It is said that all humans meet Death when they die. They see his empty, skeletal eye sockets and gleaming silver scythe, a chilling reminder of the absolute power he holds over life. They smell the scent of decay and despair that surrounds him, withering flowers as he glides across the earth. They hear the hollow, sickly rattle of his voice and his bones. And this is when a human truly knows that they are dead – when they are afraid, more afraid than they've ever been, but can no longer feel their heartbeat fluttering like mad in their chest.
When a Pokémon dies, it does not meet Death. Instead, it is greeted by fierce yet gentle eyes and the warm feeling of safety, of being protected and loved. A human knows they are dead when they are scared to death and do not die. A Pokémon knows they are dead when the harsh realities of the world fade away and they are like an infant again, protected by a bone-masked sentinel that guides them towards Arceus's kingdom with almost motherly tenderness.
You see, there is Death…
And then there is Marowak.
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Since the very beginning, there have been Pokémon, and humans, and Pokémon that love humans, and humans that love Pokémon.
And since the very beginning, there have been humans who lost their Pokémon and Pokémon who lost their humans, and there has been sorrow and remembrance and memories both fond and painful.
It is an endless cycle, you see, the partnerships between humans and their creature companions. As one ends, another begins. And the legendary beasts look down upon this cycle of friendship and loss and think that this is the way it must be, and always will be, until the end of time.
For death, as we all know, is a necessary thing.
You could even call it beautiful, if you were a Marowak.
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Many years ago, farther back than anyone alive now can remember, there was a boy who lived in a small village called Lavender with his family and his Cubone. As time passed the boy and his Cubone grew closer and formed a bond that seemed unbreakable, even when the Cubone became a Marowak and in turn a mother and the boy became a man with a family of his own and they both grew older and wiser to the ways of the world. Through it all they stayed friends and partners, and it seemed as if nothing would ever separate them.
But then one day the Marowak died, as all creatures do. And the boy who was now a man was lost. He knew not how to carry on without his greatest friend and ally by his side.
"I will build a tower," he said to his wife on his sixth day of grieving. "A tower where the spirits of dead Pokémon will gather, where humans will pay their respects to the partners they once fought and lived alongside. It will be a monument to the cruel, neverending tale of death and rebirth."
His wife was wary. So much death in one place… So many memories echoing across the ages… It could only end in despair. And yet she said nothing, sensing the terrible, volatile grief that fraught her husband's mind. She said nothing, and allowed him to build his tower of woe.
And woe it did bring, in time.
(But I am getting ahead of myself. Stories such as this take time to weave, for each thread has its origin and its end.)
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Many years ago, not so far back but far enough that the details are beginning to blur and fade with time, there was a young man who felt no love for the world. This was not his fault, for his mother before him had been cruel and vicious, with the blood of many staining her sharp, quick hands. And when she died her legacy was passed on to him, this burden of so many deaths and pleas for mercy, this inescapable future shaped by another's crimes.
He was angry, this man, at the hand Fate had dealt him. What was the point of living, he thought, if everything was predetermined, a game of chance played with a loaded die?
But it was his fate all the same. No matter what he did he could not escape it. And though his heart was heavy with longing for a life unfettered by his mother's misdeeds, eventually he accepted the path before him without qualm or quarrel. Light could not exist without darkness, after all. Shadow could not exist without the sun.
Without a villain, Giovanni thinks, there would be no heroes.
And without heroes, there would be no tales worth the telling.
.
A few short years ago, when the villain's face was first beginning to crease with age and the hero was naught but a quiet child, there was a kindly old man who lived in a tiny town called Lavender. Lavender was unremarkable in many ways – a few ramshackle old houses, a town hall, a Pokemon Center, a General Store. And then, jutting from the ground like a broken spear on the battlefield, there was the Tower. (We see now, how the threads connect, how easily they begin to unravel.)
The people of Lavender feared the Tower. It was a place built upon a dais of bones, a place where the air was thick with the sour smell of death. Ghosts haunted the Tower, the people said. At night, they could hear them, their voices stretched thin across the space between our world and the next. At night, the ghosts would rise from their graves and wander the Tower's vaulted halls, seeking the ones who had buried them, the ones who had forgotten.
The kindly old man thought this very sad. He did not fear the ghosts as the others did, but instead took pity on their unfortunate souls. They began to love him, these specters (these echoes of memory in the night), and he promised to find them some form of solace.
"You must pass on," he told the ghosts, and they stared at him with their will-o-the-wisp eyes shining bright. "I will find a way."
It was then that the Marowak came.
(Hush now, child. Do not cry. I am the Mother of All. Close your eyes, child, and look towards the light.)
.
For a time, things were peaceful. Mr. Fuji grew older, and his eyes grew tired and dull, but that was alright, because the Marowak was there now.
The spirits had an angel now, a proper one (though perhaps more solemn than beautiful), and they no longer needed him to guide them to their rest.
Still, though, he visited the Tower every day, if only to place a comforting hand on a young man's shoulder and say, "It is alright. Your Pokemon, my boy… Your Pokemon is in a better place now." To be able to say this with certainty was Mr. Fuji's greatest joy.
But an old man's joy is an ephemeral thing.
(Now, we watch as the threads begin to intertwine. Soon, they will fray and break. Every unhappy tale ends this way, though few span so many eras, and few create such binding ties.)
.
It goes like this:
The hero is twelve when he leaves home, Pikachu by his side. He was once quiet but is now silent, words catching in his throat like Butterfree in a net, unable to be set free. The boy with brown eyes sneers at him, jeers at him, glares with a mixture of hatred and sadness, but the hero cannot (or will not?) respond.
Words are so simple, he thinks. They say far too much.
(Later he will realize that silence too can speak volumes – perhaps even more than words. I'm sorry, he will say, but Green will shake his head and turn away.)
The mediator is eighty-six when he stops visiting the Tower. Too old, he thinks, to be scaling such heights. Too old to drag his weary bones up those ancient stone steps. But in reality, the ghosts have begun to frighten him. He nears death's doorstep every day, little by little (and no one wishes to be reminded of their own mortality).
Too old to deal with the dead, Mr. Fuji thinks.
(But deal with them he will, one last time.)
The villain is thirty-eight when he decides to claim all of Kanto in the name of Team Rocket. First, he says, they will need a place to broadcast their message to the world. It will not be a peaceful takeover, no, but it will not be a violent one either. They will not accept Team Rocket, but in the end, they will not fight them. (He knows all too well the darkness that lurks in every human heart.)
"There is a tower in Lavender Town," Athena suggests. "We could use it."
"Bad idea," Lambda mutters under his breath. He's heard the stories.
"A bad idea? Why?"
But Lambda shakes his head, lowers his eyes. "Whatever," he says. "It's not important."
(Wrong, wrong, wrong. Bad ideas are always important.)
.
Sometimes Giovanni sees a strange figure dressed in purple. A woman, pale and sickly, with her dark dress all tattered and ragged, her hair hanging in damp, lanky strands around her face. She always appears along the edges of his vision, like a trick of the light, and when he turns there is no one there, but the air is always cold and biting against his skin.
Giovanni would have listened, had Lambda spoken up.
.
In the end, Apollo is the one who kills the Marowak. She hefts her club of bone and stares at him, defiant, her children huddled behind her. (But look closer, at the way the space around her seems to twist and bend upon itself. She is the Mother of All, you see, and her children are not just among the living.)
Apollo's mouth twists into a grimace. It is an unpleasant business, this. But orders are orders.
He lifts his gun and pulls the trigger.
Again and again and again.
.
Red arrives in Lavender Town with a heavy heart. He does not remember why he is sad. There is simply something about this place that weighs on him, claws at him, grasps his soul and tears at it with hands of shadow and stone. The people here are odd – blank eyes regarding him mournfully, unresponsive to the simplest questions. They keep their heads downcast, watching the ground beneath their feet. (So very afraid. Were they to look, what might they see?)
Outside the Tower he finds a Rocket Grunt, huddled and shaking on the ground.
"Please, let me go back home," he whispers; grips Red's hand tightly. "I can see them. When I close my eyes, they stare back at me. Oh god, please… Let me go home. I don't want to sleep tonight. I don't want to sleep."
Red pries the man's cold fingers from his own, and scales the Tower.
"They have done something terrible," Mr. Fuji says to him, as they stand atop the Tower. "They will be haunted for the rest of their days. And this place… This place will bring them nothing but misfortune."
A cold breeze blows past, chilling them both to the bone.
The hero turns to face the Mother of All, whose will-o-the-wisp eyes are bright with anger and pain.
(Now, everything has come apart. We have returned to the beginning; nothing remains. (This is untrue. Something always remains.))
.
.
Apollo is dying.
He should've seen it coming, in hindsight. The man had been nothing but suspicious throughout the meeting, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, eyes darting left and right, left and right, like a pendulum with a nervous tic.
But Apollo's mind had been elsewhere. And so when the man offered him a drink he had accepted it, hardly even processing the possible threat of poison.
How foolish, he thinks, and almost laughs at this tactical misstep. I have been incautious. I hope the Boss is not too angry with me.
It is getting harder and harder to draw breath now. His heartbeat is slowing; his vision is growing darker. The pulse in his veins has weakened to a low murmur. This is the end.
As he slips into unconsciousness he sees an imposing figure standing before him. Death. His eye sockets appraise Apollo, inscrutable in their emptiness, and His bony fingers curl around His gleaming silver scythe.
You have many sins to repent for, human, Death says. Too many to count.
And thus, Apollo dies.
.
.
In his eyes, there is nothing.
But in his ears, the sound of bones rattling fills him with indescribable dread.
Wild GHOST appears…