Ch 22: Rocky Road
My last night in Wintervale was spent partying late into the night at this trendy trainer's bar downtown with Marvin, celebrating the festivities with the remaining attendants of the festival. The highlight of the evening was when I ended up getting into a battle right with some jerk outside the bar after he spilt his drink on me while telling a story to his group of friends with way too much animation, swishing his hands back and forth until of course half his drink ended up on the back of my neck, soaking my shirt. I maybe could have accepted an honest apology and let it go, but this guy just burst into laughter when he saw his glass was suddenly empty, as if he was amazed by the magical forces that made his drink disappear.
Long story short, because of some drinking and the late night, this jerk and I ended up in front of the bar in battle position, with Marvin and some girls we had been dancing with during the night standing behind my back, while the jerk's friends were behind his. A small crowd of spectators huddled around the fight to watch the two angry trainers go at it.
I used Drapion while the asshole picked a towering Beartic that was one of the few pokemon I had encountered that matched my Drapion's furious scowl. It was a fun, quick battle that involved the Beartic setting up a hailstorm using Hail while Drapion got off damage with a free Poison Jab to the Beartic's side, making the bear that was standing on its two hind legs stumble a few feet to the side, yet the Beartic remained standing tall. My pokedex informed me that Beartic had an ability called Slush Rush, meaning his speed was heightened under hailstorms, but that information was clear enough before my own eyes as the Beartic was now rushing around Drapion, attempting to confuse him while the hailstorm slowly chipped at Drapion's health. They had the whole open street to play around in, and Beartic was taking advantage by hurtling Icicle Crashes, massive boulder-like chunks of ice chucked at Drapion who could only dodge the first two, the third one finally striking Drapion's body and sending him spinning into a STOP sign on the corner, making some of the spectators scream who thought he'd come flying into them on the sidewalk. This was a messy battle, and probably illegal, but no police were around and no one cared enough to think about the safety precautions of a hectic battle outside a bar to dare call the cops at this point.
Drapion used his tail to sever the STOP sign by its base, and held the sign in his right arm like a sword, waving it threateningly at the Beartic who was still much too fast for the Drapion under the hailstorm to get off a clear hit. Beartic managed to get off one more Icicle Crash just as the hailstorm faded, but Drapion tanked the hit like a champ. Drapion swung the STOP sign with the steel end of the sign connecting right into Beartic's head, knocking the ice pokemon out with the super effective material. The crowd cheered Drapion's name, with many of the spectators complimenting that they'd never seen such an impressive Drapion in their lives.
Marvin rewarded me with a drink when I caught up with him, and the rest of the night was a blur of happiness.
The next morning, while packing up my things for the last time, getting ready to leave the trainer's hostel in Wintervale, my roommate - now thankfully Marvin instead of the mopey Donovan - struck up a conversation with me.
"You headed straight to the next gym from here, ain't you?" Marvin wondered casually, rolling his own belongings into his backpack on his side of the room.
"Yes."
"So you're headed to Goldenleaf. That's the closest gym from here."
"I guess I am. Where are you going from here?" I asked back.
"I was headed up north anyway. It's the same direction as Goldenleaf. And the north side of Ilragorn is kind of known as the rougher side of the island. Not that we're bitches, but it's not a bad idea to not be alone up there."
"I haven't exactly found the Gord or Exeter or Duggie's Ruins all that pleasant. Not to offend you or anything, Marvin, but I've held my own against some pretty bleak circumstances all over Ilragorn at this point. I got two gym badges. I've lost a handful of pokemon. I even pissed off a few folks over at Anonymous once or twice. My point is - I've been around."
Marvin's eyebrows raised the highest at the end of my speech. "You've tussled with Team Anonymous? No shit? You?"
"Yeah, shit, me!" I replied with a laugh at his dismissive response. "And all those things did in the long run was make me stronger and show me what not to do in order to never let myself get into situations like that again."
I could tell Marvin was actually a friend because the guy actually listened to me when I talked. He actually asked me questions, and reacted to my tales with more than just an 'ah' or 'cool'. He was genuinely interested in all the shenanigans I'd had to put up with. He laughed empathetically at my near castration when I'd first caught Skorupi in the Gord, rolled his eyes with a smile and endlessly apologized for leaving me to fight for my life miles underground in the dark caves of Duggie's Ruins against a raging Kabutops with a Tropius who didn't know how to use a grass move. Although he did blame that on me for not having a grass move on my Tropius from day one, and I somewhat agreed with his criticism, and since then all my pokemon from day 1 had moves to give them their STAB (same type attack boost) and to prevent ridiculous moments like being walled by pokemon you should always beat.
He seemed most engrossed by my retelling of the breaking of my innocence as a trainer - being attacked out of my sleep by a member of Anonymous and his partner Arbok whose hisses still rung in the back of my ears sometimes. The Arbok that had killed my Togepi and my Spearow, and caused my Emolga to abandon me at Gord Lake so many nights ago. I told him about the poachers that worked for Anonymous, and how I'd let the Zoroark they'd captured free to eat them, which was one of my darker moments that haunted me many nights in that bed in the Wintervale Pokemon Center.
"That's fucking intense, bro," Marvin said. He didn't have much else to say after that, but what could you say?
We checked out of the hostel together and Marvin ended up leading me to the northern edge of the city, where small mountains guarded the whole of Wintervale City from the oceans tides on the other side. At the base of one of mountains, not too far from the north entrance to the city, a route with a small sign reading Rocky Road would have probably gone unnoticed if I'd been venturing alone, but Marvin led me to the path, labeling it as one of the older, forgotten routes around the city as the wealthy citizens of Wintervale mostly stuck to purchasing their mons at the daycare. This made me think the route would be secluded barring us.
Rocky Road earned its namesake in more ways than one, both literally and figuratively. The uneven route raggedly carved through the wild northern mountains of Wintervale proved quite the hiking trip, with my calves burning from just under an hour of traveling along the upward slope toward the peak.
Among the sights on the ascent up the mountain, Marvin and I pointed out to each other such gems as an emaciated Golbat that appeared to be sucking the blood out of its own youngling Zubats in a dirty nest high up in a dead tree. There was a Linoone that got snatched out of a hole in the ground a few moments after poking its head out to scan the area. The patient Noctowl had swooped in from a low branch just waiting, and successfully captured dinner with ease. I got the sense this was a real wasteland of pokemon habitats, a place where I just couldn't imagine any pokemon surviving out here in a few more years. The northern mountains were rough, and the few pokemon that could manage to survive out here must be undoubtedly tough to keep up with this deadly environment.
Marvin regaled me with some of his own tales of his own journey since last I'd seen him to make the trip along Rocky Road go faster. I was massively curious how he had made such a transformation from a trash-talking, sailor-mouthed asshole whose strongest mon was an Axew that hadn't evolved after training for two years - to this confident (hell, cocky) trainer owning fully leveled powerhouses. I say this after being able to witness him in action use his own Haxorus to beat down a fat Jellicent belonging to a well-respected trainer at the festival after a few Dragon Dances and expert dodges of Will-o-Wisps thrown out by the Jellicent to just pummel it down with Outrages.
Marvin claimed a part of it was just putting in the time to know the craft: what each pokemon does, what each pokemon can learn, what terrains work for what pokemon, pokemon typing advantages. It was a long list, and it could get boring at times, but an expert trainer got joy out of learning the constant advancements and updates on pokemon information, and regularly consulted their pokedex if they didn't know something. Also putting in the time to battle, and to not let yourself get intimidated by an opponent based on their reputation, or their pokemon. That was easier said than done sometimes, but I found that I'd naturally picked up on a lot of his advice from my own experiences as a trainer.
At a certain point along Rocky Road, the worn route merged into a small valley that had a few pathetic puddles of water for the local pokemon to lap at, and the carcass of a Bouffalant, a gigantic hole seemingly punched through its stomach, leaving the guts pouring out of the Bouffalant while a family of Tauros was helping itself to the free lunch. I got the feeling the Tauros were incapable of performing such a powerful hit, and wondered what pokemon had done that to the bull with the afro on its head.
Marvin suggested we take a temporary break at the valley, seeing as it was just us and the three feasting Tauros surrounding by decaying mountains on all sides, so it seemed safe enough to rest our legs after all that walking uphill.
"So, Adam, are you happy with how your life's going?" Marvin questioned while he took a seat on the rock floor, using his backpack as a cushion.
"Uh," I was taken off guard by his unguarded question. "I mean...I could be better. Could be further than where I'm at, I think. But I'm not so hard on myself as I used to be." I joined him on the floor, sitting with him and deciding to show some of my newfound compassion for my own pokemon in front of Marvin, so I released Tropius and motioned for him to drink some of the open pond water. Tropius happily obliged.
"If my memory serves me right, you said you only became a trainer because your parents kicked you out and you needed to get back in your room?" Marvin asked.
I nodded.
"That was true. Nowadays though - I don't think I even have an interest in going back to Lunaris when I'm done with all this." It was the first time I'd ever even considered what I would do when I was finally done with getting the badges and entering the league. "Being away from my family for so long has just made me realize that I flourish so much better outside my hometown environment, away from my nagging parents and my asshole brother, Evan."
Marvin and I were interrupted by two figures that emerged from behind us, both of them making impressive leaps from over some massive rock formations and bounding over both of our heads. The two pokemon seemed to have zero interest in us or my Tropius, but they instead had their sights set on the three Tauros they had lured with their apparent trap.
The first new arrival was a flexible Hitmonlee, who used the propulsion from his great leap to build momentum into a powerful High Jump Kick, the Hitmonlee showing no expression as it stabbed its right foot through the neck of one of the clueless Tauros, dead before it hit the floor. The second pokemon was a stout Sudowoodo, who after making his jump over the rock patterns to enter the valley, chose to slide a Low Kick into the remaining two Tauros, sending them flying like bowling pins into the rock wall, heavily damaging them. Before either Tauros could rise to their feet, the Hitmonlee delivered a deadly Mach Punch to ones face, while Sudowoodo sent his dangerous slabs of Stone Edge into the last Tauros, sending it to its knees for the last time. The two pokemon has killed the three Tauros in under 10 seconds, and it had a kind of planning and fine tuning applied to it that made the whole scene feel incredibly wrong.
Sure, two well-trained, highly-leveled pokemon of an experienced trainer could probably pull off a coordinated attack with such synergy and timing, but two wild pokemon just don't have that kind of conscious planning.
Then the Hitmonlee and Sudowoodo turned to face the three of us, who had all risen to our feet and stood together. Tropius had his teeth bared and was ready to make up for his lackluster performance at the Wintervale Gym. Marvin, frankly, looked completely unimpressed by the two new threats that had presented themselves in the valley, and seemed more so annoyed by them for interrupting our conversation.
I then focused on their faces, and there was something creepily familiar about the blankness in both of their eyes, and I wondered where I'd seen that same deathly stare before. Then I remembered the horrible accident on the Greyhoundoom Bus: it spinning out of control and slamming into a tree, that nice passenger Cletus getting killed in the chaos, the flock of Unfezants breaking through the windows and almost killing all of us. How I had so nearly gotten gobbled up by a couple of them myself, if not for fighting back just long enough to release my old Kabutops to finish them off. But those Unfezants had that milky white in their eyes, as if they pupil had vanished. They also seemed extremely aggressive and had a conniving intelligence to their attacks, and I realized that whatever had triggered or infected the Unfezants over by Celmont was infecting pokemon way the hell over here in the north mountains, too.
As I reached to grab Haunter's pokeball to join Tropius against these two infected Hitmonlee and Sudowoodo, Marvin grabbed at my arm before my hands touched my belt.
"What the fuck are you-?"
"This is exactly the kind of shit that made me a better trainer so fast. Push your Tropius, man! He's fucking good enough to take these two, he's got type advantage and he's been on your team for a long ass time so 1v2. You got this, man. You don't need more than Tropius to win." Marvin then let go of my arm, leaving it my choice to release Haunter to aid Tropius in this battle. I went with just Tropius.
"Tropius, let's keep this battle up close and personal for now," I warned him. The valley gave us plenty of space to do our thing and flying up high just gave Hitmonlee enough distance to actually fire off High Jump Kicks, and resisted or not, I knew those were some powerful kicks. I'd seen the Tauros and the Bouffalant.
"Tropius, Air Slash Hitmonlee!" I started, and Tropius, who was only hovering a few inches off the ground using his wings to glide through the air, slashed his wings through the air to fire off a few dangerous whips of wind, but Hitmonlee twirled around the Air Slashes with grace while Sudowoodo used the distraction to fire off a few Stone Edges at Tropius. In an attempt to recreate Hitmonlees almost acrobatic dodging of the Air Slashes, Tropius did his best imitation of that while trying to dodge the slabs of stone rather than slashes of wind, and due to his bulkier size he was not as successful.
One of the stones connected with Tropius' front paw, leaving a bright red bruise and drawing tears from Tropius' eyes from the pain of one of his toes clipping off, that the pokemon did his best to hide.
Sudowoodo was firing off another Stone Edge while Hitmonlee was bouncing and ricocheting off of the rocky walls surrounding us while his right foot was slowly steaming, then catching fire, finally allowing the Hitmonlee to fire a Blaze Kick at Tropius just as Sudowoodo fired his rocks off.
"Fly up!" I said urgently.
Tropius sucked up the pain in his front paw to cast his wings down with tremendous force, sending him flying upward and evading the Stone Edge and the Hitmonlee's Blaze Kick, leaving the Hitmonlee to catch a slab of rock in its face, knocking it momentarily to the floor before it leaped back to its feet again, its blank eyes locked on the airbound Tropius who was safely high above them all.
"Energy Ball when you see an opening!" Like I'd thought, Hitmonlee took advantage of Tropius' extended distance to kick off of one of the walls and aim a High Jump Kick up into the sky at Tropius, who was using the moment to fire off an Energy Ball at Sudowoodo who was busy preparing to fire off yet another Stone Edge and was caught unaware by the green ball that reeked of mildew and exploded into bright burst of grassy energy upon contact, knocking Sudowoodo on his back. He would have been OHKO'd by that move under normal circumstances, but he must have the ability Sturdy, meaning he can just barely tank one move that would normally knock him out. It was a good effort on Tropius' part, but almost taking down the Sudowoodo cost him dearly. Hitmonlee's feet connected into Tropius' underbelly, and the force of the High Jump Kick, though resisted by the flying typing as well as natural gravity, got a hard hit on Tropius that knocked the wind out of him and he was sent falling to the rocky floor below.
As the dust cloud settled from Tropius crashing back down to the valley floor littered with pebbles and sand, all three pokemon were back on their feet and ready for more. Just as I was getting ready to call out another move on Tropius, the Sudowoodo began shaking its entire body like a washing machine out of control, even foaming at the mouth of its odd tree trunk face. I realized what was happening: it was Self-Destructing.
"Tropius, get behind those rock formations fast!" I shouted from the safety of the other side of the valley, making sure to hide behind a large chunk of rock jutting out of the ground myself, with Marvin over my shoulder, impressed at how I was holding up.
Tropius' wings flapped madly through the air as he whizzed to the safety of behind the rock formations a distance away from where the Sudowoodo was slowly glowing a beautiful white energy that seemed to radiate from inside, though Sudowoodo still shook with convulsions. The blast of the Self-Destruct was massive, catching Hitmonlee in the crossfire and ensuring neither tainted pokemon ever left that valley alive, yet Tropius emerged from behind the old rocks with a happy-go-lucky smile on his face over taking down two mons.
Marvin suggested we finish up taking our break in the valley, now unbothered by any unwanted guests. We whipped out our best snacks from our backpacks, shared some funny stories while I let my team out to go exploring around the barren valley, and even got a dark-sided kind of kick at Haunter using his ghostly abilities to invade/haunt the carcass of Hitmonlee to antagonize Drapion into a fight.