I had no idea how long I was out for. It was a horrible, dreamless dark that lasted an eternity. Not like being knocked out. Like being drugged.

I vaguely remember when I hit the ground, or from how high it was, but I do remember what tore me out of the webby cocoon I had been swaddled in. The Grovyle. He was momentarily towering over me as his one arm pulled me to my feet. I had to steady myself against him for a moment, still woozy and very much numb from whatever had put me under.

There was a beat before I realized what I was leaning against. This was definitely not the Grovyle. I pushed myself away for a moment so I could get a blurry view of my new savior. A surprisingly calm, reptilian face looked back down at me, the healed stub of an arm giving me an odd sort-of tap. I think it was meant to be reassuring. Without hesitation, he picked me up and placed me on his back. I slid limply down in to his brushy tail, which curled up slightly to hold me firm as he went about his business. Whatever that was. I found out a few moments later when a webby bundle was tossed over the creature's shoulder and landed in my lap. My hands took their sweet time numbly fumbling with the thread until I finally unraveled the package. There was a crumpled, powdery white sheet wrapped around a large, purple thorax. For a moment I was moving like an automaton, not realizing what I was doing until a pair of antennae sprung free from the bindings. There was something strange about those large, multifaceted red eyes…

No.

No, no, no.

It was sobering. It was sickening. The corpse of the Butterfree was heavy in my arms. It was too much. If my legs would have worked, I would have thrown myself out in to the canyon. As it was, I barely managed to catch myself as my shock uprooted me from the large grass Pokémon's back. I landed on my elbows hard, cradling the half-cocooned body. This wasn't happening. It couldn't possibly be happening. It was then, however, that I began to remember what had happened. We had been attacked shortly after the tidal wave, dozens of yellow bugs descended upon us and I must have been electrocuted and bound up. But I don't remember the pain of electrocution…

I could piece together what followed that: the Grovyle must have fought off a hell of a lot of the bugs. I could see gashes in the webbing where he must have sliced away, scorch marks from errant blasts of electricity, and a lone ultra ball sitting in the webby wreckage. I thought the Grovyle evolved. I knew that I must have caught something, otherwise the ultra ball would have broken. And I was fairly certain that Slink was… Slink was…

The memory hit me very suddenly: great billows of power. A flash of light. The sudden flooding of my system with the sedative scales of the Butterfree's wings. My hand found the Pokéball on the bandolier around my midriff, and a sudden wave of relief washed over me. In a moment, my partner was hovering in front of me. Disoriented, still a little powdery, and slightly disturbed by the corpse of the other Butterfree next to me, but otherwise fine. "If you knew," I growled through a smile, "how much you had me worried..."

We stayed in the cave for a while. I didn't know what else to do, really. Occasionally I would peer out at the wreckage that had been caused by the torrential surf, trying to spot anything that might be useful in the slightest. The multiple beached fish were being picked clean by large, bony bird Pokemon the likes of which I had never seen. Some sort of Unovan horror, I was sure. Removing the bag from my back, I discovered that I had grabbed the Medicine Bag, which would have been nice if we had sustained any serious injuries. I pulled out and ate the MRE that was inside.

It was three days before anything truly exciting happened. A freak thunderstorm whipped through on day two, the canon fired twice through the deafening howls against the lip of the cavern. On the third day, I emptied out the last pack of dried food as the much larger lizard picked clean the last spider that we had deemed "safe to eat." And, until then, it did not occur to me that I had thrown an Ultra Ball during the fray. And I was not quite sure of the contents.

"Did I ever open this?" I held up the Ultra Ball for Slink and the grass Pokémon to examine. After a moment, they both shook their heads. Strange. I pointed the ball away from me to see what I had caught. A familiar flash of light illuminated the cave, condensing in to the smallest speck of a Pokémon I had ever seen in my life. It looked like a furry, yellow little tick. Large blue eyes looked up at me fearfully, and I could tell that it was about to bolt.

"Oh, little guy-" I was interrupted by an indignant squeaking from the bug as I extended a hand.

"Jol! Joolll!" It snapped me with a tiny blue bolt, not much more than a static shock. But definitely enough to make me yelp after the days of boredom spent curled up in slightly damn webbing.

"Ow, shit, fine. Are you a girl, then?" I rubbed my numbed fingers as the little bug bobbed in agreement. "Alright, girlie, welcome aboard Team Wildcard. You in?" I re-extended my hand again. There was a tentative moment where she didn't quite know what to do, switching between readying herself to flee and readying herself to climb up my arm. Eventually, however, she scuttled up and settled on my chest like a brooch.

"Good choice," I muttered as I gave her a gentle scratch. Slink settled himself on my bag as I turned towards the entrance of the cave, and the green lizard limped ahead of me on all threes. We both peered out again, as we had taken to doing at least once every fifteen minutes or so. We lazily scanned the riverbed, the trees, the weird birds, the trio of competitors, the far side of the-

I froze up. I knew that trio. They were all of the Kanto Tributes. I immediately dove behind the edge of the cave, poking my head out just enough to keep tabs on them. Three trainers, two boys and a girl, and two Pokémon. One of the boys was very lanky and had a oddly familiar Squirtle on his shoulder, while the other was built like a brick house with a Pokéball on his bandolier. The third one, the girl, was dressed to the nines in sharp, shining objects. They were all cooperating, as the Careers tended to do, but something was wrong. They were yelling at each other, obviously not paying attention to their surroundings, each taking turns teaming up with another to tear in to a third.

I didn't know what I was doing until I was maybe halfway down the cliff. Miraculously, I had gone unseen as I rappelled down the side of the canyon on a thick stream of stored-up String Shot. We hit the tree line on the opposite shore and I pulled out the hatchet from around my belt. I was going to kill them. I didn't know when exactly I had decided it, somewhere between ordering Slink to set up a loose circle of tripwire string shots and ordering the lizard up a tree. We approached from three angles, pinching them against the three of us and the wall. The hardest part was getting us across what remained of the river. For a full thirty seconds, I was completely exposed as Slink psychically made a downstream disturbance. They were all too angry at each other to be effectively watching. I couldn't believe it. We were so close.

I should elaborate a little more. They had made camp under a rocky outcropping, which was completely surrounded by leaning trees and debris. The way that some trees had fallen had created a pocket in which they were completely protected from the elements. However, they had no easy way of escape save for retreating up the cliff, which I doubt they could do. I came from upstream of them, practically walking through debris and very well-hidden, with the sound of the river covering my footsteps. As I got closer, I scooped up a handful of mud and covered any exposed skin up to help myself hide. The larger lizard was coming from downstream, where the trees had been relatively sheltered from harm and he was able to maneuver through them quite easily. Which left Slink fluttering innocuously towards the river, pretending to feed on obviously dead flowers in bushes. It was somewhat sadly accurate, really. Other Pokémon of all sorts were trying to feed on the plants, bug-types mostly, and Sink fit right in.

We waited just on the edge of their camp for a few minutes. I watched my lizard companion stick out his large tail like a branch, but otherwise he didn't move. Slink fluttered harmlessly. I was motionless. The campsite, however, was obviously uneasy.

"Something isn't right, guys," the girl spoke, looking around. I closed my eyes before she could see them, but otherwise did not move.

"Yeah, we're in a fucking murder competition, darling," one of them replied smarmily, "and this fucking canyon is the only place we haven't looked for the last two Johto tributes." They were so close. I knew I could kill one of them before they all noticed. Suddenly, there was a loud snap from the opposite side of their small campground. I watched a branch drop to the ground from a green claw. He had done that on purpose.

"What the hell was that?" The lanky boy with the Squirtle must have jumped half a foot in the air before pulling a sword from its sheath. The girl and other boy got up to investigate it, too. I was moving before they were completely converged on the area almost exactly where the grass Pokémon was. The hatchet was up. My feet pounded against the sand, making it incredibly hard to run very quickly, but I was moving. The girl turned around first and let out a shocked scream. My arm whipped around to silence her, but caught something else. The large man, who I hadn't even see, caught the hatchet with the side of his head and immediately hit the ground in a twitching heap.

Canon fire. I had done it.

I pulled out my knife as the girl continued to scream. She was next. She would have to die next. A green blur pounced from the trees and sliced the lankier boy across the midriff from my peripheral as I bore down on the girl. She pulled a handful of throwing knives and began to expertly throw them at me. One sliced open my left arm, and the second was deflected by a blast of psychic energy from Slink. Before I could get any closer, a long blue body wrapped itself around my midriff, pulling me to the ground. I whipped around and buried the knife in to the scaly flesh. There was an immediate contraction in response, but I began to hack my way out of a Dragonair's grasp. I had no clue where it had came from, but it was dead within moments. A mighty dragon-type. Dead. I threw the coils off of me and turned to see where it had came from, and saw the lanky kid on the ground.

"I f-fucking hate you," he spluttered. He was in horrible shape, an open Pokéball in his hand and his guts in his lap. Behind him, a small turtle was having its shell separated from its body by the vicious green killer I had under my control. "You fucking m-monster." He weakly tossed his sword at me, and it missed. He was no longer a threat, and I bolted off after the girl, the yellow bug bobbing on my chest. That was when I had a marvelous idea.

She gave a shriek somewhere in front of me. Perfect. Slink's strings must have tripped her up. I came on to her just as she was struggling to her feet and went with my plan. "Thunderwave," I shouted as I pulled the bug from my chest and hurled it at the struggling Tribute. The bug dug in its fangs and she was instantly paralyzed, flopping over on the floor in gross convulsions as she was riddled with electricity. So simple. So brutal. I yanked her head back by her air, brought about the knife, and rested it against her throat.

What the fuck had just happened?

There was a moment of perfect clarity in the middle of that horrible competition. A moment where I realized what I had just done. First, I had crept up on a bunch of unassuming trainers and launched a surprise murder spree, which in itself was a horrible thing. But how I had done it. It was instinctual. The hatchet had come around as if I had been swinging them all my life. I had planted it firmly in to someone's brain, snuffed out their life without a second thought. Secondly, that wasn't even enough for me. I was frustrated that I hadn't killed the girl first. The axe wasn't meant for him. It was meant for her.

"Please," she struggled, drool running down her lips from the continued paralysis, "just end it. Please Arceus… Just end it." She sobbed grossly, pinned down by my weight, completely helpless, "just end it. You killed him. Kill me. I want to die. Please kill me." She kept repeating it, kept sobbing, but never struggled. She didn't once struggle. I just sat there for a few moments. I couldn't let her live. She would murder me the second I turned my back. But… I did want to kill her. She needed to die. It was her or me, right? She had to die, or I might as well kill myself. Yes. She had to die. And I wanted to kill her.

"Please, please, please. Just end it. Just end it. Just e-"

Somewhere in the distance, a canon shot echoed through the canyon.

I pulled the blade across her throat in one swift movement. Her blood sprang forth almost as if it longed to escape her body. She gasped like a fish for a few seconds before she fell completely limp.

When the canon fired again, I didn't know whether I was feeling shame or pride.