"Scizor, reduce mass with Autotomize, chain into Agility, and finish them with a maximum-velocity Bullet Punch!" Guzma barked, his face twisting into a mask of pure aggression.
Autotomize systematically shaved off a precise one-third fraction of Scizor's baseline structural weight. When mathematically multiplied by the sheer acceleration loops of Agility and the priority speed mechanics of a Bullet Punch, a standard opponent would be blitzed before their sensory units could even register the threat vector.
The metallic hide of the steel mantis strobed with a fluid, silvery sheen, its internal kinetic pressure shifting drastically.
It raised its massive, heavy iron pincers, transforming into a blurred, high-velocity streak of crimson light. To completely buffer itself against Ninetales' tracking lines and avoid a clean intercept from a subsequent Fire art, Scizor executed a sequence of dizzying, high-speed directional pivots.
Every single millisecond it paused its displacement matrix, a high-fidelity kinetic afterimage was left stamped upon the white sand. Within seconds, five to six identical crimson phantoms flanked Ninetales across the beach grid.
"Ninetales, sweep the coordinates—Iron Tail!"
Feng Che didn't even blink. He casually authorized a minor processing allocation of his raw psychokinetic perception, tracking the authentic atomic mass of the real steel mantis with absolute, pinpoint clarity.
While Guzma had successfully optimized his stable to clear the Elite tier, his Pokémon frequently displayed a distinct data deviancy—their cell walls behaved as though they had been forcefully pumped with massive allocations of artificial combat serums to aggressively spike their stats, resulting in uneven performance metrics. They completely lacked the flawless structural density and polished refinement of Feng Che's manually bred assets.
Ninetales' nine elegant tails flared instantly, hard-coding into dense, silver-gray bars of reinforced steel alloy.
With a brutal, sweeping cross-cut, the massive tails slammed directly into the side of Scizor's real chassis, swatting the steel mantis across the airspace like a high-velocity baseball.
The iron mantis registered a colossal, crushing wave of kinetic force shattering its guard. PLOP! Its heavy body tore through the surf, plunging clumsily into the deep ocean waters off the coastal shelf.
The Dimensional Rip
Right as Guzma's features darkened with boiling rage—his fingers clamping down on his harness to forcibly deploy a third asset to reclaim his face—the experimental automated hardware anchored dead-center of the beach violently shrieked into life.
A blinding, multi-meter beam of volatile, dark-purple plasma shot straight out of the machine's primary projector node, locking onto a precise coordinate point in the empty sky above the sand dunes.
The ambient space began to ripple and buckle like silk stretched over a razor, deep geometric shockwaves blurring the scenery.
Slowly, heavily, a massive, swirling spatial tear—a pristine Ultra Wormhole—unhinged its gateway across the open airspace.
"It finalized its alignment...! After hundreds of failed simulation runs, the threshold metrics have finally opened the spatial locks!" one of the grunts screamed in manic technical ecstasy.
However, the artificial dimension-gate retained an exceptionally volatile energy profile; it sustained its structural cohesion for a mere three seconds before the localized spatial drag unraveled its boundaries, forcing the rip to silently dissolve back into the baseline atmosphere.
Guzma snapped his head around, his aviator visors catching the empty sand where Feng Che had been anchoring his coordinates just a fraction of a second ago. The teenager had vanished entirely from his sensor field.
"Tsk... a complete ghost."
"The next time our paths intersect on a competitive track, I will personally strip every single point of data from his stable," Guzma growled, resting his hand against his dented iron pipe. "I hold zero intelligence regarding what high-level League agenda routed that freak to our testing grid."
BEEP.
Right at that juncture, the master communicator snapped to life inside Guzma's leather harness. He extracted the high-encryption slate, displaying a real-time secure video link originating directly from the high executive suites of Aether Paradise.
The display rendered the elegant, commanding silhouette of Lusamine.
"Guzma. My localized monitoring nodes verified that a microscopic spatial rift was successfully forced open across your coordinate block," the President stated, her voice icy, refined, and entirely serious.
"Your readings are mathematically accurate, Lady Lusamine. However, the internal stabilization fields collapsed; the retention window was exceptionally brief," Guzma replied, his thuggish posture instantly dropping into a rigid, professional military stance.
"Sustain the testing cycles without a single millisecond of artificial delay, Guzma," Lusamine commanded, her fingers tightening around her terminal.
"That specific spatial pipeline represents the absolute, undivided survival hope for my office to recover Professor Mohn from the dark zones." She disconnected the line, the display flickering to black.
Guzma slowly pivoted his frame, casting a thoroughly savage, murderous glare across the gathered Team Skull grunts.
The lower street brawlers couldn't sustain eye contact with their leader's twisted, furious expression, their heads instantly dropping down toward their boots as cold sweat drenched their collars.
"I hold zero data as to which sniveling rat within this faction authorized a direct information leak to bypass my console and alert Lady Lusamine's desk, but let me make this parameter absolute—I will tolerate zero duplications of this insubordination."
"Your house belongs explicitly to my banner, not the payroll of the Aether Foundation." Guzma spat venomously before turning on his heel to stomp off the dunes, his mood thoroughly ruined.
The Abyssal Desert
The exact millisecond the Ultra Wormhole unhinged its dimensional folds across the beach sky, Feng Che had utilized his advanced reflexes to execute a blind forward displacement, diving head-first through the cosmic rip before the spatial locks could snap shut.
The sensory metrics registered exactly as the historical journals had projected—his entire biological framework was subjected to a severe, crushing gravitational drag, his atoms feeling as though they were being forcefully kneaded and stretched like raw dough through a structural matrix press.
A brief chronological window later, the spatial friction decayed, and his boots hit solid ground.
"The statistical probability fell within our favor... the random landing coordinates managed to drop our station directly into a stable oasis zone," Feng Che murmured, his visor filtering the dense green canopy around him.
He was well-aware that the vast interior of the Ultra Space was a largely desolate, resource-starved void. However, the dimension housed rare, isolated sub-sectors that functioned as biological oases—ecosystems densely packed with the exact nutrient vectors required to sustain specialized life-forms.
"Our primary navigational directive within this sector is to systematically isolate the tracking signals of the Altar of the Sunne and the Altar of the Moone."
"Furthermore... if my sensors can locate and lock a master containment matrix around a dormant Cosmog core, the strategic leverage for my house will cross into an unprecedented tier."
"To safely chart these uncharted dunes, I require a localized sentinel to act as our native guide."
"Come forth, Naganadel!"
Feng Che unclipped a specialized heavy ball, deploying his purple dragon-wasp onto the grass. The exact millisecond the beast cleared its capsule, its sensory needles twitched violently in absolute, instinctual joy—it had officially returned to its native atmospheric matrix.
"Naganadel, map a secure flight vector toward the nearest high-density architectural structures resembling the ancient solar and lunar sacrificial shrines."
Feng Che intended to audit the core coordinates of the twin altars to verify the ancient spatial telemetry before beginning his systematic search to recover his maternal grandfather's life-force signature. He vaulted onto the dragon's sleek, armored dorsal casing, and the beast fanned its massive wings, rocketing into the high purple sky.
Throughout several days of continuous aerial scouting across the shifting dimensional sub-layers, Feng Che noted that the Ultra Space wasn't exclusively populated by high-tier Ultra Beasts; it housed massive, feral populations of standard Pokémon varieties that had historically suffered accidental displacement through ancient rifts.
The absolute dominant species fracturing the local lower ecology was the Alolan Raticate.
POKÉMON VARIANT REGISTRYALOLAN RATICATE — ULTRA SPATIAL LINEAGEClassification
Type: Dark / Normal
Behavioral Adaptation: Hyper-Aggressive Carnivorous Pack Hunter
Field Notes
Compared to standard Alolan Raticate populations observed across the Alola region, the Ultra Space lineage exhibits a dramatically altered physiology.
Generations of survival under constant predation pressure from high-order Ultra Beasts have reshaped the species into a far leaner and more combat-efficient predator. Excess fat deposits common in mainland specimens have nearly vanished, replaced by dense musculature and an optimized skeletal frame designed for explosive acceleration and rapid directional shifts.
This evolutionary divergence has resulted in a permanent increase in baseline speed, reaction timing, and pack-coordination efficiency.
Sustained beneath the absolute, high-purity Dragon-type pressure radiating from Feng Che's Naganadel, the lesser vermin packs scattered in panic before their shadow, recognizing the wasp as an undisputed overlord of the upper skies.
Right as Naganadel carved a smooth aerodynamic arc through a deep, jagged canyon fissure, a sharp, chaotic chorus of high-volume combat screeches echoed from the rocky sub-soil below.
A massive, solitary Stakataka was completely gridlocked within the bottleneck of the gorge, ruthlessly compressed and encircled by a massive, starving colony of hundreds of blood-eyed Alolan Raticate. The vermin's irises were completely choked with crimson madness, driven entirely by feral hunger.
The Rock/Steel sentinel resembled a monolithic, four-sided square defensive fortress tower. Its external stone walls were composed of hundreds of independent, brick-like grey mineral blocks—each block functioning as an individual living organism possessing its own independent neural receptors. When threatened, these independent modules manually stacked and interlocked their frames to forge a singular, collective mega-monolith.
The fort was supported over four massive, pillar-like legs composed of dense mineral aggregates. The stone walls featured several geometric gaps and micro-fissures, inside of which hundreds of independent, glowing blue optical sensors peered out at the encroaching swarm.
This specific Stakataka commanded an exceptionally massive material scale compared to standard metrics, frantically utilizing a continuous Rock Tomb matrix to throw up heavy stone walls to buffer its lower limbs from the relentless, gnawing teeth of the rodent colony.
Just as Feng Che prepared to instruct Naganadel to ignore the low-tier attrition loop and maintain their high altitude, a sudden flash of brilliant, high-purity emerald energy strobed through the gaps of Stakataka's internal fortress walls.
The unique energetic wavelength caused Feng Che's pupils to contract instantly. That exact frequency... it's the unmistakable manifestation of the Viridian Force!
He immediately activated his psychokinetic scanning array, boring straight through the thick stone blocks of the living tower to audit the internal hollow core. Resting deep within the central security chamber of the fort were two small, terrified human children.
While the Stakataka appeared superficially immovable across its outer plates, Feng Che's internal diagnostics verified that its primary core conduits had sustained severe structural micro-tears from prolonged exhaustion. The two children huddled inside its chest were frantically utilizing their own raw, unrefined streams of Viridian energy to continuously patch the titan's cell walls from within.
"Naganadel, clear the gorge—Dragon Pulse!"
The purple wasp unhinged its primary stinger vents, condensing a massive sphere of violet draconic plasma. But before the art could clear the barrel, the sharp, calculating eyes of the leading Raticates tracked the aerial shadow.
Recognizing the immense, lethal threat profile of an active Naganadel hovering over their flanks, the massive rodent colony abandoned their hunting positions within milliseconds, scattering back into the canyon fissures like a retreating wave of black ink.
"Exceptional survival reflexes," Feng Che muttered, adjusting his cloak as Naganadel dropped down through the canyon airspace, its massive wings completely blanketing the Stakataka within its shadow.