"Shit," Red hissed. He dropped the fang and rushed down the staircase, using the railing to hold himself up.
Crystal made it to Green first. Ruby and Red appeared next and stared over her shoulders. Green's eyes stared blankly at the space above her. Her skin was ghostly pale, and the bottom of her shirt had been ripped to tatters. There were bite marks along her torso where the rope that had once been around her waist had cut through the skin.
"I got her," Crystal said. With her good arm, she shifted the older girl off of the bottom steps onto the floor. Then she remembered how Ruby had checked to see if Red was alive. She held her breath and brought her ear close the Green's mouth.
No breathing.
Of course not. She sighed and pulled away. One of her fingers rested on Green's neck for a moment, just under the jaw bone.
No pulse.
"She's gone, isn't she," Red said dejectedly. Crys nodded. He slumped against the railing and let himself slide to the ground. His face revealed nothing. Stoic. It was hard to tell if he was hiding his sadness, or if he had finally gone numb. "Of course she's dead. Why would I even hope?"
"It looks like the zubats and golbats went straight for the open wound on her waist," Crystal said. "They can smell blood from miles away, after all. There were so many… They must have fed until she didn't have any blood left." She glanced at Red, and his bloody and bitten shoulder. "They probably tried to do the same to you. I'd say it's pure luck they left before they finished you off."
Red looked away. He didn't want to hear her logical way of telling him how lucky he was. He didn't feel lucky.
Crystal stood up and backed away from the body, giving Ruby a chance to take a closer look. He kneeled down next to her. The younger boy looked at Green sadly. With a gentle, steady hand, he reached out and shut those vacant eyes. "I've seen enough death. I wish I still had that one pokemon. The one that brought me to a new timeline," he murmured. "Maybe then I could make things different."
"It's no use wishing for something we don't have," Crystal said. "There's not much more we can do then leave. Leave, and take her with us." She took a few steps away from the boys and reached for the door. The knob wiggled, but the door didn't budge. "It's stuck."
Ruby stood up. "Let me try."
"I'll try the windows too," Red said as he picked himself up.
They both stepped over Green to get a closer look. Crystal stepped aside as Ruby approached. As he turned the handle, he shoved his shoulder into the door. The wood seemed to bend beneath his weight, but remained firmly shut. "Darnit. We can't open the door again."
"We can't leave through the window either," Red called from his place by the window frame. "It's latched from the outside."
"Can we smash it?" Crystal asked, her eyes scanning the floor for something heavy.
Red shrugged, then winced in pain. He had forgotten about his bloody shoulder. "It's worth a try."
Ruby's voice drifted from somewhere behind them. "Way ahead of you." The two older dex holders turned in time to see him lift the pokemon statue next to the dining room doorway off its pedestal. Struggling with the effort to lift the heavy carving, he waddled closer to the window. "Move!"
Wide eyed, Red and Crystal scrambled backwards out of the way.
"Here goes nothing," Ruby grunted. With a heave, the statue tumbled through the air towards the window.
CRASH!
The glass shattered. Debris flew every which way, and the dex holders had to duck to avoid the shards. As soon as glass stopped falling, they looked up at the wreckage.
"Are you kidding me?" Ruby cried.
It was stuck. The statue had shattered the window pane, but it had been larger than the window frame. The carved piece of stone filled the window, preventing any chance of slipping outside.
Crystal patted his shoulder. "I was sure it was going to work. It was a good plan."
"Maybe we can try pushing it through," Red suggested. He stepped forward and pressed his back against the portion of the statue still in the room.
Crystal and Ruby joined him. They ignored the bits of remaining glass falling around their feet and pushed until they were exhausted. The statue hadn't budged.
"That's it," Crystal said in defeat. "We're stuck here. There's no way out."
"Don't -pant- say -pant- that," Red said between pants. He took a few deep breaths before continuing. "There has to be something we can do."
"Oh yeah?" she snapped. "Then what's your plan."
Red's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Crystal was usually the calm one of the bunch. "I… I don't know, but I'll think of something. I always do." She gave him a skeptical look, but said no more. He'd think of something, he just needed a little time to think. This wasn't like a battle where he could come up with a strategy in no time.
"If you don't mind," Ruby chimed in. "I really don't think Green would have wanted to be left in the middle of the floor. Can we at least put her in the dining room with Silver while you come up with a plan?"
The two older dex holders frowned. Red had known Green and how much she cared for Silver. Crystal had known Silver and how much he had looked up to Green. For a moment, their hearts were heavy with guilt. Why hadn't they thought to put their friends together like they would have wanted? Why hadn't they thought of that? Instead Ruby, who barely even knew the two, had thought of it.
"Good idea," Red said as he put on a small smile. "How about you help me carry her into the dining room?"
"Yeah," Ruby said with a nod. "No problem."
"I'll help too," Crys said. She held her bad arm close. "I can't do much, but I can at least help steady her."
And so they did. Since Ruby was the least hurt, he carried Green on his back. He hadn't planned for that. The thought of having a body lying on his back freaked him out so much, that Crystal ended up having to talk him through it while Red supported Green from the side so she wouldn't fall off.
"I can't do this," Ruby said in a panic.
"You can, Ruby," Crystal said. She walked backwards a few steps ahead of him. Facing him so that he could see her face. "You see. You're almost in the dining room. I'm already in. Just a few more steps."
"Uh, I don't mean to be rude," Red called from the back. "But could you hurry? Green's slipping back here and Ruby isn't bothering to keep a hold on her."
"Come on, Ruby," Crystal said, trying once more. "A few more steps, and you can put her down."
Ruby took big gulps of air. "I can do this. I can do this. A few more steps." He closed his eye and tried to forget the cold lump of dead meat on his back and instead focused on his feet. Just a few more steps.
Crystal's words broke his focus. "Okay. You can put her down." She didn't have to tell him twice. He instantly let go, making the body fall into Red's outstretched arms.
"Got her," Red grunted. "Now we can put her by Silver."
Ruby opened his eyes, but his brain couldn't register the new sight they were taking in.
Crystal was still facing him, and Red was behind him, holding Green. Ruby was still blocking Red's sight of the rest of the room, so Red wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. Crystal had her back facing most of the room, so she wouldn't have seen either. Only he noticed the awful additions to the room.
Crystal must have seen the shock in his eyes. The disgust. Confused, she turned only to let out a shriek.
"What is it," Red asked, slipping past Ruby with Green still in his arms. He stopped dead in his tracks. "But… That's impossible."
It was their friends. All the other dex holders, or at least what was left of them. Blue, White, Sapphire, Silver, Emerald, Platina and Pearl lay across the dining room table. Blood dripped over the edge of the rotting wood onto the floor. Their every wound was clearly visible, despite the low light. Silver and Sapphire's bloody stab wounds, Emerald's slit throat, Pearl and White's charred and bite mark ridden skin, Platina's crushed bones sticking out at odd angles, Blue's lower intestine hanging from the hole in his abdomen, and little Yellow hung from the ceiling by the rope her neck above them all like some gruesome decoration on the wall.
Crystal turned away and emptied the contents of her stomach out on the floor.
Ruby dropped into a dead faint when he saw the blood encrusted hole in Sapphire's back.
Red dropped Green into a nearby chair. Her body slumped forward until her head and shoulders rested against the tabletop near Silver's head. "How did they all get here?" Red asked. A shiver slithered down his spine as he caught sight of Blue's empty eye socket. "I thought the library was blocked? And who could have brought them here?"
"I don't know," Crystal said with a groan. "It's the same answer for any question you could ask about anything that has happened." She swiped her arm across her mouth to get rid of the last of the bile. "Who did this? Who's killing us? Where did everyone disappear to? It's all the same. There's just no answer." She pointed towards the motionless boy on the floor. "Right now, I almost wish I could be out cold like Ruby. Then maybe I'd stop focusing so much on what we don't know."
Red nodded grimly. They both crouched down next to Ruby and tried to wake him. Red shook his shoulders a bit, and Crystal tried calling his name, but it was no use. The boy was dead to the world.
Crystal gave up trying to wake him first. She sat back on her feet and tried to look at anything other than the corpses. "Maybe we can narrow down who could have brought them here, though," she said with a shrug.
Red quite shaking Ruby and looked at her. "What do you mean?"
She sighed. "Well, fifteen of us came to the chateau. There's three of us sitting here that are still breathing, and all we have to do is look at the table to see that nine of us are dead." She narrowed her eyes and looked back out the doorway as if lost in thought. Red didn't like where she was going with this.
"That's twelve," she continued. "So what about the other three?"
Red thought back to all the carefree faces he first saw when they came to the abandoned building. "Well…" he started. "Gold's not on the table." Crystal scrunched her eyes shut at the mention of their friend. "He's been missing for a while now," he continued. "But Gold is too open about everything to stay hidden for long. Plus, he's no killer. That Diamond kid has been missing for a long time too. I don't know much about him, but he didn't seem like a killer. And then there's Black. He disappeared during the golbat and zubat attack like Pearl, but I don't see his body here. It couldn't be him, though. He was with us when Emerald went missing. Not to mention the fact that he was with you when me and the others fell down that hole." Now it was Red's turn to scrunch up his eyes. "He couldn't have been the one who attacked me after we hit the ground."
Crystal buried her face in her hands. "All unlikely killers, gnd yet, those are our options. I don't know what to think."
Red flopped backward onto the cracked tiled floor. He laid there and thought, ignoring the dripping blood splattering the floor a few feet away. "Neither do I Crys."