In this chapter, no Pokemon die... In this edit, at least.
Thanks for the inspiration on the last bit Beth, you sadistic psychopath.
Please R&R
-Ship-
Chapter 5
A crack sounded, echoing through the town. Dena started at the noise, crying out in surprise, and Dale called her over to the window, his voice quiet, anguished, even. She knelt at his side, confused. All she could see was the pyre in Jasper's fields, and the black of the forest beyond.
"Jack ran." Dale said, "Into the forest. He left Jasper's hut and sprinted off into the trees, just after the gunshot went off."
"Gunshot?" Dena replied, "Are you sure?"
Dale nodded grimly, "There was no mistaking it. The Colonel must have shot at Jack, but Jack escaped. Now he's gone."
Dena was confused. Why was Jack in Jasper's hut? And why had the Colonel tried to shoot him? Nothing made sense. Mulling it over, she saw movement at the tree line. "Look!" she said, excited, "There he is!", but the figure turned back to the trees and walked into the depths of the forest.
Dale shook his head. "That wasn't Jack."
"We have to go!" she replied, ignoring this last comment, "We have to help him!"
"I said that wasn't Jack. And it wasn't a soldier, either, or he would have gone straight after Jack the second he ran. Whoever it was, Jack isn't alone anymore. And he'll have to look after himself."
Angry, Dena stalked over to her bed and picked up a shoulder-bag, slinging it over her head. "You know what Dale? Just fuck off. I'm going to help Jack, whether you are or not." She planted a foot against the base of the window and pushed it open. A bright white light flashed as she tossed a pokéball out into the air. A steel bird formed in the light, and Dena leapt from the window, landing on the. A bullet sped through the air and hit hard into the wall, shattering bricks with a sharp retort.
Dale cried out, standing at the window, as his sister fled on the back of Skarmory, flying high over the forest. She looked back as he ducked away from the rifles of the soldiers, and, with a pang of guilt, looked forward again, concentrating on the forest below. She caught a glimpse of water between the black branches of Greatroot, and dived to the ground, leaping from the back of her mount into a big tree. "Skarmory!" She shouted into the sky, "Find Jack!"
She leapt from the branch onto the peaty soil, landing in a crouch. Faint gunshots sounded from the direction of the town, but she forced herself not to listen. Dale was more than a match for the pitifully few soldiers who garrisoned Littleroot. Instead, she turned back towards the tree, and saw writing carved into the trunk. The edges of the scratch-marks were worn with age, but the words showed clear. Loose clumps of moss lay on a stone slab at the base of the trunk, recently torn from the tree where the carvings were now revealed. "Oscar," They said; "Dale, Jack, Dena."
Dena wept openly at the memory of herself, and her three greatest friends, one her twin, one her mentor, and one, her love. They had been small children then, untied by love or admiration, but seeing eachother as perfect equals. Now one was dead, one fighting, and one fleeing from the world.
"Mightyena." She called out her wolf pokémon, "Jack was here. Can you find his trail?"
The pokémon sniffed around, and then found what he was looking for. He bounded away, his trainer sprinting behind him, following a familiar smell. Dena determinedly followed on, Skarmory circling high above.
After an hour of jogging and walking alternately, Dena came to the edge of a glade. Mightyena leapt to a rock protruding from the centre of the glade, and sniffed disappointedly around it. He had found what he was looking for, but it was too late. Gouge marks in the rock told Dena all she needed to know. Jack had come to this place, but flown away, his Charizard carrying him to wherever he aimed.
Dena sank to her knees, bare feet scratched and muddy, danger behind her and danger ahead, and scared without the constant companionship of her twin.
Dale stood at the window, a long rifle dwarfing him. His father, Silver Caste, stood a few metres away, aiming through the next window at the blockade where sat five soldiers. His pokémon patrolled the skies and the ground, making sure to stay out of the firing line of the blockade. His mother, Kris, was in Max Birch's Lab, hiding in the cellar with Rose and Simon, the fat tramp who usually made his home in the eaves of Greatroot, accepted as a part of the village for as long as Dale could remember.
A movement came from the blockade and Dale loosed a poorly aimed shot, sending a bullet flying high over the blockade. His father's more reliable aim landed a shot in the arm of a soldier who was unlucky enough to reveal himself.
A burst of fire erupted from the direction of Blaziken's hiding place. The soldier's Combusken had long since been recalled, having no chance against the superior Blaziken, and the collection of other pokémon around the village.
Suddenly, two of the three armoured cars used by the soldiers erupted from the back of the blockade, careening up Route 101. Dale lowered his rifle and smiled. He nodded at his dad, exhausted.
"You know, Dale, nothing will ever be the same again?" His father said wearily. "Littleroot will come under attack, and eventually, we'll fall."
Dale was worried by this display of defeatism from the older man.
"I want you to leave. Follow Dena and Jack and find somewhere safe."
Dale lowered his head, and began to talk. "Nowhere is safe. We never told you the truth about how Oscar died, did we Dad?"
"I'm sorry? What do you mean?" He was worried, or sounded it.
"There was no freak accident in Sootopolis."
The truth slowly came out, the story of Oscar's death shocking Dale's father. Dale felt ashamed to have hidden the story, but the way things had turned out, there was no point anymore. The world was falling apart.
Max walked in, his broad build dominating the room. "They're gone." He said, "But more will be back."
Dale and Silver said nothing, but their gloomy faces agreed.
"We can't leave. They'll find us and kill us all." Silver said, looking straight at Max.
"Ah," replied Max, "but we can fight."
Most of the residents of the tiny Littleroot Town - Dale, Max, Silver, Kris, Simon, Tom the builder and an old couple who lived at the far south of the village - ran back and forth between their houses and the poorly constucted blockade. Silver's Alakazam stood at the edge of the forest, felling trees with his mind and lifting them into a rough barricade while Dale's Tropius pulled trees up by the roots, assisting Alakazam in his efforts.
Dale coordinated his pokémon, trying to get Jasper's enormous truck onto it's side behind the main blockade, while others reinforced the existing cluster of corrugated iron and concrete blocks. His Sandslash dug a honeycomb under the route, and Max, crawling through the cramped tunnels, laid bombs throughout the network. When asked where the crates of plastic explosive had come from, the professor just shrugged, embarrassed, and mumbled that you never knew when things could be useful.
By evening, Littleroot looked formidable. Barbed wire lined a high stockade, and at it's entrance, a makeshift barbican was home to a host of traps and weaponry. Mounted behind crenellations of broken brick and blocks of cement was a huge gun, cannibalised from the remaining armoured car and bolted to strong scaffolding poles. Windows were shuttered and boarded up, and a watchman sat at the top of the wall, eyeing the quiet route beyond suspiciously. A Fearow circled high above, watching the land and skies for miles around.
Dale thought about his sister as he lay restless in bed. Was she alright? Had she found Jack, or was she still wandering the skies on Skarmory, ceaselessly searching for the twins' erstwhile protector? Wherever she was, she was certainly not here.
Dena awoke beside a stream, dry tears on her cheeks. The surroundings seemed oddly familiar, but, of course, she had slept here before. This was Marsh Isle. She rose up and stretched, the chirping call of a Mudkip confirming her location; the mud-fish pokémon made their homes on this island, making it a nature reserve. Well, it was a nature reserve before the League disbanded – Dena had no idea what would come of it in the next few years.
She had flown high and fast the night before, and landed on the island, tired. Skarmory was too exhausted to go on, and Dena didn't want to risk travelling by day in this new world of hatred. She remembered Dale and Jack, and quickly pushed them out of her thoughts. She had no chance of catching up with Jack on Charizard, and Dale had probably left Littleroot by now. So she was alone. Shit.
Dena collected up the thin sleeping bag and rolled it into it's even thinner nylon sack. She shoved the poor substitute for a blanket down into her shoulder bag and hoisted it high over her head, letting it come to rest with the strap close to her neck. A gentle wind cut through her cropped hair as Skarmory, having taken a roost high in a tree for the night, landed, disrupting the dust beneath his feet.
"No food this morning Scar," She said, her own stomach empty and grumbling, "If you want breakfast, you'll have to go and hunt."
The elegant steel form took off again in search of food, not willing to miss out on breakfast after a night of hard flying. Dena decided against calling out her other pokémon – they would be kept in stasis inside their unfamiliar pokéballs, and so would not need to eat.
As she looked around, an abundance of trees bearing Pecha berries made her reconsider, so she took her balls from the bag and tossed them out onto the ground. The light of the five pokéballs was blinding, but Dena was already walking to the nearest tree to retrieve the fist-sized fruits. The slight resistance of the branch made picking the ripe fruit a satisfying task, and the sweet taste reminded her of eating home-made crumbles as a kid.
Her pokémon liked the Pecha Berries too, indulging in a fair few of the berries before settling down contentedly. Scar was unique in that he was exclusively a carnivore – he refused to eat fuits or berries, or even the nutritionally tailored artificial crap that many pokémon preferred to the real thing. He would only eat meat – mostly small animals found on hunting trips, and raw fish given to him from packets, but he was rather partial to the most expensive cuts and fillets of meat eaten by Dale and Dena.
Dena filled a rather empty food box with the fruit, and recalled her pokémon, none of whom were being remarkably helpful.
The island was large, and, had she not been here before, she would never have had a clue where she was without the help of Scar. For the lack of the bird pokémon, she would now have to walk along the stream to get to the coast.
As Dena walked, she noticed that the pokémon were on edge; a bevy of Marshtomp turned and fled back downriver when they saw her, and flocks of Taillow scattered from trees at her approach. She wondered warily what had them so riled as she headed for the one place where she knew pokémon would be safe.
Fear rose in her throat as she came into sight of the Ranger Center. The windows of the building were boarded up, and soldiers patrolled inside a barbed wire fence. A cage beside the stream's mouth held a disheveled looking man.
His green jacket was stained brown from blood, his hair matted and congealed from the red cut on his scalp, and his head rolled as he turned to look at her. He mouthed a word, but Dena's attention was pulled away as a soldier shouted. She felt a sharp pain in her arm and pulled out a red dart, aghast. Another dart thudded into her thigh, and weariness engulfed her. She collapsed to the ground and, as she struggled to stay conscious, she saw the soldiers running towards her through blurred eyes. She heard a cry, and saw the distinct shape of a green-clad man standing, in waves of electrified spasm as he struggled to force open a door.
Blackness closed in.