Chapter 38: Toxins, Part 1
I was pulled out of my dreams by the sound of water running in the bathroom. Rising from the bed, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The spot on the mattress next to me was empty, damp with sweat and knotted with sheets. I remembered feeling him thrash in the night.
"Red," I said aloud, but the shower kept hissing. He hadn't said a word to me since he left for the Safari Zone the previous day. When he came back, it was like he couldn't speak. Or refused to speak.
"Red, are you in there?" I had moved to the bathroom door and pressed my ear against it. The water was still running...continuously, consistently...too consistently. As if the water was flowing in the same pattern the whole time...If Red was in there, he wasn't moving.
Suddenly panicked, I began knocking. "Are you inside? Red, are you okay? Red, answer me!"
The water stopped. "I'm fine," came a hoarse voice from the other side.
"What's wrong?" I pressed on, straining to hear everything I could, afraid I might miss something if he spoke too quietly, hoping he would answer me again.
There was silence, and some shuffling. I could hear him breathing deeply. "Would you forgive me?" he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but didn't know what to say. He was asking me for forgiveness...for what? I raked through my memory to see if, from his perspective, I had looked angry or upset. But, as I already knew, the opposite was true; he was the one who seemed to be upset.
"Forgive you for what?" I asked through the door. "What happened?"
The lock clicked, and the door swung inward, releasing a cloud of steam that rose frantically to the ceiling. I stumbled as the surface of the door gave way under my palms, but I caught myself and took a step back to stand up straight. There he was, a pristine towel with a Pokeball design wrapped around his waist, his hair and face and chest glistening with residual moisture. His skin looked raw, like he had been scratching himself, or bathing in a cauldron over a fire. But his eyes...they were so far away, sad and red.
"I hurt someone," he croaked. "Would you forgive me if I hurt someone?"
My mind raced. He hurt someone...when he was in the Safari Zone, yesterday. Of course...but who in the world would he be willing to hurt? And the answer came to me in a sudden shock of brown hair topped over a cruel laugh, accompanied by the scream of a fire-breathing dragon and the rocking of crumbling stone.
He met Gary yesterday. He faced Blue.
It made perfect sense. The only person who I had ever seen make Red feel the way he felt last night, the way he felt this morning, was Blue. Of course! Gary would be drawn to the Safari Zone too, in search of the rare and powerful Pokemon there. He didn't care it was closed, since when have rules ever applied to him? And they met, and they fought. My mind's eye pictured what must have been a spectacular battle...Red was always the more reserved one, the one who cared more. Gary was the tyrannical merciless sea against the steadfast unyielding dam that was Red. And Red must have won...and now here he was, on the verge of tears because he had hurt his old friend...because he had a heart. And now I was watching the dam break.
"He deserved it," I said. "He deserved whatever you did to him. He's a monster, Red, you know that." I raised my hand to touch his cheek, to show I'd love him no matter what.
Red stared at me, blankly, with his faraway bloodshot eyes. Then he swept me into a fierce hug, and sobbed into my shoulder, and I stroked his wet hair and told him it would all be alright.
She stared at me, concern etched into her beautiful green eyes, like rings of neon. She wanted to understand, she wanted to help...but she couldn't. I had been preparing for this moment in the shower, standing motionless against the cool tile of the wall, punishing myself with scalding water, replaying in my mind the horror that would unfold on her face when I told her I was a murderer. This wasn't like it was with Surge...he was alive. He forgave me. Now I had to ask her to do the impossible, and forgive me.
"I hurt someone," I said to her. The words fell out of my mouth like stones, dropping from my tongue like the first bricks of a wall that would forever separate me from her. There was no going back. I felt Warden Connel tried to drown me in my dreams with his own blood. The shower couldn't wash it from my hands anymore than sleep could take it from my eyes or boiling tea could wash the taste of its iron from my teeth. My soul was now stained as red as my name. I could never ask her to understand that, to live with that...but I had to try. Because I loved her, and she was worth it. "Would you forgive me if I hurt someone?"
Those eyes; I wanted to wither and die under them. Murderers do not deserve this kind of empathy.
"He deserved it," she said.
What?
"He deserved whatever you did to him."
She knew. She knew the whole time. And she still slept next to me...still wanted to help me...still wanted to make sure I was alright. It must have been on the news. She must've realized that I was in danger, that I was protecting myself.
"He's a monster, Red, you know that."
Her soft hand cupped my cheek. After the brutal searing I gave myself in the shower, her fingers felt pleasantly cool. She forgives me, I thought. As the lump in my throat burst, I fell forward and hugged her tightly to me. I didn't deserve her...but I was so glad that she was mine.
I dried and dressed, still shaken with relief. It amazed me how important it was that Leaf stayed on my side. I would carry the weight of blood with me forever, and maybe I would never have another restful night again because of what I had done, but knowing that she was there anyway...it gave me cause.
"Will you come to the gym with me?" I asked her after I had managed to keep some food down in my roiling stomach.
Leaf sighed. "I want to support you," she began, "but...watching you battle? It's so stressful. I know how important it is to you, but watching you go through that intensity each time...it's not easy for me. I don't know if I can do it, Red."
I wanted to tell her how not-easy it was for me too, but there was a slight tremble in her hand that hinted me it would not be the best thing to say now. Leaf had done more than enough for me already, perhaps far more than she realized; it wouldn't do any good now to ask her so unfairly for more.
"Do you know what happens to you when you battle?" she asked. Her voice was small, constricted with worry, with the kind of weight that told me this was a question that has been on her mind for more time than I could imagine. I shook my head.
"You disappear," she said. "And it wasn't always like that," she quickly added. "When we met, you battled with pride and power, but there was curiosity too, maybe even joy. You taught me how to battle like that, and I stick to it but, Red...you've changed, you must have realized it. There's still pride and power...but now there's rage too, so much of it that sometimes I wonder if it's poisoning you. I feel like when you fight, you go somewhere else, like another world." She gazed vacantly into the swirling brown of her tea as she spoke. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm being naive about all of this. Battling is the way of the world."
I felt it was time to step in. "The person I am on the battlefield isn't the same as the person I am off of it."
Leaf brushed her hair behind her ear. "I know that, but it still makes me wonder; if I keep battling...will I eventually start battling like you now, and not like you did?"
My heart gave a sigh of relief, though I continued to hold my breath; this was about her. I mentally kicked myself for assuming that it was about me. Even when there weren't cameras on my face and microphones under my nose, I still managed to be unforgivably narcissistic.
"So...tell me what you're thinking," I prompted her, unsure of what was going to come next.
She sipped thoughtfully. "I don't think I want to battle with Pokemon anymore," she said. "Ever."
"Well, what then? A business? Breeding, maybe?" I had a brief vision of the two of us as old and withered as Mr. Fuji and Ellie back in Lavender Town, running a small cozy daycare center, helping trainers who wanted to follow in my eventual footsteps.
"I don't know," she admitted. "There's just so much beauty to Pokemon...I don't want to have to go to whatever world you go to when you fight. It seems like a...like a very red world." Leaf grinned at her own pun, and I have to admit that I did too. I lifted my mug to the same height as hers.
"So, no gym?" I asked.
"No gym," she agreed, and clinked her mug with mine. "Not for me, anyway."
I drained the last of the tea, shivering slightly at the bitter dregs on my tongue, then stood up to put on my jacket. As I pulled my arm through the sleeve, my hand fell into my pocket, and a cold hand gripped my heart when I remembered the Exeggcute that had rested in there several hours earlier, and saved my life, and ended someone else's.
No, that was me. I did that.
"You know, you had me worried there for a second," I told Leaf as I headed for the door. "When you started, it sounded like we were about to have a break-up talk."
"Oh, don't worry," she said, putting down her now-empty mug and flashing me a mischievous smile. "You'll know when it's break-up talk."
Leaf's task was to shop for supplies for the next leg of the journey. In the meantime, my task was to give us the clearance to start it. The Soul Badge would be my sixth, and I needed to conquer the Fuchsia City Gym Leader before I could acquire it. I knew nothing about its leader except the most important details...his specialty. The Poison type wasn't one I had encountered very frequently, but my few skirmishes were enough to warn me that it was a deceptively formidable class of Pokemon. I swapped out Snare, who had earned a very well-deserved break from being on my belt 24/7 for weeks now, and replaced him with Andrea, the Diglett I acquired initially to help defeat Lt. Surge back in Vermillion City. After some training rounds by the southern flank of the city, where there was a pleasant beach, I was ecstatic to learn that Andrea hadn't lost any of her former prowess as a speedy hard-hitting Ground-type, one of the most glaring weaknesses of the Poison types.
The gym itself was not hard to find, but it was hard to believe; it looked no different from any of the typical Fuschia City residences, perhaps slightly larger. Same reedy walls, same thatched roof, same stepping-stone pathway. I pushed open the wood-and-paper door, sliding it along a track into the wall. The entrance was modestly lit by sunlight that peeked through the roof and skipped across the floor of reeds and rough wood. Mats guided a path over the floor into a hall lined with more sliding paper doors, and I padded over it, watching as dust swirled in the sunbeams before me, parting delicately like curtains as I walked through them.
I coughed. The dust was heavier than I had expected. Fuschia City Gym must not be used especially often. I wondered whether the Gym Leader was even there to receive me. Some of the sliding doors were ajar, and I peeked inside them. Where I was used to a typical Pokemon Gym having these smaller rooms be used for individual training, these looked more like saunas and spas, all simple rooms with minimal furnishing. One held nothing else but a brass tea kettle sitting in front of a pillow in the middle of the floor.
The hallway opened into a larger room, completely bare and filled with shadow. The mats were gone now. I could not see the roof, save for the spots where sunlight broke through, nor the far walls or even the floor ten feet in front of me. I squinted, straining my eyes to see through the darkness...and crashed facefirst into an invisible wall.
"Ow!"I roared as the simultaneous throbbing of my toe and my nose pulsed through my body. My stream of curses filled the room, echoing off every facet of the building and returning to my ears, amplifying my pain further. I felt my nose; it wasn't broken, but it was incredibly sore.
Blindly, I stuck out one arm to feel the wall. The collision was so unexpected that it made my heart rate skyrocket. I felt like I had been punched, and I panted deep dusty breaths. My hand met the perfectly flat, perfectly transparent surface that assaulted me. It felt peculiarly hot to the touch. Slowly, I began to walk along its length, to find the point where it broke and gave path.
"That is not the way," said a grave voice that seemed to rise from the floorboards. I coughed through the dust to answer it.
"Are you the Gym Leader?" I did not bother to look around for the source of the voice. It was too dark, too dusty. I coughed again, and this time, it hurt.
"I am. My name is Koga. That is not the way," the voice repeated sternly.
"Whatever works," I hacked out, but despite my stubborn reply, I let go of the wall and placed the hand instead on my chest. My heart rate was continuing to rise steadily. It had been nearly a minute since I hit the wall...I should be calming down by now. Panicking now, I pressed to fingers under the side of my jaw, counting my pulse. It was fast...way fast. And speeding up.
"What is the way, then?" I asked, my voice faltering under the ever-persistent cough.
"That depends on your symptoms," said Koga coolly.
I swallowed and decided there were too many unknowns at play to not respond appropriately. "Racing heart," I said. "And coughing." I wiped the sweat off my forehead that seemed like it had beaded up in mere seconds. "Fever?" I added.
"How much do you weigh?"
What? How much do I weigh?
I fell to my knees. My muscles felt like they would explode if they tried to hold me up any more. "One hundred...and forty...five pounds..." I struggled to speak. Another hacking cough that felt like it tore my throat open.
"Hm..." came Koga's contemplative voice. "The hallucinations should begin soon. Thirty seconds, by my estimate."
"Hallucinations? I...I don't under-," I began, but my hand moved over the wooden floor, covered in several inches of the dust I had been breathing since I walked in. Why is this place so dusty? I lifted my hand to inspect it in the half-light. It didn't look like dust...it looked like...powder?
I glanced up at the ceiling, and I would've screamed if I had the energy. A massive shape fell from the roof, swooping over me like an enormous bat, with veiny purple wings and gleaming white fangs and eyes. Its wings flapped once to keep it from hitting the floor, and the single flap was enough to drown me in another gust of the powder.
"You poisoned me," I said as my face hit the floor and the darkness stepped closer into my vision.
There was no answer from Koga, but I heard the giant bug flapping up a storm somewhere over me, or maybe somewhere else in the hall. My hearing was fading, just as my sight was. "I'm going to die here," I whispered. If this is death...it's not so bad. It feels like going to sleep...
"The first is true," came Koga's voice. Then the toxin swept away all my senses. Silence pressed in on my ears, darkness on my eyes. I could no feel any part of my body or the floor that it lay on. "The second? We shall see."
...
...I was floating in perfect blackness. Just me. My body didn't join me.
"What do you see?"
I blinked, but it made no difference. "Nothing."
"Look harder."
A crack of purple lightning sliced through the blackness, revealing a shape far away.
"Harder," said Koga.
Another bolt, forking, lingering like a crack in the perfect dark. The shape rushed closer. It was tall, and feline, with a thick tail that whipped around its ankles. A large welt sat on its inner thigh, surrounding two puncture marks oozing with blood and venom.
"I see Mewtwo," I said. "He's hurt."
"Did you hurt him?" asked Koga.
"No."
"Then look on."
The crack in the darkness split open, and light poured in, revealing the grassy pastures, the rocky outcropping, the jagged treeline, the curling finger of smoke of a distant cottage.
"Any last words?"
I looked down, and saw my knees in the grass. My arms had reappeared, with my hands on the ends. They were clasped behind my head. I felt a struggling in my pocket, and a cold circle of metal on the back of my neck.
"Yes," I said. Then, with another voice; "Barrage."
The scene played, every bit as horrible as it was in my memory. The explosion, the blood, the bone, the shotgun, the headless corpse of Warden Connel.
"What do you see?" asked Koga.
"I see the person I hurt," I said, feeling the gun's weight drag my arms to the ground.
"Why did you hurt him?"
I dropped the gun and fell to my knees in front of the body. "He was going to kill me."
"Then you did right. Self-defense is not a crime."
"He wasn't sane," I countered. "He needed help." Suddenly, the scene rewinded. Connel was on the ground, clutching his leg, staring into the barrel of the gun I was pointing at his face. My finger refused to pull the trigger this time. "I was just...I was scared."
"Then you did right. Fear is not a crime either."
I lowered the gun. "He's helpless now. I shouldn't have been afraid."
"You should always be afraid!" Koga's voice was suddenly angry. The Safari Zone was swallowed up as if sucked away by a giant vacuum cleaner. Faces appeared before me, exploding like bloody balloons. My mom, Professor Oak, Leaf...I cried out as she vanished.
"Fear means survival!" Koga yelled. Gary's face appeared, materializing a split second before his body. It laughed at me from above before his Charizard, wreathed in flame, swooped in and burned Pallet Town to the ground, and I was watching as if from a mountaintop.
"These are your fears!" Koga shouted. I watched as my house below exploded in a fireball, before the scene spun out and I was looking down at myself lying in an empty hotel bed, holding a framed picture I couldn't see. I could the see the tracks of tears on my face. I saw a man in a suit clutching the Masterball, and throwing it to reveal Mewtwo, fully healed and wielding orbs of black fire in his bulbous fingers. "Are they not valid?!"
I closed my eyes and shook my head. This was a test. Koga wanted me to be fearless. "I have to be fearless if I want to be the champion," I said as calmly as I could, while I watched Mewtwo punching holes into Silph Tower as if it were made of paper.
"No!" Koga roared. The scene disappeared, and started over. I watched myself blow off the Warden's head, watched everyone I cared about curl up in pools of blood and wither like dead flowers. I saw the bodies of the Pokemon I lost on my journey. I watched Blue astride his Charizard burn down city after city after city. It was all rapid, as if I was watching a grotesque film at twice its intended speed.
"Machines are fearless! You think a Champion is a machine? You think he is not human? You ARE human! Accept that you have fear!" The scenes blurred together into nonsense until they vanished entirely, and the blackness returned. A man wrapped in a purple shawl, scarf and robe approached me through the nothingness. His hair was short and black, and his face was so harsh it may have been carved from stone. I was still on my knees as he continued to walk towards me. "Do you accept this?"
I stared at him. "Yes."
"Why are you afraid?" he barked.
"Because I am human."
"Because you are a survivor," Koga said. He reached out a hand between us. Hovering over his palm was a sphere, swirling with images of burning towns and empty beds and shotgun barrels and dying Pokemon. "These," he said, "make you a survivor. They are important." He pushed the sphere into my body, and it spread like ice through my veins, soothing the ache of my muscles and the pain in my head.
"And you have guilt," he said, holding out his other hand. Another sphere hovered between us, this one with images of the headless Warden, and the worried face of Leaf, and the burning cinders of a Silph social security file, and visions of my mother playing with a baby boy I would never meet, and of Primo falling to his death from the edge of a building and Lt. Surge lying unconscious as he was swallowed by a cloud of smoke. And Gary's sneering angry face dominated them all, staring at me. "Why do you have guilt, Red?"
Because I'm human, I thought.
"Because you have love," Koga said, pushing the second sphere into me too, that burned like a coal eating through my chest until it rested inside of my heart. He stared at me, and I stared at him, unsure of what to say.
"Can I really succeed with...these?" I pointed at my chest where the orbs entered my body. "With fear and guilt, I can become the Champion?"
"Fear and guilt are not what I gave you. Those you already had. What I gave you was acceptance," said Koga, sternly knitting his eyebrows, "and the reminder that you already had them because you also carry a will to survive, and a power to love. And those," he said, pointing at my chest, "are why you will become the Champion. Embrace your humanity, or it will be taken from you."
I nodded. The darkness began to soften as faint beams of sunlight poked through. "You poisoned me," I said, unsure of why. It sounded more accusatory than I intended.
Koga shook his head. "You were already poisoned. I cured you."
The hall swam back into view, brighter than I remembered it, and far less dusty. Koga continued to stand before me, his hands clasped behind his back. My senses came back. I could hear the chittering of the giant Pokemon in the corner of the hall, clicking its fangs and rustling its wings. I could feel the weight of my own body again.
"Thank you," I said. Koga nodded curtly. "But...what now?"
"Now?" Koga smiled with one half of his mouth. "Now you show me what you learned."
Merry Christmas, y'all (a little late, I know).
This was originally not going to be in two parts, but I wasn't happy with the condition of the Gym battle yet, so I broke it into two parts so that you guys could have something to read for the holiday while I cleaned up the second half. But I really like how this chapter turned out especially where character development is concerned. The hallucination of Koga's toxin was some of the most fun I've had writing this fic.
Also, one of my betareaders had a concern that I want to address pre-emptively; the first scene with Red in the shower was NOT me being a cocktease for a possible sex scene. In fact, I was trying to be somewhat symbolic; Red is showering because he wants to wash himself of guilt, and Leaf sees him basically naked to illustrate his vulnerability (originally it was full nudity, but it felt forced, so I added the towel).
IN OTHER NEWS: It looks like I've started a series (which is awesome! and really flattering). YDream08, one of my readers, has started a fanfic as a spiritual successor to this one which takes place in the Hoenn-verse (it is a Nuzlocke of Pokemon Emerald Version) and she has been working on it for some time now. It is called "Tale of Her" and you can find it here on . She keeps some ideas consistent, but for the most part, the story is uniquely hers, and I encourage you to check it out. Recently, another reader, BadSuns08 has also taken up the mantle to write a spiritual successor, his being in the Johto-verse as a Nuzlocke of Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Versions. It has not been published yet, but it will be any day now, and I will edit this section when he does so that you can find it and enjoy it.
TO THAT EFFECT: If any of you guys are interested in filling the niches of the Sinnoh, Unova, and Kalos storylines in a similar style, I really encourage it! It's a monstrous project, to be sure, as these are long games, and making them into fulfilling and unique stories is not an easy task, but I guarantee that you will become better writers as a result and you'll also probably have a ton of fun (especially since I think it would be really neat if YDream, BadSuns, and I could form some kind of thread of continuity between ourselves and anyone willing to fill in the other blanks with us to make one cohesive Nuzlocke-verse for these awesome games...plus we're all cool people). So if you're interested, PM any one of us and toss around some ideas!
As always, let me know your thoughts for the chapter (part 2 will be up within the week!); tell me what you loved/what you hated/questions/concerns/brilliant ideas/how your holidays were/anything at all. And, as always, thank you for your continued readership and support.
Stay awesome!
-Curse