Drew wanted nothing more than to get out of here, but the heat emanating from the cave entrance kept increasing and there was still an entire Rock Slide approaching their location. Sandslash reinforced the stone pillars he’d formed, raising many more spikes in front of the cave entrance, ‘The perfect day to not take the full team with me!’

  “Weave them into each other, Buddy!” Drew commanded. Buddy obliged with a nod. He wove the spikes into each other, making a tall basin of rock to catch the rock in front of Mt. Silver's entrance. By the time he had completed his work, smaller pebbles were already raining down on them, and a giant cloud of dust followed just behind the stones.

  “Alright Buddy, next-” WHOMP! Just as Drew was about to issue one final command, a gigantic boulder smashed into his Pokemon's rock weave with an impossibly loud crash. The cacophony of noise only seemed to increase as more and more rock, boulders, gravel, and other debris began to collect in the large woven rock basket created by his ace.

  He could see what was about to happen, “Reinforce it!”

  Sandslash dug its claws into the green grass and began to raise another layer of woven stones to reinforce the construct. Its work was for nothing though, as the cracks and fissures from the mountain began to spiderweb outwards as the ground around them began to quake violently, cracking in various places and opening up large fissures all around them.

  ‘Damn! What the hell is going on?!’ Drew cried out in his mind as he scooped up his daughter in a panic, ‘This isn’t normal!’ Valerie for her part looked like a deer in headlights as she watched the cloud of dust finally roll over them.

  “SCREEECH!” A loud bird cry echoed out of the insides of the cavern, dispelling another large swath of dust with a gout of heat that blasted the basket in front of the exit, shooting sharp pebbles in their general direction.

  One of the windows of the truck shattered as a stray pebble struck it, and the body of the truck violently jolted as a large boulder struck its side, managing to merely stay in place due to the parking brake. The noise gave Drew pause though, was a loud hiss of air as one of the sharp-edged pebbles sliced apart the sidewall of one of their tires. “Shit!” Drew tried not to swear in front of his kid, but he was overwhelmed and knew he needed to do something, anything. He just didn’t know what was to be done at this point.

  His gaze naturally traveled down to his daughter, “Valerie?”

  She didn’t respond her eyes transfixed on the natural disaster happening in front of them, “Val!”

  “W-What?!” She turned suddenly like she’d just realized she wasn’t in some movie scene.

  “You need to get out here, I can protect myself, but I’m not sure I can protect a second person.” Drew quickly ripped open the driver-side door of the truck they’d been hiding next to, before handing his daughter a large backpack that had been sitting in the middle of the car.

  “Dad?” Valerie still looked up at her father with wide eyes as he manhandled the backpack onto her, “W-What are you doing?!”

  “Alright, Val!” Drew announced as calmly as he could as a shower of increasingly violent spray of stones began to rain down on the passenger side of their truck, “On three we run back there to the treeline, ok? You listening too Buddy? Spot us.”

  “Sla!” Sandslash answered back loudly next to him, it began peering around the bodywork of the truck to watch the rockslide descend onto them.

  “Wha-” Valerie tried to stutter out another question, but Drew spoke over her.

  “Alright, Ready? Three? Two? ONE! GO GO GO!” Drew pulled Valerie along as they ran away from the truck and to the side, making for the trail they’d driven through to get to the entrance.

  RRRUM

  Through the dust and debris, a giant boulder careened straight towards the two of them. Valerie's eyes grew wide as saucers and she was just about to cry out in panic, before a stone spire shot out of the earth and rebounded the boulder away from them and onto their truck, whose entire rear and truck bed was crushed flat underneath its weight.

  She slowed and looked on in awe at the speed at which the boulder was redirected like a pinball by Sandslash before her father tugged on her arm in alarm. “Keep going! We’re almost out!”

  A few stray pebbles hit Drew's arm, but once they were inside the bed of trees most of the bigger stones were out of the equation as they were being blocked by the treeline.

  They looked back as the dust cloud still rolling over their parked truck before a giant boulder easily the size of a semi suddenly smashed through the clearing.

  WHOMP

  The truck was crushed completely flat under its weight as the entire front face of the mountain had seemingly decided to come loose at the same time. Drew patted his daughter on the shoulder as they huddled behind a large oak tree, “Seems we’re lucky we got away from there.”

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  Valerie for her part looked absolutely flabbergasted, her mouth hung agape and her eyes were transfixed on the former truck, now nothing more than a piece of scrap metal.

  “What was that?” She asked as she pointed towards the clearing.

  “Fuck if I know.” Drew barely swore, so his current vernacular was completely new to his daughter. It was an old trait though, Drew began to swear when in high-stress situations, “Alright-,” The endless flow of stone, boulders, and debris was just beginning to finally wane when suddenly something made itself known again.

  “SCCREEE!” An incredibly loud bird screech echoed from the depths of the cave behind a thick layer of dust and suddenly the air around the clearing became swelteringly hot. Drew knew something was coming, so he acted out of instinct again as he grabbed his daughter into his arms and threw himself and her to the ground, “Buddy, Rock Tomb us!”

  The two of them instantly sagged into the ground as a sandy layer of dirt covered them gently.

  “CAAAAAW!”

  Another loud cry sounded out and the dirt above them began to heat up, it started as a pleasant warmth, but in a matter of seconds the heat became unbearable, the sand above lost all its natural moisture before beginning to sear Drew's uniform, “Aargh!”

  …

  Whatever bird was up there, stomped around pridefully for a few more seconds before it took flight. The temperature dropped instantly, and the sand cooled back down to a bearable temperature.

  “Dad?” Still in her father's embrace and covered under a layer of sand, Valerie finally found the courage to call out in a worried tone, “Are you alright?”

  Drew didn’t answer though, “Buddy?” Sandslash worked its magic and the two of them rose on a hard piece of ground out of the impromptu cover which Sandslash had created. Her father finally released his grip on her and Valerie got her first real look at the carnage around them.

  The trees surrounding the clearing of the cave entrance of Mt. Silver were singed, their bark looked dry and burnt, while the leaves which were facing the cave looked to be either a sickly yellow instead of the vibrant green they’d been before or completely burnt off.

  Previously, grass had grown in the clearing to the cavern, with a simple pairing of dirt tracks for vehicles and people to follow. Now the grass looked yellow, heated to an ugly brown or in the case of a quite obvious trail, completely burnt away.

  Whatever Pokemon they’d been forced to hide from, it was most definitely a Fire-Type, Valerie was sure of it. But why had it caused a rock slide and why had it cried out anyway? Looking down to contemplate her questions, her eyes fell on her father, who she just now noticed looked far worse for wear than before.

  “Oh, Dad! What happened?!” Valerie cried out and put a hand on his shoulder, forcing Drew to cry out in pain.

  “Ooh! Don’t! Jus- Just don’t touch Val ok?” Valerie's eyes began to bead with tears as Drew fought his expression into a reassuring smile, “I protected you, took most of the heat of that thing. Burned my back.”

  “Dad…” Val started again but was cut off by her dad.

  “Can’t move, even talking hurts. Val, you gotta be a big girl and call for help.” Drew ground out.

  “Wh- What am I supposed to do?!” Valerie panicked seeing her dad in such a state, she’d never been in such a perilous situation before. The highest of highs she’d experienced before was one of her favorite characters in a drama dying, she’d cried her eyes out for almost three hours then.

  “Backpack…” Drew forced himself to say, with a pained expression, “...Radio, call an emergency.”

  Val shucked off the pack as if it had bitten her, she ripped open the zipper and rummaged through the inside like she was possessed. Finally, she found the device and fumbled it in her hand for a second to find out how to turn the thing on, before she found the switch.

  BWO-WEEP!

  Startled, she almost dropped the thing onto the forest floor before catching it again. BWEE! As she caught it, she grasped it weirdly and pushed a button on the side, “Wha- Huh?! Is it on? Wha-! Da-?”

  WEEP!

  “Push the button to talk…Ugh!” Drew explained to his panicking daughter, “Argh! Tell 'em’ what happened, baby!”

  Valerie looked at the thing reverently, she’d owned a phone before, so she thought the thing in her hands was technology of the past. She pushed the button again, BWEE!

  “H-Hello?” She tested warily before remembering a show she’d watched on TV before, “O-Over…”

  WEEP!

  A tense silence descended on the forest, a stray pebble rolled down the hill in the distance, the burnt trees swayed in the wind. Seconds went by in minutes as Valerie watched her fathers face wrinkle in agony, before the radio finally answered.

  “Valerie? Did you just activate the radio? We just had some intense seismic readings from your location, I hope nothing bad happened. Over.” Henrys voice over the radio dispelled the mounting anxiety like rainfall in a desert and Valerie could feel herself smile at his voice before she came back to the severity of the situation.

  BWEE! “Henry! Da-, I mean Drew is injured! The truck got crushed by a rockslide and we almost died and then some crazy Pokemon almost burned us to death and now Drew’s got burns on his back!” Valerie rattled off everything that had happened to her before realizing she’d still been pressing down the button, “Uh, over!” WEEP!

  The radio stayed quiet for another agonizing five seconds before it answered, “You serious? Alright, I’ll call for some backup! Can you get Drew on the phone? Over.”

  Drew tried to move his arm to take the device, but immediately winced in pain and retracted after he tried, “Agh! Hold it to my mouth Val.”

  BWEE! “Hey Henry,” Drew groaned out, “Get some fliers here, I think these are second-degree burns. Ugh, over” WEEP!

  “Alright, signals already sent out. I’ll be making my way over there too. You guys just hold down the fort! Over!” Henry sounded like he was already walking around, judging by the noises in the background. Considering their truck was now more pancake than motor vehicle, Valerie didn’t know how he was going to get there.

  A quick confirmation was sent his way and the two kept off of the radio waves for now, hoping for the signal from the other group of rangers to arrive. Just as Valerie was about to ask for more instructions on what to do, the earth rumbled ominously again. She looked around in a panic, fearing another rockslide, but the quaking stopped just as quickly as it arrived. The only difference was, the noise of flowing water sounded out in the distance.