Chapter 57: Blast from the Past
"Oh this trip is just going to be a blast," Lucas said sarcastically as he looked again over the trip plan in his Pokevice. Lucas and Skyler spent the previous day exploring Slateport City and restocking supplies. Now they were at the mouth of Route 110, the road they needed to take to get to their next destination, the Gym in Mauville City for Lucas' fourth Hoenn badge, "So let's recap shall we? For reasons I can't understand my Mightyena seems to want to maul any person who comes near me, my Eevee can't get over his epic guilt trip and we are going to spend the next four days on foot because, genius that I am, never bothered to fix my bike or even bring it with me, so we can't use the Cycling Road to reduce the time of our trip. There are no hotels, restaurants or Pokemon Centers along the way, it's going to be muggy as hell because we'll be so landlocked, and according to the weather there's at least a 75% chance that it will rain all four days. This is just going to be super,"
"There's good news in all this," Skyler replied as he double-checked the last of his own supplies.
"What's that?"
"No Tentacool!"
"Thank God for small miracles, right?" Lucas responded dryly, "Well, at least the scenery and stuff will be nice. Just don't get hurt or hungry or anything for at least a couple of days,"
Lucas barely meant any of the griping he did. Though he rather swim in an Olympic-sized pool full of Tentacool than walk in the rain, and he was genuinely worried about his current Pokemon problems, all of those seemed minor compared to the prospect of spending as much time with Skyler as possible. Lucas' like for Skyler increased with every passing moment. Not only was he becoming an amazing friend, one of the best he'd had in a long time, he rejoiced in being around the intensely attractive Trainer. His crush on Skyler was getting worse and there would still be moments when he crashed into trees or tripped over his own feet if the older Trainer said something that could be construed as a double entandre, but overall it became easier and easier to talk and joke with his new friend.
The morning started out cool as the sun was still low in the sky and the sea breezes hit their backs. The Cycling Road was overhead and the Trainers could hear the grinding of rubber wheels on the asphalt. Not taking the road had an additional advantage to spending more time with Skyler, it also gave Lucas a chance to capture and train more Pokemon. From what his Pokevice's guide had said, Mauville's Gym specialty was electric type. And so far the majority of the Pokemon Lucas had encountered on Hoenn's coasts, beaches and water ways were water types. The teen knew that he would have to face an advanced team because of his Championship, so he needed all the opportunities for catching and Training he could get.
The first day he caught a poison type Pokemon that looked like a stomach called Gulpin, and the paired electric types Minun and Plusle. Before leaving Slateport, Lucas reorganized his team yet again and carried with him Gizmo, Diablo, his Growtle, Beautifly, Blobby Bob and the high leveled Steelix from Iron Island. His desire to give more of his Pokemon a chance was coming true, with him seeming to use more of his Pokemon than he had in his past to deal with this new Gym Challenge. Most of the afternoon was devoted to Training by fighting every Pokemon they encountered, Lucas only slowing down towards the evening after realizing if he continued at his pace he would blow through his medical supplies before even the half way point of the trip.
Like their trip from Dewford town, Lucas and Skyler made camp with Lucas doing the cooking while Skyler tended the fire, and spent most of the evening chatting and opening up more and more to each other. Skyler with his more harebrained schemes to escape the watchful eye of his cousin and the Clan, Lucas with some of his more gritty stories of life in a gang, all finished with Skyler dropping to a coma-like sleep as soon as his head was down, the other teen left with a few minutes of thoughts and dreams about the other boy, and another attempt to coax his Eevee back to their close relationship.
The second day was also fairly quiet. Now that they were further from the shore the clammy heat made itself known, slowing the walking pace of both Trainers as they sweated and marched through the tropical environment. Lucas caught an Electrike, Trained some more, and the two tried to futilely escape the heat in the shade of the overhead Cycling Road. As the heat got worse, Skyler came up with the idea to nap during the day and spend more of the night traveling like what was done in many hot countries. So the routine changed slightly, Lucas encountered some of Hoenn's nocturnal Pokemon and they passed the half-way point of their journey.
The third day of the trip turned far more interesting than their first two. Lucas and Skyler tried to make the most of the morning as they could, trying to walk as far as possible before the heat and humidity made traveling impossible. As they continued through bushes and short trees, Lucas thought he heard a voice call out to him from the wilderness, a familiar voice that made him feel like someone dumped a bucket of ice water into his veins.
"Lucas!" He ignored it at first, thinking the beating sun and sweltering heat was making him hallucinate. There would be no way he'd heard that particular voice out here, of all places, in the middle of a largely abandoned path in the middle of tropical Hoenn. Then the voice called out again, "Lucas! Oh my God, it's you!"
"Hey, do you hear somebody calling your name?" Skyler nudged Lucas with his elbow, his walk starting to sway slightly because of fatigue.
Hell. Lucas thought. If Skyler heard it too that meant he wasn't hallucinating, or having a waking nightmare. It was real. And when the Trainer stopped to look around, it became far too real. A figure erupted from the bushes and nearly tackled Lucas to the ground with the force of it jumping and wrapping its arms and legs around the teen's body.
"Lucas! Baby! It's been ages since I've seen you! I'm so happy!" A beautiful teen girl with long, dark green hair and dark brown eyes clung to the Trainer, wrapping her long thin arms around his neck, nuzzling his cheek with her own, while her long, toned legs were clutched tightly around Lucas' pelvis. Skyler stared at the sight, eyes wide with his jaws dropped. Lucas just snarled at the girl.
"Marcia, get your skanky corpse off of me!" Lucas grabbed the girl's calves and shoved them off, causing the girl to lose her balance and fall to the ground in a heap.
"That's a nice way to treat you girlfriend!" Marcia huffed indignantly.
"You're my ex girlfriend, you two-faced whore. Or have you forgotten that your slutty ass cheated then dumped me?" Lucas snarled. Of all the people Lucas would meet in the middle of the wilderness, Marcia was the last person he ever wanted to see. He'd rather face the handsy, perverted Major of Team Cosmic, Mathias, than ever see this particular girl again. Marcia had been the teen's last serious girlfriend in Cherrygrove City. It had been almost two years since they last saw each other. Marcia had been a girl in his gang, and he had truly loved her. But then she betrayed him, not only cheating on him, but cheating on him with the leader of a rival gang. She not only tore out Lucas' heart and stomped on it, but she betrayed their friends by sleeping with a guy who had put many of their members in the hospital during their fights. She was remorseless, conniving, self-centered, and opportunistic.
The girl stuck out her bottom lip and pouted, a gesture that at one time Lucas found endearing, but now just made him grind his teeth. She turned her attention over to the teen's traveling companion, got up adjusted the hair out of her face and purred, "Who's your friend? He's hot,"
A protective, possessive instinct made Lucas want to leap on Skyler and call 'dibs', but when he saw Skyler's expression seemed wary and confused rather than intrigued, his more logical side made him give a grudging introduction, "Skyler this is Marcia. Marcia, this is what a decent human being looks like. Skag, meet decent human being. Decent human being, meet the skag,"
"Um, nice to meet you," Skyler said politely, still trying to take a gauge of the situation.
"Likewise, I'm sure," Marcia gently took Skyler's outstretched hand and leaned over slightly so her upper arms pushed her cleavage together, very visible in her low-cut top.
"Good manners are wasted on her," Lucas stated as he stepped closer to his friend, "So what the hell are you doing out here, anyway?"
"I've come out here to join a convent," Marcia rolled her eyes sarcastically and flipped her hair, "I'm a Pokemon Trainer, duh,"
Lucas narrowed his eyes, "Since when did you become a Pokemon Trainer?"
"Since you and the rest of the gang threw me out of Cherrygrove like I was the town leper," Marcia sniffed, "It was the only thing I could try without having to resort to some really icky ways of supporting myself,"
"Oh, you mean like real work, the kind where you aren't on your knees and back all day?" Lucas replied snidely, "If I remember right you thought Pokemon were gross,"
"I said some Pokemon were gross. I might not have spent every day dicking around in the grass playing with giant rats and slimey bugs like some ex boyfriends I know, but I never hated them," Marcia snapped back, "I might not have become a Champion, but I am pretty good, and I've gotten pretty far in two years," Her sneering expression smoothed and she looked over Skyler and Lucas again, "Listen, I know things ended really shitty between us, and I am really sorry about that. But I am really happy to see you. You were really the only guy who was truly good to me. Since you're a Pokemon Trainer now, why don't we all travel together? Go back to better times?"
"No." Lucas answered bluntly. He gestured towards Skyler, "We better get going, it feels like it's going to be a hot one. And I want to make it to Mauville by tomorrow evening," Skyler nodded wordlessly and the two Trainers continued back on the path, leaving Marcia on her own.
The afternoon heat became practically unbearable and between that and what had transpired earlier, Lucas and Skyler said nothing to each other, the only sounds their feet trudging through the brush and the noises of Pokemon in the bushes and trees. As the heat got too bad, the Trainers made camp, planning to keep walking when the evening got cool again. They did their work silently, now a mechanical routine as they spread out their sleeping bags and made food. Finally the silence got too much for Lucas.
"I'm not normally that much of an asshole towards women, I swear," Lucas finally said aloud. He wasn't sure why, but it somehow felt important that Skyler really understood the situation, "I'm not even that mean towards my exes, but Marcia, Marcia really deserved everything I said to her today,"
Much to the tattooed Trainer's relief, Skyler responded, "It was that bad a breakup, huh?"
"Oh yeah," As the two Trainers ate Lucas explained everything about Marcia. How he caught her at their gang's hideout with rival leader in the act, how she acted like what she did was no big deal. How much he had loved her at the time, how the day he caught her he intended to give her a special necklace. How it felt like his heart was shattered and she didn't even seem to care. Lucas ended his story with a question of his own, "I don't suppose you have any ugly breakups like that, have you?"
Skyler sat thoughtfully for a moment as he poked at his cup of instant noodles, "No, I can't say I have. I haven't had a lot of relationships, kind of a hazard where you grow up in a town where the majority of the population are all blood relatives. But the few breakups I have, well, they always hurt, don't they?"
"That they do," Lucas nodded.
Once more they finished their food and then slept in the open, only awakened by the drop in temperature and an increase in wind. The sky was now the deep, dark blue of a tropical evening, but black clouds edged around the perimeter, closing in quickly. Skyler observed as they rolled up their sleeping bags, "Well, it appears we've beat the odds for long enough. We've had good weather so far but it's definitely going to rain now,"
Lucas looked up at the sky and scowled, "Of course it is,"
They packed up the rest of camp and Lucas recalled his loose Pokemon to their Pokeballs. While he would have to suffer walking in the rain, he didn't have to have Gizmo and Diablo suffer as well. Despite the fact that Lucas couldn't possible make it to Mauville in a single day when there was still a half-day's walking at least, the tattooed teen picked up his pace considerably. Inevitably though, the skies opened up above Lucas and Skyler. Unlike the raging storms at sea, the inland tropical rain was warm and poured straight down, like a sane but thorough shower. This did not stop the tattooed young man's foul mood. His hair once more dumped in his eyes and his soaked clothing clung uncomfortably to his body, while mud and dirt squished into his boots. At intervals the two Trainers attempted to take shelter under the overhanging Cycling Road, but the structure offered little protection, and the rain showed no signs of slowing. So no matter how much it poured, the two teen boys were forced to walk in the weather.
It rained for hours, and walking through the increasingly difficult terrain was fatiguing the two greatly. Lucas shivered uncontrollably despite the warmth of the falling water, and Skyler was noticing the toll the weather was taking on his friend, "You okay, man? You look like you're going to fall over, and you've been miserable for hours,"
"I just really don't like it when it rains," Lucas said through chattering teeth, pushing his collapsed Mohawk out of his eyes for the umpteenth time, "It just makes me really cold and it gets a little hard to move, I'll be fine,"
"We need to find you some shelter," Skyler pulled a blanket out of his bag and threw it over his companion's shoulder, "You're going to get sick or arthritis or something,"
Lucas was grateful the dark sky overhead had made it impossible for Skyler to see Lucas' red face in response to the kind gesture, and snorted humorlessly, "It's a nice thought but this is the middle of nowhere, remember? It's still at least six hours before we see Mauville, and that was at the pace I was hoofing it before this weather hit. If this keeps up it'll take even longer,"
Skyler scanned the horizon and gestured to the other Trainer, "I know you're not going to believe this, but, I think I see a house!"
The other teen squinted in the direction Skyler was motioning and through the pouring water saw the outline of a structure not too far off the main road. But an instinct made him immediately suspicious. A house out here just felt too...convenient, "I dunno man..."
"Come on, if someone lives there they'd have to be heartless to not let some people in when it's raining this badly and if it's abandoned then we don't have to worry about anyone at all. And dude, you're verging on hypothermia. We want to go to Mauville for the Gym, not the hospital," Skyler's concern made it impossible for Lucas to refuse and the taller boy steered the increasingly weakened Trainer towards the building. Skyler was right, Lucas had taken shelter with people before. Abandoned houses were only an issue because of Pokemon, and Lucas was pretty sure he had once been the house guest of a ghost, a lonely woman who froze to death in her cabin. Yet in spite of this he felt the house seemed off, like a trap or the locale of a particularly bloody horror movie.
Skyler knocked on the door, calling out for an occupant. After a couple of minutes with no answer, the Dragon Tamer tried the knob and found it unlocked. The house seemed occupied, but the owner didn't appear to be home. There was no dust on the floor and the furniture seemed in good shape. Lucas dropped like a stone just inside the doorjamb while Skyler started digging through the cabinets for some cups and grabbed Lucas' duffel bag to pull out a towel, "You go into the bathroom and take off those wet clothes. Then wrap yourself with a towel while I make you some hot broth. When the owner shows up we'll tell him what's going on. Don't put on any dry clothing until you start warming up. For some reason you lost a lot of body heat, which is weird considering how warm it is. Then after we get to Mauville and you get your Gym badge you should probably go see a doctor to make sure there isn't something wrong,"
Lucas nodded wordlessly and obeyed. He dragged himself to the bathroom and pulled off his clothes except for Gizmo's Pokeball, leaving them in a soggy mess in the corner. He pulled himself into the tub and ran warm water over himself until his teeth stopped chattering. Then he dried off and clutched the towel around himself, sitting on the lid of the closed toilet. A few minutes later Skyler came in with a steaming cup of instinct vegetable broth.
"Feeling better?"
"Much," Lucas replied, slowing sipping the broth.
"I'm glad. If you were any further gone I'd probably have to use that old trick when people get hypothermia up in the mountains,"
"What's that?"
"Oh, you know, where two people have to get naked and use their body heat to warm each other up," there was a crash and the sound of shattered china, "Oh Lucas, you dropped your mug! I'll go get you another one. I hope the owner won't be too upset over the broken cup,"
After Lucas finished the broth, Skyler handed the teen some dry clothes and they waited for the home's owner at the kitchen table. The house only seemed to be made up of two rooms. The front room contained the kitchen, a living room area, a desk for an office and a bed in the corner, and the bathroom by the side. The rain continued to pour outside in thick sheets. Lucas spoke up, "It's really weird that there's no one home right now, especially as bad as this weather is,"
"Maybe they were on their way home when they got caught. It's even more dangerous to drive than walk when it rains like this. You can't see anything," Skyler said.
"I guess, but leaving the door unlocked? Usually you only do that when you come right back. And didn't you notice something else weird? This house looks huge from the outside but inside it's only a couple of rooms,"
"Well, this weather is pretty bad, it's really hard to say how big anything is or how far stuff is,"
"I guess," Just as the last of Lucas doubts started to fade, a woman's scream rang through the house.