The east fence was already bowing by the time Orion reached it.
Three posts leaned inward in a row, chain-link peeled back off the top rail where the earlier patch had given out, and past the gap the drones weren't scattering the way they had all night. They came in a column. Twenty of them, maybe more, holding a tight line and hammering the same weak stretch with short, steady bursts, the way water leans on the one crack in a dam until the crack gives up first.
The Forme holding the gap was the same one. Left side dragging, stance planted wide to make up for a shoulder that wouldn't take weight anymore, and it hadn't given the drones one inch of ground.
Orion ran the numbers on the walk over. Pikachu, back on his shoulder since the west line went quiet, cheeks already spitting sparks. Celebi, a green blur somewhere overhead in the smoke. This one Forme, plus the two at the gate, which he couldn't strip, not with people still trickling in through it. Latias could hold the air or she could hold the gap, and she couldn't hold both at once.
Not enough. Not close to enough.
"Latias. Sky."
She was already rising, human shape folding away into red and white wings before she'd cleared the top rail, and a Dragon Pulse tore through the back of the column a second later.
Pikachu launched off his shoulder without being told. Thunderbolt caught the lead drone, and the one behind it, and the one behind that, and the column closed up the hole like the machines inside it hadn't noticed losing anything.
A fourth post groaned.
Movement at his left pulled his eyes off the fence. A fist the size of a car door swung past him and folded around a drone that had slipped low under the Forme's guard, and the drone came apart with a crunch that shook through his boots. Kamala. Doreen was two steps behind her, already vaulting a stack of pallets, Emolga launching off her shoulder with a crackle building in both cheeks.
He'd told them to find a spot away from the fence. They'd found one, too, the water table at the far edge of the lot. It hadn't been far enough to keep them from hearing this.
Orion had maybe half a second. He'd watched these two fight before, in his own tournament, with a referee and a scoreboard and a crowd cheering from the bleachers. Never in anything like this. Bone tired from two fights already tonight, and kids, whatever the costumes said. Sending them back inside was the safe call. The fence didn't leave him room for the safe call.
He pointed with the cane. "Kamala, the low ones, left of the Forme. Doreen, top rail."
Neither of them asked what he meant. They went.
Celebi dropped out of the smoke then, straight down the length of the column, close enough to clip the rotors. Whatever the drones used to see, heat or motion or both, broke apart the second she passed through it. They started firing at nothing. Two of them hit each other. A third swung its whole body toward a patch of empty air where Celebi had been a heartbeat earlier and emptied a burst into the dirt.
The opening lasted maybe four seconds, and the first two went to waste.
Eevee darted straight into the lane Pikachu was firing down, and Pikachu had to cut his Thunderbolt short so he didn't hit her. Emolga's Thunder Wave washed right over the Forme's hide without doing a thing, because nobody had told Doreen that electricity didn't touch it, and she hadn't had any reason to guess. Kamala reached too far after a drone climbing the rail and left the gap under her arm wide open.
A drone went straight for it.
Pikachu got there first. He hit it with an Iron Tail across the chassis and sent it spinning into the fence post, but the drone's last burst caught him on the way past, a black scorch mark raking across his back. He landed, shook it off with a sharp, offended "Pika!", and went right back in.
Orion's grip tightened on the cane. Minor. Friction, the cost of people learning each other in the middle of a fight instead of before one. He let it stay minor.
Then Kamala stopped reaching early.
She'd been watching Celebi, Orion realized, and on the next pass she waited, held back until the drones went blind and started firing at ghosts, and only then grabbed. Two at once, one in each hand. She held them up in the air like a pair of cans, and Pikachu, catching on faster than Orion could have told him to, chained a Thunderbolt straight through both. Doreen quit trying to fight the drones at eye level and went up the fence instead, all the way to the top rail, knocking the climbers off before they cleared it while Emolga swept the ones that tried to go around. Eevee found the space low under the Forme's bad side and stayed there, Shadow Ball after Shadow Ball punching up into anything that tried to slip under the gap.
The Forme stopped having to cover its left side. It planted both feet and held.
The column stayed whole. It lifted all at once and peeled north, still in its neat line, following whatever route it had been assigned before it ever reached Home. The last of them cleared the tree line. Latias came down in a slow spiral and landed on the lot in human shape, breathing hard.
The fence hadn't survived the save. Two posts were down all the way now, not leaning, down, and a ten foot stretch of chain-link lay flat in the dirt like somebody had rolled it out as a welcome mat. Orion had told himself earlier tonight this stretch would hold until morning. It wasn't going to hold until midnight.
The Forme sat down. First time all night Orion had seen it stop standing.
Kamala was flexing her right hand, the knuckles already purpling, eyes still on the sky. Doreen crouched on the top rail with Emolga cupped in both hands, checking one wing and then the other. Neither of them turned around to see what Orion thought of how it went. They were still watching the tree line, waiting in case the column came back, and that told him more than anything either of them could've said.
He crossed to Kamala and stopped close enough that she had to look at him.
He nodded once toward the downed Forme. "Electric won't touch the ground types. Tell Doreen."
She blinked, then nodded once, slowly. "Okay."
"Go eat. Both of you. Then come find me."
He left it there and walked on toward the downed posts before she could answer, and behind him he heard Kamala calling up to Doreen about ground types, Doreen's short, surprised laugh, the first real one he'd heard out of either of them tonight.
Orion stopped at the end of the flattened stretch and put his hand on the last post still standing. It shifted under his palm.
He'd sold Kamala her first Poké Ball across his own counter. He'd run the tournament where both of them fought for a trophy with a crowd yelling their names. After Aurawood, he'd thrown them a party, because they'd done something brave and he'd wanted them to know somebody noticed. He'd been the one teaching them. That had been the whole arrangement. Tonight they'd held his fence while he stood behind them giving orders, and he'd let them, because there hadn't been anyone else to ask.
Somewhere inside, Sparkplug was still sitting where Orion had left him, and the question he'd asked was still sitting there with him.
Orion took his hand off the post. It kept leaning without him.
***
Give power stones to support this book.
Advance chapters in P@T0n Najicablitz.