Chapter 37: The Most Dangerous Safari
Fuchsia City was not what I expected.
Leaf had filled my head with snapshots of a bustling port city, a natural vista with a renowned zoo and a wildlife reserve, and while all of those things were certainly true, my image of them was biased toward size and activity. Entering Fuchsia City felt like stepping backwards in time. After the sprawling metropolis of Saffron, the tenacious technological revival of Celadon, the magnificent stretch of Cycling Road, I could not help but be deflated by dirt roads, simple one-story homes, and transportation by carriage. To its credit, however, Fuchsia impressed me; not many people in the modern world could enjoy an environment like this. It spoke to the character of Fuchsia's citizens that this rustic life not only suited them, but delighted them.
"It's incredible," I breathed, and in that moment, I decided that I liked Fuchsia. "This must be what life in Johto is like. Or at least close."
Leaf smiled and squeezed my hand. "Close, but probably not in the way you think. Cities like Goldenrod and Blackthorn are decades ahead of this place. Fuchsia may even be the oldest city on the continent."
We looked out into the glittering Fuchsia bay from the window of the simple Pokemon Center, where Kirby and his gang, The Primeapes, decided we should part. He chose to leave me with the playful threat that he would be personally insulted should I be unable to beat the Elite Four after what I pulled at the bridge, as Kirby believed he and his bikers could take down the Elite Four themselves. Unfortunately for them, the Pokemon League only accepts single competitors.
Or in this case...a single competitor.
Help...
I turned my head. "Did you say something?"
Leaf looked up from her tea, puzzled. "Just now?"
That answered my question.
Help...
It was coming from me, from my mind. Leaf rose from the squashy chair in our room as I closed my eyes and reflected. The coiled mass of pain was unfurling, whining.
What's wrong, I asked it.
Venom, Mewtwo replied. A lightning bolt crashed through my skull as a vision burned itself into my sealed eyes; Mewtwo's tall muscular body, outlined as if with starry wire against a jagged background. The focal point was the massive purple bruise throbbing on his right thigh. Two red puncture marks glared at me from the dark flesh like angered eyes.
When did that happen? How? I shouted in my head as the warm weight of Leaf's hand rested on my shoulder.
Another lightning bolt. Another searing vision, this time of a snake lunging towards me, an Arbok, fangs bared, hood expanded. Then a searing blinding pain in my own thigh, as if the blood there had caught fire.
I'm dying...
I'm dying.
The warm weight became a cool press, as the back of Leaf's hand glided to touch my forehead. "Red, you're burning up. What's going on? Talk to me."
And it was over. I opened my eyes. The pain was gone, the vision was gone, the fever was gone.
And Mewtwo was gone.
Completely.
I searched, in vain, for the resting place in my brain where he had made himself comfortable, where the roiling mass temperamentally barred me entry or opened itself to me its deepest agony. It was gone. All of it.
There was a knocking at the door.
"Master Red, I have an urgent delivery!" came an excited voice from an elderly woman. Leaf scurried to answer the door. I continued to comb through my mind, hoping to find Mewtwo, or some trace of him. There was none. Panic swept over me. He's dead, I thought.
"Red isn't feeling well, I can take the message," I heard Leaf's voice say from the hall. There was a disgruntled sigh, and then the closing of a door and the clicking of a lock.
Why are you upset? I interrogated myself. He was evil, a monster bred to destroy, and miserable in his existence. Someone took him out, you should be relieved.
He helped you...said another voice, timid and guilty. You'd be dead without him.
"It's an invitation."
I turned from the window. Leaf was holding the envelope, opened, in her hand, and reading from a slip of paper.
"To another fighting dojo?" I tried to smile, but the horror and guilt and panic of the recent mental assault made it difficult. Had Leaf seen it, she would have found it unconvincing.
"To the Safari Zone," she said apprehensively. "It's from the Warden. He says that it hasn't been open to the public recently because of his declining health, but he would like for you to come and see the reserve. Tomorrow." She handed the paper over to me to read, but I barely even skimmed it. My thoughts were elsewhere. "That's strange," Leaf continued. "This is the first time I'm hearing of Safari Zone being closed to the public..."
"Yeah, well...we haven't exactly been in the loop lately, right?"
"I guess not," she agreed, and turned back to her tea, while I read the letter and allowed the clenching in my fingers over Mewtwo's disappearance to resolve. If it hadn't been for the circumstances, this would be an exciting invitation; the Safari Zone housed unimaginably rare Pokemon, and the Warden was personally inviting me to see it. It even gave me another day before going to challenge the Fuchsia gym, which I'd seen on our way through the city; it was just as unimposing and innocuous as everything else in Fuchsia.
Writhing snakes pulled me to sleep that night, and I thrashed so much in the bed that, when I woke, I saw Leaf had moved herself to sleep curled up in the squashy chair. Peeking out the window, I saw a sliver of sunlight cutting through the air from the east, making the water of the harbor sparkle. I had slept poorly; exhaustion was seeped in my bones. Once more, I searched for Mewtwo's consciousness within my own, and found nothing.
"Leaf?" I called quietly from the bed. She didn't answer. "Love?" She stirred slightly, and the corner of her mouth lifted, but continued to sleep.
If I've been thrashing all night, I should let her sleep...the news about Mewtwo can wait.
I rose from the bed, dressed quietly, kissed Leaf softly on the brow, and slipped out of the room.
"Anything I can get for you, Mr. Red?" said the Pokemon Center's nurse a minute later as I entered the main lobby.
"Coffee," I said. "And directions to the Safari Zone."
She smiled pleasantly and led me into a lounge which I had the sneaking suspicion that I would not normally have access to, and patted myself on the back for my own fame. "You'll find the Safari Zone behind a gatehouse north of here," the nurse said as she filled a mug with steaming brown liquid and handed it to me. "It's quite an honor to receive a personal invitation," she added.
I gave her a warm smile. "Thank you, I find I receive personal invitations quite often," I said, gesturing around the room, and noticing her flush slightly. "But they are no less special for being frequent."
"I'd certainly hope not," she replied. Her eyes seemed to linger on me longer than normal, and I moved to sip the coffee just to have something to do. The bitterness satisfied me.
"You should do that more often," she said suddenly.
"…Drink coffee?"
"Smile," she said. "It suits you." With that, she left the room. I gave her a minute's headstart while I savored the drink, draining the remainder in a handful of gulps, then followed through the hallway, into the lobby, and out the main doors.
In retrospect, I probably didn't need directions to find the gatehouse. The Safari Zone was Fuchsia's pride and joy, as every sign seemed to point in its direction and its direction alone. Asking how to find it was not only superfluous, but very touristy, and I cringed inwardly at my anxiety. I entered the featureless building after a twenty minute walk and was met with an odd greeting.
"Please leave your Pokemon at the door," said a wiry and flustered woman.
"Good morning to you as well," I said with perhaps more ice than I intended, wiping my shoes of mud and approaching the desk. "I'd like to keep my Pokemon while I'm inside your reserve."
"That's not our policy," she responded. "Trainers are permitted to have only a supply of Safari Balls and an emergency retrieval signal when they enter. Those are the rules of the game. Outside Pokemon must be left outside."
This did not sit well with me at all. "My name is Red," I said, hoping that I was being more subtle than I felt. "I'd like to enter your Safari Zone, at the Warden's own personal invitation," I added, extending to her the letter. "I'm not playing any game, I'm just visiting. I'd like t have my companions at my side."
"Warden Connel has explicitly requested that you, Mr. Red, leave your Pokemon here with me." She did not even look at the letter. I stared at her and, finally, resigned.
"Fine." I had nothing left to argue, no other points to assist me. I unclipped my belt and rested it on the desk. The woman swiped it and the six Pokeballs attached to it almost too eagerly, before replacing them on the desk with an unceremonious sack. "Your Safari Balls," she said noncommittally. "And your emergency retrieval signal," she added, handing over a metal rectangle with a single red button and a triangular antenna. I made it a point to take the latter and not the former.
"I'm not here to play games," I said, and left without thanking her.
Entering the Safari Zone, however, instantly brightened my mood. It looked like a truly marvelous place; beautiful in its unaltered natural appearance. The sounds of wild Pokemon filled my ears; chattering, squawking, rustling, from every direction, though I couldn't see any of them through the sea of golden grass. Above a distant treeline, I saw a trail of smoke rising like a dark finger against a milky pale sky, beckoning me. I headed towards what I assumed must be the Warden's cottage.
The Pokemon sightings began, and continued en masse. A pair of Tauros butted heads, their six collective tails flailing. A swarm of Beedrill buzzed in a nearby tree. A Nidorino slept soundly under a rocky lip that jutted from a larger outcropping. I began to scale the rock to get a better view of how best to get to the source of the smoke, but an unnatural sound startled me. It sounded like…a gunshot?
"Ho there!" I heard a man yell. Still gripping the rock, I turned towards the sound. A fit elderly man in a yellow hat hailed me with a shotgun from several feet below. A black moustache sat comfortably amongst the wrinkles on his face. Nervously, I worked my way back down the wall.
"Mr. Red, I presume!" he exclaimed, and extended his free hand to grasp mine. Reflexively, I shook it, but my gaze was still affixed to his firearm. "Warden Connel."
"The same, the same," he said, slinging the shotgun over his back. "Figured I'd find you stumbling about for me here. Come, let's walk to my office." He gave a bright laugh and clapped a broad palm on my shoulder, guiding me to join him. I was surprised at the strength.
"I thought your health was failing you, sir," I remarked.
"Nonsense," he said, far too jolly at the notion that people thought he was ill and dying.
The pace was brisk, and the conversation inane. The Warden seemed interested exclusively in asking the questions and not answering them, assuring me that everything I wanted to know would be explained as soon as we reached the safety of his home, which was only a handful of minutes later.
Just like Fuchsia City and the Safari Zone, the inside of the Warden's cottage was not what I expected, if only for the decor. A line of variously sized Tauros heads were mounted on either side of the entryway; an entire herd. The sitting room contained a reconstructed skeleton of a broad-chested bipedal reptilian creature. Beedrill, Butterfree, Venomoth, were pinned to corkboard in glass cases that rested along the edge of a long ornate dining table, so life-like in their preservation that they looked like they might begin buzzing at any second. Chill spread through my fingers as I stared in horror at the sights.
"Anything you'd like, Mr. Red?" the Warden asked, indicating a plate of food.
"Uh…no, thank you. I've already eaten," I lied, hoping to make the conversation brief and get the hell out.
"Come now, you need your strength!"
"Sir?"
"For the hunt!"
Oh no. "I'm sorry, sir, there's been a misunderstanding. I came here at your invitation without realizing that I would be asked to hunt. I'm a trainer, not a hunter."
This made him chuckle. The shaking of his laughter cause the shotgun to swing ominously on his back. "Yes, there is a misunderstanding indeed, isn't there."
"Sir?"
"I did not invite you to hunt. I invited you to be hunted."
The silence fell like an anvil.
"To be hunted," I echoed hollowly. Somehow, I was not surprised, and yet dread filled me like water.
"That's right. No prey in the Safari can stand up to me anymore, as you can plainly see. I dare say I've killed every kind of thing that lives here. And trainers are forbidden to enter because of my 'declining health'," he spoke, pouring himself some honey-colored liquid into a square glass. "So I figured I'd have one more hunt, the hunt to end all hunts. A beast smarter than any here. A trainer like no other."
He flashed me a wink as if his compliments could make up for the horror of what he was implying. He drained his glass and shivered as the alcohol swam into his blood.
"You're insane," I whispered through the dryness of my throat.
"Oh, aye, as if I haven't heard that a million times," he said. "But you better watch it. You're not in much of a place to be spitting insults." He set the glass down, unhooked the shotgun from the strap, and began to polish it nonchalantly in a handsome leather armchair. I stood rooted to the spot. After a minute of casual silence, he looked up, surprised to see me still standing in his home.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't explain. You have an hour's headstart, then I come after you with this. You may use whatever you like to stop me. By sunset, one of us will win."
A pause. Then I ran.
The first thing I tried was the emergency retrieval button. That was stupid; I knew what to expect, and I got what I expected. Well, more or less. The high-pitched whining that gave away my location was a mild surprise. I tossed it without a second thought, but the crunch of metal and the sudden silence of the whining did little to calm me.
Run for the exit. Hide. Do something.
At full sprint, I reached the gatehouse in a matter of minutes. The door was locked, presumably with a magnet if the humming of the metal lock was any indication. My lack of surprise hit me a second time.
Damn it!
My heart hammered in my chest. My eyes skipped frantically over the terrain. My breath managed to be simultaneously shallow and deep. I could never forgive myself for getting into this situation: I let them take my team!
If I didn't get out of this alive, I had only myself to blame. Also the criminally insane Warden, but mostly myself.
"What's the plan?"
The man in the suit huffed, halfway a wheeze and a sarcastic laugh. "There's no plan, Blaine."
Another man, thin, bald, bespectacled, turned in his chair to face a monitor, feigning nonchalance. "I don't buy it." His white lab coat made him look almost ghostly in the twilight of the room.
"There's nothing to buy, Blaine. I'm done with plans. It's finished." Giovanni grumbled and rubbed his thick hand over the bruise on his shoulder, its ugly purple hidden under the blackness of his suit.
"Fine, then it's not a plan. What are you going to do?" the scientist implored.
Giovanni stewed silently. His temper was short, but Blaine was the only lieutenant he had left, and he couldn't afford to express his anger.
"You will stay here," Giovanni started.
"I didn't ask what I'm going to do. I know what I'm going to do. Same thing I always do, same thing I've been doing for years! Stay in this forsaken mansion and run the numbers on your damages and patch you up when you feel like admitting that you aren't immortal and wait for that fu-"
A swift blow to the throat silenced him. Giovanni cracked the knuckles of the offending fist menacingly while Blaine hacked, clutching his neck with one hand and holding himself off the floor with the other.
"I'm going to Viridian City."
If they weren't already swollen to their maximum size from pain and surprise, Blaine's eyes would have widened further. "Why?!" he managed to choke out.
"I'm meeting someone. And then I'm meeting someone else."
Giovanni stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him, where a knocker in the shape of a stylized flame rocked limply.
The gunshot slashed through the air and the sound fell on my ears like the first hit of a funerary drum. My hour was up. It sounded surprisingly close…maybe I hadn't put as much distance between me and him as I thought? The Safari Zone's landscape blended into a seamless stretch, and it was impossible to tell whether I was moving in circles or not.
Regardless, I stayed in the tree. I'd left enough of a trail to be followed, and hoped that I would be able to get a jump on Connel when he tracked me to the spot I was watching. My shirt and pants stuck to my skin, plastered by sweat. The rubber of my sneakers had ripped and torn from scuffling over rocks. My hat, miraculously, had stayed on my head, and now shielded my eyes from the sun. I waited…and waited…and waited…my legs seemed to petrify in their locked position on the branch thirty feet off the ground.
How could the Gym Leader allow it to get this bad? I asked myself for what felt like the hundredth time. Surely someone has to know that the Warden is completely insane, is hunting people for sport? Is hunting mefor sport? Clearly nobody was aware. Not even Leaf. She was probably expecting me to come back to her very soon…I hoped I wouldn't disappoint her.
A leaf crunched, and I flinched so hard I lost my balance on the branch, regaining it at the last second, though now my heart was beating so fast I feared it would telegraph where I was hiding to Connel. Still as stone, heart hammering, I watched the trail I had made. A shadow appeared over the ground…it didn't look like Connel. The boy was too stocky, the arms too thin and not holding anything.
It's just a Pokemon, I realized, as the furry round body of a Mankey moved into sight, curiously examining a stick it picked up from the grass.
The unmistakable sound of a cocked hammer. The Mankey skittered. I froze.
"Get down from there, boy."
Moving only my eyes, I spotted him; two menacing narrowed eyes hovering over the two wide black pits of a shotgun's barrel, and all four pointing directly at me. Staring directly at the source of the gunshot that was about to end my life, I suddenly became aware of how much life I had; the blood rushing through every inch of my body, every fiber of every nerve firing electrical current, every cell working to stay alive. I felt like I had betrayed them all.
"Get. Down."
I don't know why, but I listened. Maybe I thought he wouldn't shoot me if I listened.
"Hands up and behind your head," he said, stepping out of the bush on the side of the trail where he had been waiting, watching me for who knows how long.
I raised my hands, clasped them around the back of my skull. I took my first breath in what felt like several minutes.
"Turn around."
I did. I heard him step up behind me. I wondered foolishly if the bones of my hands could stop the bullet from piercing my skull.
"Kneel."
I did.
"Any last words?"
Well, I had several options. I could ask him why, but that would not be met with anything satisfying. He was insane; insanity doesn't have a 'why', only a 'how'. I could ask any number of pointed questions, say any number of witty scalding comments. I settled for this:
"Barrage."
The Exeggcute in my jacket pocket wriggled. Without Safari Balls, my only chance was to befriend it, before my hour's headstart was up. It agreed, and I'd never been more grateful. A single pink egg-shaped creature, its eyes set harder than its shell, burst out, collided with Connel's knee, and exploded.
The gun fired, but I was several feet away when it did, having rolled instantly after calling out my command. My ears rang with the force of the explosion from the egg and the firearm. Clods of dirt rained down, torn up by the suicidal Exeggcute to whom I now owed my life. Connel was on the ground, clutching what was left of his right leg; everything below the knee was mangled, torn, bleeding. An ivory spike of bone protruded from the scarlet flesh. If my ears weren't ringing, I would have heard him screaming.
I rose, and approached him. The shotgun lay on the grass, suddenly harmless outside of human hands. The whine slowly ebbed away, to be replaced by the hoarse cries of a man in excruciating pain. I couldn't begin to imagine it and, to my surprise, I couldn't begin to empathize.
"What are you doing?" he blubbered as I bent down to lift the gun into my arms, giving it new life, new lethality. Warden Connel tried to laugh in the delirium of his pain. "You can't kill me, it's out of ammo."
Wordlessly, I pointed the gun at Connel, aiming between his eyes. He clammed up, and paled.
"You're a lousy liar, Warden Connel," I said slowly. My finger felt heavy on the trigger. I watched as an eon passed, as the Warden regressed to his days as a child. With blurring speed, I watched the baby grow up, get fat, slip into insanity, chase me through the safari, watched from behind his eyes as he pointed the nose of his gun at the back of my own neck.
So I pulled back the hammer, and fired.
...
I left the Safari Zone. I blasted open the magnetic lock. I collected my belt, with my Pokemon still clasped onto it. I walked back through Fuchsia City, stumbling with exhaustion, with the weight of blood. I found my way back to the Pokemon Center.
I heard Leaf talking to me, as if from a thousand rooms away. She sounded scared. I couldn't answer her, I couldn't talk. I could only sit…and then, I could only break.
I've never slept in a less comfortable bed. I spent the whole night running in the tunnels of my dreams, running from a man who had lost his head.
Yep, this is the first idea I had when I decided to write this story. Loosely based off the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connel, which is an awesome short story, but it also transplants really well into this version of the Pokemon universe, and it serves as great character catalyst for Red. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it, and hopefully I didn't piss too many of you off with the big changes that came through in this chapter. It's all uphill from here, y'all (that is, if I can live up to my own ideas)...
This is also my first time trying out the unreliable narrator, where Red acquires an Exeggcute while not telling us until the last minute. Let me know how that worked out and whether or not you liked it.
Once again, I'm going to advertise the spiritual successor to "Red" here in the author's note section. It is called "Tale of Her", and features a similar (but unique!) adventure in the Hoenn-verse, written by one of my readers, Ydream08. I'm barely involved in this story; it is entirely her work, and I encourage you to check it out, also available here on FanFiction.
It won't be too long until the next chapter. Thank you for readership and please use the reviews to tell me your thoughts, your likes, your dislikes, your hopes, your favorite conspiracy theories, whatever you feel like, and I'll be back to update soon. Stay awesome!
-Curse