence—hired muscle is hired muscle, and sometimes that goes beyond pokémon battles. Whatever. As long as he gets his money, he’s not complaining.
Dream looks murderous.
He can’t do anything, though. Not with a dozen trainers and their pokémon encircling him, not when he’s a ranger first and foremost and doesn’t even have a proper team to fight them with. The cheeky punch he got in before everyone managed to corner him is the last punch he’ll ever land.
So what if only a handful of the deployed pokémon are actually battle-trained? The only defense he’s got left is Rowlet, who’s less of a partner and more of a pampered pet. Even Eret’s coddled baby Eevee could probably dispatch it with a few well-placed Tackles—which means it would be a piece of cake for their Gallade.
As it is, the little green bird’s nowhere to be seen. Punz vaguely recalls Dream sending Rowlet away somewhere before the confrontation, preferring instead to recruit the local Steelix and Tyranitar that live in these jagged mountains. But with his stylus broken and his makeshift party disbanded, Dream’s not even a trainer. He’s just… alone.
Furious, but alone.
“You traitor ,” Dream hisses at Punz, eyes narrowed. He shifts his weight as though to close the distance between them, but Tommy’s Pikachu crackles threateningly, and he doesn’t move from his spot.
Punz meets Dream’s glare with a lazy smirk, hand calmly set on his Mega Houndoom’s curling horn. The evolution is tenuous at best (probably because they’re not in active battle, Punz thinks, and refuses to acknowledge the confused glances his pokémon keeps shooting him), but nobody else will be able to tell.
“Give it up, Dream,” Punz says leisurely. “You’re done. Look around—nobody’s on your side.”
“We,” he bites out, “had a deal.”
“I’m afraid Tommy had a better one. Mercenaries go where the money is, don’t you know?”
Dream raises a hand to his mask, the plain white plate left skewed to the side of his head. “Alright, I get it. I misunderstood the terms of our contract,” he says, dragging the mask back over his face in a movement Punz has seen a thousand times over in his dealings with Dream; it’s a tell more than anything, that Dream feels uncomfortable. Nervous.
Before, it evoked some… professional concern from Punz.
Now, he tries to pretend it’s just the triumphant rush of near-victory.
“I wasn’t aware you could break it without telling me,” Dream continues, slipping his hands into his pockets. The mask makes him look calmer than he must actually be. “But that’s fine. Better late than never.” And then his gaze swings over to Sapnap.
Something—shifts. The wind changes direction, howling down, flattening clothes and fur as it rushes through the craggy peaks of the shattered savannah.
Sapnap’s eyes widen. “You wouldn’t,” he says, and everyone turns to look at him in confusion. His Charizard lowers her head with a threatening snarl, but he pays her little heed as his words stumble on. “Dream—Dream, enough, you can’t—you know they don’t respond to evil intent—”
“Evil?” Dream cuts in, icily. “Is that what you think, Sapnap? Was I the evil one, and not the ones who barred us from our own home, who threatened our loved ones, who started this whole stupid war, who left without a second look back?” He withdraws his hand from his pocket, and Punz stiffens at the sight of a green ball in his hand—but it can’t be a pokéball, Dream’s not a trainer—he doesn’t know what it is. “If that’s what you think, Sapnap, I’d rather ask them!”
“Who’s them?” Tubbo hisses at Tommy, who shrugs.
Sapnap seems to know, though.
Sapnap whirls around, eyes wide, crying out, “Get back!” Not that there’s anywhere to go, really, on this tiny, crowded plateau, but—
Dream thrusts that radiant green sphere into the sky, and it lights up gold between his fingers. “I wish,” he shouts, and the sky crumples over him, “I could just put an end to all of this!”
Vivid green light pours through the sky, a brushstroke of violent viridian stretching down from the heavens, and with it comes a windstorm so fierce it presses everyone against the ground.
Everyone except Dream, standing tall in the eye of the hurricane, hand suffused with so much light it hurts to look at. He says, so quietly it’s nearly lost in the commotion, “If you want a fight, so be it,” and a jade-scaled tail whips out of the maelstrom to knock half the party off the lip of the cliff.
“Houndoom!” Punz shouts, and his partner immediately snaps his jaws shut on the back of Tommy’s shirt, stopping him from careening off the edge. The others are probably fine; there’s plenty of fliers between all of their teams, but Tommy is Punz’s first priority by contractual obligation.
Serve the hand that pays, and all that.
The wind rips apart, and too late Punz realizes that there’s an unnatural rasp to the wind roaring through the area, the bellow of a pokémon emerging in absolute fury.
And Rayquaza, lord and keeper of the heavens, embodiment of the skies themselves, tears through the clouds with just enough speed to slam their claws into the earth around Dream and shriek a challenge to the rest of them.
On instinct, most of the other pokémon flinch. The only one to roar back is Sapnap’s grim-faced Charizard, spouting flame that gets whipped away into nothing the moment it leaves her tongue. Sapnap himself looks torn, but eventually reaches for the keystone glimmering on one of his many rings.
He doesn’t get a chance to activate it before Rayquaza cloaks themselves in light and rushes forward, gouging a canyon into the ground as they Thrash.
“Arceus may love you still,” Dream hisses, finally dropping his arm, “but we do not.”