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“Quit bullying the Eevee Volo.” His Zoroark rolled his eyes, but thankfully left the petrified pack of Eevee alone, vaulting over the ranch fence and joining both him and Rude, his typhlosion, on the other side.
Rei turned to give them both a stern look, “I need both of you and Aura with me on the expedition team, there’s been reports of mass outbreaks all across the obsession fieldlands, and the..galactic teams,” He hesitated at the name of his old comrades, “-are too thinly spread to cover the ground on their own.”
He nodded to Volo, “That’s why you’re going to guide the pearl clan squad west, and you,” He nodded at Aura, “are going to guide the diamond clan east.”
He rubbed at his mask in habit, “They get along pretty well, but we don’t know how well that’ll hold up in the face of battle, especially since two weeks ago there was a fist fight at the clan exchange.”
He turned to Rude, “You’ll be going with me to the south, and the Galactic team will stay north, near the camps.”
He clapped his hands, “This is going to be an in-and-out expedition, no fooling around, no fighting. We categorize the outbreaks, and try to find a pattern, hopefully we can discern what’s causing them before we do anything drastic like try to weed them out.”
Well, at least, he wasn’t going to do anything so reckless, he didn’t know about the others though.
“The merchant guild is going with me, they have lots of helpful pokemon that can heal and status effects in case we get into trouble.” He reassured Volo, who was starting to look a bit agitated at the sound that he wouldn’t be accompanying his trainer.
He put up his hands in a calming motion, “Don’t worry, human Volo is coming with me.”
That…didn’t calm his pokemon down in the least, but in the end, he had no say in babysitting the pearl clan squad.
He stepped up and growled at Rude once before allowing one of his squad to put on a bright, semi reflective blue band around his waist, matching with the ones on each of their arms.
They seemed to glow like the wisps in the distance, it admittedly made it easier to spot them from far away due to his slightly blurry vision.
The storm raged on, slapping Rei in the face with stinging rain, he held out his own arm for a blue band, and tied one on Rude’s and Aura’s necks.
“Alright,” he yelled over the raging storm above them, in the distance, lighting flashed angrily. “We have maybe two hours to get to the designated marked points and back, make sure you do constant headcounts every twenty minutes or so, and keep the rope around each other, this storm is something aggressive pokemon will take advantage of!”
He looked at them all, he was the only superior there, besides Volo, but no one trusted him after the stunt he pulled on Rei six months ago.
Was he nervous? Absolutely, but he couldn’t show that to all these fresh faces, looking to his own masked one for guidance, seeing as he was the only one there that practically lived in the wilds in his off time away from the merchant guild and Volo.
He reached into the wagon beside him and proceeded to pass out hip bags like his own. “These are filled with smoke bombs, sticky balls, oran berries, and stealth sprays, courtesy of the merchant guild, please don’t hesitate to use them if the situation calls for it.”
He looked at them all one last time, “Alright, move out!”
-
He ducked close near the ground for better stability, throwing another smoke bomb for cover. This was the last island they needed to investigate before heading back.
He circled his hand silently, turning back to make sure Volo and the three other guild members understood.
Volo nodded, and went around the side near the beaches, and the other three spread out on the other side.
Rude led the head and he went front and center, nervously looking around for the well known Alpha Infernape he’s encountered once or twice when looking for Shellos around here.
There was a menacing call somewhere behind him, he froze, spraying both Rude and himself with a stealth spray as quickly as possible.
He threw down another smoke bomb and waited for the glow of fire, but instead, is was as if there was a mini tornado brushing just along his back, he stayed absolutely still, counting to ten in his head as he held his breath.
The mini tornado went away, and he crept around, turning to see the back of one of the pokemon Cogita had warned him about a month ago.
He could see orange skin, and concluded it to be Landorus. He pulled Rude back, and they crawled backwards into the grass, out of sight.
What did they do? They were directly inside the circle of hills, it wasn’t as if they could just walk off! He’d heard horror stories of people encountering these things and never making it back in one piece.
Just the other day, a pearl clan member came back to the camp with half their arm torn off and bleeding everywhere, barely conscious through the absolute massive blow in their head.
To think of Rude, or any of his team meeting the same fate to this thing…
He gulped, and grabbed a jet ball out of his bag. It was the only way…there were too many people here to safely leave without an encounter.
He threw it at the beast, and the mini tornado around it dissipated. It whipped around and shreiked, he pulled back and ran for it, but it chased him instead of running away like people had said it would!
“Rude!” Rude ran towards him, ducking to pull him on his back. He held onto the scarf and turned back to throw another ball at the thing. The tornado barrier around it was back, so the ball did nothing but dissipate it again.
“Dammit!” he growled under his breath.
Once more! One more time! Please, Arceus, if you can here him, please let this hit!”
He threw it with all his might, but instead of catching it, it stopped short, looking dizzy and disoriented.
He dropped off Rude, “Go!”
Rude jumped back and instantly attacked, hitting Landorus with a Shadow ball.
He pulled out the heavy lead ball, a considerable weight in his hand and hard for pokemon to escape from.
With one last prayer to Arceus, he threw it.
-
They all met back up at the shore to the beach. “We’re leaving before anything else can try to kill us.” Rei muttered under his breath, slightly singed from the stupid Infernape that caught sight of him just as Landorus’ ball exploded fireworks to signal it had been caught.
Volo snickered, until he slammed the stupid heavy ball in his hand.
“That’s Landorus, give it to Cognita, keep it, I don’t care, just keep it out of my sight.”
Volo’s eyes nearly popped out of his head from what Rei could see through the violent storm.
“How-”
But Rei was no longer listening, stomping in the water and calling on Basculion. He was done with the fieldands, thank you very much.