Part 5 – The Encounter

Tigri had never seen what a Zoroark’s Illusion had looked like from the inside prior to this. She just assumed that it’d just look like another side of the ones she’d see while passing through the Barrier—objects with little details like their shadows that were amiss that would look solid until one gave a hard enough push or attack. In retrospect, it was probably silly of her to assume such things. After all, if Illusions could look real enough to trick their own casters, Zoroark like Ombre and Chasseur would constantly be getting lost.

Instead, the immediate surroundings from Ombre and Chasseur’s side carried faded tones, almost like Tigri was seeing things through a dome of some sort of faint, magenta-tinted haze. It was a bit surreal to see how as they moved along, barring the occasional turn of a wild Pokémon’s head when they made too much noise, the Pokémon they passed by would just react to them as if they were invisible. Eventually, they came across a set of round, heavy footprints in the flowers, and followed their trail, carefully overlapping their paces with the tracks as best as they could to avoid leaving ones of their own that could be followed.

Tigri’s head flared as the power inside her burbled from stress, and only got more and more noticeable as they kept following the Avalugg tracks. Every time she checked up on Stig, his mood similarly felt every bit as tense and on edge as her own. And for good reason, after all, Longbloom Meadow was only so big, and the Avalugg’s icy body would surely come into view over the tops of the surrounding flowers at any moment.

Except that moment just seemed to take longer and longer to come, without any sign of him or his human. For a moment, Tigri started to worry that they’d been too late and that they’d already left for the Mazewoods. Then a strange scent carried on the winds and reached her nose. Stig and the Zoroark seemed to notice it too, as they gradually slowed their pace and came to a stop while Ombre scanned her surroundings with an investigative sniff at the air.

“We’re getting close,” she said. “Chasseur, you take the right and come around from the north. If the human’s around here, we’re better off trying to flank the human from two directions.”

Tigri watched as Chasseur nodded back and started to drift off deeper into the magenta haze dome, only to stop and look back at her and her brother.

“Wait, isn’t one of you two coming along with me?” he asked.

It was hard to argue that Chasseur wouldn’t have had a point normally, but… things weren’t a normal situation just then.

Tigri’s ears pricked after a sharp wince and turned to see her brother briefly pawing at the lingering wounds on his chest. She supposed Stig hadn’t been struggling too hard on the journey over here so far, but he was still visibly off-balance from Patron’s clawing yesterday. Was it really a good idea for him to go off with Chasseur? Without her there to help him if something went awry?

… The very fact that she had to ask herself that question was answered enough for her.

“No. We’ll be sticking together,” she said.

Chasseur and Ombre blinked in surprise and the magenta-tinted haze briefly wavered. Ombre’s eyes widened when she hurriedly threw out a claw and closed her eyes in focus on it. The haze’s discrepancy faded as soon as it came, but Chasseur’s fur still stood on edge. Tigri supposed that was one way to tell that that must’ve been a closer call with the Illusion than she realized. The male Zoroark set his teeth on edge and sharply sucked in a breath, before looking down with a worried stare.

“You two are sure about this?” he insisted. ”I’m just saying, this isn’t exactly a casual stroll through the flowers and we’ll be taking a big risk. If something happens and one of our Illusions gets broken, it means the human would only see one of you.”

Tigri felt a spike of pressure in her head. Her eyes didn’t budge, as they normally didn’t, but she could feel her mouth curling and empty air against her teeth.

“Again, we’ll be sticking together,” she hissed. “Stig and I have come all this way together. If we’re really in serious danger right now, we’re going to stay together so we can give each other the best chance we can if the worst comes to pass.”

Stig looked at her and opened his mouth to interject, only to stiffen up and flinch as he brought a paw to his chest wound. Tigri darted over and helped Stig steady himself as doubts began to swirl in her mind.

They should’ve treated his wounds a bit more before they went to meet Chasseur and Ombre. Maybe it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, but it’d still have done more good than the nonexistent help they were able to rouse from the other villagers. She looked back up at the Zoroark and saw that both of them looked unconvinced. They stared wordlessly for a moment before they finally relented, Ombre turning her head to shoot a sideways glance at them.

“If you say so,” Ombre sighed. “Chasseur, keep an ear out for us while you’re coming in from the north. If it sounds like we’re in trouble, whip up a distraction and we’ll try to make a run for it.”

Chasseur nodded back, before making his way to the edge of the hazy dome.

“Alright, though if we do have to bolt, Ombre and I aren’t sticking around for you two if you fall behind,” Chasseur warned. “Our pack doesn’t need to lose more of its Pokémon to this human….”

Tigri wavered briefly, but before she could say anything, Chasseur had already reached the boundary of Ombre’s Illusion. There was a brief flash of magenta light, and then he was gone.

The nagging doubts in her mind grew along the pressure in her head as her power felt like it was struggling to stay contained in her skull. Maybe this was a mistake. Or at least bringing Stig here was. If it was just her and the human snatched her, at least Stig would still be able to carry on in Abri…

But for how long afterwards? Especially if the village remained unhidden and just waiting for a human to discover it? She didn’t have an answer to that question, and the more she thought about it, the more it didn’t seem to matter for their present circumstances. They were already in the middle of Longbloom Meadow with Abri’s present protection hinging on them helping Chasseur and Ombre to free Patron. It was far too late to question their moves. Doing anything aside from sticking to the path they chose would likely make matters worse, both for them and for the rest of the village.

All they could do was to see things through, and hope for the best.

She let Ombre lead and followed along with her brother, only for Zoroark’s ears to abruptly swivel. Tigri stopped, as her guide crouched to all fours and braced herself as if she was ready for a pounce.

“Be careful while walking up ahead,” she said. “We’re closer to the human and his partners than I originally thought.”

Tigri looked up and saw Ombre motion for silence before the Dark-type slunk forward. She and Stig followed in the Zoroark’s wake, carefully brushing the flowers aside to try and cut down on the amount of rustling as they crept through the blooms.

Every sensation seemed to grow sharper in her mind. The swaying of the blooms and brief glimpses of movement beyond them. The sound of the Avalugg’s voice ahead along with another that was in the strange tongue that humans had. The smell of strange musk intermixed with river silt.

“Wait a minute, Tigri. Doesn’t it smell a lot like it does when we’re down by the river collecting salvage? Why does it smell like that in the middle of the meadow?”

Tigri didn’t know what to make of that either until the sound of dull thumps up ahead turned her head past the tops of the flowers. She struggled to make out anything past the blooms, even on her tiptoes. She turned over to Stig and saw he was having little more luck, only for him to quietly click his tongue and go up to Ombre to tug at her leg.

“Ombre?” he whispered. “What do you see?”

“It’s the rise in the middle of the meadow,” she replied. “The human set up a tent there and it looks like he’s in the middle of taking it apart.”

It sounded like they’d come not a moment too soon. Ombre went ahead a few paces before crouching and slowing her pace to a crawl and Tigri did much the same alongside her brother. It quickly became apparent why: they’d reached the edge of the flowers where the blooms gave way to the meadow’s central rise, with no cover beyond Ombre’s Illusion to disguise them past that point.

Sure enough, at the top, there was some sort of fabric shelter that the human was collapsing and folding up with the help of an Abomasnow. The Avalugg from the day before was out as well, crouched as his back was laden with colored sacks piled up on them. At first, Tigri thought they were Trubbish of some sort, but it dawned on her that they were resin like the ones that sometimes washed up wadded up from the river, just filled. A few odds and ends were lying intermixed with them…

Including the white chest that they’d found yesterday, along with their sled.

“Ah! So they really did steal our salvage!” she whispered.

“Oi! Keep it down!” Ombre hissed.

The Zoroark pointed off to the human’s waist, where there, just to the side of where his blue pelt was hanging loose from his body, there was a set of red-and-white orbs along some sort of band.

“Those are those spheres of his,” the Zoroark explained. “Nobody in the pack got a good count of how many he has, but he’d have at least two for those partners with him. So if he’s got more than that, one of them must have Patron inside it.”

Tigri looked on with her brother, studying the human as he moved about and the loose pelt moved about to and fro. It was hard to tell just how far the band went, but there were clearly three of those spheres attached to them. Every time she tried to see if there were more, either his pelt would cover the band, or he’d turn away, or something else would get in her way to ruin the view.

All of a sudden, the Abomasnow stiffened up, before motioning off in the opposite direction of the mound.

“Wait. There’s something in the flowers.”

Tigri’s heart skipped a beat as Ombre quietly let out a sigh of relief. Something else had caught the Abomasnow’s attention and turned it away from them. The human and the Avalugg started to look off at where the Abomasnow was gesturing. Ombre cautiously crept out of the flowers and motioned at Tigri and her brother to follow. She complied and made her way out onto the grass still under the Zoroark’s haze, when she saw it:

The human had three red-and-white spheres on the band around his waist, with empty impressions afterwards.

“Whew, so he’s only got three of those spheres with him,” Stig whispered. “That means that whichever of them isn’t empty is the one that Patron’s in one of them right now.”

It seemed to make sense. Except… which of them wasn’t empty right now?

“… So now what?” Tigri whispered. “How do we tell which of those spheres has Patron in it?”

There was a long silence, as the three studied the human’s belt carefully.

“The first two balls look like they’d be easier for the human to reach. Wouldn’t they logically be the ones that he’d want to keep his partners in since it’d be easier to reach them?” Stig asked. “That’d leave the last one as the most likely spot, wouldn’t it?

“Wait, but what about the one in the middle?” the Zoroark asked. “If he had to grab one of the spheres without looking, the ones at the ends would be easy for him just by feeling him. Wouldn’t he be just as likely to put a Pokémon he doesn’t intend to let out in between?”

Gah, both of those arguments seemed to make sense… and knowing human spheres, there wasn’t a way of seeing what was inside them without opening them. The human was starting to move away now. If they didn’t take something, their opportunity would be lost entirely. She cast a glance between the Abomasnow and Avalugg, and then at the human’s waist.

“If there’s two partners already out and only three balls, then it should just be a process of elimination,” she said. “Stig and I can grab the middle and rear spheres with our powers. If they’re both empty, we’d just need to figure out a way of getting at the last one when the human’s distracted enough.”

It was a simple enough idea, and normally she’d be confident in their chances… except she couldn’t help but have her attention drift over to Stig and his chest wound.

“… Stig, are you still able to lift things with your mind?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t have come along if I wasn’t confident that I could, Tigri,” he insisted. “Just give the word for when the human’s distracted.”

Tigri sucked in a breath as she looked back at the human on the ridge. He was starting to move further away now. And if he got into the flowers, it’d be impossible to follow after him without making noise. She glanced over at Ombre, before warily stepping out into the part of the grassy clearing still under her Illusion’s dome.

“Help us get a little closer,” she insisted. “I can’t grasp things with my mind without having a firm idea of where they’re at.”

Ombre hesitated but ultimately relented and crept forward, with Tigri and Stig following after her. When they reached the base of the rise, Tigri caught a glimpse of the human clambering down a dirt path just in front of them. Her breath caught in her throat as the human passed by, when she saw the spheres on the band on his waist.

She held out a forepaw and focused, tugging gently at the ball closest to the back as it came off and floated in the air back towards the haze. Stig did much the same and the spheres floated off and was just about to enter the dome of haze marking the boundaries of Ombre’s Illusion. Tigri tried to hurry the process along as much as she could, but her head was pulsing from the power within her, and any little noise could tip the human or his partners off to their presence.

And then Stig’s sphere suddenly dipped in the air. She shifted her focus to help stabilize it only for her own sphere to wobble in midair. All of a sudden, a light shot out from the ball she was holding and it split open along a hinge. She dropped it out of alarm as the light settled into the shape of a Pokémon just outside of Ombre’s Illusion…

One that looked nothing like a Zoroark, but instead like some sort of giant ice crystal.

“Huh?!” the Avalugg’s voice rumbled. “Horace, what are you doing out right now-?

“Someone was trying to take my Pokéball!”

Tigri reeled as her mind went blank with shock. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that the human would’ve kept Patron someplace else-!

“Hey! There’s someone down there next to you!”

Tigri’s blood froze as the Avalugg’s voice cried out from the rise and the human and his partners’ attention all whirled on their position… right on Stig’s sphere still floating in the air.

“Ditch the ball, kid!” Ombre hissed. “We need to go!”

Stig hurriedly flung the sphere aside into the flowers as they turned to run, but it didn’t divert the four’s attention. The Abomasnow took his place in front of the human as he blasted out frigid air around his body and the air grew thick with flurries with stinging particles of ice.

The human’s voice called out and Tigri and Stig jumped aside as an icy flechette zipped in and struck Ombre in the back. The Zoroark pitched forward from the Ice Shard with a pained yelp as she frantically tried to scrabble up. Much to Tigri’s horror, the haze abruptly cleared in a flash of magenta as she looked back and saw the Abomasnow staring and pointing off at them.

“Gah! It’s those same Zoroark from yester-!”

Everything happened so quickly afterwards as A flash of black and red from the meadow cut the Abomasnow off. It took a brief moment for Tigri to make sense of things, but it was clearly Chasseur diving in with a snarl. Tigri looked back towards the flowers at the sound of frantic rustling and saw Ombre was already gone. There was a loud yelp from Chasseur as they briefly caught him reeling from an Ice Beam from the Cyrogonal, which was enough to erase the Zoroark’s confidence as he turned and fled for dear life through the flowers.

Tigri frantically grabbed at Stig’s paw and dragged him along, her mind empty of all thoughts other than escape as she ran for the flowers ahead.

“Ack!”

His footing slipped and Tigri felt her lose her grasp on her brother’s paw as the stinging ice ice in the air dashed against her pelt. She turned back and saw that he’d tripped and was lying on the ground.

“Stig!”

She hurried over and dragged him back up onto his feet when she saw a shadow fall over them along with a frigid breath. Her breath hitched and she didn’t dare look up. This was it. If they survived, they were going to be taken away. Back to the place with the harsh lights or somewhere else that was similarly horrible. She clung to Stig and braced for the icy end…

“Easy! Easy!” the Avalugg’s voice insisted. “We don’t need to fight like this!”

She looked up and saw the Avalugg standing a few paces away. His posture was wary and guarded, and he lowered his head with a puzzled tilt as the human and his other partners looked on.

“Are you alright?” the Avalugg asked. “We were trying to scare off those Zoroark that ambushed us earlier but we didn’t see you there.”

Tigri stared ahead vacantly for a moment, stealing glances back at the flowers. She sharply tugged at her brother to try and get him to move along. Whatever had come over this human’s partner to make him hesitate, they were best off taking advantage of it to get away.

Except, Stig didn’t budge. He brushed her paw away and stood firm, and bared his fangs and bristled his fur back at the Avalugg with a sharp hiss.

“Those were friends of ours. And you can stop pretending that you’re some sort of nice Pokémon,” Stig snapped. “You stole our salvage yesterday and we already know how you and your human snatched Patron earlier.”


The Avalugg blinked in reply, as the human and his other partners looked on and traded glances with one another. The human said something in that strange, discordant human tongue that was curiously low-pitched. Not like the voices the humans from the place with harsh lights had, but… almost uneasy, or worried.

“‘Salvage’?” the Abomasnow murmured. “Is he talking about that trash we’ve been picking up from along the river?”

“I didn’t think that Espurr even lived in the woods around here normally,” the Cryogonal said. “Do you think they’re really Ditto? Since we’ve certainly been running into them around here.”

Tigri wasn’t sure what was going on, but neither the Pokémon nor the human seemed like they wanted to fight them. The Avalugg hesitated for a moment, before shaking his head with a low sigh.

“‘Patron’… that’s certainly an on-the-nose name if I ever heard one,” the Ice-type said. “I take it that’s what you call the Zoroark my trainer caught the other day?”

“Yes,” Stig retorted. “He leads the pack that helps disguise the place where we live. To keep Pokémon like you and the humans you teamed up with from finding us!”

The Avalugg’s expression briefly hardened into a stern frown only for it to waver briefly and for him to hang his head with a low murmur.

“I’m not fully sure what the story is with you two, but it sounds like there’s been quite a bit of confusion. And we’ve probably gotten off on the wrong foot because of it,” the Avalugg insisted before motioning with his head at the human with him. “But I can assure you, Wulfric genuinely doesn’t mean any harm to you or any of the Pokémon that live here.”

‘Wul… fric’? Was that what these Pokémon called their human? The name certainly sounded like a human came up with it. Tigri looked up and saw the human and his other partners starting to approach when she noticed something strange: the human was holding a resin bowl in his hands, much like the ones that the humans in the place with harsh lights would sometimes bring around. She stiffened up and reflexively pulled Stig back.

“What do you think you’re-?”

“My human noticed that your friend looked hurt and you two both looked a bit thin,” the Avalugg replied. “He wanted to tend to you two before you left. If your other companions didn’t run away earlier, I’m sure that he’d have offered the same to them.”

Tigri watched carefully as the human set the bowl down. She glimpsed past the edge where there were those brown food lumps in it. The same kind that the humans in the place with harsh lights used to give her and Stig to eat in between the times they took them under the lights to hurt them. In his free hand, the human held a purple and white bottle with a nozzle. It’d been a while since she’d seen one but…

“A Potion and some kibble?” she asked. “What exactly are you trying to prove? What do you really want from us?”

The human hesitated briefly as the Avalugg cocked a brow.

“A chance to explain ourselves? Or at least to see you not hungry and miserable before you leave?” he asked.

There was a moment’s silence as Tigri and her brother just stared at these strange interlopers. Was it safe to trust them? They were certainly strong enough to overpower them on a moment’s notice, and yet… they hadn’t for some reason.

“Wulfric may be a clever tactician and ruthless about battle strategies when we need to be, but he’s more than capable of being kind,” the Avalugg insisted. “If you’re not interested in hearing what we have to say, we’ll let you leave. But I’d think you’d appreciate at least being a bit better fed and having those scrapes treated.”

The Avalugg nosed over in Stig’s direction. Tigri paused and followed along as her brother briefly pawed at his chest as the streaks from under his fur came into view. They at least closed up and looked better than they were yesterday, but they clearly were still lingering.

She carefully eyed the Avalugg and his companions. If this was all really some trick of theirs, it was quite an elaborate one, and they were already at these four’s mercy. It wouldn’t do any good to flee without Patron, either. Tigri didn’t know how they’d find him, much less leave with him successfully, but they at least had a chance to free him as long as they were here.

“Fine, we’ll accept your hospitality,” she said. “But this doesn’t mean we’re going to let you take us from here without a fight.”

“Understood. Just take your time and settle in a bit.”

The Abomasnow prodded at this ‘Wulfric’ as he went over and stooped with the potion bottles. Tigri turned to the food bowl and slowly helped herself to the kibble, occasionally stealing glances at Stig in between the sound of spraying fluid and the occasional wince. She stared up at the Avalugg, giving a wary twitch of her ears.

“I just don’t understand you all,” she said. “Why are you acting kind to us when you took Patron captive just yesterday?”

The human’s partners turned their attention towards Tigri after her question, and eventually, their human did too. The Avalugg sighed before letting out a quiet grumble.

“Straight to the Mamoswine in the room, huh?” the Avalugg replied. “I’m not sure how much of it will mean anything to you, but the long and short of it is that Zoroark is in a Pokéball inside Wulfric’s bag. Considering how Wulfric caught him, your ‘Patron’ is most likely currently in medically-induced stasis.”

Tigri glanced off at the human and a bag sitting by his feet. She flinched briefly at the mention of ‘stasis’. Back in the place with the harsh lights, when she and Stig were kept in those balls of their own, there’d be times they’d entered them when noticeably injured or extremely weak where they’d black out entirely and lose consciousness.

She supposed that would explain why Patron hadn’t broken free all this time, though then that meant…

“So you did hurt him badly,” she said.

“He’s fine… ish,” the Cryogonal chipped in. “It’s nothing he wouldn’t bounce back from with treatment. But we weren’t confident about how he’d do in the wild if we just left him to limp off into the brush right away.”

“For the record, I said we should’ve just left him,” the Abomasnow chimed in. “We were hoping to make him a Ranger’s problem, but the woods that led us to this meadow here are easy to get lost in. Worse still, that ‘caster’ thing Wulfric had hadn’t been working properly here. Something about ‘bad reception’.”

Tigri quietly bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t know how truthful these three were being, but what they had to say about Patron’s condition didn’t sound positive. She heard footsteps as Stig made his way over. He walked past the food bowl entirely and held a paw up accusingly at the Avalugg.

“We’ll take our chances,” Stig said. “We have healers of our own who can treat Patron for whatever you did to him and our village needs him back.”

His reply took Wulfric’s Pokémon aback, as the Avalugg tilted his head puzzledly.

“Wait, ‘village’?”

The ‘Wulfric’ human said something in his tongue, before motioning towards Stig’s arm. Off at where the cloth strip tied around it was. Tigri looked over at the Avalugg curiously and noticed that weirdly, he had an awed expression about him.

“I didn’t know that there were villages this far out,” he murmured under his breath. “Though is that what the armband is for? To show that you’re trained?”

“‘Trained’? Of course not! As if we’d want anything to do with humans again!” Stig cried. “The band’s to show that we’re from our village!”

A befuddled silence followed from the lot. Tigri knew that ‘villages’ were normally made by humans and that Abri was a sheltered haven, but was it really that strange of an idea? She wasn’t sure how much it made sense to explain things to these strangers when she and Stig couldn’t trust them. But from the expressions they were trading, she supposed that was one way to tell that Abri’s present location was still fairly unknown by the outside world.

“I’m not sure if I follow you, Espurr,” the Avalugg said. “You say that you’re from a village, but you don’t have a human training you? Just what sort of village are you talking abou-?”

“Tigri! Stig!”

A spray of embers suddenly came in and made the Avalugg pull his leg back sharply. The air behind them suddenly shimmered as a magenta light broke, and Rouge suddenly came into view hopping forward along the ground.

“Rouge! Get back here!”

Along with his mother sharply pulling him back and spreading her wings out to shield him. She looked up, at the top of the flowers, where face after face from the village was drawing forward braced and ready for battle. There were the Furfrou Brothers along with a good chunk of the town’s Officers—even Sheriff Ron was awake and present with them! Team Rapid and many other teams from town there too, with Nobi and Orne crouched and ready to lunge at a moment’s notice. At their fore of the group, there were Ticho and Elder Gide, with the Farfetch’d tightly gripping his leek, and the Aegislash held his shield in a tassel with his body’s blade bared for all to see. The culprits of the Illusion became apparent quickly enough, as Chasseur and Ombre meekly peeked out from behind the Ghost-type.

“That’s them right there!” Ombre exclaimed.

“Y-Yeah, you’d better look scared, human!” Chasseur yipped. “We’ve got reinforcements now!”

The Avalugg and the others hurriedly steadied themselves for a fight, as the human stiffened up and backed away. Tigri traded glances between Wulfric and his Pokémon along with the encroaching villagers. Most of them despite their aggressive stances, seemed afraid and like they were visibly wavering. Could they really hold out in a fight against this human and his partners?

Did they even have to fight in the first place?

“Wait, stop!”

Tigri waved her arms frantically as both the villagers and Wulfric’s Pokémon froze in their places. She looked around, before looking up at Elder Gide with what she hoped they would interpret as a pleading gaze.

“Stig and I are alright!” she insisted. “The human didn’t hurt us at all!”

There was a moment of incredulous silence after the words left her throat. A few uneasy murmurs went about the villagers before the Avalugg’s voice rumbled in the air.

“Ahem.”

Tigri looked behind her where she saw the Avalugg digging his feet in. He was still wary, though no longer ready to charge forward into battle and studying his surroundings carefully,

“I don’t know what on earth is going on,” he said. “But from those bands you’re all wearing, I’m guessing that you’re all from the same place.

The Avalugg nosed off in Rouge’s direction, as Wulfric walked alongside him, pulling out another purple and white spray bottle from his bag. Off to the side, the human drifted up to their partly disassembled encampment and rooted through it.

“We understand that we have a few things that you want from us,” the Avalugg said. “Instead of trying to fight over it, why don’t we talk things through a bit? Give us a chance to patch up some of your wounded and explain how we got here, and we’ll hear your story in return.”

There was an uneasy pause as the villagers traded murmurs and cast glances over at Elder Gide. He hesitated briefly before he set his shield back against his blade and folded his tassels behind him with a sharp harrumph.

“… Fine, we will humor you, and if we deem it appropriate, we will talk,” Gide said. “But don’t expect us to let you have your way with us over a few words.”

Tigri didn’t know what she was expecting from this ‘Wulfric’ and the Pokémon he had as partners, but they were certainly full of surprises. The Avalugg apparently was called ‘Serge’ by his human and his teammates and didn’t find the name strange at all. They made good on their promise of tending to Rouge’s sprained wing, which he was able to better move afterward getting a Potion applied. They even treated Chasseur and Ombre’s wounds from the earlier skirmish. The pair squirmed uneasily during their treatment before they hurriedly slunk back alongside the gathered villagers.

All the while, the other Pokémon from the village kept wary stares trained on the human and his companions. Wulfric and his Pokémon largely didn’t protest, though Serge seemed to grow impatient towards the end of the impromptu treatment, and he turned his attention back to Elder Gide with a low harrumph.

“Have we convinced you now that we don’t mean any harm?” the Avalugg asked. “Or are we going to have to break out the food again?”

A low growl came from the back of the crowd as Tigri saw that it was Sheriff Ron. There was a thin bead of spittle at the edge of the Snorlax’s mouth as a few murmurs went around the crowd about whether or not the human was serious about offering food. Elder Gide rolled his eye, before narrowing it at the Avalugg and his teammates.

“We aren’t in the habit of accepting gifts from strangers we don’t trust,” Elder Gide retorted. “Let alone from humans. Though I suppose we promised you an audience, I will leave it to my villagers to question you as they see fit.”

Elder Gide floated aside as Tigri waited patiently for the villagers to start asking questions, expecting that maybe Team Rapid or one of the other stronger teams would go first. None of them stepped forward, and they all either traded hushed whispers with one another or pretended to distract themselves with some of the nearby flowers or the clouds in the sky.

… Perhaps Achille would do it? He and his family were one of the strongest fighters in Abri, some said stronger than even Elder Gide, and the Kecleon always had been more fearless about humans than most others in the village…

“Wait, where is Achille anyways?” she whispered to Rouge. “I wouldn’t have expected him to miss a moment like this.”

“Er… he stayed behind in town to do an ‘inventory restock’ since a bunch of us bought items on the way out and a bunch of others were still buying stuff from him in case the human made it into A… er, the village.”

Tigri should’ve been less surprised, really. Even if Achille’s family had been the ones to introduce money to the village, they sure did their best to try and make sure those coins they found inevitably returned to them.

She looked back at Serge and the others before shaking her head and speaking up with the voice in her throat.

“… I guess I’ll start myself since we’ve already talked a bit,” she said. “How on earth did you all even find this place? The Mazewoods are a place that even strong Teams easily get lost in.”

“Er… that is how we found this place, or at least at first,” the Cryogonal of the group said. “We made a wrong turn during a trip south into the woods a few days ago and wound up coming across this place.”

“We obviously were surprised by it, since we didn’t think that there were still flowers blooming this late into the year,” the Abomasnow chimed in. “It just seemed like a shame that there was all that trash just lying along the river, so we came back to try and clean it up.”

Tigri supposed that meant that the sighting that the Furfrou Brothers had made of a human a few days ago had also been Wulfric. Did humans and their partners really consider the salvage that Abri treasured so much to be trash? Did being around humans make Pokémon more wasteful or something?

Stig walked past her with a puzzled tilt of his head. So it wasn’t just her that found the explanation strange.

“I don’t know why you’re calling that salvage ‘trash’, but you three are definitely a lot stronger than any of the teams here that gather it,” Stig said. “Just who are you?”

Tigri looked up at this ‘Wulfric’ and noticed that he didn’t seem to be following along with the conversation, but instead seemed to be studying them and their armbands. She turned back to his partners, as the Avalugg cocked a brow with a low rumble of his voice.

“‘Teams’? You probably mean something very different by that term than we do. Though we’re a team, of partners with my human. He’s what other humans call a ‘Gym Leader’,” the Avalugg explained. “It’s our job to grow strong and battle others that come to challenge us, as well as to use that strength to help better the place we live and its surroundings when they need help.”

Tigri twitched her ears and heard a few voices in the crowd audibly gasp, as some of the villagers visibly tensed up and others had flashes of fear come across them. She didn’t recognize the term, but these ‘Gym Leaders’ and their partners must’ve been quite strong indeed, from a reaction like that. Though now that the three mentioned it…

“Why are all of you Ice-types, anyways?” she asked. “Did you all come from a snowy mountain or something?

“More like from the bottom of one, but that’s more of a coincidence,” the Avalugg explained. “It’s part of Wulfric’s job to specialize in training Ice-types like us.”

“Yeah, we’ve got no shortage of others like us back at the gym,” the Abomasnow chipped in. “So you don’t have to worry about us catching you or anything like that.”

Tigri eased up at the pair’s explanation. Stig and Rouge did too, and even some of the villagers seemed to be swayed… with the visible exception of a Vanillish in the crowd, who cringed and ducked away.

Chasseur and Ombre were also exceptions. The pair stomped up, as Ombre crouched and bristled her fur with a sharp growl.

“A likely story!” Ombre snapped. “You caught our pack’s leader just yesterday!”

“Yeah! Last I checked, Zoroark like us weren’t Ice-types!” Chasseur spat.

The Avalugg narrowed his eyes at the pair, and Tigri briefly backed away, thinking that Serge might have been ready to attack. The moment passed before the Avalugg glanced over to the Cryogonal.

“Horace, tell Wulfric to send the Zoroark out,” the Avalugg said.

The Cryogonal hesitated, before curling his icy mouth into a wary frown.

“Are you sure, Serge? Cryogonal asked. “I’m not sure how these Pokémon are going to react to seeing him.”

“I think they’ve already gotten an idea of what to expect,” the Avalugg replied. “It’s probably faster to just show them if they’re serious about wanting him back.”

The Cryogonal went over to Wulfric and nudged at his back with the edges of his body. Tigri looked on as the Cryogonal guided the human through to the bag. Wulfric said something in reply that she couldn’t understand but sounded like a question from the way it was inflected. The human put his hand into the bag, before taking out a red-and-white sphere from it. He hesitated briefly, before pointing it ahead at the gathered group and clicking its center.

A jagged ray of light shot out as the form of a Zoroark took shape in front of Tigri and her fellow villagers. It settled as Patron came into view slumped over on the ground, before he stumbled onto all fours in a daze.

“Ngah… what is this?” Patron groaned. “Where am I-?”

“A-Ack! Patron! You’re bleeding!”

Tigri looked closer at Patron’s body after Chasseur’s alarmed yelp. As Patron attempted to rear up, she could see a visible, ruddy gash that ran along his abdomen. Patron clutched at it when he started to turn his head back and saw Wulfric. He stiffened up and sprang back with a sharp growl.

“Grr… you—!”

“Give it a rest already, Patron,” Ticho harrumphed. “You’re in no condition to fight right now and we both know it.”

“You should be thankful that Wulfric was calling the shots in that battle,” the Avalugg huffed. “With the way you tried to slash him, I’d have stomped you flat if it were up to me. Literally..”

Patron flinched and clutched at his wound, before looking back and to the rest of Elder Gide’s party. The Zoroark leader hesitated and pinned his ears back, and Chasseur and Ombre both looked visibly worried. It was the first time that Tigri had ever seen Patron look defeated like this. Even when Elder Gide was at his throat the other day, he still was defiant.

But he wasn’t now, which was the surest sign that Patron knew he was in trouble.

“Though this is why we caught him,” the Cryogonal of the group explained. “Wounds like those are things that don’t heal easily on their own in the wild, but are easily treatable by human medics and a bit of rest.”

“I mean, I didn’t want to take the chance on him,” the Abomasnow scoffed. “But yeah. If we didn’t, it’d be an open question as to whether he’d last the week in the wilds like this.”

It was hard to argue the Abomasnow’s point, even if Tigri didn’t think that the wound looked that bad. She didn’t know how they did it, but she’d had seen Pelin and Ernel deal with wounds like those before, and the Pokémon they’d treated generally recovered fine.

Except, those were villagers in Abri, and Patron wasn’t one of them. Elder Gide floated over and sized up the Zoroark’s wound, before turning back to Wulfric and his companions with a quiet sigh.

“Well, it’s a bit unfortunate, but this is a matter between Patron and you,” he said. “Were he still an ally of our village, we would surely be compelled to interject and insist that you surrender that sphere you caught him in so we could heal him, but-”

“Just shut up and patch me up, Aegislash,” Patron snapped. “I can’t exactly cast Illusions for your village if I’m dead.”

Tigri traded glances with her teammates as they had a flash of surprise. As impossible as it seemed, they might have succeeded in their mission after all. There was a loud splutter from the other end, as Serge stepped forward, and raised his voice to interject.

“Now hold on just a moment,” the Avalugg insisted. “I understand that you don’t trust us, but that’s not the sort of wound you can just eat a few Oran Berries to shrug off-”

“Trust us, we’re already aware. We’ve treated worse ones in the past,” Elder Gide said. “Though if you all absolutely must get involved, have your human come over with a couple of those ‘Potions’.”

The Avalugg and the others traded glances, as Wulfric came over and gave a puzzled paw with his hand. The Ice-type stared back, as Tigri hesitated, before stepping forward with a wave of her paw.

“Avalugg, I… believe that you and your human are trying to do the right thing here,” she said. “But it would really be for the best if you let us try to handle things our way.”

There was a noticeable pause before the Avalugg lowered his head with a quiet sigh.

“… We’ll let Wulfric know,” he said. “Though I’m not really sure what you’re all planning on doing.”