No one in the cabin made a sound. Not the poachers, not the passengers, not even Nova. Every pair of eyes was fixed on the emergency exit as a pair of strong hands pushed the door open from the outside.
The security officer stepped through, glanced at the two poachers, and smiled pleasantly. "Looks like you two were keeping yourselves busy."
One of the criminals managed a hollow laugh. "Any chance we can work something out?"
"Right now? Not a chance."
The officer stepped aside to let his partner through. Noctowl swept into the cabin, locked onto the Ariados, and brought it down with a Wing Attack followed by a sharp Peck. The Ariados crumpled to the floor and went still, sinking into a deep, untroubled sleep almost instantly.
A Bug-type with no level advantage, taking on a Flying-type — there was only ever going to be one outcome.
Noctowl's eyes flickered with a faint red glow as Hypnosis activated, and the Ariados's Trainer slumped unconscious beside it.
The officer turned his attention to the second poacher — already badly weakened by Nidorino's Poison Sting. But before he could act, something unexpected happened.
The man jammed a hand into his backpack and pulled out a black syringe. In one sharp motion, he drove it into the leg of the Medicham that was barely still standing.
A dark, unsettling aura began spreading from the Medicham's body. Nova watched as the Pokémon's muscles visibly swelled, its laboured breathing sharpening into something frantic. Within moments, the Medicham that had looked moments from collapsing was smashing through everything around it.
Both Corvisquire and Noctowl were thrown off by the sudden change. The berserk Medicham was hurling objects in every direction, and the risk to the passengers was immediate. Both Pokémon were pulled from the offensive and redirected to intercepting the debris before it could reach anyone.
The distraction bought the poacher the opening he needed. He tore an Antidote from his pack and used it quickly. A standard Antidote would do little against Nidorino's concentrated venom — but it did not need to cure him entirely. If it cleared enough of the paralysis to give him his legs back, that was all he required.
"Medicham! Use Close Combat on the side wall!"
Even in its berserk state, the Medicham followed the command. Whatever was in that syringe had done something remarkable to its strength. The Medicham drove its fist into the left wall of the passenger cabin and punched clean through it.
The poacher did not even stop to recall his Pokémon. He threw himself straight through the hole.
Nova pressed close to the porthole and watched. The man's backpack had deployed into a compact jetpack, twin bursts of compressed air launching him away from the airship and into the night.
Nova stared after him for a moment. Technology really does change things. I want one of those.
He turned back to the cabin. The other poacher was already unconscious on the floor.
Without its Trainer's commands to anchor it, the berserk Medicham had no strategy — only rage. It could not hold out against two Flying-type Pokémon working in tandem. Within minutes, it went down.
The moment it fainted, the dark aura vanished. What it left behind was worse than the berserk state itself.
The muscles that had been forcibly swollen by whatever was in that syringe shrank back rapidly, visibly deflating. The Medicham that had just been punching through airship walls now lay on the floor looking hollow and sunken, like something that had not eaten in weeks. The drug had burned through a real portion of its vitality to produce that brief surge of power.
Nova and the security officer crouched down to check on it. Neither of them said anything for a moment. The look they exchanged said enough.
Because of the incident in the passenger cabin, the pilots had already brought the airship to a low altitude as a precaution. They identified a flat, open stretch of plateau below and brought the airship down to an emergency landing.
The passengers let out a collective breath the moment they felt solid ground beneath them.
For Nova and the security officer, the work was only beginning.
"Young man — Nova, is it?"
"Yes."
"I'm Cleo. Uncle Cleo is fine." The officer extended a hand. "Thank you for what you did back there. If you hadn't been in that cabin, those two would have had me for good."
"Don't thank me, Uncle Cleo. I'm fairly sure they were here because of me."
"Oh?"
Nova gave him a brief account of what had happened on the mountain — the poaching base, the raid, the arrests.
Cleo listened carefully, then shook his head. "You think they came specifically to get back at you?"
"That's what I assumed."
"I'm not sure that holds up," Cleo said, thinking it through. "You weren't the only one involved in that raid. From what you're describing, there were well over a dozen Trainers from Goldenlight City who took part. If they were after revenge but didn't dare go after the officer in charge, why single you out from the whole group?"
"Maybe because the others were still in the city and I was the only one who left the next morning?"
Cleo did not look convinced. "Criminal organisations that run on pure revenge do exist — but they tend to be lone operators, grudge-driven types. A structured poaching group doesn't send people and resources after someone just to settle a score. There's no profit in it. They would need another reason."
Nova saw where the reasoning was going. Security officers who worked the airship routes were not ordinary people — they had dealt with all manner of criminal organisations across regions and knew how these groups operated.
"The venom formula," Nova said. "They're after Nidorino's venom."
Cleo nodded immediately. Nidorino's venom, carefully cultivated by Nova over time, was of an unusually high potency — well above what the species was typically known for. And that black syringe, and what it had done to the Medicham, made the stakes very clear. Whatever these people were developing, getting their hands on a more powerful venom source would only make it worse.
With that established, the interrogation of the remaining poacher was straightforward enough. Cleo and Nova were not particularly gentle about it, and the criminal was not especially resilient.
Thunderbolt. Then Dream Eater.
Electric shock while conscious, then torment through his dreams the moment he blacked out — the man was in tears inside fifteen minutes. He gave up everything: the purpose of the mission, the full plan, and the current location of the organisation's senior members — specifically, the executive who had taken a particular interest in Nova's venom.
According to him, the substance in the black syringe was called "Dark Toxin" internally — a compound developed by an executive within the organisation with a specialisation in poisons. It forced a temporary spike in a Pokémon's combat ability by burning through its life energy directly.
The side effect — severe and permanent damage to the Pokémon's vitality — did not concern the organisation in the slightest. They were poachers. When a Pokémon became unusable, they simply took another.