Chapter 39: Bang
A sea of fire had rapidly sprouted over the entirety of Maxwell Street as the explosion from the car engine Muk Thunder Punched had spread from one vehicle to the next until basically the walls of hell were there on Maxwell with how much smoke and fire there ended up being. The oil tanks from all the abandoned cars were fueling the flames and the massive lake of fire had forced Muk and Passimian to move their battle from the streets to the cramped sidewalk instead.
Eliza and I were watching from the sidelines, still a safe distance away from the battle, much further back along the sidewalk for Muk or the fires to get to us since we were hugging along the walls of what appeared to be an abandoned post service. Eliza was getting nervous foot syndrome though by the way she kept accidentally kicking me, and I could tell she was itching to do something rather than just watch any longer.
Passimian had managed to evade most of Muk's Gunk Shots he had spewed from his hands, which were massive globs of thick poison that fired out like a loosened fire hydrant. But there were some close calls, and at one point Passimian nearly lost footing while dodging a thick glob of poison that would have wrecked his back, but he recovered nicely. It's just that Muk's natural resistances to Passimian's STAB fighting moves made him much more challenging than just a run-of-the-mill fight.
"This is too serious for any kind of honorable battle, Adam! Screw your useless pride, I'm helping you beat this asshole! Golem, come out!" Eliza threw her only remaining pokeball to the floor as her old reliable came out, squat and sturdy as ever.
Lt. Riley, still watching from the heights of a pizza joint rooftop two stories above, gave a disgusted look at the girl who was breaking battling conduct so blatantly. "I got more mons, too! Salazzle, deal with these peasants!" Lt. Riley chucked a second ball from his belt and Muk was soon joined by a thin but flexible-looking Salazzle, a lizard pokemon with shades of purple and dark grey who had her tongue hanging down to her chest, which was not very ladylike considering all Salazzle are female.
The sidewalk was now more than crowded with Golem and Passimian side-by-side, in their aggressive stances against the opposing poison types facing them, all four pokemon just waiting for a call from either Lt. Riley, Eliza, or myself before springing into action.
"Golem, Earthquake these guys and let's just get this over with already!" Eliza said confidently, with a hint of irritation that I was taking so long to win, unless my own self-doubt was imagining that.
"Passimian, get up to the rooftops, let's get the high ground!" I called, with Passimian scrambling up the front of the pizza joint Lt. Riley was perched on, using the front door and the huge letters reading NAPORIA POST OFFICE - NEITHER RAIN, SUN, HAIL, OR SANDSTORM WILL THE POST BE DELAYED to get to the top, just a few feet away from our new adversary.
"Salazzle, Muk, up the building, quick! Dragon Pulse and Ice Punch, you know what to do!" the Lieutenant called down to his team members.
Just as the more lethargic Golem was getting around to rearing his tiny hands all the way down to the ground so that he could begin quaking the sidewalk and blazing street of Maxwell with full force, Salazzle and Passimian were already well out of harms way on the rooftop of the pizza joint. Muk, whose speed was already at a pathetic pace due to Cursing down his speed stat, was not so lucky as to be able to dodge the Earthquake, and he was caught in the super effective hit, dead on.
Despite Golem's Earthquake ravaging the whole block so hard that the pizza joint was shaking, Salazzle managed to get a solid footing along the edge of the rooftop, and from her long snout, she spat out a blue-tinged pulse of energy that's silhouette resembled that of a long, serpent-like dragon. It was a well-aimed Dragon Pulse, and the blue energy-constructed dragon struck Golem along his back, causing him to cry out in pain and relent on his Earthquake that had sent Muk into useless convulsions as he could do nothing to escape the fallout of Golem's deadly attack.
Passimian had taken initiative without me since I was too caught up in the moment, and thank Arceus he did. While Salazzle had her attention on Golem to fire off her attack for those brief moments, her back was to Passimian, and that's all he needed. To give Golem some breathing room, Passimian charged at Salazzle's thin, wiry back, his good arm reeled back in a punching motion - then he threw out a powerful Drain Punch right into Salazzle's spine, knocking her off balance and sending her flying off the roof of the pizza shop and down to the lake of fire of burning cars on Maxwell Street below. But Salazzle was quick, and her tail was quicker. The end of her tail managed to wrap itself around Passimian's wrist, the one he'd used to punch her, and she ended up yanking Passimian off the rooftop right along with her, ensnared by her tail.
Meanwhile, since Salazzle had distracted Golem from attacking Muk, Muk had now slushed his body close enough to Golem to start throwing out Ice Punches, revealing his final move and showing that Lt. Riley was smart enough to have coverage for ground types for his team. What was bizarre was that I was surprised to see that neither Golem nor Eliza were doing anything about it; Golem was just standing there, taking it like a pinata on a child's birthday. Eliza had fallen to her knees, her eyes were wide open and shell shocked - she had somehow instantly lost her fighting spirit and it had carried over into Golem as well. She had fully given up in mid-fight. And Muk was taking full advantage of that by battering the immobile, easy target of a passive Muk with Ice Punch after Ice Punch, the sounds of the ice on his fists cracking against the hard rock on Golem's shell slowly being chipped down and broken.
Passimian, thank Arceus, had used some quick thinking to Iron Head the hard steel shell of the coconut on his head into Salazzle's tail several times, very hard, before the two of them would be crashing into the debris of burning cars and shrapnel. The pain from it had caused Salazzle to let go, and the fire pokemon easily and naturally landed on a burning pick up truck in the middle of the street, completely coated in fire and unharmed due to her typing. Passimian did a fancy backflip in mid air so he would land on his feet in a tiny amount of free space between all the fires where he wouldn't be charred to the third-degree.
But the temperature was too hot, Passimian's fur was instantly coated in sweat, and he could feel the hairs on the end of his tail begging to singe and smoke as they had almost caught fire. Oh my Arceus, no. No. I was going to lose my Passimian to the entrance to hell on Maxwell Street with trucks and cars as his tombstone. There was too much fire. He had the reflexes and grace to land in a few feet of safety, but he was surrounded on all sides and it was a huge, four-lane city street.
"That's it, little fuckers, roast like Torchic, yum, yum yum!" Lt. Riley gawked and laughed from his height, pointing at Passimian, whose face had so much fear and uncertainty of what to do I almost wanted to cry. Or it could have just been the amount of sheer swear pouring over his face. It had be over 100 degrees in that fire. "Burn, baby, burn! This is the shit I live for!"
"Passimian!" I made sure to scream as loud as I could, so that he could hear me over the roaring fires all around him and the freak laughing from the rooftop whos neck I would snap later. I had to sacrifice the only move we could've used to beat these pokemon if Golem was out of the picture - Earthquake - for even a small chance that Passimian would be able to live. He had already used Bulk Up, Iron Head, and Drain Punch. He could only use one move left. The thought that Passimian could take down an Anonymous Lieutenant's Muk and Salazzle with just those moves was absolutely insane to me, but I wanted my pokemon to live another day, and it the only thing I could think of. "Passimian, Quick Attack over to Muk on the sidewalk! Fast as you can, through the flames, I know it's hot but the faster you go the less hot it'll be! QUICK ATTACK MUK, QUICK ATTACK MUK, QUICK ATTACK MUK!"
Just as the end of Passimian's beautiful black-and-white tail started to actually catch fire and Passimian was beginning to choke on the smoke filling his lungs, he heard his master's orders through the loud crackling of flames all around him, even though it was faint. All he heard was three words, and he did them to the best of his ability, closing his eyes and bracing himself through the scorching pain of rushing through the flames, but within two seconds he had crossed over the flames, and he had done it quick enough to avoid actually catching fire, but half his fur had turned ashy and burned, but it was a small price to pay for avoiding death. And Passimian even got off his Quick Attack, landing with a solid kick to what some would consider Muk's neck but was honestly just a pile of purple goop.
"Salazzle, how the fuck could you let that monkey get away!?" Lt. Riley instantly barked on his member, needing someone to blame other than himself. While he was preoccupied insulting his Salazzle while she remained in the ocean of fire out of brief shame, I turned to the crestfallen Eliza and tried to shake her out of her funk before her Golem ended up knocked out without doing much but being Muk's punching bag. Muk had even Cursed up once more to add insult to injury, so he was now much slower than Golem and still taking his sweet time doling out wallops to Golem's broken face.
"Eliza, snap out of it! I know you're not a fighter, but Golem is dying! He's the only pokemon you've got left, Eliza, are you going to just sit there and watch him die as he loses to a fucking poison type!?"
"I'm not strong enough," Eliza whimpered out in a voice that did not sound like hers. Gone was the confident, sassy girl in the pink hat I had first met in the Gord Woods who had been my first challenger, and now she was a little girl who had lost her confidence and had her fighting spirit dampened from Marvin Bloom beating her down too many times or losing Staraptor due to my failure to protect her properly or just watching everything around her literally fall apart and die in this city.
"Eliza, you're here, with me, we're the only two left who can do this. You are strong enough because I fucking need you to be."
Passimian and Muk were now resembling that old game of Rock-em-sock-em robots where two robots are in a ring just punching the shit out of each other in straight close quarters with none of them going down until literally one of their heads pops off. Which is pretty much how it felt between Passimian throwing off strong Drain Punches all over Muk's body, hopping around his gooey form so that his slow, fat arms could never have time to connect a Thunder Punch on the agile monkey. Passimian was doing a solid job distracting the Muk, but Golem may as well have been a statue for as much good as he was doing.
"There's only so much Passimian and I can do with the set we're stuck with against these two, some back-up from a very durable ground type would be really good right around now!" I shouted in Eliza's ears at a volume that would normally make most people wince and slap me, but she didn't react one bit.
"Salazzle, why are you still in the fire while that stupid monkey's bothering Muk and stopping him from killing the biggest threat to our team while you're in there taking a fucking bath!? Throw some sludge bombs at Passimian until he backs off before I throw a bucket of water on you!" Lt. Riley spat out, his vile behavior reminding me so much of that other Anonymous piece of trash, Snake. Who had never bothered me again after leaving him in the Icy Caverns, now that I thought about it, and I would think he would make me top priority the moment he got out.
For some reason, at this moment in the middle of the most life-threatening battle of my life, I just now came to realize that Snake was probably dead. And somewhere in my heart of hearts, I knew he was dead and that he had gotten himself killed in that ice tomb. And just remembering how far I had come from just being the young, overly cocky trainer who got robbed and attacked in the middle of the night by an Anonymous member to a trainer on a non-stop win streak that also caused the demise of said Anonymous member? It gave me a lot of restored confidence in myself. Although Snake attacking me had sent me on this whirlwind of a journey against so many of these goons and it just never seemed to fucking end. Just one after another, like Beedrills in a forest, they seemed to come find you and sting you with their annoyances. But I always came out on top, even when it all came down to me using my own wits and nerve to survive.
Salazzle had emerged from the edges of the fire and stepped out onto the sidewalk where Muk and Passimian were throwing jabs at each other, with Muk whiffing every hit and with Passimian landing every one and slowly recovering tiny chips of health back with each punch, despite the fact Muk's defenses was so high. Salazzle, who was much faster and a much better aim than Muk, took a few seconds to watch Passimian and study his pattern of hopping all around Muk to keep his Thunder Punches from landing. Salazzle took note of the fact that despite the fact Passimian moved a lot, he was usually straight above Muk's head, at a high point where Muk's stubby arms were too short to connect a jab - since this spot was completely free from Muk's punches. Salazzle waited a few long moments to Lt. Riley's agitation, (though to his credit, he remained silent) before opening up her long mouth and spewing out a balloon-like sphere of purple sludge that she used her neck to give enough momentum to swing it pretty hard, sending the Sludge Bomb directly over Muk's head just as Passimian was jumping once again to avoid Muk's Thunder Punch by sailing directly over him.
The Sludge Bomb splashed and shattered all over Passimian's back which was already black from the fire burning it, but now had the oozy, thick purple sludge coated all over his back, tail, shoulders, arms, and legs. The force of the Sludge Bomb hitting him knocked Passimian to the floor, rolling several times before resting facedown. Oh, and by the purple hue now coating his body and the familiar shudder of pain as his health was slowly robbed of him, I knew that Salazzle had gotten the 30% chance to poison with her attack, to Lt. Riley's delight and my horror that we were now on an ever shorter timer than we previously were.
"Muk, Gunk Shot the monkey while he's down," Lt. Riley called down with glee, not missing a beat.
"Passimian, move your ass!" I ordered, my stress level much higher than the Anonymous member. Passimian took a second longer than I would've liked, but he managed to get to his hands and feet with enough time to scale up the post office, the next building down from the pizza joint, and effectively dodge the wads of gunk Muk fired. Passimian was now on the rooftop of the post office, taking a minute to catch his breath despite the fact I heard him groan in pain as the poison wore him down.
"Great, that worked nicely," Lt. Riley chuckled at Passimian fleeing and the ease with which he was overcoming these two brats that had dared think they could get past him and his powerful poison type pokemon with their weak excuses for partners. "Muk, the Golem is clearly no longer a threat. Let's refocus on the boy and girl." Muk swirled his googly, dumb but savage eyes over to rest on where I was standing in front of the post office with Eliza still kneeling beside me, unable or unwilling to help, it didn't matter. "Go get desert, Muk." Muk began using his hands to drag his huge, gelatinous body along the sidewalk towards the two of us. I looked toward Eliza to see if she would have any kind of a reaction to a disgusting pile of garbage and gunk dragging itself over to us, slow as a Slowbro, so that it could consume us alive.
Nothing. No signs of life.
"Eliza, for Arceus' fucking sake, just one minute! Just be fucking present for one fucking minute and we can END THIS!" I screamed at her helplessly, but she may as well have been deaf. A few droplets of tears were coming out of the corners of her eyes as she seemed to just give up and accept her fate that she would die in this city and that she wasn't good enough. Or that could have been the stench of filth that radiated off of Muk's body making her eyes well up like chopped onions.
"Salazzle," Lt. Riley turned his attention to the female on his team. "Get up on that post office with Passimian, don't let up." Salazzle shimmied up the side of the post office at nearly twice the speed Passimian had done it. But unbeknownst to Salazzle, Passimian was waiting on the side, just behind the edge so that the moment Salazzle's head poked out to see how much distance she had, she got answered with a vengeful Drain Punch to her snout, breaking off one of her teeth as she bit on her tongue and drew fresh blood as well. Although Salazzle, like Muk, was a poison type that resisted Passimian's STAB - unlike Muk, Salazzle was much more physically frail and couldn't eat up hits the way Muk could. Salazzle, once again, was caught off guard and almost fell all the way back down to the alley floor between the post office and pizza shop, but she used her tail and sticky fingers to latch onto a window of the post-office halfway down, catching herself.
As Muk got closer and closer, I realized my options were very limited since both Passimian and Golem were preoccupied with fighting Salazzle and staring straight down at the sidewalk doing jack shit. My hands instantly reached for a pokeball as a last line of defense, but which one?
There was no way my Tropius was beating a Muk with Ice Punch and Gunk Shot, plus I might need his flying in the back for later and all of the pokemon centers were shut down from the invasion causing a blackout in the city, so healing mons at this point was out of the questions via any centers, so I had to be very careful about who I selected and at what time.
I had Lapras, who attacked in all special attacks thankfully since Muk had boosted up his physical side so much at this point, and water and ice were solid against Lt. Riley's team. But Lapras was key for me and Eliza getting back to Ilragorn, and if Lapras got knocked out, we were trapped on the Isle of Naporia dealing with all of Team Anonymous, not just a Lieutenant.
And then there was Drapion, my go-to for whenever I was in a bad spot that I wasn't sure I could get out of. Because Drapion's mere presence alone usually gave me enough confidence to fake it until I made it until it literally stopped becoming about faking the confidence since Drapion would always win. But Muk was a wall of boosted defense at this point in the battle, and I had my doubts that even Drapion could take down this purple monster.
Can any of my pokemon even beat this thing?
Unsure for once in my battling career, I hesitated and froze since I literally couldn't make a decision, and Eliza and myself must have looked like an ever easier target that Golem for a second there before Passimian had come barreling down from a mighty dive off of the post office, landing with his steel-plated coconut directly on Muk, clashing into the poison type with a heavy Iron Head that caused the Muk to flinch from the steel bruising his forehead.
Passimian almost lost his footing as he landed beside Muk on one wobbly foot, then two as he steadied himself. Then he raced to join me and Eliza's side as he scooped her up in his arms. Neither of us were talking and I wasn't giving him too many orders, but with the rush for time and the dire circumstances of it all, it seemed like few words needed to be even said for me and my partner to understand each other perfectly. Passimian winced as the poison shuddered its way down his body, then he started bounding backwards, with the catatonic Eliza limp in his arms, and me racing after him to avoid being eaten by Muk. Smart thinking on Passimian's part to prioritize Eliza.
"Salazzle, why is the monkey getting away with so much shit when you're so much faster? What are you doing!?"
Afraid of punishment from her trainer, Salazzle hopped from from the side of the post office and landed rather close to Muk, the two of them with their backs to the stationary Golem since he was that little of a threat at this point. The two powerful poison types had their eyes focused on the three of us, hatred and hunger for death evident all over their faces.
"Eliza, please, I know it's scary and hard but-" I tried once more to shake her out of her rutt while Passimian was still holding her as the three of us raced down the sidewalk to put some distance between us and Lt. Riley's members, but I was interrupted by a terrible, thunderous BANG that came from the spot where Salazzle and Muk had just been. An explosion had rattled the earth, though I wasn't sure where it had come from, and for a second I considered that Anonymous had actually been insane enough to plant bombs all over the city and we were lucky enough that those two had set it off. Then I realized what actually happened.
The moment Passimian had carted Eliza a safe distance away, and that I had rushed after to join them, Golem had found just a little bit of fighting spirit left in him. Just enough to go for the move Explosion, harnessing all the energy and power he had left to blow himself and everything close to him into smithereens. That included both Muk and Salazzle, who had been caught in the blast which had been strong enough to take out all three pokemon for the count, as none of their bodies were visible anywhere. Golem's final sacrifice was to protect both Eliza and myself, and he had done it.
Another upside to Golem's powerful final attack was that his Explosion not only removed the massive threat of Lt. Riley's poison types, but it also leveled the pizza joints infrastructure significantly, much like the way construction works would bring down a building by bombing its first few floors to weaken the base and bring it all down with ease. That meant that the pizza shop that Lt. Riley had been standing on the roof of, sniggering at me and my pokes as they were about to burn to death and doing everything in his power to kill me and those I cared about, was beginning to collapse. And the funny, ironic part is - the whole front of the building was sliding forward, meaning the rooftop of the two-story joint would be falling right into the heart of the ocean of burning cars that had now grown into something far too big for the fireman to control, if there were even any active fireman alive at this point in Naporia. The huge clusters of ashy smoke from the fire alone was rising and permeating into the night sky, tainting the once beautiful, fresh air that Naporia was renowned for. And it was only just and fitting that that piece of shit Lt. Asshole die while being scorched alive by the very fire his stupid ass had ordered his Muk to -
"Save him!" Eliza choked out in her weak, little girl voice, a voice just above a whisper.
"W-what? Golem's already dead-" I replied, confused, my eyes still watching in awe at the beautiful poetic justice being served to this Anonymous scumbag.
"Save him, Adam!" I turned to look at Eliza, who was speaking more like herself, stronger. "No more death! Save him!"
"Ugh, fuck! Tropius! Get him, now!" I lunged the right pokeball with impressive timing and aim, at a nice 45 degree angle toward the building just as Lt. Riley was beginning to scream like a bitch as he realized he was about to go down in flames, literally. Tropius emerged in mid-air, leafy green wings already spread wide and flapping toward Lt. Riley heroically, beaming with pride that he would be able to carry out an order I gave him after his recent hiccup. Lt. Riley's foot had caught on fire for a brief period from getting swallowed up in the high licks of flames, even as he had grabbed onto Tropius' front arms for dear life, sobbing for forgiveness and swearing that he's seen the light and the error of his ways and yadda yadda until Tropius brought him to join the group of Eliza, Passimian, and myself.
Passimian gave him a single, hard wallop to the right cheek that sent Lt. Riley to his knees, his cheek flushing a bright beet red, from both embarrassment and the slap. Neither Eliza nor I stopped Passimian or gave him indication that what he had done was inappropriate as Lt. Riley sniffled at his nose pathetically while it was leaking blood. I just then remembered that my own nose had been cracked and likely broken not too long ago, but the adrenaline rush and fear of dying had made me completely forget about the pain and numbing in my nose as the blood dried.
"There, we saved the monster who's killed who knows how many innocent people, including some of our own friends. Do you feel better, Eliza? Apparently that's all it takes to shake you out of your funk, piping up in the nick of time to save scumbag pieces of shit Anonymous members. But you got no problems just sitting back and watching your Golem get nearly beat to death, or me, or Passimian. You know how that makes me feel right now, Eliza?"
"Adam…"
"I fucking love you, I'm doing everything I can to protect you and get the both of us safely out of this hellhole. And you were just going to sit back and let us all die?" I asked her, not caring that Lt. Riley and my mons were right out there seeing the free show. "But you saved him?"
"I was in panic mode, Adam. I just froze up. I'm sorry! I'm not a battler, I fucking told you that! I wanted to be a daycare lady, not some high-level, high-stress battler fighting professional bad guys!" Eliza apologized, sounding mostly back to her old self, though heavily shaken up. Then, she perked up as if she had good news for me. "But I did come to my senses in enough time to get you out of your sense of just wanting revenge so that we can actually get done what we need to get done."
"And what is it we need to get done?" I wondered, my feelings still hurt.
"We need to find out what exactly is causing this barrier preventing us from leaving the city that you nearly broke your nose on. And he's probably one of the only ones that might know something about that, so ask him."
I had to give her credit where credit was due. She had thought about the longterm enough to shake herself out of her rut so that I wouldn't let the only person who might know the only way out of the city just slip so easily away into the eternal secrecy of death with such valuable information. And although Lt. Riley at first resisted, after a few more Drain Punches, Iron Heads, and Air Slashes from Tropius who wanted to get in on the prodding, Lt. Riley talked.
St. Meloetta's Holy Church. That's all he said before one final punch from Passimian knocked him out cold, leaving him with two black eyes. Immediately after, Passimian fell victim to the throngs of poison wearing his health all the way down to zero and he fell to the floor, done and unconscious for the night.
I hated to leave her alone, but Eliza just closed her eyes, nodded her head fervently over and over, and she just kept saying, 'you have to go, you have to go.' She would wait and hide in the safety of an arcade store close to Naporia Beach until I came back. And we had established that Tropius could only fly with one of us aboard, and the distance and height to get to the church, with the time that we had, required a solid flying type. So I gave her a hug, she whispered that she loved me too, and then I boarded Tropius' back and let the wind slap against the dried blood on my face, waking me up as I headed toward the church to stop whatever was causing this mess.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Bit of a more extreme battle that harkens back to the kinds of darker fights that got my story an audience.
Also, I have decided to extend my story a bit past the original ending of Chapter 40 as I don't want to kill myself writing 20,000 long chapters each. Don't worry, just 2-5 chapters longer I'm thinking. And I really want to pummel them out fast. I'm enjoying how this is story is going out with a bang, and I hope no minds the story extension. I really thought my story would be finished within 40 chapters, but I just need a little more time. Hope you enjoy every minute. - Jonathan