We spent close to two hours and worked our way through the rest of the northern border as well as most of the western border. I captured and questioned another 3 Ekans as well as 1 Arbok that we managed to come across during that time, but none of them had anything new to add.
We had yet to come across another large group like the one I captured, but since Arbok said that they were sent out at the same time, there was a good chance that I could come across a returning team within the next hour or so.
It was with that idea in mind, that I finished examining the rest of what I considered the western border before I turned around and slowly headed back instead of moving on to the southern border.
First of all, I had been told that the Arbok tribe was ignoring that direction for now, and more importantly, I had to check the western as well as the northern border if I wanted a chance of coming across a returning team, so I began to head back the same way I had arrived.
Everyone was stretching their senses to the maximum to ensure that we would not miss our target, but I asked Horus/Xatu to keep an eye on a larger stretch through the air, just to be safe. After half an hour, I briefly considered calling out Hera/Pidegeot as well to help Horus, but I ended up deciding that Horus would be enough for now.
Still, if nothing happened within the next 30 minutes I would reconsider the Hera option. Roughly 10 minutes later Horus and Enji/Arcanine spoke up at the same time. Well, Horus used telepathy since he was up in the air, but as they say same difference.
"Found them,"/'I've located a returning batch,' Enji barked out happily, while Horus simultaneously gave his report.
"They're a bit ahead of us," Enji said while looking toward the northwest. 'He's right,' Horus spoke up only after Enji finished. 'They are less than two minutes away, and should appear roughly 60 meters in front of our current position,' Horus gave a more detailed answer and I had to nod.
'Please scout their number and condition,' I requested of Horus in the open channel and he left after nodding in acceptance.
"Alright, unless Horus returns with some monumental intel that would require a special approach, we'll use the same strategy as before," I told the rest and they agreed. Optimum/Butterfree was unsurprisingly the most enthused by my words.
It did not take long for Horus to return, and once he did, he directly began his report through open telepathy.
'The returning group has definitely seen better days. There are 17 Ekans and two Arbok in the group. Out of the 17 Ekans, 2 can be considered fairly injured, 6 are moderately injured, and the other 9 are lightly injured. There's no one that has no degree of injury, even the two Arbok are injured. Though their injuries can be considered light as well.
As for their strength, one of the Arbok is at the (high) silver stage, while the other one is at the (mid) silver stage. The Ekans are at various points in the bronze stage,' Horus finished his report.
"Thank you," I said to Horus, before turning to Optimus. "You've heard him. Go on, get in position," I told him, and he took off to the place Horus had said they would appear.
He rose a bit higher once he made it there, and began releasing a large cloud of Stun Spore and Sleep Powder, which he caught with Psychic, and kept in reserve, evidently waiting for the arrival of his target. Less than half a minute later, he used Gust to send the cloud forward, without us even having seen the head of a single Pokemon.
Yet, it was obvious that he did, so we made our way to his position as well. It only took a few moments for us to come across Optimus, who was alertly observing the area. We, naturally also became vigilant seeing his behavior, and looking at the unmoving crowd it became apparent why Optimus was behaving like that.
While all Ekans seemed to be out cold or were at least unable to move, the Arbok were nowhere to be seen. Horus told me he could see two holes in the ground, which made it clear that those two had reacted fast enough to dodge Optimus's attack by dodging underground.
Optimus seemed to have noticed the holes as well since he began heading toward them without our input. Still, in my opinion, there was a big chance that the Arbok were lying in wait around the holes to ambush anyone that came over to investigate. Well, that, or they had already run/slithered away.
'They could be lying in ambush,' I decided to give Optimus a telepathic warning, and the only sign that he heard me was a brief/slight bob of his head, as well as his slightly elevated flight while moving toward the holes.
Once there, he flew a bit lower, before releasing another Powder Gust inside the holes. The moment Optimus did that, two Arbok broke out of the ground and practically flew at him from two directions. He stopped the one that came from ahead of him with Psychic while dodging the one coming from behind with an aerial backflip, leaving the Arbok on a crash course with the frozen one.
Surprisingly, the Arbok showed an outstanding reaction and slapped his glinting tail at Optimus while passing below him. Moreover, his mouth was glowing, showing that he was preparing to shoot/release something at Optimus from there as well.
Still, Optimus reacted perfectly to Arbok's counterattack by fluttering away from the approaching tail, while controlling the frozen Arbok and crashing it into the head of the attacking one, interrupting whatever it was brewing inside its head/mouth.
Optimus swiftly followed up on the crashed duo and released a Psybeam at their upper bodies while they were falling. The Psybeam hit them and sent them crashing down even faster. Optimus did not keep up the beam for more than three seconds and switched to the powder cloud instead. The Stun Spore and Sleep Powder mix rained down on the recently crashed Arbok duo, and after the dust settled, we saw that both Arbok were down for the count.
Optimus released another batch of Sleep Powder just to be sure, and we approached him while he was carefully flying down to check if they were out or not. I saw him nod happily, and all the psychics on my side confirmed that the duo was sleeping.
I asked Gwen/Gardevoir to keep an eye on the two and use Hypnosis if it looked as if they were about to wake up, before moving to the crowd of immobilized/asleep Ekans. I had Horus guide me to the most injured of them first and began treating their injuries after studying their condition for a moment.
Once I was satisfied with its condition, I captured the still-sleeping Ekans, before moving on to the second one to repeat the process. Occasionally a "lucky" one recovered due to having Shed Skin and it activating, but I had Ali/Kirlia send them back to la-la-land with Hypnosis once they had seen that I was treating them.
In the end, it took 20 minutes to heal and capture all 17 Ekans, and Gwen said that she had to hypnotize the Arbok twice during this time. Still, there was a reason I did not ask Ali/Kirlia or one of the others to heal them with their healing moves, and did it myself.
Not only did it give me the chance to keep my healing/treatment skills sharp, but it also allowed me to impress the Ekans that briefly woke up, which could prove useful somewhere along the line. Anyway, once I was done with the Ekans I went up to the Arbok and unlike with the Ekans, I directly captured them with Great Balls.
Healing them first could have made capturing them harder, which was why I captured them first. Once that was a success, I immediately let them out once more and began their treatment. I left waking them up to the end and had my Pokemon flare their power a bit to keep them from acting stupid right after waking up.
The duo flinched the moment they regained consciousness and warily looked up after feeling the aura of so many gold-stage Pokemon. Still, they were behaving so I motioned for the others to let up, and the Arbok marginally relaxed.
"I'm sure you can feel it, but I captured you," I informed them. "Not only that, but I healed and captured the Ekans. I also healed you two as well," I added and they looked around after I said that.
They obviously failed to spot any Ekans, and they focused back on me. I told them about my main mission and what I had learned up until now. I also made sure to inform them that we could tell if someone was lying before I asked them if they knew any information that I had not mentioned just now.
Unfortunately, they said that they did not know much, but I could tell that the (high) silver one was keeping something for himself, and I was not the only one. Horus made his displeasure at that known by flaring his psychic energy and once I stopped him, Arbok folded after being stared at by all of us for a bit.
He shared that he had heard that the gold-stage subleaders were planning to get involved starting tomorrow, which meant that the conflict would escalate come tomorrow. Not that I had plans to wait that long. Still, it was good I know that I had arrived before things went off the rails.
Anyway, I asked him how their expedition went, and he said that they did pretty well. When I asked him to elaborate, I got a pretty bloody/morbid picture of the course of their excursion. It seemed their group had initially been quite a bit bigger than the first one, with 40 Ekans and 5 Arbok.
However, over the course of their attack, only the stronger Ekans survived and they lost 3 of the Arbok. In return for the ones they lost, they had attacked a lot of lone Zigzagoon and the occasional Linoone, along with three nests they came across.
It seemed they killed and devoured more than thrice their number. Somewhere around 130ish Zigzagoon and 18 Linoone, of which 10 were at the silver stage. Arbok seemed pretty proud that they managed to exchange 23 Ekans and 3 Arbok for so many enemies, and I did not know whether I should reprimand him or not for feeling proud.
I ultimately didn't since they had practically declared war on each other and fighting as well as killing/eating your opponent was pretty much standard behavior in nature, not to mention a tribe war, so looking at it from that angle there was nothing wrong with what they did.
That did not mean that I had to like it, so I closed the topic, and recalled both Arbok before putting their balls away. I then turned toward my Pokemon and told them that we would be moving inwards now, instead of circling the rest of the border. Only the southern border was left anyway, so skipping that should make no difference.
After that, we began to slowly head towards the center of the Arbok territory, capturing and questioning any Ekans or Arbok we came across. That not only helped confirm old information and possibly learn new ones, but it also reduced the number of Ekans and Arbok we would have to possibly face.
We did not learn much we did not already know aside from the fact that most teams that went out were already back, or should be back soon, and that all Ekans and Arbok were gathering back in/around the main nest.
The last bit was pretty important for me since it meant that the whole tribe would be gathered there, instead of a part being strewn across their territory. By the time I came close enough to my destination to switch to a more stealthy approach, I had caught a total of 86 Ekans and 12 Arbok, of which 8 were at the silver stage.
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