Negrek – Well, it's actually a bit easier to explain most of the stuff than you might think (all of the stuff I've got I've already got a big, major reason for). It's just very, very hard to get Elliot in the right place to figure it out is all :) Second to last chapter should set it up, last chapter gives the overriding explanation. (Even so I admit there's a bunch of stuff that can't be exactly explained, only hinted at, at least, within this story…)
PyroArts – That would certainly explain why Prowler hates nidoqueen, but who knows? Caw's pretty certain that it isn't possible for persian to live around siblings, and Prowler does have that odd head injury.
Chapter Thirty: Decisions
-
So now what?
'So now what' was not exactly what Elliot had expected he'd be thinking after getting the eight badge. He'd thought he'd be buried in fame, head straight to the Plateau and after a string of marvelous battles where not a single pokemon of his fainted, become victorious.
The idea that he might just miss the year's tournament had never occurred to him and the prospect of waiting a whole year until the next one didn't thrill him. What was he supposed to do now? Just travel around and train?
He could go back home.
The thought seemed to come out of nowhere. But it was true. He'd gotten eight badges, no one would think he was a failure or a wimp for going back now.
But…to go back home without even trying at the Plateau? After all the work he'd done, everything he'd had to go through to get the badges? And how could he explain it, really? To drop out now…quit while he was ahead.
Go home. Back to a tiny little place where nothing ever happened, back to school, acting like everything was the same as before.
He…
-
-
At the Center, Elliot heard trainers discussing a large tournament taking place well up north, further up even than Pewter, actually in the mountains there rather than nestled just below. It occurred to him he hadn't fought in a tournament since Michael had brought him to Saffron, and he shook off the memory of the ninetales flying into the wall. That had been just a fluke. Anyway, going to tournaments was something else trainers did, and the great ones in stories, they always won in tournaments, didn't they? Maybe not always at first, but they did in the end.
And…it would mean he had a goal, a place he was heading toward again.
-
-
Elliot followed the path he'd been directed toward, a thin, narrow strip that wove around the uneven ground. He was going by a map he'd been sold in the town before, at the base of the mountains. The town he was going to wasn't too far up further, well within a day's walk, although for some reason the Nurse Joy had been adamant he start in the morning rather than headed out yesterday afternoon after he'd healed his pokemon.
The place looked a little odd, he thought, strangely like the parks in cities, with trees that were just a little thinner and possessing slightly scragglier branches, and nearly invisible marks that looked like faint, ghostly versions of the trimming scars on park trees. Every now and then he saw a rock poking from the ground of the path, small ones that were sometimes not smooth and round. The grass was as thin as in parks and schoolyards, and sometimes there were twigs on the ground, like those places.
The walk was uphill, the ground imperceptibly harder than usual, something Elliot noticed only indirectly as he grew tired. By the time he got to the town, he was grateful for the chance to rest.
-
-
Elliot examined the board, looking for his match. He found in on the left side, around the middle. He was up against another boy, who couldn't have been more than a few months older.
"Dammit!" a boy burst out on the right, his voice a muffled shout, that of someone who wants to yell but is biting it back. "Dammit!"
"Quiet," the girl next to him hissed, looking around.
"Dammit!" the boy said again. He looked like he was thirteen or fourteen. "Every time, every damn time." His hand flung up wildly toward the board. "We're all on one side and the stupid cheri are on the other. Dammit! You know what's going to happen!"
No one else seemed to have noticed the outburst, or if they did, they were ignoring it.
"Quiet," the girl hissed again. "You want more trouble than you've got?"
-
-
Elliot was oddly far along in the tournament, at least, compared to how he'd done last time and his usual battles, but he imagined this was because of his achievements and training. He'd completed the gyms of Kanto, that must have meant something, after all.
Discord had fainted early, with Sono and Din soon following. Howler had kept up longer but ultimately fainted.
The battle began. He chose a pokeball.
"-Ler!"
Prowler found herself somewhere grassy. Before her was a persian.
She flattened down, tucking her tail against her side, her ears back and teeth barred. He took her appearance no different than that of any other pokemon.
"Use slash!" Elliot ordered behind her, his voice meaningless.
She was slowly backing away. Her fur was puffed, but she was bunching up, compressing into herself.
"Prowler?" He was confused, she could hear it in his voice but she was barely aware of it.
"What's wrong?"
The other trainer, wisely, had ordered no attack.
She kept backing away. He tried to circle her, find a way to attack that wasn't guarded by fangs – she moved, kept herself facing him as she shrank away.
"Return."
-
-
Outside the stadium, after losing – the other persian had fallen to Caw, barely, and the following pidgeot had knocked him out quickly – Elliot released Prowler again.
"Prowler, what was wrong? Why were you so scared?" Elliot asked.
((I wasn't.)) She didn't know how to explain. It was.
"You don't need to be scared. Just because you weren't the strongest fighter in your family when you were younger doesn't mean all persian are stronger," Elliot said, guessing on what little she'd said to him and on overheard half-conversations with Din and the other pokemon. He really didn't know who to believe, her or Caw, but didn't see any point in arguing with it.
((He wasn't stronger than me,)) she said. ((That doesn't matter, anyway.))
"You looked scared," Elliot said. "You were trying to get away."
((I would have run if I wanted to get away. I just didn't want him to attack me.))
"Why?"
((Because you don't fight with brothers.))
"You knew him? He was-"
She shook her head, a strange motion she'd learned from him. ((No.))
"But you just said…"
((He was he. A brother. You can't fight with brothers.))
"Why?"
((Because it is wrong.))
"But why?"
She didn't answer for a moment. Then she jumped up, putting her paws on his shoulders so they were face to face. She stared at him seriously. ((The brothers mustn't be hurt,)) she said quietly. She purred, as if trying to comfort him, and licked his nose. ((Don't worry,)) she said. ((If he would have hurt you, I would fight.))
-
-
Elliot headed back inside to watch the rest of the tournament from the stands. He hadn't really understood what Prowler meant – it had seemed like she was willing to fight with the persian they met months ago in Vermillion, and she'd seemed so aggressive to the kitten his sister had found, but…well, he just wouldn't use her against persian. It didn't really matter why. She was his friend, and it wouldn't be right to use her if she didn't want to fight.
The battles were a bit odd somehow. He remembered the boy who was so upset before. He'd said something, about cheri on one side. And, it was odd, but, it seemed like, all of the older trainers were all fighting each other, and all of the younger trainers were fighting each other. There were a couple of older trainers who were on what would be considered the left half, though, fighting with younger trainers, and one or two younger trainers, eleven or so, on the right half, so it must have just been coincidence, Elliot thought. Besides, it didn't really matter, right?
The battles started to get up to the top. A trainer was battling using one of the helmeted psyduck – Elliot had felt a little unsettled when he'd seen it, but nothing bad had happened, it was just strong, able to sweep through the other trainer's pokemon when it was out. It must have been pretty high level, he thought. But then, its trainer always saved it until last, so that it only went up against weakened pokemon or one strong remainder. Sweeps like that weren't strange, just showing good strategy.
Then, during one of the battles, it happened.
The psyduck glowed. Its form began to stretch. Elliot watched, entranced, as the pokemon evolved.
It screamed, the first sound Elliot had ever heard one of the helmeted psyduck make. Half-formed hands clawed at its head. When the light faded it collapsed on the ground, its head split apart.
-
-
"I'm afraid there's nothing that can be done," the Joy said.
"My pokemon is dead?"
"It's comatose. The brain damage is too extensive. You won't be able to use it again."
"Oh…"
"There's nothing that can be done," she repeated. "You'll need to get another pokemon. It will need to be put down."
"Put down? But-"
"It's useless," the Joy said. "It needs to be put down."
"Alright…" the boy said slowly. The Joy turned to go.
"Hey, wait," Elliot said, without thinking. They looked at him. "I-I'll take it."
"You won't be able to use it," she said.
"I understand. I'll take it."
The other boy looked grateful. The Nurse Joy handed Elliot the pokeball.
"You'll need to exchange one pokemon," she told him. "As you can't carry more than six."
Elliot nodded, pulling off Sono's pokeball and handing it over.
-
-
Elliot had acted without thinking. Now he sat quietly up in bed, staring into the dark and thinking about what he was going to do.
The golduck was horribly injured – he didn't need to be a breeder or watcher to notice that. It had just seemed…wrong to just kill it then. But what was he supposed to do if the Nurse Joy wasn't even able to help it?
But this sort of thing had happened before, hadn't it? Gabrielle had shown him her ponyta. He could almost hear her voice as she told him the story. He could bring the golduck to Bill.
He climbed out of bed, bare feet touching the carpet with a sensation of almost surprise after all the time he'd spent getting up to dewy grass. He pulled open his bag and unfolded the map, flicking the lamp on.
He was up north of Mt. Moon now, although a bit to the west of it. He could go through it the normal way, but he'd have to backtrack pretty far, not just going south but west as well. It'd be easier to try to hike through the mountains, he thought, tracing the path with one finger. It was a shorter distance, almost straight west to get to the lighthouse, and just a little bit further north. He'd gone through a mountain range before, the one that separated the towns and cities near the border of Johto from the rest of the Kanto region, and it hadn't been hard.
He folded the map up again and replaced it in his bag, turned the light off, and went to sleep.
-
-
He was already regretting his decision by ten o'clock that morning. His legs didn't seem to have completely recovered from the walk to the town, and the path seemed to only be getting worse. There were stones all over the ground now, and the dirt was getting thin. He had to be careful where he stepped because the rocks would shift under his feet, like they were trying to make him fall. The Nurse Joy had told him not to go this way, that the paths weren't being taken care of any more, but they'd been on the map and when he'd started out it'd seemed okay.
It wasn't just the ground either. The trees were looking really, really weird – sick, almost, all stretched out and with way too many branches, all of which looked so thin he couldn't believe they could really hold themselves up. Some trees, he realized, even had broken, jutting remains of where there had been branches. Were they going to fall on him as he walked? They didn't have thick leaves either – or maybe it looked like that because of the angle, most of their leaves seemed to be concentrated at the top. They were all different sizes too, and as he walked, some of the littler ones started sticking their branches out onto the path, making him shove past them. And there were really weird things that were like a cross between a bush and a tree, low down with twisty stems but with thicker, upward branches and leaves that weren't so close together and were only on the top. And he didn't see any normal bushes at all. He pushed past one thing that looked almost like a vine from a jungle picturebook and yelped because it had jabbed into his hand somehow, drawing blood that oozed out of his palm. Elliot had thought it had bit him or something at first, that it was a grass pokemon, but when he looked closer he realized it had spiky things all over it for some reason.
And, it was like there was no flat clear space except the path. Elliot didn't see anywhere clear he could walk into – everything was covered by woody plants and not-woody-enough little trees and bigger trees. Stuff was weirdly brown too, with old fallen leaves on the ground and so much of the plants exposed rather than covered in leaves. Plus, where there was green, a lot of it was weird plants – like a green carpet-like thing growing on an old fallen tree trunk, really old, falling apart even, and another think that looked sorta like a fan made of dyed green pidgeotto feathers growing out of the ground.
Weird, weird weird. Elliot was wondering to himself why all of this was.
And then two men stepped out in front of him, onto the path.
"Hey kid."
Elliot felt as if he was rooted in place. His eyes darted from side to side helplessly. This couldn't be – how – how could they be standing there in broad daylight like they were real?
"Hand over your – hey!"
Elliot had turned and run, leaping off the path into the strange sort of plants, ignoring as the branches clawed at him. The men stared in surprise for a moment, shocked, but then recovered and gave chase.
Three more chapters to go…
Next chapter: Elliot really should have known better than to run when he was having trouble just walking on the path…and why are both Caw and Prowler worried about what might be in the mountains? And why isn't anything working?