Chapter 3: Escape

“Lucario! Please just tell me, what did you do?” 

Kommo-o’s voice is a post for my mind to cling to in the raging storm of yelling. The shrills make a chant-like beat, gasping for breath together, all of them wearing out their voices. The toolbox frozen above the ground turns into a void cut into reality. The edge of the pink pool inches closer. So does the gusting aura.

“Lucario! Tell me you’re safe!”

I blink. I feel my body again. My glove frantically pats the front of my suit until I find the comms button. “I threw a toolbox in the way. Figured we could see what it does when it approached it. I- I didn’t expect this!”

The fluid fills out small craters in the path. I realize it isn’t pouring forward so much as welling new shimmer out of the ground in front of it. The approach is messy and chaotic. Sometimes it fills out the left or the right more, unlike the aura – that gale takes a straight approach to us.

“There’s an aura here too, I thought it was further away before,” I say. “I don’t think the fluid is it, but either way, something’s here. It already arrived!”

My legs are frozen. Pain flickers through my head with each beat of my heart. Those voices pant between hollers.

“Just fight it!” Kommo-o shouts. Fear is in his voice.

He’s right. It has an aura, so it must be living and therefore can be defeated. I shake my arms loose as I try to remember how to fight – I haven’t used a move in years. My father’s teachings come to me in floating, hazy memories. Ki… Lifeforce… Being…

I bend my knees and tuck my elbows into a fighting stance. I put my palms close together and create a ball of aura. The clunky suit makes my technique slow and clumsy when I shoot it forward. A flickering orb the size of a tennis ball spits through the air. It coasts into and through the menacing aura. The voices don’t even care an attack passed through “it”.

I rush another one. A puny marble waves through the air, hitting nothing. I take a deep breath and hold my arms above myself to surge a larger aura sphere. I look for what targets I have as I sustain it. The black case still hangs unmoving above the surface. I throw it forward and the full charge flies into it. It touches it and disappears without an explosion like it was swallowed.

The entity continued its advance. It crossed a third of the distance. More Pokemon joined the legion in my head with it.

“The fluid, Lucario!” Kommo-o shouts.

I take a deep breath to regain my warrior senses and I power up one more attack to full size. I examine the ground, looking for where its “feet” should be once it’s fired. I launch it and grin for the seconds it travels. The ball plunges into the liquid with a splash.

The screeches erupt to their loudest. All of them gasp desperately for air between straining their voice with the clamour of their agony. I’m pushed to my knees and I bang my palms against the side of my helmet, wanting to dig my paws into my ears. Dying to the vacuum around would be less painful. I scream with them.

In my peripheral vision, a geyser of pink explodes, its mist escaping orbit. The pool stretches wide and fast, flooding the ground I attacked. Its rim ends before the raft. The surface ebbs and flows, creating small waves that breach onto further ground.

My vision is blurry. My voice strains as I keep screaming. But eventually, the cacophony recedes to loud moaning and sobbing, leaving my ears with a heavy ring and blood dripping out. I gasp to get air back in me.

The aura has not stopped advancing.

I hit my comms button. “You okay?!”

Kommo-o buzzes in. He’s breathing heavily. “Arceus, That hurt!”

“What should we do?”

“We need to… We need to not panic.” He trails off, still recovering breath. “How close is it?”

I tune into the aura. It’s a heavy bellow, the wind would knock me off my feet if it was real. “It’s halfway,” I say. The growing fluid approaches the raft.

He buzzes in a few times, each time with no words. It’s only after a long pause he says, “Is there anything we can do to stall it? Shit, what about putting to sleep? Do you know hypnosis? Sleep powder?”

The darkened toolbox is still defying gravity after all this. “Throw some of our excess in the cockpit in front of it. It might distract it!” I reach down and pick up a spent tank off the raft.

“Throw it where?”

He can’t see it. “Other side of the raft!” 

Myself able to sense it, I throw further than that, aiming for a few steps ahead of it. The tank’s bulky shape spins wildly despite its calm descent. I already have another object in my arms when it sinks into the liquid. The yelling in my ear picks up. New puddles surge around the entity, encroaching a wider radius.

The merit of my idea reveals itself. The aura stops moving and the tank lifts up out of the mire. It fades to black.

The lake doesn’t stop growing, though. The end of the raft dips into it. I chuck the next item. Above my head, a huge box drifts over – Kommo-o’s own lobbing. It lands short of the raft, bringing reinvigorated screaming that is not only loud, but right next to my ears.

A spring wells around my boots. 

The ground under my feet softens, throwing my balance off. I drop the canister I just picked up, splashing fluid onto my legs. Another bundle of supplies passes over my head.

“Get out of there Lucario! The raft’s already in the way!” Kommo-o shouts. The alarm in his voice is palpable. 

My feet sink further into the shimmer. The sand has become mud. The liquid rises up past my foot. I cautiously move my legs back, tensing all the muscles in them. The liquid is expanding behind me faster than I can waddle backward. My foot shifts with every step finding purchase in the murkiness, avoiding falling over at all costs. I do this until my back hits the lander’s onboarding ladder. The fluid’s up to my shins.

It’s a lagoon now. The ridges of craters jutting out are rare to spot. The raft and its remaining junk drift away in some unseen current. Spots geyser and rupture, especially where each of Kommo-o’s volleys lands. The unseen entity picks up each item in its path, consuming it into nothingness but buying us seconds.

I crawl up the ladder. I shake the fluid off my legs on the way up but they’re already stained pink and purple. The lander’s weight shifts as one side sinks. My friend’s eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open. He slides out the easiest box to reach, not caring to check what it is. I duck as he throws it without spotting me.

I fumble for my button. My other paw feels pain as I grip the top rung too hard. “How much more time?”

He leans into the console. “Seconds.” He throws a different tank past me.

The wind behind me is now a hurricane. I fear I’ll be swept off my perch. And underneath the ever-closer thralls, there’s a rhythm of low-pitch voices whispering. They chant words without meaning, sung with elation and duty. They drive the beat of the damned’s yelling, conducting its eulogy. My mouth moves with the words.

He throws a canister of water past me and reaches a hand out after. “In, now!” he shouts. I scramble up the last rung and lunge into the cockpit. He catches me and pulls me in while the other drags the hatch down. I dig my head against him and squeeze my arms around what I can hold of him. He holds me tight; no time to strap me in. The chanting and screaming voices enter my ears. Blood flows down my cheeks.

The storm’s done its meal. The raft and every item hovers like marionettes hung by threads, all robbed of colour. The aura moves close. I feel the maelstrom lash against my skin.

Warmth floods around my leg. Shimmering fluid is rising inside our cockpit. We tuck our legs up but there’s not enough room. It reaches our boots as the lander rumbles to life, building up its energy.

I close my eyes and I huddle my body. I don’t want this to be the end. Please stop this. Everything is shaking. I cry. Get me out of here. Get me out of here. Get me out of here.

My weight shifts around. My soul begs this isn’t ascending to heaven. I don’t open my eyes. Even when the howling stops, and I can’t feel the wind, I’m not ready for the truth. I sob harder.

I hold Kommo-o as hard as I can. He’s all I have.

I stay this way for a long time, until I lose all sensation of weight. I’m shaking. My breath is uneven and tears squeeze out of my eyes. 

A hand brushes the back of my suit. It does it a few times, slowly. I let it ease me. The shaking of the lander smooths out. I suck in deep breaths and my muscles unwind. 

I finally brave opening my eyes. Pink-and-purple droplets float around us. I look up. My partner’s looking back down to me. His eyes are wet and sparkling droplets float away from his eyes. More flush out when he sees my pupils.

His mouth moves. He didn’t press his comms button, but I know what he’s saying. “We’re safe.”