[X] My Assistant

[Kamaitachi]

Taggarty “Tag” Lee- Kamaitachi- Johto- 27 - Male
Party: Ledian, Nidorino, Bellossom, Vulpix, Snorunt, Poochyena

Jaima Kuonji-Master Houndoom- Johto- 16 - Male
Party: Quilava, Luxio, Ivysaur, Sandshrew, Kirlia, Marshtomp

Alex Slasher- Proby - Furoh - 14 - Male
Party: Combusken, Marshtomp, Staravia, Luxio, Cottonee, Riolu

Douken Sota - Douken Sota - Furoh - 16 - Male
Party: Croagunk, Dewgong, Growlithe, Duskull, Magnemite, Skarmory

Kaya Rovera - Firepower - Furoh - 13 - Female
Party: Blitzle, Drillbur, Spearow, Venipede, Psyduck, Absol

Rosalind "Rose" Fiore- Asterna - Unova - 13 - Female
Party: Cottonee, Zorua, Panpour, Rufflet

Anita Lyfe- FlyingMew - Kanto - 16 - Female
Party: Skitty, Manky, Growlithe, Snivy

Tag slowly scanned the group of trainers. Part of him wished that he could've been allowed to tackle the Temple all on his own, but his more reasonable instincts told him that being in a group would probably be safer. However, with such a reckless team on board, perhaps that might not have been the correct decision. One kid, with bright orange hair, had crashed a car with some other teenagers into it into the ditch that lead to their current location. The kid with the dirty blonde hair, who had appeared familiar to Tag, had been flying around in a meteor storm on the back of a steel bird. Nothing about that combination sounded particularly safe.

There appeared to be a rather sensible looking boy with the ground. He wore wire-framed glasses, and had brilliant blonde hair in a long braided ponytail. Tag surmised that this teenager seemed a little more sensible and rational than the other two. He hoped he was correct in his assumption.

There was a girl that appeared to be fairly...hyper. Her long black hair seemed all a mess, but that was probably from the latest bout with the Goletts and Golurks. She seemed to be hovering very closely to the dirty blonde guy. The part that worried him the most was the two younger girls. One of them appeared to have an injured leg, but the scariest part of all was that they were probably twelve or thirteen, which meant Tag was double their age.

For a brief moment, he felt really old. Therefore, as the oldest person, he felt compelled to take the position of leadership. He'd hold himself responsible for the teens in his group, and do his best to get them through this ordeal allive.

He moved towards the rainforest edge, waving to the six other people in the team.

"Hello Team Steel" he said in a fairly commanding voice. Despite the 'greeting' message, it still carried the tone that Tag applied to his pokemon in pokemon battles, which was quite odd. He looked around, giving a final sweep over the assembly, then turned to leave. "Let's head for the Steel Temple, we can introduce ourselves on the trek over."

The Steel Team, the most metal of the metal, departed from the Gigas Temple, woefully unaware that they had chosen Nightmare Mode uncertain as to how they'd get through the perils that lay ahead. Tag was certain that preparedness was one of them, and at the very least, he wanted to know at least the names of each of the people he was to be working with. He had the sensation that he'd be guiding a few of them along, as well as probably holding their hands through some of the more difficult parts of the adventure. Not feeling particularly chatty, he walked at the head of the group, unsure as to how to go about introducing himself. He'd heard himself referred to as "Tattoo-Guy", "Tiki-man" and now "Baby-Eater", and he was pretty sure he needed to get the drop on this one by introducing himself before a nickname was established.

"My name is Taggarty Lee. Though I'd prefer if you call me Tag." That wasn't so hard, right?

[Asterna]

Rose looked away from her conversation with Kaya as the tattooed man -- their de facto leader, it seemed -- moved away from the temple, towards the edge of the rainforest. He greeted them all in a commanding voice, making it even clearer that he would be taking charge of their group. Judging by his performance in the battle earlier, he probably knew what he was doing, so Rose followed along after him obediently.

Team Steel walked along for a little while in near silence. No one seemed up to talking, and Rose couldn't blame them; much as she loved to chat, this situation didn't exactly promote that sort of atmosphere. For lack of anything better to do -- she would have loved to examine some of the plants they were walking past, but they probably didn't have time for that -- Rose looked around at the trainers surrounding her. There were Kaya, Jaima, and Douken -- all people she was acquainted with, and whom she knew were good trainers. Other than them, there was an orange-haired boy -- Alex? -- whom she vaguely recalled had battled Kaya earlier. There was also an unfamiliar teenage girl, with long, messy black hair.

With a vague sense of nervousness, Rose realized that she and Kaya were the youngest trainers there. She knew that she wasn't very experienced, either, particularly in comparison to some of the others in Team Steel. Three years of traveling and research didn't make one an expert battler, after all. But we can handle it, she told herself firmly, squaring her shoulders. We kicked those Goletts' butts, and we can deal with Registeel too -- especially with these people. She marched forward a bit more determinedly, refusing to doubt herself further. Anxiety would do no good whatsoever, and Rose much preferred being positive.

Just then, the tattooed man up front spoke for the first time since they'd left the temple, introducing himself as Tag. Cheered by the prospect of lifting the silence, Rose piped up with her own introduction. "I'm Rosalind Fiore, but call me Rose. Nice to meet those of you that I don't already know."

[Master Houndoom]

Jaima took in the group, between bouts where he was unable to keep from glancing toward the direction Meiko had gone. He shouldn't have gone along with the plan to split up, even if it had been half his own idea. He's been nervous enough at the Castle of Mr. Vonmoto, especially after the avalanche hit, but now, when the unannounced disaster hit first, he was even more nervous.

Which is why he sent Shadow with her.

Regardless, it was time to look upon the matter at hand. And what was at hand was that, once again, a rag tag group of trainers was going to go out and attempt the impossible.

Jaima smirked as Mercury intoned, with mock gravity, Second verse, same as the first!

"Come on, Merc," he said, quietly, fully aware that no one else had heard her, "It's not so bad. The fact that it keeps happening and we keep surviving means we're doing something right!"

Or, she said, still sucking on the rawst berry Douken had given her, we're due for a butt kicking.

"This isn't like you, Mercury," Jaima said, half concerned and half adminishing.

I know. I've had... some things to deal with. I'll be fine. With that she gave one of the fakest, bravest smiles Jaima had ever seen and floated off to properly thank Douken for giving her another rawst berry.

It was then that Tag began to speak, establishing himself as leader, much to Jaima's relief. There were actual adults present (though Jaima was considered near enough of one himself in the circles he usually ran with), and he felt that he could relax. He wasn't exactly the leader of his group; at least, he didn't consider himself it. Darryn and Meiko, and even Tuesday all pretty much took over when needed. But outsiders seemed to talk to him first. Meiko had commented, once, that it was because of his height and his innate "dadness", and Jaima, though he'd been suitably outraged at the time, couldn't fault her for the frank analysis (he thought of it as personality dialysis). So it would be a nice change not to be the one looked to.

"Tag introduced himself, putting emphasis on what people could call him. Jaima nodded, as Rose did the same, without the over-exaggerated stress of the nickname.

"I'm Jaima Kuonji, from Cherrygrove in Johto... everyone pretty much just calls me Jaima."

[Douken Sota]

Douken gave off a smile as he saw the blue Kirlia enjoy the berry. Maybe it was the fact that she seemed a bit nervous over the situation. Maybe he just remembered she enjoyed them and was spoiling her a little bit. Who knows. Sh seemed to enjoy sucking on it, so he wasn't one to complain. When she floated by to thank him, he flashed a smile her way and said, "Your welcome. Hope things won't be as bad as the Castle." he didn't need two Pokemon traumatized. It was bad enough that his Croagunk spazzed out whenever he heard "Ursurang" or see a Hyper Beam.

And with that, a girl's voice hovered over his back, looking at the girl with the large backpack. "Anita... right?" he asked, remembering the large back and the white ribbon. She seemed very anxious and curious on what was going to happen, and seemed to be interested on who he was. It was almost like he gained himself a fan girl for saving her life.

Before he could introduce himself to the girl, the tattooed man from before called out to them, seemingly to be taking the role of the leader. He was nearly glad about this, since he didn't want to be held responsible for so many lives. Still, he didn't seem to want to wait and pushed the crowd forward. Douken could of spared a second to take a Revive from Nurse Joy, but he wanted to make sure it was for better usage than his pup, even if Fire is great against Steel.

With the crowd moving along, introductions were being made one by one, starting off with their leader. "I am Douken Sota," he announced to the crowd. "If you guys are in need of Berries, don't be afraid to ask. Whether it be healing, ailments, or hungry stomachs, I got what you need, but my bag can only carry oh-so much." It was one of the things he could offer to the table.

Within the moment, something stirred in his gut, saying they would need a bit of protection just in case, and the split second of releasing a Pokemon can easily mean life and death. Taking a ball off his belt, he held it out and released his poisonous frog, who gave out a slow croak. "Hey Koldo, think you can keep an eye out for any poisonous plants? We need to make sure we get out of here with as little casualties as possibles." With a croak, Douken watched the Poison Frog Pokemon hurry his pace, catching up to the front and keeping his eye out for things. Steel types have protection from poisonous plants and attacks, so it may make sense their trail may be littered with them. However, a Poison type Pokemon is used to a variety of Poisons, and can recognize their signs to be sure they wouldn't get any deadly infections.

At least, that is what he hopes.

[FirePower]

"No thanks," Kaya said, not noticing when Rose glanced at her broken leg. "All my pokemon are either fainted or already healed." At that point the guy with tattoos on his face, seemingly the leader of the group, greeted them in an in-chargey voice and suggested they start heading to the temple. Kaya went with the group, keeping up reasonably well despite her injury. She had a tendency to stumble, though. Once her splinted leg caught on a root and she tripped. Luckily she caught her self before she hit the ground. At that point the tattooed man introduced himself as Taggarty Lee, but he said he preferred they all call him Tag. Then Rose introduced herself, followed by the guy with glasses and a braid, who introduced himself as Jamia. Then the boy who had made her her leg splinted, Douken.

Kaya suddenly realized that she and Rose were the youngest in the group. Kaya hoped no thought they couldn't fight just because they were younger than everyone else. After all, she'd been traveling the Furoh Mainland her entire life, three years of that with only her pokemon. She knew how to battle just as good as they probably did, so what if she was only thirteen?

"I-I'm Kaya Rovera," Kaya said, still feeling rather shy. "I have some berries too. They're mostly oran and lum, though."

[FlyingMew]

Who: Anita
To: Douken/ the beatiful blue Kirlia/ anybody else who feels like joining in
Where: Oh, god... THIS question again? Follow the story! Following the group waving her bag around.

Anita was still standing near where she had stopped to look for the leader of the group she was joined with. Looking around, she noticed a rather unusual pokemon near its trainer. Anita wondered if this was a Kirlia. She has seen them in her mother's daycare center before, but those ones had been green and white with red horns. Anita took off her backpack and began rooting around in one of the smaller side-pockets. Retrieving her Pokedex, Anita flipped it open and pointed at the blue beauty.

~Kirlia- The emotion pokemon. If its Trainer becomes happy, it overflows with energy, dancing joyously while spinning about. ~ the pokedex quipped. Aniita looked in surprise at the picture of the green Kirlia next to the blue one. ~New form registered. Kirlia- shiny.~ the machine said. Anita's eyes became wider as she looked at the gorgeous blue Kirlia. She closed the pokedex and stuffed it back into her backpack. She looked over at Douken as he stated that he had some berries to share, and her eyes glittered with admiration of him. She stared at him, stunned as he handed the shiny Kirlia a Rawst berry, who had eagerly accepted it.

Anita watched as the Kirlia moved to stand near a rather tired-looking man. Wondering if this pokemon belonged to the man that it was standing near, she opened another pocket and began to root around for her berry bag. Her berriy supply was perhaps a little higher as her and her Skitty had located a berry forest before arriving in Starfall Field. Locating the pouch, she looked up at Douken. "Hey, Douken-kun! I've got some berries I'd be happy to share, too, if that'll help." Anita stood up and pulled her arms through the straps of her backpack, hiking it up on her shoulders, while continuing to hold her berry pouch. Looking around, she waved her berry pouch in the air above her head, smiling. "Hey!!! I've got Oran, Rawst and Pecha berries if ya need 'em!" she said loudly. "My name's Anita Lyfe if ya gotta find me!"

[Captain Combuske...]

~Alex

Alex walked rather excitably over to his new group. He was going to do something ridiculously dangerous, but he was sure it'd be fantastic at the same time.

Still, you've got the challenge of Tag, who looks like he disapproves of me... but I suppose there's Douken, who seemed OK, he saved me after all, and that guy with the...

"OH MY GOODNESS, IS THAT A SHINY?" he said and ran over to the Kirlia. "Man, I so badly want one of these..." The Kirlia looked at him, sucking on a Rawst berry. She, Alex thought it was a she anyway, he could sort of tell, looked at him. Alex then remembered that this Pokemon had an owner, and looked up into the guy's face. He was quite tall, with blond hair and glasses.

"Hi, my name's Alex. Alex Slasher. Nice to meet you. You have a lovely Pokemon over there."

He then turned to the rest of the group, which included Tag, who looked quite menacing and leaderish.
"So yeah, I'm Alex. I lived in Mauvile until I was two, and now I live in Daas."
Alex then realized that he was the centre of attention. He cursed to himself, so that nobody heard, and flipped out his Pokegear and in an instant, Blaze the Combusken appeared.
"And this is my buddy Blaze."

The Combusken looked around, smiled warmly at everyone, then looked Alex in the eyes and his eyes turned hard and determined. Alex nodded. They would make it through this challenge together.

[Kamaitachi]

Tag made a quick mental list of the trainers in his group. Because he'd spoken earlier with his stentorian voice, it appeared that all the kids looked to him with the eagerness of people needing direction. Not that they were sheep, but this was certainly a life or death experience. It was rather alarming to have so many people looking up to one in such an expectant manner. It was as if they wanted Tag to bark out orders the whole time. While he certainly had no qualms doing that, he was a little nervous about the whole thing now. He wasn't exactly a natural born leader, as shown by his fairly gruff yet educated demeanor.

So...he had Rose Fiore, Jaima Kuonji from Cherrygrove. A few memories of Cherrygrove flashed through Tag's eyes. Most of them involved sinking beneath the water, with the former dragon trainer haven given up all prospects of life. Strange that just a single mention of a city he'd spent so little time in evoked such powerful memories, even still.

Then there was Douken Sota. The name sounded familiar, almost infuriatingly so. Tag still couldn't place where he'd heard it before, or where he felt he'd met this kid. Either way, he was now working with him, so it was a fairly moot point.

Then there was the other young girl, Kaya Rovera, who seemed to be limping a bit still. The splint seemed to be holding splendidly; whoever had patched it together did a solid job. Not that Tag was any doctor, but that was his assessment regardless.

Then Anita, who was...hyper. She'd probably get annoying very quickly. Taggarty Lee, who was most likely de facto grumpiest as well as oldest, would most likely have found himself annoyed by this far-too-cheerful girl.

And lastly, Alex Slasher. Yet another hotshot trainer, who had crashed a car into the ditch. He didn't seem to have his more reasonable counter-part with him, so this would most likely be a kid he'd have to keep from running off of cliffs. Alex did, however, have a Combusken partner. The Combination of Fire and Fighting would most likely prove absolutely vital in the upcoming Steel Temple.

"Okay guys, here's a ground rule that might help us." Tag looked over his shoulder at the group. "It would probably be best for us to save our fighting and fire pokemon until later. It's more than likely that the more difficult enemies will be within, and we don't want the pokemon with the best chances of defeating them too fatigued. Let's try to ration our energy, and our stock of healing items, or else we may not get too far at all."

As he finished his speech, the group stepped through a particularly rough patch of underbrush into a clearing.

The sight that met them was an astonishing one indeed. Right in front of them stood a rather gargantuan pyramid. The direction of the temple, as deciphered by Pandora Gibbs, had been correct. The building was impressive in its simplicity: No decorum, no decoration, no embellishments. The monolith was simply a set of four, large, smooth, triangular walls, reaching up fairly high into the sky. The only reason they'd missed seeing it was most likely due to the thick foliage of the jungle canopy. But now here it was, towering before them, casting an ominous shadow over the team. Tag halted the team at the fringe of the underbrush, surveying the area before them for any signs of danger.

"Well." Tag blinked, not visibly shaken by the sight. "I guess this is it."

He scanned the side of the building, seeing nothing much but the smooth and surprisingly unmarred sides of the large metal building. However, closer to the ground, there seemed to be several indentations on the walls, that looked to be circular...or even hexagonal with small circles at each vertex.

On the ground in front of each one of the wall indentations were several large slots. From their distance, Tag calculated them to have a length roughly equivalent to the diameter of the keyholes. What they meant, he really wasn't sure of, though.

"Well...looks like there are 10 indentations here on the wall." Tag pointed them out to the group. "Those are probably the keyholes. Let's try and find the keys."

With a determined nod, he stepped forward. If anyone had ever seen a movie, they probably would've expected Tag's foot to sink slightly into the ground, making an odd, grating noise. Tag stopped dead, his face blanching as he stared down at the ground.

There was a slight rumble from the ground, and suddenly a convenient ten shapes shot out of the ten slots on the ground, where they floated in the air. For all the world, it looked like ten thin lines were simply hovering in the air. After a moment, they turned slowly, revealing that the lines were in fact Bronzor, a Psychic and Metal type pokemon.

Of course, they didn't seem at all pleased to see the group of 7 trainers in front of them.

Tag flipped out his pokedex to get a good scan on them, perhaps to see what moves they knew...but to his dismay, the screen of his pokedex remained dead.

"Something's fried my pokedex." he frowned. "I think the temple just fried our electronics." It would make sense that the steel temple would also deal with magnetics and electrics, and since the Furites didn't exactly rely on modern technology, it wouldn't be an inconvenience for such a magnetic field to exist.

He turned to the group, something between a grimace and a grin appearing on his face.

"Well Team Steel. Let's do this the hard way." With that, his hand snapped down to his belt. "I'll take care of our defenses. The rest of you, show me what you've got!"

With that, he summoned to the field Suzu, and only Suzu. He was absolutely set on watching and determining his comrades' battle capabilities, and what sort of pokemon they had, how they battled, etc. It seemed only fitting that he take a sort of backseat to this fight.

"Suzu, Safeguard!" The Five-Star Pokemon crossed all four arms in front of her, gathering energy, before throwing them out with surprising gusto. A silvery powder shot forth into the air before her, forming into a sort of misty veil between Team Steel and the Defending Bronzors. The Safeguard would protect the team from a majority of the status effects that Bronzor could muster, which effectively nullified their Confuse Ray and Hypnosis attacks. This way, the rest of the trainers could fight with a little more focus on offense.

[Douken Sota]

"Douken... kun?" Douken asked, looking at Anita. "Are you also foreign like Jaima?" If he remembered right, Jaima called Douken "Sota-san" before they all took off on the helicopters back home, or at least back to where they were before their journey took such a strange turn. He couldn't help but think about everything that had happened on that day, which turned a simple gathering into a chaos turn for survival. Deja vu anyone?

When Tag spoke up again about keeping Fire and Fighting types on standby, he gave a small nod. [i]If we are going to actually fight Registeel in order to cooperate, then those would be our best elements. Ground would also be useful, but right now, didn't really affect Douken. Rufus was still out, so he was going to recover naturally, and Koldo would make some effective use later on if those giant statues came up again.

Once inside the pyramid-shaped temple, Douken looked about, checking out the main hall, listening on to Tag determine how one might proceed forward... and trigger the first booby trap. With a quick statement about electronics being fried, Douken got curious and pulled out His Pokegear. sure enough, he mostly got crackling and static as the screen had trouble keeping the map on screen. "Wow, talk about a lot of magnetic ener....gy..." Strange as it sounds, Douken got an idea on how to fight the floating plates.

"Koldo, stand back." The poisonous frog stared back at his human companion, giving him a black face Douken had gone to recognize. "Now Koldo, be patient. There are going to be better targets up ahead. A lot stronger than these Pokemon." With a small spitting sound, Douken returned the Poison frog to his POkeball befiore switching out for another.

"Now Rusty, time to show us what you got!" With a chuck of the Pokeball, he released out his magnemite, who looked at the set of plates. With his magnets moving in front of him, it seemed the timid Pokemon was not enjoying the numbers, until it felt the energy radiating from the temple. "Alright Rusty, we can take care of these plates. Go! Electro Ball!"

With a small nod from the Magnet Pokemon, a ball of electricity began to form between the North and South poles on its right magnet. Not only was it gathering its own electric energy, but it was also drawing forth the natural magnetic power of the temple itself into one fierce ball of bolts soon to go flying into the face of the front-right most Bronzor.

"Magne!" Right after the first throw, Magnemite's body soon began to glow bright white, a typical sign of evolution. This made Douken's Pokegear screech and show white noise like crazy just from the pure magnetic energy being thrown outwards. However, the light faded and Rusty was still a simple Magnetite. "Okay, Rusty seems to be ready to evolve, but didn't... Why?"

[Captain Combuske...]

~Alex

Alex nodded at Tag's sound words. It made sense for him not to use Blaze in battle so the kick-boxing Pokemon could be in tiptop condition for the tough battles later. The same would be applied to Swamps, whose ground type moves would come in very handy in the Steel environment. Leo would also do well in the electric-conducting environment. Lucas would also do well. But Lucas was woefully under-levelled and wouldn't be strong enough

So Alex would have to use his newly caught Fluffee, Stryk and Lucas earlier on. And so they started to head for the Steel Temple itself. But whilst they were walking there, Alex spotted a Pokemon in a nearby pool that he had wanted for a while; an Anorith.

"It's an Anorith!" he exclaimed to the group. "I really want that! See you in a couple of minutes!"
He then dashed towards the pool. The prehistoric shrimp Pokemon turned round and looked with its sweet innocent eyes at Alex.

"Go, Swamps!" yelled Alex. Out came his Swamp monster, ready to battle.

"Swamps, use Water Gun!" ordered Alex. He didn't care about his humming routine right now. This would be a quick battle. Swamps nodded and spouted water expertly and accurately, hitting the Anorith square between the eyes. The fossil Pokemon's expression suddenly turned angry and it used the same move, but directed it at the ground instead. It then got out of the water it was in and slapped the soil, now Mud, sending a Mud Slap attack at Swamps. Luckily, he wasn't too hurt, so responded with a powerful Water Gun.

This, surprisingly, only made the Anorith angrier, and it charged at Swamps and used a powerful Scratch attack. But swamps deflected this too with relative ease. he launched a final Water Gun and that did the trick. The Anorith was now weak enough. Alex found a Net ball in his bag, and, knowing it was doubly effective on the Anorith, the it. The Pokeball clicked and Alex walked over to it.

"Well... yay. That was easier than I thought it would be!" he said. "I caught an Anorith! Right, I'm naming your Aldo." he said this last phrase to the Pokeball. He knew that inside, his newly caught Pokemon had heard him.

But now, he had a dilemma. He had to send a Pokemon to the PC! He wanted to sue Anorith now... He then decided. Lucas was far too weak for this. He swiftly switched over Aldo's Pokeball with Lucas', and in an instant, Lucas' Pokeball had mysteriously disappeared.

Alex then headed back in the direction where he'd seen the rest of the group go. He couldn't afford to stay behind for long. he arrived in the middle of the battle with a few odd looking Pokemon that Alex recognized at Bronzor. James had one. Alex knew its weaknesses.

"Go, Stryk!" he cried, and his Staravia came out of he Pokeball, looking fiercely at the shield-like Pokemon.

"Red Bull!" he said. Wing attack. Stryk charged into the fray.

This post has been edited by Proby: Jul 21 2011, 06:24 AM

[Asterna]

Rose listened as the others introduced themselves, making note of their names and general personalities. Both of the younger strangers in this group -- Alex and Anita -- seemed rather excitable at the moment. For the upcoming battles, perhaps? Rose herself felt a small rush of excitement at the thought. After all the fighting she'd done today, she was beginning to understand why trainers enjoyed battling so much. True, it had been dangerous, frightening, and nerve-wracking, but there'd also been a certain joy in the adrenaline rush of putting herself up against an opponent and a sense of accomplishment after defeating them that she had never felt before. To her surprise, she actually found herself looking forward to the upcoming fighting.

She turned her attention back to Tag as the tattooed man spoke up, giving very sound advice about saving their most effective offensive Pokemon for later. So far, all that he'd said had been very reasonable and intelligent, further enforcing her impression that he was quite competent. In her case, she had no super effective Pokemon, but Nina would probably be her most effective attacker when the time came, so Rose decided to keep her Panpour in reserve for the time being.

Then they reached their destination, effectively blowing tactical thoughts out of her mind momentarily. She let out a soft whistle as she stared up at the enormous pyramid. It was quite plain, but its astonishing size still made it quite the awe-inspiring site. Of course, she didn't have time to stand around gawking at the architecture, impressive though it may be. She followed Tag's gaze to the indentations in the wall, nodding as he told them to go look for keys. No sooner had she turned around to begin searching when she heard a grating noise. She whipped around to see that one of Tag's feet had sank into the ground, depressing a block of stone. Her mind flashed back to all the cliched adventure movies that she'd watched in her childhood, and her eyes widened. A trap!

Sure enough, a group of ten Bronzors popped out of slots in the ground. Rose reached her Pokedex and flipped it open, only to find the screen black and dead, just as Tag had said. She tucked it back into her belt, eyeing the Bronzors. Well, they looked like Steel-types, and since they were levitating... perhaps Psychic as well? Their hard, shield-like appearance meant that they probably had high defense. Normally, she would send out Nina in this case, but since she wanted to save her for later... Making up her mind, she tossed two Pokeballs onto the field, summoning Alaia and Ciar. Alaia could support Wyatt with her disabling moves and special attacks, and he could do the up-front attacking. Ciar would be limited since he only had one attack that would do any real damage, but he was still the best option available.

"Alaia, Stun Spore, then Leech Seed! Ciar, Pursuit!" she ordered, pointing at the nearest Bronzor. This was the same basic strategy she'd used with the Goletts -- it should be fairly effective here as well. They both leaped into action, Alaia spraying yellow powder onto the targeted Bronzor to paralyze it before sending in her seeds to sap its HP. Meanwhile, Ciar charged up to it and tackled the Bronzor. He didn't seem to be doing much damage, but that was expected, and Leech Seed would help with that.

[Master Houndoom]

"Fang, take the furthest left one! Spark, then Fire Fang!"

The electric cat gave a smirk, and then, with a mighty roar, charged toward the Bronze pokemon to the farthest left, electricity arcing from his forelegs. He leapt, shoulder forward, and slammed into the plate-like pokemon, electricity arcing between the felinoid and the living mirror. Flipping behind it, he opened his mouth wide, his teeth wreathed in flames, but was sent flying off by a telekinetic burst from the psychic type. Flipping in the air, he landed on his feet, shaking his head with a snarl.

The bronzor turned toward Fang, who kicked dirt behind himself with his forefeet. His eyes held nothing but smug contempt, which phased the bronzor not at all.

Another bronzor was struck in the anterior side with a ball of mud, sending it reeling. Tsunami leaned her head side to side, readying another mud ball even as the bronzor readied an attack.

Mercury floated at Jay's shoulder, and, at his feet, Desertdancer paced. <Bother! I feel so useless! I think I should have stayed with my trainer.>

Nonsense, friend, soothed Mercury, still sucking on the rawst berry Douken had given her. Trainer Jaima is simply biding his time. You'll see. Besides, I am the one who is nearly useless in this situation.

<I very much disagree, my dear. Still, if they didn't float so, I believe I would give them what for!>

[FirePower]

Kaya nodded in understanding when Tag said to save their fire and fighting types for later. It wouldn't really affect her battling. She didn't have any pokemon that were of those types, let alone that were battle ready. She was pulled from her thoughts when they arrived at the temple. It was huge! It was quite simple, with no carvings or decorations on the outside except for ten indentations near the bottom. Quite similar to an Indiana Jones movie, Tag's foot sank into the ground and ten bronzor came out, clearly not too pleased with their rude awakening.

"I think the temple just fried our electronics." she heard Tag say just as she reached for her pokedex. Sure enough, it had short-circuited. She sighed. It had taken her three years to get that pokedex.

"If I had the money, I would so sue the bright fella who came up with pokecon!" She muttered under her breath before she sent out her psyduck.

"Blitbli!" Manera cried. It reared up on it's hind legs, ready to fight.

"No, Manera. Don't fight this time," Kaya commanded before turning to Attila. Pointing to the bronzor on the right edge of the group, she commanded, "Attila, use water gun on that one!" It was in the fray in an instant, squirting a high-pressure stream of water at the bronzor. The move was a bit off-center, causing the bronzor to spin. It took advantage of this to use a powerful tackle attack. Attila tottered back a few feet, dazed by the strength of the move.

"Okay. Not a good idea," Kaya said, returning the psyduck. "Flit, go!"

"Spea-row!" it cried, ready to fight.

"Flit, use peck on that one. Hit it on the top," Kaya ordered, once again targeting the one on the edge. Flit dove towards the bronze pokemon, stabbing at it with it's beak. The attack landed without flipping the bronzor over.

"Keep it up Flit!" she shouted, adrenaline pumping through her veins. She was getting excited now, and so were her pokemon. Manera could barely keep itself from rushing into the fight, and Flit was attacking with surprising enthusiasm. Eventually Flit got too careless, and the bronzor landed a powerful tackle, knocking the spearow out of the air.

"Careful Flit," Kaya commanded as it got back up. Flit nodded and continued attack, now more cautiously.

[FlyingMew]

Anita turned to answer Douken's query just as the Bronzor army came floating up in front of the group. Her immediate response was to utter a short squeal of surprise and jump about two feet up into the air. "Wha-wha-wha-WHAT THE HECK!?" she screamed. She was of course one of those who didn't know what these Pokemon were. She landed on her feet and crouched down, as if to avoid the floating pokemon, and began to crawl forwards at a rather fast pace.

In her panic, Anita forgot about her all-too-familiar backpack being a rather large target, and as she crawled under the Bronzors, one of them began floating after her. Anita continued crawling underneath the Bronzor, as the battle broke out. Somehow, she had managed to crawl past the pokemon, and reached the other side of the room. As she neared the far wall, Anita turned around, only to come face-to-face with the creepiest Bronzor imaginable. The result of this was a resounding "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!! Poof! Get your fuzzy butt out here and HELP ME!!!!!"

Red light flared out of Anita's pocket as a rather ruffled-looking Mankey shot out of his pokeball like a cannon."Maaaannk-YYYYY!" The little fighting-type. landed in front of his trainer in a protective stance, the vein on his forehead standing out. "Mank! Maaaaaannnnnnnnnyyyyyy KY!" he squeaked angrily. He glared at the Bronzor, readying himself for battle. Anita, at this point, managed to get up into a standing position. "Poof," Anita said, "Focus your energy!"

The Mankey closed his eyes and took a deep breath, which he held for a few seconds before releasing a contented sigh. Opening his eyes, Poof looked at the bronzor, focusing on the orbs on the edges of it's body. Anita got the hint. "Poof, Covet!" she ordered. The little fuzzball suddenly jumped towards the Bronzor, and latched onto the topmost orb of the Bronzor. "Kee, kee!!! Maaaan!"

The Mankey held tight to the Bronzor, as it simply hovered there in mid-air. Poof looked at the orb that he was holding onto, puzzled. "Kree? Mank!" he cried. He began frantically pulling on the Bronzor's orb, which caused it to slowly start spinning. The resulting sight was rather comical, the enraged mankey pulling harder and harder as the Bronzor silently rotated in place. Anita stared blankly at them, her eyes dull as if she was being hypnotized.

[Kamaitachi]

This was Tag's first real chance to study his team in earnest. While he didn't particularly enjoy playing leader, he honestly felt that he had to in this group of ragamuffin teenage trainers. At the very least, he could get an idea of what sort of battle abilities that Team Steel would utilize in the upcoming temple.

The first thing he noticed, was the only synergy was in target picking. Each of the trainers successfully picked one, but there were seven trainers and ten bronzor.

Douken Sota had opted to attack with Magnemite, which made sense defensively. The magnet pokemon would receive minimal damage from the Steel/Psychic Types. Tag watched curiously as the Magnemite prepared to evolve. It made sense that it would be absorbing the magnetic energy from the temple, forcing into evolution. However, once the light faded, Rusty remained a Magnemite. The Bronzor that had been struck with the Electro Ball reeled from the attack. Electro Ball's damage was based on how much faster the user pokemon was from its opponent, and the speed difference between the two was minimal. Bronzor was not a particularly fast pokemon to begin with, but neither was Magnemite. The Pokemon opted to retaliate with an Extrasensory, which probably wouldn't do too much damage, but had the potential to flinch its opponent.

"Maybe it's just not ready." Tag shrugged, throwing in his two cents concerning the non-evolution.

Turning his attention to Alex next, he watched as the trainer picked a Staravia to battle his Bronzor. Wing attack proved fairly ineffective, both against Bronzor's Steel-typing, but also its very high defenses. Tag watched as the Bronzor retaliated with a confusion attack, sending waves of psychic energy at Alex's pokemon.

Rose, despite her age, appeared to be a very, very sharp girl. She opted to send out two pokemon Tag hadn't really seen before. Realizing that he hadn't seen them before could only mean that they were Unova pokemon. (Not that Tag had seen every pokemon in the world, but he'd seen plenty of them in his time.) The fluffball was using Stun Spore and Leech seed, which while not dealing outright damage, would help sap the life force from the Bronzor. Pursuit was a dark type attack, which obviously meant that the little black and red fox was a dark type of some sort. Naturally, Tag inwardly cooed at the cuteness of the duo.

Once again, he turned his attention to another part of the battle, where the blonde haired Jaima Kuonji was taking on a pair of Bronzor with his team of Fang and Tsunami. The duo looked quite formidable, taking on the Bronzor with a certain amount of aplomb. It was definitely the most interesting battle to watch so far. Even yet, Jaima had a Kirlia floating near his head, and a rather cute, but stuffy looking Sandshrew at his feet.

The other young girl, Kaya, did not seem to be as competent a strategist as her friend Rose. Either that, or she simply didn't have the pokemon team to fight effectively against these floating steel types. She had taken on a Bronzor with an angry looking Psyduck, then opted for a Spearow. Either way, she didn't seem to be making too much progress with her Bronzor opponent.

The least successful of all seemed to be Anita. Not only had she completely ignored Tag's suggestion, summoning a fighting type pokemon, (which was double-suicide in this encounter, due to Bronzor's psychic typing), but she had essentially crawled into the enemy portion of the field, where she was in very real danger of getting hit by attacks from not only the Bronzors, but her own teammates as well. The girl had actively made the choice to make the battle that much more difficult.

With Seven of the Bronzor actively engaged, Tag watched as the remaining three divied themselves up amongst the combatants. Seeing as one Bronzor was outnumbered 2 to 1 by Rose's Cottonee and Zorua, another floated over to join them, evening the odds. Both Bronzor fired off confusion attacks at her pokemon. Ciar would remain completely unaffected, obviously, but Alaia might not've come off so lucky.

The remaining two Bronzor noted Ledian hovering towards the back of the ground, and began spinning slowly, moving towards her in their Gyro Ball technique.

Tag sighed, a little peeved that they were targeting his pokemon rather than the other pokemon providing the offensive threat. It seemed that these temple keys were also the guardians, and that they had some semblance of strategy when it came to defending their home turf.

"Suzu, Silver Wind."

Suzu fired off a powerful blast of energy from her wings, the powdery, silvery wind slamming hard into the two oncoming attackers. The attack stopped their Gyro Ball techniques in their tracks, and the two quickly lost interest in haranguing the Ledian. One floated off to go team up on Jaima's Marshtomp, while the other made its way towards the temple, aiming to bother Anita and her Mankey some.

With that, he stepped back again, Ledian hovering gently by his side. "Everyone seems to be doing fine." Tag muttered to his pokemon, who buzzed and nodded quietly in assent. "We'll step in again if the tables start to turn."

[Captain Combuske...]

~Alex

Alex cursed as Stryk got hit by a seemingly powerful Confusion attack. Clearly, whoever had wanted any intruders to stay out of the Registeel Temple had done a great job doing so, by training these Bronzor to be excellent strategists as well as hardy battlers.

"Dammit, Stryk, you don't have any good moves on the ground, do you? Well, I guess we'll have to resolve that. Stryk, come back to my side!"

The Staravia looked at Alex and nodded. She flew like a bullet towards him, and landed expertly without hurting him on his shoulder. She nodded at Blaze, who was standing beside his trainer in silent understanding, before looking back at the battle.

Alex, who hadn't heard Tag's earlier comment about the electronics not working due to the fact that he was capturing his Anorith at the time, was very confused at that his Pokegear was not working.

"DAMN YOU, YOU STUPID THING!" he yelled the the device, nearly knocking Stryk of her perch in shock. Suddenly, Alex's party appeared from the device. Alex briefly remembered Tom explaining the mechanics of a Pokeball once to him, saying that when the Pokeball stopped working, it automatically released the Pokemon from the device. Clearly this was what was happening here. Out came Fluffee, Leo, Swamps and his new Aldo, looking very relived. The broken device must have taken a toll on their minds and they were sighing that they were now safe.

"Great," grumbled Alex, quite loudly, "So now, my Pokeballs don't work! Now ain't that just the Cats' Pyjamas..."

Oh well, so your Pokemon are going to have to stay out of their Pokeballs... there could be worse dilemmas. he reasoned with himself.

Then he remembered the battle. The Bronzor he was facing was coming closer, and Alex didn't like that. He needed to resume this battle. But Blaze, Swamps and Leo needed to be kept for later, Fluffee and Stryk had massive type disadvantages meaning they wouldn't be able to penetrate the solid defence of the opposing Pokemon. That left Aldo.

"Well, I guess he needs to battle sometime." said Alex, before shouting "Go, Aldo!"

"Ano!" screeched the Ancient Shrimp, before launching himself in the way of the Bronzor. The Bronzor turned round, as if cocking his head, before smiling maliciously. He then started producing a bright white light. he looked like he was charging up for a Flash Cannon attack.
"Steel is super-effective against Anorith." said Alex. That meant he needed to act. Fast.
"Aldo, send that Flash Cannon to the sky! Use Water gun!" he ordered. Aldo paused for a second as he took in the orders and thought about what to do with his Water Gun. But he quickly realized and spouted a powerful gush at the Bronze Pokemon, at the top of it. This meant that the thin Pokemon's entire body was flung so it faced upwards. The Bronzor couldn't bring its position back in time, and so the Flash Cannon was shot directly upwards instead of at Aldo.

"No, Aldo, follow up with Mud Slap!" cried Alex excitedly but confidently. He was always like this in battles. He loved the thrill of it, but at the same time, he knew was he was doing. Aldo began work on his next move. Just like when Alex had caught him a few minutes earlier, the Old Shrimp Pokemon waterlogged some of the soil right near him to it became gloopy and muddy. He then raised his two front claws in the air, then swept the muddy ground with a powerful force, sending some flying at the Bronzor. It made contact with Aldo's opponent, sending it spiralling out of control. It crashed into the temple walls, and fell to the floor.

But no sooner had one enemy fallen that another appeared. Alex sighed. This may yet turn out to be a long fight. And at the back of his mind was the Golurk battle earlier. It was quite likely that the original keeps of this temple would have put in a backup security system. That meant there might be some Bronzong. Those were some tough cookies,. Alex hoped they would encounter those.

This post has been edited by Proby: Jul 21 2011, 07:06 AM

[Asterna]

Rose made a face as another Bronzor drifted over to join its comrade. She'd been hoping to make up for her lack of offensive power and damaging moves with superior numbers, but it looked like that wouldn't work. "Alaia, same combo on that one!" she called, pointing to the second Bronzor. The Cottonee managed to get off a Stun Spore, paralyzing the new Bronzor, but then the Bronzor both attacked in tandem. The Confusion attack passed through Ciar harmlessly, but Alaia wasn't able to get off so lightly. She was knocked backwards with a cry of alarm, bouncing once before she got her balance back.

Rose, eyes widening, muttered something rude under her breath and ran to check on her Cottonee, but not before turning and sending out her Rufflet to back up Ciar. "Wyatt, Wing Attack on the right Bronzor! Ciar, Pursuit again! Keep attacking, but try not to get hit!" she ordered.

Wyatt eagerly fell upon his new opponent, smacking the mirror-like Pokemon with his wings and distracting it from targeting the Zorua. Of course, given that Flying wasn't very effective against Steel, it hardly seemed to affect the Bronzor, but that didn't dampen the young Rufflet's enthusiasm in the least. Ciar, meanwhile, smashed into his opponent again with dogged determination. He was having more success than Wyatt at the moment, both his constant Pursuits and Alaia's Leech Seed whittling away at the Bronzor's health. It looked like she wouldn't be able to use the same strategy on the second Bronzor, though, Rose thought as she reached Alaia.

The Cottonee was still conscious, but probably not up to battling -- just the one Confusion had done plenty of damage, having caught her off guard. This, coupled with her species' low defenses, was enough for Rose to take her off the battlefield, for fear of having her be knocked out. She only had four Pokemon, after all, three of which she'd already brought out, and no Revives, for which she was quietly cursing herself for. Rose recalled Alaia with a quick murmur of thanks, resolving to heal her later, when they had time. Now, she had to get back to the battle.

She hastily ran back to her previous place, chewing absentmindedly on her bottom lip as she thought quickly, trying to decide on her next move. Her Pokemon were still attacking their opponents, but weren't dealing as much damage as she would like. The Bronzors, due to their superior levels, were able to do more damage to her Pokemon -- a fact that she didn't want to test again, as the two Bronze Pokemon readied attacks again, spinning rapidly as rings of light appeared around them. Rose didn't recognize what move it was -- Gyro Ball, perhaps? -- but either way, she didn't want to get hit by them.

"Guys, get out of the way of those!" she called, just in the nick of time as the Bronzors released their attacks. Ciar, being quite speedy, was able to dodge out of the way in time, but Wyatt wasn't quite fast enough. He managed to dodge the brunt of the attack, but was clipped with the edge of the beam. He recoiled with a cry that was as much anger as pain. He'd taken damage, but still seemed well enough to battle -- for that matter, Rose didn't think he would let her recall him, if the way he was glaring at the Bronzor was any indication. His surprisingly frightening expression gave her an idea.

"Wyatt, Leer, then keep using Wing Attack!" she ordered. The Rufflet glowered at both Bronzor, puffing up his now singed feathers threateningly. Both opponents seemed to shudder slightly; their defense was now lowered slightly, so Rose should be able to take them down more quickly. "Good! Ciar, keep using Pursuit on yours!" she shouted encouragingly.

[Douken Sota]

"I have my doubt about that.." he muttered as Rusty began to glow again, releasing another wave of magnetic energy, causing his Pokegear to screech again, fading as soon as it subsided. "If I remember right, Magneton, which is Magnemite's evolution, is pretty much three different Magnemite combined through magnetic forces. Whenever he seems to glow for evolution, a strong magnetic wave is being released, which can be told by the Pokegear acting up whenever it gets ready..." That was when it clicked. "I get it! Rusty's ready. The only problem is that there are no other Magnemite around to fuse with to actually become Magneton." If that's the case, only one would be labeled the Alpha of the trio, and its the stronger one that gets the title. Rusty is getting a serious advantage boost inside here charging up.

Now then, looking back on the battle on hand, Douken looked at the Bronzor. With its eyes glowing gold, the floating plate fired off a multicolor beam full of white crescents at the Magnet Pokemon's steel body. Good thing that steel body could take the front, and even then, if it was way too Powerful, Rusty would still be standing thanks to Sturdy. "Now Rusty, give them another hand of Electro Ball!" Sure, both Pokemon were consider slow, but at least Rusty was still faster than the Bronze Pokemon, which meant another good hand of damage.

Douken looked about, seeing each trainer taking on more opponents. The three that weren't taken decided not to simply wait around, though. One went to help out an outnumbered ally as the other two tried to mess around with the Ledian. However, with a powerful Silver Wind, they, too, divided themselves, one for Jaima to even out and one for... Anita. She was standing there in a complete daze as a Mankey tried to pull away one of the six orbs that were apart of the Bronze's body.

"Talk about a mess," he sighed as he removed another Pokeball from his belt. Tossing it out, his Dewgong appeared. "Maya, help out the girl with the backpack!" With a swift nod, the giant seal slammed her fins onto the floor, surrounding herself in water before launching straight at the second plate that wanted to mess with Anita.

[Master Houndoom]

Jaima was bothered by something, but couldn't put his finger on it. In the mean time, he had two Bronzors to contend with. One had figured out Fang's major strategy and was trying to keep him at bay with distance attacks. However, the pokémon that looked like a floating bronze mirror could not keep up with the feline's speed and power. Fang would dash by, hit him with a Fire Fang, and dash away before the bronzor could compensate. The gleeful smirk on Fang's face spoke volumes over how much he was enjoying this.

In the mean time, Tsunami was doing more to keep her opponent off balance, sending jets of water from a distance to hit it from the side, before slamming with another mud-slap or mud ball. That returned the bothersome feeling to the back of Jaima's mind.

Then it hit him.

"Hey, at least some of these can be hit with Ground attacks!"

He turned to inform Tag of this, then noticed that three of the pokemon had split up, one going toward a girl, Anita, and the other coming at Tsunami. He also noticed as he turned that one of the girls, Kaya, was in a precarious position. He started snapping orders to his pokémon.

"Desertdancer," (OK, his girlfriend's pokémon, too, but he was on loan!) "Attack the one Tsunami is on! Use Sand Attack and see if you can hit the other one! Keep them distracted if you can, and if you have to, take out any you can hit! Grondir, the one there, keep it back! Don't let it hit Kaya!"

Trainer Jaima, you might be spreading your forces too thin! Mercury reminded him, worried at her own uselessness as well as the danger they were all in.

"That's where you might come in handy, Merc. See if you can't communicate with any of these guys. Explain the situation and call them off, if you can!"

[FirePower]

Kaya took a second to check on how everyone else was doing. They all seemed to be handling their battles quite nicely- well, all except for Anita, but Douken looked to be taking care of that. As it was, She wasn't doing all that fantastic herself. Peck didn't do all that much damage against the bronzor, and the tackle attack Flit had received was beginning to take it's toll. It wasn't fighting with it's usual pep anymore. Before she recalled the spearow, she had one last idea to try and beat it.

"Atilla, go!" She said, sending out her psyduck once more. "Atilla, hit it from behind with water gun. Flit, peck it in the face after that." Atilla nodded and snuck behind the mirror-like pokemon and hit it towards the bottom with a powerful stream of water. It flipped upward. At lest that part of the plan worked. The bronzor, who Kaya forgot could also hear her orders, launched a confusion attack upwards, making Flit run into it head-on. Now the spearow was definitely in no condition for battle.

"Both of you return," Kaya said, kicking herself for forgetting that her pokemon weren't the only ones with ears. "Manera, it's your turn. Shock wave!"

"Zleblitzlebli!" It cried as it launched electricity at the bronzor. The steel type looked dazed by the attack.

"Great! Three quick attacks, then charge!" Kaya said, her excitement rising again. Manera reared up on it's hind legs before charging as fast as it could at the bronzor. Then it turned around and repeated the process twice. As it came to a stop, it's fur began to spark with static electricity. Kaya had hoped the bronzor would spiral out of control and straight into another round of attacks, but apparently that wasn't the case. It managed to keep from running into Manera's electrified fur and began to prepare a confusion attack.

"Charge again, before it can hit you with that confusion!" Kaya said, hoping her blitzle was fast enough. Luckily, it manged to finish the move just before confusion was launched. The blitzle was knocked back a few feet, but it was still up for fighting.

"Another shock wave!" Kaya shouted. She was in her own little world now. Nothing else existed except for her and the two battling pokemon. She smiled to herself as manera released the powered-up electric attack and the charge left. The bronzor hurtled at Manera, which sidestepped the attack and waited for Kaya's ext order.