Pokemon: The Queen of Kalos

The Search for Squishy!

Kind of unrelated to the chapter, but here's Pine and her team in a similar style to the cover! Let me know if I should make ones for Shadow and Crystal as well. And if any of you want to make edits or fanart... 😳👉👈 It would be much appreciated!

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Our heroes finally made it to the fabled Terminus Cave, an abandoned mine that was now home to many wild Pokemon. Suddenly, Squishy jumped out of Bonnie's bag and ran off, forcing everyone to follow. Even with the Fire-Types lighting up the place, they had to go through such narrow tunnels and crawlspaces that, by the time they reach the cavern and they still hadn't caught up to Squishy, no one wanted to go running off after it again.

Instead, they used Noibat, Noivern, and Luxray to locate a bigger passage for them to take, reaching another open area. Bonnie was sure she saw Squishy, but then it disappeared again. Zenith was ready to call out Gardevoir and Espy to track it using psychic power before they were ambushed by Team Flare, having to take out Celosia and some grunts' teams before they could make any snide comments regarding their past with the Sawyers.

Zenith had a sneaking suspicion they were after Z1 and Z2 again, and that maybe both Zygarde cores were in that cave at the same time. Only Z3 was safe, split into two entities and stored in her sisters' PC boxes until they were needed.

Fighting Team Flare wasn't that difficult, though Squishy managed to get hit a few times, and the evil team announced that Squishy belonged to them, something the rest of our heroes thankfully brushed off as Flare being greedy for Pokemon instead of believing, as the Team had been using them for many years, though they still didn't "own" the legendaries.

It was then that Squishy gathered power and transformed into its 10% canine form, blowing much of Team Flare (and also Team Rocket, who had apparently been following them) away while giving up one of its secrets, before going back to normal.

Still, Celosia and Bryony still had 'mons up their sleeves- er, on their belts?- and continued fighting, which led to Ash stepping in with Greninja and Pikachu. The former transformed into Ash-Greninja again, and ended up taking some damage, which meant Ash also felt the force of the attack, and with a break in their shared mindset, the transformation ceased.

Zenith and her sisters took over from there, but a blinding Flash from Manectric let the rest of Team Flare escape before they could get a taste of their own medicine, sadly enough.

Leaving Terminus Cave in search of Squishy again, they began calling out for it, and eventually split up. Bonnie went with Pine and Clemont, Shadow went with Crystal and Red, Ash went with Zenith, and Serena refused to help (she still thought Squishy was weird and gross...) so she sat in the clearing to wait instead.

They looked until nightfall, and still couldn't find it, so they set up a campfire and began making dinner and setting up tents for the night. Just like Eevee had been the day before, Bonnie was so worried she wasn't eating.

"Come on, Bons, you need to eat something. If you don't, you won't have any energy to keep looking for Squishy tomorrow!" Zenith told her, holding out a plate. "Please. We need to keep our strength up. I'm sure Squishy is fine."

"I know... but I can't help worrying about it! Those bad guys were trying to catch it... What if they stole Squishy and we didn't even know!?" She asked, looking down at the empty pouch in her bag the Pokemon usually sat.

Crystal rubbing her shoulder reassuringly, sighing. "Don't think like that, Bonnie. We scared those nobodies off; there's no way they'd try taking Squishy after that."