<Somewhere deep within the Empire>
"OY! PUT YER BACKS INTO IT!" Zane, a Simisear, shouted over his workers. "The quicker we can find out whatever this energy source is, the quicker we can get away from the burning mountain!" His crew was apparently tasked with digging up some kind of energy source at the base of a nearby volcano that some villagers nearby had discovered. Zane was never a Pokemon to be putting so much effort into something some god forsaken village 'supposedly' found, but those were the orders that were passed down from above.
"We're goin' as fast as we can boss!" A Machoke called back removing a massive boulder so a fellow Onix and several Gravelers could tunnel deeper. "But this heat, ash, and soot is not makn' it any easier to move!"
As much as Zane wanted to push his team, their complaints were warranted. Recently this dormant volcano had re-awoken. Smoke bellowed out nonstop from top in a steady stream making any attempts to investigate the summit impossible. The local area was covered in a dense ash and soot, it rained down like a bad snowstorm, forcing several villages to evacuate and forcing the excavation team to don on protective masks and breath equipment for their eyes and lungs.
Zane looked up at the summit of the volcano, "This is getting worse by the minute...." he said to himself. A deep rumble could be felt that shook the foundations of the mountain, it wasn't anything close to an earthquake but still a rather alarming noise that sounded like rocks grinding on rocks deep under ground. Zane looked at the Onix and Gravelers, but they returned a look that told him it wasn't them.
ZZZZZ......
The sound emanated again, but this time it was more like a deep buzzing, and seemed to be from the core of the volcano. Whatever Zane was hearing, it was echoes and vibrations through the rocks.
"WATCH OUT, INCOMMING ROCK SLIDE!" a Graveler shouted as a mass of rocks began tumbling down the side of the mountain. The Gravelers defense curled and did their best to root themselves into the soil, the nearyby Onix coild protetively around Zane and several of the Machokes and Machaps.
The rock slide thundered past them, "The summit mus be crumblin' down!" Zane shouted over the crashing rocks, "Hows you holdn' up Onix?"
The Onix seemed relatively un-phased by the falling rocks, but the bigger issue is getting back onto the surface if they get buried. After what felt like an eternity, the rock slide had stopped. Onix shifted its body slightly sifting some of the rocks, dirt, and debris off itself and reemerged. Zane crawled out of the hold the Onix had made and looked around. Zane was right, the top of the volcano had collapsed, the volcano only roughly 3/4 of its original height, and all their excavation progress had be buried and now they had to start over with even more to dig through. "Oh boy... the Taskmasta' ain't gonna like this...." Zane sighed. "Sound off crew!"
Slowly one by one his workforce emerged from below the rubble,luckily most off them being rock and ground types, they were all relatively unharmed. "Ehy boss! dosn't it seem brighter than before?" one of the Machokes asked looking around.
"Wut you on about? it's....." Zane stopped and looked around more closely. The Machoke was sort of right. The falling soot and ash did seem to be slightly lighter, but was caught his attention more was the rays of sunlight piercing through the clouds of soot and ash. "Is that sunny day...? no...." Zane watched as the rays of light changed angles, there was something up there radiating that powerful light and it was moving.
FOOM!
A large fireball shot out from the cloud of soot and ash above. Zane tried stopping with it with a flamethrower of his own but it was too powerful, he was forced to leap out of the way, and nearly avoided to fiery explosion. "Wut tha...?"
"So much noise, such insolence, such arrogance, are you all that eager to die?" a sultry voice echoed from the source of the attack.
The excavation crew were a little taken aback by the voice. The light shining through the smoke ash, and soot brightened as the source of the attack descended. It was a larger than normal shiny Volcarona, its six bright yellow wings were glowing like the sun, her emerald green eyes shining like miniature spotlights. Wisps of fire emanating from them as countless embers began to fill the sky replacing the ash and soot. The temperature of the area was rapidly increasing and the rock, ground, and fighting types were finding themselves having more difficulty breathing, their masks had been made for air purification, not temperature instabilities.
"Look ere' I dun' care who you are, but you got sum nerve threatenin' uz!" Zane shouted at the Volcarona, being a fire type the rise in temperature was not too much of a hassle. He was scared of course but he couldn't show that in front of his crew.
The Volcarona shifted her gaze to Zane, "Perish...." two powerful flamethrowers shot out from two of her six wings, the white hot jets of flames twisted around as it shot towards Zane.
Zane stood his ground, refusing to move. he fired back a flamethrower of his own, but it stood no chance, within seconds, Zane was completely engulfed in Volcarona's flamethrower. What was left of the little Simisear was nothing more than black smoldering corpse. The rest of the excavation crew immediately began to flee, the rock and ground types dug into the earth, while the fighting types simply ran down the mountain.
The Volcarona laughed aloud, her laughter echoed through the mountains, "TEMPRIS FLIES AGAIN!" a deafening bug buzz emanated from the Volcarona as she flew away from the mountain, slowing gaining altitude but staying low enough, long enough so she would trap some of the slower fleeing fighting types. Her body and wings shook and vibrated as she emitted the bug buzz. Her wings unleashed torrents of fiery scales, setting the mountainside ablaze. The sound of the bug buzz caught some of the slower moving fighting Pokémon, it dropped them to their knees as they were disoriented by the noise, becoming deaf and holding their bleeding ears, as the heat of the burning forest sapped away their last renaming bits of energy slowly engulfing them, sealing their fates.