Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Destruction- Chapter 9.2- Guild Under Siege
#13 of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
A suspicious noise latched on to Ambipom's ears, making him turn his attention away from his student's practice. An entire crowd of Pokemon gathered around the teacher and his disciples, though curiosity or amazement wasn't what dragged them out in the forest.
"Ambipom, what's wrong with them?" Oran asked, observing the same scene the monkey was.
"Oran, stay with Pecha," he told him. "I'll go figure out what's happening, oh-ho."
Leaving his students for a second, the double-tailed monkey met with the sudden crowd, but something wasn't right with them to him. Some hid their faces in paws full of tears; others spaced out with empty eyes as if escaping from an active battlefield. "What has gotten into everyone, oh-ho?" he asked himself. Among the bunch he saw Loudred, as quiet as a Whismur for once. "Loudred, what's going on?" Ambipom asked.
"SOMETHING TRULY TERRIBLE, THAT'S WHAT!" he replied with a shout loud enough to rumble a mountain, everyone around him covering their ears to keep from going deaf. "THREE OUTLAWS JUST SHOWED UP OUTTA NOWHERE AND STARTED ATTACKING THE GUILD! THEY EVEN WHACKED GRANBULL!"
"That's terrible!" Ambipom screamed. "What about the Guildmistress? Is she still all right?"
"SHE AND AZUMARILL ARE STILL IN THERE," he explained, "TRYING TO PROTECT THE GUILD. BUT SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE OUTLAWS ARE JUST WEIRD, I DON'T KNOW HOW LONG FLORGES CAN LAST AGAINST THEM. YOU'RE A TRAINED EXPLORER, AMBIPOM; WHY DON'T YOU GO IN THERE AND HELP?"
He didn't care how strong the invaders were, or why they want to wreck the guild. Ambipom had only one answer, and he blurted it without a second thought, "Oh-ho, yeah, like I would ever let those punks destroy my guild! Watch Pecha and Oran for me; make sure they don't leave the group, oh-ho. I'm going in to help Guildmistress Florges!"
"BUT, AMBIPOM, I AIN'T GOOD AROUND-!" Having started his run for the guild, Ambipom made a great effort to ignore Loudred's complaint, never looking back to acknowledge him. "KIDS," the Loudred sighed. His perpetually open mouth took on the form of a frown. "GREAT," he said to himself, "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KEEP THOSE KIDS AWAY FROM THE GUILD? I'M NOT SO MUCH WORRIED ABOUT THE GIRL; SHE SEEMS TO BE ENJOYIN HER PRACTICE. IT'S-"
He felt two light on his right leg. Looking down, he saw a curious looking Riolu hovering near his kneecap. "hey, Loudred, do you know what's going on?" Oran asked. "Where's Ambipom going?"
"NOTHING," he replied, "NOTHING IS HAPPENING. WE'RE DEFINITELY NOT BEING ATTACKED BY A GANG OF SUPER STRONG OUTLAWS OR ANYTHING; THAT'S JUST SILLY. AMBIPOM JUST FORGOT A FEW THINGS, SO HE'LL BE BACK IN A MINUTE OR TWO."
"But you just said a second ago-"
"I SAY A LOT OF THINGS!" the Loudred screamed. "I'M LITERALLY JUST A BIG MOUTH WITH LEGS- IT'S WHAT I DO! NOW GO BACK TO PRACTICING THROWING YOUR IRON BARBS, OR WHATEVER."
"You mean, 'iron thorns'?" Oran corrected him. His eyes drifted away, and his hands locked behind his head. "Nah, I don't like those things all that much; I just feel like heading back inside, and-"
To his surprise Oran found himself lifted up with ease, Loudred hoisting him by his sides, and suspending him over his head to observe the forest's thick skyline of rich, emerald foliage. "HEY, LOOK, KID- NATURE!" Loudred exclaimed in a falsely excited tone. "YA LIKE NATURE, DON'T YA, KID?"
"Well, of course," Oran replied back, watching the blanket of leaves above head sway to the slightest touch of wind. "I live in nature. I get to see it every day; it gets kinda boring, though, after seeing it so many times, y'know-?"
"MY MASTER PLAN IS WORKING," the Loudred thought to himself as the Riolu pup rambled on without much of a care.
Meanwhile, the guild remained an active war zone. The moist grass floor became a thin smokescreen from the Gabite and Delphox spreading their fire around; everything below the fighters' feet was a mystery.
Azumarill, the first to fall in battle, laid on her stomach unconscious, with several light gashes and scratches lining her cerulean body. Lono loomed over her as the victor, though looking down on her wrote a grimace of self-disgust across his face. Even after going easy on her, refraining from doing any major damage to her, he felt sick to his stomach just looking at what he was able to do. If he wasn't under the Inverse Orb's effects, maybe she'd be in better condition.
His sister's shout caught his ear, "Hey, Lono, get your butt over here! This one's really starting to get under my scales!" When he looked over to her battle, he realized she wasn't kidding. It's been only two minutes since they started fighting, and already Pele huffed and wheezed as if she just ran a marathon; she never learned how to conserve her energy during fights.
"Take this!" Again the Delphox drew a circle of flame midair with her staff, collapsing it into savage stream of inferno. Except this time, her opponent had tired herself too much to counter, deciding to engulf herself in the ravenous sapphire flames. But as the Gabite's screams of discomfort suggested, she was unaware the Inverse Orb weakened her natural resistance to fire.
"Lono! Don't just stand there," she shrieked in pain, rolling around the ground in a panic, "do something, you idiot!" Lono kicked up a small stream of sand with his left fin, using his Sand Attack to douse out the flames devouring his sister before they did any major harm to her. Pele's cries for mercy turned into a series of coughing fits as she laid flat on her belly. "Took you long enough," she coughed out. Just like Ku, her body failed to register a single scorch mark, even after being turned into a giant ball of fire.
"Mystical Fire doesn't act like other Fire-type moves," the Delphox explained to them. "It lacks the ability to burn, yet your body still registers the sensation of burning. Being both a Dragon-type and a Ground-type you should have resisted it fairly easily, yet, your reaction to it was interesting."
Pele stood herself onto her knees, refusing to lose the fight. "Why don't ya shut your mouth, ya dumb broad?" she blurted out. "Your voice makes me wanna puke!"
Seeing such revolting disrespect from her opponent sent a twitching fit through the fox's right eye brow. "Is that how you treat your elders?" Delphox growled at her, flinging a ripple of blue inferno at the Gabite with her staff. But a line of sand intercepted the fire attack, snuffing it about before reaching Pele. The Fox Pokémon passed an apathetic glance towards the brother, suspecting him of throwing the Sand Attack. "I prefer you not to interfere," said the fox witch.
"You got something in your eyes!" Whipping his tail across the foggy black ground summoned a splash of sand, aiming directly for the Fire-type's head. Delphox nudged her head to the left, missing the Dragon's pathetic Sand Attack.
"Fool," Delphox called the Gabite. "Did you really think that would work after you called it out?"
"No," Lono answered with a confident grin, "but thanks for taking the bait, anyways."
At first she had no idea what he was talking about, But then it suddenly dawned on her. Delphox only took her eyes off her real opponent for a few seconds, but that gave the female Gabite enough time to get up close to her, practically breathing up her robes. There wasn't enough time to charge another Mystical Fire; in a split-second decision, her deep blue eyes turned entirely purple with psychic energy, erecting an invisible, paper-thin barrier between her and the Gabite.
Passing through it certainly slowed the Dragon-type down to a noticeable degree, but it failed to stop her from attacking. Swiping at her lower abdomen with her right claw, to start off her Dual Chop attack, it connected with a light mist of blood. Then the second claw came, cutting diagonally downward to intersect with the first wound; a little more fluid left the fox's stomach as she toppled like a falling tree, hitting the ground hard on her back.
Delphox groaned while wiggling on the ground, using her thick coat arms to slow the heavy bleeding; All she felt in her stomach was a deep burning sensation from her open wounds getting some air. Had she not used her Reflect, she feared the dragon's claws could have gone deeper.
As the Fox Pokémon used the wall to her right to help prop her to her knees, the victor towered over her, a smug grin stretching across her face. "Had enough, yet?" Pele taunted in glee. "I guess so; you're just all bark, and no bite."
"You little, arrogant brat," Delphox growled in pain. "I will not allow myself to be talked down by the likes of you-!" in the middle of forcing herself up her knees gave in, and she toppled back to the ground on her stomach.
The Cave Pokémon burst out laughing at the sight of her enemy falling down, her obnoxious howls rung through the guild like a banshee's wail. "Look at you; you're a mess!" she hollered, tears nearly trickling down her face. "Don't think about getting back up- you look better as a rug, anyways!"
"Leave her alone, already," Lono told his sister. "You've won your fight; there's no need to brag about it."
Suddenly her desire to laugh died out to a resentful silence. "Gee, just suck the fun outta everything, why don't ya," she groaned in a disheartened tone. That was her brother for her, all right: an enemy to all that is fun.
Her fight with the Garchomp didn't even remotely feel like a real fight to the Guildmistress. Her once perfect, porcelain skin now adorned several deep purplish bruises and lightly bleeding scrapes. With not a single scratch on his scales, it was like he was toying with her, playing with her like she was some child's doll. To her- he was taunting her abilities.
"Tired already?" the dragon mocked. "We haven't even begun, yet."
As mush as she wanted to tell him otherwise, the flower wasn't in any condition to lie. Each irregular breath was heavier than a Stoutland's overheated panting. Even while she slumped to the ground for a few quick gasps, the desert in her mouth kept getting dryer, making it harder to breathe. All of her muscles felt stiff and heavy, having expended so much energy to punish the foe with no payoff.
"What you did to Diglett and Granbull, was truly horrendous," she huffed. "As Guildmistress, I will stop your terror; no more members will be harmed by your hand!" Struggling to get back up, she continued, "Even if I must fall, I will not allow your evil to destroy my guild! As every guildmaster must be, I am prepared to die, to protect the home of so many Pokémon-!"
Ku's enormous tail slammed into the guildmistress' gut with boulder-shattering strength, knocking the wind out of her lungs and the Florges off her tail, flinging her outside of the guild's entrance to the Verde Forest. "I've been courteous enough to go easy on you," said the Garchomp as he strolled to her. "With this power of mine I could have killed you the moment we started fighting; I kept you alive this long to tell me where your treasury is located."
Laying on her back in the pebble-filled dirt, a spot of sun hit her in the eyes. It gave her an idea: closing her eyes, her collar of blue hydrangeas turned snow white, drawing in energy from the sunlight around her. The Synthesis continued to draw in the surrounding light, reinvigorating the Garden Pokémon with newfound energy; she didn't need much, just enough to keep her fighting.
Ku's hefty left foot crashed down on the Florges' arm, disrupting her Synthesis, and pulverizing her left humerus into bone powder. Biting down on her lip almost hard enough to draw blood, she locked a scream of pain inside of her mouth, filtering it to sound like a discomforting groan to the dragon. Florges turned her head, trying to rob her opponent the pleasure to watch a heavy flow of tears trickle down her face, but no matter which way she turned, there would always be one eye revealed.
Grinding his left foot with her arm underneath forced those exquisite screams right out from her throat, and her tears flowed heavier than streams out of a crumbling dam. "Talk," he told her in a calm demeanor. "Where is your treasury? Your guild will be left unharmed, if you just tell me where it is."
Despite squirming around on the ground like an earthworm, filling the air with her stomach-churning howls, Florges kept her lips shut to the hammerhead.
Ku bellowed a low growl at the sight of the guildmistress' noncompliance; a new persuasion tactic was needed. He lifted his foot off the Garden Pokémon's broken arm, only to place his right foot on the side of her head, placing firm pressure, but not enough to squish it like a grape. Ku ground her face into the dirt, until she was locked in place to stare at the inside of her guild through watery eyes.
"Look, Guildmistress," the dragon told her, "look at your guild. Watch what your stubbornness rewarded you with." The leader called out to his observing teammates from the inside, "Lono, Pele: destroy the guild! Leave nothing standing!"
The female Gabite was all too happy to carry out his order. A calm vortex of sand formed around her at first, but the entire inside of the assembly hall was soon devoured by the devastating storm. Fine particles of earth produced by her Sand Tomb wore down the walls at an alarming rate, until the ceiling overhead collapsed from having nothing left supporting it. Like meteors from the sky, the ceiling collapsed into large chunks of stone, burying both the unconscious Azumarill and Delphox underneath hills of rubble.
Her entire pride and joy was being destroyed by a simple sandstorm- and she was forced to watch every second of it. She was forced to watch her guild, her home, be converted into an unrecognizable ruin in a hand-made desert. Florges tried wiggling her head out of her captor's grasp, to avoid another moment of devastation, but Ku's foothold held strong and firm; the more she struggled, the harder he pressed down.
"Stop," the guildmistress gave in, begging while catching a mouthful of dirt, "please, stop! I'll do as you ask- just leave the rest of my guild alone! I'm begging you!"
The dragon lifted his foot from her tear-soaked face, believing in her surrender. Signaling for his teammate to put a cap on her Sand Tomb, He told the guildmistress, "Then be a good girl, and tell me: where is your treasury? If this is a trick, I have no qualms with squashing your head like a berry underneath my foot."
At first she couldn't speak coherently underneath her heavy sobbing. But she took a few seconds to collect some calmness to speak, "The- the treasury is underneath my desk, in my office, west wing. It's all collected inside a treasure chest. We are a- we're a rural guild- we don't receive much, anyways; it's all we have. So, please, just take it, and leave," she told him before her tears started running, again.
The dragon gave a slight smirk, satisfied with his prey giving in to his demands. "There; was that so hard?" he asked as if belittling her.
A furious shout broke from behind the Garchomp as he turned his back and started walking for the guild, "Hey, you! Get away from the guildmistress!" An aggressive Ambipom caught up to him, ten feet in the air, preparing to strike him with a savage punch from one of his tails.
Ku blocked the attack from his right tail by covering his upper body with his arm fins, unflinching at its sheer impact as it drove him backwards. Ambipom landed several feet away by ricocheting off his opponent; the Garchomp's entire left fin was nearly turned black, but he read no signs of pain from his face.
"Oh-ho, how are you still standing?" Ambipom demanded. "That punch was strong enough to even fall a redwood tree; how did it not break your arms?"
"Oh? Was I supposed to feel something?" the shark taunted, a wide, toothy smile stretching across his face. "Because I didn't feel a thing." He turned to his teammates inside the ruins, "Lono, Pele: find the treasury," he ordered. "I'll deal with this monkey, myself." Given the order, the Gabite pair ran off deeper into the guild, hunting for their treasure.
"You'll pay for-"
Ku cut him off, "For destroying your home- I know; I can't go five seconds without you worms reminding me. It disturbs me that so many of you fell for that guise. Do you know what a guild really is? What it really is: is a work camp, leeching off what little their 'explorers' rake in. You risk your life, possibly even die, to earn just a measly handful of Poké, while the Guildmaster gets comfy with your earnings."
A look of confusion struck the two-tailed monkey, unable to decipher what he's saying. "Oh-ho? Which guild did you come from that does that?"
"Why does it matter to you?" Ku asked. "You're going to die in a few moments!" Digging his right foot beneath the Florges' barely conscious body, he flung her at Ambipom!
Distracted by his flying guildmistress, he took his eyes off his opponent for a few seconds to catch her in his scrawny arms; for someone built like a slender flower, she packed some serious weight!
A sudden shadow blotted out the sun; in just a few short moments, Ku towered over the monkey, poised to strike! He brought his right claw down with the weight of a sledgehammer, but the nimble Ambipom dodged by jumping backwards several feet.
"What an attack," the Normal-type remarked to himself, observing the thick cloud of dirt that engulfed the dragon whole. "Had I taken it, Florges and I would've been torn apart like paper, oh-ho! I can't mess around with this guy; first, I need to find a safe spot to put the guildmistress down. But where is 'safe'?"
"Nowhere's safe," Ku remarked, as his veil of earth cleared, revealing him once more. "If you lay her down, who's to say I won't attack her?"
"You're a monster!" screamed Ambipom. "What are you gaining from attacking us?"
"That's a good question," Ku replied. "A good question that I don't have the time to answer!" From underneath his feet he summoned a whirling maelstrom of sand, using it as a veil to block his opponent's line of sight.
The storm howled relentlessly, causing the Ambipom to close his eyes shut; his whole body stung from resisting the sand blasting him at a high velocity. But through it all he kept the guildmistress close to his chest. "You're Sand Tomb doesn't faze me!" Ambipom's scream broke through the storm. "You're gonna have to try a lot harder if you wanna beat me!"
The sandstorm died off, but there was no trace of the Dragon-type anywhere; only a large hole was left where he used to stand. His heart beat like a racing Rapidash, and his nerves hardened to steel. The inside of his head buzzed like a hive of angry Combee, turning every direction in a frantic sweep.
"Where could he be, oh-ho?" he asked himself. "It's unlikely he's retreating- he doesn't seem like that kind of Pokémon. So, is he going to attack me from the front? Or maybe from behind?" A loud gulp rung through his throat, "What if he's planning a sneak attack on the evacuation party?"
Following the sound of the earth exploding behind him, a sharp pain traveled up his spine, causing him to drop his leader from his tight grasp. Turning around, he saw the outlaw reappear, but with both of his tails laying beside him.
Hyperventilating, he patted down the bleeding stubs where his precious extensions used to be, hoping this was some kind of dream. It wasn't. "What did you do to my tails?" screamed Ambipom.
"The same thing I'm going to do to you," the outlaw replied.