Massive wings beat down hard against the sand with every stroke, throwing up clouds of dust that swirled like a miniature sandstorm in the Pokémon's wake. It had clearly noticed Nova and Corvisquire below. But it seemed to have somewhere more important to be — it cast one brief glance downward from the air and kept flying north without breaking its pace.
If you're not stopping for me, I'll follow you.
"Corvisquire," Nova called out, "can you keep up with that thing?"
Corvisquire's flight speed had never been its strongest quality, and carrying a Trainer made it considerably worse. It had no interest in that kind of sustained effort and shook its head quickly to make its opinion clear.
Nova's glare said it was not being given a choice.
Corvisquire relented. To at least make things easier on itself, it used Tailwind first, building up a following wind, then hooked its talons into the flight rings on Nova's backpack straps and began hauling him upward.
The backpack had come from an Original Team member Nova had encountered during the airship incident — the one with the Spidops. His partner had been a Mienshao, and when the situation turned, he had used the flight backpack to jump clear of the airship and avoid being caught. Nova had noticed the pack during that fight and made a point of confiscating it while questioning the Spidops Trainer afterward. The Security Officer on the scene, Uncle Cleo, had quietly looked the other way. Nova had done enough that day to have earned a little leeway.
The pack was clearly internal Original Team equipment — not the kind of thing available commercially. It combined a jet propulsion system with deployable glider wings for low-altitude unpowered flight. It also had a specific compatibility feature for Flying-type Pokémon: two grip rings on the shoulder straps, each sized for a bird Pokémon's talons, with a reinforced harness structure beneath them that spread the pulling force evenly across the wearer's upper body. In other words, even a mid-sized bird Pokémon like Corvisquire — one that could not carry a person in direct flight — could use those rings to tow a Trainer through the air.
The jet function only had a single charge before needing to be reset. Nova decided to save it for something that actually mattered. If Corvisquire needed a workout, chasing down a large Flying-type was a reasonable way to get one.
Corvisquire hauled Nova several hundred metres into the air, pulling them both clear of the worst of the sandstorm. With Tailwind still active and pushing from behind, it pushed hard to close the gap on the Pokémon ahead.
It was not happy about any of this. It repeated the same thought over and over to keep itself from simply letting go: This is the Trainer I chose. This is the Trainer I chose. The backpack can fly. He won't fall. The backpack can fly. He won't fall.
That was the only thing keeping its talons locked shut.
Nova knew exactly what the little troublemaker was thinking. Through the cold high-altitude wind, he spoke in a tone that cut through it cleanly. "If you let go, no food for three days. And your weekly budget gets cut in half."
Corvisquire let out a long, miserable cry.
What else could it do. Everything came back to food in the end.
By the time Corvisquire, still running Tailwind, finally caught up with the pale-green shape ahead, it was completely drained.
Nova's read had been right. It was a Flygon — level 48.
Under normal circumstances, a Corvisquire carrying a Trainer's full weight would have had no realistic chance of matching a Flygon's speed even with Tailwind behind it. But this Flygon was not flying free. It was hauling something — a Tauros, large and adult, hanging limp and unconscious in its grip. The bull Pokémon weighed well over two hundred and fifty kilograms. Compared to Nova, who was considerably lighter, the Flygon had the far heavier load.
The Flygon had come in from the east and turned north just around the point where it had passed over Nova. Based on the direction, the Tauros had almost certainly been taken from the wide grazing plains to the east of Forest City.
The desert terrain around Forest City had been picked clean by the Trapinch colony over time. Stronger individuals like this Flygon had already been ranging across city boundaries to find enough food.
What struck Nova as odd, though, was that the Flygon had not simply eaten the Tauros where it caught it. Despite the malicious drugs pushing its hunger and aggression, it was carrying the food back toward the colony's core territory instead. That was not normal predatory behavior for a Pokémon in its condition.
When something that should not make sense keeps happening, it means something is being missed. Nova felt he was getting closer to the real answer.
The Flygon had clocked Nova and Corvisquire when it passed overhead. It had weighed the options and decided a two-hundred-fifty-kilogram Tauros was a better use of the trip than dealing with a small human and a blue bird. There would be time to deal with the stragglers later. They were already inside the colony's territory. There was nowhere for them to go.
What it had not expected was the small human immediately giving chase.
The Flygon dropped altitude, readying itself to set the Tauros down and deal with this overconfident intruder properly.
The moment Nova saw the Flygon shift into a combat posture, he called out to Corvisquire to release its grip. He pulled the glider wings on the backpack and rode the wind down in a wide descending arc while Corvisquire broke away and moved to attack before the Flygon could fully land.
Two Air Cutter strikes hit the Flygon's wings in quick succession — precisely aimed at the joints where the diamond-shaped wings connected to the body.
Flygon is a dual Ground and Dragon type, but its physical build leans heavily toward its insect origins. Its wings, despite their distinctive shape, are structured more like an insect's than a bird's — lightweight membranes rather than solid limb structures, strong enough for flight but vulnerable to direct hits at the joints. Corvisquire's Air Cutter was not its most powerful move, but it was immediately available, and the Flygon's speed and evasion were both hampered by the weight of the Tauros still in its grip.
The Flygon cried out sharply as the strikes landed. Its wings faltered, throwing its balance off mid-air.
Once it steadied itself, Corvisquire was already on it again — staying out of range of a direct counter from a level 48 Pokémon, but pressing from the sides with a relentless stream of ranged attacks. None of them hit hard, but taken together they kept the Flygon off-balance and increasingly irritated.
Eventually, under that sustained pressure, the Flygon managed to land. It dropped the Tauros, intending to take off again with both wings free and deal with the reckless bird properly.
It did not get the chance.
"Nidoking — Psybeam!"