Forever Searching

(This Pokepasta is my first one, and was based off my actual experiences during the Sun/Moon post game side-quest. Still salty about what happened back there)

The sounds of wet grass and dirt crunching under one's feet echoed throughout the almost silent Lush Jungle as Nero, the new Champion of the Alola Region, ran through with their Decidueye and a yellow-tailed Smeargle trailing quickly behind him. More Ultra Beasts were invading the region as the days passed, and these new sightings were seen to use its tentacle-like appendages to take root in the ground and enter a tree-like state, sapping the electrical energy from the ground around it and causing the surrounding plant life to wilt.

The rustling of a tree stopped him right in his tracks. Nero called the two Pokemon to stick closer to him and braced himself for whatever would come out of there.

One shake..

Another rustle..

A yellow Fomantis burst from the tree, and immediately his eyes widened as he instinctively threw one of his Quick Balls out to capture it before he could even process what he just did. Quickly enough, the sound of the ball clicking brought him back to earth. He just.. Caught a shiny, his very first shiny that he had seen, ever, without so much as a second thought. It'd objectively be better for it if it stayed somewhere that wasn't the Jungle in its current state, anyways. He picked the ball off of the ground, packing it into his bag and continuing onwards. The new Ultra Beast was somewhere close and only coming closer, he could feel it..

Nero woke up with a jolt at one of those Aether Foundation portable research facility things, and just as quickly stopped moving about with a groan. He was wrapped in bandages up to his head, covering most of his body. Along with one of the employees and their Comfey, his equally beaten-looking but patched-up Decidueye and Smeargle were all standing next to him on the table. “We were watching and making sure you weren’t too badly hurt when you took on the Ultra Beast,” the employee started to explain, “It got ahold of your bag and destroyed whatever was inside it. You’re lucky you survived only being hit by two consecutive Power Whip attacks.” He could only mutter a few unintelligible words in complaint and despair of his shiny Fomantis being forcibly released before the employee’s Comfey made the air an almost sickly sweet with Aromatherapy. The smell was enough to calm him down for the time being, and soon enough, he closed his eyes and let his weak body rest.

He’d catch them again, one day. Hopefully.

--SIX MONTHS LATER--

Nero had been seen absolutely nowhere on any of the four islands for at least two months at this rate, besides that Lush Jungle. Over those other 4 months, the prospect of capturing that same Fomantis that was released had slowly started to eat away at him, turning from a simple half-hour search every now and then to more than half of his days spent searching for it. Eventually, he simply disappeared from Akala with nothing more than a “I’m going on a walk, see you all later.” Every search, authority or community-led, always ended up with nothing.

A Toucannon stared down at the ragged and dirty trainer, looking at, then flinched once it saw the trail of death and borderline destruction he left in his wake this time around. Anything that dared to stand against him, the Decidueye and Smeargle that wasn’t a Fomantis all faced a fate worse than death thanks to the Decidueye’s Spirit Shackle. The cries of those baby Pokemon echoed throughout the jungle, being unable to run away for fear of being set alight by the Smeargle’s Flamethrower, and thus attracting more of them in a futile attempt to save the others or stop these three.

A Lurantis poked its head out of one of the top bushes, its mostly green body helping it to camouflage more easily into the jungle. The first and final thing it saw on that day was tired, but ever-vigilant brown eyes, aiming at its head to make sure it never got away again.