Symbiosis

Chapter 14

Alex was jostled out of his shocked state by the inkay. <"Mew! Please, they're coming! What do we do?">

Alex shook his shock away and regained his reason. 'Shit, that's right, gotta work fast. Those guys that spotted our escape attempt are gonna be back any moment.' Thinking quickly, Alex pointed at the inkay, cyndaquil, and the unknown purple lizard-like pokemon. <"Okay, you three! With me! Mudbray! Bust the others out!">

<"Got it!"> The mudbray dutifully called out before rushing to the cells that were still occupied. <"You guys are gonna wanna back up a bit!">

Alex swiftly floated over to the basement entrance. He flinched and briefly paused when he heard how loud the mudbray was bashing the cell doors, but he put it to the back of his mind. He turned behind him for a brief moment, swiftly scanning for the cyndaquil, who happened to be standing beside him, fearfully shaking, but forcing a determined look through it all. <"Cyndaquil, I'm gonna lift you a bit, and when I do, I need you to use as big of a smokescreen as you can manage.">

The cyndaquil nervously swallowed, but gave a swift nod.

Alex mentally grabbed hold of the fire pokemon and lifted him halfway up the ladder. His ears perked up as he heard footsteps above them rapidly approaching. He began to panic a little. <"Cyndaquil! Do it now!">

Alex didn't even finish the sentence before the cyndaquil took in a deep breath and let loose a thick black cloud from his mouth. It very quickly flooded the ground level, evident by the fact that Alex started hearing frenzied shouting above them, but it ended up working too well. A decent amount of the smoke pooled back underground and enveloped Alex, along with the rest of the basement entrance. Alex started coughing a bit, not expecting it to work that well, and floated backwards out of the smoke cloud. He gently laid the cyndaquil back down beside him and muttered a curse under his breath. <"Damn, well that didn't work out the way I hoped, but I think we bought ourselves some time. Inkay, how long does your Reflect last?">

Inkay gave a very unsure look. <"On this many pokemon? I dunno, man. Maybe a minute? But they've got guns! I mean, I don't know if they'll work against bullets! I-I've never even thought about trying that before!"> he finished, starting to become frantic, himself.

Alex clenched his teeth. 'Damn it! No, calm down. There's gotta be something we can do here.' Alex's attention shot to the unknown pokemon. <"What can you do?">

The lizard pokemon was frantically pacing up and down the width of the hallway before Alex got her attention. <"Uh, I uh... not much. I don't know pokemon too much either, to be honest. All I know is I know how to shock people into paralysis by touching them, and I can spit out some sort of acid. But that's it.">

Alex briefly did a double take. 'Nuzzle and Acid? Weird combination of- aahh, not important, Alex! Think!' Alex closed his eyes for a brief moment, rapidly scrambling for a plan. Panic began to set in as he realized he had nothing. They may be under cover of a smokescreen, but they still only had one way out. Whether they could be seen or not, they were still going to be drawing a lot of heavy fire. And their enemies had no reason at this point to go down and attack them when the pokemon were the ones who were cornered. Alex could theoretically sneak his way out under cloak of invisibility, but he still wasn't skilled enough to use attacks while invisible, and there was no way he was going to be able to pull off more than one sneak attack without being focused down, even if he timed his attacks and escapes with perfection. Alex gave a frustrated yell through clenched teeth as any makings of a plan faded. 'God damn it all! I fucked this up so bad! They may all end up getting killed because I didn't take time to come up with a better plan before I started busting them out!' Alex punched the wall out of frustration, earning concerned and panicked looks from all of the pokemon present. Alex very nearly let out a dismayed shout, but a deafening crash, accompanied by shrill metallic creaking noises, caught everyone's attention.