Ch 4: Back to the Gord
I don't even care. What does it matter to me what some punkass gym leader says? He was talking as if he knew jack shit about my life. Who the fuck was he to say what he did about my parents? And talk shit about my Pokemon. I mean, I did it everyday, but I was allowed to. Fuck that guy. I didn't have to evolve my mons to beat his stupid ass freakshow looking Diggersby or anorexic looking Heliolisk.
All these overwhelming thoughts were crashing around in my head while I sat on a wooden bench in front of the nearby Pokemon Center, hoping the receptionist didn't come out for a smoke break. My Emolga and Spearow were being treated inside, and I gave them the other two mons just because I didn't want to be around any Pokemon for a while. The nurse, a pink-haired woman with an air of superiority and a name like a prostitute, told me it shouldn't be a long wait and that I should take better care of my pokemon. Bitch, nobody asked you.
It wasn't my fault my Pokemon sucked. With pickings that are solely based on what I'm forced to catch in a garbage-infested forest like the Gord Woods, how the hell could I have been able to win anyway? How the hell does anyone from Lunaris beat that gym? Who the hell can beat a Diggersby and a Heliolisk with a Vileplume, or Raticate, or Butterfree, or Muk? The pokemon in the Gord sucked, not me. I bet if I came from some fancy uppity ass city like Wintervale, where the rich trainers just buy whatever pokemon they want with whatever moves they want from the Pokemon-breeding factory they call the Daycare, I could have won.
It was at this moment that a shadow was cast over me, blocking out the sunlight, and making a bad day even worse.
"Hey, bro, your pokemon dead already?" came the last voice I wanted to hear right now. Not now. I shut my eyes, braced myself for this, and looked up at my older brother.
"No, asshole. I'm doing something you wouldn't know about. It's called being a good trainer and healing them up." I retorted as Evan took a seat next to me. Damn it.
"Oh, so you got your ass kicked by Zach?"
"No." Lie to him. "I won."
"Bullshit. Where's your badge, then?" his head cocked, examining my jacket lapel, which is where badges are typically pinned. Evan had three on his lapel.
"I don't have to show you anything. What are you even doing here? Get your ass kicked by the dark gym, again?"
"Hey, you just fucking wait. Well, actually, don't bother, you'll never get that far. Everyone I know has struggled at that gym. His mons are League-level. Watch your mouth, like you know anything about facing gym leaders. You think beating Zach's hard? I swept his whole gym with a fuckin' Steelix."
His Steelix. His starter mon. He always had it on his party, as he constantly loved to remind me. His Steelix was an asshole too, always smashing its giant head through my bedroom window when I was younger, just to scare me in the middle of the night by Roaring at me.
"Whatever. So what are you doing here?" I asked, hoping whatever the reason was, he would go do it right now and leave.
"I'm visiting Mom and Dad, duh. They're having a party, 'cause you're finally out of the house." He smirked at me, his thin lips chapped and weathered. His dark hair had grown long and was tossed lazily along the morning breeze. I hated it, but I was probably beginning to look like him.
"I've been gone two months. What's the real reason?"
"It's my birthday. Hello?"
Oh, right. It's tomorrow.
"So, I just came back to drop off the Avalugg I caught and get some presents and eat some grub. I guess I'll invite you, being the sweetheart brother that I am." He placed his hand on his heart, mockingly.
"I'll pass; thanks, though. I'd have more fun starving in the Gord."
He ignored my jibe. "So, when you're done waiting for your Pokemon to wake up from their comas, want to battle? Let's see what kind of garbage you've captured in the Gord." His eyes wandered to the front door of the Center, toying with the idea of entering it and seeing my Pokemon I'm sure.
"Maybe tomorrow. I'm tired. It's been a long day." I stretched for emphasis, even pulled off a yawn.
His eyebrows furrowed, unconvinced. "It's 11 in the morning. What are you, 70?"
"I just don't want to do anything today, Evan, fuck. Can't you just go home?"
There was a brief silence.
"Are you a vegetarian?"
"What?"
"I'm just wondering. Are you a vegetarian?"
"...No."
"'Cause it sure seems like you don't want this beef."
"Oh my God, will you please just fucking go, Evan."
Guffawing like a maniac, he finally rose from the bench and proceeded to head toward the Gord Woods, away from me. I watched him walk away for a long time, until Nurse Joy poked her head out of the doors.
"Your pokemon are taken care of!" she announced with a put-on smile. Fake ass bitch. Nobody's that happy.
As I entered the Center to pick up my pokeballs, Nurse Joy informed me that there was a 200 dollar charge. I opened up my wallet, which had an impressive amount of cash in it, and paid her. A figure caught my eye as I was stepping out. It was a man, who I had felt watching me the entire time. He was wearing loose black sweatpants and a black t-shirt, with dark sunglasses to mask his eyes and a backwards black cap with the letter D on it. I ignored him. Probably cruising.
I made my way through Peltagrow City, but the walk back lacked the sense of pride I felt hours earlier. My confidence was shattered. My dickhead brother had beaten this leader Zach, but I couldn't. Why does this matter to me? And why am I so fucking obsessed with all this Pokemon shit? I used to hate the very thought of thinking about this crap two months ago, and now, I seemed to have trouble thinking of anything not relating to the things. I needed to go back to Lunaris, go back to school, go back to my old friends. I suddenly missed all of this more than any other time in my life.
This Peltagrow City wasn't half bad. It was definitely nicer than Lunaris. The houses were bigger, cleaner, the air smelled fresher. The house Pokemon were clearly nicer. Folks in Lunaris were stuck with Butterfrees, Bellsprouts, and Rattata's for pets. But I'd passed a house that had a Mr. Mime sweeping the front porch, and it even waved at me. I didn't return it. Another house had a pack of Poochyena tied in the backyard, barking at some invisible nothing in the sky. Both of them were small towns, but this place just seemed a little happier.
I spent the remainder of the day sitting on a log off the beaten path somewhere in the northern region of the Gord Woods. The place instantly reminded me of why I was so happy to leave it, with its foul smell of Pokemon shit, the headache-inducing moves left by all the poison and bug pokemon. The venom and webs all over the forest. I hated it here.
Thirst and hunger quickly overshadowed my thoughts, but trekking all the way to the Vendor's Market was far too unappealing. For food, I had Spearow and Emolga search for as many berries as they could. They didn't fail. They seemed eager to please me after the embarrassment that happened at the gym that morning. I didn't bother blaming them out loud. They knew it was their fault. Skorupi and Togepi were instructed to fetch water from the Gord Lake and fill the thermos I'd bought from the market a few months ago with it. The water was trash, but I wasn't picky today.
That night, the five of us sat in a circle in silence in a small clearing free of trees, munching on berries, sharing the thermos of water, and reflecting on the day. Wondering what would come of us tomorrow. Knowing that all of them, barring Emolga, would have to evolve soon and they'd have to push themselves much harder than they had been.
"I just want you guys to know," I began, startling them. They hadn't heard me say more than a few words all day. Togepi in particular had her eyes widened beyond belief, her mouth agape. "That today was...really shitty. It sucked. For all of us. But...I think that sometimes, we need these awful days to remind us to keep moving forward. Not get too cocky. To appreciate that...there's room for improvement. I know I did my best, and apparently you guys just couldn't keep up. Which is okay. For now. Just...you'll get better."
It wasn't an amazing speech, but they all generally nodded their heads in agreement.
After dinner, before we were getting ready to bed, I wrote out something on a piece of scrap paper I'd taken at the Center. It was a note to Mom and Dad, basically telling them I'd be declining to go to Evan's birthday party tomorrow, and thanks for the invitation that I didn't get. Love, your son. I told Emolga to send it to my home in Lunaris right that second, in the dark of the night, and if they were sleeping, all the more reason to wake them up and throw it in their faces. Emolga departed to Lunaris dutifully, and I settled for laying in a bed of leaves Spearow and Skorupi had fashioned together for me without me asking, while the two of them lay curled beside each other in the middle of the clearing. Togepi was asleep inside the log. I wouldn't ever admit it to them, but for a brief moment there, I was just a little proud of having these fuckers around.
I woke up to a familiar hissing and spitting that instantly told me that Skorupi was threatened by something. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and sat up, but it was too dark to make anything out and my eyes needed to adjust.
"Skorupi, what's wrong?" I asked, but the hissing got even louder, and then a rattling noise joined in to the hissing. A rattling noise that I'd never heard before. This wasn't Skorupi hissing.
"Get the fucker!" a man's voice shouted, and a heavy weight sank onto my chest, and the air rushed out of my lungs.
In the darkness, the distinguishable silhouette of an Arbok was coiling itself around me, hissing and sprouting its yellow-stained fangs in my face. I couldn't even scream - there was no air to breathe out.
Togepi came charging at the Arbok like a footballer, and hit it with an insane amount of force that the only excuse I could think of was that it Metronome'd a Giga Impact, so hard that the two of them went crashing into a bush, causing a pair of Sentret that had been sleeping in it to flee.
"What the fuck is happening?" I choked out, sitting up. I turned my head to where I remember the man's voice had come from, and saw a figure dressed in black come rushing at me. I got a kick to the face as an answer, the toeline of the boot butting right at my chin. My bottom lip sliced against my lower teeth as my head jerked back, and I could taste the metallic, coppery blood start to fill my mouth as I slammed back down to the ground. Something had been dislodged.
Dizzy with nausea, I tried to rise, but I felt another kick, this time to my elbow. It would only bruise, but it prevented me from trying to stand.
"Where's the fucking money?" The man in black spat out, his voice raspy and reeking of
alcohol.
Spearow and Skorupi jumped to action, springing onto the man's face. Spearow was Pecking at the man's forehead, trying to pluck his eyes out, while Skorupi was attacking his feet, stabbing at them with his stinger. They had him. I turned to Togepi, who was now screaming.
The Arbok was spitting venom furiously at Togepi, and biting into her shell with such ferocity that poison was starting to come out of Togepi's mouth. Togepi could only scream in pain as the Arbok was ripping her shell apart and biting into her soft white skin.
"Spearow! Fucking get the Arbok!" I try rising to my feet, disoriented, and feeling the wetness of blood seep down my chin. Spearow reacted quickly, flying from the man's face and now nipping at the back of Arbok's head, attempting to distract it. Arbok had lightning-fast reflexes though, and reacted by twisting its head backwards, quickly opened its mouth, and as jolts of electricity sprouted out, Arbok bit into Spearows right wing with a Thunder Fang as I managed to get upright.
With the man in black now free to see, he kicked Skorupi away, Skorupi rolling over and smacking its head against a tree.
He charged at me, and rammed me into a tree. One of my last images was Arbok ripping Spearows wings off with fangs sparking with electric power, holding the bird down with his powerful tail, before the man began pummeling my face with his fists.
"Where da fuckin' money at? I'll kill you, man!" He screamed, as my vision started to turn red. I couldn't even call for help. I could only raise my arms to my face, attempting to shield myself from the pain.
Skorupi came out of nowhere, biting the man's ear, and tearing him away from me as the
man screamed in agony. I pushed myself up slowly, and picked up a nearby branch that had a pointed tip.
"Ahbok! Get thif fuckin thin off meh!" the man ordered, slamming the side of his head into a tree repeatedly in a failed attempt to get Skorupi to stop. But Skorupi had not only sunk its pinsirs and teeth into the man's ear, nearly biting it clean off as evidenced by the amount of blood gushing around its mouth, but his stinger was repeatedly stabbing into the back of the mans neck, trying to poison him.
The hissing Arbok tossed Spearows wingless, unmoving body aside, and started slithering over toward the man.
"Fuck you!" I raised the branch, ready to stab the snake, but its reflexes were too fast. Its tail formed a watery substance, and it rolled out from behind my feet, knocking me on my back and nearly dislocating my elbow as I landed on it, crying out in surprise and pain.
My own Skorupi was chomping its venom into the man's ear, trying to poison the man who had attacked its friends and master over the night, as the man screamed for Arbok to kill it.
I rolled onto my side, and grabbed the branch again. It felt so heavy, and blood and dirt was covering nearly my entire vision, but I still had enough energy to talk.
"Fucking kill him, Skorupi!" I screamed in encouragement, trying to pull myself to my feet, but my legs felt like rubber and the effort was too much. I couldn't even stand.
Arbok bit into Skorupi's stinger with its Gunk Shot, though the poison didn't affect him, and managed to wretch Skorupi free of the piece of shit man, but the ear came off with it. The man couldn't even speak out orders for the Arbok, he was crying and grabbing at his severed ear, trying pathetically to press it back to the side of his head while Skorupi twisted maniacally, being dangled upside-down by the Arbok.
Arbok opted to use Thunder Fang on Skorupi holding him down with its tail and electrocuting him. Skorupi was stabbing at Arbok's face with the stinger, but Arbok wasn't even fazed by the moves.
"Skorupi! Hold on!" I cried out, finally gathering the energy to stand up, using the branch as a sort of cane. I charged at Arbok's back in a rage, holding the branch up like a javelin, ready to shank it in the back of its head, but the Aqua Tail reflexively batted me back without Arbok even turning around, the rattle at the end shaking threateningly. It's heavy tail held me down as it held Skorupi down with its fangs, both of us screaming helplessly, unable to beat this monster.
Like an angel swooping from the sky, a crack of lightning fired through the air and struck the snake, causing it to roll into its side, away, spitting and rattling with an urgency. It looked toward the man in black, its master, for guidance, but the man in black was too distracted by his lost ear, crying and holding it in disbelief. This distraction was all Emolga needed. It lunged onto Arbok's back and started repeatedly shocking it with bouts of electricity from her Thunder attack, all the while squeaking in effort. Skorupi was quick to help, and he charged onto the Arbok as well, snapping its claws over Arbok's snout. But the snake quickly overpowered them, rolling over and over on its back and repeatedly slamming Emolga down until she had no energy left to fight the serpent, and Skorupi stood alone, biting into the side of Arbok's face, refusing to quit.
Arbok seemed to almost slap himself with his tail, smacking Skorupi off of it with a seemingly lazy effort. This was the opening I needed. I charged it once more, just as it opened its jaws to go for one last Thunder Fang on Skorupi, and rammed the sharp branch through its open jaws, stabbing through its throat and piercing into the back of its head, the tip of the branch jamming into the ground, the snake hanging dead in between.
The screams of the man in black echoed throughout the Gord. He was rolling around in the grassy clearing, leaving a small pool of blood wherever the left side of his head rubbed against the ground.
Gasping for air as the adrenaline still pumped throughout my veins, I whirled around to face the direction Togepi and Spearow had been attacked. I stumbled my way over to them to see the damage. Togepi's shell had been completely shattered, and there were bite marks and bruises all over her body, as well as the purplish hue of being poisoned tainting her skin. She was killed. Spearow was even worse. A trail of his own blood from being tossed by Arbok had splattered all over the grass, and his wings were nowhere to be seen. His feathers were a charred black from being electrocuted, and he reeked of the smell of something burning. His eyes were agape in shock, his beak chipped, and he also had been poisoned. Spearow was dead, too.
My mind a blank slate, I fell to my knees in front of my dead Pokemon. As signs of emotions like rage, disbelief, and sadness started to overcome me, a young boy, maybe 12 or 13, arrived at the scene. He looked to be a trainer, since there was a Poliwag trailing closely behind him.
"I heard scream-" the boy said no more. He saw the wingless Spearow, the broken Togepi, the pierced snake, the bloody man rolling around on the floor as if having a seizure. The Emolga and the Skorupi that were helping each other walk toward their fallen friends, the Emolga stricken with grief and tears while the Skorupi tried to remain strong.
"I'll get the police," the boy announced, and he was gone. On his way to Peltagrow probably to alert the station, as it was closer than Lunaris Town.
"We have to get out of here," I told my two remaining Pokemon, standing. I almost fell over as I did, unaware of how worn out I was. "Killing Pokemon is illegal." I looked over at the man who had made all this happen, who was still jerking around on the grass 4 yards away. A Pokemon who bit a man's ear off would be put down. That was the law. Self defense may have been a valid defense on our part, but I had impaled an Arbok with a fucking stick. I would go to jail. "Come on, do you want to get put down by Pokemon Control?" I began limping out of the clearing, urging Emolga and Skorupi to follow. I made sure to grab my backpack, not thinking of just returning them to their pokeballs. I wasn't thinking straight.
They followed. Emolga at first attempted to fly, but she couldn't fly straight and would continuously falter down to the ground, so she soon gave up and settled for trotting beside Skorupi.
And so we ran. Even when I heard the familiar wail of the police department's cars driving through the Gord as they were guided by the young boy to the scene of the crime. We kept running and running, even when I felt the comings of a cramp in my ribcage. Even when it hurt to run, we all ran.
Then, like a gunshot out of nowhere, I was surprised to find that I tripped over a root sticking out of the ground and fell over, injuring my already bruised arm. Skorupi rushed over to see if I was alright while Emolga just watched, panting, out of breath.
We found ourselves at the Gord Lake, where I'd first caught Emolga, when she had impressed me by fighting off a group of Grimers. There were Volbeats and Illumises glowing in the darkness above the lake, flying above them, dancing above them actually. Lighting the lake up, it was almost beautiful. The first time I'd ever said something like that about a Pokemon.
I was sitting in the sand, nursing my injured arm while Skorupi looked me over, seeing if I had broken anything, despite me telling him that I was okay. The fact that blood kept bubbling out when I would talk didn't comfort him.
"Emolga."
I turned around to the source of the voice and saw my Emolga looking at the Gord Lake with a pained look in her eyes.
"What are you looking at?" I asked her. She turned to look at me, briefly, with a look full of confliction. She looked back at the lake, then her eyes lingered back toward me, then she faced the lake again.
"You miss them?" I asked Emolga. She nodded, tears starting to form in the corner of her eyes.
"I'm mad about that, too. Don't worry, that dickhead's getting arrested right now." I hoped that would get her to stop looking so wistfully at the lake.
What she did next caught me off guard. She took to the air, and hovered herself over the lake, despite being exhausted from her fight with Arbok and all the sprinting.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Emolga," came the most defeated voice I'd ever heard. She was flying a few yards above the lake, looking at me as if I was some poor child living in an alleyway. It was a look of pity. She then turned around, and looked longingly into the night clouds.
"You want to leave me?" I asked, my voice much more quiet than I would have thought.
"Emolga." Yes.
Something resembling that pain in my stomach while getting chewed out by the gym leader came rushing back into my gut. That Butterfree in my stomach feeling, that pre-vomit feeling.
"Well…" I lowered my head, lost for words. Then, they came to me. "Good! Fucking go then! I never wanted your weak ass on my team anyway! Just fucking leave like you all do!"
Emolga just levitated, looking at me with that fucking pity look.
"FUCKING GO!"
And so she did, flying high into the air above the trees of the Gord and departing, and I was sure that was the last time I would ever see that pokemon.
I turned to Skorupi next.
"You can fucking go, too!" I shouted, tempted to kick him and take this fury out that I felt toward the man in black, toward the Arbok, toward Emolga. Skorupi just stood there, looking at me with a blank look. "I know, I'm a shitty fucking trainer who let you all get beat at the gym and then let you die, right? It's my fucking fault, right? Just go, so you can fucking leave me sooner rather than later."
I limped over to the edge of the Gord Lake. The firefly Pokemon had all disappeared, scared off by my screaming. Good. Fuck them too. I waited to hear the sound of Skorupi retreating into the woods, but all I heard was him fumbling through my backpack. The sound of the pokeball activating, and then the flash of red light behind me as Skorupi returned himself into the ball. Into his home.
I fell to my knees for the last time that day, full of guilt and anger at myself and at my pokemon and at that man in black, felt myself start to cry over everything that was wrong with my shitty fucking life and wish that now more than ever, I could just go home.