Ch 25: No Man's Land, Part 2
"Haunter, Hypnosis!"
"Jynx, Lovely Kiss!"
My confident Haunter, who was levitating several feet above ground to my side, struck his three-clawed hand forward to fire off a Hypnosis, the three-ringed yellow hoops that had a habit of missing most of the time I used it and thus made the move iffy to me. A few meters directly in front of me displayed a floating Jynx and her partner, Marvin Bloom, the asshole who had deceived my dumbass into following him way the hell out to the middle of nowhere, falling right into this trap set up by Snake, the member of Team Anonymous I thought I would never see again after that traumatizing night in the Gord. Snake had his head poked out from behind a boulder the size of a house, spectating with a look of annoyance on his face that was growing worse and worse the longer it took for this to end with my death.
The Hypnosis collided in mid-air with the Jynx's own Lovely Kiss, a similar sleep-inducing move with slightly better accuracy that Jynx instead of firing off a thrust of her hand, she instead blew a kiss and a small lip-shaped ball of energy emerged from her mouth to lull Haunter into taking a nap. When the moves struck each other, a small puff of smoke burst from where they met, both moves vetoing each other.
"Forget it, just go for damage," I whispered to Haunter while he was still so close, trying to get any advantage I could before the battle really heated up. "Get up close and hit her with a Shadow Ball, that should take a chunk out of her." Haunter looked at me with a seriousness in the eyes he usually didn't have, nodded, and then focused his attention back on Jynx, who was also being coached by Marvin, but in a different way.
"How the fuck did you miss that shit!?" Marvin was saying, not bothering with the concept of having a foot up on me by hiding his strategy with Jynx instead of shouting it for all to hear. Which I appreciated. He then gave Jynx a good slap to the back of her head, making her head snap forward like a jack-in-the-box, her golden hair hiding her face as she took the hit from her own partner. "Lovely Kiss again!"
While Jynx took a moment to aim her kiss toward Haunter, I decided to slip one more move in there before Haunter got up close with the powerful Jynx. "Disable that move while you're at it."
Haunter fired off his Disable just before surging forward through the air toward Jynx, hoping the move would connect with Jynx before she could even fire off her second Lovely Kiss so that he wouldn't have to bother dodging it and risk being put out of commission because if that Lovely Kiss landed and Jynx got off a free psychic move on Haunter, he was done. Haunter was strong as hell like Drapion, perhaps even stronger in some ways through his keen intelligence, but he was a glass cannon and couldn't stomach too many strong hits.
Jynx was surprised to find that as she blew her second kiss, though she looked very pretty doing it, no lip-shaped ball of energy came out this time - Haunter had successfully Disabled the Lovely Kiss before she could fire it off. In her momentary daze over her unsuccessful move, Haunter managed to spring his small ghostly body through the air with rapid-fire speed, harnessing a devastating Shadow Ball cupped in his hands all the while, aiming to get a super-effective hit on Jynx extremely early and dent her hard from the get-go.
"Teleport!" shouted Marvin.
Just as Haunter was a mere foot from Jynx, he hurled the Shadow Ball right at her breast plate. Quicker than any pokemon could physically move, Jynx simply disappeared, swallowed up by some massive nothing faster than the blink of an eye, with the Shadow Ball just sinking into the earth and never coming back up.
Jynx reappeared not a moment later, about 50 feet further out into the open than the tight area we had started in. She was an odd silhouette there in the middle of a rocky wasteland, her bright red dress billowing in the wind and her hair floating in mid-air as if she was swimming underwater. She was using her psychic abilities to levitate high in the air and reminded me of a broomless witch. I had never really gotten to see the extent of a psychic pokemon's power before, and despite the fact I had never been too concerned since I had a ghost type and a dark type to fight them off, there was something disconcerting and frightening about the level of power ones like Jynx could attain.
"Ice Beam!" Marvin went on the offensive, and Jynx responded by shooting a beam of freezing cold temperatures at Haunter, who was just noticing where Jynx had teleported to.
"Go underground!" I told Haunter, who reacted by phasing his body directly into the earth much like he had used as a strategy against the Dugtrio at Wintervale Gym, sinking into the safety of the ground as the Ice Beam sailed over his head and struck the earth instead, leaving a small pool of frozen ice where it had connected. "Fire off a Shadow Ball from underground!"
While Jynx hovered in the air, her dopey face scanning the floor for any sign of Haunter emerging, Haunter used these precious few seconds to cast a Shadow Ball from beneath the earth's surface, and then fire it directly at Jynx, the Shadow Ball easily phasing through the ground with its ghostly properties.
Jynx instinctively Teleported a distance away to safety the moment she saw the Shadow Ball catapulting out of the ground toward her, making that whole attack a waste of energy.
Once Haunter popped out of the ground to see if his attack had beaten Jynx, he noticed with disappointment that she was floating 50 meters away again, but this time to the south, further away from where me and Marvin were huddled. Marvin had an equally frustrated look on his face, giving me confidence that as difficult to take down as this Jynx was, Marvin clearly felt the same way about my Haunter.
"Haunter, Double Team," I revealed my final move, even though I had wanted to save this as an ace up my sleeve. But now was that time.
"Jynx, Psyshock the fuck out of that thing!" Marvin retaliated.
Haunter conjured up an identical version of himself, with just a slight blurriness to the edges that one would only notice upon close inspection, and the two Haunters glided with effervescence toward the frazzled Jynx, who had both her hands raised and was unleashing the full force of her psychic power in one powerful Psyshock.
One of the Haunters paused in mid-air while charging the Jynx, as if grabbed by some massive invisible hand that was squeezing tight, as the Haunter received the full blow of the Psyshock and dissipated, revealing he was the copy of Haunter.
The real Haunter had flown over and behind Jynx and used those precious seconds to fire off a hastily constructed Shadow Ball at her back just as Jynx realized that she had focused all her power on the duplicate. The black ball glowing with purple sparks connected into Jynx's spine, temporarily absorbed her entire body in a massive black ball of spectral energy as she screamed in pain and her previously golden waves became fried, black, steaming chunks of burned hair and she fell about 40 feet to the floor below, knocked out cold.
"What the fuck, Marvin!?" cursed Snake from the sidelines. "How could you let your Jynx take that hit!? That was so obvious! Pay attention, stupid!"
While Marvin and Snake had a moment to offer each other some interesting suggestions, I watched in awe as Haunter who had been chuckling at Jynx's demise, stopped laughing and saw the look of dumb innocence in his eyes turn to fear as Haunter's entire body began glowing an awesome, pure white that lit up No Man's Land and made it seem almost beautiful for just that little moment.
Even Marvin and Snake shut up from their arguing to take in the sight of Haunter evolving into Gengar, as the bright light dimmed to show off his more rounded body and his newly developed feet, though he still levitated in the air as he always had. Wow. This was officially the second pokemon I had evolved, and it was just as cool to watch as when Skorupi transformed into Drapion in Peltagrow. It gave me hope. Like, even though I may have failed raising the likes of my Togepi, Spearow, Emolga, and Kabutops - I had invested my energy into turning Drapion, Tropius, Gengar, and hopefully soon Lapras into the kind of pokemon that could compete against the top tier threats in the Ilragorn League. But that all started with taking down Marvin today.
Marvin recalled Jynx and chose for his second pokemon a small, silver fairy type that looked more like something out of a can of alphabet soup than a pokemon: it was Klefki, who was a rather annoying pokemon in that it normally drew out battles with its priority status moves such as Toxic or Thunder Wave, according to its pokedex entry. One comment from the trainers reviews read: "TWave everything = VICTORY".
"Klefki, Thunder Wave!" Marvin ordered the moment Klefki settled out of his pokeball.
"Haunt- I mean, Gengar, dodge it and Disable!" Still adjusting to the sudden change.
Haunter was encapsulated by the familiar electrical charges surrounding his body that occured when a pokemon was statused with paralysis, which slowed a pokemon down and sometimes caused them to freeze completely in place while the opponent got off a free move. Klefki had the ability Prankster, meaning his non-attacking moves struck Gengar long before Gengar could even try to dodge it or fire off his Diable to shut down the Thunder Wave.
I could hear Snake laughing maniacally at Gengar being slowed down considerably by the paralyzation, which was basically a death sentence for a speedy glass cannon such as him. Gengar's eyes were squeezed tight in effort as he attempted to flee the immediate area while Klefki was just a few feet away from him, but the Thunder Wave prevailed and Gengar was frozen in place while Klefki decided to set up a Spike, shooting off a metallic spike from one of its dangling keys that flew through the air, stabbed into the ground, and sunk in, waiting to stab into the next pokemon that entered the area.
"Flash Cannon, let's get some damage!" Marvin said.
"Hypnosis!" I tried, thinking it useless, finding it very unlikely Gengar could hit a Hypnosis through paralysis against this conniving Klefki.
I rolled my eyes in aggravation as once again Gengar was completely paralyzed and unable to move an inch so that he couldn't even try lift his hand to fire off Hypnosis, making it all the more frustrating when Klefki shot off a beam of metallic, chrome energy that, while not very strong, hit Gengar right on the cheek and caused him to stumble out of the air, being pushed down by natural gravity and sending him down to the dusty rocky floors, kicking up pebbles and sand as he crash landed.
"This is fucking bullshit!" I complained to the laughter of the Anonymous members.
"Spikes and Flash Cannon until he can't get up," Marvin said through laughter and I watched in pained agony as Gengar moved at pitiful speeds while Klefki got up all three potential layers of Spikes, and then with two more Flash Cannons, set Gengar down for the count.
I recalled Gengar into his pokeball, shaking my head at the nasty tactics employed by this scumball to win. It was a sad sight to see one of my most powerful members be put down so easily by a pair of keys. I only had Lapras and Drapion left. Marvin had a Klefki and his Haxorus. So it made more sense for me to save Lapras in the back against Haxorus since he's got that nice ice STAB against it.
"I choose Drapion," I said confidently to myself, unleashing my Drapion who's eyes immediately honed in on Snake, who was 100 feet away, but the bright red on his face was visible from even such a distance. I smiled, knowing that seeing Snake would do nothing but build up Drapion's fury - which would only help us in a battle.
Before I could say anything, three spikes reminiscent of nails jutted out of the ground, and all zoned in on Drapion, stabbing into his sides while he grunted from the hits, but he didn't even blink. Drapion didn't want to display weakness in front of the man who had done so much damage to his partner, and to his old teammates. As much as Drapion wanted to completely ignore this battle against some worthless Klefki, and run up to Snake and start stabbing his poisonous tail into him, but Drapion had to have faith that Adam was making the right calls - and right now Adam was calling upon Drapion to take down this pesky Klefki.
"Thunder Wave!" repeated Marvin, hoping to use the same tactics used to beat Gengar on Drapion.
"Toxic Spikes," I said calmly to Drapion while nothing happened to him. Drapion threw a spike into the air similarly to Klefki's, except that Drapion's was purple and leaking poison as it stabbed onto Klefkis side of the field and sunk into the earth. Klefki was remaining still, his eyes focused on Drapion, trying to Thunder Wave but to no avail.
"You can't use priority moves on dark types, you idiot!" Snake screamed at Marvin, practically pulling his bandana off his head in an attempt to wretch at his own hair in anger.
"Oh, shit, I forgot," Marvin said dumbly.
I almost wanted to laugh at Marvin's ignorance, and turned to see if Eliza had woken up yet, but she still remained sprawled out on the floor, looking weathered and shaken up, and still lost in sleep from the beating she had taken from Snake. He was a monster, and when I was done with Marvin, I was going to finish off that piece of garbage, too.
"Knock Off," I told Drapion, wanting to get a read on Klefki's reaction to Drapion up close.
"Reflect," Marvin responded.
While Drapion rushed forward to hit Klefki with a Knock Off that wouldn't do much damage anyway, Klefki closed its eyes and a large blue rectangular screen that reminded me of a giant glass window briefly flashed in front of Klefki, showing that physical attacks against him would now be halved in power. And my Drapion was a physical attacker with dark and poison coverage, meaning the Klefki walled me. But I had my fourth move prepared in the back for such occasions.
"Earthquake," I said.
"Flash Cannon!" Marvin snapped.
Drapion pummeled his fists against the ground with tenacity; I got the feeling Drapion was envisioning the ground was Snake's face. While striking the earth with such strong Earthquakes, Klefki had no choice but to eat up the hits under the slight protection of Reflect softening the blows. Klefki managed to shoot out a Flash Cannon from one of its keys that connected right into Drapion's eye, snapping his head back reflexively at the force of the move, and when his head returned upright, it was clear that the steel move had actually damaged Drapion's left eye, and it was now bleeding, a thin stream of blood pooling out of Drapion's left tear duct.
It went on like this for a few turns, with both pokemon just unleashing the same attacks on each other, waiting either for their bodies to fail them or for the opponent to fall. Drapion wouldn't stop firing off Earthquakes against Klefki, while Klefki kept shooting out Flash Cannons at Drapion, occasionally piercing his hard skin and drawing blood in other areas too. Eventually, even with the aid of Reflect, Klefki could only take so much of Drapion's raw strength, and Klefki fainted in a dramatic display that had each individual key come apart from the key ring until the red welcoming light of Marvin's pokeball scooped up the shattered pieces. Drapion had beaten Klefki, with just a few cuts and a few shortages of breath to show for it.
"Fuck, man!" Marvin swore to himself as he detached his third and final pokeball from his belt. He was clearly losing some steam and confidence in his ability to beat me, and that was just the way I wanted it. "Whatever, Haxorus can solo your whole squad anyway."
Haxorus emerged from the pokeball and I craned my head back in order to look up enough to see how tall the cute little dragon pokemon from Duggie's Ruins had gotten, and how visibly he had changed - in every way. He wasn't cute no more. He had grown from just around my knee length to nearly 7 feet tall. He was bigger than the average Haxorus by a decent height.
This Haxorus, most noted for the two tusks he sprouted out of each corner of his mouth, had a clear dent in one of his tusks, as if someone had grabbed a hold of the Haxorus by the tusk in the past and swung it around far too aggressively and often based on the unnatural curve in his tusk. I had never paid attention to it before, but it made me sad noticing it now.
The purple hue of a poisoned pokemon radiated around Haxorus as the Toxic Spikes he was standing in infected him, putting a definitive timer on just how long this Haxorus could duke it out with my Drapion and giving me a ton of momentum.
"Drapion, Poison Jab," I ordered.
"Dragon Dance!" Marvin exclaimed with a note of panic in his voice: he was going all out from the beginning. Haxorus being poisoned and him being on his last mon while I still had one in the back was definitely getting the better of him and making him battle recklessly.
Haxorus remained firmly rooted in place, his three-toed feet clinging into the ground for dear life while my Drapion approached him and got off an easy jab right in the stomach of Haxorus, who winced in pain and cried out to the skies as the poison wore at his body, but Haxorus obeyed Marvin's command and successfully performed a fancy series of movements with his arms as he Dragon Danced in order to boost his attack and speed simultaneously.
With a swat of his long tail, Haxorus slapped Drapion away, causing Drapion to skirt along the ground several meters until he slammed with his back against a rather large rock. While Drapion picked himself up and brushed off some stone pebbles from his shoulders, Haxorus made an impressive leap several hundred feet through the air as he jumped and landed on top of the Snorlax-shaped rock that Snake and Eliza were beside. While Eliza remained unmoving on the floor, Snake slowly backed away from the rock in fear, never taking his eyes off the Haxorus, who was too preoccupied keep his own eyes locked on Drapion.
"Haxorus, Earthquake!" Marvin revealed, sinking my heart. Ground moves were Drapion's one and only weakness.
"Earthquake the ground right back at him, Drapion!" I countered, never one to quit too easily.
Haxorus jumped down from the massive boulder with surprising speed due to the Dragon Dance, and then pummeled away at the ground with his muscular vomit-green arms and blood-red fingers that had also been boosted with more strength, allowing Haxorus' Earthquake to eventually overpower Drapion's own. Drapion had tried desperately, pummeling at the ground just as fervently as Haxorus to stave off the opposing Earthquake, but Haxorus just outclassed him in raw strength by too wide of a margin. And that just did not happen with Drapion very often and thus the both of us were caught off guard by this pokemon with such overwhelming physical prowess.
Drapion was caught in Haxorus' Earthquake, and it looked like it would be the end as Drapion fell to the floor, still shaking with rapid intensity. Then, the shaking stopped as a particularly painful stroke of poison caused Haxorus to finally relent on his Earthquake, clutch at his heart in pain, and wheeze as he radiated purple for a few brief seconds.
"Drapion, Knock Off, now's your only chance!" I cheered, knowing that if there was going to be a chance to get off just one more hit on this terrible dragon, it would be now.
Drapion shot up from the floor with energy and stamina that I did not know he had despite taking such a beating from the Klefki and Haxorus, and charged the Haxorus, right arm raised high above in order to give him a lot of room to build up his slap. Just as Haxorus settled from the shudder of poison, Drapion slapped him across the face with a harshly swung Knock Off, making Haxorus stumble a few feet, then fire back with an even harsher swung Dragon Claw to Drapion's chest, knocking the wind out of Drapion and sending him flying until he landed on his back, knocked out. My Drapion had actually been beaten by another pokemon; I knew I couldn't claim he was unbeaten for forever, and there were only so many times Drapion could power through my opponent's team. He had finally met his match.
I recalled Drapion, hurt over his loss but assured that this match was coming to a close as I witnessed Haxorus actually falling to one knee for a few seconds there as the poison wracked up to harm his body, and I eagerly released Lapras from her pokeball.
"Just finish her quickly and then kill the little bastard and be done with and then we can leave! You can have the girl, I just want this fucking kid dead and you're just fucking around!" Snake ordered Marvin, watching nervously as the Haxorus stumbled around, clearly weakened from fighting.
"Shut up!" Marvin screamed at Snake before turning back to his Haxorus. "Haxorus! Outrage Lapras with everything you've got, then Outrage Adam until he's roadkill! I want them both killed or you'll be fucking dead when this battle's over!"
"Lapras," I said in my most relaxed voice, knowing I had already won. "Ice Shard."
Just as Haxorus was getting ready to unleash a move so powerful that it could potentially level that whole area of No Man's Land and make it even more flat than it currently was, Lapras spat out a small shard of ice from her mouth that went flying at Haxorus with the impossible speed of priority moves, hitting the Haxorus right in the neck before he could start his devastating Outrage that would have likely killed me and Lapras.
The moment the icicle pierced his skin, Haxorus gave a pathetic little yelp like a Herdier that had its tail stepped on by child, and then fell on its side, unconscious, the veins under his skin still glowing faintly purple.
"No!" Marvin whined in shock at losing.
"Fucking idiot," Snake muttered to himself under his breath, enraged. He so badly wanted to attack Adam right now while his team was so vulnerable, but to act without Sir's orders was death. He had to get approval from Sir before stepping in himself, which tore at Snake because he had at last trapped the brat who was responsible for the loss of his ear, but couldn't finish him off.
Snake hurriedly summoned a Gyarados from his belt, hopping on its back and flying away with it into the distance in a matter of seconds, interest waned in bringing along Marvin or Eliza with him. I promised myself that the next time I bumped into that piece of shit, he was not getting away.
While Snake had been escaping into the sunset, Marvin had his own idea of fleeing the scene. He had attempted to begin running away, back toward the beach, but I wasn't done with him yet.
"Ice Shard," I told Lapras, who fired off a second shard that went flying into Marvin's shoulder, causing him to fall to the ground and stare wide-eyed in shock at the blood oozing from where his shoulder had been heavily sliced. I approached him, along with Lapras who sauntered behind me, then placed my foot on his chest, holding him down in the dirt, establishing complete dominance over him and hopefully scaring the shit out of him.
"Are you listening?" I asked Marvin, who was panicking and trying to crawl out from under my foot. He was definitely not listening. For reinforcement, I gave him a hard stomp on the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and making him finally stop fighting back. "Are you listening now?"
Marvin nodded, gasping for breath.
"Good. Now listen. You're done with this Team Anonymous shit. Do you hear me?" I put just the slightest bit of pressure down on my foot, pressing down on his sternum. His eyes bulged in fear of me stomping on it again, and he nodded as vigorously as one on their back could. "I don't think you're a bad guy. I think you've made some stupid decisions and you fell back into some bad choices and now you winded up tied to Team Anonymous. But because you made the even stupider decision to fuck with me, and that poor girl over there-" I motioned with my head at Eliza. "-you've now forced my hand. Stay the fuck away from Team Anonymous. Stay the fuck away from me. And most of all, stay the fuck away from Eliza. If I see you near anyone of these three things in the future - I'm going to regret letting you go right now. Now, am I going to regret letting you go, Marvin?"
Marvin shook his head furiously, but his eyes were honest. "No, no, no, never again, you'll never see me again, I promise, I promise."
After several more minutes of false threats that I delivered beautifully, and several more minutes of what I believed to be honest words, I chose to believe Marvin rather than kill a kid my age who I felt still had potential to do good. He wasn't a complete psycho beyond repair like Snake was. I thought there was still a little bit of hope for the guy. Maybe I saw a little bit of myself in him, and just hoped he would find his calling the way I did. I watched as he stumbled away into the setting sun, back toward Scalding Springs, with no healthy pokemon and low on supplies. He wouldn't likely survive the trip back toward Wintervale, but it was on him.
Since the sun was so close to setting, I decided to set up camp right by the Snorlax-shaped boulder, waiting until Eliza would wake up so that I could explain to her what she missed. She might even have some useful information for me regarding Snake or Marvin that might end up helping me find Snake later. My mind was whirling with a thousand different thoughts and scenarios of what kind of topics I would talk about with Eliza when she came to, but I ended up falling asleep into the night before she ever even stirred.