This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[11-3] Take Over the Controls
Laina Fauder thought this sucked.
It sucked being stranded in the middle of wild Pokémon-infested Eterna Forest. It was a gloomy wasteland unlike Floaroma, the ground coated in decopo— decom— dead stuff, enough that it made her skin crawl thinking of what might be munching on it from below. And she could barely see a thing, because only tiny spots of sun dotted their path forward, or backward, or whatever dang way they were going.
It also sucked having to stop every few moments just to make sure everyone who should be following her was still there. Raven was right behind her, dragging her sickle low through the leaf beds, so at least someone still took her lead.
And it sucked, most of all, to have to learn how to battle Pokémon!
A Roselia leapt from the creepy underbrush to block their path. It lunged without any regard for its own safety, which for one she thought was completely irresponsible. She needed to counterattack. The gears of time slowed.
In the pitch-black simulation of her mind, glowing stands rose from the ground around her and blasted light in her face. Slash. Psycho Cut. Night Slash. Quick Attack. Others glitched and blurred, the ones she'd seen Raven use in her weeks of spectating but for the life of her couldn't remember by name. Her head snapped between one of the displays and their target.
"Right, umm, we need a counterattack!" said a version of her in her head. "Quick Attack! That makes her go really fast, right, so she won't get hurt before she can hit the other Pokémon? I've seen Ciel use it like that!"
"No! It's super weak. We need to time the attack right and use another," argued another voice.
"All Pokémon are weak to something! We need to use a weakness!"
"Oh yeah? And what's it weak to, smart aleck?"
As the voices argued, she realized time hadn't fully halted. Roselia reeled back its poisonous bouquet to attack, and Raven wound up of her own accord. Her thoughts weren't racing fast enough to stop their trudge towards a collision. Imagined spotlights revealed them amidst the void.
Realizing she was out of time, Laina scrambled for an answer, choosing Psycho Cut against all the other suggestions inside. But her brain had to run.
Her mental image broke into a sprint, arms grasping forward for the decision in the dark. No matter how fast she ran, it barely moved closer to her. The two Pokémon were about to clash.
"Dang it, dang it! Stop hesitating and use it!" she shouted to herself.
Psycho Cut raced towards her, slammed into her mental body, and shattered. All at once, she escaped from her mind's eye and raced towards the real world. The thought traced her brain cells to her mouth, which shouted the name of the move with all the gusto she had heard from her brother.
Too late.
Raven sheared savagely through the leaves on Roselia's crown with her sickle, but she took an immediate dose of poison from the tainted petals that caught her in the cheek. The recoil of the exchange sent both Pokémon sliding from the impact point, and Laina was left scrambling in the dust.
In her head, she screamed. She tried, over and over and over and over again, but she could never seem to decide the right call in time. Her brother made it look so easy, so natural, all the time, like Pokémon battling was some second-nature instinct and not a barbaric dance of strategy and pain. By the time she decided, the Pokémon she was supposed to be commanding had acted five seconds ago. Their mental strategy was beyond what she could comprehend.
Wounded and aware that it couldn't finish the fight without taking more hits itself, the Roselia spun on its heel and fled back into the creepy underbrush. Raven twitched, then fell, panting heavily from the poison—no, toxin—coursing through her. Her rage never slowed, urging a snarl at nothing in particular. It wasn't because of the battle, that much she knew.
Raven was jumpy. She started more fights with the wilds than they did with her. It was like she was lashing out at anything she saw, and Laina was real lucky that she hadn't become a target yet. She had nothing to say to make it any better.
Laina tore through Ciel's backpack and found a dwindling supply of antidotes. It was the fourth or fifth time her mistakes had left Ciel's Pokémon infected, and she had already used all their spray bottles, leaving only a clinking pile of syringes. She eyed their needles warily, then shoved it back into the bag.
"We've gotta have something better. Maybe a Pokémon can do something about it?" she asked.
"Oh yeah?" chimed in the nagging doubt in her head. "Sure sounds like a big fat long shot."
She ignored it and checked through Ciel's broken Poké GEAR. Why he still used it was a mystery, but she managed to coax it into its Pokedex function to look up each of his team members for an outline of their skills. Typhlosion? All it did was explode fire and scratch things. Scizor, she learned, was Steel-type, and was completely immune to Poison, something she wished she'd checked half a day ago, right after she realized trying the big, terrible Staravia wasn't an option. She finally found an answer on the page for Lilligant, the newest member of his team.
"Aroma… therapy. Supess- suppresses poisons, electric parlis— para— shock thingy, and other ailments by blah blah blah inducing the regenerative effects of Pokémon sleep. But it heavily exhausts the Pokémon that uses it," she explained to herself.
She jerked when the Poké Ball beam lept out onto the dark forest floor. Nobody ever said the balls shook, and she hadn't gotten the hang of it.
The bulbous Pokémon appeared, flashing red one moment before her real colors came through. Although a thick canopy hung over the forest, leaving only isolated pools of sun within the maze, her body seemed to steal every last ray it could and sparkles in return. She twirled first thing out of her Poké Ball, and then once her eyes caught on Raven, she swooped to meet her.
"Alright, use— what are you doing?" Laina's was cut off by the Lilligant shoving herself against the Absol and rubbing her, um, hips into the heaving Pokémon's side. A cool scent wormed up her nostrils and made a tangle of her nose hairs.
Raven snapped at the contact, nearly biting a leaf right off the Lilligant's torso. The Pokémon twirled out of reach and began a routine of twirls and sways, sliding back closer with each hip rotation as if no one would notice.
Laina, jaw still slack, asked, "So, can you use the aroma thing?"
Lilligant tilted its head, clearly not understanding. Right, Ciel mentioned something about this, how Pokémon couldn't understand words until way into their training. To compensate, she engaged in a game of charades. Laina sucked in a big gulp of air and sighed in content. No response. She laid down and faked a pleasant nap. Also nothing, though when she opened her eyes again, the Lilligant was reclining on the ground in front of her. The Pokémon matched her when she stood back up and danced in her direction instead of Raven's.
"This is pointless," she said, deciding to grab one of those syringes and, taking advantage of the distraction, jab it into Raven's neck. Yanking her hand away from the toothy response, she stepped back, wiped her hands together, and huffed.
"Alright, big lug, the coast is clear. We have to get moving to get to Eterna by, like, tomorrow," she said.
When she looked over her shoulder, there was no one. She'd assumed he'd been following her, but looking away so long had made her lose track of him—it had happened a double-digit number of times on their hike already.
"Ciel! Ciel!" She shouted between her palms and picked up the pace, running beneath stripes of sun to scour the empty forest. "Come on! We have to—"
Her feet slowed when she saw him, and her expression fell to nothing. The shell under the shadow of a tree was her brother.
He had retreated somewhere she couldn't find. It was like coming home from school to an empty house and a cold dinner in the fridge. She was just sitting alone, waiting with uncertain breath for someone to come back, and the most she could do was wait and cry and pretend like nothing had changed.
Soft steps carried her to him, and she found a soft patch of grass to sit on, ignoring how much it would ruin her skirt. The chill of the forest fell on her shoulders like a pair of uncomfortable hands, unable to kindle her inner fire enough to fight it back. She still had some embers left, at least, while his flame had completely burnt out.
His legs were limp, his back was hunched, and the only thing that proved he was still alive was his ragged breathing. For some reason he was looking at his Trainer Card locked in his bandaged hand. His other arm was still busted in a sling.
Laina swallowed a lump as she saw the skin peeking out from inside. It was a horrible purple-yellow-green. He must've hurt himself again, and even though he didn't act like it, somebody needed to check it soon. They would've done it at Floaroma if she wasn't such a stupid mess.
When word got around that something happened, there were reporters slamming on their doors and cameras through the windows. She would've taken him to a little clinic, but she got so steamed thinking about the paparazzi picking at his wounds that she dragged him out the door and demanded Ren and Eva hold the mob back. At the time it felt right, but now they were a day and a half into Eterna Forest and his arm was only getting worse.
She clenched the grass in her fist when she looked at him again. For some reason her blood ran hot, and she didn't fully get why. Maybe it's because, when she thought of Ciel in that black stage of her mind, she saw a tall, strong, kind, smiling tower of coolness and action, the Pokémon at his side able to take on anything. It was like a myth realized. He was her very own superhero, and that was proven over and over since they got to Sinnoh.
Or maybe it was just because he wouldn't say why. She pressed and she begged, but he refused to say anything about Floaroma. He wouldn't even pick up his Poké Balls, like he couldn't look his Pokémon in the eye. Her only option to make it through the forest alive was to pick them up herself.
All she wanted was to help him, to bring him back some happiness, but the statue under the tree was just that. A lifeless sculpture who told no truths or lies.
Why won't you tell me?
He finally looked up, and there was nothing in his pupils. He wouldn't say, or do, or be anything.
Why don't you trust me?
Her only connection back in time was the dirt caked under the nails of a bandaged hand. That was all that remained of a day he hadn't yet washed away.
When he finally slipped from her hug, he looked for a perfect little spot.
Even as local firefighters rushed by with big buck toothed Pokémon to douse the fire, he kept wandering until he found it. She followed him away from the ruined forest, which became nothing but a gray stain on the horizon. It was like the pillars of smoke rising from below were actually pouring from above.
Once he found a place, he started digging. His bad arm hung free of its sling, bruised and purple and dripping at his side, and his only usable hand sported a bleeding cut in his palm, but he dug and dug and dug through the soil. As he gently unearthed flowers to set them aside, his face remained unchanged. The burning smell lingered beneath her nose while she hung back, unable to process what he was doing.
No shovel, no trowel, he just pushed his fingers into the dirt and dug. A mound grew behind him, along with a smaller pile where he stored the unearthed colors. She didn't know what to do, what to say. It was times like this that she'd normally ask him or Mom for help, but now she didn't feel like she could ask anybody.
When she stepped closer, tiptoeing around the blossoms to the best of her ability, she saw how much he was trembling. Her mouth dry, she finally found a simple question that some part of her knew the answer to. "Why are you digging?"
"Hector likes flowers," was all he said.
The best she could do was help dig, and because no one else was, she did. The joints of her fingers locked after a while, and burned a little more later, despite how cold the earth was. It got colder and harder the deeper they went to the point that her knuckles ached trying to break it. She wanted to stop, but she couldn't let him do it himself.
A shovel speared into the opposite side of the hole. Ciel didn't look up, but Laina did, and saw a woman wrapped in floral wreaths, some clearly marred by thorns. Her soft face and flowing posture betrayed how buff she was, and she started to shovel without another word. They created a pit as big as they needed-not even Laina's inner voices called it what it actually was.
She stared into it, teetering on the edge and afraid it would swallow her whole. Suddenly, her brother placed a hand against her shoulder and pushed her. She stumbled into the arms of the wreath lady, who pulled her away, far away, maybe even a kilometer, from someone who really didn't need to be alone.
The woman found a clear spot between the flowers and, like a gentle behemoth, nestled between them without so much as a petal out of place. Laina found her own seat beside her, following the example. She was the one who spoke first, and not quickly. "T-thanks. For helping us. Ma'am."
"My pleasure, young lady," she said. Laina could barely understand her. Her clunky brain struggled to pass around the twang-heavy syllables to find a match, especially messed up as she was.
Across the field, on a backdrop of ash, Ciel moved alone. A crowd had followed the firefighters from the town, but no one answered his strains and groans as he dragged something towards the pit. They just stood and watched like statues.
When it finally became too hard to ignore what exactly Ciel was doing, she locked her vision between the angle of her outstretched legs. Her eyes boiled over.
"A-a stranger shouldn't have to do that," she choked out.
The woman merely pointed elsewhere in the field, directing Laina away from the awful scene. Her index finger landed on what looked like a small hill awash in the dull rainbow. Expanding her focus, Laina realized there were similar hills dotting the plain, each slight enough to be ignored but bold enough to be remembered, especially because each seemed to have a thicker coat of flowers than the surrounding ground. As she put the pieces together, her sinuses melted until she was a full-on mess.
"The townsfolk like to come north to create graves," the woman said, which made her tremble. "We bury our Pokémon here because the spirits of the flowers will protect them. I like to keep them healthy, and plant new ones when they wither."
One of the wreaths, a small one around her wrist, wiggled and came free. It was… a Pokémon. An absolutely puny creature who formed a ring by holding its own blossom-laden tail in its arms and hovered. For some reason, it floated to her and helped wipe some of the wetness from her cheeks.
"Do your best to cry for the Pokémon, young lady. Not everyone allows themselves to, and that just makes the tears come by more often," said the woman.
"It's not just the Pokémon," she managed. His Rhydon—Hector—had that dumb stupid face that she never got tired of watching while he played with sticks or rolled snowballs or tackled Ciel like he hadn't seen him in years.
But he wasn't her friend. She had nowhere near the bond him that Ciel did, merely sitting on the sidelines to understand why exactly Trainers and Pokémon did the things they did. What mattered was that Hector was his friend, and that's why she was crying. "I didn't know what to say to him. I didn't say anything. He's been protecting me, and he wants me to have fun, and when something bad happened, I didn't do anything. I don't even know what happened."
He was over burying one of his teammates, his partners, and what was she doing? Sitting with some woman she didn't know, watching shadows crawl across the sky? Leaking out her nose so much she couldn't think?
"What can I do?" she sputtered.
"Make the decisions he can't." Her attention fell on Laina, full of honest joy. "Grief doesn't weaken you, but it does steal your focus, and it makes it difficult to think about so many things at once. If you really want to help him, be his hands. It's up to him to trust you with that responsibility."
Laina glanced at the ground in front of her, and her eyes were drawn to a pair of brilliant green blooms, standing just a bit taller and healthier than the ones around them.
That was the first thing she could do, before they left Floaroma. He still needed to send those flowers.
That was the main thing on her mind when she finally returned to him, sitting in front of a decorated mound of soft earth. It had been replanted with colors, and a single gift marked where Hector once was: a little house-shaped piece of brick, standing in harmony with the petals.
Taking his hand in both of hers, she tugged him from the base of the tree, which showered them in leaves from above. They just stared at each other, as she tried to pump her brain faster to take the lead. "Let's go. We should get as far as we can before dark, right?"
His neck barely twitched, which she interpreted it as the weakest tilt of his head. He didn't even know where they were going, no matter how many times she had said it.
"Eterna, remember. We've gotta get you to the," she paused, "the hospital, for your arm. Don't want it to get infected, right?"
She knew from the spidering veins that it was too late already. It was just stupid optimism to convince herself that things were okay. She tried her real best to believe that.
He nodded, slow enough that she wasn't sure he was moving at all.
She frowned, but only on the inside. Raven, shoulders still low and tense, and Lilligant, forever dancing and oblivious, waited for a command. She hated being a Trainer and didn't feel right giving them orders.
But Ciel Fauder didn't have that trouble, and for the time being, she and him were one and the same.
I was really excited for this volume to advance the established mysteries of the story, plus we get back to Ciel and Laina after a really impactful event. Perhaps it was mean of me to cut away from them like that after Volume 9, but I think it improved the effect!
I think I haven't said this in a while, but I'm always open to comments and I love seeing people's thoughts on my stories. If you have anything to say or want a few questions answered (with as few spoilers as possible, of course), leave me a note and I'll respond pretty quickly!
Come back later for the beginning of Volume 12 with Part 1: Friends From Afar. See you someday!