Pokemon: Criminal Life

Chapter 231: 231-The Wrong Place

They flew south over open water, Honchkrow and Garchomp cutting through the sea wind at a comfortable pace, and below them, Sharpedo and Milotic ran escort through the surface chop.

The contrast between the two was immediate and specific. Milotic moved with long, flowing undulations, iridescent scales catching whatever light made it through the surface and scattering it in all directions. Sharpedo moved the way Sharpedo always moved: direct, fast, no wasted motion, the water breaking around its fin and closing back into a churning white wake that stretched out behind it like a comet trail.

They were, Sieg, noticed, quietly keeping score against each other.

It had started around the second kilometer, when a Tentacruel surfaced ahead of them and both Pokémon went for it simultaneously. Milotic got there first by maybe half a second. Sharpedo, rather than pulling off, adjusted course and hit the next one that came up a moment later, and then made a point of getting there first. The Tentacruel didn't present any real challenge to either of them at their respective levels. This stretch of water, close enough to the coast that deeper species rarely came up, was well within both of their ranges. This freed up a surprising amount of bandwidth for the competition happening alongside the actual job.

"Your Sharpedo's completely in its element out here," Cynthia said from Garchomp's back, watching the white wake below. "The speed in open water is something else."

"It's what it was built for." Sieg watched it clear another encounter in two passes and immediately checked back on where Milotic was in the count. "I don't think it is expected company worth keeping up with."

From the look Milotic gave Sharpedo after that exchange, the feeling was mutual.

The trainers above them had largely handed the surface off to the two of them. Wild encounters at this range and depth were below the threshold where direct command added much, the Pokémon knew what to do, and letting them work through it on their own terms built the kind of combat instinct that couldn't be drilled in from the outside. Sieg and Cynthia both operated on that principle without needing to discuss it, which Sieg noted as a small but useful piece of information about how Cynthia ran her team.

Good trainers gave their Pokémon room. The best ones knew exactly when to take it back.

The island had been visible on the horizon for a while before it resolved into something with real detail. And it was around the point where the water below them shifted from coastal-shallow to genuinely deep that both of them spotted the problem at the same time.

"That's a Kingler," Sieg said.

"It is," Cynthia said. "Why is a Kingler out here?"

Kingler lived in shallow water. Beaches, tidal zones, and rocky coastal margins where the bottom was close enough to the surface to matter. What was sitting half-submerged below them, waving a claw the size of a small boulder at Sharpedo and Milotic as they circled at a cautious distance, was not in any habitat it was supposed to be in.

"Something pushed it out," Sieg said. "Or it followed something it shouldn't have."

He looked at the claw again.

Kingler's large claw was normally on the left. This one had it on the right, the oversized one, the one built for Crabhammer, sitting on the wrong side of the body. The smaller, weaker claw where the big one should have been. It wasn't a huge difference at a glance, but once you knew what you were looking for, it was obvious. A developmental mutation, the kind that happened rarely enough to be notable when it did.

Cynthia had already seen it. She didn't say anything, just filed it with the same expression she used for things that were interesting and potentially relevant later.

"Hit it first," Sieg said. "Sharpedo, Crunch."

Cynthia was already moving. "Milotic, Whirlpool, then Twister."

Sharpedo peeled off from its orbit, drove straight in, and hit Kingler's shell with a Dark-type bite that went through most of the outer layer's resistance and left the force of it sitting inside. Kingler felt that. It swung the big right claw down hard, water-type energy building around it fast, Crabhammer, the same move Crawdaunt ran as its signature, and Kingler's version wasn't weak.

Sharpedo was already gone.

It didn't wait to see if the hit was coming. The claw came down on water, throwing a spray that caught the light and made a brief, small rainbow against the dark sea. Kingler spun in the wrong direction, weight unbalanced by the oversized right claw pulling it into a lurch whenever it moved too fast.

Milotic's Whirlpool came in while Kingler was still recovering its footing, a circling column of water that latched onto it and started pulling. Then the Twister hit the same spot and the two effects compounded, the rotational forces working together and leaving Kingler churning in place, furious but not going anywhere useful.

"Water Pulse," Cynthia said.

"Hidden Power," Sieg said.

Both commands landed within a second of each other.

Milotic's Water Pulse hit Kingler center-mass, and the confusion effect triggered, which at twenty percent odds was not guaranteed and was always welcome when it landed. Kingler's already uncertain coordination got worse, the lopsided claw swinging at angles that made no tactical sense, the smaller claw not doing much better.

Then Sharpedo's Hidden Power Electric came in from the side, gold-bright, and hit a Water-type that was already down to confused, motion-restricted, and structurally off-balance.

The sea went flat.

Kingler floated, eyes spiraled, bubbles rising slowly around it from wherever the electric charge had dispersed. Done.

Sieg and Cynthia both looked at it for a moment from above.

"Still bothered by where it was," Sieg said.

"Me too." Cynthia was looking ahead at the platform, now close enough to make out individual features of the structure. "If something's forcing Kingler that far from the coast, the interior of that building is going to be more interesting than the briefing suggested."

"Or more crowded."

"Those tend to go together."

The island was right ahead of them now, the Sea Mauville platform sitting at its edge like something that hadn't quite finished deciding whether it wanted to be above or below the water. They dropped altitude and came in slowly, reading the approach.