Lost in Scorchfall Desert.

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Spoiler:

"How did I get lost HERE of all places?!" Tom yelled into the blazing sun above, kicking his foot onto the sandy ground below. He was in the middle of a desert, which was a pretty huge contrast from the calm serenity of the Serene Cave, his original destination.
He'd originally been planning to train his Rage attack - he'd figured that he let the thing control him too much for him to utilize it effectively - in the Serene Cave. He'd been lost there before, met some of the creatures hidden within, and figured that it would be the perfect place to train his moves. Mind you, Scorchfall was an even better place to train his rage attack, what with all of the Pokemon weak to his own element, but Tom didn't know if he could take the heat for long.

Douglas was suddenly pelted with questions. For someone who seemed rather inept with such a poor sense of direction, he was a curious fellow. Douglas wondered how such characteristics could meet within the one body.

"Hey hey, one at a time. Ah ain't able to answer as fast as yer talkin'." Douglas wait for the Totodile to pause so that his breath could be regained. "To answer yer questions in no real order, the temple was built a looong time ago by Pokemon so old they wouldn't even be called Pokemon today. The temple is said to house a religious god. A living legend. Ah don't know if that's true or not but when we get there, you notice two oddities. The first being there is no wind, the second being there is complete silence. When we arrive we will be fed and offered to enter the temple. We will except. We can talk again in there."

Douglas glanced to the sun and cursed under his breath. "Come on, we need to get there before nightfall. They don't take kindly to nocturne visitors." Douglas picked up to a light jog, feeling simultaneously blessed and irritated with his companion. His innate curiosity would make it easy to convince him to enter the temple and help him locate the god. The type match up was also a great boon. But did his luck really have to land him with the perfect idea of a partner coupled with the slowest, thickest most lostie Totodile in the world?

Tom nodded. "Huh. Interesting. What sort of Pokemon will feed us?" He asked. He had to hold back another rush of questions; he could tell that Doug was irritated - or at least somewhat annoyed - with his ramblings. As he awaited a reply, the reptile went back to examining the radar orb in his hand. He'd never used an orb before (Not counting the hurl orb; the less said about that, the better), and he was particularly curious about how an orb like this would work. Would he just know innately where other Pokemon were, or would it create a sort of visual representation of the surrounding area?

As he mused, he failed to notice the creature coming towards them, its eyes trained hungrily on the orb.

This dice is not existing.

Douglas went ridged. Not 6 steps before him a semi-circle of very slight triangles protruded from the orange sand. They camouflaged almost perfectly, evolution matching the shades to near absolute impermeability. Regardless of the marvelousness of nature, this thing was a trapinch. Trapinch were dangerous. They were the desert equivalent of carnivine; teeth as big as wooden stakes and jaws strong enough to crush any thing that would cross their path.

Douglas' companion seemed to have noticed the sudden lack of progress. "Shh..." The sandshrew hissed, glancing around. "They found me again. Don't talk. They won't bother you. It's lookin' fer me. That's why Ah was hidin' from you before." Douglas cursed under his breath. "Ok. They'll not bother you. Just keep walkin'; On four legs if you can. I know this is shifty but yer gonna need ta trust me. Walk forwards, don't look back. Ah ain't leaving ya long."

Douglas bolted toward the mound of grit they had just crossed over, diving into the sand in what seemed to be a ravenous fury. The dune avalanched as the treasure hunter buried himself within, the hole soon covering over and the area settled. To the outside eye he was either cleverly concealed or now deep below it.

Douglas watched the water type from his hiding place. Now it was time to assess his skills. Need be he would jump in and help but this would be mostly decided but the Totodile.

"Hope that Trapinch isn't too hungry."

Douglas was right; it was shifty. Tom contemplated Doug's suggestion; if he were to stealth it out, he may be able to avoid a conflict. However, should the creature attack as he snuck away - a very likely occurrence, seeing as he was a light blue reptile in the middle of a brown desert - Tom would be unable to fight back effectively.
Tom decided that the only rational thing to do in this situation was not to sneak away, as Doug suggested, but to stand his ground. He curled his right hand into a fist and felt as its temperature fell below freezing.
Of course, he'd be little more than a feral if he didn't even make an attempt at diplomacy.
"Um... Trapinch? Hi. Could you maybe leave us al-"
And then it attacked.
The Totodile dodged out of the way as the ground type threw sand at him and immediately glowed the red glow of rage. "Alright, you wanna play it that way..."
Tom immediately spewed water at the trapinch, leaving it lying on its back. Before the creature could come back up and retaliate or something of the sort, he immediately punched the ground-type with ice-cold fists before jumping away in an attempt to escape the mud that had been flung at him (how the creature had managed to fling mud at him, Tom had no idea).
The Totodile grinned; this was an easy battle. Perhaps he could beat the Trapinch before it could lay a finger on him.
All of his optimism was lost, however, when a green light shone from its mouth. Solar beam. "Oh, nuts..."

Douglas watched from his dune as his companion invoked the trapinch’s attention by completely ignoring his advice completely and yelling at it.

“Well, if he wants ta do it thata way”

The trapinch lunged at the totodile, its crunch missing his blue hide by the width of a whisker. Entertained, the armadillo ploughed closer to the action as the small biped soaked his foe with a jet of high pressure water.

Douglas smirked. “Come on buddy, show me what you can really do. Make me care.” The totodile, acting as though he had heard the plea, pulled back his fists and snapped them into the broad side of the trapinch’s face, brutally damaging the ambushing ground type with a wicked ice punch.

“There we go.” The sandshrew exclaimed, grinning. “Kid’s got some fight.” But the totodile wasn’t the only one who was fired up. The trapinch shuddered and regained its footing, steadying its stance and spreading its weight out, bracing itself for the deployment of its final gambit. The weakened enemy readied itself to unleash a powerful attack, taking in the desert sunlight.

Douglas’ face fell. “Oh no…” He threw himself into the grit, hurriedly burrowing toward the battle. Mentally tracking positions, the treasure hunter located himself just below the water type and turned sharply upward. Sand fell from above, aided by gravity, in showers of dirt as the frantic adventurer shovelled it back down his tunnel. He hated sand; t never held form and left no room for escape. Just below the surface, Douglas gripped Tom’s left foot and the totodile plunged into the cavern below, narrowly avoiding the concentrated streak of ultraviolet radiation and flopping onto his savior.

Douglas spun his companion to face him. “You out of yer damned tineh mind? Ah said sneak! If you didn’t go yellin’… Fine. Ya’ll be needin’ mah help now, you damned fancy walkin’ treasure bag. Ah’m circling around.” Douglas gripped the blue croc in his digging claws, aiming straight up. “Don’t miss.” Heedless of any pleas, Douglas harnessed his toned arm muscles and launched the water type skywards before burying himself back underground. He was starting to dislike the desert today.

"Woah, wait, what?!" Tom's eyes were wide, and he still had no clue of what was going on, but before he could ask what was happening the blue reptile found himself flung into the air. He figured he had a few seconds before Gravity decided to take pity on him (or spite him, depending on his height), so the Totodile readied his right fist, feeling it freeze.

The Trapinch was surprised by the development, but it nonetheless readied another solar beam in an alarmingly short time. "Oh Arceus," Tom muttered; he'd hoped for the creature to take a long time to ready the beam, but luck seemed to hate him because it was pretty much about to set off less than a second after charging, and with him starting his descent, unable to dodge to the side, Tom didn't think that he'd have any chance of getting out of this unscathed.

So he decided to do something that certainly seemed sane at the time.

He grabbed the radar orb (which he'd lost a grip on when he had been thrown into the air) and threw it at the Trapinch. The solar beam collided with the orb, which worked as a shield, preventing the beam of lethal light from touching the Totodile, and eventually landed on the creature at around the same time that Tom did.

The first thing that fell to the floor was the radar orb. It had been damaged to the point of uselessness, but it had just taken a solar beam.

The second thing to fall was the Trapinch. It fell stiffly with a sizable, frozen dent on its upper jaw.
The third thing to fall was Tom.

"Ah!" Tom's hand had taken the brunt of the hit, and while the force he hit the creature with wasn't enough to cause any lasting damage, it still hurt beyond belief. He lay on his side for a while, his back to the unconscious (dead?) Trapinch, rubbing his now-unfrozen hand. "Doug, what in the hell was that about?!"

Douglas’ hatted head popped up from his tunnel just in time to watch the airborne crocodile literally rain down an icy pain upon the trapinch. Douglas grinned as he saw the plan succeed, if mildly indignant over his lack of major involvement. But then, he did save the totodile’s life and put him in position for that amazing blow. Douglas became a little peeved when his companion posed his arrogant question. Douglas smiled inwardly. He could play the actor now.

"What in the hell was that? What in the hell was that? That was you not listenin' to me! Ah said leave him alone. Ah said sneak! Who is the one who is lost in this desert? Who asked the other fer help? You complain about what happened and you didn't listen to me."

Douglas snorted, cutting of any possible verbal avenue for assault before he finished his piece. "Ah ain't the nicest or most trustworthy guy you could have met in this oversized sandbox, but Ah hold mah word and I ain't done anythin' to the otherwise."

The sandshrew spat, noting the falling temperature as he monologued. Maybe next time some short little water spitting fool ambles about through one of the most inhospitable places this side of Grassveil, Ah shouldn't take kindly to them. Next time some twerp ignores advice he begged fer not even half an hour ago, Ah should let the solar beam melt the ahs from his face." The globual of saliva evaporated rather quickly on the hot sand, but Douglas saw from it the the temperature had dropped. He glanced up at the sun, sitting just high enough for the sky to be blue.

"We're out of time. Ah can make it to the temple alone but You still have mah word. Ah ain't lettin' anythin' like that trapinch befall you again. If you don't believe me about that sneakin' thing, you're welcome to wake him up and trah again. The temple gates close at dusk. I've spent a few nights out there myself. Only problem is that ferals learn that Pokemon get trapped outside and the gates don't open for anyone after they close. So I can either make it or stick it out with you."

"That was me attacking up front rather than getting kicked in the ass. I'm blue, not brown; I would have been pretty conspicuous if I..." Tom grunted and got on his feet, still slightly disoriented. "Fine. Whatever. Go ahead if you want; I'll just follow behind. If we make it in time, we make it in time. If not, I don't want to endanger you to the night here." He began walking forwards (unsteadily, but at least he didn't trip over himself like he did back in the mountains). He tugged at his defense scarf, glad that it had not been blown away in the fall.

Douglas felt his jaw clench with frustration. "Trapinch are low sighted, perhaps even colour blind; never met one mahself that was nice enough ta talk it over. They sense vibrations, either those made vocally or through nearbah movement. Next time, sneak!"

The desert veteran pointed of in the direction they had been heading. "See that shadow on the horizon? Go there." He spat again. "And hurry. Once Ah get there you can walk fer a while. But when Ah catch up, you'd better be runnin'."

Douglas spent no further time waiting to see if the Totodile would heed his words beyond his condescending "An trah ta avoid any more tahme sinks like fallin' over." And the treasure hunter set to his business. He quickly looked over the trapinch, summering it was without any valuables and would be nursing a headache for the next week to come; but would probably be well enough to still hunt.

"Aw, Ah ain't gettin' a chance to end you taday." He whispered, kicking the fallen Pokémon's rear. If the trapinch would only die of starvation, it would be better to tear out its throat now and be done with it.

Douglas peered over into the nest the trapinch had burst from. Instantly, something caught his eye.

This dice is not existing.

Tom nodded wordlessly, immediately running (or, rather, walking rather quickly) in the direction that the sandshrew had pointed out. Perhaps the Sandshrew had a point - not that he'd actually admit that aloud.

(Extremely short post, but what the hell am I supposed to write when Doug shoos me away?)

Douglas wasn't sure of he was still irritated with his unexpected company as he approached the nest of his foe. He had seen something and they often contained hidden treasures.

"It's mah lucky day..."

Deep inside the dwelling in the sand sat a single object of blue spherical sheen.

Without any hesitation, the treasure hunter leapt into the hole and received what he considered his prize. He pinged the orb and again a crisp note peeled from the marvel of technology.

Douglas smiled in earnest now, he teeth showing through his grin. "Hiah C..." He bagged the orb.

Douglas felt his contentment leave him as he scrambled out of the trapinch's residence. The body of his foe was still out literally cold nearby. The sandshrew regarded it with curiosity before deciding to do the honorable thing.

Douglas monologued as he pushed is combatant and near Totodile killer into the pit it had sprang from. "You put up a good fight pal. That solarbeam needs some work though... It'll serve you well when you rule the skies." There was an unsavory thud as the trapinch was taken ahold of by gravity and disappeared into the gap in the sands.

"Ah'll never understand how you guys git sand so 'ard..."

Douglas grunted and adjusted his hat. "That croc had bettah still be runnin'..."

Douglas sprinted toward the nearby dune and tunneled through it and up slightly, he shot from his tunnel and quickly formed his shielded ball, rolling down the dune side accelerating all the while. When the next area of elevation was reached, the experienced traveler broke from his sphere and tunneled again through the dune. He traveled like this for several minutes until he came across the Totodile. Douglas smirked as he planned his entrance. Upon reaching the next rise, he dug up fairly sharply, launching himself through the air, landing and sliding along the shaded side of the sand mound, kicking up grit as it gave way to his powerful legs. He halted right next to the blue crocodile, his smile still wide across his face.

"How we doin'?" Queried the cocksure adventurer while he adjusted his hat.