Pokémon Chronicles 零 (ZERO)

Episode 42: Heroica's demise

"Go, go, just go!" Lucca freaked out, pushing against Angel's head.

"I can't, you're going mad! I'll die if I try to charge through them!" Angel cried, fidgeting against Lucca's insane, struggled movements.

"We'll all die if we stay here any longer! Just go, Shelly's ancient arte is protecting you," Lucca cried, not stopping at all.

"God damn it Lucca, what's with you? If Angel gets hurt, what can we do?" Megan argued.

"Angel won't matter if we're all dead. So go darn it, before that happens!" he shouted at the top of his voice. Angel finally answered him with a cough of complaint before obeying, soaring towards the portal in the sky at full speed. I glanced back at King FinVarra just as she took off, surprised to find that he didn't seem to be putting much effort into following us. His reason for doing so was set to be the least of my worries as far as I knew, anyway.

It didn't take long before we were amidst the chaos I feared these unidentifiable Pokémon could cause. Even though Angel had the benefit of Shelly's Reflect shield to protect her, she put her all into avoiding contact with the jellyfish beasts that quickly surrounded us. Thankfully, they really didn't seem to be able to hit us with Pokémon attacks, just as Lucca warned. They kept trying to bash into us rather than exhibit any nasty poison attacks.

That was still trouble however, as they were coming at us with so much force that I could hear the wind howl past me with each miss. The jellyfish made some rather intriguing noises, cursing with sounds I couldn't quite understand. They were definitely complaining about them missing Angel, or communicating with each other to organize a strategy or something, but it didn't sound like the battle cries any feral creature would make. Their cries were high pitched and echoed strangely, lingering in my ears even after they had stopped making noise.

"You guys holding on? There's a lot of 'em!" Angel warned, tucking her wings in to build up speed. I tightened my grip, but still cried out when Angel suddenly twisted sharply to the left, leaving us desperately hanging onto her cape. I could barely hold on before, and felt myself physically slip when one of the enemies brushed past me, nearly hitting me.

That wasn't nearly the worst of it. Angel began to fly as if we weren't even on her back, performing twists and tilts of her body almost at complete random. I panicked hard as I was shaken loose but managed to grab somewhere on her cape during my fall, where my view became obscured. I couldn't tell what was going on, just that Angel was flying so wildly that her cape buried me in its material, whilst a heavy gush of wind kept punching me from different directions. I growled and held on for my life for longer than I could stand, starting to cry out when I lost hope of getting out of this unharmed.

Thankfully, a few moments later, some consistent direction returned to my desperate trip. I hung downwards from her cape quite dangerously, once again praying that I wouldn't lose my scarf. Dark gas muffled me and everything not close to me, deafening me and nulling my cries to a sound similar to drowning. I still hyperventilated though, losing my mind even more when the high pitched squeaks came from around me. The beasts were close by.

"Aaahhh, someone do something, they're dragging me back!" Angel screamed, sounding strained. I just couldn't focus from where I was hanging from however, unable to see this threat until one of them came right up close to me. I almost did a backflip and screamed, causing it to cry out at me in just as much surprise. My reaction was to thoughtlessly kick as hard as I could, losing my grip and balance even more. Thankfully I hit it, but that only agitated it more and made it grip onto Angel with all of its tentacles, just out of reach for me to hit it physically.

"Damn it," I coughed, trying my hardest to balance myself. I got in control enough to fire a Bubblebeam down at it, having to hit it for quite a while before it detached.