Chapter 20: Against the Grunge

Chapter 20: Against the Grunge

Jermy had been right — if they had gotten here any later, their friends would have been toast.

Shortly after he, ORB, and Meowth had slipped past the gurdurr and followed the tunnel to the upper floor, it was clear the kind of circumstance they were dealing with. This open area of the cave resembled a giant donut — a massive hole in the ceiling and the upper floor of the cave shone a light down onto the passing river below, while the stalagmite and stalactite-filled ring of the upper floor was left in the shadows. There, along the right side of the ring, were the Service Guild members, beaten and battered, and Minichino, unconscious.

One of the so-called bandits, a dark-blue, shark-on-two-feet-like garchomp, leapt in for a death blow, pointing one of his sharp forearm fins towards the sprawled minccino’s neck. Poliwrath was the one to knock him out of the air, slamming the garchomp with his entire body. Chip, meanwhile, was trying to distract another two pokemon — a giant red crab with massive pincers and a tiny pink puffball with two leaves atop her head that spun like helicopter blades. The chatot was keeping them busy, narrowly slipping away from the crawdaunt’s pincer trying to crush him out of the air and keeping the approaching hoppip at bay with energy waves powered by his own yell, but it was clear how sloppily Chip’s resistance was.

They both looked exhausted, and they were still outnumbered. This was bad.

“Minichino…” Meowth looked momentarily stunned, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing…but in no time at all his stern expression came back. “I have a few Reviver Seeds left,” he told Jermy, raking at the side of his kit with one of his claws. “Keep those two busy and get Chip to come to me. I have a plan.”

“You got it, chief,” he said, sprinting ahead of the cat for a quick attack on the floating pokemon. He felt his jagged tail harden into steel, and with a leap into the air, he spun it the bandit’s way.

“Oh, well look who it is~!” With a twirl, the hoppip whirled around his incoming attack and bounced atop the pikachu, smacking him into the hard rock chest-first. “It’s a surprise to see you here. Don’t you have somebody else you should be roughing up~?”

Ignoring the pain of the landing, Jermy met her challenge head-on, clamoring to his feet. Chip looked at him from behind the distracted hoppip, seeming surprised but appreciative. With a deliberate flick of his ears, Jermy got him to fly away, towards Meowth. “Yeah… We had a change of plans.” Electricity surged through him, and with a point of his hand upwards—

Just before he could land a blow on the hoppip, the crawdaunt leapt in the way. When he put it forward, the piece of metal clutched in one of his pincers unfolded into a round shield, clearly made of metal but coated in a black rubber covering, sufficient to force Jermy’s bolt to redirect into a nearby stalagmite. “Rrrgh,” he grunted, looking at the pikachu with fierce determination. “If you think you can land a cheap shot past me, the Iron Wall, Crawd…aunt, you’re mistaken, Jermy!”

Jermy gasped. A shield? “Didn’t they tell you not to bring those trinkets with you?”

The hoppip chuckled, feeling even more confident behind the crawdaunt’s protection. “Well, if it’s you fighting us, it hardly even matters, doesn’t it~?”

“She’s got you there,” ORB said, a respectable distance away from the snarling Jermy, staying clear of whatever fight was about to break out. “Now would probably be a good time to ‘cheat’ yourself, unless you’re still too much of a wuss to use it.”

Jermy lightly shook his head. Even if he wanted to make use of the ‘ability’ that had gotten him out of dire straights with David yesterday, he barely had any practice with it. If he wasn’t careful, he might launch something explosive at Meowth, or worse… Speaking of Meowth, where the heck was—

“I guess you’re the reason we never found any geodudes.”

To Jermy’s surprise, when he looked to Meowth behind him, there wasn’t any confusion on his face at all. If Meowth had been listening in to his conversion, he certainly didn’t make it known.

“Hah! We ran them out! Their fists were weak against my hide,” the crawdaunt boasted to him.

“Right, your ‘Iron Wall’. Did you give yourself that title?” Meowth snarked, extending his claws. “That’s sad.”

“Oooooh, your bark is as bad as they say,” the hoppip said. “Too bad you weren’t put in your place like you were supposed to. Oh well~! Knocking you down will have to do. Or, I guess we need to do, if that kit’s got what I think it does…” she gave them a glare, flying above them all.

Protectively, Meowth stuffed the kit in his satchel comfortably resting against his side, freeing up both hands. “I’d like to see you try,” he taunted.

Just then, Jermy felt a pulse of energy enter his body from an unknown direction. His body and mind felt sharper, as if he’d gotten a full night of sleep for the first time in months. The Wonder Orb… Politoed must’ve just now used it, beefing up everyone he considered an ally in the near-vicinity. Based on the falter in Meowth’s fighting stance, he must’ve felt it too. Suddenly, Jermy felt a little more confident about this.

“Yeah…let’s show ‘em our bite, Meowth!” Once more, Jermy’s tail took on a metal sheen, but this time he was aiming for the edge of the crawdaunt’s shield. He may take pride in his defenses, but this bandit was only a water type — it’d only take a few shocks to bring him down, right?

It’d take a few clashes of metal against metal before any kind of opening would reveal itself. The pikachu panted each time he spun, swinging at the shield left and right, but the crawdaunt held firm — that was, until Meowth came to his aid, trying to get in claw swipes from another angle. Keeping rhythm, the crawdaunt shifted his protection from blocking Jermy to Meowth and back to Jermy again, but he was too slow. The jagged shape of the pikachu’s tail caught the end of the shield, and with a push, Jermy forced it aside.

“Wha—?” The crawdaunt’s eyes widened, not anticipating such a quick breach of defenses.

“Nice try, bucko!” Jermy‘s red cheeks flickered with bright and powerful streaks of lightning and—

“Why don’t you go beddy bye, Jermy~?”

“Gah!” His concentration was broken as a cloud of blue-green dust filled his eyes and nose. That dang Hoppip kept interrupting his…uh…his…?

Suddenly Jermy’s head felt incredibly heavy, as if he had been flung right back into those long, grueling sessions in the lab. Everything was so fuzzy, he couldn’t even concentrate enough to aim. His electric charge fizzled out, and he came close to collapsing right then and there. Of course, the hoppip was glad to finish the job, pushing him over with a simple tackle.

The next thirty seconds or so were a blur. The crawdaunt was towering over him…then he was plucked off the ground and pulled somewhere…there was the sound of bubbles soaring through the air and popping with force…

The next thing Jermy vaguely knew, chunks of some dry fruit were being fed down his throat. He felt the delicate pressure of Meowth holding him steady and upright as he came back to his senses.

“Don’t think I didn’t catch a glimpse at that kit from over here~” the hoppip proclaimed, approaching fast. “Somebody’s a little low on pink berries…”

Jermy and Meowth jumped in opposite directions to avoid a dosage of familiarly purple spores bursting from the hoppip’s body. She put the pressure on Meowth in particular, covering the trail of their chase in violet hues. Jermy readied to aim an electric bolt at her, but she was so hot on Meowth’s tail, he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t also hit him — especially when his power had been bolstered by Politoed’s orb. “Rrrrgh, we’re kind of on the clock here!” Jermy exclaimed, frustrated.

“Yeah, I know.” A bright light sparkled in Meowth’s paw that quickly formed into a golden coin. Just before the hoppip cornered him against a wall, he turned and flung it into the hoppip’s face.

“Nnnnngh!” she grunted, flipping backwards at the force of the attack. “That stings way more than it should…”

Jermy had been so focused on watching Meowth that he failed to notice the crawdaunt approach from behind, smacking him once, twice in the back of the head with the blunt end of his pincer. He tried to retaliate by turning and shocking him, but by the time he was ready, the shield was up again. Jermy groaned — this was getting annoying fast.

“Hmmph,” the crawdaunt grunted, seeming prideful. “If a mere type advantage is all you have to offer the Iron Wall, you stand no chance at bringing it down! You don’t outmatch or outnumber us—”

WHACK.

“I don’t think so!”

Jermy gasped, then grinned as he witnessed the bandit get a taste of his own medicine, being struck in the back of the head by the tail of a familiar, hat-wearing chinchilla. “Minichino!” Jermy exclaimed. “How are you back up?!”

Minichino leapt back from the crawdaunt, landing on the floor next to him. “That chatot gave me a Reviver Seed,” she explained casually, not even seeming worried at the moment. “Beats me where he got it, though.”

“So that’s why…yeah, that’d be Meowth’s doing,” Jermy told her.

“What?!” The crawdaunt momentarily whirled back to see Poliwrath and Chip, having been completely left to Garchomp in the chaos of their arrival.

Minichino’s mouth gaped, and in an instant she frantically pointed at the crawdaunt’s face. SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT.

Jermy realized what she meant just in time. Taking advantage of his slacked defenses, Jermy finally got a clean shot at the crawdaunt. He loudly cried out, the highly effective electric attack sending the water attack stumbling.

“Heck yeah! Man, am I glad you’re on our side here!” Minichino grabbed the pikachu’s hand and yanked him towards the game of cat-and-mouse Meowth still found himself on the receiving end of.

The hoppip quickly took notice of the pair navigating the poison-filled battlefield. “H-huh?” she blurted. “Well, looks like s-somebody wants a round two…~” She seemed a little less confident.

“Hey Meowth!” Minichino called out, seeming unbothered by the bandit. “If you planned out your workload as well as you planned that seed pass-off, we’d have cleaned Kalmwa’er twice over already!”

Jermy gave her a wary look as she pulled him through the maze of purple. What got her this cocky…?

After climbing up a rock and leaping over a cloud of poison spores, Meowth only acknowledged her remark with the shake of a head. “Just don’t let her poison you! I can’t heal that,” he called out.

“Don’t even worry about it.” Suddenly, Minichino pushed Jermy in front of her. “We’re already done here!” The minccino placed both of her paws on his back. The pikachu suddenly felt even more energy pulse against his back. She was supplying him a Helping Hand!

“Oh!” Jermy took one glance back at the crawdaunt, struggling to stand, looking at them in total panic. Even factoring in the type disadvantage, the weaker hoppip was toast. Between Minichino and Politoed’s orb, Jermy was able to fire off a doubly-powered Electro Ball, soaring through the air towards the hoppip. She tried to get out of the way, but…

“Aaaaah!!”

The hoppip screamed as she went down, landing in the spores she covered the ground with. She faded fast, going unconscious in just a couple seconds.

“Hope!” the crawdaunt cried. “I-I mean, Hoppip!”

Jermy jumped for joy, turning to Minichino in cheer. “Yeeaaah, we—”

Before the pikachu could even declare victory, the robotic voice of ORB coming from behind a stalagmite cut him off. “Incoming, genius.”

“What’d you mean, in—”

Sailing through the air, a dark blue blur swept through the group. In the span of a blink, Meowth had gone from studying the unconscious hoppip to being slammed against the wall of the cavern, a sharp fin pointed straight at his neck.

“I can’t trust you two to handle anything, can I?” the garchomp said to the crawdaunt, biting down on every word with his sharp teeth. “First rule of group combat: take out the healer first.”

Jermy gasped at the pinned cat, seeing his gritting teeth and hearing his desperate breaths. “Meowth! Oh no!” He quickly motioned for Minichino to supply him with another Helping Hand, but they were too slow — the crawdaunt got in the two’s way, shield lifted.

“You’re not taking down another one of us. Not as long as the Iron Wall still stands!” The crawdaunt side-eyed away from Jermy. “And that includes you two.”

That, of course, did not stop Poliwrath from trying, leaping into the fray and throwing fist after fist at the shield, just as Jermy had tried. “Dang it, c’mon…” he grunted, making no progress. Chip, on the other hand, hovered above them, the threat of crawdaunt’s open claw readied to fire bubbles into the air serving as enough of an incentive to hold back.

There was a moment of hesitation from all four of them on what to do next. Jermy was certain that would have been enough for the garchomp to rip Meowth into a bunch of tiny cat scraps — had it not been for the last-moment save…

---

This…wasn’t exactly how Mathew had planned to observe the action.

Once he had reached the end of the tunnel, the cubone had quickly realized he wasn’t going to be able to just sit around and watch what certainly sounded like a fight. If the rest of the Club saw him, it would look terrible to not immediately jump in. Worse yet, if ORB noted his behavior down, it would instantly sink his relationship with them as well. He needed a disguise — something that would buy him just a couple minutes to understand what was happening, and then act.

But where the hell was he going to get one of those? It’s not like somebody would randomly throw away a perfectly good black cloak to hide in the shadows with.

…Although, they would certainly throw away an object equally as black…

And that was the story of how Mathew donned a large plastic garbage bag that happened to be sitting in the dark. Using the sharp end of his club, he poked a pair of eye holes, then draped the whole thing over his head, leaving his feet exposed at the opening. It dragged behind him and made a fair bit of noise if he moved around too much, but it would do.

His initial test run was…surprisingly effective. After slipping out of the tunnel and leaping out of the light from the entrance and holes above, he was practically invisible to the strange humanoid pokemon and his peers. When a stream of bubbles pushed the supposed bandit towards him, he collapsed and played dead. Once that moment of tension passed, he was home free.

Mathew’s aim wasn’t for Politoed and Breloom — he wanted to see what was happening between Minichino and whoever else was fighting her. However, the tunnel leading up to where they were most likely fighting was on the other side of the river. He knew he couldn’t test his luck like that…that only left the path behind the demolished wall the bandit, Politoed, and Breloom had somehow opened up for him.

Past the wall, Mathew found a rocky, unkempt area shadowed by a ring of cliffs. The river ran through it, originating from another side tunnel leading even deeper into the cave. Right on the other side of the river, Mathew could make out a place where the rocks were harshly impacted from the landing of something above, which seemed to explain how those three got down here.

Most importantly, though, Mathew could hear the ongoing sounds of the fight very clearly as it echoed through the cavern. If he settled down in one of these shaded areas, he’d go completely undetected and could listen to whatever details he wanted. All he had to do was…get…there.

As Mathew scuttled along under his disguise, it became apparent that it wasn’t his finest piece of craftsmanship. His peripherals were completely obscured by the rims of the eye holes. Not to mention, the dim lighting of the cave made the sightlines even worse. He really hoped Minichino and the others had thought to clean the lower half of this big room, as well as the upper half they had come from. If they hadn’t, trying to navigate without tripping was about to get a whole lot harder—

“Wah!”

A shrill voice cried out as Mathew felt the plastic of the bag push into his right flank. Through the eyeholes, he could vaguely make out a very familiar hat-wearing crow. Demurke was fumbling into some kind of stance. Mathew couldn’t really make the whole thing out.

“H-huh…?” She seemed confused. Surprisingly, the disguise was actually working.

“Oops, sorry, Demurke,” he said.

“M-Mathew?!” She crouched down, trying to look into the bag’s opening at his feet.

He bent down and pulled back the front of the bag so she could see his face. “Shhh shhhh.” Mathew tried to put a digit to his mouth, but ended up awkwardly bumping it into his skull mask. “You’re gonna blow my cover down here…”

Demurke tilted her head, a baffled but amused expression on her beak and eyes. “Why is your cover…a t-trash bag?”

“It’s good camouflage.” Mathew pulled the bag back over his head and slipped further into the shadows cast by the cliffs above. “You think anybody’s gonna see me slithering around here when I’m in nothing but black?”

This seemed to amuse Demurke even more. “But you c-can’t see anything either!”

“The eyeholes are good enough for what I have in mind.”

CRASH! BOOM! BANG!

The cubone looked at the commotion a floor above them. Unfortunately, the angle from here wasn’t as good for seeing and hearing the fight as he thought it would be. He could make out a few shadowy shapes dancing around each other on the walls, but that was about it. It was a shame this spot didn’t serve his purposes as well as he’d hoped.

Although…was it serving Demurke’s? “…The hell are you doing down here, anyway?” he asked, glancing back at her. “I was trying to scope out what the fight looks like so I can figure a thing or two out.”

“Well… Uh… I…” Demurke’s gaze veered off to the left of the conversation. “I-I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know?” The thought was baffling. “There’s a fight going on.”

Demurke put her wings up and backed up towards the nearby wall. “I k-know that! It’s just, I’m just…” Demurke froze. Only her outstretched wings moved, twitching slightly. “My job was…to lead them. N-not get involved.”

Mathew raised a brow. “Involved with…what?”

Demurke paused, her eyes returning to him. “OCEAN asked that we… g-get them all to the ‘bandits’ in the time it took for you to h-handle Meowth, so then you w-wouldn’t know what they looked like before they left.

Mathew looked away from the crow for a second to think. He panned his head from the ground to the ceiling. Everything was clicking into place. “They were trying to get at Minichino, Politoed, and Breloom while we looked away, weren’t they?” It was the only explanation.

Demurke stared vacantly at the cubone. “Worse.”

“But—” Dit and David…they hadn’t said anything about this during the meeting. “They—” There was grounds for OCEAN to reign Minichino, Politoed, and Breloom in, considering their odd actions and clear awareness of what they were doing…but kill them?! The whole reason the three of them were here was to help him and Joey! They were his dependable coworkers! “They don’t—”

And that’s why OCEAN didn’t tell him, wasn’t it.

The voice from the dark was right. They’d duped him, just as she said.

Mathew punched the side of his trash bag, startling Demurke out of her trance. “Look, I am too fucking pissed at too many fucking people right now to even think. But nobody I give two shits about is gonna die in some trash heap on my watch!”

Demurke gave him a ratcheted nod. “Y-Yeah. I don’t want them to…”

She didn’t want them to? But… The cubone sent a pointing finger through one of the bag’s eyeholes. “Then why are you still down here?”

“Because I-I’m…” Once again, Demurke seemed to retreat into her own head. “I’m not supposed to fight, it’d…be i-incriminating and…”

This was bad. Mathew wasn’t exactly a great fighter, considering he couldn’t take Meowth down, so if he planned to fix this whole mess, he was going to need help. But with Demurke in a state like this…

Mathew took a deep breath. It was time to put his pitching skills to the test. “Listen, Demurke,” he began. “We’re on the same page here. We don’t know if we wanna stay or go, but we also have people we care for up there. People that keep us strugglers going.”

She looked up at the dim floor above them. “Minichino’s up there…and Jermy…and M-Meowth…” She pulled the rim of her hat over her face, seeming to contemplate.

“Exactly. Without them, what will we do with ourselves?” Mathew might have been exaggerating, but showing doubt would not win her over. “But if anything OCEAN’s said is true, our job still has the fate of that Legendary War resting on it, right? If we fail them, and fail the war…” Considering the scale a Legendary War suggested… “We fail the world. And that won’t mean good things for our friends, either.”

Demurke lifted her hat and nodded. She was agreeing with him!

Mathey lifted up the edge of the bag, showing his face to her. He didn’t know exactly how close they were, but Mathew needed to remind her who she was talking to. “That’s why I’ve got the trash bag. Using this junk to our advantage…that’s the compromise. We can sabotage the mission, get everyone out of here, and OCEAN will never know it was us.”

Demurke chuckled slightly. “Guess we’re…l-lucky somebody threw this away, right?” She studied his disguise. “I d-don’t think I can do much in a trash bag, though…”

“Fair enough…” Now that Demurke was on his side, Mathew just needed to think of something for her to do. He tried to recall her fighting style. She was, what’s the word… Elusive? She tended to keep her distance and make the occasional poke. She would probably do best with a role that kept her out of OCEAN’s eyes. What if… “I know! You could airlift this bag and throw me in the action,” he suggested. “If you move fast, you could slip behind one of those rocks before anybody sees you. Then, you can just stay out of the rest if you want. Can you do that?”

Demurke suddenly brought up a wing and pushed her hat back, looking determined. “I’ll do it.”

Mathew beamed at her from underneath his soon-to-be means of travel. “That’s great! Now take the bottom of this bag and take off.”

Demurke reached a leg out and grabbed the rim of the bag in her talons. “So, um, you mean like—”

“Woah!” Mathew rolled to the new bottom of the bag as it was pulled out from under him.

“Oh, s-sorry! Do y-you need me to… slow down?”

“No, no, this is fine,” the cubone said, taking a seat. “You can fly up now.”

“Okay…”

A second later, the walls of the bag closed in on him as it stretched from his weight, barely holding him up in the air as Mathew was lifted. He was lucky it didn’t tear from the strain… After finding the eyeholes and asking Demurke to do some awkward turning, Mathew could finally see. There was Jermy, Minichino, and the poliwrath and chatot from earlier in front of some weird elongated crab — and behind the crab, there was a pokemon that Mathew could only call a ‘hammerhead guy’ about to cleave Meowth open with his fin.

Above him, he could hear Demurke mutter, “Meowth…?!”

“Why are they just standing there…?” Mathew asked himself. The answer hit him quickly. Shit! It’s bystander syndrome! He didn’t know how to feel about bailing out Meowth, but putting an end to this fight was more important to him.“Demurke, when I say go, be ready to throw!” he whispered as loudly as he could, trying to point at the OCEAN soldier by pushing at the bag with his club. “Aim for that shark dude.”

The crinkling of Demurke’s grip on the bag tightened. That’s all Mathew needed to see. He held on tight to the walls of the bag with one hand and kept a protective arm over his satchel with the other. “ Go!” He was slammed into the walls of the bag as it was flipped around, then—

THWACK!

Mathew gasped as he tumbled to the floor. That hurt like hell, but once he got his bearings, he could see the desired results. The garchomp grunted as he tried to free himself from the wall. His fins were jammed! Mathew could hear Meowth’s paws against the floor as he escaped from both of the soldiers and rejoined the others. That was one cat out of the bag…for now.

“The heck was that?!” the garchomp yelled, his head whipping around. Evidently, Demurke had darted behind a stalagmite or something before she could be spotted. Mathew slumped over, motionless. He was just an unassuming plastic bag full of garbage, nothing to see here…

He could hear the sounds of the others, freed from bystander syndrome, fighting past the crawdaunt to approach the now-unstuck garchomp. Perfect! Now all he had to do was get the two of them to run. He had a good idea just how he could make that happen, too. All he had to do was press the gun straight up through the left eye hole aaaand…

“Bleech!” the crab gagged as the purple mist overtook him and the garchomp. “That was definitely — hack! — not from Hope!” Underneath the bag, the cubone was totally safe from the poison. None of them would know it was—

“No, it wasn’t.” The garchomp’s arm came down towards the bag.

Shit. Mathew was forced to leap out of the way, narrowly avoiding having his identity revealed. The garchomp tried again, and again, and each time the cubone narrowly slipped away. These two weren’t going to juke him out that easily…or, that’s what Mathew would have thought if a pincer hadn’t come from behind and yanked the trash bag right off of his head. “Eh?! Don’t tell me it was you!” the crab exclaimed.

“Damnit,” Mathew muttered, taking a slight cut from a slash of the garchomp’s fins as he escaped their clutches. The crab tried to stop his approach, but a couple pecks in the head from the Service Guild member chatot kept that from happening.

“Somehow, I had a feeling that was you,” Meowth muttered as Mathew came close.

“Don’t think I’m done with you,” Mathew muttered to Meowth before brandishing his gun towards the OCEAN soldiers. “We haven’t met before, so let me introduce myself. I’m Mathew Walker, and my life mission is to make peace — and take down baseless murderers like you.”

“Didya really have to add that last part?!” Poliwrath asked as he destroyed a stream of bubbles from the crawdaunt using a Water Gun that came from…somewhere.

The garchomp sprung over his partner in crime and came down, sweeping the floor once, then again with his fins. The first sweep tripped Minichino and Poliwrath; the second Mathew and Meowth. The cubone rose to a battle position, ready to—

“Hey, you two!”

The battle was momentarily halted by the sudden yell of an approaching gurdurr. The one Joey and the others were fighting…! And gripped in one of his hands was…

“Demurke?!” Mathew exclaimed.

“Could you two keep these fellas out of my way? I’ve got some private business to take care of with her…” Suddenly, the gurdurr chucked his weapon across the cavern. “And him!”

Mathew put his hands on his mask, searching for ears to cover from the shrill sound of the metal slamming and sliding against rock. It ended up putting a gap between the rest of the group and Jermy.

“Huh? Uh oh…waugh!” Before Jermy could react, the gurdurr broke out into a sprint and picked him up like some kind of crazed ape. He was heading towards a tunnel in the back of the cave. The garchomp and crab leapt ahead, trying to wall the group off from their presumed leader as he made a break for it.

“Don’t let him get away!” Shouting a rallying cry was Politoed, accompanied by Breloom and Joey. They were being chased by a purple cat — certainly another member of the gurdurr’s group. In seconds, both parties met up, and chaos broke out.

Mathew watched in horror as everyone else tried to charge at the soldiers all at once. Meowth and Minichino bumped into one another, dissipating the former’s Pay Day and blocking the latter from launching a move with her tail. Politoed readied a bubbly attack, only to panic from Chip gliding directly in front of him. Poliwrath and Breloom all stuttered their sprints, none of them sure who was leading their assault. In the back of the pack, Joey stopped and watched the chaos nervously, not even sure where to begin.

“Haha! You really think that display will break through the Iron Wall?” the crawdaunt proclaimed.

Damnit! Mathew could see exactly what was happening here. They completely outnumbered these bandits, but it wouldn’t mean anything if they were totally unorganized! Mathew wanted to cry out to Chip to keep back and make sure the garchomp can’t soar over them, bark at Breloom to lead and then have Poliwrath approach from another angle, and make Meowth hold the back line…but his heart was pounding, and he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. At this rate, none of them would be able to catch up to the gurdurr…!

Seeing the cat swiping at Minichino’s chest and Meowth’s arm in one fell swoop, Mathew realized there was no way they could get through these three fast enough. So, the best he could do was make sure he made it past them. But how? He’d have to pull this whole fight to the side for none of the three to notice him. He’d need a dummy of some sort…

Wait. Mathew looked around him, and on a second’s notice, a plan formed in his mind. Yes…that could work.

The cubone sprung towards the torn plastic bag and donned it, then charged obviously into the fray. He shadowed Poliwrath and Chip as they fought against the garchomp, making sure to jump around in the shadows.

“Hey, cubone, what the heck are ya doin’…?” Poliwrath shrilly whispered, taking notice of him faffing about.

“Don’t worry about it. Just keep them from getting to me,” Mathew insisted a bit too loudly.

The garchomp, of course, easily recognized the bag that had whacked and poisoned him a moment earlier. “Oh, no, you don’t!” he cried, launching forward fin-first.

“Hey, you’re fightin’ me here!” Poliwrath conjured a similar stream of bubbles to his brother’s, lobbing them in the garchomp’s face…but it didn’t stop his onslaught, cleaving through the bubbles with one fin and through Poliwrath with the other.

Confidently, the garchomp landed in front of the still plastic bag, reaching out a claw to pull the bag up. “Time to take out this piece of trash…Did you really think you could get me again with—uh?!” He gawked at who was underneath — or rather, who wasn’t. Greeting the garchomp was a small stalagmite that the bag had been draped over in the time it took to get through Poliwrath. “Shoot! He did get me again!”

Mathew, on the other hand, had already taken full advantage of the offensive distraction, sprinting through the gap in the three’s formation. He passed a grin at a stunned crawdaunt, too busy with Politoed and Breloom to stop him, and gunned straight for the tunnel.

“Math!” Breloom called out as she launched a seed at the crawdaunt’s shield. “Be careful.”

Mathew didn’t waste energy trying to reply. He knew the garchomp was fast, even if he was weakened by the poison, and any second now—

CRASH!

There he was, slamming into the cavern wall right above Mathew. Rather than take the cubone on himself, he was trying to seal the exit off by dropping rubble in front of it! Desperate, the cubone dived through the entrance. Tiny bits of rock clanked off of his skull mask, but he made it through just in time.

Mathew coughed as he landed and rose to his feet, dust from the rubble all around him…but in seconds, it faded, and he was alone in the dark tunnel. The fight outside was muffled by the newly-formed wall, but Mathew could just barely make out a “Gah! That slippery cubone…” coming from the garchomp on the other side.

There was no going back now. He’d made those OCEAN soldiers into his enemy, and now they’d sealed him in with their leader. Mathew’s future career with them was all but certainly gone. But right now, Mathew had lost the will to care. He agreed to work for them because he had been promised a peaceful future, but that had turned out to be a bust.

The light had brought danger to himself and his friends. So, Mathew charged into the darkness. He wasn’t convinced it would bring him salvation, either…but now, it was the only way forward.