Ch 17: Sillstone Cemetery
When I finally woke up, after what felt like an eternity, the first thing that came to my mind was recalling the last moments of my dream - I had dreamed about Eliza, the cowboy-hat wearing girl back in Peltagrow - well, back in the Gord, really. I had been back in the Gord Woods, so similar yet different from Exeter with the horrible smell of all those bug pokemon and their nasty living habits, and just the noticeably weaker pokemon in general. But Eliza had been there, wearing her ratted blue jeans with brown scuffed boots, and that endearing pink hat. She had her face in her hands, and was sobbing heavily into her palms, looking so broken, I couldn't help but approach her.
"Eliza?" I had asked her, reaching out a comforting arm for her shoulder, wanting to somehow rub the pain away. "Hey, what happened? Eliza?"
Then she lashed at me with her hands, screaming wildly, scratching my cheek, cutting the skin with her nails and drawing blood as I cried out in surprise and stumbled over, then fell down an endless dark tunnel of eternity for probably just a second or two, then I woke up with a start back in Exeter Forest, with two weakend mons napping in their pokeballs, a sleep-deprived Drapion that had successfully guarded me all night, and my backpack with so few belongings.
Working my brain quickly to forget that nightmare, I remembered then that it was Tropius that had guided us off the beaten path in the first place and had gotten us entangled with those poachers, so I was dead lost without him. I recalled Tropius from his pokeball, returned Drapion to his, and suggested Tropius try flying me straight over the forest and directly to Wintervale rather than us continue to struggle through these dangerous woods, unprepared, undermanned, with only three pokemon who were slowly becoming more and more tired by each hour.
It goes without saying - it was not a good idea. I'll even admit that he tried his very best. He could successfully carry me for a short distance over the treetops, but the extra weight just was too much for his wings to handle.
So we continued our original formula, with Tropius guiding me through the dense forest, swatting at branches with his wings that were in the way of his long, protruding head that he had to keep strategically maneuvering around the trees to avoid getting his neck caught. I had a great view of his big brown ass right in my face, so I tried taking in the rest of my surroundings with more interest than usual, but we seemed to be in such a deep, dense part of the forest that there weren't even any wild pokemon in sight.
There was an opening in the towering treetops overhead at one point, which was revealed due to the arc of bright sunlight casting down a natural spotlight onto the forest floor. The crowns of the tall tree trunks were all so filled with green leaves sprouting out of every branch that it cast a permanent shade down onto this dimmer area of Exeter. The light had an almost ironic entrance, due to it being cast directly down onto an old, rusted iron gate with a beaten-up sign tied to the top with String Shot, reading SILLSTONE CEMETERY, FOR THE FORGOTTEN ONES.
The iron gate was the entrance into the cemetery, with two brick walls on either side of the gate that stretched on out of vision, meaning this was no small graveyard. It was quite peculiar to find a cemetery way the hell out in the darkest part of the forest that Adam had explored the whole time he'd been in here. The light shining from above only lit the front entrance, leaving the whole inside in an ominous cloud of shade, with a few large gray tombstones and statues popping out in the background as landmarks.
"Looks safe enough," I said to Tropius, half-jokingly. The humor flying over his head, Tropius grinned stupidly, and trotted forward with no hesitation into the cemetery as I rushed to keep up with him before he got himself killed.
The innards of the Sillstone Cemetery were eerie and reminiscent of a set off of some old horror movie. The floor of the whole place was littered with dead leaves and a few signs of previous life: a bouquet of flowers pressed against one headstone that had long withered, or a skeleton of a Rattata lying on its back right off of the old cobblestone pathway. Most of the headstones had turned black with grime and were unreadable, or some outright damaged beyond repair, likely from some pokemon skirmish. There were fat old cherry trees planted sporadically between the headstones, the leaves and foliage drooping very to the ground for tree branch standards, leaving trails of vines and dangling leaves a common obstacles through the area that Tropius had to swat away with his own leafy wings to move forward. He was almost moving at a run, suddenly scared by the foreboding nature of the chipped headstones and decrepit trees, so I was racing to keep up with him.
"Tropius, slow down! It's just us, you dumbass!" I shouted while sprinting after him, and something in my command had just clicked with Tropius; sinking his front paws into the dirt, he skidded slightly before coming to a stop from his gallop. Tropius' reaction time was faster than mine, and I wasn't able to slow down from my run.
The collision with his back wasn't so painful, but ricocheting off of Tropius and landing with all my weight slammed down onto my right arm as something went click, causing me to scream in pain and roll over to free up my right arm, but I couldn't stop shouting as tears welled in my eyes and my heartbeat thumped harder and harder - it was broken. I had stupidly landed on my arm, and now it was fucking broken in the middle of the fucking forest in the center of Ilragorn Island, miles away from any Pokemon Center or any person who can help, with no healing supplies for me or my team in my backpack.
Tropius was instantly at my side, guilty tears in his eyes and a look of hopelessness as he looked me up and down, patting me with his soft leaves in some weak attempt to dull the pain of watching me scream over something he couldn't fix.
"Fuck, I think it's broken," I managed to explain through gritted teeth and a few yelps of pain to Tropius, while using a nearby headstone to pull myself up to a sitting position so I could rest my back against it and clutch at my busted right shoulder with my left arm, terrified to feel around it and survey what the damage to my bones could be. "Tropius, this is serious. I'm not going to be able to walk all that. You're the only one who can help me out here. I need you to fly to Wintervale City and go to a Pokemon Center and you make sure you make a fuss and you don't settle down with Nurse Joy until she realizes that she needs to send out emergency help. Take my trainer ID card and cash from the bag so that bitch knows what's going on." Tropius opened my backpack with his mouth and then scooped up what I told him to while I recalled from that one poke class I took with Eliza that for emergencies where trainers were injured out in the wilderness, they could always send out a flying pokemon to the center with their trainer ID card so that Nurse Joy could report an injured trainer. It was kind of encouraged that everyone should have a flying type pokemon for this very reason, though some people thought it unnecessary and their teams fared better with no flyer.
"Okay - ow," I winced in pain from the throbbing in my right arm, then focused on making sure Tropius understood the direness of the situation. "Please hurry, Tropus. I only got Kabutops and Drapion here and none of you are at your finest right now. So just-"
A pair of glowing pink eyes with thin black slits for pupils lit up the darkness just 10 meters to my left, joined with an insane snicker of laughter, hidden behind a sickly yellow pair of jagged smiling lips that resembled a zipper off of a jacket. It was a Banette, obviously, and it was incredibly hard to make out in the darkness due to its soot-like darkened body. It was small and looked more like an evil gnome than a pokemon to me, but under these circumstances, this pokemon came off as pretty dangerous and rapid.
Tropius shifted his weight so that he blocked me off from the Banette and he stretched his wings out as wide and high as he could, doing his best imitation of a roar, trying to intimidate the ghost to leave us alone. As good an effort as it was, I could see from peering under his wings, the ghost remained still as a potted plant, sneering in our direction and laughing behind his teeth a kind of hungry, unfiltered belting as though this pokemon had heard the funniest joke of its life but couldn't make a sound. It was really unnerving and causing me goosebumps, but there was no way I could let Tropius feel like I was overwhelmed by this. Being a strong trainer had taught me that as a leader, you never let them know that you even think that a situation is hopeless. Never display weakness.
Just like that, a second pair of jewel-like pink eyes appeared beside the first one, and we found ourselves facing two Banettes, both of them looking as ravenous and twitchy as the other. They both just stood there, crouched beside a headstone just maybe 4 blocks away from where I was leaning, just a rocks-throw away.
I grabbed for my pokeball on my left hip where I knew I always stored Drapion, but found only blank air. Looking down to confirm after thoughtlessly trying a second and third time, I discovered that indeed, my Drapion was gone.
"What the fuck!?" I cried, outraged. I instinctively reached for my right side, where I kept Kabutops, praying that he would still be there. He was. I celebrated by releasing Kabutops so that this potential battle was at least even, despite the face they had both already fought a Scyther and a Weavile (and a Rhyhorn, a little). My guys were tough, but they were bumping into some threatening pokemon in Exeter who threw off some powerful attacks, it wasn't the little-leagues here anymore.
An answer to my momentary question of Drapion's whereabouts presented itself when the newly revealed Banette began showing off its new stolen plaything to the other Banette, as they both began poking at the pokeball. It would simply be too easy and too comically ironic for the Banettes to accidentally summon Drapion from the ball, so of course that did not happen. Somehow, this thing had snatched Drapion right off my belt, maybe while I was running to catch Tropius? Either way, all I had to do was get my Drapion back because there was no way I was about to lose my top tier threat to these little gnome pieces of shit, and I had to make sure Tropius is able to fly to Wintervale when this battle was over. Arceus mighty, this was going to be one of my harder moments, I just knew it. Please, don't let me die in this wretched, ugly cemetery with all these forgotten pokemon and people.
A foggy, bulky dark cloud began to rise out of one of the largest tombstones in the cemetery, which was just a few headstones past the one the Banettes were crouching next to. The words on the tombstone were ineligible like most, but the grand ghost pokemon that emerged from it, rubbing at its sleepy eyes, was quite renowned - it was a plump, healthy Dusknoir that looked well-fed and battle-ready. For a clueless moment, I thought the Dusknoir would assist us in shooing away the Banettes, but it was immediately clear that the Dusknoir saw us as threats as it raised one of its arms at us and a small ball of fire began harnessing in his palm.
How the hell did everything go so badly so quickly!? It was almost insane to believe that just a few minutes ago I was fine, my arm was fine, I could walk, my Drapion wasn't stolen, and I wasn't outmanned by two to three pokemon, with one of theirs being an Arceus-damn Dusknoir.
"Kabutops," I fought back whining from the pain of my bones shifting around in my right arm as I readjusted myself. "You take Dusk. Tropus, you gotta take on both the Banettes. You got it?"
Both of them rushed to their prospective targets. The Dusknoir fired off a Will-o-Wisp, hitting my Kabutops square in his big head as Kabutops fired back with a series of Rock Slides, with two of the six rocks he fired actually connecting. Due to Kabutops being burned before the move connected, the weakened attack meant Dusknoir took virtually nothing from it, also owing to its natural bulk. Tropius flew upward, using his flying type to his advantage as per usual by soaring above the Banettes and out of their reach. Taking initiative, Tropius fired off two Air Slashes, one at each pokemon, as he ascended. Both pokemon dodged it with relative ease, but it got them to stop remaining still and go on the offensive, as they both propelled into the air and flew to keep up with Tropius, who was caught off guard by their ability of flight.
"Tropius, Energy Ball! Kabutops, Swords Dance!"
Kabutops stood in place and concentrated for a few moments, leaving himself open to attack as he performed a few dramatic gestures with his arm and raised his attack stat to where it was before he was burned. He cringed a few times as he was whittled by the natural burn emanating off his body, but he was not attacked. Dusknoir took these moments to set up something of his own: he had done a brief pantomine of being trapped in a box, and then Sillstone Cemetery temporarily became entrapped in a Trick Room. During their spat, Tropius had fired off two Energy Balls, with one of them managing to send a Banette crashing right back down to the dirt. The second Banette, this one holding Drapion's ball, used its free hand to fire off a small orb of Confuse-Ray that sunk into Tropius' head, confusing it. Tropius fought through the confusion, and successfully fired off another Energy Ball, hitting the descending Banette with the ball, and he went flying into the branches of a cherry tree.
"Tropius, keep up the pressure by Air Slashing them back down, keep them from getting at you! And Kabutops, Night Slash that thing in its fat stomach!"
Tropius attempted to do as I ordered, but he only managed to smack himself with a ridiculous Heabutt to his own side, which frustrated me to no end to watch. In that free turn, both Banettes had flew back up to my confused Tropius, and both of them used a Shadow Claw directly in his face. The nice thing was that it jolted him out of confusion, the shitty part was that he fell and landed on his back right on a headstone, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to fall over onto his side in the dirt, seemingly unconscious. Kabutops' scythes turned a charcoal black and glowed with dark energy as he charged at the Dusknoir, but Kabutops moved with a new speed: grandma. Under Trick Room, Dusknoir had acquired a newfound quickness whereas Kabutops now moved as though stuck in quicksand. Before Kabutops could even blink, Dusknoir fired off a Shadow Punch in Kabutops' chest, knocking him to the ground as he cringed with pain over the burn wearing him down more.
"Tropius, use the headstones like shields! Like at Peltagrow Gym!" I shouted, the pain in my arm almost unnoticeable compared to the fear of what would happen if I lost this battle. "Kabutops, Aqua Jet out of there!" Knowing Aqua Jet gave Kabutops priority over one of Dusknoir's moves even if Dusknoir was technically faster at the moment, I hoped he could use that to maneuver away for a moment and gain some momentum. I just needed to stall this Trick Room out, and if either of my guys got knocked out before that happened, I didn't see myself getting out of here.
Kabutops, even in his weakest, still moved with incredibly speed and he managed to fire off an Aqua Jet that slammed right through Dusknoir, entering through the stomach and exiting directly out of his back, but Katutops remained Aqua Jetting, firing himself off like a small torpedo of aquatic energy. He was using up his energy fast but the prioritized speed made him able to dodge Dusknoir's attempts to Shadow Punch him because even though Dusknoir was faster than Kabutops in Trick Room - Aqua Jet still managed to sail around and evade his moves. Tropius also found himself now slower than the Banettes under Trick Room, and the Banettes continued their assault by firing off Confuse Rays and occasionally one would Shadow Sneak, a ghost version of Quick Attack, in order to mostly scare Tropius as one would suddenly materialize right in his face in order to give him a good slap. He was using his wigs to fire off Air Slashes to blow away the Confuse Rays, and he kept ducking behind statues and tombstones, but the Banettes finally gained the upper hand when one of them had the bright idea of hurdling a purple glob just over a tombstone he was ducking behind, which connected, poisoning him instantly.
This was the beginning of the end. There was no way Tropius could fight his way
through these two, while poisoned, and somehow this Dusknoir, and fly all the way to Wintervale in enough time. Poison wears mons out generally 5-30 minutes depending on how strong the mon.
In the final turn of Trick Room, Kabutops could no longer Aqua Jet to dance his way free from his beating from Dusknoir. As Kabutops fell to his knees on the cobblestone pathway in exhaustion in that fifth turn, Dusknoir raised his arm in a karate-chop motion, and brought down a super-effective Brick Break with tremendous power upon Kabutops shoulder, casing a snap to reverberate in the air, and Kabutops fell to the floor, trembling, defeated but not yet unconscious. His right arm had literally been broken off by the Dusknoir, who towered over the Kabutops, causing a shadow of darkness upon him and making his final moments so frightening and dim.
"Tropius, please!" I screamed, thinking of the last option I could, which was a move I'd never asked Tropius to perform due to how weak I assumed him to be, figuring he would never be able to perform it so why bother asking it? Only the top tiers of their type can perform the most powerful of moves. "Please Leaf Storm! Please learn it right now if you don't already and just blow those Banettes away with Leaf Storm!"
I could only watch helplessly as Dusknoir pounded away at Kabutops with Brick Break after Brick Break, until I could hear nothing but the crack of his rock body breaking apart with each mighty swing, killing Kabutops with no remorse. But on the other side Tropius took to the air, glowing that purplish hue of a poisoned pokemon, gave a twirl as he reeled his wings inward, then unleashed a tornado of both leaves that it shot out from its wings, as well as many being swept up from the dirt floor, or from the drooping tree branches, and the assault of deadly hurricanes of sharp leaves barreled through the two Banettes with tremendous force, sending the two of them deep underground, unconscious, as their ghostly bodies lay in the coffins underneath the ground, badly beaten.
Tropius descended, heavily weakened, to where one of the Banettes had sunk into the floor, just in front of a tombstone reading HERE LIES CATERPIE. HE LIVED., where the pokeball containing Drapion had found itself.
"Throw it at me!" I said, my eyes still on the Dusknoir which had ceased its pummeling of Kabutops. Kabutops lay in several broken pieces in front of the ghost, and I knew it was beyond a Pokemon Center's abilities to fix. He had killed Kabutops, and his one glowing red eye now focused in on me, the kid lying against a headstone with one arm bent at an odd position and no guard.
Tropius shivered away the pain of poison, picked up the ball with his mouth, then used his neck to propel the ball as hard as he could toward me, landing several feet to my left, just out of reach. That had taken the last of his energy, and with one last glow of purplish pain, Tropius fell over, knocked out.
I rolled over so that my stomach was now pressed into the ground, screaming at the pain that caused by rolling my shoulder muscles, but the ball was too far out of reach for me to do anything other than crawl. I dragged myself forward with my left, free arm while holding back screams of anguish over dragging my broken right arm along the floor, but the Dusknoir was approaching closer, the heat of flames being summoned in his palms being within reach of my back as my left hand clasped Drapion's ball at last -
I released him, and it was a blur of Drapion's arms swinging as he avenged Kabutops with an array of Knock Offs upon the Dusknoir, beating the ghost type until the ghost was beyond dead as Drapion looked on with shame at Kabutops unmoving body, feeling that he didn't get there in time.
I lay still for a long time, staring up into the treelines, trying to steady my pulsating heart beat since it felt like I was having the oncoming of a heart attack or a panic attack or something.
"I'm dead," I said out loud, to no one, since Drapion wasn't even listening as he was mourning over Kabutops' body. With Tropius knocked out and no revives or centers by me, he was out for the count. All I had was a weakened, devastated Drapion to get me out of this forest, with a broken arm? I just didn't see how I could possibly do it.
A friendly laugh shook me out of my dreary thoughts, but it was still unsettling considering all the ghosts I'd just had to deal with. I whipped my head around to find the source of the laughing, as did Drapion, and we both came upon a jolly Haunter that had come out of nowhere, clapping its hands joyously.
The Haunter was smiling and clapping at the sight of the toppled Dusknoir, and the Haunter made it a point to bow respectfully at Drapion, who just blinked stupidly back it, confused on such manners as I never bowed around him. The Haunter seemed bright, and he was quite fast as he floated on over toward me with astounding dexterity as he viewed the injury on my arm and his smiled faded as he took in the seriousness of the moment.
"I get the feeling you didn't like that Dusknoir, or those Banettes. Maybe bullied you or something?" I hazarded a guess, and the Haunter timply tilted his head amicably. Probably a yes. "Tell you what. You can join my team, and you can leave this ugly cemetery and hang around with strong mons like my Drapion and I can train you up to be a tough ass bad ass pokemon. All I need you to do is take my trainer ID card and this money-" I motioned toward my bag where Tropius had left it. "-and just fly over to the Pokemon Center in Wintervale and Nurse Joy will understand. Just lead someone back here. I'm putting all my eggs into you, so please just agree to join my team."
The Haunter licked the side of my cheek, which sent a shiver down my spine, but he then grabbed my backpack with one of his small hands, and flew through the air toward the top of the treetops, heading toward the direction of Wintervale City.