"But the Legendary Birds fight all the time! At least the ones in Kanto do," huffed Lucky.

"Yeah, but they’re siblings, the Lake Trio are triplets. Like the Legendary Beasts, kind of. Triplets and twins mostly get along, siblings just... don’t. That’s why they need Lugia, their babysitter." Tully was quite adamant about the correctness of his position.

"That makes sense. So, is Giratina the older sibling then? He got his own room, after all," said Bart with a chuckle.

I stopped in my tracks, mouth opening and closing a few times as the sandslash said that. "That makes too much sense," I finally grumbled. "He’s the edgier older brother — yes, I know he’s not entirely a he because he's Giratina but if he minded, I’d already be a smear on the wall — going through a goth phase. Not that I’m going to say that to his face. Like I'd ever get to talk to Giratina." I chuckled to myself, shaking my head.

We were making our way through Rusturf Tunnel and ‘shooting the shit’, as I would have said at one time, mostly out of nervousness. The tunnel itself was very sparsely lit by rectangular electric lights that cast a wan, pallid glow over everything. They weren't bright, but then I got the impression they weren't supposed to be since I strongly suspected they were never turned off. That's not to say the whole cave complex was lit, because it wasn't. Not in the slightest. There had been signs just inside the entrance apparently mentioning how the light level was kept deliberately low and restricted to certain areas, and that apparently meant 'the main tunnels and nothing else'. I’d not even spotted them until I heard Ed and Worst Child talking about them, they just hadn’t registered to my eevee brain. Probably because they weren't at reading height for at least any of Ed's or Becca's pokémon. As we moved through the tunnel, deeper underground, I could hear snatches of whispered conversations from the local Pokémon, nervous about our passage.

"Do you think they’re trainers?"

"I think so, look at their Pokémon!"

"They look strong... I’m scared!"

"You don’t need to be scared, we’ll protect you."

"What if I want to go with them?"

"Then fight them, but not near the babies. Keep them away from the babies, that will be your final duty to the tribe."

From time to time we caught glimpses of those Pokémon. Other than the usual collections of diglet, zubat and geodude and the like, it was mostly whismur and loudred. When it was an exploud or other similarly evolved, we kept a closer eye on them and tried to act imposing but not threatening. They mostly stayed clear of our group, but eventually there was a little whismur who was doing its best to get as close to us as it could without actually being noticed by our humans.

"Can... can you get rid of the loud trainer? Sh-she scares me," whispered the whismur, once it had gathered up enough courage. It was hiding behind a stalagmite, shivering. I shared a look with the rest of our two teams who were out of their pokéballs, and gave a short nod.

"This 'loud trainer', is she... what is she doing?" asked Sissy. "Is she capturing Pokémon?" The whismur shook its head. "Attacking Pokémon?" The whismur shook its head again.

"Sh-she’s t-too near the babies, and h-her Pokémon are... big a-and h-hungry. Th-that’s why they sent me," the whismur said, voice almost failing. "I-if something happens to me, the r-rest of the c-colony a-are... y-you won’t hurt me, right?"

"Sweetie, we won’t hurt you," said Sissy with uncommon compassion in her voice. "We’ll..." she looked at all of us, we shared a glance and nodded, murmuring assent. "We’ll deal with it, somehow."

"[What’s up, Sissy? Is that a... that’s a whismur! Does it... does it want to fight you? To come with us?]"

Sissy tilted her head for a moment, considering, glancing from the small pink puffball and back to her trainer, then shook her head. She pointed further down the cave tunnel, where the whismur had been indicating. Now that I strained my hearing — my ears twitching — I could pick up heated conversation. Human conversation, not that I could tell what was being said at this range.

"Down there!" I yipped. "A trainer! A bad one!" I tried to put urgency into my vocalizations, hoping that Ed would pick up on it. Of course, this also had the effect of alerting the dangerous trainer and her Pokémon, oops. A few moments later, the distant speech stopped and I noticed a familiar dark form pad its way out of a side-tunnel. It was a houndoom, the houndoom I’d seen back in Rustboro. He growled, the menacing sound reverberating up and down the tunnel with ghostly echoes. The fur on the back of my neck fluffed up as I bunched my muscles up and took point between Ed and Blue. The houndoom’s trainer strode out into the tunnel after her Pokémon. She scowled, calling out something I didn’t quite catch.

"That’s the punk me and Bart sacked back in Rustboro," I growled to Sissy and Chompy. "He’s not a nice yamper. His trainer’s not nice either, she’s the one who hurt Barb."

"Tell me the rest of what you know about her," ordered Chompy.

"I don’t know much," I said, not taking my eyes off the houndoom as he padded further up the tunnel towards us. I dimly registered our two trainers taking up defensive stances and getting the rest of their pokéballs out and ready. "She doesn’t care about other people at all. She had a corviknight, which I don’t think we’ll see down here, so whatever else she has is... oh, that doesn’t look good."

"That one is mine," growled Guy, as a golurk appeared in a flash of red light.

"I’ve got a few moves that can help," tweeted Tully, "as long as she doesn’t have another... oh. Oh well, scratch that then I guess." His gaze hardened as a noivern padded out around the corner, licking blood off its lips. "I thought those things ate fruit."

"You’d be sssurprised," added Chompy.

"[Who... who are you? What are you doing?]" called out Becca, as the woman I knew as Zyrna curled her hands into fists. "[Who do you have there?]"

"[This is no concern of you children. Just turn around and walk away, and you won’t have to get hurt.]"

"[I... I don’t think we can do that,]" said Ed, fearfully. "[It’s not what Pokémon trainers do. Whatever you’re doing, just... just stop. You’re going to turn yourself in to the way-station and—]"

Zyrna snorted derisively, immediately ordering her Pokémon to advance and attack. "[Thunder, keep their Pokémon busy. Blue, take out those kids. Damascus, stay back for now, but if anybody comes close, end them.]"

For all their faults, our trainers didn't back down either, ordering us into the fray. The battle became a brawl within moments, with all the Pokémon taking their own initiative; for every shouted order there came another feint or counter-attack that was not. For all his timid nature, Bart didn’t hold back, immediately giving Blue a hard time by denying him freedom of movement as the houndoom attempted to streak ahead, the sandslash attacking from below. Shadow backed him up, the manectric releasing bark after bark of burning plasma waves that lit up the tunnel like day in staccato bursts of lightning. That’s not to say the two had in all their own way, because Blue was a vicious brawler. His muzzle lit up with lurid flames and his burning maw snapped with fiery fangs at both the sandslash and the manectric, sending both of them flying, whining and struggling to get up as they bled from open wounds. Barb harried the houndoom where she could, jabbing with her poisoned horn and flaring her spines. Ziggy let loose claw attack after claw attack, juking left and right to stay out of Blue’s clutches. The houndoom may have been above them in level and strength, but four on one was far from a fair fight.

I didn’t let Blue have things all his own way either. I could bite when I needed to, and an echo of the hound’s flamethrower burst from my muzzle once I’d almost got my ears singed off. If it hadn’t been for random bursts of water jets from Lucky, I’m not sure I’d have both of them. Even though it didn’t seem to worry Blue too much, it certainly made him think twice. I saw stars, however, when Blue’s teeth fastened around my tail and slammed me into first the floor, then the wall, then threw me against the ceiling, snarling. I won’t say I was out of the running, but I was seeing double the amount of Pokémon and at least six humans for a while.

Guy vanished down the corridor before, with an unearthly screech, he launched himself at Damascus, spitting up a violently purple wad of sludge. For his trouble he got punched by the golem, its massive gauntlet-covered hands wreathed in shadow. As Guy bounced off the wall like a strangely elastic bowling ball, Damascus pointed one massive set of digits towards Ed and Becca, who were busy shouting orders to the rest of us, and said in an echoing voice that echoed of the grave, "For that, I will tear your trainer’s souls from their body and devour them. Nothing shall remain."

Guy snarled, the first time I'd really seen him angry. It wasn't pretty. "You won’t... you won’t go near them! I! Won’t! Let! You!" There was a burst of light and, as Damascus started moving, he was stopped by a suddenly much larger Haunter, as Guy’s new claws caught hold of the golurk, heaved, and threw the creature away down the tunnel.

Whilst this was going on, Thunder and Tully were trading Boombursts, sending shrapnel flying as they swooped and dived around each other. At one point Thunder slammed Tully into the ground, holding the poor flying pokémon’s wings wide as he growled over the prone form of the swellow on his back. Thunder drew his head back, widening his toothy jaws to lunge down at the helpless Pokémon beneath him... when Sissy’s huge backwards-facing jaws slammed shut around the noivern’s throat and started chewing. The bat-Pokémon let out a strangled, gurgling cry as he scrabbled at his throat, but Sissy was very hard to dislodge. She wasn't going to let go without a fight. And a large amount of fur.

Tully scrambled to get free as soon as the opportunity presented itself, before joining Guy in dealing damage to the golurk. Lucky’s claws and jaws were scrabbling for purchase on the massive golem, and though he was thrown clear many times, the little blue powerhouse just got back up and carried on. He spat watergun after watergun at the massive golem, fastening his jaws in crunch after crunch as he fought. I'd never actualy tell him, but I was impressed. I could see why he'd thought himself king of the lake, and in fact probably had been.

Eventually, Zyrna tired of the melee, stamping her feet in annoyance. She clapped her hands loudly, then whistled.

"[I don’t need to deal with you idiot children! Blue! Thunder! Return!]" Zyrna shouted as her whistle faded away, face dark with anger. Twin beams of red light speared through the tunnel to strike her pokemon. "[Damascus, quit messing around! Get us out of here, we have everything we need.]"

Damascus, it turned out, really had been playing with Tully, Lucky and Guy. Now he'd been ordered to quit it, be stopped playing around. He sucker-punched both the totodile and the haunter in quick succession, then swept back his gauntleted fist and blasted the ghost with a blinding flash canon. He then swirled around, scooped up Zyrna in his arms and accelerated down the tunnel on jets of flame, before disappearing into the ether in a violet flash of actinic light.

"[Did... can golurk teleport?]" asked Ed, rubbing his eyes to try and get some night-vision back.

"[I... I don’t know, maybe it just... hid itself from view with phantom force? Either way, I think she’s gone. What was she doing in here?]" The two trainers ran forwards to the cul-de-sac Zyrna had appeared from and blinked in confusion at what turned out to be a smaller offshoot to a deeper cave, the sandy ground of which was littered with various pieces of hardware and a few worrying patches of red. "[What the... there was somebody else here, what were they doing?]"

Ed slowly shook his head. "[I... I don’t know. It looks like there was, but whoever it was, they’re not here now. I don't think I want to go looking for them either, that's a good way to end up a statistic.]" He strode forwards and picked up some of the pieces from the collection of computerised hardware, turning the odd parts over and over as he examined them. "[Any ideas what all junk this is? What it does, or did?]"

Becca shook her head as she took some of the devices from Ed. There was something with a touch-screen, some sort of main reader unit with various ports for other hardware, something which may have been a projector of sorts — it at least had lenses and receivers — and some smaller pieces that looked like they plugged into the others, or into something else that was presumably missing. None of it seemed to be working. There was a deep briefcase, torn to pieces, in a far corner.

"[Oh, hello... an I.D. badge... Eric Dooley, Devon Corporation.]" Becca sighed as she knelt, picked up a plastic card on its broken lanyard, and then straightened up. "[I guess we should put it all in our bags, we’re taking this with us.]"

"[Another day, another N.D.A.,]" quipped Ed.

"[This has happened to you before?]" asked Sly. He’d been hanging back, mostly trying to stay out of trouble, but now the excitement was over he flipped his chunky phone closed and put it in a vest pocket. "[No signal,]" he explained, shrugging at the others’ questioning glances. "[Not that I didn’t try.]"

"[It’s only happened twice,]" said Becca, "[But it’s weird that it’s happened more than once.]"

I limped around the corner too, sniffing delicately at the scuffed sand. I snorted, clearing my nostrils. Blood, quite a bit of it, and sweat. "There was somebody else here. There’s been several somebody’s here. The guy that noivern — thunder was snacking on, I guess. Did you see where they went, Chompy?"

The seviper uncoiled from where she’d been hiding in the shadows at the end of the small cave offshoot. A darker passageway led into another cave system, I could hear Pokémon from within, and smelled them all. No wonder the whismur had been worried, this was their first line of defence against intruders, and it had become an outpost for criminals.

"It dependsss who you’re talking about," she said, flicking her tongue in a self-satisfied manner. "If you mean the other human who was in this crevice, he’s taken care of. The draconid escaped with her golurk, and at least one other Pokémon that I did not see."

"Taken care of?" I asked, gulping, my fur frizzing out at her amused tone.

"Very much ssso." Chompy’s grin widened. "I am a very fast eater when I’m hungry. And I wasss very hungry. Ssswallow is not only useful in contests."

I shuddered. "You ate a human?"

The snake shrugged with a flick of her bladed tail-tip as she moved to herd her trainer and mine away from the inner crevice once they’d finished picking up the junk strewn about. "You ate a Pokémon. Your point?" She retorted.

"But..." I looked down at the ground. Now I looked properly, I could see some clumps where the dry sand had been moistened by some sort of liquid. I couldn’t really tell the colour in the wan light that barely penetrated here, but I could guess it was red. "Would you eat—"

"He wasss not a very nice man. Tasty, but not very nice, not... good." Chompy sighed as she slithered out of the cul-de-sac after her trainer. She went to disappear around the corner into the main tunnel, looking over her — for want of a better word — shoulder. "I have already sssaid I will never eat you, I dislike the fur sticking in my teeth. Is your mind truly that ssscrambled that you do not remember asking before? Come, our trainers were informed not to dally. That means we should not, either."

I shook myself as I recalled once more that humans are told from birth never to venture into the tall grass without their own Pokémon, then followed after the seviper. Not a nice man, she’d said, not a good man. For whatever it was worth, I trusted Chompy’s judgement. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted him doing anything bad to Ed. Maybe Becca, I considered, then recanted. No, not even Becca deserved the bad that people could do. And whatever this human and Zyrna had been doing in the dark, it hadn’t been good. They’d been threatening the whismur colony, too. I noticed the whismur who’d begged our help follow us for a little way, just watching, making sure we left. He or she seemed grateful enough. I wondered, idly, if the humans had been any real danger to the Pokémon in this cave, or if the pair had just not cared, believing in their own superiority, or just ignorant or uncaring. After all, this route was supposedly ‘safe’.

Eventually we left the gloom behind us, emerging into the open air. The sunlight, even though it was late afternoon, hit like a truck compared to the darkness of Rusturf. Before us, just a little way down from the mountain that now lay behind us, was Verdanturf Town. I shook the dust and miasma from my fur and filled my lungs with the cool, clean air. After the oppressive atmosphere of the tunnel, this was heavenly.

"Let’s get to a pokécenter, I want to make sure my Pokémon are okay," said Ed, looking a bit white himself. He’d returned most of his team to their balls. Lux of course had steadfastly refused to be recalled, despite the fact she must have been feeling the start of a killer headache and the after-pain of being slammed against the rocks back there. Becca had done the same, although Chompy was silently slithering beside them, radiating a threatening aura that was keeping anything even remotely troublesome far away.

"Me too, I really want to make sure my team's healthy," agreed Becca. "I’d like to talk to somebody at Devon as soon as possible, but I’m not risking trouble with my team. I’ll make a call once we’re at the pokécenter, unless you want to, but then let’s find somewhere to sleep. With luck, we’ll just be harassed a little before we get to rest."

"Any idea what any of this junk is?" Sly asked, throwing a thumb back at his pack. They'd left the ruined suitcase where it lay, it didn't seem to be too important compared to the hardware that had been in it.

"Not a clue," replied Ed. "We didn’t know last time. It won’t stop them grilling us about it though, I’m sure."

"What happened last time?" Sly asked, raising an eyebrow.

"We could tell you," said Becca conspiratorially, "but then we’d have to kill you." She waggled both her eyebrows, mugging at the photographer. Ed snorted.

"Honestly, I don’t know how much we can tell you and not get in a load of trouble, so just believe me when I say she’s probably kidding." Ed rolled his eyes, chuckling. "I wasn’t kidding about the N.D.A. though. It’s what got us the passes onto the S. S. Tidal. We helped during an emergency back in Rustboro, Devon were very thankful."

Sly whistled appreciatively. "And now you’ve helped with... whatever that damned mess just was."

"Might be good for an upgrade for you, at least," said Becca, laughing briefly as she gestured her thumb at Sly's phone.

"I guess there’s no time like the present then," said Sly, after a moment’s thought. "I want to make sure we’ve got somewhere inside to be before it gets dark. Remember what Helen said, there’s been some angry Pokémon sightings recently."

"I wonder if it has anything to do with whatever that woman and Eric were doing? And whether it’s now stopped or... or if we’ve got more trouble brewing?" pondered Becca. "Oh... oh no," she added.

"What?" asked both Ed and Sly.

"I’m fine with Devon’s secrets not getting out — I’m sure all this stuff was stolen from them — but if whatever we’re mixed up with is causing powerful Pokémon to get angry and attack people, then that fact at least can’t be just... covered up." The girl looked helplessly between the two boys. They both slowly nodded.

"Then we’d better think what we’re going to tell the Jennies, and whether we tell them first... or second." Ed’s brow furrowed as he pondered the problem. "This was so much easier when it was just a human problem."

Sly chuckled as the trio finally turned and headed once more towards Verdanturf. "If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my travels, it’s that it’s never just a human problem."