Author's Note: Hello again loyal readers. If anyone has suggestions for teams or Pokemon for characters to use, feel free to leave a message. I'm open to suggestions.
GioRocket: Thank you! I'm not sure how well I can explore darker themes with my level of writing, but I'll do my best to live up to your expectations.
ultima-owner: Absol is a pretty cool Pokemon, no doubt about it.
Chapter 3- Journey of Terror
When Quentin finally began his movement back towards consciousness, he first became aware of pain. A painful line across the entire back of his skull, throbbing in tune with the pounding in his ears; a dull pain in his tailbone; several other minor contusions across his body. In the space of a few minutes, Quentin acclimatized himself to the pain and prepared to enter consciousness. When he began to push away the tantalizing darkness of sleep and rose, he discovered another thing: he had not prepared for the pain nearly enough.
He was unable to contain his groan of pain as he finally came to. The first sensations he took note of was the rough blanket underneath him and a source of heat to his right. The bruises and aches throughout his body reminded him that yes, he was alive, and yes, this was real. But then he realized he was in total blackness. He could not see a thing, and his throat was dry and his face felt... thick, almost wooden in its lack of feeling.
Panicking, he flailed around wildly. Was he blind? Captured by someone or something? Trapped in some sort of Dark-type effect? Then a soft voice intervened. "You can open your eyes now, Quentin."
Not recognizing the voice, he blearily opened crusty eyes and carefully brought himself up onto his elbows. The voice belonged to a young dark-haired girl kneeling next to him. She rocked back onto her heels as he rose slightly, giving him a careful eye. Still mostly asleep and therefore ignorant of decorum, Quentin made an appraisal of the girl, lingering more than was strictly necessary. The girl's straight hair fell over most of her face, obscuring dark, angular eyes. She wore a dark jacket two sizes too big for her wrapped around her small frame, and a simple skirt, again in dark colors. Shyly turning away and down from his continued gaze, she spoke softly.
"We're at the gates of the Petalburg woods, and several of the older kids decided to stop here. No one wanted to brave Petalburg in the dark." A short grimace understandably followed this thought, and she fell silent for a moment, collecting herself. "John there helped me carry you this far. Your backpack is really heavy..." She gestured, indicating a grimy boy curled up with
Quentin had the grace to look bashful as he replied, "Heh, sorry about that. I was packing stuff from Supplies into my bag and never got to unload." As his hand touched the welt stretching across the back of his head, he flinched and withdrew his hand, hissing lowly.
Her standoffish demeanor changed instantly as she reached back and lifted a roll of bandages and some kind of ointment from the sleeping bag below her, reaching forward with only a bit of hesitation. "Here, put this on the bandages, it should help reduce the swelling."
Quentin grudgingly submitted to her ministrations, wincing silently as her cool hands touched the source of his pain, but his headache lessened gradually as the ointment took effect. Turning a grateful eye to her, he nodded once and simply said, "Thank you. Sorry, what was your name again?"
A frown marred her face as she answered. "Jacqueline Min. Weren't you listening at introductions?"
Tilting his head up, Quentin began to think back? Jacqueline? Hmmm... Suddenly an image flashed in his mind's eye of a tiny girl with straight black hair proclaiming herself as a future Gym Leader.
His reflective thoughts were interrupted as she pointed out the camp layout. "One guy with a fire-type started a bonfire over there, and we all went along with it; the lake is that way, and the water is clean; there are some berry bushes over there for feeding your Pokemon. We think they are Yache Berries but no one is really sure."
Pokemon? Pokemon! The teacher had ordered them to grab a Pokeball before they left, hadn't she? Where was it? Hadn't he stuffed it in his backpack. Casting around, his eyes lit upon his half-open backpack, notebooks hanging half out of the open pocket. Wasn't it on the top? Had it fallen out?
Panic began to set in as he tried to move towards his bag. He only succeeded in scrabbling forward and upsetting his sleeping bag. Jacqueline looked on curiously as he dragged himself towards his bag. No, no, no, it had to be here. Near-blind in fear and panic, he ripped open his bag and starting delving through its contents. Sweatshirt, no, notebooks, no, snack food, no... Quentin tore through his bag, heedless of the safety of its contents, searching for that elusive round shape of a Pokeball. Moving rapidly, he tossed things behind him in his mad search, uncaring, as long as he could find that white ball...!
Nothing. His bag had been emptied. He didn't have a starter pokemon. He couldn't become a trainer short of capturing something with his bare hands, and anything he could catch would be too weak to fight anyway. He sat back on his hands, and as the adrenaline wore off, he felt a sinking feeling in his chest and the pain in his head resurfaced. His chest felt empty. He had finally entered the Trainer's School, only for it to be destroyed; he had finally gotten his chance at a starter, only to lose the Pokeball somewhere between here and Rustboro; the poor thing was probably under the lake they had crossed. His shoulders hunched as he drew inward, ignoring the dampness in his eyes; he barely even registered Jacqueline softly putting her arms around him as his frame was racked with silent sobs. Distraught over the loss of his home, his Pokemon, and his dream, Quentin cried until his eyes were dry and passed out from stress and exhaustion.
When he next opened his eyes, it was broad daylight, and Sam was standing nearby. "Hey Quentin, time to wake up. We're going to attempt part of the Petalburg Woods this morning."
Extricating himself from the blanket, Quentin stood slowly, ignoring the mumbling from Jacqueline, who had been kind enough to share her blanket in his emotional distress. "Petalburg this soon?"
"We need to get a message to the nearest gym at Petalburg City. The Rock Tunnel is still unfinished, and we aren't going through Meteor Falls. That's where those Salamence came from, and I ain't looking forward to more of their kind. That leaves only the way through the woods, and the word needs to get out. We'll try to get as far as we can during the daylight."
It took relatively little time for the children to assemble, gear packed and Pokeballs in hand, staring fearfully up at the shadows beneath the trees. A girl slightly taller than the rest called out, "Everyone stay together. It's easy to get lost in the dark."
Lacking his own Pokeball to hold in readiness, Quentin instead pulled out his Pokedex and began scanning, hoping to get the drop on any wild Pokemon the rest of the group did not see. After only a little hesitation, the group of children entered the shadows beneath the trees, collectively blinking as their eyes adjusted. Almost half of the children sent out their starters in a cacophony of cries and light, causing Quentin to wince. There goes any chance of secrecy... Once again ruing his lack of a starter, he followed along in the middle of the group, straining his eyes to pierce the deep shadows. The forest held an eerie quiet, only broken by the murmur and shuffling of the children and occasional clicking and hissing noises with no discernable origin. Turning slowly, Quentin gazed fruitlessly into the trees, discerning nothing except leaves. The first Wurmple to emerge from the trees was immediately lit on fire by torchic and charmander just as nervous as their trainers. It shrieked, sliding around while on fire, its distress carrying through the forest before a hulking nidoran stomped it flat.
Not nearly quick enough, though. As soon as they began to relax and move forward, a curious thing happened. Every few meters, a sudden pattern of wingbeats could be heard before halting, at different locations on all sides of the schoolchildren. Every time they would stop, trying to pinpoint the noise, before it would suddenly cease. No one was eager to go investigate under the shadows of the impossibly dense undergrowth. Fearing the unknown, they moved more cautiously. But this held to no avail.
Stepping through the tangled forest, they finally reached a clearing. The exhausted children sat down with a whump, recalling overexcited pokemon. One left his vulpix out long enough to start a small fire before returning it as well. It was this sight which stirred the first inkling of danger within Quentin. Firelight, in a forest crawling with bugs... Quentin just watched the tiny particles illuminated by the firelight floating before disappearing from his vision. Ahhh, they'd be fine. Petalburg Woods were commonly traveled, people had to get to Petalburg City and Rustboro, right? The teacher wouldn't have sent them this way otherwise. That seemed right.
Quentin yawned, and saw another student yawn. Gee, yawning really is contagious. The particles in the air were beautiful in the firelight; they seemed denser than before. He felt his eyes begin to shut, succumbing to sleep, then another deep breath... and an acrid taste assaulted his lungs. Coughing and suddenly awake, he was privy to the sight of shroomish unearthing from the damp soil and shaking themselves violently, scattering spores from the tops of their heads to counteract... something? His mind still befuddled by the effects of the Stun Spore drifting through the clearing, he tied a cloth around his mouth and nose, and noticed the shroomish between his feet, bouncing slightly as it shook itself violently. Silently apologizing, he picked up the shroomish and ran through the sleeping children, spraying the pain-inducing spores far and wide. It didn't seem to mind, chirruping lightly as it nestled itself in his palm. Soon hacking, coughing, and moaning in pain filled the air as the painful shroomish spores drove out the Stun Spore. Now the remaining question was, who had cast the Stun Spore?
First Jacqueline, then Sam, then the other children began to follow Quentin's example in the makeshift filter, releasing their pokemon to try and find the threat. After wary seconds broken only by coughing and curious pokemon nosing at the shroomish, the source appeared. Dustox in vast numbers descended upon the clearing, attracted to the flames of fire-types, scattering dust in their wake.
Screams and chaos awoke as the swarm attacked the crowd indiscriminately. Quentin began to edge away from the swarm, but as he tried to lift his foot further, it was stuck. Looking down, he saw that he had stepped on a String Shot, likely the work of one of Dustox's evolutionary relatives. As he wrenched his foot away, a faint spurting noise saw another line of string lay itself across the top of his boot, hampering him little. He attempted to pull it off, only to find his fingers stuck to the fine string. Hissing in annoyance, he ripped his fingers away, ignoring how the string took his skin with it, his split fingers now bleeding. He took another three steps before he was once more anchored, the frequency of the shots rising alarmingly. Overbalanced, he began to fall, his arms strapped to his sides. His last motion before he hit the ground was to flick his hand, tossing the distressed shroomish away from where he would impact. Then he was totally immobilized, and came face to face with the source of his capture. Silcoon... or was it cascoon? Whatever they were, they were occupied with firmly securing all the humans within immobilizing webs.
Quentin felt all vestiges of movement taken away with layer after layer of luminescent white, and the shroomish danced angrily by his immobile form as a dustox slowly fluttered down in front of him and prepared to release a burst of poisonous dust, lifting its wings high.