What had started as a straightforward clean-up turned into something far more urgent.
The quicksand spiralled downward like a whirlpool, and rising from that churning vortex came a pale-green Dragon Claw.
A Flygon at level seventy was not going to be stopped by loose sand. As the apex predator of the desert, freeing itself from a collapse like that was only ever a matter of time.
No one knew exactly how long this Flygon had been held captive by Taylor, or how many doses of harmful substances she had been forced to endure. Whatever the number, it had left her temperament volatile and unpredictable.
And in a barren stretch of desert where food was scarce, wild Pokémon took what they could find. Reports of Flygon attacking humans were not common, but they were not unheard of either.
From that perspective, humans were very much on the menu. Having just clawed her way back to the surface, the Flygon was almost certainly starving — and half a Taylor was not going to come close to satisfying her.
That thought moved Nova quickly. He dug a shallow pit at a safe distance from the sinkhole, dropped Taylor inside, and stepped back.
After everything Taylor had been through, the Original Team officer was barely conscious. His breathing was faint, and lying still in the sand, he looked very much like he had already given up.
With the body disposed of, Nova moved more than ten metres away. He had no intention of being caught between a hungry, Elite-level Flygon and the man who had kept her captive.
If Flygon surfaced and chose to take out her fury on Taylor, Nova would not interfere. A bounty was not worth throwing his life away against a wild Pokémon of that strength on its home territory.
If she turned on Nova instead, he would have no way to run. He would have to fight.
What actually happened was neither.
With a violent tremor, Flygon burst free from the sandy whirlpool and rose into the air above it. Her crimson compound eyes swept briefly over Taylor's crumpled form, then moved on — and settled on Nova.
That she had recovered her senses so quickly, shaking off both the physical damage and the effects of prolonged drug exposure, said everything about the level she had reached. Nova could only admire it.
It was also very bad news for him.
If she had still been in a berserk state, he might have had a real chance with Nidoking and Corviknight fighting together. Against a calm, fully aware opponent of Elite calibre — even with Nidoking still in good condition and Corviknight freshly evolved and significantly stronger — a two-on-one felt like a losing proposition.
But she was not attacking. She was just staring at him — or more precisely, at something he was carrying.
Nova's first instinct was the egg sitting in his backpack. The golden-potential Pokémon egg he had been holding onto.
Of course. It was her egg. He had taken it right in front of her, which was, by any reasonable measure, not something to be proud of.
However much he wanted that egg, he was not going to take a child from its mother while she was standing right there watching him.
Nova opened his pack, carefully took out the reddish-brown egg — smooth except for a single dark line running around its middle like a crack — and set it gently on the sand. Then he stepped back, giving Flygon clear space to take it.
She still did not move. Her eyes remained fixed on him.
Nova followed her gaze and realised she was looking at his belt.
His belt. The only things on it were his Poké Balls. Was she actually asking him to catch her?
That was not something he could take seriously. He was not the kind of trainer that wild Pokémon lined up to join. The idea of an Elite-level Pokémon volunteering to be caught was the sort of thing that happened in stories, not in the Black Rock Desert.
Flygon's wings beat steadily overhead, sending gusts of gritty air washing over him.
Then it clicked.
He had seen this exact scene earlier that same day — another Flygon, gripping its prey, flying hard across the open desert sky.
Nova understood what she wanted.
The egg meant nothing to her. It had been produced under duress, under the influence of substances forced on her against her will. If she had cared about offspring born in those conditions, she would not have brought the entire underground lab down with a single Earthquake.
What she cared about was her mate. The one who, even after her capture and everything that followed, had not given up on her. The one who had flown all the way to the Kuoye Steppe to hunt, carrying prey back across the desert without rest.
Nova had taken the egg. He had also, he now realised, been holding her mate captive in a Poké Ball.
That she had not attacked him on sight — that she had waited, patiently, for him to work it out himself — was far more restraint than he deserved.
"I— right, yes," Nova said, clearing his throat. "I'll release him."
He took out the Poké Ball and opened it. The male Flygon that had been captured earlier emerged onto the sand. Despite everything — the battle, the defeat, the time spent inside the Ball — he had managed to recover some strength. And having witnessed through the Ball how Nova had helped rescue his mate from underground, he did not come out looking for a fight. He launched himself skyward without hesitation, rising to meet her.
The reunion was immediate. The male nuzzled close, and she met him without pulling away.
Nova looked between them. The female was noticeably larger — a good fifty percent bigger than her mate, and at least a couple of levels above him by any measure.
He kept that observation to himself.
The pair showed no interest in Nova after that. No demand for the prey the male had been carrying. No acknowledgement of the egg still sitting on the sand. No reaction at all to the fact that Nova had roughed up the husband considerably before capturing him.
Nova watched them rise together and disappear beyond the desert horizon, two shapes growing smaller until the haze swallowed them entirely.
He quietly hoped the male Flygon would enjoy a long and peaceful life. Somehow, he suspected the female would make sure of it.
Nova arrived back at Sand Village on the fourth day after setting out.
The Black Rock Desert was not the kind of place anyone crossed by bicycle. The trip out had taken two and a half days, the battle had eaten up half a day more, and even with Corviknight carrying him on the return, the flight back had been nearly two hours. He was well past the time he had arranged to meet Mr. Leon.
At noon on the day Nova had found Taylor, Mr. Leon had already called the police.
The Security Officer who took the call initially assumed it was a prank. A report about an Original Team officer named Taylor, operating out of an underground base in the middle of the desert, based entirely on a tip from someone staying in an abandoned village — it did not exactly sound credible.
But Mr. Leon was thorough. He went through everything Nova had told him, piece by piece — every detail from Sand Village, every observation about what was happening out there.
The tone on the other end of the line changed.
A recluse in a deserted hamlet was easy to dismiss. A Professional Trainer's read on a situation was something else. Especially one who had already stepped in to stop a violent hijacking less than a week before.