Chapter 12: Facing Facts
I don't remember much else about that night. I remember handing Sora over to Nurse Joy. I vaguely remember trudging up to my room and passing out on the bed, exhausted from the nights events. What I remember clearly is the rapid knocking on my door the next morning.
"Alright, alright, I'm up!" I groaned, getting to my feet and shuffling over to the door. I undid the latch and flung it open, revealing the man in the blue suit from the night before. "What?" I snapped.
He held his hands up defensively. "I don't want any trouble. I just wanted to return your backpack." he explained. He quickly picked the bag up off of the floor next to him and handed it to me. It took me a minute to remember that I had left it behind in my rush to get Sora to the Center. "Thanks." I said hoarsely, grabbing the bag and tossing it back into the room. I stretched my arms and stepped out of the door, closing it behind me. "Where are you going?" the man asked as I stalked down the hallway.
"To go check on Sora." I called over my shoulder. I heard the sound of muffled footsteps behind me and glanced over my shoulder, noticing he had caught up to me.
"My name's Riley by the way." he said, extending a hand. I awkwardly shook it, not even remotely slowing down on my march to the front desk. "I'm Nick." I replied.
He stepped forward, blocking my path suddenly. I stopped and glared up at him, angry that he would halt my progress. "Is there a problem?" I asked, hand itching to grab Mufasa's pokeball.
"Not for me." Riley replied coolly. "You pretty much announced to everyone last night that you're a Nuzlocker."
"Yeah, and?" I was getting more annoyed by this conversation every minute.
"Look, it's not my place to tell you how to raise your pokemon, but they are in danger just by being with you and you need to step up if they are going to survive." Riley growled, moving closer so we were inches away. "Even new trainers keep Antidotes on them at all times, and the way you handled that Galactic boss makes me think you're not new to this. And I pray that your Staravia survives because if she doesn't, that's on you."
I glared at the older man. "Look, I know I fucked up, I get it. But I am tired of everyone jumping on my case, telling me to shape up. I am doing the best I can. I had no idea she had a Zubat with her, let alone that it knew Toxic. I wasn't exactly expecting to attack a building filled with criminals last night. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see Sora." I shoved past him, knocking him back a step as I made my way to the front desk. Nurse Joy saw me coming and quickly moved towards me, a clipboard in her hands.
"She's alive." she said preemptively. I felt my stomach unclench in relief. "She needs to stay in the care ward overnight and she'll be ready to go tomorrow." A strange look passed over the nurses face. "I have some questions though, regarding rumors the other trainers have been saying and that strange mark on your Staravia's left wing."
I sighed, already defeated by the events of today. "Yes, I'm a Nuzlocker. That's the mark on her wing."
The nurse nodded. "I suspected as much. In that case, I'll need you to fill out these forms and afterward I'll print out a new ID for you so the League knows you're undergoing the challenge." her tone had changed from a personal, friendly one to a stony buisiness-like manor. It was clear to me that she didn't approve of the challenge at all, and thought less of me because of it. I sighed again, taking the clipboard and pen from her. "Thanks." I muttered, as I sat down in a nearby chair and began filling out the forms.
A few hours later, I emerged from the Center, Armstrong by my side. I shielded my eyes from the suns glare before looking down at my new trainer ID. It was mostly exactly like my old one, a gold card with my picture and information. Only now, there was a large red bar cutting across the center. I hope this doesn't mean I can't challenge gyms anymore I thought grudgingly, pocketing the card and heading off towards the nearby Meadow.
While filling out the forms I had decided that I might as well spend the day catching new pokemon. I might not ever use them, my team being pretty well balanced at the moment, but I wouldn't mind a new water-type, of which there were plenty around. In a short time, I arrived at Floaroma Meadow, a small clearing in the forest behind the town. It was filled with flowers off all kinds, creating a beautiful panorama of color. I gazed across the field, looking for any sign of movement. My eyes locked onto a small form in the distance, which revealed itself to be a Combee.
"Sweet, I've always wanted a Vespiquen." I muttered to myself. I motioned for Armstrong to go weaken the bug-type. He sped off, running low across the flowers. The disturbance alerted the Combee to his presence, and it fired off a Gust attack at him. Armstrong threw his arms up, taking the super-effective attack full force and not slowing down an inch because of it. He jumped up, snatching the bee out of the air and pinned it to the ground. I rushed over, pokeball already in my hand. However, as I approached, Armstrong jumped off of the Combee, letting it fly away in a daze.
"What the hell man, I wanted to catch that!" I yelled, shoving the pokeball back in my bag.
"Would have been a waste of a pokeball." Armstrong replied. "That Combee was a male. No Vespiquen for you."
I sulked, but had to agree with the gray humanoid. A male Combee was essentially, useless. "Alright, let's go to Route 205 then, see what we can find there."
As it turned out, there wasn't much to find. A large family of Bidoof was splashing in the pond right at the beginning of the route, destroying any chance I had of catching a new pokemon there. "Dammit! You useless bastards!" I shouted in frustration, kicking a rock off the wood bridge. It landed close to the group but they either didn't notice or didn't care about the attack, merely continuing to play in the water. "I hope a Floatzel eats you!" I barked, turning back and setting off towards the factory from yesterday.
Arriving at the factory, I noticed it was up and running again. People were busily running in and out of it, police tape stretched across the front door. Apparently the Jublife authorities had arrived earlier today and were investigating. Now that it was daylight, I could clearly see the sign in front, reading Valley Windworks. I moved towards a patch of tall grass growing near the back of the building.
It didn't take long to find something. A small pink blob caught my eye, and as I focused it was revealed to be a Shellos, sunning itself on a rock. "Dude, there's one. Sucks that it isn't a Buizel but I'll take what I can get." I muttered to Armstrong. He nodded and moved forwards, blatantly crashing through the brush to reach the wild pokemon. His total lack of stealth snapped it out of it's daze and it looked around for the source of the disturbance. Eyes latching onto the Machop moving towards it, the Shellos cried out in alarm and spat out a stream of water.
The Water Gun attack hit home, halting Armstrongs forward movement. As soon as the attack stopped, however, Armstrong shot forward, backhanding the pink pokemon off of it's rock. It bounced across the grass before settling a few feet away from me. Taking the chance and not wanting to risk fainting it, I tossed a pokeball. One, two, three, click. I smiled excitedly at the new catch, picking the ball up. "Welcome to the reserve team Trish." I said proudly as the ball glowed and faded away, moving the pokemon to the Box system.
I arrived back at the Center just in time for dinner. I let everyone out of their pokeballs and laid out some dishes for them to eat in the mess hall. I eventually sat down with my own food and started eating. My meal was sadly, interrupted.
"Hey, you're that Nuzlocker, right?" A voice asked. I glanced up to see the green-haired trainer from the night before, his Sandslash next to him.
I quickly gulped down the food in my mouth. "Yeah, but keep it quiet would you? I don't want to many people knowing about that."
"Sure, sure." he said, sitting across from me. "Y'know, I was thinking of taking the challenge myself not to long ago." I nodded, focusing my attention on my food. "Couldn't figure out how to make it work though." He stared at me pointedly.
I sighed. "Look man, I'm not going to tell you how to take the challenge. Even if I knew how to do it yourself, I wouldn't tell you. You saw what happened last night, Sora almost died on me. You shouldn't be so eager to let your pokemon die."
"You sayin' my pokemon are weak?" he suddenly growled, glaring down at me. The atmosphere quickly turned sour and the Sandslash next to him flexed it's spins menacingly. Immediately, Armstrong jumped up and walked up to the ground-type, cracking his knuckles. Glancing at my other pokemon, I noticed Lin and Rebecca were ignoring the confrontation while Franklin and Mufasa looked ready to intervene.
"No, I'm not." I replied, hoping to defuse the situation. "I'm saying you shouldn't risk it. What if you run into the situation I did? What if someone stronger than you comes around, looking for a battle? I'm saying that this challenge isn't something you should rush into blindly. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm done here." I scooped up my plate and left the table, whistling for my pokemon to do the same.
The next day, I woke up early, hoping to make up for lost time. I quickly gathered my things and practically jumped down the stairs to the main floor. Waiting for me at the front desk was Nurse Joy, Sora standing next to her. "She's got a clean bill of health." the nurse said cheerfully. "Now, be careful out there." I nodded and beckoned to Sora to follow me outside, deciding to give her some exercise after being out of the game.
As we walked down to Route 205 I glanced up at her, hovering a few feet above my head. "So how're you feeling?" I called.
"Great." she answered, performing a quick barrel roll to prove it. "I'm glad to be out here in the open air again! But how about you?" she asked suddenly.
"What do you mean?" I replied, curious.
"Well, you almost lost me back there and you seemed really distressed." she explained. "And I heard you yelling at the other trainers."
I sighed. "Yeah, I was pretty frustrated. I didn't want to loose someone else, not after Brittany."
Sora descended a bit, now hovering at eye level next to me. "Nick, you have to face the fact that we won't all survive this." I gawked at the bird pokemon, stopping in my tracks. She flapped her wings and landed in front of me. "I'm serious. I almost died two nights ago. Armstrong was almost killed by Roark's Cranidos. Eventually our luck is going to run out. And when that happens, I need to know that you aren't going to lash out at everyone, or worse, shut down."
I stood there in silence for a long time, going through everything she had said. Slowly, I spoke up. "I get it. I know you all are worried about me, but I don't want any of you to die, and I'm going to try my best to make sure that you don't. But you're right. I can't keep going thinking that everyone will make it through this. It's unrealistic. And when that happens, I'll step up. But until then, I'd rather not dwell on the subject."
Sora nodded. "That's all I wanted to hear." she said, taking off back into the sky again.
"Since when did you become the voice of reason?" I asked half-jokingly as we started moving again.
She chuckled. "Someone had to while you were busy acting the fool."
The path through Route 205 wasn't very treacherous in and of itself, but the sheer number of trainers stationed along it made the trek more dangerous. Sora was in top form, showing no signs of slowing down from the poisoning ordeal. When we started encountering more and more rock-type pokemon, I switched her out with Franklin, realizing I hadn't spent much time with the little turtle recently. We eventually battled our way to the edge of Eterna Forest. Franklin stared up in awe of the tall pines.
"They're so big!" he gasped, craning his neck as high as he could in an effort to see the top of the trees. "I never thought trees could grow that big!"
"Wait till you evolve into a Torterra." I chuckled. "You'll have a tree like that growing out of your shell."
"Wow!" Franklin said, excited at the prospect of becoming a mobile tree. I couldn't help but fell giddy at how everything seemed so interesting to him. We marched through the forest, with me describing all the different plants as best I could to the curious turtle. As the day wore on, we grew silent simply enjoying the quiet of the forest.
"Hello?" a voice called out, shattering the peacefulness of the surrounding woods. "Is anyone there?" The voice was female, and not that far off. Franklin and I jogged towards it, moving quickly through the brush. Rounding a thick clump of trees, we found the source of the voice. A woman in her 30s was standing in the thicket. She wore a green dress, under which was a shirt colored a lighter green. Even her hair was green, pulled into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder. In contrast to the rest of her appearance, she seemed to be wearing thick, leather hiking boots. She turned towards us as we approached.
"Oh thank goodness, I thought I was lost forever!" she gasped, trotting over to us. "My name's Cheryl. I was hiking though the woods here and got lost. I didn't expect this place to be so big."
I introduced myself and Franklin. "We're on our way to Eterna if you want to come along." I offered.
"Well, I don't want to be a burden." she said, glancing down at the ground. "Oh! I know!" she said suddenly. She reached into a pocket on her dress and withdrew a pokeball. "Come out Chansey!" she called.
The large pink pokemon appeared in a burst of red light. It held the large egg in it's pocket, eyes darting around the forest. It squeaked at Cheryl and pointed at the two of us.
"It's okay Chansey, we're not battling." Cheryl said before turning to me. "Chansey can heal your pokemon for you while we travel. That way, we help each other out."
"Sounds great to me!" I said, immediately feeling better about the trek through the forest. Now I don't have to worry about anyone getting poisoned! Awesome! "Let's get going then. I want to get through the forest before night." I said, working my way back to the path, Franklin and our new companions following.