CH64 (428), Well, That Escalated Quickly (5)

After the Slythering Six left along with Mothra/Butterfree and Horus/Xatu, the pressure on the defensive line increased by quite a bit, and the Ekans and Arbok had to struggle quite a bit more. Thankfully, my side had no problem compensating for their departure.

Anyway, it did not take long for sounds of battle to come from the back, signaling that Mothra and Horus had initiated their boss fights. Still, multiple things happened at once after those battle sounds appeared, taking me, and probably everyone on our side by surprise.

The biggest among the surprises was probably the ambush aimed at boss Arbok. While our attention was drawn to the noise coming from the back, a Sandslash jumped out from below ground and attacked boss Arbok, who stood less than 30 meters to my left.

I honestly thought that Arbok was done for. I could feel the fluctuations coming from the Sandslash and the energy it was giving off told me that it was at the dark gold stage as well. Due to that, I could not help but think that Arbok would either get seriously injured or if worst comes to worst, even die after I saw Sandslash's gleaming claw heading for Arbok's head.

However, in an impressive feat of reaction speed and flexibility, Arbok managed to twist his body, swerve past the claw with but a scratch, and block Sandslash's claw from reaching its target with his gleaming tail. From the noise and sparks their clash caused, I was absolutely convinced that they were using Metal Claw and Iron Tail respectively.

I heard Arbok roar in anger after successfully blocking/escaping the ambush and angrily demanding to know why Sandslash appeared since his tribe had left the south alone. This confirmed that the assailant was the boss of the Sandslash tribe in the south, and that apparently, the bosses of the Furret and Linoone tribes had managed to rope the Sandslash tribe into their attack as well.

I actually saw the boss Sandslash shrug when it said that it was promised the southern half of Arbok's territory in return for taking part in the attack. The whole thing screamed "It's just business. What can you do?" to me, and even Arbok seemed surprised at the blase way Sandslash delivered its answer.

Still, Sandslash's ambush was not the only thing that happened, since concurrently with its ambush, another 6 gold-stage Pokemon made an appearance. 4 of those were Sandslash, while the other two were another Furret and Linoone. Moreover, they did not come alone but brought along a batch of silver stage Sandslash.

Sadly, all my gold-stage Pokemon that were not part of Mothra's attack were already tied up. They were fighting against the gold-stage Pokemon that had taken part in the tide from the beginning. The same was true for the weaker two gold-stage Arbok, so when the 6 new gold-stage foes arrived, only the stronger two gold-stage Arbok were available to face them and the two only managed to tie up two of the Sandslash.

The good news was that those two were the only (mid) gold-stage Pokemon among the new arrivals and the bad news was that the other 4 were free to rampage around with no one to stop them. Furthermore, those 4 seemed to be intent on causing as much damage as possible since they were ignoring both my Pokemon as well as the stronger Arbok.

Instead, they kept attacking any Ekans and "weak" Arbok around them. By the time I decided to have some of my Pokemon block them, they had killed or maimed close to a hundred Ekans/Arbok.

That was quite a lot since a minute had passed at most before I asked Abzu/Milotic and Tiamat/Milotic to deal with the rampaging two (low) gold-stage Sandslash. Enji/Arcanine and Shino/Yanmega to deal with the (low) gold stage Linoone as well as Furret respectively.

The situation was heating up, and while my Pokemon were somewhat forcing the situation into a stalemate, it was obvious that our side was slowly but surely falling into a disadvantage due to the sudden arrival of the Sandslash. The number of casualties among the Ekans and Arbok was increasing, and the number of injuries among the Butterfree and Beedrill squads was increasing as well.

I had to emergency evacuate a few Butterfree and Beedrill who had suffered critical damage and would have most likely died if not for my timely interference. Honestly, it was a bit funny seeing the Sandslash looking perplexed when the Pokemon they just mauled suddenly vanished, but the fact that it was my Pokemon that they were mauling took the humor out of the situation for me.

I also evacuated those that had been hurt past a certain degree. That meant anyone that had lost half or more of their combat capability. My main fighters were not unharmed either, but despite being injured to various degrees, none of them had lost more than a tenth of their combat capacity so far.

I made sure to dedicate my second thought stream to keeping an eye on all of them so that I could evacuate them in case they got seriously injured or were too exhausted to keep fighting properly. Was it a grossly unfair advantage compared to everyone else? Maybe, but did I care? Absolutely not.

While I was keeping track of the battles happening everywhere, I noticed that boss Arbok was at disadvantage during the fight against boss Sandslash, and his situation was worsening with each minute that their fight continued.

Thankfully he had yet to suffer any serious injury, but the number of small injuries was beginning to pile up, and after a certain point quantity also turned into quality. The fact that he had landed a few good hits on Sandslash was only a small consolation, and I was just hoping that he would hold out long enough for Horus and Mothra to finish up on their end.

Honestly, the whole affair was pretty tragic. I just saw another Ekans evolve into an Arbok due to desperation because it was being attacked by one of the free silver stage Sandslash. Sadly only a few of them managed to resist their attacker even after their evolution, and this one was not one of them. While no one attacked it during its evolution, they did resume their attack after the evolution was done.

It managed to resist for close to two minutes before Sandslash skewed its claw through its hood and spine. Those claws of theirs could be truly dangerous as I had witnessed multiple times by now. A few minutes later I turned to my "bodyguards", Manami/Lapras, Hashirama/Venusaur, Saphira/Altaria, and Osiris/Marowak, who were fighting with any attackers that came close to us.

Still, they would have been capable of doing so much more if they went out fighting, especially Manami, who was the only gold-stage Pokemon of mine that was not involved in the "big" fights at the forefront. It was exactly for that reason I tried to persuade Manami, Hashirama, and Osiris to go out and involved in the main fight.

They only agreed after I promised to relocate high into the air along with Saphira, and that I would stay up there until the fighting down here had been resolved, or more of my Pokemon came to my side to protect me. I swiftly did as I promised and moved roughly a hundred meters into the air. Saphira flew up beside me and made sure to fly/glide around.

Meanwhile, Manami, Hashirama, as well as Osiris moved up now that they were free, and their involvement stabilized the situation by a lot. Manami and Osiris focused on dealing with the Sandslash scuttling around and Hashirama focused on closing the gap that had opened in the defensive wall due to the "patch-up" assignments I had to give out.

He made use of his wide range of aoe moves and proved as useful in repelling the attackers as two or even three silver-stage Pokemon. Also, after moving up I connected my vision with Saphira so that I could continue properly observing the situation down below.

Unfortunately, while my movement stabilized the situation somewhat, I noticed that the situation of boss Arbok had become pretty bad by now. Actually, I was not optimistic about his situation at all and decided that I had to intervene because I felt that Arbok would fall in a few more minutes if I didn't.

I focused on the boss fight happening at the back and saw Mothra and Horus dominating their battles, while the Slythering Six had practically created a vacuum around the boss fights, keeping the other Pokmeon from interfering/helping their bosses.

Still, from the look of things, it would take the two a few more minutes to knock out their opponent. Yes, my Pokmeon had calmed down a bit by now and were no longer trying to kill their opponent, but to knock them out instead, which was arguably harder than just killing them.

Anyway, while it was great that they would be done in a few minutes, I doubted that Arbok would be able to hold out that long, so I kept an eye on Mothra's fight. Once I managed to spot a moment in which I could address her without distracting her and causing an accident, I told her to leave her opponent to Stan and come to my side.

She did not hesitate at all and directly flew in my direction, after hurling her foe back for a bit. She simply left her opponent looking after her retreating back. Fortunately, I told Stan to take her place directly after I spoke to Mothra, so he directly took her place, which gave boss Linoone no time to make use of its momentary leeway.

Leaving that aside, once Mothra arrived in front of me, I told her to take on the boss Sandslash instead to help boss Arbok, but to make sure to not let her guard down around boss Arbok in case he attempted something stupid.

Mothra saluted before diving down, heading straight to the fight between boss Sandslash and boss Arbok. Her speedy plunge allowed her to take the boss Sandslash by surprise, and she slapped him away from boss Arbok with a Steel Wing before either of them could react.

She only briefly gave Arbok a wave/greeting before she flew after Sandslash, who had been sent behind the lines, a bit away from the fights that were happening. It was a brilliant move on her part since her action reduced any possible collateral damage her battle with Sandslash could have caused.

Anyway, she lost no time in engaging Sandlash in a fight, and after observing the battle for a minute, I could without a doubt say that she was doing a much, much better job than Arbok had been doing. I could not help but laugh at Sandslash's poleaxed look when Mothra used a Hydro Pump, and I was not the only one since Saphira had to laugh as well.

I also kept an eye on boss Arbok, who now had room to breathe, to see what he would do. One thing I could say was that he looked quite bad, with all those wounds and blood on his body. Well, Arbok did not immediately rush into the thick of it to help its underlings but rested for a minute or two to stabilize his situation a bit.

I was pretty sure he used Stockpile as well as Swallow for that, and while that combo was not a miracle cure like some would believe, it closed Arbok's wounds, preventing him from bleeding out, and gave him somewhat of a second wind. He was obviously not at his best, but I was sure that he could at least help deal with the silver-stage foes that were still at large.

It seemed that he thought so as well since he ignored the ongoing gold stage battles and began hunting down the silver stage Pokemon that were doing the most damage to his Ekans. Naturally, his actions did not go unnoticed, and I saw the gold stage battles intensifying due to the other side trying to rush toward boss Arbok.

There was no doubt that they wanted to stop him, but they could not get away from the battle which forced them to fight more ferociously in hopes of finishing as fast as possible. I was happy with that development. While it was true that the battles had become a bit riskier/more dangerous, it was also a fact that their behavior had a higher chance of resulting in mistakes.

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