Chapter 10

	When the sounds of destruction subsided, the remaining members returned to see their guild reduced to a giant sand trap.  The grassy floor was underneath an ocean of beige earth, and the destroyed bits of ceiling stuck out from the ground like jagged teeth.  It was like walking into a ruin forgotten and abused by time.

	Nurse Blissey worked herself to near death managing the dead and wounded; aside from the whistling of the coming breeze, all the returning members heard was her ordering herself around.  Three large cocoons of cloth were laid side by side where the request board used to be, two of them heavily soaked in blood.  Of the five wounded and unconscious, she laid them in the middle of the room.

	Among the wounded, Assistant-Guildmistress was given the lightest treatment, hiding her many cuts underneath simple bandages.  The worst she had to deal with were the numerous dark purplish spots dotting the cerulean section of her body.


	After laying her completely flat, Blissey hovered her flippers above Delphox's lower stomach, where a large gash stretching across her wide waist resided.  

	“You might feel a slight burn,” Blissey told her.  A brilliant glow emitted from her hands.  Delphox clenched her jaws shut, holding down a distressed growl.  It was like the nurse held the open flame of a Charizard's tail close to her abdomen.  But the longer she endured the harsh burning sensation, the more her flesh wound shrunk.  Within no time, the deadly affliction became a simple graze across her epidermis, until disappearing completely.

	Delphox relaxed her head on the wall behind her.  “Thank you,” she said to the nurse under an exhausted, yet relieved huff.

	“Just rest up, for now,” Blissey told her.  “You've lost a lot of blood; you may be light headed for a little while, so I don't recommend you do any heavy physical activity.”

	Her little Fennekin pup ran to her mother's side, curling herself into a little yellow and red ball of fur in her limp left arm.  “Mother,” she squeaked with mist forming in her eyes, “are you going to be okay?”

	“I'm fine now, little one,” Delphox told her, raking her in closer to her, “just a little sore.”


	“Nngh.”  The guildmistress felt a strange sensation like pins and needles fill her arm, causing her to wake up. The harsh brightness of the afternoon day stabbed her into the back of her brain like a well placed knife, causing her to shade herself  with her right arm until her sight adjusted.  “What happened?”

	“Good afternoon, Guildmistress.” The nurse's soft voice caught the dazed Fairy-type's ear. “Hold still, I'm almost done.” Her vision was still a bit fuzzy, but from what she could make out, the Blissey had her broken left arm in a gentle caress.  A healing pulse of energy surged through it, reconstructing the broken bits of her limb into a whole bone like puzzle pieces being put together.  When she let go, Florges moved her arm a little: aside from a numb ache lingering in her upper arm, it was back in proper working order!

	“Thank you, nurse,” Florges said in a grateful sigh, “I don't know what we would do without you.”

	“I can name a few things,” she answered back, “but you wouldn't like them.  Just rest easy, don't push yourself too hard.”

	Florges rested her head against the wall, sighing an exhausted huff.  Gazing around the assembly hall, her heart crawled down her stomach after seeing what those barbarians did to her guild. Covering her mouth with her hands, a consuming emptiness overpowered her, seeing most of her pride and joy reduced to just bits of rock.  Though only the assembly hall suffered damage, to her, it felt like all of it was destroyed.  

	“What's the matter?” the nurse asked.

	“I don't know what I'm going to do,” the guildmistress huffed, wiping the water from her eyes.  Under a strong sniffle, she continued, “Some of my best explorers are dead; our guild is ruined; what am I going to do?  How am I going to rebuild it?  We've lost so much in so little time- I don't know how to deal with this!”  She sunk into her lap, sobbing to herself.

	“There, there,” Blissey told her, patting her on the back, “you'll eventually work things out.”


	Four Blissey hovered over Scyther's burnt carcass.  His entire body was one large third degree burn, his exoskeleton was almost pitch black instead of mint green.  He wore himself out from his flailing for now, but whenever they touch him, he would still jerk back in pain.  Every time he took a faint breath, it came out as a weak wheeze.

	“This isn't good,” one Blissey said, “he's in critical condition.”

	“You're telling me,” another Blissey replied.  “The bad thing is: our Heal Pulse won't do anything against burns.”

	“But we can use it to mitigate some of the pain,” the fourth replied.

	“Good idea,” the Blissey occupying his legs complimented.  “If we do that, we won't hurt him as much when we move him to the medical bay.  Then when we settle him there,  we can start applying herbs to reduce the burns.”

	“Maybe we can collapse one of the sick beds to use as some sort of stretcher?”  The Blissey near his head asked.

	“Yes, good idea,” Blissey said, “go do that real quick.”

	The Blissey near his head left her spot, hustling her way to her office.


	The land shark zoomed towards Lopunny in a streak of sand.  His left claw burned in a harsh orange color, poised to strike.  She leaped out of his range to the left.  The Dragon Claw missed, striking the ground instead with a thunderous crash.  Buried deep in the rock, he pulled his talon out of its crater.

	A light bluish glare caught him in his good eye.  He turned around.  Crouching, the rabbit fired a straight beam of ice at him.  Ku responded, kicking a maelstrom of sad with just a single waft of his right fin.

	Dirt and ice collided, fusing to become a twisted, warped barrier of frozen earth separating the two.

	With the howling of both attacks simmered down, all had gone quiet for Lopunny.  She heard no more heavy grunts from her opponent.  “What is he up to?” she said to herself, trying to read her opponent's next move.

	She heard screaming, a voice shouting the same thing over and over.  “He's below you,” Lono shouted at the top of his voice, “below you!  Move out of the way!”

	By the time she caught his message, she already felt a rumble beneath her feet growing in intensity.  She leaped to her right to escape her reappearing opponent's surprise attack.  A geyser of rock and dirt exploded from behind, and razor sharp teeth clamped down on her right ankle, cutting to the very bone.

	In the air Ku twirled with his prey in his mouth, letting go to throw her into the barrier of ice.  Lopunny slammed into the frozen wall back first, bellowing an agonizing yelp as one of its icy prongs impaled her straight through her side.  The icicle snapped from holding her weight, and she fell flat on the ground, her left side soaked in red from her wound.  

	Now was his chance.  Ku dashed toward her, his right claw raised up high.  But again, the slippery Lopunny barely avoided his assault by leaping out of his way.  He struck the wall of ice, shattering it completely in to just hunks of frozen block.  “Why are you avoiding me?” the dragon asked in a calm tone masked by bloodthirsty rage.

	She didn't answer him at first.  She groaned in discomfort, slowly pulling the icicle from her back.  An extra squeal left her mouth when she freed the chunk of ice; her blood lightly coated it from its tip to its middle.  “It's called strategy,” she wheezed, throwing the shard to the ground.

	“With strength like yours, it's a waste,” he growled.  “I didn't choose to fight you so you can showcase your acrobatic skills.  I am showing my respect for you by giving you all I got; I expect you to do the same-!” He waved his right fin, summoning a ravenous vortex of sand.

	“Another Sand Tomb,” Lopunny grunted to herself, “like I would fall for that again!”

	“This is the end for you!”  Ku's left claw took up its familiar orange glow, as he dashed for the tornado.  He slashed into it, but when the dust cleared, nothing was inside the Sand Tomb.  “What?” His eye opened wide.  “How could it have missed?” Ku growled between his clenched teeth.

	It dawned on him.  Looking up he saw her, several feet in the air.  She kicked her left foot out in front of her, while descending back down as fast as a shooting star.  Ku threw himself out of her way,  avoiding the impact as she crashed down to the earth, leaving a small crater in her wake.

	Lopunny tumbled to her side, growling while holding her left shin tightly. A sharp, stabbing pain ran from her foot to just below her knee.  Putting weight on it as she attempted to stand made the pain flare up even worse, and she tumbled back down.

	“So careless,” Ku remarked, looming over her, “you broke your leg.  I'll admit, you're one of the few able to escape my Sand Tomb.  It's a shame I have to put you down so soon.”  Ku raised his left claw, readying it for the killing blow.

	“Please-”

	Ku stopped his talon from diving into the Lopunny.  She turned around, staring at him with her soft crimson eyes.  Her outstretched body laid innocently across the floor, with her chest puffed out.  “You don't want to hurt me, do you, Mr. Dragon?” she asked in a tender voice.

	He lowered his claw.  Looking at her brought a strange sense of calmness to the Dragon-type.  Each heartbeat filled him with a gentle and close warmth he forgot long ago.  She watched all of his aggression dissolve off his face, leaving behind a submissive grimace.  “N-no,” he told her back in a depressed voice, “I don't want to hurt you.”

	Lopunny ran her left paw across her chest, playing with her short yet soft fur between her fingers.  “I wish I could get up,” she said to him under a flirtatious smile, “but I'm very injured.  I need a big, strong Pokémon to help me back up.”

	“I'm big and strong,” he replied back.  “I'll help you back u-”  he flinched back a step, cradling his head between his claws. “N-no,” Ku growled repeatedly while shaking his head, as if trying to shake some maddening voice out of his mind, “no!”  Lashing out, he drove his shin deep into her side, tossing her across the cave like a ball thrown at full force.

	Lopunny rolled across the hard, rocky floor as her body came to a halt at the other end of the cave.  She lifted herself up on all fours, though feeling a bit shaken and breathless.  A severe bruise numbed her lower abdomen, while a burning dryness flared in her chest from coughing so many times.  “Guess some boys just can't handle me,” She huffed to herself, wiping her mouth dry of saliva.

	Ku flailed about as if he went mad, his feral roars almost reaching deafening levels.  His furious gaze fixated on the rabbit, the blood thirst in his golden eye burned away what little shreds of respect he had for her.  “You,” the dragon hissed, “how dare you defile me!”

	Ku's footsteps thundered down the cave as he sprinted for the downed Lopunny, looking to put her down for good.  Both of his talons illuminated the settling dust-filled air with an orange hue. Before she had time to react, he was already on top of her.  He swung his left claw down first- Lopunny caught it before it sank into her shoulder.  He took another swing with his right, and once again, she caught it.

	Lopunny held his attacks by his wrists, but her arms felt like they were about to snap under the dragon's immense weight.  Fatigue started to sink in, allowing her strength to fail her and the dragon's claws to slip closer. The heat coming off his Dragon Claws was intense, like they were steel daggers fresh out of a furnace.  At this rate, she couldn't tell which was about to give in first: her arms, her legs, or her back.

	“Give in, already!” Ku demanded, pushing down harder on the struggling Normal-type.  “This fight is over- I've won!  So stop struggling, and just die!”

	Lopunny refused to lose, refused to let this monster walk away from what he did to her son.  While bearing his weight on her shoulders she slowly rose to her feet; her left leg screamed in pain, but she had to ignore it.  She threw his talons off of her to her left, causing the brute to stagger; in his moment of lost poise, Lopunny delivered a swift punch to his jaw, feeling it fracture beneath her knuckle.  She held him tight by his hammer-like appendages, then drove his snout into her left knee.

	He stumbled back a few steps; broken growls of pain left Ku as he stomped at the ground.  He lifted his face from behind his arms: streams of blood emptied out from his nose, while the right side of his jaw was somewhat slanted.  That punch was harder than he expected; even his opponent flicked her hand and flexed her digits, checking to see if she didn't break anything again.  “I spoke too soon about you,” he told her in a numbed voice, “you still got some fight in you.  But it's going to take more than a few dirty tricks to stop me!”

	“Then I'll just cool off that hot head of yours!” Lopunny put her hands together, and let loose a straight beam of ice heading for the Dragon-type.

	Thinking fast Ku hid himself behind his right fin as he took the Ice Beam; a thick cloud of chilling mist enveloped the dragon as the beam continued to flow.  She won't let up until the dragon was nothing but an ice statue. But her weakened leg gave in, causing her to collapse back onto her knees and stop the attack.

	After her struggle passed, she caught her breath.  Her body hurt from the waist down, but she now had the time to let the pain settle for a moment.  That Garchomp was unlike any Pokémon she fought before; none of the others were able to keep her on her toes for so long. But this was one fight she would be glad to forget about. After a quick breath she tried getting back up, again.  Everything ached as she limped towards the cave's exit; she knew for sure this was the last fight she'll have for a while.

	“What a shame.” The voice stopped Lopunny in her tracks, and her heart dropped.  She looked back: the icy veil soon dissipated, revealing the Dragon-type.  All of his right arm was encased in ice like a cast, along with some of the right side of his body, its trail stretching as high as the bottom of his chin; the ice went far enough to even enclose some of his ruptured chest wound. For a dragon he didn't look too bothered by its cold, numbing sting.  “If you kept going, you might have won,” he told her.

	“You're still kicking?” Lopunny asked.

	“I've been through worse,” Ku replied.  “It was smart targeting me with an Ice-type attack, but it's going to take more than a little frost to defeat me!”  Without hesitation, Ku slammed both his arms together in a scissor motion, shattering his right arm off like it was made of brittle glass.  

	Both Lopunny and Lono shared their shock, speechless as they watched him stomp on the ice chunks that used to be his arm.  If Ku did it to catch their attentions, he certainly had them. He made it clear to them this wasn't the first time he was willing to sacrifice a body part to win.

	 “Hey, why'd you do that?”  Lopunny asked.  “Now you're missing something on both sides!”

	He responded with a toothy smirk and chuckle.  “I could tell you,” he replied, “but I'd rather show you- up close!”
