Chapter 11: Kadelast Region: Chapter 10

'Thoughts'

"Speech"

"Ursaring!"

"Vespiquen!"

"Lena, are you ok?" I blinked twice before I turned to look at Ted. Hearing his question I find it odd that I wasn't in more pain, but one look at my arm shows that I'm far from being uninjured. 

"Besides not having any feeling in my left arm, I'm fine." He nodded as I shakily tried to stay standing. "Forget about me, we need to get Antony to safety. I'm not sure how long the Vespiquen can keep the Ursaring occupied." It was the Ranger who answered instead of Ted.

"Pinsir Swords Dance and get ready to attack." The bearded Ranger said before running towards Antony.

"Pinsir!" Pinsir replied while transparent blue swords started spinning around him.

Seeing the Ranger approach Antony and her cub, the Ursaring roared angrily before trying to separate herself from Vesiquen. However, the Vesiquen stubbornly kept her hold on the Ursaring while countless little Combee from her abdomen desperately reinforced and healed her body. Before the bearded Ranger could get close enough to grab my son, the Ursaring broke free from Vespiquen's grasp and charged straight at the Ranger.

"Heracross slow her down with Aerial Ace!" The other Ranger commanded when he saw that the Ursaring would reach Antony before the bearded Ranger can get him to safety. The Heracross nodded before speeding forward surrounded by clear light-blue energy. 

"Damn! Pinsir get over here as fast as you can!" 

"Pin Sir!" Pinsir shouted before kicking off the ground and charging to the Ranger's side. As Pinsir ran forward, the transparent blue swords spinning around him slowly faded away. The Ranger hugged Antony in his arms and barely rolled under Ursarings attack. Her follow-up attack was intercepted by Heracorss's horn while Pinisir's pincers held Ursaring in place. Struggling to break free, the Ursaring raised a claw that burst into flames. Before she could hit Heracorss with the flaming fist, she was bombarded by glowing orange rocks. Turning to the attack's origin, I saw Vespiquen struggling to stay afloat. However, she wasn't the only one running off fumes, as the purple tint on the Ursaring has considerably darkened since she was first poisoned. 

"Heracross end this with Thrash!"

"Pinsir keep her in place with Strength!"

"Cross!/Sir!" Both of them screamed as a white aura surrounded their bodies. Pinsir's tightly restricted the Ursaring's movement while Heracross blindly attacked her. Any counter-attack from the Ursaring was met by a barrage of rocks from the injured Vespiquen. While the trio dealt with the Ursaring, the Ranger ran towards us with Antony in his arms. 

"Are you ok honey?" I asked, grabbing him with my good arm. I let out a sigh when he nodded into my shoulders. "Thank you," I said to both the Rangers.

"It's our pleasure Ma'am." Replied the bearded Ranger. "Let's get the three of you out of here while the Ursaring is occupied."

"I don't think we'll have to worry about the Ursaring." Confused about Ted's comment I turned in time to watch the Ursaring toss the dizzy Heracross to the side. At first, I was worried that the Ursaring would try to attack us again but instead watched as she grabbed Pinsir and used him as a shield while slowly limping towards her unconscious cub. Pinsir gave out a gained cry as several dozen rocks crashed into his back before fainting. Seeing her attacks being blocked, the Vespiquen flew forward to get close enough to get an attack in. Before Vespiquenthe could strike Ursaring slammed her into the ground using Pinsir as a hammer. Done with Pinsir, Ursaring threw him away before she continued walking. Reaching her cub the Ursaring protectively curled around the Teddiursa and gave one more defiant cry before her eyes closed.

We all stood in tense silence as we waited to see if the Ursaring was truly asleep. We all let out a sigh of relief when it was clear that she wasn't getting back up any time soon. "We better get the three of you back home before the Urasring wakes up." Said the bearded Ranger while checking the injuries of the bug Pokemon that came to his call for help.

"We also need to find out what caused this whole mess to occur. There isn't a Beedrill colony anywhere near here, they shouldn't have a reason to get this agitated." Ted said while dusting off the dirt off his lab coat.

"Agreed." The other Ranger nodded. "We'll join you in the investigation, this whole situation reeks of foul play." He turned towards his partner. "Once we get back we need to check if there are any poacher sightings recently." Ted frowned.

"Do you think a poacher caused all this?" 

"We can't be completely sure, but this does seem like botched Teddiursa kidnapping that somehow angered a colony of Beedrills." Ted leaned to the side to look at the Teddiursa. 

"The Teddiursa doesn't look special enough to warrant a poacher targeting them." Said Ted while the Ranger shook his head.

"It's just a theory, we'll need to do a proper investigation before can conclude anything." I nodded before following the Rangers back home, with Antony falling asleep in my arms along the way.

You are reading story The Finite Path at novel35.com

--Ted--

It's been a few days since a colony of Beedrills along with an alpha Ursaring went berserk near the town. My colleagues and I have been lending the local Rangers any help we can with the ongoing investigation. From our findings, we learned that the Ursaring went on her rampage because something took her cub away and she heard said cub cry out for help. This was extremely suspicious because when the Teddiursa finally woke up, we learned that they weren't the ones who cried out for help. Meaning that whatever took the Teddiursa also wanted the Ursaring to go berserk.

On the bright side, the Rangers managed to clear up the misunderstanding with the Ursaring who calmed down considerably after learning that we didn't have any plans of harming her cubs. Once the Ursaring was healthy enough, she along with her cub went back home to her other cubs. 

"Professor S." Being dragged out of my thoughts I turned to see who it was. 

"Ah, hello Mr. Walker." I smiled at the bearded Ranger entering my lab. "How's your day going so far?"

"Haha, I've been having a great day so far. Thanks for asking." His wide grin turned serious. "Well I don't want to take too much of your time so I'll just go straight to the point. The other Rangers and I finished our investigation on the colony of Beedrills engaged with the Ursaring and what we found doesn't look good." I frowned.

"Is it connected with our potential kidnapper?" He nodded.

"We're pretty sure that if it wasn't them they're at least connected."

"What do you mean?"

"Like how the Ursaring heard a Teddiursa cry, the Beedrills started swarming because they heard the cries of Kakunas." My frown deepened.

"I see why you think they have to be connected. There wasn't any Kakuna anywhere near where the location, so like with the Teddiursa it must have also been a false alarm." Walker nodded. "What about the Vespiquen? I know they can be protective about their young but it's usually the Combees that swarm to defend the Vespiquen and not the other way around."

"Why don't you tell me, Professor? Last I heard, she has been regularly visiting." I let out a deep sigh. After the Ursaring and Beedrills went back to their homes, the Vespiquen has regularly been trying to visit little Antony. Emphasizes on trying because he still hides away at the mere sight of any bug Pokemon. On the bright side, Lena with the help of her Wurmple and Spewpa had been making progress with helping him overcome his fears.

"After a few tests, we found out that Antony has high Affinity with bug Pokemon. Because of this they treat him as one of their own and are quite protective of him as a result. This is especially noticeable in social bug Pokemon like Beedrills who sees him as a young member of their colony. This also resulted in the Vespiquen getting quite attached to him."

"Do we have to fear him getting taken by her?" I shook my head.

"She understands that he's human and wants to stay with his mother. The only reason why she attacked us in the first place was that she thought we were going to attack him. She did feel bad about attacking us afterwards. She also wanted to make it up to Antony for scaring him, but I doubt that's going to happen anything soon with him avoiding her. As for the reason why she was so far away from her colony? We're not sure because she has been quite vague when questioned. From what we could gather, she felt a need to go out around the time the Beedrills started swarming around the Ursaring."

"It that's all you could get from her?" I nodded. "Then we're not any closer to finding out our kidnapper."

"Did you find any clues on the possible motives they could have?" He shook his head.

"We couldn't find any request for Teddiursas or any signs of poachers near the location."

"Do you have any suspects?"

"Sadly we don't because there aren't any poachers on our watch list that have the skill set to cause all this chaos. There also aren't any poachers that are known to use Chatot."

"A Chatot? Hmm, I could see how one could have helped with tricking both parties. But with the timing of things, there must have been at least two Chatots helping our criminal." He nodded.

"We took that into account, but we still couldn't find anyone who match what we were looking for. But that doesn't mean we're going to give up, if they could orchestrate something like this, imagine what else they could do?" I grimace at the thought.

"My colleagues and I will keep providing any aid we could. The last thing any of us want is something like that occurring so close to our homes again." We continued talking for half an hour before Mr.Walker had to leave. I bid him goodbye as I cleaned up my lab, planning to meet up with Lena to see how she and Antony were doing.