Chapter Text
This part of Ula'ula island was quiet. The sounds of the tides oriented Kuawehi, but the only structures on either side of the road were trees and old, abandoned tourist traps. Kua kicked up sand as she walked. A quiet thump of paws was the only sign of the large cat following her. His pokeball sat alongside her four others. The unnatural colours of the sky above them, the occasional flashes of blackness or stars she didn't recognize barely registered any more. It had been nearly two months of irregular days and nights that were anywhere between minutes and hours too short. She supposed that was what happened when a madwoman stole the supposed Moon. Over a month since she’d wandered out to the beach on the other side of the island, and found Tapu Bulu Itself resting there.
Over a month since she had been chosen.
She looked toward where the beach must be and sighed. Hau was probably helping with rebuilding or healing or babysitting somewhere, and Gladion had yelled her out of their training spot because poor little Type-null's joints were flaring up or something. Anywhere else on the island, she'd risk running into the idiot she called her brot- uh, sister. Her sister. And the goons she lived with now. Plotting to subvert the police force.
The two of them had been planning on taking on the steel- and electric-type Trial today or tomorrow or… some time, hours from now. The Observatory was always busy, these days. With two of her four pokemon being steel types, it was the most important one for her to start with.
"What do you think, Kitty?" She called over her shoulder. The torracat merely licked his jowls at her, yellow eyes fire-bright in the growing evening. Or morning? "What should we do now?"
She pretended to listen intently to her newest ward’s catlike rumblings - so much deeper now than in a litten. They had to keep training, and working in shifts meant avoiding burnout for any of her team. Still deep in thought, she let the road lead her towards the sound of the sea, the buildings giving way to a glorious false sunset near a small cliff and pier.
The world was counting on her. She was afraid, and she was proud of it, of the steely strength she knew lay within her. Hau and Gladion could just stay back where they belonged.
Torracat meow -ed. That was an alert sound she recognized from battle.
A faint rumble in the wind. Snapping , like when you flipped a paper too hard, or a sheet of metal. Getting louder, and suddenly it was too close-
"Torracat, get down!" Kua shouted, throwing herself to the ground. A crack sound came from above her, and a belated gust of wind, strong. A tiny blur shot over her head, and hit the ground with a violent cracking noise.
It cut an arc right through the asphalt, curving widely as it turned. Turned back towards them.
It was both thin, and small, and absolutely not a pokemon . Wrong in all the ways Kua's brain instinctively knew.
She took a deep breath.
"Ultra Beast!" She screamed, as loud as she could, warning anyone who may be hanging nearby unseen. She threw herself into a run away from it, barely remembering she didn't need to pick up her litten anymore. He took long leaps, faster than her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw it behind her. Picking up speed. It was as small as a paper plane, but the path it had carved into the road had widened behind it into a crevasse. What kind of creature is that? Bug? Bird? A shard of Rock? Folded Steel? Or something we have no name for?
Too fast. Not passing energies into multi-direction mobility - so not Flying. Not Ground, Fire, Psy- what the heck am I doing?
"Momentum," she gasped between breaths, am I going to die here? On this nowhere pier?
A psychic nudge came, with a following noise-migrane - she didn't have the time to decode the fish’s message and so just followed the instruction blindly, with her subconscious mind. "Li-Torracat!" He turned from beside her, where he'd been keeping pace. "Return!" He mewled in shock as he dissolved into red light and she swerved towards the raised ledge by the sea.
Almost there. Almost there. But it was closer. It - was on her!
"Protect!" She gasped, turning with another pokeball in hand. The Ultra Beast was almost completely white, looking like it was made from too-pristine paper with sharp edges and black gravel in its folds. It was almost at her flopping braid when her pokeball finally turned white energy into form.
With a crack its blade-arm met her Alolan sandslash's claws, the sudden force throwing her onto her back. For a single, awful moment Sandslash and the Ultra Beast both hung in the air, steel against steel, and she could see it digging into Sandslash's claw- and then it was thrown back, floating in the air weightlessly, and Sandslash was on the ground -
Bleeding. He was bleeding. His claw had fallen - elsewhere. Cut. The rest of it, the rooted part, had been all but torn out from the force.
"Shrew," Kua gasped. "Oh - oh my-"
Another psychic tug. She returned him quickly and ran again, feet scraping the ground in terrible form, hearing the Ultra Beast recover and begin tearing air towards her.
The edge of the pier. She took a running leap, like in swimming class, and dove.
Saltwater pulled at her eyes and nose. Bruxish was out of her pokeball before her feet had even entered the water, slipped under her armpit and pulling her forwards and downwards. The Ultra Beast tore into the water after them but never got as deep as they were. It was so small and light that the saltwater repelled it, forced it to float, like her straw hat had been left behind.
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Sandslash, please, please-
She wasn’t sure who or what she was pleading with – the Tapu who didn’t care, or the pokemon she was putting in such danger, already pulling her away, faster than she could have swum.
Aqua Jet, intermittently. She commanded. Save your strength, you hear me?
It’s still chasing us.
What organs could something like that even have? Would it tire soon and give up? Or was it some sort of predator in its own world, refusing to give up the kill?
I can’t stay under forever.
Gods, what if it was smart?
She realised she was running out of breath a moment after Bruxish began lifting her to the surface – predator instincts and telepathy – and her desperate mind struggled for a strategy, any strategy.
This isn’t a battle, it’s a wild encounter scaled up. With bewear – avoid, stay calm, shit, we’re past that - make yourself look big or play dead – with dragons – hide, seek high ground -
When there is no other choice, enter battle.
She breached the salty waves and felt Bruxish slip away from her armpit – a glance behind even as she broke into a front-stroke, showed that the fish was going after the UB – the UB that was terrifyingly close. Bruxish was using psychic powers to harry the thing without getting too close, but she was a physical fighter, depending hard on her teeth and using telepathy and the like to confuse, to dazzle, to close the distance, not keep it.
My pokemon. My responsibility.
But it had been Bruxish that had decided where to lead her. She reached landfall – a sandbar sitting separate from the shore. Nowhere to run. Not that she could, with such drenched clothes.
The ground under her feet was more concrete than sand – think of that later. Did her bag have anything? Repels – potions (not good enough for Sandslash) – her phone and some drenched papers – pokeballs, poke block -
When all goes wrong – there’s one way to end a battle in the wild fast.
“Hey!” The UB didn’t even seem to hear. “What, is, is there no sound in your dimension, you – you stinking alien?”
It didn’t bother, still dogging Bruxish. It would dive at her as she bobbed up to the surface, then be pushed back by water and psychic force – confusion, she couldn’t do anything stronger – letting her dive back down, then have to circle back as she emerged from the water to taunt it. Reacting to taunts?
‘Wet it, try to slow it. Then let it come,’ she commanded, again.
It won’t slow it to any degree that matters.
It didn’t.
Torracat wove between her crouched legs, fur going from warm to burning in seconds, as he puffed his cheeks with fire. She barely had time to whisper into his ear – “Left,” before the UB was on them, water parting half a metre below its lower, bared blade.
Catches the wind. Can’t change directions in the face of force. Still agile-fast, not build-up-fast.
She dove right and Torracat dove left and somehow – somehow – neither of them were hit, as the UB tore through the cement floor between them. The screech of metal and the way it was forced to slow – there must have been those metal poles inside the cement.
Torracat waited a moment too long – the most mortally terrifying second of Kua’s life, past even the unnatural night when these beasts first arrived – and then, what was the word her sister used to use when boasting about Sandslash’s icicle spear? He unloaded.
The blaze of fire covered everything in Kua’s view. It dwarfed the UB still stuck in the ground, it burnt her eyes for the moment she let them open. It tore through the leftover seawater and the potion she’d spread on her arms in an attempt to ward off the inevitable – the burns she would be left with. It -
Was really not that bad. It was just an Ember attack, albeit one at a high level from how long they’d had it, worked on it. No, the pain rolling though her was somewhat psychological – it came from the noise that had echoed from Torracat’s deep throat, spread through the energies of the world. A sound she hoped the UB was capable of both hearing and feeling – a Roar.
As hoped, it couldn’t turn towards Torracat, not with the roiling hot air and fire – so it swung right, towards Kua.
If the girl could, she would have grinned. Unfortunately, she was too scared. Better me than him.
The ball was in her hand, the button already pressed. She saw the creature, the alien, the not-pokemon, the Ultra Beast, for a moment, way too close – and then it was a familiar red light, and gone.
Beep . The weird alien pokeball wriggled in her hand. Beep . Torracat came over to give it a sniff, bumping her arm in possibly-apology. Beep . Wait, what if it forced its way out-
Nothing. No shower of sparks or cheering crowds (or yelling or arguments over money, if they were counting how most of her battles seemed to have ended). Just... a silent evening. An immobile pokeball. If it were darker, nobody could even tell that anything was different... even though she could still smell the cement-dust in the air.
“Mrow” Torracat grumbled, and nudged her hand aside for heat-pats. Cats . Bruxish came swimming over.
Not counting the fish – who had come willingly and likely wouldn’t have taken no for an answer – this was... her first catch? A litten from that loud masked guy, Sandslash (oh god Sandslash) traded from her deadbeat sister, Magnemite from her house’s generator... and, of all the pokemon to catch the old-fashioned way, it was... this thing?
Rubbing her hand over one of the ridiculous metal fringes on the ball, Kuawehi could only mutter -
“Great. Now I have to tell those weirdoes that their tech worked.”