So I was thinking over this chapter and what goes on in it. It isn't going to be as long as the previous, much more in line with the first 5 of these little chapters. Mostly because the real bulk of what goes on in this chapter is located in Lilith's backstory, which is not covered in this chapter. We'll show where and why she is the way she is later. For now, however, enjoy.
I will, however, give a warning here. Some gore in this chapter. To prevent this story from getting an M rating, as well as not wanting to inflict nightmares on anyone, including myself, I have avoided putting too much detail to the descriptions, but there is a pretty gross moment in this chapter.
Location – Hoenn, six badges.
Age 13.
Route 120.
"What is the plan?" Was the question of the day.
The most recent Gym Battle had been fought. And failed. Tate and Liza of Mossdeep City's gym had proven to be a challenge to unique for Felix and his pokémon to prevail over their first go around. Besides giving Felix flashbacks to the last Psychic Gym he failed at, he and his pokémon had stepped back to do some training.
"Double battles," Felix muttered under his breath. "How do you keep track of everything? Especially when you're fighting two people at once. Psychic twins, they don't even need to say anything and they and their pokémon know what's going on."
The young twins had proven age means little to a Gym Leader when they had unparalleled teamwork on their side. Felix wasn't able to defeat their claydol and xatu, let alone progress to what they still had to use. Tristan and Athreos, Malissa and Joey. All four of them fell before even one of the Gym Leader's pokémon went down.
They hadn't suffered a loss like that in a while. Felix at least, his Hoenn Team had never suffered quite an embarrassing defeat like that up to that point. Only Zephyr and Isolde were spared from the shame gripping the other four.
Felix had no plans to bring any of his older pokémon to challenge the gym yet. It'd take quite a severe situation for him to break his silent promise to his pokémon; the promise to give the newcomers their time in the spotlight and only use pokémon he caught in the region he was in for Gym Battles. Contests were another story, but the Gym Battles were reserved for the new pokémon, to use his older pokémon whenever he pleased would rob the newer ones of many glorious battles.
So for now, they were committed to training.
Zephyr joined in on the practise as well. He wasn't a part of the Gym Battle, but he wasn't going to let himself be downgraded from anything below awesome.
Even Isolde was considering joining in...
"Tristan?" Isolde asked, stepping up to the marshtomp.
"Yes?" he answered, pausing from the high-pressured water he was spitting at a tree. It was almost entirely stripped of its leaves at that point anyway.
Isolde fidgeted slightly, tugging at the skirt-like ruffles on her hip, she wasn't sure about this. "I was thinking, perhaps, I could help you."
"Help me?" Tristan turned his full attention to Isolde. "What do you mean?"
"The Gym Battle," Isolde said. "Felix has said that it is Psychic dominated. Claydol and xatu, both are Psychic types. I am a Psychic type. You could, I think, attack me."
"What!?" Tristan gasped, horrified at the thought of attacking Isolde. "I don't want to hurt you."
"No, no!" Isolde said panicked. "I don't mean just attack me. I mean, I'm a Psychic, maybe if you trained with me you might learn how to fight one. Not that you can't already, I was just thinking..."
"But." Tristan frowned. "You don't like to battle. Not even in the contests."
"Yeah well..." Isolde glanced away, trying to say it in words that would convince him. "That just means I'm weak and my attacks won't do much anyway, so you won't get tired. Oh, but it would still help I'm sure! I'm not that weak, I could probably knock you out if I wanted... oh, no I didn't mean that. I... argh." Isolde stopped, bent her head, caught her breath, and tried again. "Tristan. As a Psychic pokémon I believe I could offer some valuable insight in how to combat one, I can control my Power very well and such a contest of wills would not likely harm either one of us. Would you like to train with me?"
Tristan stared at her in silence, leaving Isolde feeling exposed. A feeling she much preferred to avoid. Tristan had saved her, however, so she felt the need to be brace for this.
"Are you sure?" Tristan said, after some time.
"Yes." Isolde nodded as determinedly as she could.
"Then that would be brilliant!" Tristan smiled, allowing Isolde to relax and beam back at him. "I'll go grab the others, this could be just what we need!" Before Isolde could interject, make it clear this was an offer for just him, Tristan was off.
He wasn't exactly fast. Isolde could easily catch him and explain what she really meant.
"Old habits die hard," Isolde thought to herself, grimacing on the inside. "Can't bring myself to tell anyone what I really mean. Of course."
Shaking her head, Isolde decided to go after Tristan. Before she could walk more than three steps, something hit her mind. A rush of agony, fear, terror, pain, death, death, death, death death death death death-
The Ghost pokémon had gathered to discuss the Psychic menace.
"Yeah, let's drag her through the four cycles of hell!" Malissa cheered.
"I was more thinking about the Gym Psychic's," Athreos muttered. "You are frightening sometimes. What is the issue between you and Isolde?"
"I was talking about the girl twin," Malissa replied, eyes visibly rolling through the diamonds covering them. "Thinking all those fancy words to the other twin. Psychic's, psh." She waved a hand dismissively.
"...Sure," Athreos acquiesced her. "Still. Both of us were unable to make much of a dent. YOU are a Dark one as well, and still the battle was an utter failure."
"Try not to use the words 'utter failure' with me as the topic, lest you want to experience that darkness as well." Malissa showed twenty-too-many teeth with that.
Athreos was unimpressed. "It sure worked on the Psychics. Oh wait, no it didn't! You're 'darkness' is barely a dim fog."
"Oh YOU WANNA GO BRO!?" Malissa went to leap at the duskull, but Athreos waved her down.
"Woah, woah, woah wait! Don't you see? They're doing it right now, getting into our heads, it's the psychic shenanigans. Don't give into them."
Malissa did pause, think it over, and nodded. "You're right. Even though you are full of complete crap, I'll go along with it. Because that's how we are going to beat them, fill them with you."
Athreos cocked his head, affronted. "Fill them with me? Moving aside the euphemism, we really do need to-"
Both Ghost's bent over from a sudden rush of something that hit them out of nowhere. Malissa's diamond eye clinked as she hit a stone, having fallen to the ground. Athreos lost the ability to float, collapsed into the ground and phased halfway into the earth.
Neither could speak. But they could feel.
Pain. Terror. Pain. Agony. Why? Why? Why? Death. death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death death-
Joey whooped as he flew high above the trees. The castform couldn't move too quickly, but he enjoyed the sensation of the wind blowing against him nonetheless. Zephyr quirked a cocky smirk on his beak as he saw the expression of bliss on Joey's face. The pair had decided to go about on their own. With Tristan being approached by Isolde and the pair of Ghost's tucked away in some sinister corner, Zephyr offered the idea of flying about for a while. Joey had accepted gleefully.
"How fast do you think I can go?" Zephyr asked.
"A million!" Joey immediately replied.
"Yeah," the swellow scoffed. "Maybe on a lazy day. Watch this!" Zephyr swooped down into a rapid dive, building up a massive boost of speed. He quickly turned, clipping through the top of a taller tree and slicing through the wood with his wing.
"Ooh," Joey gasped as he watched the top fall to the ground. "That was awesome!" he cheered and did a few spins, floating as quickly to Zephyr as he could, he circled the proud swellow. "Teach me! Teach me!"
"Sorry little buddy." Zephyr shook his head. "You're kinda lacking a few... what is that?"
Joey frowned, slowly moving to a stop and floating in place. "Yeah... what IS that?"
"Can you really hear, or are you just going with what I'm saying?"
"No, I can really hear that. Is that... yelling?"
"Sounds like screaming to me. My ears are extremely well developed, you see when I was in my egg-"
While Zephyr went off on some grandoise tangent, Joey had begun floating downwards, following the path the top of the tree had fallen and closer to the disturbance he could detect. Now that he was within the trees he could make out more sounds, bangs and cries, the clear sounds of a battle. Common enough he would normally pay it no mind, except there was something off with the sounds.
There were too many of them. They were too high, to pleading. Joey was an artificial pokémon, never living outside of human ownership, but even he could tell that those sounds were not normal in the wilds.
"Wait up kid!" Zephyr came flying down a little fast. "Don't just float off like that. You have any idea what Malissa would do to me if you got hurt?"
"I'm not a kid," Joey mumbled, distracted. Zephyr had gone to admonish him further, but his greater ears, and instincts, had picked up on what Joey was hearing as well.
"What IS that?" the swellow asked, not expecting an answer.
The swellow and castform shared a look and nodded, moving onwards to find the source of the disturbance.
It didn't take long. And the two would wish in their lowest moments to have never stumbled across it.
To call it a bloodbath would somehow be not enough to describe the carnage they found. In a clearing lined with trees, but wide enough for a free-for-all to be had, was the sight of a massacre.
Who was massacring who was not clear upon a first glance, and neither Zephyr or Joey could stand to take a second look. What they had seen was enough to turn them around and send them silently screaming for the skies.
Once they were above the trees again, Joey found his mouth was still functional, even after throwing up. "W-w-wha?" He still couldn't manage much though.
"Get Felix," Zephyr said, managing to think clearly by pretending that only the others existed. "And Tristan and Athreos, and Malissa and Joey." Saying names was helping him not think about it. "And everything. Get legends. Get monsters. Just get someone!"
"Getting," Joey spluttered out before zooming forward. "Going!"
He repeated the two words, leaving Zephyr behind to feebly flap his wings to remain in the air, moving as quickly as possible to find someone to make it all better. Tears sprung up in his eyes but Joey didn't notice, manically repeating two words to himself.
A third couldn't help but resonate through his mind.
Death.
Death death death death-
Felix was having an odd day. Wandering from pokémon to pokémon, helping out where he could. It was times like this, in intensive training mode, he felt the most out of place as a trainer. In competition the glory and prestige went mostly to the trainer, even though the pokémon did effectively all the work. What did a trainer do? Train them. Only by harnessing their own powers, it wasn't like Felix had anything special he could specifically teach them.
He disliked thinking this way. But with Keira being gone for months at this point, it was harder not to be tough on himself. It was difficult, just trying to figure out what to do on days like these.
The answer to the question he never asked came barrelling in from the skies with speed that would make Zephyr blush. Joey was giving a high pitched keening sound as he flew blindly, smacking face to face into Felix and knocking the human down.
Felix couldn't so much as exclaim his outrage at the tackle before Joey burst into furious tears. He tried to speak words, but all that he could manage was ineligible blubbering.
The sounds of the castform's hysterics quickly attracted the attention of the others, Malissa appearing first, still hunched over, with murder glinting from the diamonds shielding her eyes, Athreos appearing soon after, picking himself up from the ground. Then Tristan rushing in from the side, a near unconscious Isolde in his arms.
"Joey!" Felix yelled, trying to get through to him, or at least calm him down. Yelling wasn't very good at calming others, however, and Joey continued to cry. Malissa shot him a filthy look and grabbed the castform, holding him steady and mumbling a stream of words to low for any of the others to hear. Whatever she was saying was enough to at least allow Joey to realise he was safe among the others.
He had made it.
Suddenly snapping to attention, Joey remembered Zephyr's words. "FELIX!" he shrieked. "TRISTAN! ATHREOS! MALISSA! JOEY! ZEPHYR! WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM!"
"S-save who?" Isolde was the only one able to verbalise words after Joey's volume.
"ALL OF THEM!" Joey cried, tearing himself out of Malissa's hold and floating back upwards. "THEY'RE DYING! WE HAVE TO GO NOW!"
Zooming forward, he didn't give anyone a chance to ask for an explanation, instead they could only follow. With speed truly of the essence, Felix returned everyone with him, barring Joey, to their pokéball's. He had the longest legs and could move the fastest, and still barely able to keep up with the normally slow Joey.
It was difficult to keep an eye on the castform when he had to move into the trees, the branches cutting off his vision of Joey. Thankfully, the castform was still making sounds, painful cries that made Felix's heart lurch, and he was able to follow.
Soon enough the time had come. Zephyr had joined them, fluttering pitifully behind Felix as Joey shivered in front of him, floating slower and slower with each passing moment. He quietly returned Zephyr and gently grabbed Joey in both hands. "Hey?" Felix tried to be as soothing as possible. "You don't have to go any further."
"Yes I do," Joey sniffled, eyes bloodshot. "That's what the good guys do. That's what Zephyr would do. What heroes would do. We have to save them." Joey's voice broke and Felix felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. Whatever happened was clearly too much for Joey.
"It's that way right?" He pointed the direction Joey was heading.
"Y-yeah."
Felix held up Joey's pokéball and returned the castform before he could dodge, shrinking the ball so Joey didn't try and force his way out. Hoping the rest would help, Felix pushed forward himself. He feared he wasn't heading in the right direction, Joey and Zephyr had been mumbling about sounds of battle and death, but there was nothing but silence.
It was eerie. There was always sound in the woods. The song of the pokémon, one he could appreciate on two levels. Felix still heard what normal humans hear when a pokémon speaks, the words simply translated in his head. It happened to automatically nowadays he scarcely ever notices the actual sounds, but the song of the woods was a constant exception.
There was nothing now. Not even the sound of the wind passing through trees, as if even the earth had fallen silent.
Exceptionally nervous about what he was going to find, Felix pressed forward. He wasn't doubting he was on the right path now, he could smell it.
Felix had been in an unfortunately large amount of near-death experiences in his three years as a Pokémon Trainer. Not as many as at least three certain, human, friends of his, but more than he was happy with. But he had gone through enough to know the smell of fear.
And blood. That too. But mostly fear.
With one hand firmly on a pokéball, and memories of BRVR flashing through his head, Felix approached the thinning of trees. Zephyr had mumbled something about a clearing, this was it.
Girding himself, Felix stepped into the scene from a nightmare.
He was stunned silent and frozen for nearly ten seconds, eyes barely able to transmit what they were seeing to his brain. Then he bent over and vomited. It was carnage. Felix would never find words to describe the scene he stepped upon. From nightmares Joey and Zephyr would tell him of later, Felix would gather that they stumbled upon the moment as it was happening, which was its own sense of true horror, but only he saw the aftermath. When everything was quiet and everything stopped moving.
Staggering back, Felix bumped into a tree. A million thoughts raced through his head but he was unable to grip onto any of them, any single idea would be too much and he simply couldn't hide from what he was seeing. A distant part of him understood why Joey had had a meltdown and why Zephyr seemed shocked into near-lifelessness, but they couldn't have seen this, this had to be worse.
Barely able to blink, Felix could nearly count the number of corpses. Nearly, as many of them were in too many pieces to count reliably, plus he really didn't want to. The heavy stench of blood saturated the place nearly as heavily as the blood actually saturated. His shoes were already slick and he was barely even on the outskirts of the carnage.
He couldn't scream, even if that was all he could hear in his ears. Nothing was moving. Everything was dead.
A twitch.
Felix's hyper-awareness in that moment alerted him to any movements. So on edge, waiting for whatever had done this to come for him next. Part of his mind screamed BRVR, but the rest of him was convinced that this was too much even for him. The demented pikachu could never had taken on this many opponents, and there was the telltale lack of the smell of ozone. No electricity.
So when something twitched, his entire attention was solely on it. The rest of the world blissfully fell away and he could only see the shock of red fur. Formally white, but there was far to much blood to realise it was originally white.
Bites, scratches, torn everything littered the creatures body, but somehow it was still alive. Something else flashed into the forefront of Felix's mind, Joey and Zephyr's voices blending together as they managed to say that something was being attacked. It was a pack. A pack of mightyena attacking an absol, except the absol was putting up one hell of a fight.
Felix's eyes widened. The absol was still alive!
Immediately all rational sense of repulsion faded away with only the life of a pokémon remaining in the balance. He carefully avoided the many sharp points the absol had, all caked in the blood of the creatures that had attacked it as a group, and tried to find words to say.
It weakly moved its head, blood and tear streaked face lifting to glare defiantly into his own. In the face of such determination, Felix could only manage one thing. "I'm going to help."
The absol glared further, but what little energy it had managed to gather left it and its head weakly thumped against the ground. Not remembering any of his pokémon, Felix gripped the absol around the middle, avoiding the deeper wounds, and pulled it forwards, dragging it out of the dog-pile of bodies that it was half-buried in.
The absol groaned, hissed, and tried to swipe at him, but there was nothing left to its fight and it could barely even wiggle in his grip. Sighing and grunting it continued to mutter things at him, things that he couldn't even understand.
Felix wouldn't have heard anything regardless, completely focused in getting the absol clear. Once he had it out of the clearing, Felix laid it on its side and pulled open his bag, smearing blood over everything.
He grabbed all the potions he had and got to work, spraying them over the worst of the wounds, apologising for the sharp gasps of pain the absol made whenever he did so and ignoring the mutterings, which were beginning to form actual words.
"Just let me die."
He ignored it.
Once every potion was exhausted and the absol was drenched in something other than blood, he pulled out his pokéNav, smeared blood over that as well, and got the location of the nearest Pokémon Centre.
Absol weren't the heaviest of all pokémon, and this was one on the scrawny side. It had some muscle, but no fat. Part of him wondered where the energy to do anything came from, but most thought was on how he was getting to the Pokémon Centre.
Summoning strength he didn't have, Felix picked the absol up, pressed it against his body, ignored the outraged sounds it made, and ran for it. He left the objects he had scattered around, weight he couldn't afford to hold, and simply sprinted with all the strength he had.
Felix wasn't sure for how long he ran, or how many times the absol tried to make him drop it, but eventually he made it.
"HelloooooOOOO! WHAT IS THIS?" the Nurse Joy at the desk shouted. "CHANSEY GET THE CRASH CART!"
The quiet centre exploded into activity as chansey came rushing in with a cart and a bed, letting Felix finally put the absol down, and rushed off into the operating theatre. Felix staggered to a chair, winced as his arms decided to reveal to him that they were in agony, and groaned in relief as the hard back of the chair accepted him like ambrosia.
The two other trainers in the lobby were staring open-mouthed at him in horror, reminding Felix he was covered in blood. He couldn't find the effort to care about that, however, falling asleep on the chair.
Felix was awoken by a chansey throttling him.
The Nurse Joy watched for a good ten seconds, allowing the healer to smack Felix to near tears before pulling it back. She then turned upon him and unleashed a torrent of words so severe it did reduce him to tears.
Once the onslaught was over, Nurse Joy demanded his trainer license to tear to pieces and revoke it world wide. This was enough to bring Felix back to the present.
"This isn't my absol," he yelled, freezing all the healers. "My pokémon stumbled upon it in the woods, led me to a scene of bloody carnage and I dragged it out of a mound of bodies, used all my potions, then carried it all the way here. I had nothing to do with its injuries, or what happened to all those mightyena."
Just saying the word 'mightyena' nearly made him throw up again.
Nurse Joy eyed him with immense suspicion and distrust and demanded his pokédex for proof. When Felix realised he had left everything but his pokémon back at the bloodbath, he sheepishly gave Nurse Joy his details to be searched up on every trainer database known to man.
When she failed to find any record of him owning an absol, along with the fact he had six pokémon with him, along with a testament to his character from Professor Rowan, who Felix had called in tears to break down to, Joy decided to believe him.
She apologised and closed the centre, departing to where Felix had come from to see if she could help any of the mightyena Felix had mentioned, taking all but one chansey with her.
Nurse Joy returned with haunted eyes, but also his belongings, and Felix cleaned the blood off himself and his belongings and went to sleep again.
The next day, Joy wanted to speak to him.
"This absol appears to have no trainer," she said as the two stared through the glass to where the absol was lying, wrapped in bandages and hooked to dozens of wires. "She was on the brink of death when you brought her in, crashing three times when the chansey and I were working on her. Each time we revived her. She's a fighter. Not just in battle, assuming she really did fight th-those mightyena." Both Felix and Joy closed their eyes, trying to ward off the images. "But in spirit. Already she seems on the mend and I am confident she will make a full recovery. There will be scarring though, likely mental scarring as well."
"I hope the absol gets the help she needs," Felix said, voice lacking much emotion. "Know any good psychiatrists?"
Nurse Joy smiled slightly. "No. But if you do find one... you have a kirlia do you not?"
"Yeah."
"That family is good for mental well-being. Keep her outside the ball for a while."
"Will do. Would anyway."
"Good... well, that is what I wanted to say."
Felix glanced to Nurse Joy, he could see that that was a lie and Joy wanted to ask him to stick around and take the absol. He, however, did not. He understood the absol was defending itself from overwhelming odds with everything it had, still was difficult to get past it killing those mightyena.
He knew it was possibly it did not, or didn't kill them all, some sort of equal sided fight with one side that happened to include an absol, that made much more sense. He'd much prefer to leave that whole nightmare in the past however.
Bidding goodbye to Nurse Joy, Felix aimed himself back towards Mossdeep City. All of his pokémon outside and around him, including Joey and Zephyr. He looked to the sky and hoped that the world would give him this one small mercy.
He'd been a trainer long enough to know how this went.
"Stop."
Felix did stop, deliver a heavy sigh, and turned around. The rest of his pokémon bunching close to their fragile trainer.
Still covered in the wires she had been hooked up to, and sliced through, the absol stood before him, Nurse Joy and two chansey rushing up to quell the patient who really needed to remain in care.
Felix met the eyes of the absol as it spoke. "You saved me life," she said. Joy had taken to referring to the absol with feminine pronouns, it was the first Felix had really heard its voice and he could hear it.
"And you now feel obligated to me?" he replied tiredly. "Look, thank you but there really is no need. You'll be happier without me."
The absol glared at him, before a smirk lit her bloody lips. "I think you'd be happier without me. But you saved my life. You forced me to live. So I'm afraid that I am now your responsibility. My life is yours." She bowed mockingly. "Master. Whether you like it or not."
Exchanging a stunned, and wary, glance with his pokémon, Felix swallowed nervously. He wasn't sure how to take that. That wasn't how this kind of thing normally went.
And by the grin of the absol, even as she began to fall over, Felix had a very bad feeling he had unleashed something terrible.
Oh Felix. You have no idea.
So if this was a chapter in a normal story, this chapter would be much longer. Especially since this is located in the time frame where Felix's pokémon are having their adventures. Ah... what I dreamed of reaching when I was trying to write the story for all these years. Still, since this is meant to be focused more on the capture than anything, I shortened it a bit.
Also? How edgy do you find this chapter :P Lilith was probably the 'edgiest' character I made for pokémon. And while I have smoothed some of those edges, many are still intact. Why not? I find her fun to write ^^
But yes. The Hoenn pokémon have all been revealed! I now have two special chapters planned. One to be set back in Kanto (I've teased a bunch about BRVR here and there. Now we'll get a first-hand experience with him :D) another is set with the Hoenn Team past this chapter.
Hope you enjoy ^^