No, I don't want TM Solar Beam!

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Acro looked at the giant crevice with a bit of grief. He had been here before, this was were George left his team for some reason. Cheh....the reason was me...he left because I was so weak... he thought. He looked down into the dark pits that seemed to want him to hop in so it could swallow him whole. He huffed and shook his head, no way was he going to jump in! Only an insane person would jump in. He walked along the edge, which was a bit dangerous, but he wasn't thinking about anything that could happen just then. He instead looked at the seemingly gloomy sky, he was alone yet again. He had sent Astrid back to the guild once more, fearing that the little Dratini would get hurt in such a dungeon.

"Oh, that's surprising. She never told me about you. Astrid had been in the forsest to defeat an outlaw Wurmple. Apparently that Wurmple had friends and...quite a lot happened. I'd have thought, you'd be on a higher rank already. You always seem to be so active."
Now William was surprised. He had run into the Archen and the torture instrument so often already, that he had expected them to be two ranks above them at least. And why had Shiro never mentioned their mission? Come to think of it...William didn't know much about the other two's pasts at all. Maybe he should ask them some time...

"I travel around but I don't do missions too often..." Acro replied, "I've been too busy roaming around to do many of them I guess...I'll have to get to doing them more often, there was one about a hitmonchan wanting to fight in the Blackspear Mountain Range or something like that...I think i'll go do that once i'm finished here" The Archen spoke. He had already decided that he wouldn't take in any more team members once Astrid left, why recruit when they all end up leaving? As he had thought before, he was sure Astrid was on the verge of leaving as well.

"Well...that makes sense, I guess. I've seen that job as well. I would take it, but you've probably already read the restrictions. Well...let's see, whose team reaches the next rank first!"
It wasn't often, that William had had a chance to compete against someone else in a non-combat manner. Thus, he was quite interested in having a little competition of sorts. It would mean mission after mission after mission for him, but he didn't mind. Living in the wilderness had made him used to having a full schedule. And as long as he wouldn't meet Astrid on those missions, everything would be all right.

"Sure, that could be fun!"
Acro agreed to the challenge. It would definitely be a fun thing to think about while on the dangerous missions. He noticed an item not far from their path, "Hang on a second.."
He darted towards the item, it was yet another item wedged in the rocks. When he picked it up he heard a bellow, it was a trap, a bait trap! Acro cursed himself for being so stupid and reckless, as a shape jumped out from behind a rock and landed in front of him with a loud thud.

This dice is not existing.

This dice is not existing.

William tried to stop the unattentive Archen, but it was too late. Acro had already fallen for the trap in front of him, so he couldn't do much but curse himself for not having seen it sooner.
In front of them, a brown shape emerged from behind a rock, spraying dirt everywhere in a Sand Attack as it jumped.
As the dirt settled down again, it revealed itself to be a Sandile, obviously angry.
Due to its typing, this would not be an easy fight for William, so he was rather enthusiastic upon identifying their attacker.
"Here we go again..."

Acro reacted a bit slowly because of the surprise attack though. He managed to smack it with a Iron Tail, but the sandile had kicked up some more sand and caused Acro to smash his tail into the Sandile's tail instead of the body. The sandile screeched and leered at both the Archen and the ghastly before diving into the ground similar to the gabite and popping up behind the ghastly in a Bite attack to try and damage the ghost pokemon. The Sandile's teeth were cloaked in a dark aura, giving it the dark type power that would effect the ghost type.

While the sand got into William's eyes and blinded him, he couldn't see the Leer with it and thus remained unaffected. The Bite attack however, was something, that didn't go away if one were to close their eyes, so it hit the spectral Pokémon, causing quite some damage.
Since the Dark type's lungs were already quite close, William decided to use Smog to cause poisonous gas to flow right into them. While it wouldn't be that effective, the resulting cough should be enough to get the Sandile to stop biting his backside.

The sandile coughed as the hazardous fumes seeped into its lungs and poisoned it. It took some damage from the poison, and leered at them once more before being suddenly surrounded by archens. Acro had used Double Team to surround the pokemon even though it could escape easily into the ground. Acro tried to use Iron Tail again but missed as the pokemon easily dodged it because of the earlier sand attack. This pokemon was getting annoying to Acro as he was hit with Sand Attack once more.

William's eyes were still closed, since it was a bit difficult to get sand out of one's eyes without the help of hands, but as he heard the Archen behind him, from multiple directions even, the Gastly decided not to attack in that direction just yet. Instead he floated into the direction he remembered the abyss to be, trying to prevent attacks in close combat until he could see again.
Hopefully Acro could deal with this pest for a moment.

The sand-attacks were relentless, but the Archen still had his hearing. He listened for the pokemon's scuttling feet and slammed his tail just inches ahead of the sandile's path. He heard the sandile screech in pain and opened his eyes slightly to see a brown shape underneath where is tail was. He had struck the pokemon in the back. The sandile hissed at the Archen and looked to see the ghastly floating over the abyss and decided it may have been just the time to give up.

William managed to open his eyes again just in time to see the Ground type disappear into the ground again, leaving its item behind. Since it didn't seem, as if it would return, the Gastly floated back to Acro again, hoping for him to get the sand out of his eyes again soon as well.
"I think it has left. Why is it, that everyone hates us, whereever we go? If only we'd knew, what it is, that's making all these Pokémon go crazy. Maybe it could be fixed somehow. But for now all we can do are missions, I guess. Still, that's treating the symptoms, not the cause..."

"I don't know, but man this sand BURNS!" Acro said while rubbing his eyes with his wing and blinking rapidly. He had decided that his new least favorite attack was now Sand-Attack. He finally got enough sand out to see more defined shapes.
"Whatever caused these pokemon to be like this is annoying though...maybe its just their nature??" He suggested. The Archen blinked a few more times, his eyes watering a bit to get the rest out of his eyes. He was finally able to see clearly again!

"I doubt it's just that. For it to be their nature, this happened far too abruptly and coincides too well with the appearance of these Mystery Dungeons. There has to be a specific cause for this. Hopefully a solution will be found soon. There are enough bad things happening already. So...should we continue?"
This dungeon was getting worse and worse by the minute. But at least Acro was there. Without him, William would probably have left already. While his recklessness was a problem, William envied him for his...his apparent happiness so to say...

"Yeah, we still haven't found anything of value. Just a Stun seed and a vile seed...what does a Vile Seed do again?" he wondered. He had heard of it through rumors in the town, but never seen it. He heard it was a good item but it was pretty common and didn't have much value in a manner of poke. He inspected the item and a stupid idea of eating it popped into his head. He pushed the folly out of his mind and mentally kicked himself for even thinking about doing that!

"If I remember it correctly, a Vile Seed drastically reduces its target's Defense and Special Defense. So you should throw it at an enemy, probably. But whatever you do, don't eat it. It wouldn't be too...healthy."
William was surprised. Shouldn't a rescue team member know about the effects of seeds? It seemed far too dangerous to him to just try out their effects, so the Gastly had assumed, that everyone had at least moderate knowledge on the topic of these items.