Adrien Murkos's Story

"shit shit shit!" Kenji's breathing quickened, close to a hyperventilation, as he noticed the two new hunters who had arrived, specifically two he recognized as two of the three founders of the Hunters of Dallea, Burton Strange and Adrien Murkos. All hope he'd had at all had just been crushed at the sight of them, and cast over the edge into a dark pit. The hunter that had been here for long enough had already done so much damage to him; he didn't like to imagine what her and those two could do all together at once.

It seemed the human girl from before realized that this wasn't a fight they could take, or at least not today, and she began to lower down to try and grab him again with her Charizard, though a Noivern from one of founders seemed to slow her down. He forced himself to get back up from off his good side again and to begin crawling away yet again, hoping to perhaps grab onto the Pokémon, though was caught by Sparta yet again, who leapt onto him. He let out a startled yell, and immediately tried to turn or perhaps knock her off of his back somehow, though all the movement and the weight of the Hunter on top of him wasn't helping his pain, nor was it helping with the fact that he was struggling to keep himself holding on to his conscience.

"Come on, Gijinka scum! Your fight is up!" Sparta's yelling made Kenji's eyes widen, and then narrow again, an angry, hateful glare coming to his face. "I'm not letting you sadists take me!" He snapped, and he suddenly twisted himself to the side, enough to knock Sparta off of him again, which wasn't a surprise with the tremors still inflicting the ground. He quickly began moving himself away again, before he spotted Charizard again, who happened to knock over a Hawlucha Kenji hadn't noticed before.

As the Charizard began to approach, Kenji quickly began to move up, struggling to get on his feet, but knowing they had a better chance of grabbing him, or him grabbing onto the Pokémon...anything, to get him out of this place, and away from the hunters attacking him. He held his hand to his side, grimacing at the pain, and the warmth of blood on his hand that had darkened the color of his clothes around his wound. He felt dizzy, and hoped to Arceus that the girl grabbed him before Sparta tackled him to the ground again.

---

"Hm, looks like you won't be an easy opponent." Adrien muttered under his breath, watching the Charizard dodge Noivern's attack at the last second, though it did manage to catch the Charizards tail; he had to give himself and the Pokémon credit for that. Yet it still hadn't made enough contact to do any disabling damage; the giant, orange dragon was still flying down, getting closer to the ground, likely to snatch up the Gijinka so the pair could make their escape...though Sparta seemed to be helping in making that more and more difficult, and the Gijinka wasn't looking too good,his face looking rather pale, blood dropping from his nose, and the injury at his side having bled quite a bit into his clothes. It wouldn't be a suprise if he passed out right where he was.

"Give up already, dammit." Adrien hissed beside Burton, taking a few more steps forward and coming much further out now that the Metang had stopped its attack and was back inside its Pokéball, before his eyes laid back onto Noivern, a nasty, malicious look in his eyes.

"You've got a clear shot, take down the Charizard!" Adrien snapped, becoming impatient as the time went on. They'd chased after the resistance member for too long; he wasn't going to let the bastard escape again. "Use Dragon Pulse again!"

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He'd nearly fallen down onto his knees when Jaime had missed again, beginning to give in to his dizziness, before he heard the Charizard's wings flapping around closer again, and he'd barely glanced behind himself before he felt the Pokémon's hands curling around him and lifting him right off the ground, carrying him above the buildings. Looking down at the ground, he could see the look of defeat on the Hunters' faces, or at least, he hoped that's what he was seeing form all the way up where he was now.

The sharp movements of the Charizard as it flew through the sky and away from the battlefield were rather painful to Kenji, and he gritted his teeth, letting out heavy breaths...but even through the pain, he felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude...towards the girl. A human.

The wasn't like him. He'd thought all the humans were the same, even the ones from Merrima, but now this trainer, of all people, was helping him. Where had she come from? This couldn't be normal, right? But the truth was right in his face. She was helping him...she'd even risked being harmed during the fight to do so. He'd never heard of anything like it before.

"Thank...you..." He muttered through his heavy breathing, though he was sure she likely didn't even hear it.

---

"Damn." Adrien cursed as the Charizard easily flew past his Noivern and its attack, and then swept up the Gijinka, taking to the air yet again immediately after. The spray of flames that had nearly come into contact the hunter's face hadn't helped either, and he had to jump back if he didn't want to lose another section of his face to an ugly, scarred burn.

He watched, his face twisted in anger, as the Umbreon Gijinka managed to get away, out of their hands, their grip, yet again. He quickly turned to the Noivern, and returned it to its Pokéball, slinging it on his belt and then brushing off his hands on his pants.

He spotted Sparta approaching them, her head lowered, and his angry expression seemed to leave for a moment, though it was still painfully could. He couldn't lose his cool in front of her right now, it would only make things worse...not that this situation could get any worse than it already was, yet still...

"No, we aren't chasing after him. We don't have any Pokémon in a good enough condition to follow them, and by the time you manage to get your Pokémon out of the Center, they'll both be long gone." He replied, his voice cold. "It would be better to just return to the HQ, after this complete failure."

---

Adrien trailed silently behind Sparta, with Burton close by his side, as he tried to think through everything that had just happened. They'd been "defeated" by some random trainer who just happened to be nearby. It had been three versus one and a half (the Umbreon Gijinka was basically done for by the time they'd arrived)...how the hell had they gotten away? They should have been so easily...defeated...

He let out an annoyed growl, shoving his hands into his pockets as he thought of it. They'd been so close to taking out the Gijinka...wuld have gotten a hefty price for him as well, probably from the DISR, after all the damage he'd done himself. He'd gotten himself a rather notorious name around Cobrapeak. They could have gotten information from him too...it wasn't a secret that he was apart of the resistance.

"Dammit, this is ridiculous." He hissed, mostly to himself, as he continued walking. "If that girl hadn't shown up..." He shook his head, and then sped up his pace, finally seeing the old building ahead of them.

Sparta disappeared into the building rather suddenly, and he could already tell something was wrong. Starting in a jog, he moved up to the door, and opened it, only to be faced with a disaster of an office, and the cages that had originally held the Gijinka that him and Sparta had caught were indeed missing. His face twisted in anger as he saw it, and his hand balled up into a fist.

"What the hell...is this?" His voice had become quiet, but was clearly full of anger. He was shaking where he stood as he looked around at the place.

As if this day couldn't get any worse.

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Adrien moved over to the open cages, looking over the doors. There hadn't been any damage to the doors, or the locks, so there wasn't any way they had perhaps managed to get through their "security" by attacking and damaging it. But did they have the keys? There was no way they would have been able to reach far enough to get to where they were stored...and yet, the keys were gone from their place, and no where to be found on the ground, the wall, or anywhere. How had they even known where it was placed when they'd been unconscious...unable to see, during the time he'd locked them in?

"It's clear someone broke in." Adrien said, slamming one of the cage doors shut before turning back aroung and leaning against the walls with his arms crossed. He'd already lost his cool; he thought he'd had at least one success today, which had been good enough to at least let him get over the events with the trainer and the Umbreon, but now...now both had turned into absolute failures. He was disgusted.

"A ghost?" Adrien said, turning to Burton as he reappeared into the disaster of a lobby. "That's highly unlikely, but possible." He paused for a moment, putting a hand up to his chin in thought. "I've never actually seen a Ghost Gijinka myself, though with how this place is looking, with no footprints, and nothing we can use to trace it, I wouldn't doubt it." A Ghost Gijinka would fetch them a high price, if they managed to get ahold of it. They were quite rare; he knew that for a fact.

"Even so, we've got no chance on finding it now. We wouldn't know how far it had gotten after it had left." Adrien sighed. "I say we simply keep a watch out for it, but continue with what we're doing, as annoying as it is. He stood back up from the wall, glancing over to Sparta for a short moment, and then back to Burton. "I say we stick to our plans on Merrima, like Sparta said. Perhaps, if we're lucky, we'll come across the ghost there. What do you say, Burton?"

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Adrien nodded, satisfied with everyone's agreement to the idea, before he himself began to move around to help straighten up the place, seeing it as the most he could do at the time being. Besides, he hated it looking like a mess, when him and Burton did their best to keep everything as straightened up and organized as possible.

"Yes, to be sure to catch him before he's in a good condition, let's leave as soon as possible tomorrow morning. I'm sure, if we do find him there, we can easily scare the villagers away once we start a fight. We don't need any others interfeering, like the trainer from before." He paused, setting the straightened pile of papers he had on the cleared table. "We'll likely have to plan more once we are heading there, or before we leave for rest tonight."

"Prepare yourselves for the journey, and get some shut-eye - we leave at first light. In the meantime... I'll sort out this mess..." Adrien gave a quick nod to Burton at his words, and set down his next pile of papers in the same spot as before, before deciding to at least help with picking up a couple other things before he was going to get the things he needed for tomorrow. "You do the same, Burton. If you really want to at least get everything off the floor and into neat piles again and all their original places, be my guest, but you need sleep as well, so forget about organizing until tomorrow. That would take up too much of your night."

"Though, I do think I should leave now." He said, looking up at the clock on the wall that gave off a perpetual click as each second passed. "I need to get a replacement key, and perhaps a spare too, for the cages, so we can actually lock them..." He rubbed the sides of his head in annoyance, as if he had a headache, before grabbing his case that had been sitting by the door. "That being said, I will see you both tomorrow morning."

With those simple words, he had left the building.

---

Adrien himself seemed to have slept the best out of the three, despite how he had been feeling before. After he'd gotten three keys to go with the cage (three, instead of one, because he felt like it would be best to simply keep some extras in store in case something similar to today's events happened again) and stopped by the Pokémon Center to rest his Pokémon for a bit and get the care they needed, he'd made his way to his home apartment, a rather fancy, spacious, but expensive one, that he never would have been able to afford before he took up the business of the Hunters with himself and the other two founders of the organization. To be completely honest, he'd be broke without the money they made nowadays.

After finishing up all of the things he felt he needed to do before sleep, as well as trying to figure out some kind of way they could successfully get into Merrima without getting chased out, he made his way for his bed, feeling exhausted with the day's turn of events. To think that they'd failed so miserably...

He'd fallen asleep in his bed without realizing it, and had woken up to his alarm early in the morning; a rather unpleasent time of 3:30 am, so that he could get ready for the day and gather the supplies he needed, with extra time to spare at the end. When he'd finally left his place and gotten out of the building, he found Cobrapeak to be rather empty, or at least compared to how it was in the morning. It was still full of traffic, but flowed much more smoothly, and there weren't nearly as many people moving out and around outside. He found it relaxing, to say the least, and disappointing that he had to leave the giant city at a wonderful time like this.

Moving into one of the alleyways to keep from startling any of those passing by or walking down the streets, Adrien released his Noivern from its pokéball, before climbing onto its back, and they made for the air. It didn't take him and his Pokémon much time to get out of Cobrapeak and in the direction of Merrima, and though the hours it took to cover the rest of the distance felt as if they were dragging along for an eternity, and finally he could see the village a little ways away. He made for the ground, after spotting Sparta and Burton a little ways away, having met together before him it seemed.

"An early good morning to you both. I hope you slept well. You're going to need the energy if we want this to go smoothly." Adrien said as he approached the two of them, returning his Noivern to its pokéball shortly after. "But besides the fact of sleep, are you both ready?"