Bent Spoon Retrieval

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A small Archen approached the entrance of the cave, taking a deep breath as he prepared to go in. He had never been this far out before, though it did feel rather nice. His rock type was at home in this dried and heated area. Acro looked at the sky, it must have been before noon since the sun still had yet to touch the middle of the sky. He wondered if he would be able to soar that sky soon.
"You wont do it."
"Never going to happen."
He jumped as he heard the voices, he looked around wildly, seeing nothing. He dismissed it as his own imagination, after all they had sounded like George and Astrid, why would they be out here?

Acro looked to see William shrouding himself in a Smog attack, and had an idea of his own. He gave a loud screech as a purple aura enveloped him and the rocks around him grew closer and closer to him swiftly. A dome of rocks was built using Ancient Power, Acro and the Larvesta were safe, for now. Acro had to keep using Ancient Power to keep the rocks from falling though, he hoped that either two things happened. 1. He or William came up with a plan. 2. The Skorupi would give up and leave. Acro had not thought that the Skorupi was also a poison type and would not be affected much by the smog, he was too focused on shielding his vulnerable self right then.
"Selfish" Astrid's voice, Just like last time, you're choosing yourself over another.
Acro's rock shield began to waver slightly along with his emotions...

So William was relatively safe for the moment. But he needed to do something and he needed to do it quickly. But what could he do? Hmm...
After a bit of time, the Gengar finally came up with an idea. Leaving the sphere of fumes and gases only slightly, he tried to spot the Skorupi as quickly as he could, fired a Shadow Ball at it and retreated into the sphere again.
The sphere...now this gave him an even better idea!
Purple gases were not exactly shadows, but they looked similar enough for the Ghost type's purposes. Facing the Skorupi again, William only let his red eyes and the manically wide grin emerge from the sphere, trying to imitate a Gastly's face as well as possible. If this illusion of a hughe Gastly with creepy red eyes wouldn't manage to scare their opponent off, the Gengar would have no idea, how to end this conflict nonviolently.

Acro's shield shook, the rocks clattering against each other as the voice spoke to him. Acro wondered if Astrid hated him for letting him die, and was now haunting him from beyond the grave. The archen was still pinned underneath the Larvesta, who was looking around at the moving rocks stupidly. He was about to give up on keeping the shield up and just let himself be buried under the rocks when the voice disappeared. Acro felt as if the sadness had just been sucked right out of him. He peaked through a hole he made in his now stable dome and saw William's attempt to make an over sized Ghastly. He looked to the Skorupi, who's eyes widened before it skittered away as fast as its small legs could take it.

It had worked...finally...
William wasn't sure, how much longer he would have been able to keep this thing up. Not only did he have to keep all that Smog together, but he also had to enlarge his face, remain floating and try to be in sync with the sphere.
Exhausted the Gengar sank to the ground, the poisonous fumes quicly dispersing into thin air.
"Now...we only need to get rid of that...thing..."
Sadly the Poison type had no idea, how they would manage to do all of this...and there still was the Weezing to defeat. As William had already guessed before, this was going to be a fun mission...

Acro dispersed the rocks rather clumsily, sending them slightly flying as if they he had exploded from the rubble. The larvesta finally moved off of the unfortunate archen and moved towards the gengar, its eyes glittering in happiness, "Papa! Papa!" It repeated. The Archen made an exhausted squawking noise before stopping to think about just what had happened back there. The voice had been taunting and insulting him, why had it suddenly disappeared? Did it start to feel sorry for him? Either way, the voice was right. He protected himself over William, just like he had with Astrid, or so he was convinced. He sat up and simply stared at the ground, feeling guilty.

Sighing, William decided to retry his previous tactic of hypnotizing the strange Pokémon.
After all it only failed because of that interruption last time and they couldn't just let the delusional thing follow them around for all eternity.
Having to focus on keeping his Hypnosis up, the Gengar didn't even notice Acro wallowing in self-pity.
But that Shadow Ball he had launched earlier...it felt different...foreign, yet familiar. It still felt immensely painful, but it was a different pain. Not only the fear of rejection, but also the fear of failure seemed to have been a component. But why?

Acro watched as the Larvesta feel asleep once more. He did not sigh in relief this time, instead he just looked at the path ahead of them, "The Wheezing," he spoke, wanting to get this day over with, "do you think it knows we're here by now?" Acro kept himself silent after speaking. The voices now only a slight murmur in his mind, Arceus knows what the voices were talking about among themselves. 'Probably about me and laughing at my vanity...' The Archen thought. Acro picked himself up, although he had taken no real damage, the effort of holding up the shield of rocks was exhausting. Usually when he used Ancient power, he would allow physics to take control and do the major damage, him just being the "push" of the events.

"Well...I think I have reached the stage of not even caring anymore. If it knows, that we are here, then it shall come forward and face us. I just want to get away from here as quickly as possible. There probably are more of those things around."
William was rather tired and thus would prefer to get back to the guild as quickly as possible. Why did missions with Acro always end up being chaotic like that? Couldn't they just have a normal, calm and peaceful mission for once? It was the price he would have to pay for acceptance, William figured. After all it was undeniable, that his guild membership had great effect on the other Pokémon. While they probably still feared him, their respect for the guild was too great for them to simply run away.

Acro wondered if the weezing knowing they were here would only make it run away and prolong the attack. The Archen did not speak up about his concerns. William did not seem to be in the mood to speak with the Archen. He instead continued along the path, wondering if it was his fault that the larvesta was following them. He did not even know what pokemon that was, his thoughts made him worry if it was a mere child and wonder about how it would survive on its own. He shoved the worry out of his mind, was it these kind of things that made him weak? Worrying about others too much?

Not knowing, what they could talk about, William silently floated through the Sandstone Cave, looking for anything, that could hint at there being a Weezing around. For the first time, the Gengar cursed his high resistance to Poison. Were he not as resistant, he might be able to notice some fumes or something of the sort. But so he was restrained to relying on optical and audial input to locate the opponent.
Hopefully all of this would be over soon. William almost envied Acro. He always was so cheerful, so innocent. He probably wouldn't even have believed, that there were Pokémon with problems like those of William, would they not have met on that fateful day a long time ago...

The Archen stayed silent. There was no reason to talk. He wished to speak though, it would get his mind off of the voices reminding him of how useless and pathetic he was. He always lost it in the middle of a fight, in some way whether it was being a coward or his ability activating. He could no longer tell the difference any more. His ability was a burden, his lack of self confidence was a burden, he was one big burden...or rather a small one considering his below average size. Acro stopped as he spotted an item lying on the floor. He stopped to investigate it, wondering if it was valueable.

This dice is not existing.

Still not having found anything to talk about and not wanting to impair the group's ability to hear the Weezing or another Pokémon appeoaching either, William remained silent as well.
In a way, silence was a paradoxical state. It did help a lot when trying to calm down, but it was also the condition, under which a Pokémon's imagination could run wild the most. It was a paradox he was only too familiar with. During their quiet trip further into the cavernous cave, the Gengar found himslef reminded of his earlier life in the forest. How far had he come from there? He had found acceptance, found friends, evolved twice and discovered happiness. Surely Acro was just as happy of his own achievements as well! Probably even moreso. He truly was a miraculous bird, better than William on so many levels.

The archen found the item to be yet another Vanish Seed, he had heard of these items, though was unsure of what they did. The archen turned to ask William, but the ghastly had kept moving. Acro rushed to keep up with him, and stopped when he smelled something strange in the cave, "What's that smell?" he asked. He took another big sniff and regretted it as he felt as if he was going to hurl. The archen looked to see that the tunnel had become large than normal, almost as if they were in more of a long room now. The archen did not know whether to hold his breathe or put up with the stench for as long as he could.

"That...what?", William asked, his Poison resistance protecting him from the horrors of a Weezing's smell.
"I don't smell anything...are you sure about that?"
Was something wrong with Acro? Had he maybe fallen ill or something? He didn't look too well right now.
Hopefully it wasn't anything too bad...it was flu season again after all and the Gengar wouldn't want to have to see his best friend suffer from it. Or maybe it was food poisoning? Hopefully it wasn't anything too serious. Well...for now they didn't have any options other than pushing onward, did they?

"Yes i'm sure, ugh it stinks!" Acro decided to cover his nose with his wing. The archen pushed forward, the smell only becoming more and more worse by the moment. The Archen finally stopped, he could not take it anymore. He could go no further, especially since a large boulder suddenly dropped down from the ceiling and nearly smashed him. Acro looked at the boulder with his eyes watering as he was a skull and cross bones on the boulder. "The wheezing!" Acro screeched before being tackled into the wall. Acro screeched and glowed purple, using his Ancient Power attack to attack the Wheezing with flying rocks.