Ostellia. A land destroyed by time, tides, and encroaching deserts. Even with just two Pokemon Torino feels more comfortable here than in the snow-blown tundra and frozen forests on the EU servers. The harsh sunlight will never be too bright, and the emergence of strange, harsh plants fills her with determination.

There is life here. Rough life that fights to claim a spot in the light. Just like her. This is where she will find new Pokemon, she's sure of it!

Grookey sits on her shoulder, her hair like grassy spaghetti is getting longer and longer by the day. It's now a full tangle, and he looks more like a Muppet than a monkey. "This doesn't look like the jungle," Simone complains. "You promised me fruits and nuts and swinging through the trees!"

"Hush Simone, we will find fruits. Rose will know where they are."

The pair walks along a highway, its back shattered like a snapped skateboard. "She said to meet on the highway," Torino said, sliding down a steep chunk of Asphalt. "I think because it is nice and warm." The blacktop was warm under her hands. She leaned against the upright slab and listened to the sounds of the new world.

Creaking, rushing, crunching, the high whistle of the wind through broken glass, and the low rumble of a 3.6L V-6 engine.

"Oh?" Torino looks up to see a gorgeous, cherry red Jeep roaring along the broken highway. "Maybe they can help us find Rose. HELLO!" she calls, waving her arms at the approaching vehicle. "HAVE YOU SEEN A LITTLE GIRL WITH A METAL FACE CAT?"

Torino cheers and walks towards the car, but as she opens the passenger door it snags on something. "Oh sorry, I stuck your door on a tree or something." Torino forces her foot down onto the thick black root that is keeping the door open. It arcs out of the ground like the roots of a fig tree, only deep black. "Wait maybe it's not a tree. There is plastic on this one. Even worse! There is trash in your car!"

She puts her weight onto the root and it buckles, twisting like a rubber hose and springing back up on the other side of the door where it rises and rises. Is a slick motion it loops over one of the roof racks, tangling itself with the car.

"Ah! Rose Garden the car is being attacked!"

"Get off the car!" Grookey yells, clambering onto the roof where he begins his battle against the black root. He smacks at it with his stick and tries to yank it off the roof rack. "Little help up here!" he calls, chewing on the root. He growls and heaves and chomps down on the root until- BZZZZZT!

A burst of electricity sends Grookey soaring away from the car in a smoking heap.

"Simone!" Torino rushes down the roar to pick up her sizzling partner. His exterior fur is blackened by the blast. "Simone are you okay?"

Grookey coughs and sits up, his matted hair an ombré of green and black. "Where's my stick?" he growls, clambering out of Torino's arms and staggering back towards the car.

"I saw it fall off the runway."

As Grookey limps back towards the car he picks up a hunk of rebar from the rubble, gripping it in pale green knuckles. "You owe me like four jungles after this."

Grookey leaps onto the roof of the moving car as it tears away into the street. Unfortunately the car takes the entangling vines with it, rupturing the sidewalk and pulling up foot after foot of thick black root. Grookey claws at the thick roots entangling the roof rack, trying in vain to peel them back from the cherry red exterior of the Jeep. "Shock me! Throw me off the car! She isn't even your friend! Get off the Jeep!" Simone yells, teeth pulled back from his gums in fury. He digs his fingers under the roots and heaves, slicing into the thick rubber coating.

Roots usually have little feelers, for detecting water levels and specific minerals, but this root terminates in a burst of copper toes. Toes or feelers, it's hard to tell when you're on the roof of a moving vehicle. Grookey doesn't care either way, and he switches to his pipe. The metal club sparks and jumps with each collision, threatening to fly out of his hands as he smashes away at the toe-feelers with his metal pipe like a deranged anti-plumber

But while Grookey is focused on toes, Torino sees the whole Totino.

The thick black limbs wriggle with tension, bound at standard lengths by white zip-ties the size of belts. And there are a half-dozen limbs if not more, flailing and slapping against the road and the exterior of the car as the creature is dragged along by the Jeep. The limbs converge on a central mass and black piping, which terminates in a bud of...ice? Fuzz? Crystalline Asbestos? It's a shock of pure white hair that looks like a boyband haircut, or like someone captured the moment a lightning strike hit a block of Phosphorus. It's mechanical, humanous, deeply-unusual, and Torino isn't sure if it's even a Pokemon. Definitely not one she's seen before.

"Rose! Swing the car! I think you can shake it off!" Torino calls as the vehicle barrels away from her down the highway.

Torino runs towards the beast. It drags itself to its full height, like cabling being pulled taught. The creature bends under its own weight, its heavy limbs all rubber and metal. No bone, no sinew. Does it have lightning for blood? It drags itself towards the car, and Torino hurls a chunk of concrete at it from behind. The block shatters against its body in a burst of blue.

"Hey! You want to fight someone? I am not afraid! Attack me!" she calls, waving her arms and throwing small pieces of the road.

The creature vacilates between car and Torino, and picks her. Its movement is like a bouncing, twisting dance. It makes Torino uncomfortable. It is like a puppet with no strings. An electric marionette propelled by power through unusual gravity.

"Ah! Marocchino!" she calls, pulling a Pokeball from the depths of her hair. In survival situations it pays to have hidden weapons, and nobody ever checks a woman's hair. The balls cracks against the asphalt and a Houndour bursts out!

"Play? Play?" she huffs.

"No! We need your fire, okay bella? [tangent="Let's go!"]Andiamo![/tangent]"

Marocchino turns from Torino and glowers at the approaching creature. Her playful demeanor melts like ice cream under hot coffee, revealing a crackling coal underneath. "Andi! Andi!" barked the Houndour. She was not good with Italian yet, but she had a beautiful spirit. With each bark her teeth click like a lighter, and sparks dance on her tongue. "Run! Run!" she warns!

Marocchino raises her face to the open sky and howls. It is a wet, screaming sound like a kettle full of tar. She swings her muzzle in a wide arc, splattering the asphalt in sticky flames that lick at the metal and melt patches in the shattered road.

The creature slumps and staggers towards Torino, passing right through the flames, heedless of the way they stick and burn and melt the rubber of its body.

Torino's heart drops. "It is like a zombie! No mind, no talking. Not even pain! How can it understand when to stop fighting?"

The road shakes like an earthquake, and the creature of rubber and wire is bullied forward on a growing wave of broken asphalt. The under-road, a crude mix of dirt and cement, rolls like crunching foam that rises and breaks, dashing the rubber beast in on itself. What was solid, then liquid, is solid again, and Torino stands back as the dust settles around them.

"Is it over? Did we defeat it?" The words are full of hope. Of bright charm and eager anticipation. But the creature is a not a single green wire to be grounded. It is not a battery buried in mud and crust, but a thriving, self-sustaining thing. It is like lightning trapped in a body. Like a Frankenstein pulling life from within itself to animate its synthetic shell. The creature is soul more than body, and the soul thrives in times of conflict.

The rolled wave of road bursts open in a flash like a handful of bursting fuses. Wires pop, rebar snaps, and lightning cracks across the ruptured ground.

And Torino and her Houndour take a step back.

"Bite? Bite?"

[tangent=Stay, Marocchino]"Resta, Marocchino.[/tangent] I do not like the look in the no eyes." No eyes. No face. Scarcely anything that could be called a head. The creature has a humanoid body by nature of how loose that definition is. It is humanoid like a root pulled from the ground. It is a human approximation akin to a face in the clouds, or a bundle of clothes on your chair at night. It is as little human as it is Pokemon. It is as foreign as a jet-blue sun floating in a bowl of tinfoil and Rocky Mountains.

Did fire hurt it? Not in any way that mattered. Did rock and stone and gravity break its reflexive form? Not that she could see.

They could not hurt it any more than they could understand it.

And it could not understand them in turn. It was blind to their movements, deaf to their words, and uncomprehending to their tactics of the interactions between the parties. It was like trying to cut a bread by casting your shadow on it. The world did not interact like that.

"It is too slick!" Torino says, backing away from the tangling battle. She skirts around the whumping, slamming fight, keeping to the edge of the road as she makes for the Jeep.

The creature and Orthworm writhe together like a thumb war with too many fingers. SLAM! SLAM! The pair take turns smashing each other into the asphalt, making the rocks jump like oil in a pan. The creature is smashed into the ground and there is a colossal BOOM that shakes the road, cracks the concrete, and sprays Torino and Marocchino with chunky dust. "Do not breath it, Marocchino!" Torino yells, covering her mouth. The cloud of grey dust passes over them, leaving the pair looking like plaster ghosts.

"Run! Run!" Marocchino barks, her muzzle covered in pale dust.

Torino turns to see tendrils emerging from the shattered ground. Thick wires, like unearthed internet cables, snaking upwards and reaching blindly for the pair. "Ah! More fingers! Let us go!" Torino and Marocchino sprint for the car as more copper fingers break out of the ground and reach after them. One hand, two, three, and suddenly a whole second creature is pulling itself out of slumber and dragging itself after them with rubber-legged speed.

"Two!? We were having trouble with one!" Torino says, yanking open the door to the Jeep. Marocchino leaps in first and Torino follows on her heels, and suddenly the pair are filling the back seat. Marocchino pokes her head out the far side and barks jets of flame at the oncoming creature. Torino bands on the seat in fear, excitement, and adrenaline. "Go Rose Garden! Push the gas to the floor!"

What happens when an unstoppable Jeep meets an improbable object?

Carnage.

Torino pulls herself from the crash. Her bones hurt, and her ears ring like church bells with every step. "Rose?" she calls, lurching towards the front of the car. "Rose are you good?"

Something black and stringy pulls itself from the driver's side wheel well. It is like twenty feet of licorice wrapped copper. Like an afternoon shadow peeled from the pavement and propped upright on a skeleton of silver and static.

It stumbles.

Or maybe it just walks weird from the crash. Torino sympathizes. "Marocchino!" she calls, and her guard dog barks nearby. "Marocchino to me!"

More barking, and the Houndour appears with flaming fangs. It leaps in front of Torino, barking and growling. "Go! Go!" it barks at the creature. But the thing keeps coming. As inevitable as sundown.

"Marocchino! It is weak! We can win now. Bite bite!"

Marocchino crouches, growling like an engine, and then leaps at the wounded creature.