The New Normal - 13-8

The New Normal – 13-8 – Magma and Aqua

(Flint POV)

They may have been outnumbered, but let it not be said that Flint and Volkner faltered when it mattered. Especially not when it was a situation where collateral damage no longer mattered. There were no other trainers in Sinnoh who could best the two of them in pure, widespread destruction.

Without needing to give any commands, his Rapidash charged into the fray, contemptuously kicking aside a Mightyena that had tried to Crunch down on it. It then detonated with a scorching Overheat, burning a large gap in the terorrists’ line as their Pokémon were incinerated by the searing flames. Quickly taking advantage of this opening, his Arcanine and Houndoom rushed in to fill the gap, both of them unleashing powerful Flamethrowers that incinerated several Purugly as they tried to fill in the gap.

In the meanwhile, Volkner had found himself entangled with the really large man that looked like he was built out of pure muscle. Yet despite the man’s intimidating appearance, Volkner was having no trouble dismantling his team.

Volkner’s Magnezone completely fried one of the Muk’s that were sent out, devastating it with a barrage of crackling Thunderbolts that turned the Poison type into nothing more than an electrified lump of ooze on the ground. His opponent’s Mightyena met a similar fate as their charge was broken by a double blast of Discharges from his Jolteon and Lanturn.

The man’s Drapion and Sharpedo did actually manage to flank around, only to get bogged down by one of the Jenny’s Luxray. The Drapion was swiftly paralysed with a Thunder Wave, while a well-placed Shock Wave denied Sharpedo a direct path to Volkner.

Then, In their distraction, they were sitting Psyduck for a well-placed barrage of Zap Cannons to paralyse the two Pokémon, before Volkner’s Electivire smashed them both into the ground with neck-breaking Cross Chops.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed the back of Flint’s neck and pulled him back – just as a Drapion came bursting out of the ground in front of him with a surprise Dig. The following Cross Poison narrowly skimmed over his head, probably shearing a few hairs off of his afro as the Pokémon tried to decapitate him.

Flint hurriedly backpedalled across the floor to escape, and Drapion gave chase – only to be blasted by a scorching hot Fire Blast to the back of the head before Infernape rushed forwards and smashed it into the ground with a Fire Punch.

A Jenny pulled him up to his feet just in time for an enemy Honchkrow to be blasted out of the sky by another Fire Blast. A frightening roar suddenly echoed from behind him, and he spun around to see the menacingly sharp teeth of a Sharpedo rushing towards him before a Luxray sniped it down with a precise Thunderbolt.

In order to deter further threats, his Magmortar stepped up and unleashed a scorching torrent of flames around him, creating an unpassable trench of burning hot fire that served as a painful warning for any future assailant trying to rush him down.

He finally had some space to breath, and he took the opportunity to survey the battle around him. Despite the close call, their combined superior firepower had really decimated the enemy’s ranks.

His Houndoom, Arcanine and Rapidash were rampaging wildly throughout the battlefield, using the breach that they had created to rush into the enemy lines create unmitigated chaos with their flames. They stayed together in one mobile pack, charging around and taking down group after group of enemies by making full use of their superior speed and firepower as they continued to savage their opponents with a rapid series of Flamethrowers and Fire Blasts.

That fat tubby guy, which Flint thought was called Tabitha, was trying to organise some kind of trap to deal with his Pokémon, but they were too mobile and too deadly to be caught.

Yet the fight was far from over. Even though their Pokémon were too much for the grunts’, the same couldn’t be said for their leaders. Especially not when they had backup.

That muscled guy that was facing Volkner, despite starting off on the backfoot, had now been reinforced by several grunts and was using his now superior numbers to fight Volkner on more even terms.

Furthermore, even though he and Volkner’s Pokémon were doing well, the same couldn’t be said for the Jenny’s. The Jenny’s weren’t as strong as they were, and they were beginning to sustain casualties as the fight went on.

And he realised the main source of those casualties – namely, the two Camerupt that were parked far in the back of the enemy’s lines. Next to them were the purple haired girl and that Maxie guy, and they seemed content to allow their Camerupt to unleash Eruption after Eruption as they fired off an unending barrage of molten rocks that would bombard the battlefield with destructive intent.

While his Fire Types were almost completely unaffected, the same could not be said for the Jennys’ Pokémon – their Pokémon were being cut down as they were too distracted by their own battles to dodge out of the way of the artillery fire of molten rocks. The fallen bodies of Luxray, Bronzong, and Staraptor were scattered across the battlefield; a visual representation of the threat that the Camerupt were.

Unfortunately, his usual assortment of Fire types were far from suited for taking down such a threat, especially with a large guard of various Water types surrounding the Camerupt. Luckily for him, his team didn’t only comprise of Fire types. His agile Lopunny would be perfect for taking down such a key threat. He just needed a way through the Water types guarding them.

A plan formed in his head, and he rushed over with his Infernape to where Volkner was.

“Flamethrower!”

He signalled his arrival as a torrent of flames sent Matt and his allies’ Pokémon back, scared off by the sudden scorching flames. Using the moment that his entrance had bought, he quickly relayed his plan to Volkner.

“Volkner! I need you to blast down those Water types there and create an opening!” He pointed to where the Camerupt were, “I’ll send Lopunny in to take them down!”

“Got it.” He nodded, and immediately shifted priorities to do so. Realising what Volkner was doing, his opponents sent forth a pair of Crawdaunt to try to stop him, only to be driven back as his Infernape fired off a few Focus Blasts. They missed, but they were only meant for deterrence.

And Volkner accomplished his part excellently. A volley of Thunderbolts speared through the Water types, who were distracted trying to bring down his rampaging trio of Fire types, and managed to paralyse and stun them for long enough for his Lopunny to perform a High Jump Kick and plough through a Walrein. Lopunny landed right next to both the Camerupt, forcing them to stop their Eruptions to deal with this new threat.

Of course, Flint knew that sending Lopunny so deep into the enemy lines would be dangerous, but he trusted in his Lopunny’s skills to be able to hold on for long enough for the tides of battle to turn. Fortunately, Lopunny would not be alone, and Volkner ordered his Jolteon and Lanturn to provide assistance from a distance with a series of Thunderbolts, helping prevent Lopunny from being too surrounded.

Furthermore, now that the Jennys were no longer suppressed by the constant barrage of Eruptions, they were finally able to rejoin the offensive, which was what their Luxray and Floatzel were best at. They were a crucial distraction, easing up on the pressure on both him and Volkner as the Jenny’s forced the terrorists to divert their grunts to shore up their flanks.

With the ground threats now busy, it freed up his Magmortar to start clearing out the fliers. With both arms raised, his Magmortar started unleashing shotgun blasts of flames into the air as it proceeded to shoot down every single Flying type that had been harassing them down.

The enemy Honchkrow and Golbat? No longer a problem. They were simply shot out of the air with bullets made out of pure flame.

Moreover, his Magmortar wasn’t the only one showing off its destructive prowess. In the midst of all this chaos, Volkner sent his Electivire deep into the fray. Unlike his mobile pack of Fire types, which relied on their mobility to not get taken down, his Electivire was a one-man army. It ruthlessly ploughed through the enemy Pokémon, its crackling fists delivering blow after blow that sent more and more Pokémon crumbling to the ground before it then brutally electrocuted them with a ruthless Discharge – leaving them as nothing more than a wriggled wreck on the ground.

At the same time, he spotted that his Lopunny had managed to take down one of the Camerupt with a final High Jump Kick to the face. But realising the tides were turning against them, the terrorists’ leaders began to bark out orders to regroup around them.

It was then that Flint recognised that the battlefield had changed. At the beginning, it was little more than a chaotic brawl where everyone was attacking everyone. Yet now that the numbers had thinned out on both sides – with many of the grunts taken out, and several of their Jennys’ having to retreat to heal up their wounded Pokémon – the battle started to revolve around two points.

It was him versus the pirate guy and the muscled guy, and Volkner versus the trio wearing red.

Wisely, the terrorists had picked their battles with Type advantages in mind, and their Pokémon charged at them before Flint or Volkner had the time to reposition their Pokémon.

Yet neither of them would let that stop them.

His Infernape was the first to meet them. A Sharpedo had tried to Aqua Jet past his Fire types, but his Infernape reacted swiftly and caught it mid-air with a precise Mach Punch – sending the Sharpedo sprawling to the ground. However, unlike the other Sharpedo that they had faced, this one rebounded quickly and charged up a Hydro Pump in its mouth, only to be interrupted as Flareon smashed into its side with a quick Flare Blitz and sending it careening backwards.

That temporarily knocked Sharpedo out of the fight, but before his Infernape could finish it off with a Brick Break, a Crobat interceded with a whirlwind of Air Slashes, forcing his Infernape back. At the same time, a Mightyena erupted out from the ground, ambushing his Flareon as the Dark Type landed a powerful Crunch on it.

But the Mightyena wasn’t able to do more as Infernape pivoted on the spot and smashed a Mach Punch straight into its face, forcing the Dark Type back with a howl of pain. Unfortunately, that was when the rest of the terrorists’ Pokémon arrived, and Flint scowled as he saw a whole pack of Sharpedo rushing his way – filling his vision with a line of menacingly sharp teeth that all looked like they wanted to take a bite out of his head. 

Despite this intimidating sight, he remained completely calm. A pack of Sharpedo may be a powerful and agile threat, but they were also a direct one. There was no subtlety – all a Sharpedo could do was rush at you to attack you. And therefore, the fact that the Sharpedo were the ones that needed to come to him was very much exploitable.

“Form a line! Lopunny, Magmortar, Infernape, to the front!”

His Pokémon obeyed, forming a wall of fighters that would shatter the Sharpedo’s assault.

The Sharpedo were quick, but that agility meant nothing when they were running into a wall that was ready and waiting for them. The two sides crashed into each other, and the brawl began.

The Sharpedo started off strong as they smashed into his Fire Types with their powerful Waterfalls and Crunch combo, but his Pokémon recovered quickly as they began their own counterattack. His Lopunny and Infernape were a whirlwind of punches and kicks as they spun around like a martial artist, every strike from the two fighters breaking another one of Sharpedo’s jaws. The same went for his Magmortar, who was unleashing a machine-gun fire of Aura Spheres that thinned out the incoming Water types, with many of them not even managing to get in close before they were taken out.

A sharp cry from behind forced Flint to spin around, and he saw that his Flareon had just Flare Blitzed a sneaky Mightyena that had crept up from behind. Before he could express his thanks, a sudden Psychic force suddenly pushed him into the ground as a Sludge Bomb from one of their Muk went straight over his head. This time, it was a Jenny’s Bronzong that saved him, and it continued to do so as it held off another Sludge Bomb with a Psychic that tossed the Poison attack harmlessly to the side.

All these close calls was starting to piss him off. These terrorists, even their leaders, might not be individually the strongest, but their willingness to ruthlessly target the trainer made them much greater threats.

He hoped Volkner was still doing okay.

Suddenly, a powerful explosion echoed across the battlefield – one that was different from the usual Explosion by the enemy’s Weezing. Flint turned to the direction of the sound, and saw that Saturn had successfully blown a hole into the wall, creating an escape path for himself. Saturn rapidly made his escape with a few grunts, carrying the captured Lake Guardian with them.

“STOP THEM!” He instinctively shouted out, but everyone around him were too preoccupied with their own battles to do anything. As if to remind him that he was still in danger, a pair of Crobat dove down from above and tried to slice his head off with a pair of Air Slashes.

Unfortunately for them, his Magmortar broke their attacks with a Dragon Pulse before giving the two Crobats a demonstration of how it had taken out its lesser evolutions by quickly turning the two Crobats into nothing more than burning heaps on the ground.

A familiar cry of pain refocused his attention, and he saw that his Lopunny had just been knocked aside by a Waterfall – its injuries starting to take a toll after it was wounded during its daring assault on the two Camerupts. Therefore, not wanting to take risks, Flint ordered his Lopunny back before it got too injured.

But a Muk was able to take advantage of that small opening to unleash several Toxic Orbs at his Pokémon when they were distracted, poisoning several of them. In response, the Muk was punished and was swiftly incinerated by a powerful Flamethrower from Infernape.

Despite being poisoned, three streams of flames heralded the arrival of his reinforcements – with his Houndoom, Arcanine, and Rapidash rejoining him, having taken down enough of the surrounding grunts that they left the rest for the Jennys to clean up. Now bolstered by these reinforcements, the tide began to turn against the terrorists, and they were forced onto the backfoot.

Just like he had predicted, trying to bring him down using overwhelming numbers wasn’t a good strategy when every one of his Pokémon attacked with large area-of-effect moves.

As time ticked on, the battle looked to grow more and more in his favour. The leaders were clearly stronger than the grunts, and the pirate guy’s Pokémon actually held their own against his Elite team for a little while, but with their numbers rapidly dwindling, they became slowly out-matched.

“ARGHH!!!” A shout of pain suddenly echoed across the cave, and he turned to see the purpled hair girl being speared through by a Thunderbolt by Volkner’s Jolteon. Her form twitched and writhed in the air as a painful amount of electricity fried her nerves until her smoking form collapsed to the ground.

“NO! COURTNEY!” Tabitha shouted out painfully, but there was nothing he could do as Volkner continued to decimate their team, leaving a field of electrified and paralysed Pokémon in his wake. In fact, it was only a few moments later where Tabitha joined the fate of his terrorist ally, with him being too slow to move out of the way of a Discharge and was paralysed along his Pokémon.

The defeat of two of the leaders was the death knell for the terrorists. The tides had now finally turned against them, and they all knew that only defeat awaited them.

In such situations, where the battle was clearly no longer going in your favour, it was common for criminal scum to try and leave to fight another day. After all, no one wanted to be captured. However, even seeing their counterparts being knocked out, the remaining terrorists made absolutely no move retreat, even as their Pokémon continued to drop fewer in number.

If Saturn hadn’t escaped, then this wouldn’t have annoyed him. Yet as it stood, their stubbornness and determination was just a waste of their time!

In the end, with the Jennys helping to flank around, that muscled guy ended up trying to wrestle a Luxray off of him before a Mach Punch from his Infernape utterly dislocated his shoulder with a large snap. He fell over unconscious from the pain.

At the same time, that guy named Maxie had been smashed and punted into a wall, with only his feet sticking out and visible. The pirate guy turned out to be the last to fall, and it was no graceful last stand. No, he was simply surrounded, knocked to the ground by a charging Luxray, and kept pinned down.

But even in this defeated position, the pirate merely let out a hearty laugh as Flint loomed over him.

“What a good fight that was!” He grinned unrepentantly, “Turns out you do live up to your title—”

“Enough chatter.” He cut the man off, “Where is Saturn? Where did he run off to?”

Despite being pinned down, the pirate managed a small shrug, “How would I know? He wouldn’t have told me – we all knew the possibility of being captured.”

“You do realise that we will be psychically interrogating you.” Volkner added from the side, and Flint noticed that there was a cut on his jacket’s shoulder. There was no blood, so it was probably a minor graze, “There’s no point trying to hide information from us. We will find out.”

Yet the man continued to laugh, “And like I said, I don’t know where he went! Psychically interrogate me or not, you won’t find out!”

Flint gritted his teeth. The man’s nonchalance even in this situation was starting to infuriate him. Did he not know what he had done?!

“Anything involving the Legendaries cannot lead to a outcome.” One of the Jennys tried, “You must understand that. Please cooperate with us, and we can stop your friends from making a terrible and irreversible mistake.”

“No. I don’t think I will.” The man replied, a maddened grin now splitting his face, “In fact, I want you to see into my memories. I want you to see the true scope of our plans. I want you to understand that what we are going for is going to benefit the world as a whole. Yes, the devastation that we committed here was a tragedy, but it was a sacrifice that needed to be paid. Even Maxie was in agreement.”

He then turned to where Maxie’s body had been imprinted into the wall, “Heh. I always knew that smartass attitude of his would get him punched in the face. That was probably a punch he deserved for a long time.”

Seeing that they weren’t really going to get anything useful out of him, Flint gestured to the Jennys and they quickly tased the man into silence. They also began rounding up all of the fallen grunts, making sure that they were actually knocked out before they cuffed them and arranged for their arrest.

In the meanwhile, Flint called his Champion to report on his failure. Because that was what it was – they might have arrested some of their leaders, but they got away with a Legendary. That was unacceptable.

Others may have tried to paint themselves in a better light in their report, but Flint relayed the situation as it happened to Cynthia, making sure to leave nothing out.

“…If it’s any comfort, you were not the only one who failed to protect their Legendary.” She said with an audible frown, “The terrorists were successful in their strikes at capturing the other Lake Guardians as well. We were barely able to muster up a response in time for the attack at Lake Acuity. However, there is a silver lining – after today’s operation, I highly doubt Cyrus will have much manpower left. They must have used up everything they had in today’s operation.”

It was cold comfort. However, he forced himself to remain calm, “What does this mean for the future then?”

“It means that we need to shift our priorities for the future.” His Champion answered, “First, we need to identify what they intend to use the Legendaries for. Second, we need to extract as much information we can from all the terrorists we captured today and get an idea of their remaining resources. Thirdly, we must shore up our defences in our prison facilities. The last thing we want is a breakout.”

“Then what are we going to do about the Lake Guardians? We need to get them back.” He stated.

He was already replaying the fight back in his head. Surely there were things he could have done better to take down Saturn before he managed to escape.

But with how surprised and outnumbered they were…

“And we will.” His Champion answered firmly, breaking him out of his train of thought, “But not alone. I have already called on reinforcements from the other regions and they will be arriving shortly. Similarly, I have given orders to the Jenny’s to massively increase their patrols and to bolster their ranks with trusted volunteers of Ace Trainers. There will be a temporary reduction in Gym activities as Gym Leaders are called to assist. Everything will be mobilised to ensure that the Lake Guardians are returned to their rightful place and that the terrorists meet their deserved end.”

“For today, we are at war.”

A.N. This battle required a lot of rewrites, so I hope you enjoyed the final product! The fight was naturally going to be very chaotic, but I tried really hard to centre the fights around certain points so that it would be easier to follow. I hope it was.

As for the strength of Maxie/Archie/their Admins, I always believed that they weren’t as strong as an Elite Four. For in the games you always fought them before you took on the Elite Four, and their teams weren’t always that strong. As I’ve tried to show repeatedly in this story, the main ‘threat’ from the evil teams were actually because their criminal manpower and how willing they were to force a Legendary onto their side, not from their individual strength.

So yes, they weren’t able to bring down Flint or Volkner outside a few close calls, but their job today was to buy time for Saturn to secure the Lake Guardian. But in exchange, what was Team Aqua and Team Magma are now defeated. We’re starting to reach the big climax now, and I hope you enjoyed!