Chapter 38 – Dark Dreams
Team Doom HQ – Eleventh Floor
I ran as fast as I could up these long stairs ignoring my open wounds from the fight with Ren, ignoring my aching body's need for rest, I just had to find them, I had to make sure they were alright. With the previous floors I had passed before, I encountered no one; no guards, no other Team Doom Eight member, and thankfully no bodies. I didn't know how further up my Pokemon were, or what floor Latias was on, if she needed help or if she was in trouble… or worse. There were only three members of the Team Doom Eight left I had not yet seen. I had hoped to have seen Jessica at some point by now, but so far nothing. She had agreed she would help us defeat Team Doom once we arrive at the base; that captain before, the first assault on the base, Nathaniel's attack when he and his soldiers killed Sakura and Isaac, nothing.
I began to wonder whether or not she had abandoned me, that she was secretly working with Shiny Latias to spy on us, to learn our secrets or something. I suspected her to do something at least, not give us the silent treatment. Maybe I shouldn't have trusted her; maybe I should've taken her out while I had the chance…
With one last step up the stairs I was finally at the eleventh floor out of the twelve floors of this building to find a sight I wasn't expecting; my Pokemon, my friends all lying on the floor motionless, all except for Latias and Espeon. I thought they were dead, but that wasn't the case when a voice, Jessica's voice from the darker part of the room standing in the shadows, her purple eyes glowing. The last time I had seen her eyes glow like that was when she used that nightmare ability on me near Driftveil City when we first met. "They're not dead… n-not yet!" Jessica slowly levitated out of the shadows grasping at her head with both of her paws.
I grabbed my scalchop and demanded, "What did you do to them? I thought you were helping us!" Why did she betray us? I thought I could trust her. but it turned out she was like the rest of Team Doom. I had enough, I was about to charge right in and attack her to end this, but then her levitation sped up and flew right at me and grabbed my shoulders. "Z-zack…" She struggled to say through her teeth as she gritted them, wincing as if she were in pain. "I-I am not in c-control of my body… S-Shiny… Latias has u-used her ability o-on me… you g-got to k-kill me b-before kill you and y-your friends… my ability will stop completely if I am rendered unconscious, you m-must do it Zack, defeat Shiny Latias and stop the fighting. I-I'm sorry…" Jessica held the sides of my head with her paws as she leaned in close, her eyes staring right back into mine as she used her ability on me. 'Shiny Latias was controlling her now?' I asked myself. 'Damn it, of course. She must've known something was up. She must've spied on her.' I refused though. I wanted to help her, to save her, I refused to kill her. But how would I help her if my ability would absorb her life energy after I rendered her unconscious?
A bright purple light flashed before my eyes then followed by darkness. Everything changed, and I was somewhere else, a place where nightmares exist.
The Savior's – Ceremony Hall
I opened my eyes to find myself standing on a stage with memories I had not experienced yet, or feared to experience. A fear I have had since day one on this journey, what would happen if I involved the others on my journey to find Shiny Latias to exact my revenge; someone would die, perhaps all of them dead while I came back all in one piece.
This stage I was on, this room was the ceremony hall of the Savior's building, I had been here many times during my life as a member, but unlike those past previous times being here, things this time were different; the colors were off giving a greenish tone to everything when it originally was a warm golden color. Wooden floors, furniture and red curtains hanging above. The windows outside were dark, no stars or even lights from other buildings across the street, just windows with darkness and nothing more. The pillars at each corners of the room were curved, with strange spikes sticking out at the sides, when in reality they are perfectly straight and flat.
In this distorted world I was in front of people, so many people with blurry faces and ten foot tall curvy bodies all wearing white suits clapping as I was handed an award. Strangely, I had memories of this whole scenario I was in; I was the sole survivor after the Team Doom assault. Shiny Latias was dead, Team Doom and all of its members defeated, and the Unova region was once again safe, and I was being awarded for my heroic actions on saving the region, promoted as the leader of the Savior's.
Looking to the crowd for anyone I knew, I couldn't recognize a single one of them, no friends, no family, no one I knew was here. It was just me, the sole survivor who had come out alone after the defeat of Shiny Latias and Team Doom. 'A white Dewott named Zack Raines who had survived it all and came out on top' was what the newspapers in this dream world said 'The future leader of The Savior's, the one who would lead us all to a better promised future.' It was a life I didn't want. To be endlessly be going out on these missions risking my life every day. With everyone gone, what else would I have to live for? I feared that I wouldn't know.
One of the black suited distorted people approached me from the crowd and offered me his hand to shake. "Congratulations Mr Raines." He said, his voice was… strangely familiar… Cornelius? But in this world, he was still alive and he was a Rayquaza, my enemy. But as soon as he spoke again, another voice escaped his throat, one which made the fur at the back of my neck stand, Mom. "It must have been tough for you to go through so much; coming back home alive, alone, to lead The Savior's to a better world, a safer world. Just so you know, we are with you all the way-" Then the voice changed midway, a voice sounding just like Isaac "So don't worry about it, we will help you… we will help you… we will…"
The distorted man just stood there staring down at me with his arm extended out still waiting for me to shake his hand. I refused to accept it and instead walked away from the man off stage to meet the crowd before me, some clapping, others wishing me well for the future, others consoling me on the loss of my friends and family. Friends and family I knew were still alive in the real world, not here. Despite knowing this wasn't real, that these distorted humanoids were created from my mind, their words, the memories I have whilst here about me being the sole survivor and all of my friends and family dead worried me, I had to get out of here. but how? I got out of that nightmare world by… my friends calling to me? Espeon and Latias showed up, and everything returned to normal; no bodies, no blood, and no Shiny Latias with that grin of hers.
I approached the door of the ceremony room's front entrance expecting it to be locked or I don't know, painted on like dreams can sometimes be. I placed my paw flat on the door and brushed it, smooth and it felt realistic, wooden, exactly like how it should feel. And so I pushed it as hard as I could, the door creaked opened, which was odd since all of my years pushing and opening this door throughout my time as a member of The Savior's this door made no noise, not even once.
Expecting to see the same corridor I expected to see whenever I left the ceremony room, a long red carpeted corridor with wooden walls and two elevator doors in front of me, darkness, just like what I saw outside the windows before until it engulfed me completely.
I had wondered with this nightmare world I was in; how would this nightmare force me to get myself killed? Randomly attacked by those distorted people in there? Impalement on one of the spiked pillars of the room? Suicide by stabbing myself with my own Razor Shell? I mean I almost did last time I was in this world believing I had lost everything.
The Beach Near Accumula Town – Totodile's Nightmare
It was a place I knew well, a place I had been a few times growing up as a kid with both my mom, my sister Yuri, and Latias building sand castles on the beach, collecting shells. It was also the location I first met Totodile, my third Pokemon to join my team before I joined the Savior's. But like with the nightmare version of the ceremony room I was just in being all distorted and off, so was this beach. Green sand, a black starless sky, but despite no moonlight or anything above or nearby to be used as a source of light, I could still see everything. The ocean was dark hardly any waves crashing beside the cliffs at the sides of the beach that would create a pleasant sound. The palm trees at first seemed normal at first, but when I looked at the fronds expecting to see some kind of distorted something, what I saw instead were giant hands, hands all waving as if blowing in nonexistent wind.
Speaking of Totodile, I saw him on the sand not even inches just before the waves touched him surrounded towering over him were Croconaw's lightly pushing him back down into the sand whenever he tried to stand back up, crying and pleading for the Pokemon to stop, but his pleas were ignored, or the simply didn't care. Unlike the distorted people from the ceremony hall, these Croconaw were normal looking in appearance. "N-no… please stop! I beg you!" Totodile cried, flinching whenever one of the Croconaw's kicked his snout.
"Hey!" I ran over to the Croconaw's, pushing them back one by one away from Totodile, but they still came back to kick Totodile some more refusing to leave Totodile alone, no matter how many times I pushed them back, threatened them, or injure them. This nightmare world, it restored any injuries I gave them. "Totodile, come on, you got to get up!" I tried to reach out to him still trying to push the Croconaw's back as much as I could to prevent anymore further injury they were doing to Totodile.
"Why bother?" He sighed in defeat. Lying there just accepting the kicks from the Croconaw's. "They are right about me, they were always right. I am weak, I could never succeed anywhere, no matter how much I did or what I do, and I'm always destined for failure!"
The affect of Jessica's ability gets to their victims easily. It puts them in a nightmarish world and treats them harshly, convincing them that they can never regain their hope, their courage and strength. Jessica's nightmare ability must've connected us all somehow. If I could reach Totodile, then together we could search for the others, and then all of us could escape this place and find Latias. "That's not true, Totodile, and you know it! You're not weak; you couldn't have gotten this far otherwise. Over the years I have known you, I knew from the very moment when you joined my team so many years ago on a beach like this one, you had grown into a strong Totodile, a Totodile who would never give up for anything." Totodile looked up at me, despite being kicked in the face by one of the Croconaw's. "You have saved my life and others so many times I can't even count how many. What about Bayleef? What about your children? Don't you want to see them again and to let them know how much you love them? They know you are not weak, they know you are definitely not a failure; I know your children are proud of you they have a cool father like you, never giving up on them. And I'm proud to have a good friend like you Totodile. So are you really going to let these Croconaw's defeat you? Or are you going to help me take them down together?!"
"I-I…" He winced as he struggled to stand. The Croconaw's kicked harder this time, in his stomach mostly, but he didn't fall back down "I remember Croconaw's I knew from long ago, they were from my clan. Their ways on doing things, leadership, treatment of others, it was all terrible, and cruel. I wanted it changed, so I challenged them to become leader, I wanted a better lifestyle for us all, but I was beaten, harshly taunted by Croconaw's just like these things here." Totodile had stood up, his eyes shut tight as he growled his next words. "They called me weak; they abandoned me… weak… I'll show you who's weak!" Totodile used Scary face first causing the Croconaw's to jump back and shriek with strange distorted voices. Then Totodile jumped up high over the Croconaw's heads towards the black ocean, but before Totodile could touch the water with his feet, he used Surf summoning up a large giant wave of water at them carrying all four Croconaw's over the sand until Totodile returned the water back towards the ocean with the Croconaw's disappearing over the horizon.
"Hey, you said you were going to fight alongside me. Instead you just stood there and watched." He said as he dusted himself from the sand stuck to his belly.
I lightly scratched the back of my head. "Yeah uh sorry about that, but seeing you take down those Croconaw's alone like that you didn't need my help. You took care of them with ease proving that you are indeed strong, and definitely not weak."
"Thanks Zack, but next time I could use the assist. It's always good to have someone watching your back. Hmm… I must've looked pathetic back there. Those Croconaw's kicking me, taunting me. Saying over and over again that I could never be anything like them." I saw the Croconaw's kick him, but I didn't hear anything, especially no taunting or other voices. Perhaps it was exclusive for Totodile, hearing those voices. In my nightmare I had a fake memory of all of my friends and family dead, the sole survivor and welcoming party. So Totodile must've had sort of the same treatment as I did; fake memories, hearing voices, maybe seeing things that I couldn't see hinted at how Totodile watched the ocean cautiously, backing away on a few occasions, refusing to inch near it. But he wasn't looking at the ocean, no. He was looking up at something, something big. He told me that he did see something standing in the ocean, a creature he hadn't seen before, something he found both disturbing and frightening; a giant Arbok with large disembodied hands floating beside it with the face of a Pikachu smiling down at him and drooling.
"Pathetic? You're far from being pathetic Totodile. But next time, I'll be there to help you out."
"Where is this place? It kinda looks like my old home, but it kinda looks like something you'd see in a horror movie. That I'd know about all thanks to Espeon's scary movie Fridays, especially the strange ones that have hand-like trees everywhere… yeesh!" I explained to Totodile all about this nightmare world being created by Jessica using her ability. I also told him how Jessica had been helping me for a few months now; avoiding Team Doom, letting me know what route to take and how to avoid dangers. "Forcing the victim to kill themselves? Then we gotta find Bayleef and the others before it's too late."
The usual exits of the beach should've been back towards route 02 or towards Accumula Town, but these paths I remembered well were all blocked off by more of those hand trees blocking our way with their giant hands. Just attempting to cut into them spurted out red liquid of some kind… blood or jam, your choice on the matter. So in order for us to avoid cutting off the hand trees finger's and see what lies beneath their skin we chose to search for another exit to this nightmare world.
At the left side of the beach we found a small cave, one I remembered exploring in when I was a child, and when I was just starting out on becoming a member of the Savior's. The entrance was small for a human, but big enough for me and Totodile to enter. It was the only place on this beach we hadn't explored, a possible 'doorway' just like the same one I had entered through to escape my nightmare. If we walked through this, we might end up at someone else's nightmare, another one of my friends we had to save before the nightmare takes them.
Unknown City – Alley – Bayleef's Nightmare
We were in a city we didn't know the name of. An alley with tall buildings towering around us, a dark area with the only light source was the blue cloudless sky above, and car horns echoing somewhere in the distance. This alley was filled with cardboard boxes, old mattresses, and filled to the top trashcans creating a vile rotting smell throughout the alley. It didn't take us long to find the dreamer of this nightmare hiding within a cardboard box with Golurk standing beside the box trying its best to talk some sense into her; Bayleef.
"Golurk, you're here too?" Totodile said, running up to Golurk and taking a peek inside the box to find Bayleef crying and shivering. Not because she was cold, but she was afraid of something.
"Yes Mr Totodile. I managed to escape my nightmare and somehow ended up here where I found Bayleef crying and hiding in this box you see before you."
"How did you escape your nightmare?" I asked, walking up beside them as I watched Totodile try and calm her down.
"As soon as I came to this place, I was in a forest holding the body of my friend Mienfoo. But then I realized this was wrong." Golurk said as it knelt down. "You see I was a Golett at the time my friend was killed, that all of this was wrong. Also, she was still alive in a way, talking to me and saying that I failed her. She along with the rest of the voices I heard all refereed to me as Golett and not Golurk… I knew this was wrong and so I had to leave and find everyone of you. But I didn't leave right away. I stayed with her, just… just to remember her face, how we told stories to our friends where we lived." Golurk's friend Mienfoo was killed by hunters where Golurk lived. Told us stories most nights when it was just me, Espeon and the rest of us while out on missions, kind of like bedtime stories. Golurk's favorite was a story Mienfoo told once, it was about a Butterfree, a blind one that wanted to be the best Pokemon a trainer could have, but it feared that because of it being blind it would be seen as a hindrance, something to slow them down, it trained not only with its moves, but its other senses it could use for battle. For months it searched for a trainer who would accept it, not caring about what it could and couldn't do. At the end of the story, i remember Golurk told us that the Butterfree did find a trainer, but not really a serious trainer in a way, but just someone who was looking for fun in battling other trainers, not wanting to be serious. The Butterfree didn't really care about being in serious battles, it just wanted to be accepted, and it finally did.
"I can hear him…" Bayleef squealed. "H-his voice, I can hear him… he's close by…" Bayleef was shivering I fear, inching further inside the cardboard box and using her leaf to hide from what she was afraid of outside the box.
"Hear who's voice?" Totodile crawled inside the box and cuddled beside her. "Bayleef-"
"Him, my old t-trainer!" Him, I knew who she was referring to. Charles, he was Bayleef's old trainer, a trainer who was both cruel and horrible to his Pokemon. He had treated them in no way a Pokemon or anybody should ever be treated. When Bayleef was a Chikorita, me along with Sakura and Isaac had to escort her to reunite with her trainer not knowing what kind of trainer he was at the time. Chikorita was hard at first, but slowly opened up to us. Then when we finally arrived at the city where we would meet her trainer, she ran off, refused to go with him. She even battled him and his Pokemon to show him that she refused to go back to him. she won the battle and evolved into a Bayleef, and that was the last time we ever saw Charles. She never told us, but she still had nightmares about how terribly she was treated by him; always trying to make her stronger through harsh training, fighting when she was too weak to fight, against Pokemon that could easily defeat her because of either type advantage or how powerful and experienced they were. And most of the time it would end with Chikorita fainting, or left badly injured to the point she couldn't walk for weeks.
"No, he isn't here. This place isn't real."
"B-but I can hear him, he says I need to be punished for running away. He wants to hurt me!" Totodile placed his paw on Bayleef's cheek and nuzzled her affectionately.
"Hey, you know I would never allow anyone to hurt you, let alone that horrid trainer. I would never allow his sorry face to ever come anywhere near you. But this place is a nightmare all of us our trapped inside." Bayleef lifted her head up turning to her mate, tears still leaking from her eyes. "Please, I'm not going to leave you alone in this place for you to suffer."
"Totodile…" She sniffed, turning her head out at the box into the alley. "T-this isn't real?"
I shook my head. "No. So how about we leave this place together." Bayleef smiled, but cautiously crawled out of the box. But when we took about four or five steps she stopped and turned to the right of us. To us we saw nothing but empty trashcans and old boxes, but to her she saw Charles staring back at her, walking slowly to her saying he has found her and would punish her.
Growling, Bayleef used Leaf Blade attack summoning many leaves to shoot at where Charles would be. "He's still walking towards me." She said, still staring at an invisible Charles. "If that had been real, he wouldn't be standing at all, it just fazed right through him as if he were an illusion, I mean he is an illusion, a fake… *sighs* it isn't real…" With that, Bayleef turned away from the invisible Charles and walked on ahead towards the exit of this nightmare with us following behind.
Together we walked down the alley, into the darkness just like we did previously with the other nightmares, and we were now at a new nightmare. Just one more to go until we could escape this place.
Unnamed Library – Gardevoir's Nightmare
In this nightmare we found ourselves surrounded by tall bookcases crammed full of so many books, books upon closer inspection were all gibberish when read, it didn't make sense, like with any other dream. But this wasn't like any other dream, it was dangerous, Perhaps even more dangerous for us traversing the minds of others, so we probably weren't in the clear yet. This was a library, one I didn't recognize, but an empty one void of any life, except for one; Gardevoir.
Gardevoir was sitting underneath a makeshift tower of thesauruses as she was sobbing in place wailing louder the more we neared her and her tower. "Ah, I am approached by… walking books." She said whipping an escaped tear from her eyes. "Books with arms and legs… f-freaks of nature! Books don't have leg or arms… oho no!" Walking books with arms and legs? So in this nightmare she see's us as walking books approaching her. I can imagine what that may be like, but seeing her reaction at us, she seemed frightened. Then again, anything other than a dictionary is off to her.
"Gardevoir it's us, your friends." I said, trying to approach her. But she grabbed a table leg and used it to try to bat me away from her fort she created.
"Stay back vile books of bland literature! You cannot sway me into reading your filthy content with your icky romance, cliché tragedies, boring adventures! The dictionary is THE one true reading material all should praise as the best book ever to exist!"
"Okay, " Totodile sighed. "I have seen Gardevoir say some odd things and do odd things now and again, but this… well, I guess you can safely say that Gardevoir has completely cracked. Nightmare or not, she still acts like this most of the time in the real world-"
"Totodile!" Bayleef interrupted "C'mon, she needs our help, so let's focus on helping her first instead of talking about how uh… odd she can be sometimes." Bayleef approached her and smiled. "C'mon Gardevoir, how's about you come out of your little thesaurus fort and come with us. I bet you'll find a unique dictionary you haven't collected yet."
"Thesaurus?" Gardevoir stopped crying and ask, her anger and voice rising. "Did you say thesaurus? I hate them I HATE THEM!" She screamed using a move to destroy her fort sending them flying in all directions. Thankfully none hit us and missed. Not that it would cause a lot of damage if they did hit us, but still…
"Gardevoir, settle down. It's me, Zack. Zack Raines, remember?" I said gently to her. Maybe she would calm down at least if she remember my name, the sound of my voice if she forgot them while in this dream. She stared at me for a minute or two before shaking her head.
"No! I know who Zack is, and he is not you!" She shouted while pointing at me with her wagging finger. "Zack isn't a book. He is a white Dewott, and YOU are no white Dewott. You are a vile plain old ordinary book trying to persuade me to read your boring content!" Instead of attacking us with her moves or by throwing a book at us, she used her Psychic to rebuild her thesaurus fort and continued to cry and shout at how evil we 'books' were.
"In the cave before we attacked Team Doom, you told me that you brought alone your dictionary, the one you brought along with you to help us fight Team Doom was your lucky dictionary. Don't you remember that?" It was something. I could've told her about her love for dictionaries and the time she brought me to her collection of dictionaries she stashed in the basement of my house. She turned it from an old dusty dark room to a brightly lit room with shelves upon shelves stacked against every wall with dictionaries ranging from different colors, rarities of the volumes, and hm… I guess that's about it. But I decided to tell her about her lucky dictionary instead. I know I could've told her all of that about her collection, but I felt that talking about it would make her realize that we weren't here to hurt her, and we certainly weren't walking books trying to harm her, I wanted her to come back to her senses.
"Wha-!? No way!" She gasped, crawling out from her fort. "Y-y-you must be… 'The Book of ones History'!" Um, I have never heard that book before. So Gardevoir explained for us. "You are a book that knows everything about the reader; a book of legend, a book so many scholars have tried to debunk its existence as just being plain stupid, a book many archaeologists have searched both land, water and sky, from the darkest pit, to the highest peak all in search of the book of legend! So you already know of me, but you shall never break me, vile book! I shall see to it that-"
"Misses Gardevoir." Golurk interrupted her. "Mr Zack is in no way this book of legend you speak of, and neither are we these walking books you think we are. But we including you are trapped in a nightmare no doubt had something to do with that Mew we fought."
Gardevoir lowered her head. Bayleef spoke to her next. "Yeah, we are here to defeat Team Doom. We are not your enemy, Gardevoir. We're your friends." Bayleef walked up to her and extended out her foreleg to Gardevoir. "Don't you remember me? It's me, Bayleef. I remember when you gave me a pocket dictionary for my birthday last year. A cute blue ribbon wrapped around it, and I used that same ribbon to wrap it around my daughter's leaf. Remember?"
Gardevoir's eyes began to tear up; she knelt down and wrapped her arms around Bayleef into a hug. "Oh Bayleef. I do remember giving you that beautiful dictionary for you." Gardevoir looked up at all of us and smiled. "I see you all as you are; my friends. And definitely not those terrible books anymore." Somehow she managed to pull us all down for a group hug. "You guys are all dictionaries in my eyes." We were all back together. And so one last thing we had to do now was to escape this place and get back to finding Espeon and Latias.
The library door was our only way out of this nightmare world, through the double doors and step into the darkness and we would be back outside again. But the problem with that was facing Jessica next. I didn't want to fight her or her to die because of my ability. But maybe I could reach out to her, to free her from Shiny Latias' control, but how? Maybe we just had to defeat her in battle first before she returned back to normal. I would have to leave it to my friends then if I want her to come out of it alive. But it would be risky; the battle could lead to one of my friends getting seriously hurt or end up dead. Then that whole anger thing I get, causing me to lose control will kick in and I might fight to see her dead.
Team Annihilation HQ – Classroom - Jessica's Nightmare
Instead of being in a new nightmare with the others or outside in the real world, I was in another dream. I was alone this time. The setting was inside a large classroom with forty desks all facing a chalkboard with the words written in white chalk 'Quiet, test in progress!' at the far end of the class room sitting at the desk with her head leaning on the desk was Jessica. I walked up to her and touched her shoulder to get her attention.
"Why are you still here, Zack? The exit is just over there. So take it and go…" She was right; at the front of the classroom to the side was the door, the only exit to this room, to this nightmare. So why hadn't she left yet? Instead she just sat there, crying and flinching every so often. Things I couldn't see no doubt, things I couldn't hear, only her. "I belong here. It's the only world I know. You can't hear them, see them, but I hear and see them all the time. I was ignored by both my peers and my parents; I was so lonely without anyone. I grew up and accepted it thinking that was normal, that everyone was always like that. They tell me how I am pathetic, born into all of this believing me to help the team grow stronger, but they see me as a disgrace to Team Annihilation and Team Doom. They what you can't see call me a traitor, Shiny Latias calls me worse, all because… because, I wanted someone to stop her. To stop her from hurting so many innocent lives, it just sickened me what Shiny Latias did to so many people she had captured, her methods of torture. Punishing those who had just made one tiny mistake, or talked back to her. All my life I was told being a part of Team Annihilation that it was for a good cause, but none of it was."
I pulled one of the chairs closer to her so I could sit with her and listen to her words. "She found out about us, how I have been secretly helping you and your friends. She wasn't sure at first, but I guess she must've seen me leave many times before to meet up with you and sent someone or a security drone to follow me, to spy on me. When she revealed to me that she knew about what I have been doing, I was so frightened I froze up, I believed she would kill me, or at least torture me first before being killed by her, but instead she controlled me, instructed me to attack you and your friends whenever you showed up here at the base. I did that, I stood right where your friends encountered me for so many days without any sleep, drinking or eating anything…" She lifted up her head from the desk. Her eyes reddened from crying fixed at the desk in front of her.
"I am trapped here, not because of my nightmare ability, but Shiny Latias still has control over me, I can feel it. I am beyond help. Even if you did try to help me, Shiny Latias' ability will still force me to attack you. And we both know that there is only one way for this to end…"
"No!" I argued. "There has to be a better way. A way for all of us to come out alive together. Please, there must be a way. I'm not going to let my ability kill you!"I didn't want my ability to kill anyone else anymore, it was a terrible thing. I wanted to help her, I wanted to save her, but I wasn't going to give up. Jessica looked up at me, her eyes filled with hope at first, but fell as they filled with sadness, and she had no hope that by the end of the day she would live to see the next sunrise. I didn't want to leave her here without trying. To escape this place and risking her life on fighting her in the waking world, killing her.
"There… there may be another way for you not to fight me." Jessica said as she wiped a tear from her cheek. "The darkness in the nightmare world I create because of my ability, it can either kill you, or send you to another dreamer who has been caught in my ability, and maybe it'll wake you up."
"W-what do you mean?" I asked, and she took my paw with both of hers and warmly smiled.
"You don't want to kill me, and so what I am about to do will make sure that you never will." She leaned in close, and kissed me on the cheek. "I'm happy that I met someone like you. Most of my life I have met terrible and cruel people and Pokemon, I'm glad that I met someone like you, someone who made my life seem a little brighter, even for a little while. Escape this nightmare world, before it consumes you, perhaps forever!" It was all she said before she got up out of her seat and threw her chair at the window smashing it upon impact and taking a run and jump through the window shouting "Go!" before I had the chance to stop her.
Jessica jumped out of the window; she chose to sacrifice herself so that I wouldn't be the one to kill her. From the window where Jessica had jumped out of, that same darkness I had seen many time before in this nightmare world, everything around it started to shatter and vanish in more darkness, spreading out into the classroom, destroying whatever it touched into nothing. I had to run, to escape this nightmare world before I would be trapped in here for who knows how long before anyone could help. I couldn't see it, but behind me I could hear the world shatter into nothingness behind me. And when I finally pushed open the door, the darkness had caught up with me and I fell before I could walk through, then the darkness took me… and then I woke up.
I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by my Pokemon, I was back. I awoke near the edge of the steps of the eleventh floor, I was surprised I didn't fall down and crack my head open. Most of my Pokemon were alright, but Bayleef and Gardevoir were injured from the attack by Jessica.
"Mr Zack, you are alright?" Golurk asked as it helped me up with its large hand. I nodded and still groggy after being in that nightmare world for who knows how long. Then as my body began to reawaken after being in that nightmare world, is started to remember Jessica. I got up and searched for her, and I did. But she wasn't dead, she was… breathing.
"As soon as we woke up from that vile nightmare, she fell unconscious." Gardevoir explained as she picked up her 'lucky' dictionary up off the ground, only to find several pages falling out. Surprisingly, instead of gasping or shrieking at this sight, she just shrugged it off and focused and focused on talking about what happened with Jessica. "We woke expecting a fight from her, but all she did was stand in silence for a short moment before she fell to ground. And then you woke up not too long after she fell."
I walked up to her and knelt down beside her. "Is she… alright?" Gardevoir walked up and knelt down next to me, placing her paw on Jessica's forehead.
"She's perfectly fine. Although I don't see why we should care about her after what she did to us."
I shook my head and told her, I told everyone as they stood around us. "She isn't to blame. Jessica has been helping us fight Team Doom since Mistralton City; evading their traps they set up, their ambushes, she told me about them all so she could get us here to help her fight Shiny Latias. She needed my help to put a stop to her reign of evil for good. Shiny Latias discovered Jessica was helping us out, so she controlled her to attack us here."
"So she's a good guy then?" Bayleef asked as she limped a little closer to us with the help from Totodile who was also limping as he walked.
"Yeah, so look after her for me. Keep her safe." I said to them as I stood up, glancing back at Jessica still hanging in there, still in the land of the living. She was unconscious, but she was alive. I was happy that my ability didn't kick in and see to it that Jessica's life energy would be absorbed into me making me stronger thus ending her life. I had hoped that after Team Doom was defeated along with Shiny Latias, I had hoped Jessica would find something better, a better life away from the fighting, she needed it after all she had been through. "You guys stay here, recover. I'll go on ahead. This won't take long. Only one floor left."
But first I had to find Latias and Espeon; I had to know they were still safe. And hopefully soon the fighting would end. I was still injured, many cuts and potential scars all over and low on health, but I had to continue on and not give up. All I had to do was climb.
To be continued...
Trivia:
Jessica was originally supposed to sacrifice herself to save Zack and his friends from the nightmares, but I didn't really like that idea and so I scrapped it so that Jessica would come out alive in the end. Not only that but I would like to branch out her character more and have her involved in future chapters.
AN: Two more chapters to go with 39 already halfway done so I could be done with that by Thursday and hopefully the last chapter on Sunday. Thanks again for reading, and until next time.