Chapter 18

"The Pokemon Tower?" Gaveriel asked Ciara, skeptical. "And to think, you said to me just last month, 'I am never setting foot in that building, Gav,'" he craned his neck to catch Ciara's eye. She was looking down and away and doing a very bad job of covering up guilt. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Well, y'know, it's good experience, and we haven't been able to train our Pokemon for while, y'know, and I figured that the ghosts are just Pokemon, y'know, not like, real ghosts, y'know—"

"If you say 'y'know' one more time, Ci, I swear," Gaveriel shook his head and laughed. "I have no qualms about it. If you really want to go, I'll go with you. It just seems a bit out-of-character for you, that's all." He smiled warmly and put an arm around her slim shoulders. She grinned up and seemed a bit too relieved at his sudden lack of suspicion.

Inside, though, Gaveriel had already picked apart his sister's intentions and was doing his very best to keep a straight face. She really was terribly obvious when she wanted something—manipulation just wasn't Ciara's forte. Gaveriel admired that in his sister—it was one of the things that made them so different. Being the eldest, Gaveriel was used to lying, cheating, and swindling his way through life in order to keep them safe, something that he fell into all too willingly. Ciara, however, couldn't lie her way out of a wet paper bag. She tried, occasionally, when she truly wanted something bad—which was now—but there hadn't been a single time that Gaveriel had failed to see right through his sister.

Now, she wanted to check out Lavender Town top to bottom, starting with the Pokemon Tower, since that was the hardest point for her, personally—Ciara had harbored an intense fear for ghosts since she was a baby—in search of the two girls. Gaveriel wasn't sure why he didn't completely shut down his sister's search party, as there was no doubt in his mind what she was up to. Following around two girls they barely knew like a pair of stalkers wasn't high on his list of things to do.

But maybe it was because Ciara so rarely got what she wanted, and so rarely wanted anything at all that Gaveriel was letting her get away with it this one time. He didn't even know why she wanted to see these girls so badly—she seemed to have truly disliked them for a stretch—and Gaveriel knew that the only reason why he didn't know why she liked them was because Ciara herself didn't quite know the answer, either.

It was yet another thing that separated the siblings. Gaveriel was quite an introspect, and always knew precisely why he did everything. Ciara could act out an entire day's worth of influential events and not even know her motivation—or truly care to know. She went with her gut instinct, or "female intuition" as she referred to it haughtily whenever Gaveriel called her impulsive.

Now he and Ciara were making their way to the Pokemon Tower. Gaveriel had to politely decline a number of people who were trying to sell them distractingly morbid souvenirs. Ciara seemed interested in a set of bloody, eight-inch knives, but Gaveriel lead her away before the woman who was selling them could catch the glimmer of interest and attack.

"You realize the blood is probably tomato paste," Gaveriel asked her, eyeing his sister from the corner of his eye as the woman yelled "Come again!" from behind them.

"But the point is, bro, that they look cool."

By the time they reached the ominous looking double doors of the Pokemon cemetery, though, Ciara's uppity spunk had entirely died out. Her face looked white, and Gaveriel knew that if she hadn't inherited so much of their mother's stubborn pride, she would have asked him if they could turn back. As it were, she took a deep breath and said, "Awesome. Spooky, but awesome," pushing the door open with one slightly trembling hand.

The entire lobby was abandoned. Gaveriel got a slight twinge of precognitive uneasiness before he shut that part of his doubts out. He himself didn't believe in ghosts that weren't of the Pokemon variety, and wasn't about to start. Beside him, waves of intense wariness and wire-tight tension were rolling off Ciara. She seemed hyped up on three tons of caffeine and sugar, ready to snap and attack at the slightest provocation. Gaveriel made sure his voice was soothing, soft, and non-threatening when he asked, "You want to explore around here a bit before we go to the upper levels?"

He was allowing her a chance to collect her nerves and prove to herself that there were no ghosts in here, but Ciara caught the sign of mercy and rebelled against it ferociously. "I'm not scared, if that's what you think," she said indignantly, straightening her back out and brushing her long hair back over one shoulder. "We can go up the stairs any time. In fact, let's do so now. It's boring down here."

Mentally, Gaveriel slapped his forehead. He should have known that Ciara would never admit a sign of weakness. Resigning himself to follow the auburn-haired girl up the next flight of stairs, he probably wouldn't have caught the scream if he hadn't been paying so much attention, and if Ciara hadn't ceased in here fevered footsteps for a mere second's worth of hesitation at the bottom of the flight. The shriek was so soft and faint that Gaveriel was surprised he had heard it at all.

"Ci!" he hissed, freezing in his tracks and concentrating all of his might on locating the direction the shout had come from. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Ciara asked, alarmed for two seconds before melting into fierce anger. "That's not funny, Gav!"

"No, I'm serious!" he said, but lifted a hand to silence the girl again. He couldn't tell if the sound had come from outside or—upstairs. Knowing their luck, it was the latter.

"Gav, will you just cut it out, I'm not—"

"Shhh!" He insisted, moving to stand beside her and craning his neck into the poorly-lit stairwell.

"—not scared, so you may as well just give it up—"

"I said be quiet, Ciara!" Gaveriel hissed, and then the scream sounded again, much louder this time, but still barely audible. Ciara caught it, though, and her almost-red eyes widened comically to about twice their normal size.

"Holy crap!" she choked out in barely a whisper. "Someone's up there!"

"Let's go," Gaveriel was saying as Ciara and he were already bounding up the stairs. No matter how afraid she was, Ciara would put all her personal worries aside for a chance to fight and help someone in distress. Justice was, after all, the core of their very lives, and often times the only thing that kept the siblings going on, besides each other.

It took them maybe five minutes to dash madly up every set of stairs and sprint through every floor to the next one. The Pokemon Tower's architect must have been a three-year-old, or someone with a sick sense of humor—instead of the traditional one flight of stairs on one side of the building, the layout of the tower had alternating sets of stairs on opposite sides of the tower. Gaveriel and Ciara had to dash up about fifty steps and run across a floor to the opposing side of the building to dash up another fifty and run back to the side they had started on. It was a pain in the ass, to say the least, and by the time they reached the sixth flight Gaveriel was sorely wishing they'd install an elevator.

He was panting pretty hard, which was why he went down on all fours when suddenly he wasn't sucking in air to his starved lungs, but thick, choking mist and fog. Ciara seemed to stumble and pause as well, but was more able to cope with the sudden change in atmosphere than her brother. Gaveriel was bothered by a mild case of asthma, but he'd only had one major attack in his life, and wasn't normally hindered in physical activities. Right now, though, his lungs felt as if they were being constricted by the world's strongest Tangela.

Ciara stopped moving forward and staggered back, coughing, to help Gaveriel to his feet. He closed his eyes for a moment and took in a deep, shaky breath before giving Ciara the thumbs up sign. The two of them half-jogged half-stumbled into the open room on the sixth floor where the mist abruptly thickened. Gaveriel passed right through something that felt solid for a second and completely gaseous the next. He was suddenly covered in something that felt liquid but evaporated into icy-cold air the second he wiped at his face in alarm—something that felt sort of like dry ice, and then chilled gelatin, and then something in between. Ectoplasm, was the first thing that leapt to his mind, and for once his logical side shut up and didn't deny the possibility.

He didn't see Visora laying on the ground and almost tripped over her. She cried out and elbowed him sharply in the knee, causing it to buckle and him to collapse in a heap beside her. She kicked ferociously out at him and he could barely cough out, "Cool it, I'm human!"

After a second's more flailing and struggling she paused—then latched onto his arm and shouted (or wheezed, since she seemed to be in a similar condition of suffocation) "Is that you?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's me—" his sentence was cut off, and suddenly he called out, "Ciara! Where are you?"

"O-over here," came the clearest voice of the three of them somewhere to his right. "Wh-what are these th-things?" She seemed scared out of her mind, but Gaveriel could already feel her reaching for her pokeballs at her waist. He felt a surge of pride in his sister's ability to keep a level head.

Visora's grip on his arm tightened to an almost painful degree as she gasped out, "Elva! She's over there," she paused to cough and compulsively Gaveriel linked an arm under her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. She leaned on him for support, a gesture Gaveriel knew was purely out of necessity. Sure enough, she straightened herself out within seconds and was darting out blind into the mist. Ciara and Gaveriel shot after her after exchanging a glance.

"Cubone," Gaveriel muttered, tapping the button on the Pokeball clutched in his hand at the same instant Ciara said, "Vulpix."

The dual beams of digitized crimson materialized into two Pokemon that instinctively followed at their trainer's heels. Gaveriel marveled at how easily Visora had vanished into the mist—she'd barely taken three steps away from them when they could no longer see her.

"Stay by me, Ci," Gaveriel said, finding that taking many rapid, shallow breaths was more effective than trying to fill his lungs entirely. "I don't want you getting too far ahead."

"Right," she said, coughing slightly and pawing through the dense fog ahead of them. For a brief second the air parted in the wake of her hand and a blessedly clear patch appeared before them—Gaveriel caught sight of Visora's red hair about ten feet ahead—before the fog coiled back into place.

"Vulpix, ember!" Ciara shouted suddenly, and a whirl of flames exploded inches from Gaveriel's left ear. Flinching away and almost falling, he marveled at his sister's problem solving skills as an enormous patch of clear air whirled open ahead of them.

"Excellent!" Gaveriel called, starting forward. "I think the mist ends a little ways ahead."

The two of them took advantage of the open spaces and flew forward. Wondering exactly where Visora had disappeared to and if Elva was okay, Gaveriel found that he was right—he lurched forward and out of the thick fog suddenly. Taking a second to reorient himself, he realized that the fog had been creating a hurricane-esque vortex all around them, and that they were now in the "eye" of the storm.

Surrounding them on all sides was thick, churning bog. There was about a fifteen-foot radius of clear, open air where they were standing now, however—and roughly fifty shadowy figures closing in on Visora and Elva, who were huddled together in the middle, accompanied by a Bellsprout and Poliwag.

The figures defied description. They looked almost human, but at the same time Gaveriel knew they couldn't possibly be. There were times they seemed transparent, and when he blinked they would be solid matter. The form shifted in a way that made him think that the things were just balls of gas taking on different shapes—and then he would reconsider and wonder if they were truly of the flesh and blood. He analyzed all of this in under a second.

"Cubone! Bone Club!" Gaveriel shouted impulsively, throwing his hand out and pointing at one that was reaching a dark hand out at Elva. Obediently the small orange Pokemon leapt in front of him and wound up its swing like a pitcher and batter all at once, performing a full circle of wind-up before releasing its foot-long bone and sending it sailing through the air.

Gaveriel fully expected the thing to fly right through the figure. Naturally, his surprise was complete when it hit target with a solid whock! The figure seemed to explode into a spray of mist, and in its place was the least human-like thing Gaveriel had ever seen; a floating black ball with impossibly large, milk-white eyes and alabaster fangs.

Of course, he thought to himself, feeling foolish. A Gastly. Why didn't I realize it before?

Everyone seemed shocked, even the remaining figures. There was a moment of almost comical silence—and then the Gastly and its remaining comrades attacked.

"Pokemon attacks can hit them!" Gaveriel shouted unnecessarily, as Visora was shouting "Vine Whip!" the same instant Elva and Ciara barked out orders as well.

"Water Gun!"

"Ember!"

The fray was intense. Dark waves of energy flooded the room and made Gaveriel feel weak. Cubone took a nasty blow and seemed down for the count, but Gaveriel crouched beside it and fed it a bottle of potion from his pack and it was up and at it again. Ember and Water Gun seemed particularly effective. They were doing well, but Gaveriel suddenly realized as twenty more Gastlies in the form of the black, humanoid shadows flooded in from the corners of the building that they wouldn't last much longer.

"Everyone!" he shouted, struggling to back towards the thick mist again. "Get ready for one last attack, all together, your strongest move! We have to distract them—and we have to get out of here!"

The girls gave some form of "right," for a response and followed his lead, backing up against the wall of fog.

"Ready?" he asked, and felt his lungs constricting again. He coughed, and was relieved when Ciara started the count down for him.

"One," she said, clenching her small hands into fists.

"Two," Elva near-whispered beside her, biting her lip and standing on her toes.

"Three!" Visora finished, green eyes blazing, red hair flying out behind her as she yelled, "Vine Whip!" fire, water, plant and bone flying forward.

They didn't stop to see if any of their attacks hit target. The second they were done, in near-perfect unison, the four of them lifted their pokeballs and called their respective Pokemon back, turned on their heels, and ran for their lives. Gaveriel could hear the ghosts pursuing them, but didn't chance a look back. Subconsciously he was keeping track of how many sets of footfalls he heard, and was pleased when all four sets reached the stairwell and began bolting down. Halfway down the tower his lungs eased up again and he realized that the Gastlies weren't following them anymore.

They exploded out through the double-doors in the lobby and out into the cool air outside.