Castle of Shadows

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Part 1: Ideals

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Chapter 10: Bones

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Pinwheel Forest would not be considered the most desirable place for anyone to hide within, especially on a day where the clouds encased the sun and no light could break through the rustling tree leaves at the top of the canopy. This included Willis – though she was normally brave, hiding in the bushes of a forest teeming with all sorts of bugs was not something she ever wanted to do again. This wasn't helped by the extremely heavy dragon skull she now clutched in her arms.

Upon leaving the museum, her team of grunts had long since disbanded after helping her carry the skull for a few yards. This had left her alone, trying to figure out a way to subtly slip through the forest whilst dragging the bones of a – possibly – ancient creature to their team leader at the other end. To do that, however, she had to get past the trouble that lay ahead. Inevitably, the gym leader had chased them into the forest, but no one had expected her to have helpers, ones that none of the Plasma grunts involved in the mission had prepared for in their morning briefing.

So, now Willis sat, dialing a scarily familiar number into her X-Transceiver and waiting impatiently for Ghetsis to pick up.

When he did, he didn't seem all too pleased. In order to be called this early, he probably knew there had been some slipup. Willis gulped as his grumpy-looking face appeared on the screen, grimacing at her with his lips pursed and his eyes squinted. She gulped.

"Sir," she said, the tone she used having been rehearsed many times before.

"Yes, Willis?" Ghetsis asked, and Willis felt her face heat up with the nerves that crept into her body. "How is your mission going? I see you are in Pinwheel Forest."

Willis nodded hastily, struggling to hold up the dragon skull with her free arm and almost falling over in the effort of it all. "Sage Ghetsis, we have retrieved the dragon skull and are making our way to the end of the forest to meet with Sage Gorm. But we have run into some, er, difficulties."

"What kind of difficulties would that include?" Ghetsis said, turning his head to the side and raising an eyebrow.

As if in cue, the ponytail girl who'd run from the gym in a fit of rage when they had been retrieving the dragon skull bolted through the trees. Almost tripping on a root, she sprinted down the path, chasing after a cackling Plasma grunt that clearly, at the speed he was running, was not in possession of the skull. Laughing sheepishly, Willis turned the camera on her X-transceiver towards the ruckus and showed Ghetsis the scene, before turning the device back to her own face and frowning. To her surprise, Ghetsis looked intrigued.

"Sage Ghetsis!" Willis addressed hastily, becoming flustered at the leader's absentmindedness. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, I'm just a little interested at the nature of the girl. She seems extremely angry."

"Well, I would suppose she is," said Willis, frowning once more. "Do you know her?"

"Briefly."

Deciding not to question what the meant, Willis continued with the main idea of the conversation. "So, what do we do?"

Ghetsis thought for a moment, then made direct eye contact with Willis, contact that was much too intimidating for the girl and sent slight shivers down her spine. "Ensure the grunts remain split-up. Is there anyone else following?"

"Yes, Lenora and some flamboyant guy who's apparently from Castelia, although he doesn't seem all that threatening."

"The rest of the team will be a distraction. You are to sneak through the forest, not down the direct path, and meet with Gorm to hand over the dragon skull. In the meantime, I will inform Gorm of what is happening. He may have to meet you within the forest for the turnover of the skull. Understood?"

Willis nodded firmly. "Yes, I understand. Thank you kindly, Sage Ghetsis."

"Do not fail, Willis."

And with that, the X-transceiver went black with a quiet beep, and Willis struggled to her feet and began the long trek through the forest, stumbling around trees with the skull in her arms.

-.-.-

White had never known fury until she'd seen Lenora that afternoon.

As Hawes had stayed inside to make sure no one else would infiltrate the museum, White and Lenora had thundered outside only to be stopped in their tracks by the confused-looking pair of Cheren and Bianca. It was upon seeing the two that White was snapped back to reality, but Lenora still seemed absolutely furious. Her breathing was heavy and her hands were violently twirling an already dreadlocked section of her hair as she rapidly talked with White's two friends.

"We were coming to check out the museum," Cheren explained, after White had, surprisingly calmly, asked what he and Bianca were up to. "But it looks like there's some sort of ruckus going on. What gives?"

Bianca nodded. "We heard yelling, and then all this smoke came out of the door and a bunch of Team Plasma members ran out. They looked like they were carrying something."

Lenora's eyes widened rapidly, her seething anger seeming to tone down a little. "What direction did they go in?"

"That way." Cheren pointed to the west side of the city. "Are you going to go after them?"

"They stole a dragon skull," explained White. "They said something about it having links to an ancient Pokémon even though Hawes explained that they were wrong."

"In which case"- Cheren adjusted his glasses and turned to Bianca –"we'll stick inside there and guard the museum in case anyone else comes in."

Bianca nodded hesitantly. "Y-yes! That sounds like a good plan. That way, you guys can go and search the forest for them."

Lenora showed a small smile. "Thank you!" she said graciously. "We shouldn't be too long. There's no way they're getting away with this, especially since, from what they've said, the dragon skull won't do them any help."

As Cheren and Bianca made their way into the museum, Bianca seeming all the more paranoid and fidgety than Cheren, Lenora gave White a determined look before making her way down the path towards Pinwheel Forest. Before she could walk too far, however, her eyes landed on an oddly-dressed man who was making his way through the city in a much-too-casual manner. As he strode, his surprisingly well-kept clump of curly, dark blond hair swayed behind him. He had a rather amused look on his face, much to the apparent annoyance of Lenora.

"Burgh!" she called, rushing up to the man before White had barely taken her second step. "Have you seen Team Plasma running past you?"

So-called Burgh looked up from his daydream and grinned, waving casually at the flustered Lenora. "Lenora! I knew I would get answers from you. Everything seems a little upturned in the city this afternoon."

Lenora glared at him, regaining her angered state from before. Seeing this, Burgh hesitated for a moment before nodding feverishly.

"Yes, I did," he stammered, before pointing a thumb behind him. "I'm assuming they're the cause of…" He gestured around him, giving Lenora a sheepish smile as his hands finally landed in front of her. "This. What's up?"

"What's up?" Lenora seethed. "Someone just walked away with an exhibit! That's what's up!" Her breathing had become heavy once more, and her fists were clenched almost painfully at her sides.

"Well, uh…" Burgh paused for a moment, staring behind him down the path Team Plasma had apparently taken. "I'm pretty sure they went into the forest, but I didn't see them go much further than that, so they could have disbanded around the city. I could help you all look, if you like?"

"Yes, that would be good." Lenora tapped a foot as she scanned around the city. "I'll stay here then and see if I can find any of those criminals. You two wouldn't mind searching the forest, would you?"

White shook her head. "We can do that." She looked down the path with gritted teeth. "We'd better hurry, though. They'll get away if we don't."

Burgh nodded, and the two began making their way towards Pinwheel Forest.

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"So, uh, who are you, exactly?"

Burgh eyed White questionably, before his face lit up and he laughed amusedly. "Oh, I didn't introduce myself, did I? I'm Burgh, the gym leader of Castelia City." He gave her a cheesy grin. "And you are?"

"White," White answered bluntly. "I'm a trainer who just so happened to be challenging Lenora's gym when all this happened. I've had a few runs with Team Plasma myself. They're really annoying, to say the least."

Burgh frowned. "Well, looks like they're a little more than annoying in this situation. But don't worry, we'll get them, I have no doubt about that. I can ask the bugs if they've seen anything odd."

"Ask the bugs?" That was something White had never expected any sane man to say.

"Well, I can't, but my Pokémon can. I specialize in Bug-types, see, and all bug types tend to have some level of connection with each other. I'll just ask my Leavanny to have a little chat with some of the wild Pokémon in here and see if they've seen anything."

White seemed less than amused, but nodded all the same. "Right."

As the two entered the forest, they found themselves standing at a fork in the road. One led to a clean road to Castelia City that seemed a lot more convenient to the alternative, which was surrounded by forest and probably teeming with all sorts of Pokémon. White shivered at the thought, but before she could ask what they were going to do next, Burgh had apparently already decided long ago.

"You will go that way!" he announced, pointing dramatically towards the forest route. "Search the forest for any Plasma members and try and figure out where the skull may have ended up. I, on the other hand, will go this way." He gestured proudly towards the cleaner route. "It will be quick to get up there. If they haven't gotten away already, I'll block the exit. It would be safe to say they probably took the more discrete route."

Before White could say anything, he turned and walked away, waving behind him. "Have fun!"

-.-.-

And that was how White had found herself face-to-face with a Plasma grunt in the middle of the forest. She'd pretty much been grumpy for the entirety of the half hour trek, and so far this was the first criminal she'd come across. He'd jumped her when she'd been walking down a barely-visible path, although, with his level of agility, he definitely was not in possession of the dragon skull.

"Where is it?" she growled, her irritation growing more and more evident by the second. "I'm honestly sick of Ghetsis and his elves running around and causing shit for everyone."

"As if I would tell you that," scoffed the grunt, sending out a small, brown, crocodile-like Pokémon that's markings made it look like it was some sort of masked bandit. "And you're the one causing trouble, ruining most of our plans so far before we could even complete a single one. You need to mind your own business."

"I don't know what you guys are trying to achieve, but you're definitely some sort of stupid extremists and I don't like it."

Oshawott was now standing in front of her, eyeing down her opponent with a steely glare. However, when the Sandile glared back, she became anxious and stepped back a few steps. White gritted her teeth and decided to begin the battle and get it over with.

"Oshawott, let's do this quick. Water Gun!"

However, the showdown was not nearly as simple as White had previously thought it would be.

Previously, Team Plasma had been easy. Each battle ended up pretty anti-climactic considering her general fury whenever they were around. This time, however, her rage only built as the battle went on.

Sandile were annoying, for one thing. They could dig… That was pretty much it. Whenever White tried to go head-on with Oshawott's attacks, the otter almost always ended up with a face full of dirt as the Sandile dug holes through the ground to avoid the attack. This always followed with a surprise-attack from underneath the ground, sending Oshawott flying through the air.

"Water Gun in the hole, Oshawott!" she'd called. After a good ten minutes of damage being dealt very rarely and lifetime of frustration, she'd finally come up with what seemed like a viable strategy.

The ground rumbled as the water from Oshawott's mouth streamed beneath the ground, and in a few seconds Sandile came shooting up from the other end of one of his holes, laying on his back on top of a geyser-like eruption from the leaf-encased ground. The force of the water through the holes in the ground caused the earth to quiver lightly. Now she just needed to be quick.

"Tackle!"

As Sandile flew through the air on what remained of the stream of water, Oshawott, kicked herself off the ground and crashed into her opponent, shoulder first, sending him flying backwards and smashing into a tree. Groaning, the Sandile slid down to the ground, swirls in his eyes, with a limp body slumped across the pile of leaves he'd since landed on.

"Finally," groaned White. To her surprise, the grunt laughed as he withdrew his Sandile.

"Distraction number one, complete!" he said, pocketing his pokéball with far too much pride considering he'd just lost a battle.

White pursed her lips, before she suddenly became aware of what he'd been doing. Clenching her fists so hard it was painful, she returned Oshawott as quickly as possible before bolting down the fading path into the deeper part of the woods.

"Sly bastards," she mumbled to herself as she ran, completely fuelled on anger. "I hope Burgh's having better luck than I am."

Going deeper into the forest didn't make it any easier to navigate. The canopy of trees above her only grew thicker and sunlight dissolved more and more as she trekked over camouflaged logs and tree roots. It didn't help that she couldn't entirely pay attention to the path ahead of her, either. Whilst trying to figure out where she was going, she also had to keep a sharp eye on where Team Plasma could possibly be.

The forest also happened to be littered with small chasms that were only just too large to jump across, with cliffs too steep to scale. Luckily (and almost too conveniently) every single one of these was fitted with its very own hollowed-out tree trunk, although these didn't seem particularly safe and were slowly rotting away. They were basically just extremely strong bark, but even through their strength, White could feel them crumbling beneath her feet as she made her way across them as cautiously as possible.

After encountering various other Plasma grunts and digging her way through many more clumps of leaves, the long-since dissolved light began to reappear again and the sun could now be seen through different breaks in the roof of the forest. Respectively, White had begun to hear voices, and slowed her walking pace almost to a halt in order to hear what was going on up ahead.

"Gorm, I have arrived with the dragon skull," said one voice; a girl's. She seemed to be extremely exhausted, panting after every other word and supposedly trying to hold back various, heaving coughs.

A faint rustling sounded, then what seemed to be the flick of a robe, and, through a gap in a bush White was now watching the scene through, a very tall man of exquisite clothing – that of which was sickeningly similar to Ghetsis – took the dragon skull from the hands of a young-looking Plasma grunt. He had a much easier time holding it than she, and only slumped over slightly as he examined the skull through his bony hands. The grunt straightened up as she let go of the object, letting out a sigh of relief and cracking her knuckles before her, smiling satisfactorily to herself.

At that moment, the man's pocket vibrated, and he looked down at it curiously before pulling out a device White had never seen before. Flipping it open, the screen lit up and the man jumped a little, clearing his throat.

"Yes, Sage Ghetsis."

White's heart leapt. She could not hear what was coming through the device, although she would have killed to hear at least some of the conversation. She couldn't risk moving forward a few more steps and being caught dead in her tracks. So instead, she watched on, glaring ahead of her, trying to keep her heavy breathing as quiet as possible. Soon, the man closed the device and placed it back in his pocket, before turning solemnly to the grunt ahead of him.

"I'm very sorry for the trouble you went to get this skull to us, Willis," he said, "but I have just been informed that our Lord has confirmed the skull has nothing to do with the legend in question."

Willis grimaced. "Seriously?" It was the least formal way White had ever heard anyone speak of or address any supposedly high-ranking member of Team Plasma. She groaned loudly as the man placed the skull on the ground and began walking away. "We're actually just going to drop it here? After everything we went through to get it?"

The man nodded slowly. "Yes, although Ghetsis applauds you for successfully completing your mission to deliver the dragon skull safely to me."

She shrugged. "Well, I guess that's alright then."

And then the two left, much to White's confusion, without a second thought about what would happen to the dragon skull. Carefully, after the two were entirely out of sight, she advanced through her hiding spot in the bush and approached the skull, eyeing it suspiciously as if something was going to jump out at her. Ghetsis… The man who'd been speaking at the meeting in Accumula Town. Why did his name make her feel so undeniably sick? He was creepy, sure, but White had met her fair share of weird people in her life and none made her feel as bitter as this.

Deciding nothing was going to jump out, she bent over and picked up the skull, staggering as the weight of it surprised her. She'd need Burgh's help for this. Still, she'd have to put up with the weight until she got to the edge of the forest, which could be seen through a clear path in-between the trees. Not much blocked her from the road except a few branches or roots, so she finished her forest journey down the path to see Burgh affronted by Willis and the sage-man as they apparently tried to make their way down the road to Castelia City.

"You and your gang have been causing a lot of reported trouble in the advancement of our King's dream," the man spoke. "I, Gorm of the Seven Sages, will not have any of it." He turned behind him. "One of your cohorts is now in possession of the skull we so desperately tried to claim for ourselves, and you are all lucky we disregarded it as something not needed."

"What do you guys want with the dragon skull, though?" Burgh shifted his weight, a concerned look on his face. "What is this 'legend' you're trying to uncover?"

"It has to do with the legendary dragons," explained Gorm. "Team Plasma has a dream. That dream is to fulfill the wishes of our King."

"King?" questioned Burgh. "You guys are all kinds of nonsense."

Gorm scoffed. "You say that, but we will not be stopped once we uncover the truth behind the legends of Unova."

"Burgh!" Lenora's call came from the other side of the forest, and everyone's heads snapped around to see her sprinting up the path. "Did you get it back?"

"One of your friends has it," said Gorm. "The child. She retrieved it a way back."

White gulped. How did he know that if he hadn't seen her take it?

"Oh, thank goodness," sighed Lenora.

Gorm snorted. "However, I will not allow anyone who disrupts our plans to get away with it easily. You came too close to interfering this time." He directed his words at Burgh, practically disregarding Lenora's presence entirely. "We will ensure we live up to Ghetsis' expectations, and no gym leader nor child will get in the way of that." Then he turned to White who, previously, thought she had gone unnoticed. She flinched in her place, almost dropping the skull, as Gorm's eyes glared at her. "You here that, girl?"

White didn't move, but Gorm didn't seem disgruntled by her lack of response.

"Ghetsis wishes to liberate Pokémon with words alone, but I fear we may need more than that as time progresses." He tapped his long, bony fingers across his robes. "The odds are little against us now. So I say to you, Bug-user Burgh and Normal-user Lenora; know your enemies, know yourself, and you need not fear the result of a thousand battles. We will secure the liberation of Pokémon by taking them by force from anyone who disagrees. That includes gym leaders, so we will settle this someday." He glanced over at White before he bowed to the gym leaders before him. "I cannot wait to see that day."

White shuddered at his final words as he and Willis disappeared from sight, although she didn't acknowledge this as much as she probably should have. As Lenora and Burgh looked around hastily, questioning the whereabouts of the sage between each other, White only stared at the blank space of which Gorm had previously inhabited.

She was stolen from her trance when Lenora and Burgh came rushing up to her, Lenora looking more thankful than White had ever seen anyone look in her entire life. Without speaking at all, she snatched up the skull from White's grateful arms and began to examine the bone for any damage.

"Hmm," she pondered to herself, running a finger along the smooth structure. "Those buffoons are surprisingly good at keeping things in-tact. I was afraid it would be damaged in some way, but…"

"That guy…" said Burgh, over the top of Lenora's rambling. "He spoke like some sort of poet. There's articulate people, then there's that."

Lenora looked up from the skull and pursed her lips, staring off into the denser part of the forest. "They're a speedy bunch."

Burgh nodded. "They said something about heading to Castelia when I overheard them and stopped them going any further. But how he got away so… discretely, I will never understand."

"Are you going to give chase?" asked Lenora.

To her irritation, Burgh shook his head. "No, no need in doing that. I have a feeling they show up when they want to show up, not when we want them to. I think I'll be heading back to my gym, though. If I come across them, I'll be sure to keep in touch."

Before Lenora could say another word, Burgh walked off without even saying goodbye.

The Normal-type leader frowned and shook her head, though she let out a quiet, amused laugh. "Burgh is an interesting leader. But you'd better not underestimate him when it comes to you challenging him. He's a lot tougher than his carefree nature would put out there." She smiled lightly. "Thank you for your help, White. If you want, you can come and challenge the gym again tomorrow. I'd be happy to hold a rematch after I've done some repairs."

-.-.-

Sorry for the abrupt ending. I didn't want to lengthen the chapter unnecessarily though.

I'm trying not to portray Team Plasma as incompetent as they are normally shown, in the games and in fanfiction. But eh, we'll see how that goes.

I actually typed out this chapter in like half a day, which is weird for me considering my terrible updating schedule. I was quite proud of myself for actually sitting down and punching out a chapter before I could ultimately lose motivation like I normally do.

Also, I quit my job to make more time for multiple things, including writing. Unfortunately, the other thing I quit it for is school, so it might not affect my updating in that much of a positive way ahahaha…. Unfortunately I had to give two weeks notice to I'm stuck with the slave labour until the 27th, but eh, I'll survive, I guess. It just means I need to wait until next holidays to get a proper few weeks off.

I actually enjoyed writing this chapter even though I didn't have too many ideas for it. It kinda was just an entire chapter of normal game plot, but I tried to switch up the dialogue a bit.

Also, I have no idea whether Willis will actually be a significantly recurring character. I just kinda wanted to write from a Plasma grunt's perspective for a bit since it seemed like an appropriate start to the chapter.

Thank you to all the reviewers, favourites, and followers, you guys are rad. Stay tuned for the next chapter!