Chapter 211. Motorcycles Are Too Dangerous; Use This Instead
"Boom!"
A blast of raging fire erupted from behind, and with a thunderous crash, the entire airship suddenly blew apart, splitting in midair into two pieces.
The heat wave lifted Lawrence III's hair as his pupils contracted, and the black cages that had imprisoned Natsume and the others disintegrated in an instant.
Countless black rods, like schools of fish drifting in shallow seas, swarmed toward Lawrence III and wrapped around him in a tight guard.
"Get back here!"
The airship was at an altitude of ten thousand meters, and the moment it broke apart, Ash and the others recalled their fainted Pokémon into their Poké Balls.
"Ahhh—someone lend me a Poké Ball!"
Misty clutched Togepi and frantically rummaged through her backpack, only for its contents to be sucked out toward the rupture.
"Crack!"
The airship was severed completely, and everyone—humans, the three Legendary birds that had been confined, and all the other collected specimens—scattered like flower petals, plummeting toward the ocean.
"We're done for!"
Ash paddled his arms in the air as if swimming, yanked the black cage holding Pikachu over, and hugged it to his chest.
He looked down and saw that the island where the three Legendary birds roosted was nothing more than three tiny dots in the sea.
He could even take in, at a glance, the hundreds of large and small islands across the Orange Archipelago.
"Where's Natsume? Where's Natsume?"
Falling at high speed with a suffocating wind pressure battering them, Misty whipped her head left and right but couldn't find any sign of Natsume.
"Behold my new Rotom!"
Suddenly, a voice rang out in everyone's mind.
In the next instant, the world stopped spinning, and what had been a blur turned calm.
"Where are we now? Did we make it to the ground?"
Tracey, woozy, realized they were still high in the sky.
It was just that everyone was being borne by a long-bodied…motorcycle?
Tracey stared in astonishment at the Loreidon beneath them that was carrying the group.
Its tires had flipped outward and were spinning madly, spewing black-violet particles and holding them suspended in midair.
Natsume sat up front, and it was clear the Pokémon belonged to him.
"Natsume, what kind of Rotom is this?"
Ash's eyes lit up, feeling this Rotom left Gary's sports car in the dust.
"You can call it—Loreidon."
Natsume snapped his fingers, and Loreidon turned into a streak of light and vanished from where it hovered.
"So fast, so fast, so fast!"
In the blink of an eye, they had gone from ten thousand meters up to the island where they had just found Zapdos.
They were moving so fast they could still see debris from the airship free-falling from the heavens.
"Wow, what Pokémon is this?"
Tracey pulled out his sketchbook and circled Loreidon, carefully sketching its appearance.
"Not good, look!"
Ash pointed at four black dots in the sky.
The sky was already shrouded in black storm clouds, and those four dots flickered in and out of sight—hard for most people to even notice.
"Look at what?" Misty asked, puzzled.
"Right, we've got to get over there—it should be west of Zapdos's island," Natsume said with a nod.
"No, seriously, what are you two looking at?!"
Completely confused, Misty could only tug Tracey along as the two sprinted toward the west side of Zapdos's island.
As time passed, Misty gradually made out the situation in the sky.
Those four black dots were the three Legendary birds, each surrounded by black rods—and Lawrence III.
At that moment, Lawrence III was brandishing a golden staff and guiding the cages holding the Legendary birds to draw closer to him.
Several helicopters cut across the sky, a clear sign the League had already noticed the commotion here.
"Professor Ivy, what's your view on this disaster weather?"
A reporter aboard a helicopter interviewed a voluptuous woman.
"When three forces fall out of balance, a being meant to balance them will appear."
Professor Ivy spoke as her eyes stared fixedly at the distant horizon over the sea.
"Professor Ivy, what do you think of these two people? Are they the culprits who captured the Legendary birds and triggered this crisis?"
The reporter handed Professor Ivy a phone showing footage shot by a drone.
One was a young man with a complicated vibe, dressed flashily like a hotshot.
The other was a man in ornate attire with gold goggles, looking like a collector.
Professor Ivy recognized the first at a glance: Natsume.
"You're watching it, aren't you."
She smiled faintly and returned the phone.
When the reporter looked again, the blue-haired hotshot on the drone feed was gone, replaced by a clean-cut young man who looked easy to talk to.
Noticing their drone, that young man gave a thumbs-up toward the camera.
"Natsume, we've got to think of something!"
Ash stared anxiously at the changing scene in the sky.
Up there, Lawrence III had already pulled the birds' cages close and was using stray black rods to keep building up a mass beneath his feet.
His rate of descent was slowing, and he even seemed on the verge of stopping in midair.
"He's not planning to directly control those black rods and fly off with the Legendary birds, is he?" Tracey blurted, voicing his guess.
Ash panicked at once.
"Natsume, have Loreidon take me up there—I'll grab the Legendary birds back!"
"No," Natsume said with a slight shake of the head.
"Loreidon is too fast, and someone could get hurt. Use this instead."
As he spoke, Natsume waved a hand, and a squat "mountain" appeared behind them all.
"What is that?"
Ash stood there dumbstruck at the giant behind them.
The mining haul truck was enormous, and fully loaded; just Natsume releasing it caused a heavy tremor.
The waves breaking toward the island were knocked off course by the commotion.
"I'm hearing the League has urgently dispatched the Elite Four—oh my! What is that!"
The reporter had also spotted the upheaval on Zapdos's island.
That colossal object stood quietly on the island as if it were a tiny display figure on a pedestal.
But this was an island.
The sheer sense of impact was indescribable.
"That's a mining haul truck, and it's manufactured by the Devon Corporation in collaboration with the League!"
"For it to appear here out of nowhere—does this mean something?"
Up in the sky, Lawrence III also noticed the movement on the island.
He froze for a beat when he saw Natsume raise a hand and summon a behemoth.
But when he realized what it was, a curl of contempt rose in his chest.
What good was that thing?
Was it going to fly up here and ram him?
"Hahaha!"
Lawrence III yanked off his cracked visor and gestured, gathering all the black rods together to condense a massive platform beneath his feet and carry him off.
"Natsume, don't joke around—we've got to stop him!"
Ash was beside himself.
"I'm not joking."
As he said this, Loreidon pressed its black-violet head against the haul truck.
Lines of red lit up and crawled across Eternatus's carapace, and in a flash, red tracery covered the entire truck.
Loreidon, having fused with Eternatus's carapace, had brought Natsume quite a few surprises.
For example, through this layer of carapace, it could apply black mist and temporarily control any machine it was in contact with.
It was like turning on a hotspot—one Rotom could operate two machines at once.
Once Loreidon, serving as the core frame, was clad head to toe in Eternatus's carapace, its compatibility with other machines would likely climb another step, and Natsume would no longer need to worry about it at all.
It was just a pity that, before that, they had to take care of that reckless fool and quell the extreme weather.
Natsume narrowed his eyes, gaze hard and fixed on Lawrence III.
In the very next second, a vast roadway of deep blue manifested out of thin air, pointing straight at Lawrence III.
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