A/N: Chapter five. I just replayed Pokémon X and got to the part where AZ is talking about the war and, predictably, cried like a baby. There's too much about that game that's either super heartbreaking, or potentially super heartbreaking. I still can't get this one immortal!Serena fic out of my head.

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon. I don't even know if I still need this disclaimer. You all know the truth.

but the monsters turned out to be just trees

and when the sun came up

you were looking at me. — taylor swift, out of the woods

5 — Swarm

"Sparky! Boy, come on!"

"Pika, pikachu." The small electric mouse snarls from his spot in the tree overhead, his cheeks sparking angrily. Leaf has been trying to coax him down for nearly fifteen minutes, now — and she's getting impatient.

Blue yawns from his spot a few feet away, taking his time in gathering up all his belongings. His Pokémon are all safely tucked back inside their pokéballs, with the sole exception of Ronan, who's staring at Leaf's new teammate with no small degree of dislike.

"Squirtle, squirt!"

Blue glances down at his starter. "You stay out of it. Do you wanna get a thundershock to the face again?"

The water-type seems to flush with anger, puffing his cheeks up in annoyance.

"That's what I thought."

Rose, who had been quiet since Sparky had started his small act of rebellion, decides to speak up next. "Charmander! Char, char! Mander?"

Sparky glances down at the fire-type, and for one wild moment, Leaf actually thinks he might be considering whatever Rose had just said. And then there's a flash of malicious glee in his eyes, his cheeks spark wildly, and Leaf can only get out a shout of warning before Rose teeters back, narrowly avoiding a direct hit from a thunder wave, and another bout of paralysis.

As it is, she doesn't get paralyzed, but tears do begin to form in the corners of her eyes, small hiccuping whimpers coming from her as she tries — and fails — to compose herself.

"Oi!" Leaf says, quickly scooping Rose up. She's a fairly good battler, Rose, but she can't stand being teased.

Sparky is cackling from his position in the tree overhead, tiny paws clapped over his mouth as he lets out malicious little giggles.

Ronan bristles when he sees his crying friend, and her laughing tormenter. Ignoring his trainer's warning glance, he steps forward, barking out a challenge at Sparky. This gets the pikachu's attention immediately — the electric mouse takes a new battle stance, his tail twitching eagerly.

"Pi-ka —"

"Squirt!"

Sparky is cut off, mid-thundershock, by a powerful blast of water coming from Ronan's mouth. The pikachu stumbles on the branch he's perched on before eventually falling, hitting the ground with a muffled thump.

He grumbles in annoyance. "Chu."

"That's enough from you," Leaf says, lips pursed as she pulls Sparky's pokéball back out. His glare is absolutely lethal as the bright light envelops him, pulling him back inside his capsule. She sighs in relief when her newest teammate is safely inside, away from a still-whimpering Rose and a seething Ronan.

A snorting scoff pulls her attention back to Blue, who's finally getting up off the ground, dusting his pants off. "Are you finally done?"

Leaf's lip curls in a scowl, her arms crossing angrily over her chest. "Yes, no thanks to you."

He shrugs, shoulders rolling up in an oh well gesture. "He's not my Pokémon. It's not my job to train him, Leafy."

Leaf's scowl only deepens at the old nickname. "Nice, Blue. You still could've helped. Your Pokémon was nice enough to, at least." Her scowl melts immediately into a smile, which she directs at Ronan. "Thank you, by the way, Ronan."

"Squirtle!" he warbles; the water type looks immensely proud of himself, a look that only fades slightly when he catches Blue's eye.

"Whatever," he mutters, maneuvering around Leaf and back onto the main pathway. "Come on. It'll be dark soon, and I don't know about you, but I'd rather not still be here when that happens."

They continue on without a word more.

It's another half-hour of relative quiet along the main pathway, made only slightly less awkward by the Pokémon's giggling conversation. Blue is quick to ignore Leaf, and she does much the same — the silence is only really broken when Blue shouts unintelligibly at something.

Leaf manages to decipher the words "Look!" and "Pokémon!" before Blue is shoving Ronan forward with the toe of his shoe. The little turtle is startled, but quickly snaps back into focus.

"Squirt?"

"Look — is it a pikachu?"

Ronan looks like he really hopes it's not, and Leaf squints into the foliage — something is moving, something small and yellow and it might very well be another pikachu, but then a moment passes and it's a weedle poking its tiny head out of the brush.

It gurgles out a cry, and Blue's shoulders, which had tensed with adrenaline, slump very suddenly. "Are you serious?"

Leaf tries hard not to feel pleased. "Aw, what is it, Blue? Bummed I finally have something you don't?"

Blue scoffs, turning his head to glare at her. "You know full and well that pikachu of yours is untrainable. At least, as long as he stays with you, he is — now, if I was his trainer —"

Leaf's cheeks flush immediately at the jab. She wants to disagree — wants to disagree vehemently, but it's not as if she has any other Pokémon to prove her point with. Sparky hates her, and will likely be hard to train, if he even is trainable at all. Leaf's almost positive the only reason Rose obeys her is because she's well-bred and well-socialized, and too timid to argue otherwise.

"That's not true," Leaf says — but she sounds uncertain, and Blue knows, and he grins, nastily.

"Of course it's true," he says, honing in on her insecurities, like he's always done and always will do. "I mean, it took you this long to even catch a Pokémon. Face it, Leafy, you're not cut out to be a trainer — maybe you should just go home."

Leaf's uncertainty grows, a little, but she stands her ground and tries not to let it show on her face. "You're wrong. I — I'm gonna be a great trainer. You don't know anything yet, Blue, we've barely just started —"

"And look at what a wonderful start you're having —"

"You're wrong!" Leaf cuts him off in a near-scream, stamping her foot hard on the ground. Rose shrinks back at the sudden outburst coming from her usually quiet trainer, hiding her face behind her claws. "You're wrong, Blue — you don't know anything —"

The two devolve quickly into a shouting match, which soon turns so unintelligible that later, Leaf won't even be able to remember what she'd said. All either of them can focus on is being louder than the other, to be heard over the other's screaming.

The weedle is long gone — scared off by the yelling. And the two of them are so engrossed in their shouting, they don't even hear the buzzing.

It's Ronan who hears it first, really. And he begins to tug at his trainer's pant leg frantically, breathless with distress, and Rose does much the same with Leaf once she realizes what's got the other Pokémon so worked up.

And Blue's screaming. And Leaf — it's almost like she's seven years old again, and it's the very first day of school after her very first summer of not talking to Blue, and he's gotten so mean, putting gum on her seat and getting Amanda to steal her pencils and making her cry, cry, cry.

The tears are streaming down her face when her Pokémon decides she's had enough, and hooks sharp claws into the side of her trainer's leg. Leaf jerks back, yelping slightly at the swift scratch attack, hissing when she sees the blood bubble on the edge of her calf. "Rose, what are you —"

"See, that's exactly what I mean, crybaby. What trainer lets their Pokémon attack them?"

"Char!" Rose snaps very suddenly, a complete one-eighty from her usually demure demeanor. The two humans pause at the outburst, and that's when they hear it — the buzzing.

Buzzing.

It's loud — deafeningly loud in the silence of the forest, and it's almost eerie, eerie enough for Leaf's heart to drop into her stomach. She knows this noise, was warned about this noise — she's read horror stories about the cause of this noise since she'd been old enough to understand what it all meant.

"Beedrill," Blue says, and it's a warning signal, enough of one for both children to pluck up their Pokémon and run along the main pathway. The buzzing is still so very loud, right behind them, too close, too close —

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Leaf thinks, the tear-tracks from earlier cold on her face. God, she'd been so stupid. As soon as she'd seen that weedle, she should've known — they both should've known that weedle inevitably meant kakuna, and kakuna meant beedrill.

Angry, sound-sensitive beedrill.

Leaf gasps when she suddenly feels something shoot past her — it cuts through the air beside her head, and one quick glance to the ground confirms her suspicions: poison sting.

"They're right behind us."

"No kidding?" Blue yells, and presses ahead of her. More poison stings, just barely dodged, and Leaf feels Rose quiver in her arms.

"We're almost out of here," Leaf says breathlessly, but the truth is they'd ditched the main path a while ago, and were caught deep in the labyrinth. She doesn't know up from down anymore, caught in the trees as she is, but the beedrill do — and they're closing in.

"Well don't lie to her," Blue snaps, and she has the intense urge to kick him in the shin for his idiocy. Rose whimpers again, and shifts in Leaf's arms, and she wants to say something to soothe her Pokémon, anything, but then she lets out another hiccupy cry and suddenly the back of Leaf's neck is very, very hot.

The buzzing stops, almost immediately, as soon as Rose's ember is let loose — it's a frantic blast of fire, something from deep within the fire-type's belly, a response to the fear curling through her veins.

It's a few more moments before Leaf has the forethought to skid to a stop, and then a few moments more before she thinks to chance a glance over her shoulder.

The beedrill are gone — the buzzing, gone. There are a few black bodies in the distance, littering the forest floor, and her stomach flops in revulsion once she makes the connection. Rose is whimpering again, her face buried in Leaf's shoulder, her tail curled around her trainer's arm.

Leaf only snaps out of it when Blue's trembling voice reaches her ears: "Hey, Leaf? I think I found the main road again. Pewter City's just up ahead."

She is silent for a few moments longer before she nods. "Yeah — right. I'll be right there."

They make it to the end of the forest in absolute silence. Rose is still trembling in Leaf's arms, and making it to the Pewter City gate is an immense relief.

She expects them to split up immediately — certainly, now that they're out of the forest, there's no real point to staying together — but Blue lingers, and she doesn't say a word about it. Truth is, she's still shaking too — truth is, she wants to go home too.

He won't say it to her directly, but she knows that's what he's thinking.

She rubs Rose's back absently as the fire-type's own trembling begins to subside, as the filtered light from the forest canopy lifts and they are met with the midday sun. Sh e thinks of her Pokémon — of Sparky, of what might have happened to him if something happened to her. She thinks of the Bulbasaur back at the lab, or sweet Ronan, who is as quiet and as fearful as his trainer is.

She thinks of how different things might be, if her little charmander didn't have such a big, big flame.

A/N: I'm sort of regretting making them ten/eleven, but I wanted to keep it as true to the games as possible. It's gonna be a long growing process for these two.