The Wicked Don't Rest [Hawlucha Man Extra]
Jun 22, 2018 23:24:33 GMT
Post by Firebrand on Jun 22, 2018 23:24:33 GMT
A/N: This is a non-canonical extra for The Amazing Hawlucha Man, written for the June Rock the Block Challenge. It's set about 10 chapters ahead of what's currently posted, so the characters' dynamics are a little more comfortable by this point. However, I was careful to make sure that this extra was a standalone fic that does not spoil anything for the fic proper. The only information in this fic that a reader of the main fic might not know would be the names of the other four young heroes of Clarus City, which are as follows:
Volcarona Mask - Isabelle Forbes
The Phantom - Edgar Harcourt
Echo - Ingrid Sorenson
Archangel - Joshua
And of course, Hawlucha Man is Alex Alvarez. But with that little disclaimer out of the way, on with the show!
Alex had just finished packing a small cooler with some sandwiches and fresh water when his phone buzzed on the countertop. The incoming text message read simply “We’re here.” Alex grabbed his phone, swung his backpack over his shoulder and gestured to Hierro. “Come on, let’s go!” The Hawlucha took the cooler off the small, scratched kitchen table and together they rushed out of the apartment, bounded down the spiral stairway, and burst out into the street. Alex’s jaw dropped. “Whoa.”
Idling in front of his apartment was a gleaming red convertible with a single black racing stripe along its flanks. Behind the wheel, Isabelle Forbes gave the horn two jaunty honks and grinned. “Come on, dude! Hurry up!”
Joshua, sitting in the passenger seat, flicked a finger, and the cooler rose up from Hierro’s talons and into the esper’s lap. Alex and Hierro jumped up over the side of the car and into the backseat, and Alex helped his partner buckle his seatbelt. Isabelle feathered the gas pedal, even though the car was still in park. She flicked her expensive designer sunglasses down from her forehead. “Let’s go to the freakin’ beach!”
As they navigated through the streets of Avenbrooke, the bright red sports car got plenty of appraising looks. Joshua caught Alex’s eye in the rearview mirror. “I tried to get her to go with something a little more inconspicuous but—”
“But, like, where’s the fun in that?” Isabelle said.
“How many cars do you actually have?” Alex asked.
“Only five,” Isabelle replied. “At this mansion.”
“How many mansions do you own?”
“Three.” She thought for a second. “And then there’s the Kalosian chateau, and the penthouses in Castelia and Celadon, and that place in Alola, even though I’ve never actually been, and—”
“I think I get the picture,” Alex said with a laugh. “Must be nice to have virtually infinite money.”
“Virtually infinite net worth,” Isabelle corrected. “I can’t, like, liquidate it all at once.”
“Because you’d probably cause the stock market to crash!” Joshua scoffed.
They turned onto the expressway, and Alex leaned his head back against the seat to enjoy the rush of wind against his face. Joshua’s cherubic blonde curls danced like a golden nimbus around his head, and Isabelle settled into the driver’s seat with a casual ease that Alex could never feel in a car like this. She blew out a long sigh. “I never get out of the city anymore. I always feel like I have to be back before dark or the whole place will like…” She exhaled again, making it into an explosion noise. “Y’know?”
Joshua spread open a paperback book on his lap, and Alex saw a faint rippling in the air around the esper’s hands as he used his telekinesis to make the pages lie flat in the wind. “I don’t get out much either. But that’s mostly to keep a low profile. Easier to hide a tree in a forest, you know what I mean? What about you, Alex?”
“Uh, Jiro took Hierro and I out for some training at this old quarry like an hour north of the city last month, so I guess that counts. But before that, I don’t think I left Clarus proper for about a year.”
“And that’s why we all needed this little vacation!” Isabelle cried. “I could so use a beach day. Like, with all this hero stuff, I never have time to work on my tan.”
“Does it take effort to be this superficial?” Joshua asked. “Or does it just come naturally to you?” But he said it with a smile, and Alex could hear that there was no malice behind it.
Isabelle stuck out her tongue. “You want to walk the rest of the way, Archangel? I can pull over.”
They had left early enough in the day that the traffic leaving Clarus City was light. As they cruised along a looping highway overpass that spanned the Umber River, Alex caught a glimpse of the sparkling spires of midtown reaching up towards the heavens. The elegant swooping arcs of the Concord Bridge and the stolid bulk of the Forbes Bridge glowed in the morning light, even from a distance, spanning the murky blue-green waters of the Umber as it flowed towards Clarus Harbor. Alex remembered seeing this same view, albeit from a different angle, as his plane descended towards Clarus Inter-Regional Airport a few years ago, just days before he had started at the Avenbrooke Institute of Technology and with nothing but the contents of a carry-on suitcase and Hierro’s pokeball. Back then, he had thought of Clarus City as a sparkling utopia of progress and industry. Even now, after spending his nights getting up close and personal with the city’s dark underbelly as Hawlucha Man, that first moment of awe hadn’t quite worn off.
He was drawn from his thoughts as Isabelle floored the accelerator, weaving across three lanes of traffic. Hierro shrieked in alarm as he was jerked out of a nap, and Alex couldn’t help but laugh as his partner puffed out his feathers in indignation. Isabelle drew up even with an old black car, all rectangular lines and hard angles. She gestured for the car to lower its windows. When the other driver complied, she shouted across the gap, “I didn’t know you had a hearse! Aren’t you playing a little too close to type?”
Edgar Harcourt’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel as he glowered at the road ahead. “It’s not a hearse! It’s… It’s a classic!”
“Whatever you say, Eddie.”
In the passenger seat of the black car, Ingrid waved at the three other heroes. Her platinum blonde hair was tied back in a severe ponytail, but a few wisps had come free and drifted around her face. Alex and Hierro waved back to her, and Isabelle thumped her hand against the steering wheel. “I know!” she exclaimed. “Let’s have a race to the beach!”
Edgar rolled his eyes. “I don’t really—”
But Isabelle was already speeding up, and the rest of Edgar’s sentence was lost in the roar of the convertible’s engine. “Later loser!” Isabelle shouted as they shot down the expressway. Alex, Hierro and Joshua all shared a look and shrugged helplessly as Isabelle swerved into the fast lane and floored the accelerator. With her right hand, she tapped something on her phone, and a second later, energetic, up-tempo rock music blared from the car stereo. When they reached a long straightaway, Isabelle threw both her hands in the air. “Woooo!”
Hierro copied her, echoing her exultant whoop with a sharp, piercing cry. Alex turned in his seat and tried to find Edgar’s car in the traffic behind them. He thought he could make out its solid bulk somewhere in the distance, but it was too far to tell for sure.
They cruised down the freeway for nearly an hour before turning off on the exit that led to the beach. As they navigated along the coastal road, they were forced to stop at a series of particularly long red lights. At the fourth one, while Isabelle’s fingers drummed impatiently at the wheel, Edgar’s black sedan drew up alongside them, and the window rolled down. Even from this far away, Alex could feel the icy blast of the air conditioning as Edgar glanced out the window, his mouth curling into a self-satisfied smirk. Isabelle glared at him. “Eddie, if you say something about slow and steady winning the race, I swear to Arceus I’ll—” And then the light changed to green, and Edgar pulled out ahead of them. “Oh, you bastard!”
When they pulled into the beach parking lot, Edgar was already unloading two beach chairs from his trunk while Ingrid sprayed down her arms and legs with high-SPF sunscreen before jamming a large, floppy sunhat over her hair. When she saw Alex’s raised eyebrow, she rolled her eyes. “I d-don’t care how d-dumb it l-looks,” she said. “If I d-don’t wear it, I burn redder than a C-Crawdaunt.”
Isabelle jabbed a finger against Edgar’s chest. “Don’t you say anything. I don’t want to hear it. Not. A. Word.”
Joshua unfolded himself from the convertible’s passenger seat and popped the trunk. “I don’t see the big deal, Izzy. He beat us fair and square.” He pushed a beach bag into her hands. “And I know that if you won, you wouldn’t pass up the chance to gloat.”
“Don’t you start with me, Archangel.”
Edgar shrugged. “Well, fortunately for you, I’m not one to gloat. I think it’s terribly crass, and rather below my station.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Alex and Ingrid rolled their eyes as they shouldered their own bags. Ingrid palmed a pokeball, and when the light cleared, she handed Mezzo a beach umbrella from the back of Edgar’s car. The Loudred slung the umbrella over his shoulder and trundled off after Isabelle and Joshua. As the heroes and their pokemon walked the short, sandy path between the dunes, Alex fell into step behind Ingrid. “Did you bring Forte?”
“The sand gets in his v-vents, so he’s st-staying in his ball.” She laughed. “I d-don’t w-want to deal with his wh-whining on my day off. Mezzo l-likes the beach, though.”
Isabelle led the way down to the beach, and after a little searching, they found a patch of sand large enough for the five of them. Alex and Joshua spread a large terry-cloth blanket out while Ingrid and Edgar unfolded their chairs. Mezzo and Hierro worked together to hammer the pole for the umbrella into the sand, and once it was stable, the Loudred opened the shade to give Ingrid a patch of shadow to sit in. Isabelle rubbed tanning oil on her arms and legs before stretching out on the blanket, and Edgar sank into his chair with an old hardcover book.
Joshua reached into his bag and tossed a pokeball into the air. “Come on, Newton!” His Kadabra appeared in a flash of light, and quickly stashed his metal spoon away in favor of a plastic sand shovel. The psychic type sat down in a lotus position in the sand and started digging a hole. Hierro perked up and sat down beside him, shaping the displaced sand into a neat pile. Mezzo leaned over them to watch until Newton patted the sand on his left and motioned for the Loudred to sit and help.
Alex threw off his t-shirt and stretched, enjoying the sea breeze on his skin. Wingull wheeled overhead, crying out to each other as they scanned the ground below for unattended food to steal. “I’m going for a swim,” he declared. “Who’s wants to come?”
“Me, definitely!” Joshua said.
Edgar carefully marked his page with a satin bookmark and stood with a groan. “I suppose I ought to at least get my feet wet.”
The three young men walked down to the water’s edge. “No ghosts today?” Joshua asked.
“They don’t like direct sunlight,” Edgar replied.
While they let the waves lap their ankles, Alex dug his feet beneath the wet sand. As he wiggled his toes deeper, he happened to glance down. “Edgar, is your bathing suit monogrammed?”
Edgar glanced down at his black swim trunks and fingered the embroidered EH on the cuff. “Almost everything I own is monogramed.”
Joshua and Alex burst out laughing. “I know we call you Fancypants,” Alex said as he tried to catch his breath. “But I didn’t know you took it so literally!”
Edgar rolled his eyes and shoved Alex forward, just as a wave was breaking. Alex tumbled headlong into the crashing surf, and came up laughing still. He reached down with one hand and splashed a spout of water back towards Edgar and Joshua. The spray hit Edgar full in the face, but Joshua managed to stay dry by casually flicking his fingers and using his psychic powers to redirect the rest of the water at Edgar.
Edgar sighed. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Yup!” Alex called over his shoulder as he splashed out further into the water. “You two coming?”
“A little cold for me, if I’m honest,” Joshua said.
Edgar pushed his soaked hair back from his forehead. “I think I’m wet enough already, thanks.”
“Suit yourself!” Alex waded out to where the water was up to nearly his shoulders before he kicked up his heels and floated on his back. Joshua was right, the water was cold, but he had grown up swimming in the frigid lakes and ponds of northern Unova. The slight sting of the salt water on his myriad cuts and scratches quickly went from slightly uncomfortable to pleasantly numbing, and Alex felt his body loosen as he let himself relax. He gently kicked his legs and moved his arms to keep himself in place, but the current was weak here along the sound. With a deep breath, he plunged beneath the lapping waves and sank down to the sandy ocean floor. He turned his face upward and opened his eyes, squinting against the water. The sunlight danced on the ocean’s surface above him, and all was quiet except for the sound of his pulse and the distant roar of the surf.
His lungs started to burn, and Alex pushed off the sand to burst upward with a gasp. Water cascaded down his face as he turned his face up to the sun, and then an instant later he had submerged again, turning in flips and cartwheels beneath the water’s surface just for the hell of it. When the sensation of water up his nose had become too uncomfortable to ignore, he paddled back to the beach and reluctantly pulled himself away from the tug of the waves.
Back at their claimed spot, the other heroes were lounging in the sun. Ingrid had procured a ukulele and was plucking out a tune as Alex dug in his bag for a towel and started to dry off. Isabelle flicked down her sunglasses and caught Alex’s eye. “I saw you gallivanting around out there like a little kid.” Her tone was mocking, but there was no bite to her words.
Alex grinned as he opened his cooler and took out a sandwich and a bottle of water to get the salt taste out of his mouth. “You should come next time I go down.”
Isabelle gave a derisive sniff. “I’d just have to put on my tanning lotion all over again.”
“More ocean for me, then.” Alex sat down on his towel and watched Hierro, Newton and Mezzo work on their sandcastles. They had already made several towers, and the Loudred seemingly lost interest in building more, instead opting to just dig a sizable hole. Hierro meandered over and reached for the cooler, but Alex clicked his tongue. “Nope, not until you wash your hands. I’m not letting you get your sandy talons all over the food.”
Hierro rolled his eyes and bounded down to the water’s edge. He quickly plunged his claws into the waves and shook them off before dashing back to the high tide line just as a swell broke, careful not to drench his feathers in salt water. When he came back to the beach blanket, Alex handed the Hawlucha his lunch and smoothed down Hierro’s feathers. “You’re going to need a bath tonight, buddy.” He had never understood Hierro’s aversion to the ocean or lakes when the Hawlucha loved to splash around in the bathtub.
Hierro chirped and set to eating. Alex leaned back on his elbows and basked in the sun, feeling the salt dry on his skin. He felt himself starting to doze off when a commotion down the beach jerked him back to alertness. He was still blinking to clear the glare from his eyes when a group of people dressed in tank tops with bandanas covering their faces barreled past near the shoreline, followed by the cries of what looked like novice trainers.
“Give back my Herdier, you jerks!”
“Croagunk!”
“They took my Skitty!”
Alex and Isabelle were on their feet in an instant. “Pokemon thieves,” Isabelle hissed. “They were battling those kids, and as soon as they knocked out their pokemon, they stole the pokeballs!”
Alex nodded to Hierro and cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get ‘em.”
Ingrid shrugged. “We’re n-not r-really on the clock here. And w-we might blow our s-secret identities…”
Edgar didn’t even look up from his book. “Besides, I’m sure some precocious eleven year old is already on the case to bring these guys to justice.”
“Are you kidding me?” Isabelle snarled. “On the clock or not, secret identity or not, these people need our help. That’s what heroes are supposed to do.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah. Hierro, let’s move.”
Joshua jumped up from his chair. “They’re right. Newton, follow me.”
Ingrid didn’t meet Isabelle’s eyes. “It’s just… I c-can’t blow my c-cover like y-you. I c-can’t hide behind the w-walls of my m-mansion.”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Fine then. I can’t use Aethon here without making a scene, so Mezzo, you’re with me.” The Loudred looked up from his pit with a surprised yelp before clambering to his feet. Isabelle smirked. “I’m going to kick these guys’ asses three times as hard to make up for you slackers.”
The three heroes sprinted down the beach after the thieves. Hierro darted in front of Alex and jumped into the air, catching the wind off the ocean beneath his wings and soaring up into the cerulean blue sky. Joshua bounded along beside Newton in leaping strides, vaulting over sunbathers in jumps that covered far more ground than even a skilled hurdler. Alex shook his head at the esper’s use of his psychic powers. “So much for low profile,” he grumbled to himself.
The slap of the sand against his bare soles made his feet hurt, but the pokemon thieves were in sight now. Just to his left, Isabelle and Mezzo barreled through the shallows, the Loudred amplifying Isabelle’s screamed obscenities. As they drew close to the thieves, Newton’s eyes flashed green and gold, and the thieves ran up against an invisible wall. As the thieves tried to gather their wits, Alex slid to a stop and planted his feet. Hierro dropped from the sky in a spray of sand and screamed out a challenge.
Alex’s body tensed to leap into the fight, but he felt an invisible force tug him back. “We can’t do this the way we’re used to,” Joshua’s voice said in Alex’s ear. When the thieves gave no indication that they heard, Alex had to figure that Joshua was speaking inside his head. “Ingrid was right, our secret identities are on the line here.”
“Then we’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way,” Isabelle said aloud, striding forward and placing her hands on her hips. “Okay, you lowlifes. It’s time you picked on someone your own size. You’re going to battle the three of us, and when we kick your butts, you’re going to give back the pokemon you stole!”
“Don’t you know to stay out of other peoples’ business?” The apparent leader of the group swaggered forward and jammed his hands in the pockets. “What do we get if we beat you?”
“That’s not going to happen!” Alex shouted back.
The leader’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “That so, huh? Guess we’ll see when we smash you to pieces!” He tossed out a pokeball, and a Golisopod appeared in a flash of light. The leader whirled on his crew. “Come on, you bozos! Don’t just stand there!”
The other thieves leaned back, throwing up their hands as if to stave off an attack. They recovered quickly, and sauntered forward, flailing their arms around in front of their faces in some kind of bizarre dance move. “Yo, the boss says to throw down, so let’s throw down, yo!” one of the thieves said.
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Teenagers.” Alex figured it wasn’t the right time to point out she was barely older than a teenager herself.
More pokeballs flashed, and the Golisopod was joined by a Toxapex, a Scrafty, an Excadrill and a dark-furred Raticate. Isabelle tossed her hair back. “Five against three? What do you think of those odds, boys?”
Joshua grinned. “That’s all?”
“Yeah, this is easy mode,” Alex said. “Come on Hierro, show ‘em what we can do!” Hierro nodded and glanced over his shoulder. The pause stretched out, and Alex mentally kicked himself. “Right, old fashioned way. Let’s hit ‘em with a… uh, high jump kick?” He and Hierro hadn’t been in a traditional pokemon battle in years, and Alex had grown used to Hierro just handling himself in combat without anything but the broadest direction from his trainer. It felt bizarre to be relegated to standing on the sidelines while his partner did all the fighting.
But Hierro had adjusted more quickly than Alex, and sprang into the air just as the boss’s Golisopod barreled forward, its claws flexing. Mezzo jumped in front of Alex and grappled the armored insect to a standstill, his muscles straining with the effort. “Hell yeah!” Isabelle crowed. “Hit him with a hyper voice! I think?” The Loudred inhaled through his nostrils and bellowed, the sonic force lifting the Golisopod from its feet and sending it sprawling across the sand. At that moment, Hierro screamed down from the sky and planted a powerful kick in the center of the Golisopod’s shell.
The boss of the thieves stamped his foot, the veins on his forehead bulging with rage. “On your feet, damn it! Get back in there and show them what we can do!” He whirled on his subordinates. “And you slackers! Start pulling your weight, or I’ll beat you down!”
His goons snapped to attention and ordered their pokemon to attack. The Raticate pounced at Hierro, but the avian pokemon jumped backwards and planted a kick in the center of the rodent’s mass, knocking the wind from its lungs. The Excadrill surged forward and tried to strike before Hierro could recover, but was stopped by an invisible psychic barrier conjured by Newton. “There are a lot of dark types,” Joshua said. “Newton and I can’t do anything about them, but we can keep the Toxapex and Excadrill off your backs for a little while.”
“No problem,” Isabelle said. But Mezzo was on the defensive, trying to keep the Scrafty’s hail of punches and kicks from knocking him out of the fight. Isabelle sighed in exasperation. “Just hit him with another sound blast, damn it!” Mezzo nodded and inhaled again. This time the sonic boom was briefer, only enough to knock the Scrafty off-balance, but it was enough of an opening for Hierro to kick the Raticate into the dark type and send both of them flying back across the battlefield in a spray of sand. “All right, now finish them both off with a thunder punch!” Isabelle ordered.
Mezzo glanced over and shook his head, spreading his hands to show that he couldn’t. “Only Forte knows how to do that,” Alex said. “Mezzo hasn’t figured it out yet.”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Then what can you do?” Mezzo scowled and dropped to his knees, burying his hands in the sand. He took a long breath in, and Alex felt a low frequency hum deep in his bones. The sandy ground began to vibrate, and Alex realized what was happening. “Hierro, get in the air now!”
Joshua was just a second behind on the uptake, and commanded Newton to levitate with telekinesis. The pokemon thieves saw their opening and ordered their pokemon to advance just as Mezzo unleashed his attack. The ground around the battlefield seethed as Mezzo used his stomach and diaphragm to produce a powerful vibration that caused localized tremors. The enemy pokemon fell to the ground as the loose sand shifted. The low roar in Mezzo’s chest built as he slowly rose up again and blasted the Excadrill with a powerful ultrasonic pulse. The Toxapex managed to recover before its allies and spewed a stream of noxious venom at the Loudred, but Newton deflected the attack with a contemptuous flick of his fingers before following up with a powerful psychic strike. Though the Toxapex’s spiky carapace could withstand powerful external blows, it couldn’t protect its mind, and its surprised yelp was oddly muted from behind the barrier.
The boss of the thieves whirled on the Toxapex’s trainer, a woman with multicolored hair tied up under a bandana. “Come on Plums, get your head in the game!” he snapped. When she rolled her eyes, the boss’s hands curled into claws and he pulled at his hair. “Fine! If you want something done right…” He snapped his fingers and chopped his hand through the air. His Golisopod shifted its bulk and darted forward, its large frame propelled by powerful jets of water that shot from the back of its legs. As the colossal insect barreled down on Mezzo and Newton, Alex put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.
“Now, buddy!”
Hierro dropped out of the sky, his wings pulled close to his side. He turned in the air and slammed his body into the bug type, knocking it off course. Hierro slid to a stop on the sand and sprang up again, using the momentum to propel a kick to the Golisopod’s jaw and knocking the insect onto its back. Newton spread his arms wide to catch Hierro with telekinesis and allow the Hawlucha to reorient himself in the air. Then, with a nod from Hierro, Newton sent him rocketing skyward again. At the peak of his arc, Hierro screamed at the top of his lungs and prepared to descend. The Golisopod’s eyes went wide with fear as the Hawlucha streaked down from the cloudless sky, and vanished in a flash of red light.
Hierro dropped to the sand and glared across the battlefield. The boss of the thieves grabbed a pokeball from his belt and shook it. “No! Get back out there and fight, you coward! Go go go!” But the ball refused to open, and the boss tried to force open the ball with his bare hands. “Gaaaaah! I’m not going down here!”
Isabelle grinned. “Looks like you’re all finished. Don’t make this any more embarrassing for yourselves.”
“No. No! This ain't over!” the boss snarled. “Bring out the big guns!”
One of his grunts started to shake his head. “But boss—”
“No buts! Just do it!” He grinned. “We’re gonna destroy them!”
Two of the grunts sighed. “Yo, if the boss says so, then we gotta do it, yo!” They each threw out another pokeball, and Alex saw Hierro brace himself to fight. The flashes of light were much brighter than before, and when it cleared, two towering forms loomed up behind the pokemon thieves.
“Well,” Isabelle said. “Crap.”
The Gyarados and Tyranitar roared in tandem. The Gyarados slithered into the water, and spectators who had gathered to watch the battle ran away screaming. The Tyranitar exhaled, and vents along its body released jets of pressurized air, kicking the sand up into a whirling cloud around it. Alex squinted against the lashing sand. “Hierro, get in close and go low!”
The Hawlucha took off at a sprint, but before he could close the distance, the Tyranitar turned its back and launched several jagged stone spines at Hierro. Two found their mark, and Hierro tumbled to the ground. When Mezzo moved to help, the Tyranitar blasted the Loudred with a pulse of black and red energy that drove Mezzo to his knees.
The Gyarados reared back and spewed a beam of orange and white light. Newton surged forward and threw up his arms, creating a wall of psychic power that managed to stop the blast before it reached the heroes. But the Kadabra was already straining to hold it, and Joshua threw up his hands as well, putting his considerable power behind his partner’s. “This is bad,” he groaned as sweat beaded on his brow.
“Secret identities be damned,” Alex said, and started to run forward to go to Hierro’s aid. If he could distract the Tyranitar, maybe Hierro could recover just enough to get in a lucky blow and then…
And then Hierro’s shadow wavered, and a dark shape burst into the heart of the sandstorm. The Dusknoir brought its hands together, and a ball of brilliant yellow-orange light appeared. It shoved its hands out, and the orb struck the Tyranitar in the center of its mass with enough power to lift it off the ground and send it flying through the air. People screamed and scrambled to get out of the way as the Tyranitar was flung into their midst. As quickly as it appeared, the Dusknoir vanished back into Hierro’s shadow only to appear a fraction of a second later from beneath a beach umbrella behind the Tyranitar and stop it cold with a powerful punch in the back.
The draconian pokemon cried out in pain as it collapsed on the ground, and the Dusknoir disappeared again as the sandstorm subsided. “How many times do Gregor and I have to show up and save your ass?” Edgar asked as he walked between Alex and Isabelle. “Ingrid, let’s finish this.”
A loud roar that shook the ground beneath Alex’s feet came from somewhere behind him, followed by a concussive boom. An Exploud shot out over the ocean, the wind howling through the hollow pipes on its head. A crackling nimbus of electricity surrounded its right hand, and it smashed its fist against the Gyarados’s spiky crest. There was a percussive boom of thunder as the energy in Forte’s fist exploded outwards, and the Gyarados went rigid as the lightning coursed through its veins. Forte crashed down in the surf and bellowed a challenge.
Ingrid stepped through the crowd, holding her low over her face. “Forte! Fortissimo!”
The Exploud dug his left hand into the wet sand to steady himself as the pipes on his head whistled like tea kettles. He opened his mouth wide and bellowed, sending a sonic pulse straight at the Gyarados, and making the leviathan crash into the water as the concussive force knocked it unconscious.
Ingrid grabbed her hat as the wind from the attack threatened to blow it off her head and placed a hand on Forte’s shoulder. “Now th-that’s how it’s done.” The Exploud smirked and turned towards the pokemon thieves.
The leader of the thieves bellowed in inarticulate rage, smacking the palms of his hands against his forehead. “Guuuoooaah! What are you doing?!” As far as Alex could tell, he was asking himself rather than his subordinates.
Isabelle strode across the battlefield and seized the man’s wrist, jerking him off balance. “We had a bargain. Return the pokemon you stole.”
The pink-haired woman rolled her eyes again and upended a satchel, and several pokeballs tumbled out. They flashed as they broke open, revealing the stolen pokemon. The bright light was enough of a distraction for the boss to wrench his hand from Isabelle’s grip as his subordinates returned their pokemon and sprinted away. “It doesn’t matter how many times you beat me down!” the boss shouted over his shoulder as he ran after the others. “I’ll still come back to beat you down harder!”
Isabelle and Alex started to run after them, but Edgar caught Alex’s arm. “Let them go. We’ve caused enough of a scene already, and Hierro’s not in any shape to fight right now.”
“But they’re getting away!”
“Either the local cops catch them or they don’t. We did everything we could, and it’s not our problem anymore.”
When Alex tried to protest, Joshua shook his head. “They’re all out of pokemon. Even if they do get away, they’ll think twice before they try something like this again.”
Ingrid returned Forte and Mezzo to their pokeballs and looked at the gathered crowd. “I think w-we should g-get g-going. This k-kind of attention is… n-not ideal.”
Isabelle sighed. “So much for my tan.” Then she raised her voice. “Hey, if those clowns stole your pokemon, come get ‘em back! We didn’t kick their butts for nothing!”
Once the trainers who had lost their pokemon started to come forward, Alex and the other heroes quickly made their exit back to their beach blanket and hastily packed up their things before retiring to the parking lot and piling into their cars.
As they cruised back down the highway into Clarus City, the midday heat baking down on the asphalt, Alex turned to Hierro. “How are you doing?” Hierro shrugged and gave a halfhearted thumbs up. None of his injuries in the fight against the Tyranitar had been serious, but the Hawlucha would likely be sore the next day. The worst blow had probably been to his pride. “Sorry I couldn’t jump in and help you,” Alex continued. “But you did look super cool fighting that Golisopod.”
Hierro perked up at the praise and chirped out a few notes, before motioning for Alex to continue heaping compliments on his battle prowess. Alex just laughed and gave Hierro a gentle shove. Isabelle glanced at them in the rearview mirror. “I was thinking,” she said, “that even if our beach day got cut short, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have our vacation.”
“Huh?”
“You know I have a pool back at my mansion, right?”
Alex rolled his eyes. “You were complaining you can’t work on your tan when you have a pool?”
“It’s different at the beach, okay? Do you guys want to come or not?”
Alex grinned. “Sure, sounds good!”
“Archangel?”
“Well, why not? Wait ‘til you see her pool, Alex. It’s huge.”
Isabelle picked up her phone from the cup holder. “Give Eddie a call and tell him that Ingrid should come and join us. And him too, I guess.” She keyed in her passcode and dropped it into Joshua’s lap. “He’s saved as ‘Tall Dark and Stupid’.”
Alex smiled and leaned back against the padded leather headrest. The pool in the city wasn’t exactly the same as the beach, even one as undoubtedly as impressive as the one at Forbes Manor, but a day off was a day off, and he was determined to make the most of it. Hierro stretched out in the seat next to him, the sunlight shining on the Hawlucha’s feathers. Alex absently smoothed down his partner’s feathered crest, sat back, and enjoyed the ride.
