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Adrian the Minccinno exited the office of the prestigious Guildmaster Mark, a new task occupying his mind. An important task, that no matter how dreadful, Adrian had to do. He could not let down the Guildmaster himself, nor allow for such potential to go to waste. A potential that Adrian wished to cultivate.
The owners of that potential were now standing in front of the Minccinno, only their backs facing him as their eyes scoured the wall that acts as the mission board of the prestigious Guild of Protecting and Serving. Or Mark’s Guild, the name commonly used on the streets.
“How about that one?” Was all a Riolu could ask right before Adrian squeaked out a measly “H-hello.”, making her, and the Lopunny accompanying her, face the Minccinno.
“Who the fuck are you?” The Lopunny, known as Blaide, asked as ill-mannered as ever. Everything about him screamed ‘ill-mannered’: His speech, his posture, and his sense of fashion. A pair of black, lingerie-like underpants without pants, really? And who even ties a sword holster to the right strap of their underpants, let alone three? In which actual, deadly katanas are held in? And the one not in the black holsters, but in a white one, looked the most used up. How many Pokémon felt the touch of that blade? Adrian hoped those who felt it were only ferals, and that no conscious Pokémon got as punctured as the nose and floppy ears of the Lopunny. A small circular metallic ring going through Blaide’s nose, and small rectangular piercings dotting the edges of the brown fur covering his large ears. The Minccinno also hoped that the swords of the Lopunny were not used to stylise anyone’s fur in the same ways in which his was: All of the cream fur segments of the Lopunny were jagged instead of puffy, with the long dangles of cream fur extending from the meat of a Lopunny’s ears having been crudely cut to stop in jagged ends as closely to the brown ear folds as possible. Meaning that the ends of his ears were close to his shoulders, and therefore, also close to the strap of the large black duffel bag resting on his right shoulder. Which for some reason did not display the badge of the Guild’s branch at which Blaide registered himself, that badge instead being displayed by the left strap of his accursed piece of clothing. The metallic representation of Blaide’s job was a Gardevoir, represented in black and white, holding a pink heart between its arms. III was inscribed into the heart with black, representing that the Lopunny was a Rank 3 Rescuer from the branch of Mark’s Guild found in Victoria Town.
The design of the badge owned by Blaide was completely different to the one displayed by the Riolu on the strap of her small, cream-coloured purse-like bag: A metallic rendition of an Arcanine’s face, facing a metallic rendition of an Eevee’s face. Their eyes formed a black V, displaying the Riolu’s Rank 5 in the Guild, aka, the highest rank one can achieve without being a Guildmaster. Despite the deformation of their eyes, the two faces looked happy. Unlike the face of the Riolu, known as Fevronia. As she was frowning at her teammate: Eyes squinted, her blue pupils partially covered by eyelids. A tuft of blue sapphire fur rested between the squinted eyes, part of the overgrown fur resting on the Riolu’s head. It drooped all the way to her shoulders, making Adrian think it was supposed to act as hair. This thought was commended by the overgrown head-fur being dyed sapphire blue, which was not a natural shade of blue for Riolu fur. That shade instead being presented by the rest of Fevronia’s blue fur while it outlined the buff body it covered. A direct opposite to the thin frame displayed by Blaide.
“That’s not how you treat a stranger that approaches you peacefully.” The woman, who could easily bench press the Minccino, told her companion.
“Words of someone who wasn’t born in Victoria Town.” The Lopunny replied, before eying Adrian. “But this ain’t Victoria Town: Whaddaya want?”
“W-well, you see-” The Minccino meekly began speaking, intimidated by Blaide’s attitude and Fevronia’s abs. “Guildmaster Mark wishes for me to accompany you today!” Adrian finished his introduction with a sudden burst of courage, created by the protection that comes with saying that an individual high on the social ladder has sent you.
“Really? My father wishes for me to work with a…” The Riolu started answering, her eyes darting to the badge pierced into Adrian’s right ear, similar to hers in design. Besides one crucial detail: “...Rank 3 Rescuer I have never interacted with before? That is not his style.”
“I-I mean, I’m supposed to work with both of you…” Adrian answered.
“Why so?” The Lopunny inquired, curiosity present on his face.
“You two…Don’t have the best track record of, erm-” The Minccino started, getting nervous under the peering gazes of his audience. “-Employing cooperation skills, y-yep!” Adrian finished, before taking a few steps back.
The two bipeds leered at the Mincinno, who was ready to bolt…But didn’t, when the two started laughing. A “Wha-” came out of Adrian’s mouth, before being promptly interrupted by Blaide:
“Yeah, no shit! We’re not on the same team to collaborate!” Making an illogical statement, before going back to laughing.
“We’re competing against eachother!” The Riolu interrupted her laughing to make Blaide’s illogical statement more logical: “We’re only on the same team to be able to gauge each other’s performances!”
“That sounds like a rather, erm, unorthodox method.” The Mincinno commented, right when his audience stopped laughing its asses off.
“And it works!” Blaide spoke his mind.
“Erm, a-actually, it doesn-” Adrian started to formulate a response, but got interrupted by Fevronia:
“Speaking of that, besides being a team-builder, you’re also supposed to supervise us, right?”
“Well, yes, so that I-” The Minccino attempted to formulate a full response once again, only to be rudely interrupted by the canine once again:
“So, if our so-called ‘unorthodox method’ provides satisfactory results, my father will allow us to work how we have ‘till now, right?”
“Well, there is no guarantee of that…But I will be writing a report on your current performances while trying to change them.” Adrian replied, explaining the time and energy consuming procedure he’d have to do in order to give an official report on the team. The faulty performances of its members had only been recorded through non-official complaints and the states in which the two showed up at the infirmary until now, after all.
“Great!” The Riolu cheered, flashing a satisfied grin to Adrian before storming to the mission board. She quickly returned, a mission paper in her grasp. “Then, you will join us on a mission!”
“Goo-” The Minccino started to reply, only to be cut-off by the Lopunny:
“Yo, what’s the mission?” He asked his teammate/rival.
“You have to earn that information.” Fevronia responded, before dashing away. Pokémon jumped out of the way as the Riolu ran and hopped between them in an attempt to reach the exit of the Guild. Which became successful right when Blaide comprehended what had just occurred.
“Hey!” The bamboozled Lopunny shouted upon realisation, before starting to rush after the barely-visible Riolu.
Adrian watched the two Pokémon he was supposed to monitor, and improve the collaboration of, run away in a scenario one would expect to see between two children, and not two adults. The Minccino sighed, considered his current circumstances, then faced the clock overlooking the main hall of the Guild’s headquarters. Forcing himself to watch 20 long minutes tick by, alongside the hustle and bustle of the room, before pulling out a Rollcall Orb from his bag. Hoping that he had spent enough time with Fevronia and Blaide for the universe to at least consider one of them as being part of his team, Adrian dropped the Orb while wishing to be brought to their current location. As such, the shattering orb used its powers to teleport the Minccino to the two run-aways, instead of the other way around.
What greeted Adrian’s eyes was a dirt road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. On it, a giggling Fevronia was laying in a supine position while Blaide held onto the mission request paper.
“No fair! You touched my most ticklish area!” The giggling Riolu screamed as the Lopunny brought the paper to his face.
“Shouldn’t have told me about it when we’re constantly competing, then.” Blaide replied while looking at the paper.
“It was a reward for one of your rare wins!” Fevronia retorted.
“My wins aren’t that ra-” The Lopunny started to respond, before his eyes widened. A sudden fury occupied his face as he tossed the paper into the ground found at his feet. “Holy fuck, you are a bitch in both species and mannerism!”
“Nothing bitchy about getting any advantage possible.” Fevronia calmly replied, while shrugging.
“You took a mission posted by the royal family of Victoria Town, for Royal Gummies that they only want because of their name, so that I won’t give it my all. Wow.” Blaide quickly explained his sudden fury.
“Ayep. So, you’re free to just do nothing, ‘cause why even bother working for the royal family?” The Riolu responded.
“You really think I’ll let you win on such a technicality?!” The Lopunny shouted in response. “If I have to give up on my promise to never work for those assholes to win, then so be it!” He then exclaimed, before rushing into the opening of a Mystery Dungeon that appeared near the dirt road. The pitch black darkness found in the side of a hill promptly consumed the Lopunny.
Fevronia stood up. “Well, let's not dwindle-dwandle any longer.” She then addressed the Minccino still processing what happened. “The longer we stay outside the Mystery Dungeon, the more Royal Gummies he’ll get.”
“And I cannot leave him unsupervised!” Adrian stated his own worries, before leaping into the Mystery Dungeon himself. The Riolu was quick to follow him.
Pitch dark blackness gave to musty green walls, surrounding a rocky brown floor littered by Royal Gummies. Some of those Gummies also ended up in the rivers of pure poison flowing through considerable cracks in the floor of the Mystery Dungeon. Not to mention the hefty amount of Scolipede present in this one room. Noticing these things shoved panic into Adrian’s body.
“W-wait, this isn’t Poison Hell MD, is it?!”
“The one and only Apocalypse-Graded Mystery Dungeon that goes by that name, yep!” Fevronia replied, while punching and kicking one of the Scolipede into fainting. “Best way to obtain Royal Gummies, considering that those are the only thing produced in every Monster House room of this Mystery Dungeon!”
“And incredibly devoid of Mystery Dungeon erosion, too!” Blaide joined in on the exposition, while running up the back of one of the Scolipede. “If you faint, these fuckers will eat you before the erosion kicks in!” He explained while jumping off the Scolipede he was running on, positioned in such a way that his fall made a sword puncture the forehead of another Scolipede. Upon landing, at the same time with a corpse he created, the Lopunny used the sword held in his other hand to slash through the Scolipede that temporarily acted as a ladder. Which fell to the floor in halves.
Adrian stared in awe at the power displayed by these two, finally gaining some respect for them…
“I killed three and you only knocked out two, ms. ‘going easy on the ferals’!” Blaide mocked Fevronia, while stabbing the chest of another Scolipede. “Make that four!”
…Until he realised that the two even turned fighting for their lives into a competition to see how many enemies each can take down, instead of simply fighting side-by-side.
Also, standing motionless in an active battlefield is usually a bad idea, as Adrian was painfully reminded upon being struck by a fat Scolipede tail.
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a Minccino should be able to fly. It has no wings that can get its fat little body off the ground. The Minccino, of course, still flies if struck by a powerful attack. As such, Adrian was sent flying, and painfully landed on a bunch of Royal Gummies, turning them into paste under himself.
What also turned to paste was the Drop Hole Trap found right beneath those Gummies, making the Minccino fall to the next floor. Where he landed on another Drop Hole Trap.
Then another one.
And another one.
And 27 more.
Statistically speaking, this should have not happened. However, due to Apocalypse-Graded mystery Dungeons having 30 times more the amount of traps found within a regular Mystery Dungeon, combined with Adrian’s particularly bad luck of that day, the Minccino was subjugated to the horror that is falling through 30 Drop Hole Traps placed one beneath the other. A faster, more experienced dungeon-crawler could have used an item to escape such a fate, but Adrian was not that sort of dungeon-crawler. He was just a panicking, screaming Minccino smashing through Trap Tile after Trap Tile, ultimately knocking him out after going through 12 of them. Adrian was also extremely lucky to not break anything during his fall.
It took slaying and knocking out a bunch of Scolipede before the two extremely powerful Pokémon noticed the absence of their supervisor.
“Did he, like, Escape Orb or run away?” Blaide inquired.
“Nay.” Fevronia answered, while pointing towards the activated Drop Hole Trap. “He touched one of the traps littering this floor, and fell to the next one.”
“That’s bad…” The Lopunny realised, a frown on his face.
“Of course it is fucking bad!” The Riolu snapped. “Look what our reckless competition did! We harmed someone that had nothing to do with it!”
“No, he did have something to do with it!” Blaide retorted, also raising his voice. “He came here to supervise us!”
“Not because he wanted to! He was ordered to!” Fevronia shouted. “And after him, there will be others, if we continue like this! Or there might be none, because our carelessness might have killed someone! And the Guild won’t be happy about this!”
“Then, what do you fucking propose we do?!” The Lopunny shouted back.
“Split the team, you piece of shit!” Fevronia screamed, making Blaide’s ears droop.
“But, our competition…” And drop his previous tone of voice.
“Fuck our competition!” The Riolu continued. “Fuck this! I’ll rescue the innocent bystander that suffered because of us, then split the team! We’re over!”
She then leapt into the activated Drop Hole Trap. Falling through hole after hole, floor after floor. As she fell, Fevronia took out a Warp Seed from her purse-like bag, then patiently waited for her small body to be on the same floor as the Minccino. Due to her small body and the rooms being tall enough to fit Scolipede, there was still a distance to fall between the 30th Drop Hole Trap and the ground beneath it, giving enough time to the quick Riolu to shove the Warp Seed into her mouth. Upon consumption, her body was teleported onto the floor in a standing position, not feeling any of the pain that should have come with such a steep fall.
Fevronia then felt a familiar aura to her left, and looked there. Spotting a Blaide not afflicted by the pain that the Riolu avoided, due to employing a similar method of avoidance.
“What even were the chances of me being teleported so close to you?” He asked the frowning Riolu, before grinning. “ ‘Cause it appears you ain’t getting rid of me so easily.”
“Small floor, as it is the boss room of that thing.” The Riolu huffed in response, while pointing towards a Scolipede starting to stand up. Twice the height and width of a normal member of the species, intending to snack on the poisoned Mincinno laying in a prone position near it after defeating the threat posed by Fevronia and Blaide.
“We’re lucky it has decided to eat him after dea-” Blaide started, but got interrupted by having to dodge an incoming Mega Horn attack. “WHOA!” For its size, it sure was fast. The Scolipede even managed to graze the Lopunny’s immodest garment with its right horn, making said garment fall to the floor with the swords held by it. “Dammit!”
“We?” The Riolu inquired, while hopping onto the back of the Scolipede running towards a wall.
“Yeah, let’s make sure this guy doesn’t die. Together.” Blaide answered, while rushing over to his swords.
“Sure, let’s actually work together for once!” Fevronia agreed, while running up the back of the Scolipede. Her blue aura manifesting itself as a set of four swords twirling around her, indicating the performance of the move Swords Dance. “So, go heal him!” She then ordered, before grabbing onto the pink spike-like protrusions the humongous Scolipede sported on the rims of one of the red shells dotting its back.
“On it!” The Lopunny replied, starting to hop towards the Minccinno found in the direction opposite to the Scolipede’s current trajectory, while also going through his black duffel bag.
“Wow, you really are serious about collaborating.” A surprised Riolu commented, as she leaned back. Her hands tightly gripping the pink spike-like protrusions of the Scolipede, before pulling them back as if they were the handles of a bike she was trying to do a one-wheelie trick with. But instead of raising a bike, the standing-up Riolu started to dislocate the red shell found between the two spike-like protrusions. The shell moved like a trapdoor, making a sickening sound while being ripped away from the flesh it was meant to shield.
“I’ll give up on being cool, if it means someone doesn’t die.” The Lopunny replied, just as he was squeezing a Pecha berry above the opened mouth of the Minccino. Blaide was holding that mouth open with his right hand while squeezing a Pecha berry above it with his dominant hand, the left one, after having rolled Adrian onto his back.
The juices smoothly dripped down the throat of the unconscious wannabe-assessor, but they were not enough. The Scolipede injected the poor thing with enough venom for multiple Pecha berries to be required for its dispersion. So, Blaide pulled out another one from his bag, and repeated the process of squeezing the juices of a Pecha berry in such a way that it effectively entered the body of the one in need of healing. The Lopunny could have applied the juice of the Pecha berries directly to where the toxins had entered Adrian’s body, in order for them to be more efficiently dispersed, but the Minccino might have died by the time Blaide located the spot in which the Scolipede had bitten/stung its future meal.
In the mean time, Fevronia continued to ride the Scolipede while ripping away a section of its natural body armour. That section came flying off when the Scolipede struck a wall of the rather small room, having run too fast to stop itself before striking stone.
Fevronia suddenly found herself in mid-air, as she was holding onto the shell that was sent flying when the Scolipede stopped running. During her ascent, the Riolu only had time to raise the shell above her head before making contact with the ceiling. Making that shell shatter into a dozen pieces, for the sake of her head not being injured in any way. Allowing Fevronia to land on her feet in one piece. Unlike her saviour, which rained down in pieces all around her.
“Is he stable?” Fevronia asked the Lopunny found behind her, as she watched the Scolipede try to pull out its horns from the stone wall it had just struck. The Scolipede wasn’t successful, the top halves of its giant horns refusing to leave behind the wall they had come to be acquainted with.
“Nope! It’s really bad, Fev! Shouldn’t we go to Gilda already??” A panicking Blaide shouted in response. “This is the third Pecha berry, and he’s still poisoned!”
“If it’s that bad, he might die by the time an Escape Orb gets us out of here.” The Riolu responded, as she watched the Scolipede suddenly jerk its head towards the right with as much force as it could muster. Breaking away the top halves of its horns from its bottom halves, freeing the Boss Pokémon. “Just keep on stuffing him with Pecha berries and Heal seeds ‘till he recovers, then we Escape Orb out of here, alright?!”
“R-right!” Blaide replied, before grabbing a Heal Seed and carefully shoving it down his patient’s throat. Pecha Berries did not require such a strenuous effort, of shoving them whole down the throat of someone who is out cold while praying that they do not choke. Hence why the Lopunny packed useful healing berries of different kinds, instead of only relying on the ‘Jack of all trades’ property that Heal Seeds have. As such, the Heal Seed being shoved down the throat of a Minccino with the utmost care that shaking hands could have…
…Was the only one that Blaide possessed at that moment.
If this Heal Seed failed to dissipate the remaining poison, then Adrian’s life was going to end right then and there.
That is why Blaide’s hands were shaking.
Fevronia watched the Scolipede turn around. Upon spotting her, the remainders of its horns started to glow a sickly green. The Scolipede then started to dash towards the Riolu, with the intent to impale her with a Mega Horn attack. Fevronia did not let herself suffer such a fate by jumping up high, almost hitting the ceiling with her head. But she did not, because she flipped her body around while ascending, so that her feet would be the ones to touch the ceiling instead. Allowing the Riolu to push herself downwards, to fall faster towards the Scolipede. Her hands outstretched, covered in a blue aura that indicated the performance of the move Final Gambit.
By pure chance, those hands came into contact with the sole spot on the Scolipede’s back not covered by a red shell. As such, the powerful, barely wounded Riolu easily went through the flesh of the Scolipede with the aid of the power occupying her hands while performing the move Final Gambit. In an instant, the Scolipede had a gaping hole in its flesh, right where a few of its vital organs used to function. Now turned to mush by the fainted Riolu occupying the space where those organs used to be. With those vital organs’ sudden inexistence, all that the Scolipede could do in response was to fall onto the ground, dead.
Having heard a loud thud commemorating the end of a cacophony of sounds created by the battle between Fevronia and a way too big Scolipede, Blaide could not help himself but check what the sudden silence was about. He then remembered about Adrian, and checked to see what the Heal Seed was able to do.
The Minccino definitely did not look poisoned anymore. Making Blaide let out a sigh of relief, before getting a hold of his assessor. With the Minccino under his left arm, the Lopunny awaited for Fevronia to make her way to him. And he waited, his worry growing with each second that passed without the Riolu appearing in any way. Upon a few minutes having passed, Blaide gulped, then approached the Scolipede. Awaiting the worst.
Relief flooded his body when he saw that Fevronia was just knocked out. Being a killer of ferals, Blaide did not feel sick when pulling out the Riolu from the gaping flesh wound she had created.
While lifting his rival, Blaide considered how only one Escape Orb would take her, and the Minccino, to a doctor.
And maybe even into a timeline in which Fevronia is still his teammate.