In a chaotic situation like this, the ones who keep a low profile are naturally the ones who tend to survive, while anyone too showy quickly becomes a target for everyone else's combined attacks.
Earlier, Dodrio's Trainer had drawn fire simply for taking the lead. Now Vibrava had gone from a hidden ambusher to standing out in the open, facing everyone at once.
The other Trainers weren't foolish either. If they didn't take Vibrava down, no one would get through the narrow pass. And if they weren't going to focus their attacks on Vibrava, then who else was there to aim for?
In an instant, the pressure on Vibrava shot up.
Flamethrower, Psybeam, Rock Blast, Air Slash, more than a dozen moves came flying straight at it all at once.
There was no way it could take that head on. Relying on the burst of speed from its High-Speed Flight trait, Vibrava darted away from where it had been hovering. All those mixed attacks collided with each other in that cramped stretch of sky, and the stray energy from the collisions still managed to clip Vibrava even after it had already put real distance between itself and its old position.
A Trainer riding a Rhyhorn caught the instant Vibrava's flight wobbled from all that dodging and immediately had Rhyhorn use Smack Down.
With its attention stretched thin from dodging move after move, Vibrava failed to notice, for just a moment, a fist sized rock streaking toward it. The rock slammed into its left wing, clearly injuring it, and Vibrava dropped out of its low hover and crashed to the ground.
Smack Down is a basic Rock-type move with a power of only 50, but its effect is rare among Pokemon moves. It's a specialized counter that Rock-type Pokemon use against Flying-types in particular. Any Flying-type hit by Smack Down is left with the Smacked Down condition for a while, losing the protection normally granted by the Flying type and by the Levitate ability. With its wings damaged, the Pokemon is forced down to the ground, where Ground-type moves can finally land on it.
At that point, surrounded on every side and stripped of its mobility, Vibrava was in real danger.
Even so, after being knocked down by a Rock-type move, Vibrava could still think clearly. The instant it hit the ground, it used Dig.
This move had been its specialty back when it was still a Trapinch. After evolving and gaining the ability to fly, Vibrava rarely used Dig anymore, but rarely using a skill doesn't mean forgetting it. A specialty stays a specialty, ready to be pulled out the moment your life is on the line.
In the air, Vibrava had relied on quick, flexible dodging to make the surrounding attacks miss. Now, buried underground, it relied on the cover of solid earth to keep the tracking moves from finding it.
The Rhyhorn Trainer sneered, "Did you really think you could get away from me by digging underground? You're just a Pokemon without a Trainer, after all. You've got some battle sense, but not enough. You dare use Dig in front of a Ground-type? If I drop an Earthquake, won't that finish you off completely?"
With that, the Rhyhorn Trainer ordered his partner to use Earthquake.
What he didn't realize was that he assumed Vibrava was still down in the tunnel it had dug, while he himself stood up on the fifth tier of the battlefield. In truth, even though he was still down on the fifth tier, Vibrava had already climbed all the way back up into open sky.
An area of effect move like Earthquake isn't something you can just fire off whenever you feel like it.
Sure enough, the moment Rhyhorn lifted its foot to begin the move, a Hydro Pump and a Psybeam slammed into its head. Even its Trainer got grazed by the Psybeam, and his entire leg ended up frozen solid.
"Didn't we agree to focus fire on this Vibrava first? You two are playing dirty!"
The other Trainers nearby just gave him cold looks. Charizard's Trainer, feeling this argument had nothing to do with him, spoke up to set the record straight.
"No, brother, we did agree to hit Vibrava first. But with that Earthquake of yours, were you trying to take out Vibrava, or were you just looking for an easy way to knock out a few rivals who happen to be standing near you?"
"I've got a Charizard, so I can see all this from up in the air, let me give you the honest version. These two hitting you wasn't wrong at all. If you'd actually let that Earthquake go off, you'd have wiped out several other people standing on the ground in one shot!"
The Rhyhorn Trainer froze. No way, was this Vibrava really that sharp? Had it actually planned for this?
By then, Vibrava had already slipped back underground and was feeling rather pleased with itself. "What did you expect? Do you think being our team's scout is some easy job? There's a reason Nova didn't pick anyone else for this role and chose me instead. Isn't it obviously because I, Lord Azir, am brilliantly clever and farsighted?"
Of course, if Nova had actually heard that last bit of Azir's inner monologue, he would have had to push back on the boasting. But the first half of that claim, Nova mostly agreed with.
Back in his previous life, even people with just a passing knowledge of military history knew that roles like scout or reconnaissance went to the sharpest members of any army. And the scout on Nova's team was, without question, Azir.
That wasn't only because of its physical gifts, its sharp sense for terrain and a flying speed that was nothing to scoff at. Azir's mind was just as impressive to Nova. This little guy had been sharp since it was just a Trapinch!
It wasn't quite on the level of Corviknight, who was clever enough to develop the Idea King trait, but Azir's intelligence still ranked among the top three on Nova's whole team. In fact, Nova suspected Azir was bound to develop an intelligence based trait of its own someday, something along the lines of Marshtomp's Philosopher or Corviknight's Clever and Quick Witted. It simply hadn't unlocked its full potential yet, and would likely need focused training from Nova before that trait could surface.
As it turned out, if you're not sharp enough, you simply can't do a scout's job.
Back in the Mountain Range, Nova had put real effort into training Vibrava's ability to fight on its own, pushing it to survive as long as possible while surrounded by its own teammates under Nova's command.
Thanks to all that brutal training, Vibrava could now fall back on tactics it had practiced over and over, tactics that had become second nature, to work its way out of difficult situations even without Nova giving direct orders.
Using Dig the instant it got knocked down in a fight against multiple opponents was exactly the kind of response Nova had once told it, in training, to keep ready for moments like this.