Archie - Pokémon: 7 Deaths: 2
Blue - Pokémon: 5 Deaths: 0
{Jinua 11th, ? ?:? ?}
{? ? ? ? ? ? ?}
He hated darkness. He didn't like that he couldn't see in the darkness, that he couldn't know when something would jump out at him and very possibly take him out with a single slash of some sort.
Right now, he wished he was in darkness. Instead he was standing in an empty hallway, with a sort of dirty beige wallpaper and a deep red carpet from one end to the other. The walls seemed to have rows of wooden doors equally spaced out in a way that made him think of a very long hotel, but the doors were just part of the wallpaper too. What he hated about this hallway was that everything was silent and empty and it was just him with flickering lights.
He held his breath when the lights went out for a split second and a cloaked figure suddenly appeared at the other side of the hallway.
He took a step back when the lights flickered again and the figure had suddenly jumped closer without moving.
Suddenly, the lights went out entirely and he switched on a flashlight to see where the figure was-
It was crawling across the ceiling now, moving toward him like an Ariados, and the flashlight flickered too and suddenly the creature was right up in his face with its fangs bared at him and acid dripping off them as the walls lit up in a blood red glow, and the floor sizzled with every drop of acid drool until a spear made of rock dropped onto the creature and finally he saw that it had a familiar face and the skin was melting off and turning black and he turned around when he heard pleas for help and there were more people standing behind him and melting and he could see skin dripping and red hollows and bones and they were reaching for him-
He screamed.
{Jinua 11th, 1:04AM}
{Solaceon}
{Pokémon Center}
Blue awoke to frantic clawing at his door.
He quickly slid out of bed and went to stand by the door. The clawing stopped.
"Blue, it's me!" Star's voice said on the other side, sounding panicked. "Something's wrong and I don't know what to do, you have to come with me!"
"Give me ten seconds."
Blue turned back to the nightstand next to the bed and picked up the belt of Pokéballs, deciding that you could never be too careful, before hurrying back to the door and out into the hallway where the Luxray was waiting for him. He swiftly made his way over to Archie's room, where Star had somehow had the amazing foresight of putting something between the door and the frame to keep it from sliding shut and locking them out.
The gym leader normally left Archie to his own things once they crashed at a Pokémon Center for the night, keeping the Sharpedo's Pokéball as insurance that the Aqua Leader wouldn't just up and vanish in the middle of the night. Sending his Alakazam to find him in case he did was easy enough, but also a pain in the ass to keep doing, so it was actually kind of a good thing that he hadn't had to resort to it yet. But this was the first time that Blue had really set foot into Archie's room, and...well, a part of him was surprised to see that Archie hadn't unpacked anything and only pulled out the bare minimum. He'd have expected the taller man to be just that bit more disorganized or messier, and maybe set up some kind of 'personal space' with a framed photo on his nightstand or something to feel more at home because he was definitely that kind of sentimental sap. The most Blue could notice within the two seconds of standing in the room was a blue cloth neatly rolled up by the small lamp- wasn't that his bandana with the Aqua logo on it? Which was literally the most incriminating bit of evidence anyone could possibly just pick up and have him arrested for?
His brain didn't have much more time to think further because his attention was very quickly drawn to Archie curled up in bed, gripping his hair like he was suffering from a bad headache and whimpering. Blue walked over to him and gave the man a solid thump on the shoulder, to which he didn't react.
"Wake up, asshole," Blue said loudly, trying to shake him. He noted that the Aqua Leader was sweating despite his skin being incredibly cold to the touch.
"I've already tried," Star said weakly. "I even tried zapping him awake. I know he hasn't had a shred of sleep in the past three nights, but..."
Blue frowned. For the past few days, Archie had grown increasingly moody and irritated, complaining about noise the others couldn't hear and snapping at them about things they couldn't see. The shadows under his eyes had grown larger every day and even causing the nurse to ask if he was alright when they'd reached Solaceon's Center.
Earlier Blue would've brushed them off as hallucinations coming from lack of sleep.
Now he was willing to bet that there was a Pokémon involved.
Suddenly, Archie rolled over and screamed. Glad he'd taken his belt with him, Blue picked off the Alakazam's Pokéball and opened it. "Adam, I need you to figure out what's going on," the gym leader said quickly. "Whatever this is, it's not just him being sick."
Adam peered at the seemingly agonizing Aqua Leader for a few seconds before glancing down at Archie's bag. "Looks like a ghost-type, and it's coming from his bag. I'm not sure why, but my abilities aren't affecting it, so I can't help him."
Blue growled. Great, so on top of the thing most likely being a ghost-type, it was also a dark-type? He dug into Archie's belongings, pulling clothes and snacks out one after the other until his hands wrapped around something that, once he saw it, made him hiss. "Bloody-I thought you threw that away!" Blue snarled. He didn't even have to ask Adam if this was where the spirit was coming from, he could feel the thing in his fingertips. "Star, try zapping this thing," he said, putting it on the floor.
The Luxray nodded, giving the rock a whack with her paw before directing an electric shock at it. The rock wobbled shortly and then stopped moving again. On the bed, Archie sat up with a sharp gasp.
The thing that Blue had never understood about dorms in Pokémon Centers was that, for some reason, every bed had two cleaning buckets tucked underneath, except that one of the buckets was always empty. Seeing Archie's face, and making a split-second decision to pull the empty bucket out from under the bed, Blue was incredibly grateful that they were actually there. In fact, he wouldn't have been surprised if people spontaneously getting sick overnight was the very reason that buckets had been placed under the beds in the first place.
"Are you feeling better yet?" Blue asked irritably after a while, when Archie had finished emptying most of his stomach contents into the bucket. "I told you that thing was suspicious, didn't I? I thought you threw it away!"
"Th' wha'...?" Archie mumbled, narrowing his eyes. He tried to glance up at Blue, but ended up leaning over the bucket again.
Blue sighed, waiting a few seconds. "Do you remember that rock you got before we reached Hearthome?" he asked, folding his arms when Archie looked somewhat stable again. "Weird, crazy-looking dude showed up out of nowhere and just shoved the thing into your hands. You were commenting on how nice the markings on it looked. Why didn't you throw it away like we agreed on?"
Archie frowned. "...I...though' I did… Put it in th' grass..."
It was Blue's turn to frown again. Actually, now that Archie mentioned it, he did remember the Aqua Leader doing that. Archie had stopped walking, carefully put the rock down, and then continued marching toward Hearthome. Considering it turned out to be a Pokémon, could that mean the rock had deliberately followed them and then hidden itself in Archie's bag without any of them knowing?
"Dammit," Blue growled. "Tomorrow we're gonna try looking for a place to dump it and where it can't follow us. Star, I'm counting on you to keep an eye on it tonight. You, try and get some sleep while it's not using Dream Eater on you or whatever it was doing."
"...No promises..." Archie croaked weakly.
Blue decided to do Archie a favor and snatched the bucket out of his hands to clean it out. Each room had its own small toilet area, so he dumped the contents and flushed everything down before rinsing the bucket best as he could.
When he handed the bucket back, Archie had very quickly curled up around it again, trying to take deep breaths and hope that the bucket stayed clean.
"Maybe I should go call a nurse for you-"
"M'fine," Archie said quickly. "Jus' a nightmare. Jus' a really bad nightmare..."
Blue glanced down at the mess he'd made while unpacking the Aqua Leader's bag. He leaned down, picking up the belt with Archie's team on it, and counted the Pokeballs under his breath. It should be...this one. The gym leader plucked the Pokeball off and opened it, releasing the Buizel that was inside.
"Why is it still dark?" Basil asked curiously. "Did something happen?"
"Your trainer got attacked by a ghost in a rock and then got sick, and now I'm going back to bed and leaving you in charge of waking me up again if something else happens," Blue said, turning to the door. "You sure you don't want a nurse to look at you?"
"I'm fine," Archie insisted. "But thanks for the offer anyway."
"If you say so. But don't hesitate to fetch one if you need it," Blue said, letting the door click shut behind him.
The Alakazam floated along behind him. "I have to say, his nightmare reminded me a bit of the ones you occasionally get," he commented.
Blue paused in his tracks to look at Adam. "Did you look in his head for that?" he asked.
"It was less me trying to pry for a change and more his thoughts being incredibly strong," Adam promised. "He kept broadcasting flashes of glowing red caves and people melting in an oddly detailed fashion. So tell me, what's the status of your relationship at this stage? Because it seems you were on the list of melting victims and that's why he kept vomiting every time he dared try to make eye contact you."
Blue rolled his eyes. "Well I damn well hope he'll be able to hold his breakfast in when I walk into the cafeteria tomorrow morning, because we've got shit to do."
{Jinua 11th, 11:57AM}
{Route 209}
While Blue noted that Archie had indeed lost a lot of color at the sight of the gym leader, that was the most that had happened, both at breakfast and during the night. According to Star, the rock hadn't budged anymore after the zapping, but Archie hadn't dared close his eyes and ended up spending- yet again- a painfully sleepless night. The Aqua Leader's entire demeanor had nonetheless changed, and instead of being in a volatile mood that caused him to snap about anything and everything, he'd instead spent the entire morning being an unusual level of jumpy and paranoid, holding his breath at small sounds like a leaf crunching under his shoe or yelping and holding onto Blue's arm at sudden shouts. He'd ducked and whimpered more than once as a bunch of Starly flew over their heads.
The only reason Blue liked yesterday's irritated Aqua Leader slightly better than the current scaredy one was because today he was being so godsdamned clingy.
"What's that?" Archie asked, looking at something off the main path. There was an odd patch of sand that stretched for about thirty meters, waves gently washing over. It was like an ocean beach, except...they were nowhere near the ocean. From what Blue recalled of the map, the closest body of water to Solaceon was a lake, the same one they'd stopped at a few days earlier on their way to Veilstone. Furthermore, there was an eerie construction of dark stones and bricks poking out of the sand.
Star bounced over to the stones, sniffing at them curiously. "I think I know this smell..." she said, rearing up and peering over the top. "Whoa, this thing is deep! Check it out, hon!"
"It...kinda looks like a well," Archie said, peering down nervously when he and Blue got to it. "But it's empty..."
"Don't you normally drop a stone in wells to see how deep they go?" Blue said, absently running his fingers over a carving that looked like 'SWTKH'. He could see carvings of other odd-looking words like 'SNKΛ' all around the well, too. "Maybe you can make use of that haunted rock and ditch it here. See if this thing has a bottom or if it's secretly a portal to Giratina's otherworldly throne room."
"Don't make jokes about that, please," Archie winced, trying not to jerk away entirely and managing to simply take a few steps back. "This thing's creepy enough as it is."
"I know what this is!" the Luxray blurted suddenly, making the Aqua Leader jump. "Sugar, you're right, maybe we can toss the stone in here- they smell the same!"
"So this might be its resting place or something?" Blue said. "Guess that settles it, then. C'mon Sebby, time to drop that thing."
Archie reached for his bag, hesitantly opening the most easily accessible pocket and pulling out the small stone with the crack on it. "I'm...I'm not sure this is a good idea, Blue," he said weakly.
"Why not?"
"I don't know. It's...I don't know," Archie replied. "Maybe there's a different way of doing this. It's still a Pokemon, isn't it?"
"One that's already dead and probably can't die a second time," Blue pointed out.
Archie swallowed nervously, edging closer to the well again. "Um...sorry about this," he told the rock, before holding it over the darkness.
Blue raised an arm to shield his eyes when a sudden gust of wind rose, lifting sand off the ground. He heard Star shout at Archie to hurry and let go of the rock.
Trying to peer from behind his arm, the gym leader watched as a purple glow twisted around Archie's arm, finding its way up his shoulder and to his face. The air changed, filled with the smell of dirt and blood and something burnt. Archie made a violent jerking motion and spun around to snarl at Blue, colored contact lenses suddenly useless in the face of a vivid green glow that made Blue's hair stick on end.
"THERE WILL BE BLOOD."
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Because Halloween isn't quite finished yet apparently and we somehow both got our horror ghost chapters to come out nearly at the same time even though it wasn't actually planned. I'm sure you'll see it if you compare the dates, but I'm dumping a reminder anyway that the events currently being posted in Deliverance all happened a week before the stuff in this week's Dimensional Destruction. But that's okay because I'll catch up eventually.
ARCHIE
Shanks the Sharpedo, Prince the Empoleon, Star the Luxray, Warin the Beautifly, Basil the Buizel
BLUE
Sam the Blastoise, Pete the Pidgeot, Adam the Alakazam, Gary the Arcanine, Girish the Gabite