2.3. No Game, No Restarts

Reyes could feel his body again, but that didn't mean he could move it. It was a big shame too, because there was an annoying beeping sound that was giving him the mother of all migraines… He gasped and opened his eyes in a rush, remembering everything that happened with a jolt of alarm. Aside from a lingering soreness in every movable part of his body, he was okay—more than that, he was still alive, which was always a win in his book. He turned his head as best he could and saw that he was in a Pokémon Center room. If he had to guess, he was in Mossdeep; it made sense considering that that was where they were headed last. He was lying on a bed with water being transferred intravenously into his wrist, and the beeping noise was coming from a heart monitor.

A Chansey bustled through the door, startling him slightly. He followed her with his eyes as she methodically adjusted things here and there, checked readings, tidied this and that, and it was when she was refilling the water supply that her eyes met his. She gasped in surprise and he grimaced.

"I apologize," she said in a timid voice, nearly dropping the gallon of water she was holding. "How do you feel?"

"Hurts," he said through his teeth. "Everywhere."

"Well, you did just recover from a bad poisoning alongside other injuries," she pointed out as she set a wooden bowl of some sort of soup on the nightstand. "This will help with the pain, but please only drink it when you're sure you have the strength to."

"You could've just…you know…" He weakly pointed to the I.V. bag.

"This is better when eaten." She finished checking up on things and started to leave. Reyes fought to sit up as realization struck, but quickly flopped back down with a pained grunt.

"Wait. Did you find another Pokémon with me?"

"Another Pokémon?" she repeated, confused. "No? You just washed up on the shore—you were alone with the remains of a boat. Did you have somebody with you?" He turned away to hide his concern.

"No, I was just wondering." He sighed and closed his eyes as the door shut. Dominic was gone—the issue was whether that was good or bad. Good, he saved himself and went off to sulk somewhere; bad, he didn't. With the condition he was in, he didn't have much room to worry about others, and besides, even if Dominic had somehow died, Hell would send him back in an instant for fear of his contagious stupidity. Still, he worried as per his nature, and even if he didn't worry about Dominic, there was the fact that he was back in a revolutionary-controlled city. It was a good thing that Sceptile were a common sight in Hoenn.

It took him a while, but finally he found the strength to sit up. His arms were bandaged where his leaf blades used to be, meaning that they had completely fallen off, and judging by the feel of his back, his seed pods were gone too. No matter, he would grow them back in a short while. He reached over and took the bowl that Chansey had left into his hands. It was pleasantly warm and smelled sweet, like cinnamon, but was a very thick and pale white. He took a small sip, amazed by the thin texture: it tasted like egg, better than it smelled, and it didn't take long for him to finish it. True to her word, the pain in his muscles faded to near nothingness, but he was still exhausted in more ways than one. He left the bowl on the nightstand and laid back down. Dominic, he decided, would be fine—he'd lasted as long as he had on his own, so what would a little bit more time matter…?

Reyes was knocked onto his back yet again by Eoin. He grinned as Reyes spat out a wad of fertilized soil. "Aw, now you're full of crap too," he joked. Eoin was Brendon's Manectric, always full of energy and of pesky cereal box jokes. Even so, he was the one that always managed to lighten the mood. He was the only child among Brendan's Pokémon. If Reyes remembered correctly, he was nine in Pokémon years, making him seven years younger than Reyes. "Hey, ya know why the Ducklett crossed the road?"

"Shaddup," Reyes muttered, smoothing his head leaf out between his claws. He lowered his head and Reyes wrapped his arms around Eoin's neck, allowing himself to be pulled up.

"You used to your body yet?"

"It's a work in progress. It's still weird… Like, one day, I was a Treecko, and now I'm not. I can still barely comprehend it."

"Well, it's a big deal to evolve," he said. "More so whenRIIIIIP

Reyes jolted awake at the sound of tearing in the real world. He rolled over and spotted a dark shadow tearing at the window's curtains. "Dominic," Reyes said into the darkness.

"Ban…" There was another rip, then bright red eyes looked back at him. Reyes was instantly on edge.

"You're not Dominic."

"Banette," it said in a raspy but muffled voice. It punctuated the word with another rip on the curtains. "Ban."

Reyes sat up, becoming more aware of his missing leaf blades. He wasn't going to grow them back in the middle of the night even using Synthesis—in fact, although he did have a large move pool, they were weakened by the lack of sunlight. That Banette couldn't have picked a worse time to sneak up on him. "You're…a rebel," he realized with a jolt.

"Banette, ban," it muttered with another rip before releasing the curtain. By the movements of its glowing eyes, it looked like it was walking, yet Reyes couldn't hear any sounds. Then he shivered as it grew closer, then it was against his ear, voice clear and loud: "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE."

Reyes threw himself to the side as a distortion hit the bed, warping it inwards and twisting the metal frame into coils. He stood up and pressed himself against the wall as those red eyes appeared a couple of feet below the ceiling. He gritted his teeth and, hoisting the window open, jumped through. He was on the second floor, but he had healed enough to absorb the impact. Banette floated through the window into the moonlight's path and gave Reyes a ghastly grin before distorting the grass at his feet. He ran to the side to avoid it and scrambled up a light post to even out their heights and released Razor Leaf, but they just passed through Banette's body like air. Ghost-type, he thought, working his jaw. Had he still had his blades, he could've used Night Slash or Pursuit, but without them…

"Ban!" it cried as it gathered its Ghost-type energy into a large purple ball. Reyes dodged out of the way as it struck the light post, reducing the steel to smoldering remains, and again as it melted the parking lot's asphalt. He watched Banette make a third and made a move to go backwards before he tripped over something. Reyes fell flat on his back with a whump and the Shadow Ball hit him head-on. The damage was not crippling, but Ghost-type attacks had the nasty side-effect of siphoning the victim's life energy—already he could feel himself losing power. He pressed his hands to the ground and created vines just below Banette. Again, they passed through its body easily.

He growled, taking up a rock and throwing it. Amazingly, it hit Banette in the head, causing it to bob in the air like an apple in water. Fling, Reyes realized, then he took up a rock in each hand and lobbed both. Banette reacted quickly this time, repelling them with distortions. Reyes needed something to attack it with. The grass and the light post were burnt to crisps— Wait, that made no sense: Ghost-types corroded things, not burned them. Reyes moved behind another light post as it released another Shadow Ball. The steel heated below his claws, burning his skin, and he skipped away. Whether it was doing it on purpose or not, the Banette was superheating things—he could use that to his advantage.

"Banette?" it said in confusion as Reyes started coughing into his hands. It took a while, but he managed to expel three large seeds. He cocked his arm and tossed them at Banette with all his strength. It giggled as it distorted them, but it waited a little too long and they ended up inches from its body. The seeds exploded from the heat. They still would have blown up naturally, but if the Banette did it itself, it wouldn't have been expecting it. It was knocked from the air and hit the ground with a light poof. Reyes slid across the dirt to hold it down.

"Ban!" It gave Reyes the finger. Reyes used his vines to bind its limbs to the ground. After testing them for a few seconds, he was sure they would hold.

"—Where is the King?"

This time, its zipper pulled back, revealing a blue light within its mouth that was surely its life force. "DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT STUPID TRAITOR! BLABBED TO ALAKAZAM, GOT TWO OF US KILLED ALREA—" Reyes thrusted his hand into its mouth, causing it to choke and sputter, and grabbed hold of its life force. Its zipper closed around his wrist to zip shut, tearing away the skin of his arm and hand, but he pulled its life free and it fell limp. He released it to the sky and watched it disappear into the night like a Volbeat.

He walked down Mossdeep's streets in the dark night, the pavement cold beneath his feet. He stripped away the bandages to free the sprouts of leaf blades, and he could feel the flowers on his back slowly growing into seed pods. It would take a while, but if he could find a good resting spot by daytime, the process would go by quicker. That would be one of the upsides of being a plant, while the cons of poison, frost, and anatomy still existed. He watched the street lights dwindle until he was passing through a quiet residential area. The houses lights were off save for one, and although he couldn't hear any words inside he could hear laughter. It made him homesick for Ever Grande. After Brendan, they were all he had in regard to family. Now he just had Dominic—the thought made him an entirely different sort of sick, but in a sort of endearing way.

"What'cha readin'?" Brendan asked, sitting next to Reyes on his bed. Reyes angled the picture book so that Brendan could see it. "Hmm… A grocery store?"

"They're eating plants!" he cried, appalled. Although Brendan couldn't really understand his words, he could understand Reyes.

"You mean the vegetables? That's normal," he laughed. Reyes pouted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Aw, c'mon, what's the problem? Think they'll eat you or something? Treecko doesn't taste very good, you know."

"Chht," he muttered, peeved and dismayed. Brendan nudged his shoulder.

"Really, Rey, it's just the circle of life: people eat plants, then when the people die their bodies help feed the plants."

"Really?" Reyes asked, astounded. He didn't know much of the world yet, since he was closer to hatchling than evolution, so every bit of information Brendon gave him was like a revelation from Arceus itself.

"Yeah, that's how it is," he grinned. "Life's learned to work itself out even without us humans messin' things up. But anyway, let's go—Mom's made salad tonight!"

That, Reyes thought, rubbing his temples, will get annoying.