Ash's POV

I watched as a sturdy and obviously well cared for Gliscor appeared from the pokeball Aryan hurled into the sky and my heart dropped into my stomach. Well, this just took a turn for the worst, I thought internally. Gliscor and its pre-evolution Gligar were the only known Ground/Flying types in the world, which meant that most of Pikachu's attacks would be completely useless against it.

I need to start hiding my other pokemon with me somehow, I thought with a grimace before motioning Pikachu to come stand with me. Looking back, it probably would have been better to just fight Aryan and act like a proper Team Galactic Lackie... but when he accused me of trying to bring Serena over to Team Galactic I flipped. Honestly, I was so SO tired of the constant lies that I had to live with. I just wanted to make Aryan leave so Neptune wouldn't find out he was here and do who knows what to him. Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on him trying to "turn" me.

This is really not how I wanted my day to go, I thought with an internal sigh.

"Use Poison Jab," Aryan called out confidently. His Gliscor swooped through the air with a confidence to match his trainer's, heading straight for Pikachu.

"Use Quick Attack to dodge, Pikachu," I called out and watched as Pikachu zoomed impossibly fast away from the imminent attack. 

Gliscor's heavy claw missed Pikachu by a foot, but the pokemon didn't seem phased at all. It just calmly swooped back up into the air and began gliding swiftly through the air toward Pikachu's new location.

"Use the trees and get above it!" I called out to Pikachu, knowing we were at a disadvantage in this battle. Normally battles like this got my blood pumping, but I couldn't enjoy it with thoughts of Aryan being captured swirling through my head.

Having trained a Gliscor of my own in the past, I knew how powerful they were. But I also knew their weakness. Gliscor couldn't actually "fly". They used the air currents to glide through the air and had nearly the same control as a normal flying type. But if you could get them turned upside down, all of the wind would be literally knocked out from under them and they would plummet to the ground if they couldn't right themselves in time. It was a dirty trick, and I normally would never use a pokemon's weakness against them like that... But I needed Aryan to get out of here.

"Use Iron Tail on the edge of its wings, then follow up with Focus Blast!" I called out as Pikachu leaped from the tallest branch of a tree, putting him on an equal playing field as Gliscor for a moment.

"Use Night Slash, Gliscor," Aryan called at nearly the same time.

I growled in frustration when Pikachu was unable to dodge the arc of dark power flung toward him. Pikachu took the hit but managed to maneuver himself so that he was flipping through the air down toward Gliscor. With his tail covered in a layer of metal, Pikachu arched his back and managed to snag the tip of his jagged tail onto the edge of Gliscor's wing. Gliscor dipped to the side from the unexpected weight and his clawed tail whipped underneath him, coming in to smack Pikachu off.

My eyes widened when Pikachu noticed the impending battering ram. In a split second, he bounced his tail off of Gliscor's wing and latched onto Gliscor's tail that had been meant to knock him off. Pikachu's transfer of weight caused his opponent to wobble dangerously in the air and I could see from the corner of my eye that Aryan was frowning heavily. Quick as lightning, Pikachu climbed up Gliscor's bumpy tail and leaped up, landing on Gliscor's shoulder.

"Knock him off and use Guillotine, Gliscor!" Aryan shouted up at his pokemon.

"Get him turned around, buddy!" I called, knowing that Pikachu was seriously in trouble if Gliscor got his claw on him. Guillotine was a finishing move where if the pokemon using it actually got a hold of their opponent it was almost guaranteed to make them faint. I believed in Pikachu though and watched resolutely to see what would happen.

I grimaced as Gliscor faced down toward the earth and went into a screaming nose dive. Pikachu was desperately holding onto Gliscor, trying not to let the G-force rip him off his back. I could almost see Pikachu's frustration at this situation and I let out a gasp when he forced his hind legs under him and then kicked with all the force he could muster. He shot away from Gliscor, who had bobbled in the air from Pikachu's unexpected launch-powered escape from his back. Gliscor recovered almost immediately though and straightened out to chase after Pikachu, who was now falling through the air.

My hands clenched into fists as Gliscor's glowing claws closed in on Pikachu, aiming for his neck. Pikachu was far from giving up, though. Just as Gliscor was about to close his claws on him he brought his small paws up and a ball of fighting power burst into life in front of him. Gliscor's outstretched claws slammed into the close-range Focus Blast and both of them rocketed away from each other.

"Pikachu!" I yelled, springing into a sprint as I helplessly watched Pikachu head straight for a tree trunk. But I was too late. 

Pikachu's small body smacked into the trunk of the tree so hard I could hear the thud even from down below. His little body peeled off the trunk and started falling, twisting and turning as he smacked into tree limbs on his way down. I leaped underneath his falling body and caught him in my arms before landing inches away from the tree trunk myself.

"Pikachu! Pikachu, are you okay?" I yelled frantically, bouncing him gently in my arms. Pikachu's ears twitched and he looked up at me with a tiny smirk but he winced as he nodded his head.

"Your Pikachu is impressive," Aryan commented and I turned to see him returning his fainted Gliscor. "Not many pokemon can hold their own in an aerial fight like that."

Normally I would be happy to receive a compliment for Pikachu and his strength, but my nerves were just about fried. All I wanted was to get Pikachu back to the hideout and have a pokemon with healing powers look at him.

"He beat your Gliscor so get out of here already," I growled, marching in the direction of Mount Coronet. I halted though when Aryan shook his head and gave me what seemed to be a legitimately sorrowful look.

"Sorry, man, but I need you to help me find someone important to me. I'm not letting you go," Aryan said, reaching for another pokeball on his belt. "Let's go, Salamence."

If my heart had dropped into my stomach earlier it was now somewhere in my intestines when I saw the massive dragon appear in front of me. If Pikachu hadn't just potentially broken every bone in his little body I would have no fear facing down this monstrosity, but I wasn't going to risk hurting my partner.

"I'm telling you you're making a mistake, you idiot Detective!" I yelled, feeling my anger rising exponentially. "Just get out of here while you can!"

Aryan shook his head and his Salamence looked back at him, seemingly confused about what was going on.

"Grab him and let's get out of here," Aryan stated simply. 

His Salamence immediately twisted his neck to look at me and I growled, clutching Pikachu's body to my chest. Before I could turn and run though, an electric current raced from Pikachu's body into my own and zapped me, causing me to drop him. He landed on his feet and awkwardly leaped forward two steps to take a protective stance in front of me.

"Pi pi pikachu!" Pikachu faced the dragon type that was ten times larger than him and I could tell he was trying to get him to understand what we couldn't tell his trainer. Salamence paused and looked down at my battered friend with an obviously mistrustful glare.

"Salamence, stop stalling, We need them to find Looker," Aryan said firmly while pointing towards me. 

Salamence obviously was loyal to his trainer because he flapped his wings and hovered in the small clearing. With his huge claws outstretched, Salamence dived towards me. I was frozen in a moment of indecision between going to Pikahcu or somersaulting out of Salamence's reach, but my eyes widened in shock when I saw a familiar electrically charged little body zooming through the sky toward Salamence.

With all of his remaining strength, Pikachu slammed into the large Salamence's side with a Volt Tackle, knocking him off course and causing him to fall to the ground in a heap. Pikachu crashed to the ground himself though, going limp from exhaustion and battling through his injuries.

The next few moments seem to go by in slow motion. I could feel my muscles expanding and contracting as I ran toward my fallen partner. The sound of an aggravated roar penetrated my eardrums at the same time as Aryan's deep voice commanded it to calm down. Something red and orange flickered from the corner of my eye and without any hesitation, I dove for my partner's unconscious form on the ground. Blindingly hot flames shot across the top half of my back and my arm and I couldn't keep myself from crying out from the agonizing pain.

"Stop! Salamence, stop!"

The flames finally subsided and I let out a shuddering breath, trying my best not to move as my skin sang with scorching heat. Pikachu was completely knocked out and I pressed him even tighter against my chest, silently begging him to hold on.

"Satoshi! Oy, Satoshi, are you okay?" Aryan's mortified expression hovered above me in a watery haze and I realized that tears were pooling in my eyes.

"Please," I said through gritted teeth, trying my best not to move my sizzling flesh. "Please just go."

"KILLIAN!" A panicked female voice shouted from somewhere beyond me and I groaned even louder.

Aryan's face disappeared from my field of vision and the sounds of a quick battle ensued. It sounded like Aryan was outnumbered and when his booted foot came into view it took all of my willpower to move my screaming shoulder so I could grab onto his ankle. Aryan startled and looked down at me. I didn't care if I was begging at this point. I just wanted him to leave so Serena wouldn't have to lose her friend.

"Go!" I yelled as loudly as I could. Aryan looked like I had hit him in the gut but after another explosion and a roar of pain from his Salamence, he grit his teeth and nodded.

"I'm sorry. I'll come back for you," Aryan said with remorse in his brown eyes.

I let my hand flop away from his ankle and finally released a sigh of relief when Aryan sprinted away from me. I was in too much pain to move, but from the outraged yells of Celeste and the other grunts she had brought along, it seemed like Aryan just narrowly made his escape. Pikachu's battered body twitched slightly against my chest and I held him even closer to me.

"Sorry, buddy. I really messed things up this time," I groaned out, trying my best to ignore the stinging pain in my arm and back. That Salamence had been incredibly strong if it could let loose a flamethrower this devastating.

"Killian! Killi... Oh my Arceus..." I forced my head up to look at Celeste's slight frame and could see that her face had gone deathly pale as she took in my injuries.

"Satoshi!!" Marcus dropped to his knees next to me and I was shocked to see he looked close to tears. "What happened to you? Are you okay?"

"Of course he's not okay, you idiot," Celeste snapped, seeming to pull herself out of her momentary shock. She kicked Marcus in the shoulder, knocking him over and pointing somewhere behind her.

"Take another grunt with you and run for the medical supplies. Have the rest start building a stretcher to carry him on. Go. Now!" 

Marcus nearly fell in his haste to obey Celeste's commands. As they waited for the others to return Celeste pulled her flask of water from her hip and I noticed that her hands were shaking.

"You and you!" Celeste barked at people who were outside of my view. "Give me your handkerchiefs. If you don't have any, cut your shirts into strips. Now."

A handkerchief was passed to Celeste and I could hear the sounds of ripping cloth coming from behind me at the same time as I heard the sound of someone dry heaving.

That bad, huh? I thought to myself as I tried my best to focus on Pikachu instead of the excruciating pain of my burned skin. Celeste poured water over the handkerchief and then kneeled in front of me. She hesitated before she reached out and laid the wet cloth against my shoulder. My entire body stiffened at the insane amount of pain signals racing to my brain telling me that I was NOT okay and it was all I could do not to scream out in agony.

"I'm sorry, Killian," Celeste said, her voice low and sounding like she was trying to hold back tears. "Just hold on, okay? We'll get you to the healers and you'll be just fine."

The next few minutes were torture as Celeste alternated between laying strips of wet cloth on my burns and cutting away my uniform so she could assess how much surface the burn covered.

"It's not supposed to be like this," I heard Celeste mutter under her breath as she worked. "None of us were supposed to get hurt. Neptune promised. No one else."

I furrowed my brow at her but I could hardly register anything other than the pain that I was in. Although I did notice that my breathing was getting a little funny. I pressed Pikachu tighter against my chest as I began to feel my senses becoming numb from the pain.

Oh... this is shock, huh? Funny, I thought my body could handle pain better than this, I thought to myself sluggishly as my breathing became much more rapid and shallow. I was getting lightheaded but I fought through the fogginess as I clutched onto my partner to try and keep myself grounded.

"Hang in there, Killian. Just a little longer." Celeste's voice seemed to be coming from far away and my vision became splotchy with black dots.

Today really is not my day, I thought to myself as I stubbornly hung on to my last shreds of consciousness.

Celeste's POV

As Killian moaned from the pain he was in, I was trying to remain calm as his breathing began to accelerate. The other grunts who had come running with me when Marcus told us some random trainer attacked Killian were all standing around looking anxious. But there was nothing more that I knew to do for a burn of this degree.

How did someone take Killian down like this? The kid is a freakin' wonderboy when it comes to pokemon battles, I thought to myself, trying to hold onto the gruffness that I used as a shield. That shield was slowly but surely cracking though as I watched Killian pressing his Pikachu protectively against his chest, even though he was in so much agony.

This kid is too pure to be involved with us wackjobs, Celeste thought bitterly as she helplessly listened to his breathing continue to accelerate alarmingly.

"Celeste!" I flinched when I heard my name being screamed through the forest, but when I turned I let out a shuddering sigh of relief. The grunts had created an ugly rendition of a homemade stretcher made of tree branches and shirts stretched between them but it would do.

Under my direction, the grunts cautiously transferred Killian onto the stretcher so that he was lying on his uninjured side. The movement caused Killian to moan in pain but he opened his glassy eyes briefly and let out a garbled thank you. Our whole group then turned as one and began jogging through the forest. Killian's gasps and moans of pain accompanied us the whole way back to the mountain and I could feel my nerves getting more and more frazzled.

Honestly, I was surprised at how much this was affecting me. Back when Cyrus was the leader of Team Galactic my parents and much older brother were his followers. When Dialga and Palkia were summoned though they caused a terrible earthquake and my brother died after being crushed by a gigantic piece of rock knocked out of the ceiling.

My parents and I were devastated, but when they caught wind that Charon was working on fulfilling Cyrus's dream of creating a new world, they sought him out. That was when I first met Neptune. I remembered her as incredibly intimidating. Even though she was only a couple of years older than me, she was insanely smart and beautiful to boot. She and her grandfather Charon were almost always holed up in their research lab doing something or other complicated, and I admired her a lot.

Then Detective Looker came in with a whole army of police in tow and everything was destroyed. I would never know how exactly it happened, but during the chaos, my father was killed and Neptune's grandfather was taken into custody. My mom and I moved back to our old home that I hadn't seen since the early years of my childhood and I naively thought that maybe we could start over. That was not to be though. The neighborhood found out that my mom had been a part of Team Galactic and they completely turned on her. People vandalized our home and called US the monsters even as they spat at us and kicked rocks at us when we were going down the street.

I begged mom to let us move, but she stubbornly refused to leave behind the memories of my father and brother that were all throughout our family home. Then one day when I was walking back from school, I turned down the street where the local convenience store was and I heard the sounds of intense arguing. Several of our neighbors had cornered my mom outside of the convenience store with her hands full of groceries and they were having a shouting match in broad daylight. I started running toward them to try and diffuse the situation, but before I got to them, one of the women reached out and shoved my mom as hard as she could.

Nightmares still plagued me with re-enactments of how my mom stumbled and her head smacked directly on the corner of a brick flower bed near the front of the store. Her whole body had gone limp and blood gushed from the wound on her head. She died that day. The court that took on my mother's case had ruled it an accidental death and they only required the woman who killed my mother to pay for her burial expenses.

At my absolute lowest point, Neptune suddenly appeared back into my life. She picked up my broken pieces and gave me a goal to live for. The chance to start over in a new world free from the cruelties and atrocities that I had gone through. I turned a blind eye to Neptune's experimentation since I knew she had a similar story to my own and desperately wanted a world with zero ties to this warped and cruel place the Creation Pokemon had given us.

Ever since my mother was murdered in front of my eyes I thought I had closed my heart off to anyone and everyone. It just hurt too much to care for anyone other than myself. So when Killian walked into Mount Coronet and started yelling for the world to hear that he wanted to join us I immediately distrusted him. In my recruitment, I had been INCREDIBLY careful to never mention where our base was located, just in case some undercover cop was in attendance, so it made no sense that he could know where we were.

I took him in just to shut him up and keep an eye on the idiot, and the weirdest thing was that he truly did seem like an idiot. He was so stupidly straightforward and unendingly optimistic that I realized he probably had just come here since he knew of Team Galactic's history with the place and hoped for the best when he started yelling like a madman. I had been shocked and a little disturbed when Neptune started to show an interest in the idiot.

My admiration for her in my younger years had since cooled into a healthy wariness. Even though she was my benefactor and I was completely loyal to her, something in me wanted to keep her darkness hidden from our imbecilic new recruit. So when she announced that she was promoting the sap to be a Major, I was adamantly against it. Neptune wouldn't listen to me though and the idiot just went along with it.

I thought it might not be too bad when at first he was just made a teacher for the grunts battle training. But when he joined us on our raids to collect pokemon for Neptune's experiments I was shocked at how emotional I became when he asked me what Neptune did with the pokemon. I didn't want to taint someone who seemed so kind and obviously loved pokemon more than anything. But even after learning the horrendous truth, he chose to stay, and ever since then, I had found myself wanting to look out for him. 

Now, this had happened. The first person I actually let myself care for like family and it was my mom all over again. Killian let out a sharp yelp of pain as the grunts jostled him accidentally while getting over a large tree root.

"Be careful!" I growled while shooting them a glare. Both guys nodded silently.

One of them was Marcus, who had come to get me as soon as he caught up to my group. When he said that some random trainer attacked Killian an unexpected rush of fear had gone through me. I hadn't even waited to hear what else he had to say before I took off in the direction he'd come from. Never again would I be too late to help save my family. Marcus looked close to tears as he gripped the tree branches in his hands so tightly I was sure the bark was digging into his palms. I was sure the guilt he was feeling at leaving Killian was immense, but I was still stunned that Killian and his Pikachu had actually lost a battle.

"Gah!" Killian's gasp of pain pulled me from my thoughts.

I turned to see that he had tilted slightly in the stretcher so his burned back was pressed against the side. I slowed my pace only slightly and reached over to hold onto his uninjured wrist. To my surprise, Killian twisted his hand to hold onto mine, squeezing my hand as tightly as he was squeezing his eyes shut, even as he continued to hold his Pikachu firmly against his chest with his arm. I held onto his hand, ignoring the pain his ridiculous grip was causing as I hoped that his squeezing could distract him even a little from his pain.

"Just hold on, Killian. We'll get you back and the doctors will get you all fixed up," I said firmly, not allowing myself to consider any other option.

"Pika... chu..." Killian gasped out. I couldn't help but shake my head in shock at this guy's selflessness.

"Obviously we'll get your Pikachu taken care of too," I stated with a sniff. Killian's grip on my hand relaxed slightly and I thought I saw him crack a faint smile.

"Thanks," he breathed out. That seemed to have taken most of his remaining energy and I held tightly onto his hand which was becoming laxer and laxer.

"Don't you dare give up, idiot," I warned under my breath as I ran alongside the stretcher.