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Chapter 82

Why I Did Not Return

I didn't expect that I would be gone for so long.

So many months ago, I left behind my only friends and promised that I would return. I told them that I would bring them back someone they cared for deeply because I wanted to thank them. They helped me understand why the civil world is able to function with many species working together instead of fighting amongst each other as they did in my old world. I had previously thought that a Cubone and Zorua working alongside one another was not possible. I thought that the Zorua would have killed the Cubone in a moment of distraction and made a meal out of the flesh from the Cubone's corpse. But because of their efforts, they made me realize there is a way for multiple species to work together. They rely on communication and cooperation, making it so that they can combine the best of their abilities together to create the best of outcomes. They complement one another, both in strength and in weakness.

When I discovered that, I had to find Syn after he was stolen from the Plagued Ones. He was a vital part of the group and provided both enthusiasm and unique ideas that could only come from a mind as young as his. His world had not become boring because his imagination remained active. No other member of our group could make the same claim. So I left to retrieve him and bring back that strength. In doing so I knew I would deprive my friends of my own strength, my ability to remain rational in situations due to a lifetime of living in the ruthless feral world, but I knew I would return. Their remaining individual strengths could hold the group together. They would only need to be without my strength for a short while. I knew I could find Syn in a reasonable amount of time. Becoming a Mienshao not long after I made the decision helped.

I followed the Plagued One swarm as it left Aurora Town. I went wherever it went. I got very little sleep as I did so because I only slept when it was dormant. It was only like that for maybe three hours a day. But I still carried on and as I did so, I often pondered how I would retrieve Syn from that massive cloud of Plagued Ones without becoming infected myself. I tried many things, such as flinging objects at it or waiting for the swarm to descend upon another town so I could attempt to find Syn amongst the hundreds of Pokémon. I was always careful to avoid their touch, but I would often notice they wouldn't bother to attack me. They were disinterested in me most of the time for a reason I couldn't explain. Because of that searching the swarm was easier than I thought it would be. But nothing I did helped. I could not find Syn. He was not in the swarm as a regular Snivy or as a Plagued One. He was nowhere to be found.

I began to question my efforts after about a month of chasing after that swarm. I was making no progress and I was only hurting my friends in the process. I did not know how Terron and Novus were doing, but I had a feeling that with what happened last I saw them, it could be nothing good. Their lives had been ruined the Plagued Ones. My decision to leave them behind had probably put them in despair even further.

I decided that it was best to head back to my friends. I did not know if they were still where I last saw them, but I would find them one way or another. My quest to find Syn was going nowhere and my friends did not deserve to have me out of their lives any longer.

But just as I was to solidify my thoughts on abandoning my efforts to find Syn and leave behind that plagued swarm I had been following for roughly a month, I decided I would give one last effort to rescuing Syn before I abandoned my mission. I would try to get him back one more time before I returned to the ones I abandoned.

So the next time a swarm attacked a city, I ran into the swarm and looked for where the most amount of Plagued Ones were gathered. I hadn't gone after the main part of the swarm before because I was worried they would devour me. There were always so many like a cloud and I didn't think I could fight them all in previous times. But I wasn't scared this time. This was going to be my last attempt to find and save Syn and I had to make it count.

So I ran into the most concentrated part of the swarm. There were dozens of Plagued Ones surrounding me, all of them staring at me with their glowing eyes. They didn't want me there and wanted to kill me. But in there I saw what I had been looking for so long. I found a Dragonair Plagued One wrapped tightly around Syn.

Miraculously, he was unharmed, though sleeping. There were no scratches upon him and for whatever reason, none of the Plagued Ones bothered to attack him. When I saw him, I was quite overjoyed to see him.

However, then I realized he wasn't exactly the same as I had last seen him. Instead of being a Snivy, he was now a slightly larger creature of similar body. He had more leaves growing out of his body and he no longer held a child-like appearance. He seemed more similar to Terron and Zekra, somewhere between child and adult. It did not take me long to understand he had evolved, just as how I had not long ago.

Even still, I knew it was him. I knew it could be no other Pokémon. Even the aura radiating from this Servine, though weak, was the same as Syn's when he was a Snivy. I didn't understand why he had evolved, but I decided not to think about it. He was Syn and I had found him.

I threw a ball of aura at the Dragonair and made it disappear, making it drop Syn. Other Plagued Ones swarmed to grab him, but I was too fast for them and got Syn before them. Then with him in my paws, I ran away from the swarm and out of the city. Some of them chased me and they followed me for many miles, but they could not catch up to me. I refused to let them. Even when my body felt weak my fear made me keep running. I couldn't let the Plagued Ones steal Syn away from me again. And after a while, the Plagued Ones gave up and went away.

When I was alone again in a glade, I finally stopped running and took a moment to relax and feel happy that I had finally found Syn. After all this time, I had found him and saved him from the Plagued Ones. Relieved that I had finally found him after my relentless searching, I shook him awake after I set him down on the grass. He did not wake, which worried me, but I knew he was still alive. But instead of wait for him to wake up on his own, I only picked him up and headed back to Aurora Town with him in my arms. There was no reason to keep my friends waiting for me. I had found Syn and I had accomplished what I had set out to do.

I hurried back to Aurora Town as fast as I could, resting along the way whenever I absolutely had to, and continued to move along as fast as my legs could carry me. I let Syn rest as I carried him, deciding not to bother waking him. I could worry about him when I could actually get to my destination. He would be safe with me. I would guard him with my life.

I returned to Aurora Town within a week. However, when I got there, I found that there was no one to be found. The streets were empty, the buildings were unoccupied, and even the Fellowship was abandoned and completely free of supplies. It was empty everywhere I checked.

When I realized that, I honestly didn't know what to do. I imagined the Fellowship would still be there. And yet it was gone, just as how Terron and Novus were. I did not know where they had gone. When I realized that, I had no idea what to do with myself. I felt dizzy and panicked, as though a large predator were about to jump out of one of the buildings and kill me right there. I set Syn, who was still asleep, on the ground in front of the Fellowship and paced around, not sure what I wanted to do. I had been certain that Terron and Novus would still be in Aurora Town by the time I returned. I did not think they would go anywhere else. And yet they had. They and the entire Fellowship had disappeared without a trace. They could have been anywhere.

I did not know what sort of direction to take, now that everyone I had known was gone. I was alone with a comatose Servine who showed no signs of waking. I told myself that I had to remain rational and that I could find Terron and Novus again, but then a voice stopped me from thinking more. The voice told me I never should have left behind my friends and that now thanks to my decision I might not ever find them again. It would not leave me alone and spoke to me in a voice that sounded almost like mine. I was not used to this. There were never voices in my head that argued with me before. Before everything in my head were my own thoughts and I agreed with them. I knew they were right and there was no pain in saying they were. Now there was a voice that was telling me things that brought me pain. The words the new voice said brought me guilt and made me question all of my previous decisions during my time as a civil. I argued with it and told me to leave me, but it would not. It only continued to tell me I was wrong to leave Terron and Novus. Hearing my other voice talk back to me made me feel more panicked and confused. I felt I might sprint off into a random direction and keep running because of how much of a troubled state I was in.

That was when Syn woke up and things became worse.

It took him a moment, but his eyes did open and I immediately knew something was not right. His eyes were glowing an ominous red. Soon after this happened, black oozed onto his body and streaked across him, invading parts of his body so that they were corrupted. Not only that, but his aura had changed. There was now a sinister vibe to it, like there was a dark shadow surrounding his true aura. It felt very similar to the aura the Plagued Ones and the Mystery Dungeons gave off. I remember backing away as soon as I felt these things, and began to hiss in a threatening manner, making my fur stand on end. It was not something I had done for quite some time. It was an entirely involuntary reflex and I couldn't help but feel ashamed of myself. Perhaps I was becoming a feral again as Jade had warned me since I had in a sense abandoned society. The last time I had spoken to anyone was when I had told Terron and Novus about my journey.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before I followed King's footsteps and became a feral again, making both my friends' and my own efforts to become civil pointless.

I watched Syn blink a few times before he finally became aware that he was awake again. He stood up when he realized that and looked around, staring at everything around him with both confusion and horror. Then he saw me and stopped moving.

I grew scared. I thought he was a Plagued One now. Maybe he was not one completely, but maybe he was close to it. Maybe there were phases. I felt that I had lost Syn and that the one looking at me now was nothing but a monster pretending to be him.

I struck at him before I could understand what I was doing. I attacked him by trying to hit him across his face with the long fur that now runs down my arms. But instead of be hit by my fur, a thorny vine came out of his neck and wrapped around my arm. It stopped me from hurting him and then threw me away from him. I landed poorly on the ground because I didn't understand what I had been doing in the first place.

I thought he would corrupt me and make me a Plagued One as well in that moment, but that did not happen. Instead Syn asked me if I was okay and that he told me he didn't mean to hurt me. It had been on accident and that his vine had attacked me on its own in an effort to protect him. I realized he was not corrupted by a Plagued One when he said that. He was still himself. I didn't know how he was not corrupted when he had a startling appearance and had been with that Plagued One swarm for some time, but he was.

It didn't take him long to see what had happened to his body. At first he couldn't understand why his appearance had changed. He said the last thing he could remember was running away from the Plagued Ones in Aurora Town.

I thought he would panic as anyone else would if they were in that situation, but he didn't. At least, not in a way that I had anticipated. He was quite alarmed and demanded to know why he appeared more like a Plagued One, and I told him the truth. Lying to him wouldn't benefit either of us. I told him that he was stolen by the Plagued Ones for a month and that during that time he must have become the way he was then. I didn't know why he wasn't completely gone, but there was no reason to ponder over it. He was more tainted than before. I also explained to him our situation and where our friends were, and why the city surrounding us was abandoned. I felt it was best to inform him about everything. I couldn't hide anything from him. Terron had tried to hide the truth from his friends once and that ended in disaster. I was not about to make the same mistake as him, even if it meant that Syn would be frightened and upset for a while. He had the strength to overcome his weakness.

He didn't say anything for a while after I explained everything to him. He only stood with me and looked at the empty buildings around us. I stayed with him. I didn't have anywhere else to go. I didn't know what else I could do anyway. I was without plans now that I no longer knew where the Fellowship or my old friends were.

That was when Syn told me we were going to find a way to turn him back to normal. He didn't know exactly how, but he felt he might be running out of time to remain himself. He said he could hear a strange voice in his mind that he couldn't understand very well and it scared him. He thought that was the Plagued One in him growing stronger and he knew he had to get rid of it.

So we did that. There was nothing else we could do when we did not know where our other friends were.

We went everywhere we thought we could possibly find a way to cure Syn. We didn't know what exactly what we were looking for, but we used what we knew to help us. We went to Dusk Mines because we knew that most of the ones there were corrupted. They didn't want to admit it at the time, but we knew it was true. We thought that maybe they had found a way to resist the corruption, especially the leader if he had lasted twenty years with his condition. We would not be welcomed thanks to our last encounter but we would still try to talk to them.

It was empty when we got there, just as Aurora Town was. There were a few Pokémon there wandering about, but they were not the true members. I had Syn hide and talked to these Pokémon and found out that they were from another Fellowship. Everyone in Dusk Mines had fled after the Fellowship had discovered their secret and wanted to eliminate them. Now it was believed that they were going to corrupt the world with their plague and everyone was on a hunt for them.

Syn and I left after that. I started to worry that others would kill him thanks to his corrupted appearance, now that it seemed the Fellowship was after corrupted individuals. To help him I bought him a large blanket that he would wrap around himself so that no one could see the black on his body. He didn't like wearing it and complained that it was bothersome to wear all the time, but I still made him wear it. I had to keep his secret safe. I remember I found it ironic that I had to hide his true nature when Terron had done the same for me when I was still of feral mind. The civil ones don't like feral Pokémon because they were reminded that they too were once feral long ago. They didn't like to think that they were once savage beasts that trusted no one and only relied on their instincts to guide them. They didn't like to think that they killed and hurt so many others who were not them in an effort to stay alive. That was why they once hated me and the rest of my feral kind. But now that I was one of them and understood their customs, they no longer hated me. None of them realized I was a feral for a majority of my life.

It was amusing how little Pokémon knew and understood others when they based their thoughts on first impressions and appearances.

Syn and I continued searching for a way to cure him. We tried to find the Dusk Mines Pokémon and we tried to find our friends as well. We thought that maybe they knew a way to fix Syn's problem. I didn't know why I thought that when neither Terron nor Zekra was very corrupted and their progress seemed stunted, but I held onto that faith. I had to find a way to help Syn.

But as the two of us continued our journey, wandering the world with only each other as company, the strange voice in my mind grew. It began to speak more clearly and loudly. Every time I felt doubts about finding my friends or a cure, the voice would appear in my mind and tell me I really didn't know what I was doing. It told me I was wandering aimlessly and was only pretending to have a clear goal in mind. It told me there was no cure for Syn and he was stuck the way he was. I couldn't change him.

I ignored the voice as often as I could. I repeatedly pushed it into the back of my mind and I made sure Syn never knew about it. He didn't need to be worried about me. He had enough to worry about himself other than his startling appearance. He began to tell me that the voice in his head was speaking more clearly. He could understand it better. However, instead of telling him that he would never find his friends or that he was soon to become completely corrupted, it told him something else. It confirmed that it was the plague, latched onto his soul and growing stronger as time went on. The more Syn began to feel hopeless about his condition, the more it grew. It didn't want to possess him, though. Instead, it said it wanted to do something called synchronize with him. It wanted to be him and it said that it would make him stronger if he would let that voice merge with his soul. All it needed was Syn's permission and they could synchronize. It promised it wouldn't hurt Syn. Syn wasn't sure what to think when it had told him this.

I told Syn to ignore the voice. I reminded him of the evil and harm the plague brought everywhere and said that the plague inside of him wasn't any different. We had no reason to trust it.

We started searching for a cure even more after that. I knew it was only a matter of time before Syn was gone completely now that it was making offers to Syn. Syn would also report that it would try to talk to him sometimes about other things and make suggestions, but I would continue to say to ignore them. The plague didn't want to help us. It only wanted our souls to corrupt. I had seen what happened to the Dusk Mines leader when his plague overtook him in that dreadful Mystery Dungeon. The plague couldn't be trusted. It only wanted death and pain.

My own voice grew as well, which I quickly came to understand was my own plague. It didn't try to have conversations with me as Syn would say his would do on occasion, but it would still bother me. It would suggest that I try something different since I was getting nowhere. It told me that Syn's plague wasn't trying to hurt him and that there was no need for a cure. It also told me that I couldn't actually get rid of the plague without dying myself. It was connected to me in more than ways than one and killing it would only kill me as well. It told me instead of focusing my efforts of ridding myself of it, that I instead take time away from this journey and get some rest and hunt. It reminded me that I always used to like being in the wild as a feral and how much satisfaction I got when I was able to kill something. It said to do these things because I was getting nowhere and it was best if I take a step back. It was best I return to my more natural state where my mind could be clearer. It also reminded me that the longer I went on this aimless journey of mine, the longer I went without seeing my friends. It told me at the rate I was going I would never see them again and that I could never make up for leaving them behind.

I told it I refused to listen to a single word it said and ignored every word it spoke after that. I was not a feral anymore. I was a civil and belonged to this strange world of differing species working alongside one another. I did not attack anyone that was bothersome, I did not take from the market when I wanted something without paying, and I did not kill a lone Sentret wandering down the street when I was feeling hungry. I was better than being a mindless and savage feral.

Syn and I continued searching for many more weeks. We searched for the Dusk Mines members as well as our friends, but could find them nowhere. We would constantly reach dead ends. We would often wonder what we do after we reached the end of our trail, and our plagues would bother us when we did. They would tell us we weren't going to find anything and then give us suggestions of their own. We would ignore them as quickly as they came. At least, I would.

Syn was different. I knew that he was listening to the voice inside in his head. He would often have a strange look on his face. I could see his mind pondering in something quite often as we traveled, as though he were listening and even talking back to the plague, though he would never say what he discussed with the plague. He would be lost in his own little world with it and he would occasionally look down at his corrupted body, which I felt was growing more tainted as the weeks went on. I would remind him not to listen to his plague, and he would nod and say he understood, but I would still see that faraway gaze in his eyes. I knew he was still listening to whatever it was telling him.

I was starting to think I was going to lose Syn to the plague. But thankfully, that was when things finally took a turn for the better. We were traveling along and one day, we came across a small clan of Pokémon in the mountains. I didn't know much about them, but they seemed like their own civilization. When they saw us, they attacked us, saying they didn't trust outsiders and that we couldn't know about them. Syn and I were able to defeat them rather easily, but in the process, we made an interesting discovery. The clan leader, a Swampert, had an unusual pin attached to him that I couldn't help but find interesting. And when I took it off of him, two things happened. The immediate answer was that my mind suddenly felt empty and no longer occupied by another being as it had been before. Somehow, this pin had smothered out my plague and made it so I could no longer feel it. I would call out to it as well, and I could feel it trying to communicate with me and giving me a headache in the process, but it couldn't. The pin was silencing it.

But what was more interesting was what happened to the Swampert after the pin came off. It took some time, but I watched as his body slowly looked less like a Swampert and more like a Plagued One. The transformation wasn't instant, and I didn't want to stay and watch it continue. So I took Syn and we fled from the clan, taking the pin with us.

I remember I was quite overjoyed when we were safe and still had the pin with us. I had found a way to silence the plague. I didn't know if I could cure Syn's appearance, but maybe I could make it so his plague couldn't corrupt him any further. So I put the pin on him, and much to my surprise, he did turn back into a normal Servine. There wasn't anything corrupted about him at all anymore. I remember being so happy that I wanted to hold him the same way I saw Terron hold Zekra when he was feeling joyful. But strangely, Syn wasn't quite as happy. He pretended to be, but I knew he wasn't actually telling the truth. And when I bothered him about it, he explained it was because he no longer thought his plague was evil. He wasn't sure if it was friendly, but he didn't think it was trying to hurt him either and it felt wrong to silence it.

Once again I reminded him of the destruction the plague caused and how it would turn him into a monster if it continued to grow in him. I said we couldn't afford for that to happen and that our friends would be heartbroken if he were to turn into a monster. And though he was reluctant to agree with me, he eventually did and said we should find a pin for myself as well. He knew I needed one.

We started on another journey for yet another pin. We knew that Pokémon had them, and even though we didn't understand why, they were preventing Pokémon from becoming Plagued Ones. I needed that pin if I wanted to stay safe. I would find myself a pin and then we would find our friends. That had been our plan before and we were still going to follow it. There was no reason not to.

But not long after we started a search for a pin of my own… we had a visitor that forced us to alter our plans completely.

It was only a few days after we had found Syn's pin. We were spending the night in an empty city we had come across. For a reason I couldn't understand at the time, more and more cities were becoming empty. Finding Pokémon to talk to was become difficult to find and often, it was only Syn that I could speak with. We were selecting a location within the city that we could use to rest for the night when I felt a presence in the air around us. It was a sinister presence, making me shiver and want to run away. It made the plague within me shudder as well, but more out of delight than the fear that I felt. I thought it felt familiar to me as well, but I didn't know why.

I found the source of the aura by turning around. What I found in front of Syn and I was a dark, slightly transparent being with one glowing blue eye. It floated before us without saying anything and there was no expression I could read off of it. It didn't appear hostile, but it didn't feel friendly either. Its aura was filled with frightful energy.

Then the strange shadow revealed what it was to us.

It said it was a copy of the monster we knew to be called Erebus, the one that lived in the large Mystery Dungeon near Dusk Mines.

I attacked it after it told us that. There was no reason not to. Erebus had been the reason why all of my friends and myself had been corrupted. It was the reason why the world was the way it currently was. However, it only moved out of the way and dove into the ground, becoming a shadow. I attacked the shadow and scratched at the ground's surface, but I couldn't harm it. It was immune to my attacks. I wanted Syn to help me, as I was sure that he had a power that could hurt this monster, but he did nothing. He was only staring at it with nervousness and worry. I wanted to yell at him for submitting to his fear and tell him to help me. He should have been fighting this monster that had ruined our world.

But I did not say those things, because that was when the Erebus copy told me that it knew where my friends were.

It told me that they were with the original Erebus but weren't being hurt. It explained to me that the world had been lied to and that this Erebus, what I had believed was evil and the cause of the Plagued Ones, was only a Pokémon called a Darkrai being brainwashed by someone else. There was another being that was the real reason Plagued Ones existed. It called it the Primogenitor. It gave me a detailed explanation about everything that had been happening to my friends since I had left them behind, including that they had managed to defeat Erebus and that it was now helping them in stopping the Primogenitor. The Erebus copy told me that I would not find my friends because they were scattered all over the land. Terron's group especially, who had Novus and supposedly Erebus herself, were in a land the copy claimed was in another dimension and I could not reach the no matter how much I tried. The copy told me many more things, and many of things the copy said to me greatly confused me, but I made an effort to understand them.

When the copy was done telling me all that it knew about my friends and what had been happening to them since I left them, it explained to me that it had a favor to ask me and Syn. It said that at that moment my friends were searching for a powerful Pokémon to help them destroy the Primogenitor. It told me it wanted me to help with their efforts and search for the Pokémon as well, calling it Reshiram. It said that he was inside objects that looked like a white rock and provided as much description as it could to me. It said my friends would appreciate helping them and that it was a very urgent thing Syn and I had to do. My friends needed all the help they could get.

I didn't want to search for Reshiram. I wanted to find my friends after hearing all of the horrible things they had been through without me by their side. Hearing all of those things made me feel all the more guilty that I couldn't be there to help them. But the Erebus copy said I could not see them for a long time. They were out of my reach. Instead, it told me that on a certain date roughly four months from the moment we spoke, they would meet at Aurora Town again. It told me I could see them then. Until then, it suggested I help my friends. It claimed it would not be easy, and what would come after I found the stone would be much worse, but it had faith that Syn and I would succeed.

Then it went away, muttering about how its days were numbered and that it had to find the Dusk Mines leader again before its time ran out and it stopped existing. I didn't bother to follow after it.

Instead I stayed where I was with Syn and thought over what it had said. There were many reasons not to believe what that Erebus copy had said. It didn't give me any proof that it was telling the truth. I didn't have to believe anything it said. Erebus had not been kind to me when I first met it and it hadn't done anything helpful for me now. It had only overloaded me and Syn with information and left us behind. It could have said its words to me because it wanted me to be distracted and further separate myself from my friends. I heavily considered forgetting the conversation I just had and go on my way to continue looking for a pin for myself.

But I didn't get to make that decision because Syn stopped me. He said we should listen to that Erebus copy and find Reshiram. He said that Novus had always been interested in Reshiram, and now that we knew he was Reshiram, Novus's actions explained much. He claimed we needed to find his body and do as the Erebus copy said. He felt that it was telling the truth and that they needed to contribute their own part to saving the world. I remember telling him we had no reason to trust it since it was the reason we were the way we were now. I asked him why we should bother listening to something that had ruined our lives even with the proof we had that Novus was Reshiram. I said we were fine with our own plan and had no reason to change it.

What he said broke my confidence and authority over our decisions.

"We need to find Reshiram's body because you need to be able to repay our friends for leaving them behind to go rescue me. You feel bad about leaving them, right? I see it in your eyes whenever I bring up their names. You're not strong when you think about that but you keep hiding it and keep telling yourself that you can make up for what you did. I know you keep thinking you can do that by bringing them me like you promised you would, but I don't think that'll help. I mean, I know our friends will forgive you if you do… they really will. They're nice like that and I bet they'd be so happy just to see both of us again after so long. I don't think they'd even care that you were gone for so long if you just showed up in their lives again.

"But you won't forgive yourself. You'll keep blaming yourself even after they've told you how much they miss you and how happy they are to have you back in their lives again. You'll hate yourself forever until you can think of something worthy enough to earn their forgiveness back. And I… I just don't want to see that, Impetus. I don't want to see you so sad, especially when you went through so much trouble to find me. You don't deserve to feel that way."

There was nothing to be said after he said those things to me. He was right. I didn't want to admit it… but he was.

Whether or not my friends had suffered during my absence as much as the Erebus copy claimed, I had still left them in a time of need for too long. I had told myself that returning to them with Syn cured of his problem would relieve me of my guilt, but when I thought about it more... it didn't. I had still left them behind for what must have looked like a poor and rash decision to them from their perspective. Bringing them Syn wouldn't cure me of the guilt that was building in me.

I had to do something more. I had to contribute to their efforts to stopping the Primogenitor. I needed to change the course of my plans and search for Reshiram's body. I would be away from my friends for even longer due to this, but if what the Erebus copy said was true, then I could not see them for many more months. They were in locations I knew I could not reach.

So I agreed to Syn's plan and together, we searched for Reshiram's body. We explored the continent and searched wherever we felt the fire sphere might be. We watched the world around us became quiet because the influence of the Plagued Ones began to spread at an even faster rate. Pokémon everywhere disappeared from civilization and retreated into underground cities or fortresses when the plague spread. We stopped seeing Pokémon as often, even feral ones. Often I only had Syn to talk to.

There were many times we thought we knew where Reshiram's body was before our lead reached a dead end. There were other times we were attacked by Pokémon of all sorts. Some of them were Fellowship Pokémon that thought we were Plagued Ones that wanted to destroy the world. Others were bandits that wanted to kill us for supplies because they were desperate. Syn and I would try to flee from them and sometimes we were able to do that successfully. But sometimes we had to kill them instead because we could not run fast enough. We didn't want to, but we didn't have any other choice. Syn would ask why we didn't let Pokémon try to kill us since we couldn't die thanks to the plague, but I told him that would only frighten Pokémon more. We would only be targeted even more because of our nature.

But we continued to search for Reshiram anyway. We didn't give up. We adapted to each of the conflicts we came across and we kept moving. We had to because this was the only way I could ever make it up to my friends for abandoning them for so long. We would find Reshiram's body one way or another.

And then one day, we made a mistake.

I can't tell exactly when it happened, but we were growing close to capturing the fire sphere. It was being kept in a cave, and we staked out on the outskirts of a village in eastern Shiron, waiting for someone to reveal the cave entrance.

We were too busy watching the village that we neglected to keep such a vigilant watch on ourselves.

I returned to Syn one day after collecting some food, and I walked right into the trap. Our own hideout had been infiltrated by the Swampert we had let survive. He had followed our trail and found us. He was a hideously plagued creature, with dark boils and blisters weighing down on his back, and his claws had mutated and become sharp like Skarmory feathers.

He wanted his pin back.

That's when I learned what the pins were used for. They were used by the Plagued Ones to hide their own plagued nature while they would deceive their hapless followers, slowly harvesting the naïve and trusting Pokémon to add to the Primogenitor's army. I also learned that the Plagued Ones were trying to infiltrate the few remaining free Pokémon settlements in the wild, often trying to become their clan leaders. It occurred to me that many of the leaders would be secretly Plagued Ones.

But there was another reason they were trying to rule the free Pokémon instead of just infesting them with the plague. They were using the free Pokémon as bait for us, the remaining threats to the Primogenitor's plan. The servants of Erebus, the one remaining leader who actually posed a threat. They had heard about the transformed human and the power he had over the Primogenitor itself.

They wanted to lure us to safety, to weed us out and end us, just as an Ursaring would wait in the darkness of a cave for a hapless Eevee to wander in, hiding from a thunderstorm.

The Swampert was a powerful plagued beast, something I could not hope to defeat in battle. Plagued Ones couldn't be defeated, anyway. They were immortal. They could be temporarily disarmed, but that was all. This one… I was not sure I could even bruise it.

It had captured Syn. Absorbed his body into its back. I needed to defeat the beast, to save Syn once more. But… I couldn't. The beast towered over me. He was too strong.

In that moment, I remembered what it felt like to be hapless prey. Though I was a strong and well-built Mienshao, and I had pushed my endurance to its limits and honed my power, I had become only become like a cornered Buneary. It was the first time I had truly felt this way since my evolution, a sort of despair I hoped never to feel again. A sort of despair I thought I had left behind in the wild.

Syn was gone. I needed to accept that, and flee while I still had a chance. I had the pin that the Swampert was seeking; Syn had since given it to me, saying that he wanted to speak to his plague again. I accepted it, but I did not tell him why; it was because my own plague was growing ever louder, and I had not the strength to smother its dark and twisted logic any more.

But I didn't have to do anything; in the end, Syn saved himself.

Two enormous, twisting blades shot out of the shadowy flesh upon the giant Swampert's back. The blades were held by the same thorny vines that had attacked me on the day I had tried to wake Syn from his hibernation. They twisted around the Swampert's neck, causing him to scream in agony.

I could only step back to watch what would happen next.

Syn burst out of captivity, leaving a gaping hole in the Swampert where he had been kept prisoner. But he was dark, twisted, and completely lost to the plague. Tendrils shot from his hands and wormed across the giant's flesh, piercing holes in the enemy wherever they went. Syn's eyes glowed with a deep and fearsome red.

The Swampert's misery did not last long; once the tendrils held it in place, Syn produced two enormous blades that simply sliced its head off. The corpse slumped to the floor, and as it did, the plague withered and simply disappeared, leaving the unplagued corpse of a normal, beheaded Swampert.

It was then that I realized that some plagued ones were completely assimilated, but others were allowed to keep their original bodies; they were the ones which needed the pins to conceal their identities, and were also more intelligent than the mindless swarms of plagued ones. That is why the Swampert had the sense to hunt us for months, but the swarm from where I had rescued Syn did not.

But I was about to make another startling revelation. I glared at Syn, who was now almost completely unrecognizable as a Servine. He appeared as a demonic creature, almost without a fixed shape or form, with his deadly tendrils and blades still waving around him.

Then he opened his mouth and spoke. "Impetus," he said. "It's alright, it's just me."

"We need to leave," I told him, choosing to disregard his fearsome form. "The Swampert will regenerate soon. We need to flee."

"No," he said. "Impetus, you don't understand. It's dead. The Swampert can't regenerate now. It's gone. It's dead. I killed it."

"You can't kill Plagued Ones," I said. "They only disperse and come back later. We're still in danger."

"Maybe I can't kill them," Syn said, his eyes glowing with power, "But Willow can. Impetus, listen to me! They aren't invincible anymore! They aren't a threat to us! If we work together with our plagues, we can kill them so they don't come back."

I stepped back as Syn's form grew and twisted like a boiling pit of tar. I held my breath, terrified for my own safety, and began backing away.

But I heard him speak to me again. "Impetus, it's okay," he said. "Don't go. It's going to be okay."

Though my instincts were crying to me, I chose to listen to him.

His form bubbled and twisted, and seemed to explode with a dark power. When it settled, he emerged as a fully grown Serperior, his final evolution. The plague had become completely tied to him; it was now part of his identity. Somehow I knew that even the pin would have no effect anymore. He was a demon, a creature like the dark and awful plagued beasts who could wield arcane techniques and spells so effortlessly.

And yet, he was still Syn.

"Impetus, it's okay," he said to me once more, looking at the strange, stained body that had become his own. "We're not in danger anymore."

"I can protect you now," he said. "It's my turn to protect you."

And that was how the Shadow Hunter was born. It was the power of communication, the lifeline and greatest accomplishment of civilized Pokémon, that I came to trust Syn. Like a Cubone could cooperate with a Zorua, I found myself in peaceful cooperation with a plagued demon.

It raised too many troubling question about my relationship with my own inner plague, questions I would later come to terms with on my own. But as the Shadow Hunter, we truly were invincible and able to carve a path through the wretched and unhospitable wilderness which had become Shiron. AT th suggestion of Willow, the name Syn had given to his plagued, he learned to disassemble himself and form a disguise for me, so that we could travel the world as one single, enigmatic figure to strike terror into every Plagued One who knew our name. And it was by this same power that we succeeded in capturing the body of Reshiram, the one we hoped would cleanse our world and save us all from what we had become.

When I'm done sharing all of this information with my friends, who now stand in front of me in Aurora Town, I look at them to understand their reactions. I see Terron staring at me with shock and confusion, like he doesn't seem to quite understand that I'm still alive and am in front of him. I see Zekra, who appears more disturbed by my appearance. Her reaction is expected. I had nearly killed her after all not too long ago. Then I look at Novus, who is now Reshiram. He is the one who is least surprised by all of this. He seems more solemn about my words because he had already seen me when I was not being The Shadow Hunter.

I don't talk to them again. I wait for their reactions. While I wait I look at Syn to find that he's very nervous at being reunited with his friends again. However, he's also very happy and I see his tongue flicker out of his mouth every so often. I can tell he wants to speak them again. But just like me he is patient and he waits for everyone's reactions.

Terron is the first one to speak.

"So all this time… you guys really were alive," Terron says quietly, as he usually does when he's not feeling strong. "You just couldn't find us when you decided to come back…"

"Yes, that's right," I say to him. "We wanted to reunite with you, but we couldn't find you. So we searched around for you and what else we needed to find at the time."

Syn then slithers over to the three. I see them tense up but they don't move and let Syn come to them. When he's with them, he smiles at them again and wraps himself around Zekra and Terron to the best of his ability. He does a fairly good job because of how much he has grown thanks to becoming a Serperior. I have seen him wrap his body around some large tree trunks twice.

"I missed you guys a lot," he says to them as he rubs their faces with his own. "I was worried you guys might be dead or something by the time Impetus and I got here. But it looks like you guys made it through. You guys really have no idea how happy I am to see you again."

He then releases Terron and Zekra from his hold and slithers up Novus's neck. He shudders but remains still as Syn makes his way to his head before rubbing his forehead into Novus's face. I notice Reshiram smile in return and no longer seems to worry about having a plagued Serperior so close to him.

"And you're really big now, Novus!" Syn says, wrapping around Novus's neck and looking over him from high up. "I knew you'd be bigger when you turned into Reshiram, but I didn't realize it was this big! You make my growth spurt look tiny in comparison!"

"Well he's not the only one who's grown bigger you know!" Zekra then says, making Syn look back at her. "I grew like five times bigger than my old self after I synchronized with my own plague! And she calls herself Venri!"

"Oh, you've got a named plague too!" Syn says, loosening himself from Novus and slithers back down to Zekra. "That's cool. You know, I was wondering why you had all those weird markings on you when I saw you again. You and Venri get along?"

Zekra does not answer, for the next thing I know, a smiling Sableye appears in between her and Syn. I almost attack it out of reaction. I am not the only one who has the reaction. Novus and Terron both tense and seem ready to either bolt or fling themselves at the sudden Sableye.

"Oh, we get along great!" the Sableye says in an oddly disturbingly cheerful voice that resembles Zekra's, making me quickly realize that this is Venri. "I mean, she's a bit of a wimp sometimes and she can be really annoying to listen to sometimes, but we get along just fine."

Instead of being frightened like everyone else of the group, Syn only laughs. He slithers around Venri in a circle and looks over her.

"Oh! You must be Venri. You're out here with me and Zekra because you're using an illusion!" he realizes. "Wow, that's amazing. I can think of all kinds of ways you can use that to your advantage. You and Zekra must be really strong if you can look this real out of Zekra's mind. You look pretty real and Zekra doesn't look tired at all! I bet Willow wishes he could be like you."

"Syn, don't encourage her," Zekra says with a sigh. "She's scary enough as she is just in my head. She's even worse outside of it."

"What are you talking about?" Venri says, glaring at Zekra. "I'm never outside of your head! This is the only time I've been outside of your head ever since I forced you to go talk to Tear because you were too much of a wimp to talk to him yourself!"

"You were out of my head for a long time, impersonating someone I once knew if I remember right…" Zekra says with a frown.

That is when I see Zekra and Venri get into an argument and Syn tries to put a stop to them. Novus and Terron observe them from afar, confused by what is happening. I can only assume that they've never seen this Venri before and have no idea what to think of the situation. But I know they won't hate her. I thought I would hate Willow because he was the plague, but I have come to like him. He is Syn and keeps him safe when I cannot. He has no intentions of harming Syn and only wants what is best for him. I can tell that Venri is the same, even if her personality is quite different than what I able to understand about Willow based on what Syn tells me of him.

I am to ponder more, but that is when I notice Terron is no longer paying attention to the commotion. He is now looking at me and making his way toward me. Now it is my turn to tense. I fear that he is upset with me because I have left him behind for so long. It's true that I have returned Syn to him as well as give Reshiram his body, but I wonder if that was enough in the first place. Maybe I needed to bring more to make Terron forgive me.

Terron stops in front of me and looks up at me. He is still small and me becoming a Mienshao has only made his height more apparent. I find myself briefly wondering if he will ever evolve so he will be taller. He is the only one of our group who is still small. Everyone else has grown significantly. I imagine it's awkward for him.

I stop thinking about his height as I look down at Terron. I wait for his words and I wait for the worst. I don't bother to run because there's no reason to run from what I fear. It's best to face fear head-on and not flee from the sight. It will only follow you if you do.

"I'm sorry that I left you behind for so long," I say to him softly in the same way Syn talks to me when he is trying to be gentle and make me understand. "I didn't know I would be gone for so long. I know that you've been through a lot while I've been gone. I know what happened. Erebus told me. So I understand if you are…"

I don't get to finish because then Terron wraps his arms around my leg. He holds me the same way he held me when I last saw him just before I left him. But this time it's not out of desperation. This time I feel only happiness from him.

"It's okay, Impetus," he says to me. "You don't have to apologize. You're back. That's all that counts. There's no more need for apologies… there's already been a whole bunch of them."

I don't understand what he means by that, but I don't ask. I instead let relief come over me as I sit myself down and allow Terron to climb onto me and wrap himself around me more easily while I hold him as well. And then the two of us remained like that for a while, remembering how much we missed each other and how happy we were to be together again.

It really had been too long.

After Terron and I were done comforting one another and the rest of our friends were done with their commotion, we decided to rest for the night. Syn and I were tired from traveling and the others were beginning to grow tired as well. So just like old times, we found a quiet place for all of us to slumber in that would support even Novus in his large size, which was a underneath a large tree. Then we slumbered together in a pile, tangled in each other so that it was difficult to tell who was who. All I could tell was that Novus was curled around us and that Syn was somehow wrapped around everyone with his long, scaly body.

But even though the pile was quite cramped, everyone was happy. It felt good to be with everyone again and everyone slept peacefully as they held each other with smiles.

Everyone, that is, except me.

I wanted to sleep. I could begin to feel my eyes close after everyone else around me had long fallen asleep. But then a familiar voice was in my head and I was no longer tired.

It's strange that none of your friends asked you why you look the way you do now. You are not the same as you used to be last time they saw you.

I know who the voice is. I used to fear her at one point but not anymore. She and I get along now.

She is Feral. She is my plagued self.

They will understand soon enough. I'll tell them if they aren't able to understand by tomorrow. But they should know because I have a similar appearance to Zekra and Syn. They should be able to realize that I am just like them and am synchronized now.

Maybe they will. But you know how some Pokémon can be. Sometimes they don't pay attention to detail as you do and need someone to point it out.

I already know. Don't worry. They don't fear me anyway. They know I'm harmless.

Feral becomes quiet. I think she is done with me and I close my eyes. I soon see her staring back at me from behind my eyelids. She looks like me as a Mienfoo except her fur more scruffy than mine used to be and with sharp claws coming out of her paws. She looks more like a feral that way. I used to wonder why she didn't look like a copy of me but I realized it was only because she is my feral side. Of course she would look like me when I was still a feral. Me becoming a Mienshao was what made me permanently become a civil. Feral says she does not like the form anyway. She feels the fur that grows out of my arms is bothersome and does not suit me. She has more than once suggested I cut them off.

I stare at her in that darkness and I wait for her to go away. She only keeps staring at me, sitting in that darkness with her hazy, untamed eyes that were once mine.

Are you ready?

Ready for what?

That you're going to save the world soon. That you're going to die.

I don't answer her right away. I don't know what to say to her. I see her smile a little at me. She knows how I am feeling.

You can't turn back now, Impetus. Your friends are just going to hate you if you run away from them now when they need you more than ever.

I know. I'm afraid but I'm not going to run away. I'll fight with my friends no matter what. I didn't return to abandon them again. I have to fight because they are my friends and I don't want to see them hurt anymore.

Feral continues to smile at me but says nothing more. I can see her starting to fade away so that she can disappear into my mind where I can't see her anymore. I try to relax so I can fall asleep just like my other friends now that Feral is done talking to me. But I don't because then Feral reappears in my mind again. She seems nervous.

Someone is coming toward you. You need to wake up.

I open my eyes as soon as she says that. There is no need to stall. I wake up everyone else around me by pushing against them roughly. Novus and Terron are reluctant to wake up and ask to know why I'm disturbing their sleep, but Zekra and Syn aren't the same. They wake up as quickly as I did. I imagine Venri and Willow told them something similar to what Feral told me.

I look around for the someone that Feral was mentioning and try to find them in the darkness. I don't see anyone for a while. There is only black and trees surrounding me. The only Pokémon with me are my friends, two of which are still trying to wake up.

But I pick up on something after a while. I see two blue lights making my way toward me. I get out of my friends' large sleeping pile and get ready to attack. Syn does the same and looks ready to coil and strike. Zekra instead starts hiding behind Terron, shrinking into a Zorua so that it's harder to see her. I can see her shuddering and notice her claws are extending out of her paws.

I would question her behavior but I don't because then the blue lights stop in front of Syn and I and I figure out what they are.

They are Sableye eyes. Specifically, they are the Dusk Mines leader's eyes. I recognize him by the strange black fabric that he wears around his neck and the frown he has always worn since I first met him. He has not changed at all.

He looks at me and all of my friends without saying anything. I notice that there is a flicker of light when he looks at Zekra, but he doesn't keep an eye on her long and quickly moves on. He finally stops at Terron, the only one that is not alarmed by the Sableye's presence.

"I see that you've found yourself a lot of company tonight," he says without emotion to his voice. "When I last saw you yesterday, you only had… her with you. Now you've added three more Pokémon to your company, one of which is a god and two of which are plagued. Do you plan on having anymore surprise guests come join you here?"

"These are my friends," Terron says to him, getting out of the pile and going over to the Sableye. "You should recognize all of them, you know. You've met them all before."

The Sableye looks over each of us again before he frowns more.

"So your Quilava friend regained his lost body and your lost friends have returned to you as well in much stronger and corrupted forms," the Sableye states. "Fascinating that all of you are all together again and that none of you died. I thought that only you would be the one here of your original Fellowship team, Terron. But I suppose after your… special friend showed up, anything was possible."

He gives Zekra a glare, one that I only see large and dangerous feral Pokémon give their prey before killing them. Then I watch Zekra jump over Novus and run far away, getting as far away from us as possible. I know that she is not leaving this city and will return when the Dusk Mines leader leaves, so I do not follow or worry about her. I only keep my attention on the ones with me.

The Sableye only frowns more and says something under his breath I can't understand. Terron doesn't like that and starts growling under his breath before getting closer to the Sableye. The Sableye doesn't seem scared by this and only keeps standing still.

"What's going on, Yimtri?" Terron asks him like he's trying to threaten him. "Why do you keep acting this way around Zekra? This has been going on for way too long and I'm tired of seeing Zekra utterly terrified of you."

"It's nothing for you to be concerned about," the Sableye says in the same threatening way. "I suggest you stay out of it."

"You mean just like everything else you desperately try to keep secret even though you really should talk about them?" Terron asks him in return.

The Sableye glares at Terron, and the gemstones that make up his eyes begin to flicker.

"Stay out of what does not concern you," he says with a powerful amount of malice in his voice, but not quite enough so that his plague influences his words.

Terron looks frustrated and looks like he wants to attack the Sableye, but the Sableye says more before he can say or do anything.

"Besides, there is no time to talk of such things. There are more important matters to discuss," he says to Terron, and then looks over at the rest of us. "Namely, the fact that I need help verifying that I might have found the portal to the Primogenitor's realm."