Chapter 38: Dragon Pulse
The grunt didn't wait.
Two balls, both at once. Skuntank and Weavile materialized side by side, and the Skuntank was already hissing before its feet touched the ground. The Weavile didn't hiss. It just looked at me with flat dark eyes and shifted its weight forward like it was doing math on how fast it could close the distance.
Fast. The answer was fast.
"Prinplup, Rhyhorn, let's go!"
They came out together. Prinplup landed on my left, Rhyhorn on my right. Prinplup read the situation immediately, stance low, eyes locked on the Skuntank. Rhyhorn planted her feet and stared at the Weavile and growled in a way that came up from somewhere deep.
Behind us, maybe fifty meters out, I could hear the rest of the battle still going. Rangers shouting orders. The crack of attacks hitting barriers. Someone yelling for backup on the south side. The world was still happening. It hadn't stopped for us.
"Prinplup, BubbleBeam the Skuntank! Rhyhorn, Smack Down on Weavile, don't let it get close!"
Prinplup fired. The BubbleBeam hit the Skuntank in the chest and it skidded back but didn't go down. It shook itself off and opened its mouth and fire came out. Not a small flame. A Flamethrower that lit up the ground between them and Prinplup barely rolled clear.
She was slower than usual. I could see it. The work inside, the corridors, the Bronzor, the cables, all of it had taken pieces out of her that she wasn't showing but couldn't hide. She fired another BubbleBeam and it connected but it was weaker. The Skuntank felt it and pushed forward.
Rhyhorn launched a rock at the Weavile. It dodged. Just slid sideways like the air moved for it and the rock hit dirt. Weavile was fast, genuinely fast, the kind of fast that made you understand what speed actually meant in a fight because everything else looked slow next to it.
"Ice Punch," the grunt said. That was it. Two words. No energy behind them at all.
The Weavile blurred forward and hit Rhyhorn in the side of the head. Ice spread across her jaw and she bellowed and stumbled sideways and the Weavile was already back out of range before Rhyhorn could turn.
"Rhyhorn! Fury Attack, wide, cut off its angles!"
She swung her horn in a broad arc, once, twice, three times. The Weavile dodged the first two but the third caught its shoulder and it tumbled. Got back up in half a second. Barely slowed.
"Night Slash on the bird," the grunt said.
Skuntank's claws lit up dark and it lunged at Prinplup. She blocked with Metal Claw. The impact sounded wrong, heavy and wet, and Prinplup's feet slid back on the concrete.
"Prinplup, Whirlpool! Push it back!"
She tried. The water spiraled up and crashed into the Skuntank and for a second it worked, it staggered, but then the Weavile came in from the side and hit Prinplup with an Ice Punch to the back of the head.
She went down.
Not slowly. Not dramatically. Just, down. Face first into the concrete. She tried to push herself up. Her flippers shook. She got halfway and then her body gave out and she was on the ground and she wasn't getting up.
"PRINPLUP!"
I was already running to her. I could hear people somewhere behind me, someone shouting something, but it didn't register. I dropped to my knees next to her and she was breathing, she was breathing, but her eyes were half closed and she wasn't looking at me.
"Hey. Hey, you're okay. You did so good. Come on back."
I recalled her. The red light took her and I held the ball in my hand and it was warm and I wanted to say something else but there was no time because the Weavile was already moving again.
Rhyhorn stepped in front of me.
Just stepped in front of me. No command. No signal. She put herself between me and both of them and lowered her head and growled and it wasn't the casual Rhyhorn rumble, it was something I'd never heard from her before. Deep. Angry. Protective in a way that had nothing to do with battle strategy and everything to do with the fact that I was on my knees behind her.
"*RHY.*"
The Weavile hesitated. Just for a second. The Skuntank circled left.
I stood up. My legs felt wrong. Prinplup was in my hand and Rhyhorn was in front of me and the math was simple and bad. Rhyhorn was tired. She'd been working inside, she'd been fighting the Glameow, she'd broken a door down, she'd been launching rocks for the last five minutes. She was standing on willpower and loyalty and not much else.
I couldn't do this to her.
"Rhyhorn. Come back."
She didn't move.
"Rhyhorn. Please. I can't watch you go down too."
She turned her head. Looked at me. And there was something in that look that I'll remember for a long time, because it wasn't anger and it wasn't refusal. It was her telling me she'd stay if I asked her to. That she'd fight until she couldn't anymore if that's what I needed. But she was also trusting me to make the right call.
I recalled her.
I was alone.
The grunt looked at me. Two Pokémon in front of him, both still standing, both barely scratched. Me with two empty hands and one ball left on my belt.
"That it?" he said.
Weavile took a step forward. Skuntank took a step forward.
Something burned at my hip.
Not warmth. Not the usual soft pulse of a Pokémon resting. This was sharp. Urgent. Deino's ball was shaking against my belt and the heat was building like something inside was trying to get out, really trying, and I didn't reach for it because I didn't have to.
It burst open on its own.
Deino hit the ground between me and the Weavile.
"DEIIIII!"
The sound went through me. Through my chest, through my teeth, into the ground under my feet. It wasn't a cry. It wasn't a battle call. It was raw and high and it tore out of him like something that had been locked inside too long and finally found a way out. Fury and fear and something underneath both that I didn't have a name for but I recognized anyway because I'd heard it in my own voice once, in Sandgem, on the floor of a Pokémon Center with him bleeding in my arms.
It was: you don't get to have him.
The Weavile flinched. Actually flinched, stepped back, claws half raised like it didn't know what it was looking at anymore. The Skuntank's hiss died in its throat. Even the grunt shifted his weight, just slightly, just enough.
Deino stood there, body low, teeth bared, every part of him aimed at the things in front of me. Shaking, but not from fear. From everything else.
"Dragon Breath, Deino, NOW!"
He fired and it came out like nothing I'd ever seen from him. Not the short bursts from training. This REACHED. The blast crossed the full distance and hit the Weavile square in the chest and it went backward, hard, across the concrete. The Skuntank lunged and Deino spun and caught it with Bite and held on, thrashing, until the Skuntank threw him off.
He landed on his feet. Screamed again. Ready. Wanting more.
And then something happened to me.
It started in my chest. That pull. The one I always felt when Deino was close, the one I never had a word for, the quiet warm thing that just existed between us. But it wasn't quiet anymore. It was loud. It was so loud. And it was moving, pulling out of me, flowing from my chest down through my arms and out, toward Deino, into Deino, and I could feel myself getting less.
My legs went heavy. Just like that. Like someone pulled a plug and parts of me started draining.
What.
The Weavile got up. Came at Deino with Ice Punch and Deino DODGED it. Weavile was fast, the fastest thing here, and Deino moved before it got there. I felt him move. In my body. I felt the direction he chose before he chose it, like for one second we were the same thing thinking the same thought.
What is happening to me.
More leaving. More flowing out. My hands were tingling, going numb at the fingertips, and Deino was getting stronger, I could feel that too, feel him filling up with whatever I was losing. The Skuntank rushed him and Deino hit it with Dragon Breath again, point blank, and the Skuntank skidded back five feet and the hit was harder than it should have been. Way harder.
"What the hell is that thing," the grunt said, and there was something in his voice now that hadn't been there before.
I couldn't feel my hands.
Deino was pulling more. Not on purpose. I don't think either of us was doing this on purpose. It was just happening, like a river finding a downhill, and I was the hill and he was the bottom and everything in me was running toward him. I could feel him so clearly it scared me. His fury. His fear underneath it, not fear of the fight but fear of me getting hurt, fear so deep and simple it didn't have thoughts attached to it, just the raw screaming fact that I was behind him and nothing was getting past.
My knees buckled. I caught myself. Stood back up. My vision was going wrong at the edges.
"Dei." His voice. Different. Deeper. The air around him was thick and wrong and the Skuntank and Weavile both felt it because they'd stopped advancing.
Something was building in him. I could feel it the way you feel thunder before you hear it, a pressure, a gathering, everything he'd pulled from me collecting into one point. He opened his mouth and it wasn't Dragon Breath that was forming. It was bigger. It was everything.
"DEINO!"
Dragon Pulse.
The sound broke the world open. A crack so deep I felt it in my spine and then light, blue and purple, erupting from him in a beam that hit the Skuntank and the Weavile and the ground and the air and everything. The explosion threw me backward. I hit the concrete with my back and my head and the sky went white.
Silence.
Total, complete silence. The ringing in my ears was so loud it became its own kind of quiet. No battles. No shouts. No commands. Everything on the field had stopped and I knew that without seeing it because the world had gone very still and very wrong.
My vision came back in pieces. The concrete where the Skuntank and Weavile had stood was cracked open. Both Pokémon down. Not moving. The grunt was on the ground further back than where he'd been standing and he wasn't moving either.
He wasn't moving at all.
Deino was swaying. His legs shaking so bad I could see it from the ground. He'd given everything and what was left wasn't enough to stand on.
I had nothing left. My body was empty. Not tired. Empty. Like everything that made me run had poured out through that connection and there was nothing to refill it with.
But I had to get up. I had to get up right now because people were coming, I could hear footsteps, and Deino was standing there in the open and I could not let them see him. Not here. Not now.
I got to my knees. My arms shook. I grabbed Deino's ball.
"Dei." He turned toward me. Barely standing. Found me anyway because he always found me.
"Come back," I said. My voice was almost gone. "Come back, buddy. I got you."
The red light took him and his ball was so hot it almost burned my hand and I didn't care. I curled both hands around it and held it against my chest and that was the only thing in the world that mattered.
Someone was running toward me. Shouting something.
My arms gave out. I hit the ground sideways, cheek against concrete. The sky above me was orange and warm and still pretty and I remember thinking that was stupid. Stupid sky. Stupid pretty colors for a moment like this.
Deino's ball against my chest. Both hands around it. I wasn't letting go.
I closed my eyes.
Gone.