Tunneling? She looks ahead, squinting at the spot Akechi was hovering over. Indeed, whatever was digging there has tossed up enough dirt to create piles of it that obscure her vision.

"Right..." She'll exercise caution—as much as she can, considering their time limit. "Cover me, will you?"

Without waiting for a reply, she starts forward. To her credit, by now she's adapted well to her new, ghostly form, and her approach is quick and silent. Soon, she nears the dirt piles—close enough to spot the bright red, worm-like form of Taillow's missing medicine. It's just lying there on the ground, a bit scuffed with dirt but otherwise intact.

She pauses, warily glancing around for any sign of danger, before sinking down into her shadow. With the rest of the distance covered via her Shadow Sneak move, she reappears beside the medicine, reaching out a claw to take it—

—Only for her to duck back into her shadow in alarm when the long, startlingly blue appendage of something suddenly bursts out from the ground, just in time to swipe the medicine away. She can feel tremors beneath her as the rest of the creatures unearths itself. Whatever it is, it's enormous compared to her; only when she reemerges from her shadow to regain her bearings does she notice that it already has her surrounded, the length of its red, serpentine body looped easily around her in a wide circle.

So much for going unnoticed. Through her surprise, she tries to relocate the medicine and finds it hanging loosely in the creature's parapodia-like tendril-arms.

"Oh...!" the Pokémon says in a high, wavering voice. She sounds about as startled to see Shoka as Shoka was to see her. "What... Who—... Who are you? What do you want?"

"All right, take it easy," Shoka replies evenly. "I'm from the Oran Berries, and I'm just here for that."

She points a claw at the medicine-worm. The Orthworm draws it closer to herself with a flinch.

"But... But why?"

"Um? Because it's medicine for a sick Pokémon?"

"No... No, that isn't... right, I don't understand..."