Chapter 46: Decisions
Evan Hunter, the current reigning leader of the last criminal syndicate on the island of Ilragorn, had spent all of last night invading the isolated city of Naporia in order to eliminate the last possible threats to Team Anonymous, being the remaining members of the Elite 4 as well as the champion, Ava, all of whom had been terminated at this point. Though near the end of the invasion, most of the Anonymous members had either been taken down or arrested by the late arrival of the police force from Ilragorn's mainland arriving to assist the Isle of Naporia, a few had managed to make their way back to Anonymous Headquarters, located deep underground of No Man's Land.
In fact, the very last errand Evan accomplished in Naporia City was kidnapping his younger brother, Adam, after realizing that Adam's team had managed to take down the remainder of Sir's highly experienced pokemon, being Buzzwole and Gothitelle at St. Meloetta's Church. Since Adam had a personal score to settle with, he had tasked one of his underlings to escort Adam to the base until Evan could deal with him directly.
Evan had contented himself with flying aboard Dodrio right after knocking out Adam, and flying over Fuji Jungle and the rolling hills of the area until he reached the nearby, ever-familiar Snake's Canyon Gym located in the trenches of a long canyon far away from the city. Inside of the rectangular, standard-issue gym painted all black to match the Dark theme. There had been lights on even though it was early in the morning, indicating to Evan that the gym leader, Magenta, was there.
Evan recalled how he used to have so much trouble with beating Magenta for literally years as he remained airborne several hundred feet above it, looking down at what used to be such a huge obstacle for him. Now not even an entire city worth of people fighting back against him was enough of an obstacle to stop him. Evan used to be so insecure about this gym, remembering how embarrassed he would always feel around the family dinner table every year when he would admit to his parents that he, once again, had failed to enter the Ilragorn League simply because Magenta outmatched him. But no more.
Evan reacted aggressively as angry, tormented memories of his childhood and his own issues with self-worth started bubbling up to the surface, something he didn't like to admit to himself or think about very often. Staring at the gym that used to be such a hindrance to his confidence in battling, Evan snatched a pokeball from off his belt and released one of his pokemon as the red energy morphed and formed into the pokemon Steelix.
It didn't take long and it didn't take much effort. Evan didn't even want to chance going inside the building and risking seeing Magenta's face, as she was one of the few trainers in his life that had always given him such issues and he wasn't sure how he'd react. Instead, Evan watched as his massive, 30 foot + tall iron snake fell through hundreds of feet through the air and landed with a loud CRASH in the rocky trenches of Snake's Canyon, all while mega evolving into an even larger behemoth with protruding, jagged, sharp bits of steel sticking out in a protective coating as well as dozens of floating rocks circling around its energized, glowing body.
"Steelix, Earthquake this building down into the ground. I never want to see a dark gym again in my life."
And with the unsuspecting gym leader Magenta still inside, who was still sleeping in due to sticking around the gym overnight because of allowing Adam a battle against her last night, Evan's pokemon began the assault. The beautiful building that had stood there on the edge of the trench for so long, and had survived many a rock and ground type pokemon attempting to damage it over the years, even the heavily reinforced steel walls of the dark gym couldn't stand up against the might of Evan's most powerful pokemon, and within minutes the entire gymnasium was completed submerged under the gravel, rock, and dirt of the trench floor, buried by M-Steelix's overwhelming Earthquakes.
I was jolted awake from finally falling asleep due to exhaustion by the static humming as someone attempted to speak through the cheap loudspeaker set up over the locked door preventing me from walking out of my tiny prison cell.
"Evan!?" I called out loudly toward the speaker so I could be heard, still half-asleep. "Get me the fuck outta here!"
"So you've made a decision," Evan responded coldly, matter-of-fact. The fact that he could be so calm while locking his older brother away like a prisoner of war would've baffled me if I hadn't grown up seeing his egomaniacal, sociopathic tendencies and his lack of care for anyone else become more and more apparent as the years went by. It may have started with him encouraging his pup Growlithe to be aggressive with me when we were kids, may have had his Onix Screech into my bedroom window at night so I'd wake up half-deaf in the morning, but it's only escalated into worse and worse behavior. "I've already told you - I need a Lieutenant. A good one. It seems Sir's previous one (that poison-obsessed idiot Riley) managed to get himself arrested by the Ilragorn cops during the end of the Naporia invasion. Him as well as most of my entire organization, the ones that weren't killed at least. I need a trainer with talent, and one that isn't so focused on having only one type on his team like some wannabe gym leader."
"Evan, I got to ask you," I said after a long pause to think of an answer. "What would you do to me if I wasn't interested in this, uh, position?"
There was silence over the loudspeaker for a while, which made my heart sink with worry.
"Are you telling me you're not interested?" Evan answered with a question, his voice pleasant and easy and impossible to interpret, playing it very close to the vest with this one.
"I…" I stammered, unsure what answer he wanted. Do I lie and seize the opportunity to save my pokemon the first chance I got, or do I give this piece of shit the honest truth? "I just don't think me being locked in a room the size of a broom closet is really the kind of incentive or treatment I'd expect if you wanted me to truly be your Lieutenant. You know? Doesn't both of our words carry a lot more weight if we talked, you know, man to man? In person?"
It was a non-answer, neither a yes or no, but hopefully it was enough.
"That's fair," Evan responded, and his answer genuinely surprised me as I was starting to lose hope that I would ever leave this room alive. "I told you I'm going to try to start showing you more respect, and I want to start on the right track if we're going to be working together. So listen up - I'm still over in the Isle of Naporia, I had some unfinished business to attend to here but I'm done now. The base is about a 1 hour trip on my Dodrio, fast as she is. I'll be there in one hour, I'll get you out of there, and we can talk man to man, and you can give me your answer. That sound fair, bro?"
"Yes, thanks." I said convincingly through gritted teeth and it nearly killed me to thank my brother for knocking me out and stealing my pokemon and holding me captive, but that was the game I had to play.
The connection then fizzled out as my brother ended the call and I was left alone, sprawled out lazily on the floor with nothing but a mind full of worries.
I had barely managed to beat the previous leader of Team Anonymous, Sir, or moreso his dangerous pokemon during all my encounters with them - whether it was the alien-like Nihilego in the Icy Caverns or the threats inside the Meloetta Church that were blocking off anyone from fleeing Naporia - they had managed to be some of the toughest battles of my entire career. And in many ways Evan had actually surpassed Sir. Even if I played the double agent card and acted friendly enough with Evan to get out of here, did me and my pokemon possess the strength and experience needed to take down possibly the toughest trainer on the entire island?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Anonymous base, there was a lot more of the action Adam was craving going on in the Testing Area where Emolga and Gengar were in the middle of a tussle between Anonymous member's mons Starmie and Crabominable. But due to a missed attack from Crabominable, after glazing right past Emolga in an attempted punch with a deadly Ice Hammer, the uniquely typed crab mon ended up directing his attack right into the three locked and covered cages in the back corner of the laboratory behind Emolga, causing a loud CLANG as the metal bars along the sides of the cages all caved in and whatever was locked inside was released.
Rising out of the debris and smoke came three quadrupedal pokemon, all with thick, black, coarse fur that was messy and unkempt like that of a wild pokemon out in the forest as opposed to three Mightyena contained in a clean, organized laboratory. The three Mightyena, all on top of not only looking absolutely terrifying and wolf-like, all had the familiar blood red tint of ruby glowing in their eyes - the giveaway that they had all been infected via consuming the Team Anonymous-produced Rage Berries, produced right there in that lab.
The three dark type dog pokemon were quick to disperse like that of a well-trained army platoon, the Mightyena all working efficiently and easily. The only other occupants in the testing lab were the watchful and wary Starmie, Crabominable, Emolga, and Gengar, who had all diverted their attention from battling each other to refocusing on the new threat that had arrived from nowhere.
Starmie had attempted to fire off an offensive Hydro Pump at the three dogs while they had remained huddled amongst their destroyed cages, but the moment that just a trickle of water had begun pooling out of her many purple tips, one of the lightning-fast Mightyena moved with impossible speed that matched that of teleportation, and ended up right in front of the Starmie before it could even fire off the Hydro Pump, smacking it right in the face with a STAB-boosted, super-effective Sucker Punch from the sharp-clawed paws, instantly sending Starmie spinning like a dropped quarter until she at last came to rest, knocked down for the count.
Crabominable, also not intimidated by the newcomers, joined in with Starmie in playing the offensive game rather than waiting for the rapid dogs to come to him - Crabominable reeled both his ridiculously massive arms back to put the dogs down for good with a Close Combat, when one of the three dogs leapt at the crab with far superior speed, radiating the pink aura of fairy energy that happens when a pokemon in summoning certain fairy moves - and a powerful, super-effective Play Rough was a direct hit as the Mightyena delivered a series of quick, strong punches of fairy energy into the fighting/ice type, knocking the crab out and sending it into a deep sleep that it wouldn't wake up from for half a day.
Gengar, unlike Starmie and Crabominable was not arrogant enough to think the infected Mightyena were no threats, as Gengar had witnessed the destruction the infected pokemon had witnessed to his friends over his journey such as the Cloyster in the caverns that killed his friend Staraptor. Gengar immediately pushed back away from the dogs once he saw that they were free, as well as grabbing Emolga's hand on the way as Gengar levitated through the air, heading towards the opposite side of the laboratory from the corner with the cages in it.
While two of the three dogs were busy dispatching the other pokemon in the room, the remaining Mightyena had his sights on Gengar and Emolga, who had put in the distance of the entire room between them now, but whose backs were completely to the wall with no where else to go except through the broken glass back out into the hallway they came from.
Mightyena lowered his head briefly to the ground, his tail raised high up, his ears perked high up to listen to even a pin drop, and then the dark type lunged forward with his yellow, wide-open jaws coming fast toward the small pokemon in a dangerous Crunch.
Gengar harnessed his ghostly abilities to phase through solid objects for just a few seconds as he held onto Emolga's hand as tightly as he could and continued backing away from the incoming Mightyena, backing through the solid, stone hard wall behind them as he took Emolga with him, equally making her intangible as Emolga briefly joined Gengar in the strange, ghostly projection of themselves they were as Gengar phased through the walls of the underground base, creating an imaginary shortcut where there shouldn't be, and leaving Mightyena smacking his jaws right into the hard walls where Emolga's belly had just been, both knocking several teeth out and breaking the pokemon's lower jaw from the force he had put into it expecting something much softer.
Gengar and Emolga came out of a completely different wall in somewhere completely foreign and unfamiliar to the two. Gengar had phased them into a completely new hallway, one that had the markings of being somewhere far more useful than the front lobby or the sleeping quarters of the Anonymous members or the testing lab. The two were hovering right in front a door marked REJUVENATION UNIT that from the many pokemon healing machines and hospital beds, had a good chance of containing some of their missing team members.
Without needing any kind of goading, the two pokemon immediately set about scouring throughout the Rejuvenation Unit with their eyes peeled, searching as quickly but effectively as they could for the familiar four pokeballs of their friends. But whether it was a Poke Ball, an Ultra Ball, a Nest Ball - neither of them knew which ones to look for or which one belonged to which of their friends as the room was just filled with too many balls to choose from.
Gengar went about it the old fashioned way, simply grabbing a pokeball with his two hands, secretly thankful for having fingers, and would press the correct button to release the pokemon. The first pokemon Gengar picked was a Comfey, and Gengar was quick to immediately return it to the pokeball, then throw it in on an empty hospital bed that would serve as the NO pile. Emolga was fast to understand what Gengar was doing as Gengar chose a second pokeball out of a healing machine, released what was beginning to form a Talonflame, then returned it to its Great Ball before the bird could even realize what was happening before chucking the ball on the NO pile hospital bed and picking a new pokeball at random.
One by one, their friends were released at last. Emolga had the fortune of freeing their first team member - Tropius. Tropius was smiling so big and so appreciatively and stomping from foot to foot in a cheerful march that his eyes were closed and Tropius didn't even seem fully aware of the serious, drastic nature of their situation. But Gengar and Emolga plowed on. Within two minutes, Gengar had freed a member himself being Passimian, who after transforming from raw red energy into the bipedal, proud monkey he was, remained standing next to Tropius with a befuddled expression on his face as he wondered where he was, but was at least comfortable enough with seeing Gengar and Tropius.
Lapras and Drapion were next, both of them coming out simultaneously as Emolga freed the water/ice type and Gengar freed his poison brother. Without bothering to explain anything to them, and hoping that they could surmise from their hurried motions that Gengar needed them to just obey for now - Gengar returned all four of his fellow teammates to their pokeballs, found a familiar knapsack that he recognized as Adam's haphazardly tossed in the corner of the room, and carefully placed them in there before handing the sack to Emolga to carry over her neck like a sash.
Gengar exited the Rejuvenation Unit with Emolga at his side, both relieved yet somehow in doubt that it had been this easy to reclaim their friends. All there was to do now was to locate Adam, hopefully avoid Evan, and escape out of here. With that in mind, Gengar turned left with Emolga at his side, both of them heading down a new, unfamiliar hallway with its many lefts and rights that all seemed to look the same and blend into each other, hoping there was enough time to find Adam before Evan found them.
I had been crouched in a fetal position, tucked into one of the corners of my prison cell, my arms wrapped around my legs which were brought up to my chest as things were looking more and more bleak as I weighed out my options for whenever my psycho brother, Evan, decided to make his return. There was no possible way I was ever joining Team Anonymous as Evan's right hand man, I don't care what Evan threatens to do to me. A life working for that piece of shit to aid the criminal syndicate I've been spending all year keeping at bay isn't a life worth having. So with that in mind, what exactly was I to say when Evan and me were to be inevitably reunited? And more importantly, how would he react?
With my thoughts racing despite my body being motionless and in a defeated position because of my hopeless surroundings, I then started to notice a distinct and odd sound that had not been present earlier. It was irregular, like someone else was breathing heavily, panting through the cracks in the door from the other side. For a moment, I thought Evan was taunting me in some way, purposely being creepy and trying to unhinge me by doing odd things like breathing like a pervert from the other side of the door. But I soon realized it wasn't breathing, and it wasn't even a human that was making the noise -
A second noise, similar to the first joined in and helped me realize that whoever-no, whatever was on the other side wasn't heavily breathing through the cracks, but was heavily sniffing, like a starved Rattata going through a torn trash bag. And there were two of them, sniffing heavily at the thin cracks underneath the door trapping me in the cell. My heart froze and I did my best to remain dead silent, as I tried to picture just what the hell was on the other side of the door. The sniffing proceeded to turn into low, threatening growls that told me that I had two dangerous pokemon on the other side of the door to contend with.
The two pokemon's growls shifted into attacks as both pokemon took turns throwing their whole weight against the locked door, barking madly as the door heavily trembled with each attack. I never would have guessed I'd hope the doors keeping me in were impenetrable. Why were there wild pokemon trying to get at me through a locked door? Where did they come from if there were no Anonymous agents with them to simply open the locked door and sick them on me if this was just an attempt to end my life before Evan returned? Did wild pokemon really enter the Anonymous base all on their own? Was this how I was going to go out? Being eaten alive by these crazed, feral pokemon plowing their heads into the center of the door, starting to leave indentations as the door's metal slowly caved inward, making me more and more nervous with each next assault on the door.
CRAaaAACKKKK!
I nearly jumped to my feet from my fetal position on the floor as I heard, saw, and nearly felt a powerful crack of lightning strike against the other side of the door, with blinding white light and jolts of electricity popping out from the cracks above and beneath the door. And from the bolt of thunder striking against the door, that must have meant that its intended target was the two pokemon trying to claw their way in. Did that mean that whatever had took care of the attacking pokemon was an ally, or an even more dangerous foe? At this point, it seemed like my luck was just getting worse and worse by the hour so I prepared myself for a pokemon with even more deadly prowess to burst through the door and finally finish me off after an entire year's worth of pokemon training and battling and arrogance in my own abilities in thinking that I ever had a shot at winning the Ilragorn League.
As another jolt of electricity struck against the locked metal door, my heart pounded in my chest in fear as thoughts of Mom and Dad raced through my mind, hoped Eliza was safe somewhere and regret over never getting to really say goodbye, wondered if my pokemon had become poisoned by the Anonymous agents by now, and wondered if Evan had okayed my execution like this. I wanted so badly a chance to just stop time and think and appreciate all that I had done in my life up until this moment, but there was no time, and for a moment I truly knew what it felt like to have your life flash before your eyes as, with a third and powerful crack of lighting, the metal door sealing me in was then blown in and a thin but powerful bolt of electricity shattered the top half of the door - leaving smoke, broken wires, and shrapnel scattered over the cell floor as well as the hallway outside that I now could see as the culprits of the attacks on the door were revealed.
On the floor of the hallway directly outside the door were two unconscious Mightyena that both looked like they had amazingly thick musculature, far greater than average, yet looked feral and aggressive even in sleep. There was no doubt in my mind that they were nothing but victims of Anonymous' Rage Berries. But beyond the tainted Mightyenas were two more pokemon, both of them floating in mid-air in the middle of the hallway, both of them smiling at me.
"Gengar! Emolga!" I could think of nothing to say but their names in utter relief as I could do nothing but smile, my eyes welling up in tears at shock and happiness to see both of them right here and right now, where moments ago I thought I was a dead man. It didn't fucking matter that the last time I had seen that adorable little electric/flying squirrel was practically a year ago at Gord Lake, back when I was starting and before I'd ever even gotten my first badge. It didn't matter how we'd parted. She had returned, and though I had no fucking idea how the hell that little squirrel managed to find me, or find Gengar, or power her way all the way through the Anonymous base. I reached out in a massive embrace as both mons made a beeline right into my torso so we formed into a massive threeway hug that took me far too long to let go of.
And Gengar. Gengar! Duh! My forgetful dumb self had left him at the pokemon center on Mulctuary Street in the middle of the invasion. But somehow he had gotten himself free and joined up with Emolga and gotten here. I had so many questions, along with equally being massively impressed at the sheer resourcefulness just these two mons of mine possessed in order to free me.
Emolga offered a small bag she'd been carrying over her shoulder to me to strap on my back, that a quick look inside revealed as my remaining four pokemon - Lapras, Passimian, Tropius, and Drapion.
"Oh my Arceus, you guys did it! You little fuckers did it!" I exclaimed excitedly, beaming with pride at the two smallest pokemon on my team as they smiled right back up at me affectionately, both of them seeming to not want to detach from my shirt even as the hug finally ceased as I pulled the bag over my own shoulders. "Just thank you. That's all I can say for now, we only have so much time. Now we need to get out of here! You remember the way out?" I asked, looking from Gengar to Emolga. Emolga looked to Gengar for the answer, which clued me in on who took the leadership role in getting me out of here and made my appreciation for Gengar grow even more.
Without any hesitation, Gengar did something I'd never experienced before - he momentarily made me into a ghost or something. It's the most bizarre, out-of-body experience I have ever and am sure will ever have. Just from touching me and Emolga, Gengar cast his ghostly ability to intangibly move through solid objects onto the two of us, and Gengar then flew us all through several thousand feet of metal walls, dirt, ground, rock, and at one point I swear we passed directly through an underground nest of sleeping Sandshrews as Gengar flew upward as I realized that Team Anonymous's base was underground.
After long last, we emerged from the earth, all of us shooting out of the ground like a volcanic eruption. Emolga and me shifted back into our normal, tangible bodies instead of the weird ghost-body we had been for the past minute just as we landed back on the solid, rocky surface of what I recognized to be No Man's Land, apparent by the complete lack of any plant life, pokemon life, or civilization for as long as the eye could see. Well, there was a speck off in the distance up in the clouds, but it looked incredibly far away. The rest of the landscape was nothing but rolling rocky dunes and hills, a sea of brown and orange rock in all directions.
I found myself kissing the dirt from the ground as I was so thankful to not only still be alive, but also to be back out in the open, fresh air after being trapped underground for so long.
"Gengar!" Gengar announced to get my attention, and I looked over at him as he still bobbed around in the air dramatically, pointing up in the sky.
Up in the clouds, where the speck previously had been just a dot in the distance, now we all could clearly recognize as the ever-angry Dodrio that belonged my older brother, who was riding atop his flier and did not look pleased to see me out of his base when I was supposed to be trapped. How fast was that damn bird of his?
"Fuck," I whispered to myself as Evan descended down from the skies until his Dodrio came to a complete stop about 20 feet in front of me, its beady eyes darting from Gengar to Emolga to myself, its chipped, hooked beak looming dangerously in front of its face.
"Adam," Evan greeted me with a small, crooked grin on his face as he looked down at me, still casually atop his Dodrio, not threatened in the slightest by us. "I see you've made your decision."
To Be Concluded...
Author's Note:
Alright, everything is at last where it needs to be. Adam FINALLY has his six pokemon at full, Evan has his six pokemon at full, Eliza isn't there to give an unfair advantage toward Adam and neither are the Anonymous agents to give one to Evan. Both brothers are pitted against each other at long last after buildup culminating since Chapter 1. This shall be the battle to end all battles in this story and I have to thank any of you still reading one last time before I finish this off with the biggest bang yet.