Rotom loved being the team's translator. It liked to think of itself as the bridge that let Nova and the rest of the partners understand each other perfectly. Whenever one of the others needed to get a message across to their Trainer, Rotom was always ready to take on that job, chattering away as the little voice that spoke for everyone.
Being needed like that, by its Trainer and by its teammates, made Rotom happier than almost anything else.
The only real downside was that Rotom could only manage proper human speech while it was riding inside a Rotom Phone, using the device's hardware and software to shape its signal into words. The moment it was tucked inside a battle appliance instead, it was no different from any other Pokémon: it could understand what people said perfectly well, but it couldn't answer back, and so it couldn't translate.
Still, given the choice, Rotom would always rather translate than fight.
So when Corviknight herded most of the team back toward Nova, and its own job of guarding the group could finally be handed off to the others watching over them from a distance, Rotom didn't waste a second returning to the post it loved best.
It immediately picked up Corviknight's question and passed it on to Nova in its own cheerful voice.
"Why did we suddenly stop fighting?"
"Something else has come up," Nova said. "We need to wait for Azir to get back."
At that moment, Nidoking and Lapras were still covering each other's retreat, having already put fifty meters between themselves and the Rhydon, the farthest distance either of them could manage before it would no longer be safe to call them back into their Poké Balls.
Seeing that the Rhydon had chosen not to press the chase, Nova recalled both of his massive partners at once, then released them again right beside him. He wanted them close in case anything else went wrong.
By now his whole team had settled into a defensive formation. Corviknight held the outer ring, gliding low, barely two meters off the ground, ready to throw itself toward any danger the instant it appeared and take the first hit meant for the others. Lapras and Marshtomp, both able to call up Protect and Detect, held the front and rear as a second line of defense. Nidoking, Growlithe, and Meowscarada made up the third layer, poised to strike back the moment anyone attacked. At the very center, shielded on every side, were Rotom and Nova himself, the team's eyes and mind.
A few minutes passed before a faint buzzing rose from the southeast. It was the sound Vibrava made only when it kicked into its fastest gear.
Sure enough, moments later Nova spotted Azir cutting through the air toward them, barely slowing as it crossed into Corviknight's flight path. It circled once above Nova's head and dropped down, letting out an anxious cry.
"Azir says there are three people to the southeast," Rotom relayed at once. "He thinks they're Trainers. They've been watching us through some kind of telescope."
So there was another problem after all.
Nova's caution had been well placed. Three kilometers away, on top of a sand dune, three figures really were tracking the standoff through a pair of high-powered binoculars.
The three had spent years drifting through the Norlandia Alliance under the cover of being explorers, forming loose groups to push into the Uninhabited Areas whenever it suited them. They had nothing in common with genuine explorers like Aresdra's parents, though. For them, "exploring" was only an excuse to slip into places without law or order and dig up whatever they could turn into Prosperity.
There was nothing wrong with that split in itself. Some people go into the wilds chasing a dream, others go chasing a living, and neither path makes a person better than the other. The trouble was that after so many years out where no law reached them, these three had gotten used to a life with no restraints at all, and they had long since stopped caring what they were willing to do to get by.
The Uninhabited Areas were dangerous for two reasons in equal measure: the wild Pokémon out there were vicious, and so were plenty of the wild Trainers. Grinding through an honest expedition never paid half as well as jumping a rival party and stripping their packs bare.
Men who could survive years together out here were not the type to pass up an easy score, and this trio was no exception. Any chance to line their pockets through the back door, they took it. Nobody gets rich playing fair, after all.
The pack of Rhyhorn had started out as their actual target. But its leader, the Rhydon, turned out to be strong enough to take down several of their own Pokémon even while surrounded, so the three of them hadn't managed to bring the herd down outright. Instead, they had settled into a war of attrition, wearing the Rhydon down with Water-type Pokémon that held the type advantage, all the while steering the whole Rhyhorn pack in the direction they wanted it to go.
They had kept at it long enough to drive the herd all the way out here, to one of the main routes leading from Sand River City into the depths of the Tamar Desert. Because the hills along this stretch hadn't yet been swallowed by sand, the terrain still had clear landmarks, which was exactly why nine Trainers out of ten leaving Sand River City chose to follow these hills into the desert rather than risk getting lost elsewhere.
Driving the Rhyhorn pack to this exact spot was the trap itself.
Any Trainer passing through was liable to pick a fight with a Rhydon that had already been provoked into defending its herd, and once that happened, the three of them stood to profit either way. If the Trainer was too weak and got killed, they would simply loot the body and wait for the next unlucky traveler to wander in. If the Trainer turned out strong enough to beat the wild Pokémon, the three would step out afterward and claim the Rhyhorn pack as their own catch.
Three against one gave them all the numbers they needed. A Trainer who had just fought through a brutal battle would rarely have the strength left to argue, and would likely let the theft go rather than risk another fight. And if someone did try to make trouble, the three of them wouldn't think twice about making sure that person vanished into the sand for good. Enough Trainers went missing in the Uninhabited Areas every year that nobody asked too many questions about how.
Today, though, they were about to be disappointed. They had expected the thin young Trainer below to have the reckless streak so many people his age carried, throwing himself into a fight the moment a powerful wild Pokémon showed up. Instead, Nova had traded a single exchange of blows before pulling his whole team back, and that alone was enough to make the three of them uneasy.
"So what's the read?" asked the burly man in the blue skull bandana, clearly the one calling the shots among the three.
"What's there to read?" shot back a thin, sallow-faced man, the most eager for blood of the group. "He saw what the Rhydon could do and lost his nerve. Since he's too spineless to fight anyway, why don't we just go down there, finish him, and take what he's got?"
But the third man, stockier and dark-skinned, with an almost too-honest face, shook his head at that.
"Doesn't look that way to me," he said. "That Earthquake a minute ago tells you his Pokémon aren't weak. Ease off the bloodlust for a second and actually think it through. Look at his team. Aside from the Marshtomp he probably started with, and the Nidoking, not one of them looks ordinary. That Nidoking alone is bigger than any I've ever seen. You really think an average Trainer puts together a lineup like that?"