That Combusken can probably use a nice talk about it being wrong to burn people who can't heal back up from it with a potion and a burn heal, just in case. Even if May orders otherwise. Oh, and same goes for kicking now.
That aqua grunt doesn't know when to quit. The dumbass might have earned himself a recurrent villain spot.
Way to make himself suffer more.
Also, that fight was totally unfair. Exploud barely got to use any turns, I thought that bullcrap was done with gen 1! Mudslap and those other attacks don't cause flinching! I call hax! Let Exploud have a rematch.
Thanks for the update!
Unfortunate as it it, this is looking like more confirmation that Astra's hefty dose of trauma about her own abilities from that whole "Bruise The Fabric Of Reality" incident is going to be manifesting in a way that'll drastically affect how she battles. Sure, she already had plenty of reason to hide them and keep her identity secret, but recently it seems like she's not even letting herself consider using them. There were a whole bunch of places where I was convinced "Ah, so at this point she's going to have to mentally pull that grunt away and worry about the questions later- oh", or "So is she going to teleport over there and help out directly? At this point I think she's the only one who can still move fast enough to save- oh", but obviously those never happened against another pokemon.
I think it may also be exaggerated by how extensively she's slotted herself into the role of a Trainer: Trainers don't have powers, they have to use their pokemon's powers. Therefore, her first response can never be her own powers. The loophole to this, as we saw with the telepathic spike, is that she mostly only falls into this mindset during an actual battle. Everywhere else, all she has to overcome is the... oh yeah, the massive trauma that's there too.
...It's going to be a long time before Astra starts working on more subtle tricks beyond the bare necessities, huh?
This just makes me think she's gonna out herself during an extreme situation. And since we're going with extreme...
Astra's arm
hurt in May's grip.
Her legs ached but she kept pumping them.
She dared only look forward towards the light at the end of the tunnel-
-Not back towards the fiery
burning light that blazed behind them.
'
JUMP!' she -rashly- breathlessly
thought at May when she felt her feet
burn.
May did.
Stupidly, hopelessly, clearly unable to clear the 10 yards between them and cold freedom.
Astra hoped she wouldn't notice the telekinetic aid, as the girls practically
flew out of the cave mouth just ahead of a
river of surging lava.
Only to take a nosedive down a cliff.
Followed by whole chunks of melting rock the size of cars.
"OHSHITFUCKSHITDAMNFUCK BLAZIKEN SKY UPPERCUT!" red light shined into said red furred pokemon, who with nary a doubt
kicked off the cliff side to
punch a ton of rock into smithereens, only to promptly use the momentum gained from the impact to catch down to the falling girls, spin, grab them, and
throw them up and away from the lava avalanche, getting them out of dodge
while mitigating their downward momentum at the same time!
Only for a humongous shadow to fall over the fighting pokemon.
"RETURN!" the falling -spinning- May somehow did a 720° no scope recall beam to save her starter
just before he got crushed by a rain of pebbles, lava, and dust.
Then everything EXPLODED.
Astra was vaguely aware of May's intermittent, continuous cursing as she felt the very cliff kicked them and hammered them as they
still fell how high was that mountain oh there's the ground-
"Sceptile! Slaking! CATCH!"
Both pokemon materialized just in time underneath each girl, seizing hold of them as gently as possible as they -painfully- completed their fall, grunting and wheezing as they were safely left down on safe, sloped ground...
"What's that sound?"
The four looked
uphill as a few dozen geodudes, graveller, golems and magcargos and a lone groudon, clearly out of control, rolled down the slope at what looked to the exhausted girls to be approximately mach 1 speed towards them.
"OH SHIT-
"-oh fuck."
The grass and normal pokemon were promptly returned as the girls did the only sane thing they could:
They jumped down another cliff.
For a moment, time seemed to stop as they stared at each other, wide eyed, floating through the air in slow motion, clearly communicating to each other through their long bred familiarity, that the situation they found themselves in was. Absolute. Bullshit.
Time resumed as
something the weight of a truck struck Astra's feet.
'
MAY!' she cried.
May acted
fast.
Bending mid-air, one hand latched onto her companion's arm, the other reached back at the solid ground they had just ejected themselves from, slowing down their flight by
scraping at the dirt and digging furrow just under the multi-tons of rock pokemon avalanching themselves over her tiny, little, frail fingers.
Until she lost her grip.
"Shit!"
The girls fell
again into uncertain doom-
"OW-
Oof!"
Except it was a short fall this time.
"... Please get off me," begged Astra.
May crawled off her friend and slumped to lie down on the ground.
"What the..." she gasped, rolling to face towards the sky, "fuuuuuu... UCK?!"
The sky blotted out as
a fucking Golem fell from above and towards the exhausted girls and was covered by a blue glow and... floated?
May wheezed for air as her eyes, scrunched up in confusion, lowered until they found her pokemon journey long time companion holding her arms up towards the third stage falling-object hazard who,
following her friend's arm movements, gently floated down and to the side, until it came to rest on safe ground, somewhere where it wouldn't crush them to a pulp.
The Golem, clearly feeling it had had enough excitement for the day, promptly curled itself into a ball and fell asleep.
May wholeheartedly agreed.
On second thought, she chucked a pokeball at it, which easily sucked up the Golem and captured it. She deserved
something good out of all that mess.
Without even waiting for the pokeball to give its final 'ding!', she sat up and turned to Astra.
"You're a psychic."
"... Uh-hm..." Astra glanced at May without half the panic she'd thought she'd feel whenever this day might've come. Clearly the exhaustion talking.
"You know what, fuck it," May lied back down, both girls resting on the safe and sound -and hard- ground, looking up at the sky -before looking away with scrunched up eyes, fuck, the sun was harsh, "you've fooled me
all this time."
"May..."
"I
believe it, because, why not."
"So you're..." the newly revealed psychic twiddled her thumbs. "You're..."
"I'm OK with it, yeah."
"Oh."
"We kinda saved each other's ass multiple times by now. Daily, sometimes."
After a long pause, Astra sighed.
"You don't know how happy it makes me to hear that," she smiled as she took off her hat and threw it away, letting herself
relax, finally giving up the illusion.
"WAIT WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE A POKEMON?!"
Astra flinched the crap out into a sitting position, staring with eyes wide as platters at May, who did likewise.
"Y-y-you- but you said- fine with-"
"I SAID YOU'RE A
PSYCHIC!" May bellowed over Astra's fully panicked muttering, "NOT A PSYCHIC
POKEMON!"
As if giving out on the last of her energy, May deflated, though still staring at her
pokemon friend as if she couldn't believe it.
"...
There are human psychics?" asked Astra in a tiny voice.
May facepalmed.
