The Fire in Their Eyes

Chapter 2

"Another one?" she asked, breathless, her sides heaving as she fought for air. Leaves lashed at her face as she ran, mud splattering on her clothes with every step she took. The air was tainted with the scent of oncoming rain.

The other nodded. "Spotted in this forest, just up ahead. A Nidoking."

Dread crept up her spine. Not again, she thought. "And you're sure it's ours?"

She couldn't say any more. Didn't need to, for as the bushes parted up ahead and the first drops of rain fell, she could spot a tint of purple, the bellows of rage and her teammate's frantic shouts.

Her stomach dropped. No.

But it was. The telltale red ribbon around the Nidoking's arm told it all. She skidded to a halt.

It was surrounded on all sides by eight of her own people. Outnumbered. Barraged by attacks. Yet it fought back easily, landing in blow after blow.

A teammate was blown back effortlessly like a leaf on the wind. He yelled as he flew backward. Candela pitched forward just in time to catch him before he crashed into a tree.

"Get more enforcements!" she told him. She shook his shoulders. "Do you understand me?" she said, yelling to be heard above the angry roars. "We need as many people we can find!"

A sudden movement. She ducked just in time as the Nidoking's tail swiped the air above her, seconds where her head had been. Twenty pounds of pure force. A blow like that would've crushed her skull.

Candela leaped back. "Victreebel!" she yelled, sending it out in a flash of white light. "Leaf storm!"

Instantly, the air became alive with wisps of green blurs, sharp-edged and quicker than lightning. They whizzed past her cheek. The Nidoking clenched its eyes shut and blocked its face with its thick arms. It bellowed angrily. The deafening noise was enough to make her knees go weak, but she didn't flinch. She couldn't. One wrong move, and they'd lose without knowing what hit them.

She turned to the others. "What are standing there for?" she spat. "Help me!"

Instantly, her teammates gained footing again. With her Victreebel in the lead, it was easy for them to raise their spirits. A long, uphill climb.

Candela dug her heels into the mud. The rain whipped past her, driven into needles by the wind.

"Hold your strongest attacks until the last!" she told them. "Drive the Nidoking backward! We have to corner him fir--"

The breath was driven out of her lungs. She could actually feel it whip past her, as though slapped by an invisible hand. Her eyes widened. Her own brown eyes met the Nidoking's own, and in the seconds that passed, she knew. She understood. She saw the power held in them, the fury, the wild anger, red-hot and unrelenting. It was too late to do anything. No time to scream, to dodge, to duck. She had underestimated it all.

If she had time, she would have spoken to it. Her lips parted. You were one of us once.

Then the claw glinted in the light and struck. She closed her eyes and braced herself.

Waited.

The pattering of rain on leaves.

A whoosh of air centimeters from her face.

A bone-crushing noise, a sickening thud, but it was not her own. Her eyes flew open just in time to see a girl flying through the air, her body spiraling. Up and around. It struck her then, to notice how small her body was, how frail. The girl flew like a bird and plummeted toward the ground like stone, noiselessly and without so much as a cry.