Chapter 6


	A symphony of screams filtered out the crackling of crickets.  Against the backdrop of the blackened sky, thick pillars of smoke arose from the many burning shelters of the Beige Plains village, their owners fleeing, shrieking with glass-breaking screeches to escape the destruction, and from Team Sharktooth.  Despite their calls for help being loud enough to wake all of Unido, no one came to their aide.

	“Run for your lives!” they chanted, running from the flame-engulfed plains they once called homes.  But before clearing the field of rubble, a geyser of dirt stopped them in their tracks, with the young Gabite female, Pele, emerging from it as she landed back onto the solid ground with a thud. She spewed an intense river of flame from her gaping maw right at their feet, pushing them back with a growing wall of fire.  “Aww, leaving so soon?”  She taunted the crowd.  “The fun's just getting started!”

	“Please, just leave us alone!” a mother Persian shouted, sheltering her cowering litter of five Meowth kittens.  “Why are you doing this?!”

	“Quiet!” Pele silenced her.  “This dump you call your home has something of ours, and we're not leaving until we get it!”

	Another Gabite slowly crawled out of an earthy mound behind the frightened crowd.  “Good job keeping them in line, Pele,” Lono said.  Wherever he looked all he could see was the great wall of inferno his sister created, quickly spreading from the dried grass the plains offered.  “Love what you did with the place,” he also cracked, “could use a little less fire, though.  The authorities won't even think of looking here. ”

	“Shut it, Lono,” she barked , “I doubt you can do any better! Help me keep this idiots in check; maybe you'd actually be of some use, for once!”

	“Hmm, I dunno, sis,” the Gabite brother told her, “I was planning to help, but then you said those hurtful things.”

	“Oh, wah,” cried Pele, “Go cry me a river!”

	“If I do, it'll put your fire out,” he said.

	Heated air beat at the Garchomp's dry scales while he strolled through the burning aisles of the Beige Plains.  All around the smoke-filled plains his eyes searched for someone, ignoring the crowds of escaping inhabitants running past him.  Turning his head left from right in several quick sweeps, his search for one specific Pokémon grew more and more fruitless; of course this had to be the day both his eyes were needed.

	A hostile growl shrieked from behind Ku, “You'll pay for destroying my village!”

	“Hmm?”  The Garchomp turned his head to the sound, wondering  who said it, to see a fully-grown Machoke thirty feet in the air, with his right fist glowing sizzling white from preparing a Dynamic Punch to punish the Dragon-type with.  Pouring enough muscle and power into his punch to make an entire mountain crumble into a pile of pebbles, the only thing to hit him as he sidestepped out of harm's way was the small shock wave surrounding the fist, breezing across his navy blue scales like a soft breath of wind.  His right claw turned a hideous orange hue, and struck the Fighting-type across his chest.

	Machoke plummeted to the ground, the worst pain he felt for a while forced a non-stop holler for relief from him.  The Dragon Claw should have cleaved right through him like bread; thanks to his bulk, it only left a deep purplish bruising cleanly streaking diagonally across his chest.  

	“You're this village's strongest fighter?”  Ku scoffed.  

	Fighting against the unimaginable pain keeping him on the floor and his stiffening muscles, Machoke raised himself off his back, but a large foot forced him back onto the ground.

	“Pathetic,” Ku scorned.  “Tell me where the Elder is.”  The Garchomp applied steady pressure onto the downed Pokémon's chest by leaning forward- his favorite persuasion technique.

	“Grrgh!” Drool bubbled between the Machoke's clenched teeth.  With each passing second, his ribs pressed against the increasing stress, with a thought in his mind that they could only take so much.  He wrapped his beefy hands around his ankle with a vice grip, and fought against the grain of his opponent's weight, trying to ease the pressure by lifting it up as much as he could.  But the slightest slip of his grip brought it all crashing back down on his center.  Machoke's voice cracked as his  rib cracked, the bone piercing deeper inside him as his enemy's paw pressed down harder.

	“Tell me,” Ku demanded again calmly. 

	“Wh-why...should I tell you anything?”  Machoke asked.

	“Because you're in no position to fight back,” he replied.  “This could have easily been avoided if you didn't listen to your pride.”

	Machoke saw no way out of his predicament.  No matter how much he resisted for his pride's sake, this was one battle he ultimately lost.  Taking one hand off the dragon's ankle, it took all his strength to point the Dragon to where his leader was.  “Over there,” he wheezed, “H-he's going around town...putting out fires you jerks caused.”  Ku's eyes glanced over and spotted an Elderly Ludicolo toward the horizons that Machoke pointed to.  Foolish geezer, he believed he could put out the mighty inferno all by himself, yet he was without help.  Witnessing the Ludicolo's Hydro Pump reducing some of the blaze to just a whimpering sizzle, the flames grew quicker than he could put them out.  The Dragon-type finally lifted his foot off the Fighting-type, though with the weight gone, Machoke only managed a few shallow, painful breaths at a time.


	Shooting gallons of high-pressured water from his bill, Ludicolo conquered the engulfing blaze one burning house at a time- but even with some of it dwindled to just smoke, the sea of fire challenged the Water-type Pokémon with just its heat alone.  It was like putting out a bonfire with nothing but a squirt gun running out of water.  All that's left of the homes in front of him were rubble and ash, and their owners' burnt up cherished memories. Fatigue slowly crept up on him, and he noticed his efforts becoming more sluggish and less thorough.  He still had much to do, but he can't keep doing it forever.  “This is not good,” he huffed to himself, “not good at all.”

	“Maybe you'd enjoy some company.”  Ku's daunting, yet calm voice startle Ludicolo from his work as he approached him.

	“You!” Ludicolo growled at him under a rough, scratchy tone.  Seeing the mastermind of all the entropy and destruction going about in his settlement face-to-face set the Ludicolo aback.  There were no words he knew that resembled any form of kindness that he wanted to say to the Dragon-type.  If he were any younger, he would have sent the outlaw packing with a Hydro Pump.  “I think you caused us enough pain and suffering for one night!  Leave my village at once!”

	“Not until I find what I'm looking for,” Ku told him.  “The orb, where is it?”

	“I haven't the slightest what you're talking about,” the Water-type replied.

	“I have reason to believe you do,” said the Garchomp.  “A little Pidgey told me.”

	“Well, that little Pidgey of yours is wrong,” Ludicolo said.

	The Garchomp rubbed his blade-like teeth together- the longer he talks to this geezer, the more time he wastes.  He had a gut feeling the Elder was dodging him deliberately.  “As much as I'd love to stay and chat with you, I'm a Pokémon on borrowed time,” he told the Elder.

	“And I'm a Pokémon at the end of his rope, trying to calm down the chaos and entropy of his beloved home,” Ludicolo snapped back, “the chaos and entropy that you caus-!” without even seeing it the Ludicolo kissed the crushing blow of Ku's tail, slamming him onto his back in a thin bed of dry grass.  A blunt grunt left his bill, calling for any nearby help to lift the Dragon's weight off of him, since his old, weakened muscles can't lift it even an inch for him to crawl out for freedom.  But no one came to his aid.

	“And I thought you Elders were smarter than this,” Ku sighed.  “I thought wrong.”

	“Release me, you fiend!”  The Elder hissed from underneath the Pokémon.

	“You wasted enough of my time,” said the Garchomp.  “Tell me where it is, or I'll cut your rope even shorter.”

	Ludicolo's stubby flippers wagged in the air, failing to grab any traction with the ground.  Getting the hulking appendage required some arm muscle, which had all but deteriorated in his old age.  Despite his best efforts, he lifted it just a tad off his chest, barely enough to breathe.   As he grabbed a quick gulp of air, the Mach Pokémon pushed his arms back until his elbows touched the soil again with a slight flinch of his tail, squeezing air right out of the Elder's lungs. “Okay!  Okay!” he wheezed. “I'll give you what you want!”

	Hearing the lovely sound of surrender drew a small smirk from the Garchomp, lifting his weight off the old 'mon as he wheezed and gasped to fill his lungs with air again.  “There, now was that so hard?” Ku asked.

	He huffed and gasped, “I'm only doing it...to save my village from further harm.”  He rolled over to his chest, lifting himself up to his hind flippers so he can stand back up.  After a quick dust off, he said to the criminal, “Once you have it, I want you and your little goonies out of here, capish?”

	Ku's grin stretched wider, now showing some of his blade-like teeth.  “Fine with me,” he said.  He called for his partners, “Pele!  Lono!”

	The Elder led the team of hammerheads to his hut, which remained to be the least affect by the blazing inferno outside.  Just as they walked right in, there it was, staring the group in the face: the orb, sitting so snugly in the wall as the centerpiece of the Elder's sigil.  Just merely gazing upon the deep red stone and its smooth surface brought the Garchomp at a loss for words.  His eyes stayed glued to it like candy, his mouth agape.

	“Beautiful,” he whispered to himself under a soft whisper, with no other word to describe it, “just beautiful; I've never seen anything like it!”

	“We terrorized an entire village, just for that lil' thing?”  Pele asked.  “What a complete waste of time!  Why not just raid a Kecleon shop if you wanted one so badly?!”

	“This orb is unlike the rest,” he told the steaming female.  “Just a mere sliver of this orb will grant us great power.  Lono-”

	The male Gabite ran to his leader's side, shuffling through his bag for an empty pouch to receive the treasure in.  Ku grabbed a hold of the softball-sized sphere by both claws, delicately transferring it from its imprint in the wall to the awaiting empty bag.  With a satisfied bulge in his pouch, Lono threw the top back over and closed the bag.

	“You have your treasure, now,” the Elder told them, “but before you leave, just let me ask: what are you planning on doing with it?”

	“That's none of your business,” said Ku.

	The Elder stepped in front of the group as they were about to walk out, “It's very well my business!  What you have there is no ordinary rarity: it's an item capable of turning the very pecking order of Pokémon on its head!  It's use was even banned years ago by the Seven Guilds Association itself!”

	“I'm fully aware of that,” Ku replied to the Pokémon's outcry in a calm tone.  Just a slight nudge from the Dragon's shoulder nearly knocked the Elder off his feet, “Out of the way,” he told the Ludicolo.

	“Then what in Arceus' name are you planning to-?!” It suddenly dawned on the Elder, as if it just walked up beside him, and slapped him across the back of his head.  His beige fur faded to a sickly white hue, and his sombrero sunk crooked atop his head.  “Oh, no, don't tell me you're-!”

	“Pele, Lono, let's leave the poor, old man to his burning pile of rubble,” Ku told them, walking away.  “That was our deal, after all.”  The two Gabite twins trailed behind the leader, never looking back at the Elder and his village.

	“You are insane,” Ludicolo howled with all his breath, “all three of you!  Your plan is doomed to fail!”

	“My sincerest gratitude for the orb,” Ku shouted back, before he forgot.  “I'll make sure we use it wisely.”

	“You have no idea what you're all getting yourselves into!”

	Pele shouted from the horizons, “Shut your trap, already!” and the trio disappeared from the Elder's sight, underneath the smoke-filled night.

	A great inferno ate away at the prairie grass at a rapid rate.  Nothing resembled a “village” to him anymore: just a pile of blackened brick and charred wood.  All thanks to that little rock he used to adorn his office wall with.  He never once believed in a bad day- funny how one experience changed that outlook.  “Sheesh, what a rowdy bunch of youngsters,” he growled, crossing his arms.  As much as he wanted to stay inside and ramble the night away, it won't do any good against that mighty fire blazing next door to him.  He some serious firefighting to do.

	While the sun's welcoming light slowly broke from the retiring darkness, Guildmaster Bisharp entered the ruins' horizon, along with his Pawniard Brigade of eight of his little pre-evolutions.  His long purple cape fluttered against the agitated breeze, catching the small particles of soot blowing from what used to be a happy, quaint settlement.  Just as the light began to make clear of the predicament, thick clouds of settling smoke somewhat clouded his vision.  

	The black ground crunched underneath their metallic feet as the force walked down the streets of the ruined settlement.  Everywhere Bisharp gazed looked all the same: the aftermath of one big bonfire that shouldn't have happened.  Whatever wasn't burned to the ground wished it was, as the remaining shelters were nearly painted entirely black from ash, with various signs of influence from the blaze, whether it was just minor charring around the sides, or entire walls being claimed by the dead blaze.  If this was the outlaw's idea of provoking him, they failed.

	Two of his Pawniard ran towards him, “Sir,” one said, “we found survivors!”

	The Sword Blade Pokémon followed his associates to a clustered group of villagers.  The three approached, and some of the inhabitants backed away a few more inches into the huddle; they had their fill of visitors for the day.  Some had barely a sunburn from the incident; others had full patches of fur missing, and their skins seared rare and bandaged.  “May I speak with your leader?”  The Bisharp called out loud to the group.  “I am Guildmaster Bisharp of Guild Bisharp; I wish to investigate whatever has happened here.”

	Amid the frightened lake of his people, a Ludicolo slowly rose from tending the more serious injuries the best he could.  “Go away,” he shouted back to the Guildmaster, “we've had enough for one day!”

	“We don't wish to cause any harm,” Bisharp told him in a leveled voice.  “We only have a few questions for you; all I ask for is your cooperation.”

	 The Elder gave a soft grunt.  His capacity to trust outsiders has all but crumbled away, regardless of who it is.  “It's funny, the last guy who visited us had questions, too, and look what happened!  What makes you so sure we can trust you?”

	Bisharp replied, “I understand that you're distraught-”

	“Who wouldn't?”  Ludicolo barked back.  “You'd be too, if someone just walked right in to your town, burned everything down, demanded your most prized possession, and left!”

	What an unruly Elder Bisharp had to deal with.  Although rather small, a kernel of guilt grew inside of the Sharp Blade; had he arrived any earlier, he had no doubt at least some of this catastrophe would have been avoided.  He opened the inside of his concealing cape with his left hand: stuck to his left shoulder was a badge as  dark gray as charcoal, adorned with chrome wings and a sapphire eye.  It was his Guildmasters' badge: his only proof of authenticity to the bewildered Elder.  “We only want to help you,” said Bisharp.  “If you cooperate with us, I'm sure I can persuade the Guild Association to send disaster relief.”

	Ludicolo gave a soft growl.  “Fine,” he told the Bisharp, “But make your questions snappy- I have many wounds to tend to.  Follow me.”

	Ludicolo walked down that familiar path, taking three strangers to his hut for a private talk.  His rusty bones screamed for him to plop right down in the middle of his grassy floor, a somewhat relieved huff left his bill.

	“we've been tracking down a group of delinquents for a while,” said Bisharp.  “They call themselves 'Team Sharktooth'- a Garchomp, and two Gabite.  Were they the ones who caused this destruction?”

	“Of course they did,” the Elder snapped.  “They just showed up out of nowhere!  One of the Gabite started firing away at our houses with a Flamethrower, and the Garchomp assaulted all those in his vicinity.  He even killed one of my strongest fighters!”  His eyes started to water with light tears, “Poor lad; all he's doing right now is waiting for me to give him a proper burial.  But my hands are full at the moment, and they'll probably be that way for a while.”

	“One death and several wounded,” the Bisharp thought to himself, “for just a C-ranked threat, Team Sharktooth is more dangerous than I perceived them.”  He told the Elder, “I have just one more question: if I recall, earlier, you referenced a 'prized possession' that they stole from you.  What was it?”

	“It was an orb,” Ludicolo told him, “a treasure I kept since I was just a young Lombre working at Slowking Guild.”

	“And so you just kept it around as a centerpiece,” Bisharp jumped to conclusions.

	“It wasn't just any ordinary orb,” the Elder told him.  “It's called the 'Inverse Orb', and what a very powerful item it was to be banned from use by the Guilds themselves.  What else was I supposed to do with it, use it as paperweight?”

	“The Inverse Orb.”  Bisharp's eyes raised slightly from their cold, unconvincing rest, “They are in possession of such a thing?”

	“Guildmaster Bisharp, was it?”  The Elder asked.  “I must thank you for coming to our aid, even though I tried to push you away earlier.”

	Bisharp bowed to the Elder, “It's my pleasure; I wouldn't be doing my duty as a law enforcer if I hadn't.”  He turned from the Elder as he exited his hut, and said, “I will bring news of this to the Association as soon as possible.  I will make sure that you and your village receive the full crisis care that you deser-”

	“There is just one more thing bothering me, though.”  

	Bisharp's footsteps stopped, and he froze as stiff as a statue in front of his doorway.  “Oh?”  He asked, without looking back at the old Pokémon.

	Despite the attention of the officer in his hands, Ludicolo slipped what he was going to say.  He swallowed a small dump down his throat, and hoped he could word his concerns easily to the Bisharp.  “That 'Team Sharktooth', I believe they are planning to assault the guilds.”

	A dead silence befell the room, not even the coming wind from outside dared to disturb it with its whispers.  Ludicolo could only imagine what went through the Sharp Blade's mind, hearing it as a Guildmaster under a potential threat of a raid: tension, anger, maybe fear.  No, something different; as he stood there in the still atmosphere, the Elder felt a certain sense of calm and collectiveness resonate from the Dark-type- as if he's already prepared for such a situation.  Bisharp peeked over his right shoulder, “Is that so,” he told the Elder.

	“Don't you find it a little suspicious?”  Ludicolo asked.  “You're a Guildmaster, you must know what the Inverse Orb is capable of, correct?  Why would three outlaws want to steal it?  The orb isn't just a thing one could use at their own leisure- they're planning on using it, one way or another.”


	Something caught just the edge of Bisharp's eye: a tiny black dot coming from the north where he was, the sounds of clanking metal accompanying it as it came into focus.  “Sir,” the Pawniard private shouted, “We found something!”

	The Pawniard lead his commanding officer to another one of Team Sharktooth's trails, barely located off the village's property.  There were three holes lined near each other, showing the same characteristics as the others they tracked: the middle hole was the largest in diameter, requiring a Wailord to plug up; the one to its left was articulately crafted, and impossibly smooth all the way down; the right hole had some haste put into its creation, as if its digger had no patience.

	“So, they really were here,” said one Pawniard to another.

	“It must get really dark in there,” said the other Pawniard, “How do they even see while digging underground?”

	Despite the banter between his subordinates, the Bisharp kept his eyes on the entrances, without chiming in to the conversation.  His mind ran wild with questions, only to have them followed up by possible conclusions.  “An entire year of harassing travelers, and hijacking their possessions, and this is what it leads to,” he thought to himself.  “I've always taken you lot for just petty crooks; Now I have you mistaken: you are capable of much, much more.” He told his privates as he strolled away from the underground escape routes, “Pawniard, we're heading back to the guild.  Immediately.”

	“What?  Why?”  The two Pokémon asked back in synchronized timing.

	“There's nothing more we can do,” the commander told them.  “As long as they travel underground, we'll never catch them on foot; our pursuit is done.  We must return to the guild.”

	“But what about the criminals?”  One Pawniard asked.  “Are we just going to give up on them?”

 	“As for Team Sharktooth: we will raise their threat level from C-class to A-class,” the Sharp Blade responded.  “The guilds must be warned: as of now, every guild is under threat of an outlaw attack- even ours.”

	The pupils of his subordinate's eyes shook with a subtle tremble.  Whatever their Captain anticipated, it sounded like nothing but bad news to them.  But even if their leader was ready for it, then they were too!  They straightened their stance to a salute, and gave a loud and proud “Yes, sir!” in unison.  The little Pawniard tapped at their badges, and the field lit up with small bursts of light as they all disappeared one by one.

	The leader remained for just a little longer, gazing down the darkness within the three gaping crevasses dug up by his targets.  “You've led quite the chase, Team Sharktooth,” Said the Bisharp as if he's talking to the holes, “but thanks to this little stunt, your endgame became predictable: you're planning an attack on the guilds, and I think I know exactly which one it'll be first.  Making the rest of them anticipate your arrival is just an extra precaution. You think you can win this; you're going to lose before it even begins.”  A metallic clink rang from his badge as he tapped it with his right hand, and he vanished in a sudden flash bang.
