I return with a new chapter. Writing is getting a little easier, my other pets aren't letting me mope too badly.
In this episode:
My team: Loxley- braixen, Levi- azurill, Zen- zorua, Tobio- pidgeotto
Louis: Feugneur- litleo, Bastion- riolu
Ilima: Stoutland
Lisette: wingull
As always there's tiny bits of French, translations for anything not obvious are at the bottom. Enjoy the traveling!
Chapter 27: Inclement
Louis slammed supplies into his pack harder than he needed to, trying not to glare at the brunette talking with the Pokémon Center nurse for last minute medical instructions. He could understand if it was just the bulbizzare she was worried about. Despite the injuries the Kantonian starter had received, it was going to get better, and everything he'd read about the squat grass types promised that they were steady and sturdy beasts. A solid addition to any team. But why she'd brought the monstrous fossile along, he still didn't know. They had enough to worry about without one of their own pokémon trying to kill them. She'd gotten the pokémon from Team Flare of all places, say what she liked about rescuing it.
Because he knew all too well just how willing those criminals were to murder them all. Years of studying at the best public school in the country. Six solid months in the field, a full team, and two badges with the next one scheduled in less than a month. And those criminals had ripped through his pokémon like they were soft bread. One single, terrifying night had upended his entire life.
Rinka had been even better, with three badges under her belt and extra pokémon with her. None of that had saved her.
Louis swallowed the bile boiling in his throat. Rinka had been a good friend. The closest rival he'd had in school, the two of them constantly toppling the other in the ranks. But he could help but feel … grateful… that it had been the Johtonian girl that had fallen in the fight help each other escape… and not Lisette.
He tugged a strap so hard it creaked, willing the thought out of his head. It didn't work, the thought of losing someone so precious to him on top of everything else spiraled like circling vaututrice (1) waiting for a carcass. Losing his pokémon… losing his friend… And he'd been completely helpless to stop any of it.
Yet Gryffin and her friends had gotten away without any trouble. He stared balefully across the lobby as he tied off another strap.
"We both know it's not really Gryffin you're mad at." Lisette had come to stand beside him, her own pack at her feet.
Louis gave her grateful smile. But she was wrong, at least a little.
"I'm mad she won't tell us what's going on," he returned, a little too hotly. "She knows what those people did…"
Lisette smiled somberly, green eyes sad underneath dark lashes. "…She's not Rinka, Louis."
Louis dared one mutinous look up at her before turning back to his packing with a scowl.
"…Rinka would have told us what's going on," he finally hissed, tugging one last strap into place.
"Again, Louis," Lisette said quietly, "She's not Rinka. Yeah, I see the same similarities you do, but Gryffin's. Not. Her."
If both of their hands were trembling when she said that, well, Louis wouldn't tell if Lisette didn't.
"I should have done something… We should be doing something… Why won't she tell us what's going on?" Why couldn't he keep the misery out of his voice? He sounded like a coatox with a cold. "It's like she doesn't trust us," he finally croaked.
As if he trusted himself.
Lisette shuffled over and draped herself over his back. Louis leaned back, giving himself a moment to enjoy the rustle of soft braids over his face, and softer breasts into his shoulders.
"You said her dad was a cop, right?"
"Yeah…Interpol. Had some fancy connections to the International League."
"You know that's probably why she can't talk about anything right? Just like you could never talk about what was on tests and stuff."
"Lisette…"
"Louis."
"…Why do you have to be right all the time, hmm?"
"I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. You're just being stubborn."
"…"
"And you know that too," She ended, pressing a smug kiss into the top of his head before standing up and quickly wrapping her hair back into the tignon she used for sports.
"What would I do without you?" he asked, tilting his head back to look up at her with a wry smile.
"Probably be off trying to fix everything on your own," Lisette gently before swatting the spot she just kissed him. "Working yourself to the bone instead of getting the help you need. From friends who care about you. Like me. And Gryffin. Now let's go." Another swat, lower this time and Louis couldn't help but smirk just a little despite the serious conversation. "The further we are from les infernales (2) the better I'll feel."
He could definitely agree with that, at least.
XYXYXY
If anyone ever asked my advice about how best to go hiking up mountains in a rainstorm, my answer would be simple: Don't.
The weather had barely been a drizzle when we hightailed it out of Micle at the ass crack of dawn. Despite the many arguments that I'd been dragged into through the night, we all agreed that the more distance between us and Team Flare the better. So after the vaguest warning I could manage to the nurse at the front desk, we'd trudged out into the uncertain weather. And for a while the drizzle was fine. We all had coats and umbrellas we could wedge on top of our packs. But the cobbled streets of the city had quickly turned to gravel road, though it was fairly smooth due to use, considering Micle sat as the halfway point between Aquacorde and Ambrette. None of the three cities were on the main League track or especially large compared to bigger cities like Desara or Anistar (or gods help Lumiose itself) but they were the main population centers for southern Kalos. Roads needed to be well maintained to carry all those people and all the agricultural goods they produced.
And they were, if a bit muddy. As long as you were on the main road. But we were going to Turin not Aquacorde, so only a few kilometers out of Micle you had to leave the gravel for the old rail tracks. And those hadn't been properly maintained in years. And then it wasn't just a drizzle anymore. So even though we were in the tail end of the storm ripping across the Ecran Mountains, we still ended up knee deep in a slick, slippery soup of vegetation and clay with a torrent of water over our heads and the rumble of thunder in the distance.
"For the record," Lisette harrumphed at me as we huddled under an overhang to avoid a sizable pile of gravel rolling downhill in rivulets of rainwater. "I hate you right now."
"I understand," I nodded back, watching the rocks pass by. "Right now, I hate me too."
Or at least, I hated The Game. I couldn't have an easy training journey, no. Couldn't wait for Ambrette Town for all my troubles to start, no. I'd finally made good on my promise to turn my settings back to normal, so I had to keep running into Team Flare, for no good reason at all except that being a Gamer meant all the Drama gravitated to me. At least I wasn't on hard mode.
Hopefully being in a party with me had some benefits, despite me not being Party Leader. Because Lisette especially needed to level up. Louis deserved every boost I could get him, too. He might be a new trainer like me, but the guy had the work ethic of a mudsdale. I think even without the Game, he'd be as good as Ilima given a bit of time.
Time Team Flare wasn't likely to give us. Hopefully we'd managed to avoid them for a little while. Long enough to bulk up Lisette and her team and fill out Louis' at least. I had no doubts about the blond boy's determination or willingness to smash his fist into a few more Flare grunts. And aside from one grunt in particular, I was perfectly willing to help and or let him do just that.
Taking a moment to breathe, I sent a prayer to … whoever… that Oscar would make it back from whatever nonsense Team Flare was up to safely. And that dad and James would let me bail him out if he got caught up in the sweep the Pokémon Rangers were running around Micle. Gods bless those men, for protecting me, believing me, keeping me in the loop… I did not want to be anywhere near Micle when the Rangers descended on it. Lt. Moreau would have probably dragged me to the airport by the ear.
"I think it's safe to keep going," Ilima commented as he stuck his head out into the lingering downpour. Several fat drops of rain rolled over the wide brim of his tightly woven Alolan-style hat before dripping off the side. "But mind the mud."
We scrabbled up the dirt trail packed next to the rail tracks, ducking under protruding cliffs or into rotting control shacks whenever we had the chance and tried not to trip up the mountain. Walking up the actual tracks was nearly impossible, the mossy ties almost as slick as the metal rails and the gravel bed they sat on was pitted and crumbling from disuse. We only ventured onto them when the path was well and truly impassable. Which was unfortunately all too often. Fallen boulders, invading brush, and on one particularly perilous stretch just missing entirely down a sheer cliff, the path was… more of a suggestion than an actual trail.
"Louis," I whined as I clung, bent half over, to a vine covered rock wall for balance. "WHEN was the last time you were out here?"
Ilima grumbled intimidations under his breath behind me, clearly wanting to know the answer to that same question.
"…Mid-October?" Louis tried after a suspiciously long moment.
Which meant he hadn't been able to check the trails at all since the winter. Snow and ice could do a lot of damage to mountain roads…
The cursing in Alolan grew several tones deeper in the edge of my hearing. And it was quite likely joined by Kalais from Lisette in front of me. The flat look in her green eyes when Louis held her arm over a pile of rocks spoke volumes. At least it was directed at the blond and not me this time. I picked my way carefully over the rocks after the couple, saying absolutely nothing. This was still technically my fault after all, even if we all preferred our current predicament to fighting Team Flare.
"We camp at the first tunnel we find." Ilima's order cut through the splatter of rain. "We're far enough away from town for one day."
No one argued. It was barely noon, and I doubted we'd managed even five kilometers since leaving the main road but it didn't matter. No one would be following our trail up the foothills, even if they'd known to look for us. The rain had wiped away any tracks or scent. And Team Flare didn't seem the type to go mucking through rain and mud with their fancy silk suits, so they'd likely decided to wait out the weather before doing whatever it was they had planned to the south. Maybe. Hopefully.
It took another hour to find decent shelter for the day. Barely even a proper tunnel, there was a covered pass where the tracks ran through a cut out in the rock face to maintain an even track. The mountainside leading in had been chiseled back for the tracks but was now covered in a curtain of flowering vines, tiny white and yellow blossoms everywhere. The once fancy stone archway was gilded in moss, thin cascades of water streaming over the edge. Umbrellas straining against the wind whipping through the mountains, we hurtled ourselves under the waterfall seeking relief.
Only to realize that we weren't the first ones to think the old train pass was a great place to hide from the weather.
"Suuu-" "Puh-WEEEE!" "-wiii!"
"Balaend, ga-da! Bulsong!" (3)
"Suwiii!" "Suwiii!"
"Fuegneur, flammeche!" (4)
"Swee!" "Swee!" "Pwouh!"
Reaching out with one hand while lobbing a pair of pokeballs with the other, I barely snagged the back of Lisette's collar as Zen and Levi emerged into the fray. With a squeal of own I leapt away from a brutal charge, dragging the shorter girl with me. The cold breath of the wild pigs icing our ankles as we tumbled to the side and frosting over the mud of the tunnel floor.
"Levi, bubblebeam! Zen, pursuit!" I ordered as I scrambled to keep my footing on the slick ground.
The group of pokemon we'd inadvertently disturbed was mostly swinub, which was good, with a single piloswine acting as matriarch and protector of its litter, which considering how upset it was with our surprise visit, was very bad. Ilima seemed to have it handled with his stoutland, and that was certainly a nasty looking fire fang the friendly dog had charred into the piloswine's side. Gulping, I noticed that the piloswine was level 42 however. Ilima's stoutland was more than a match, but for any of my pokemon the hog would be a death sentence.
The swinub were going to be tough enough. There were eight of the smaller pigs and six of them had levels in the high teens or low twenties. They were big, though; the largest was nearly a meter tall, and probably 30 kilograms, easily three times the size of my little zorua, nevermind Levi.
It didn't stop my azurill from blasting it full force with a vicious stream of bubbles though. The swinub tried to charge my tiny mouse, only for Levi to bounce up and tackle the charging pig from above, tail flashing bright blue in the dark stone passage. Confused from the aerial attack, the swinub's charge broke as its legs buckled, and it slid through the mud straight out of tunnel and disappeared into the rain.
"Levi!" I tried going after my pokémon, unwilling to let the tiny baby mouse fight unsupervised. Another loud squeal had me spinning, trying not to trip over the old rail tracks, and I planted a mean goal kick into one the smaller swinub as it tried to attack me from behind. The pig was tiny, barely bigger than Zen and only level six. My kick actually took it completely off its feet and it skid several feet on its side into the wall of the tunnel. I launched a pokeball at it without another look and turned back to find Levi.
A bright flash like lightning lit up the entrance of the tunnel, and suddenly the brown ice-type Levi had been fighting was launched back into tunnel, bouncing roughly as a torrent of high pressured water dragged it over numerous rail ties.
"Riiiii!" The blue mouse that bounced back in from the rain was much larger than before. As an azurill, Levi had barely been the size of a guinea pig. Now, as a marill, he was as tall as Zen, with the tops of his ears just brushing the bottom of my knees as he chased down the swinub, still twice his size mind you, on all four paws. He actually had front legs worth noting now, and making excellent use of them as he harried his opponent. He slapped tiny razor claws at the pig's exposed snout when it got too close, then pushed it into the wall again with another overcharged blast of bubblebeam.
"You are awesome, Levi!" I cheered. It was the best congratulations for his evolution I could give at the moment. I sidestepped another charging swinub, dragging Lisette with me again. The shorter girl had finally managed to pull out her wingull, though it couldn't maneuver well between the narrow tunnel walls. The water bird had settled for spitting water guns from the safety of Lisette's hair, webbed talons pulling at her protective wrap as it fought for balance.
I kicked that swinub, too, and slashed out with my dagger as soon as my friend was out of the way. The blade slid across coarse fur, digging a few centimeters into porcine flesh. Blood welled in the gash, spilling onto the already slick ground as the pig rushed past.
"SweeEEEEE!" Hooved feet ground to halt as the swinub took the briefest moments to consider its wound before snarling at me in a feral rage. I could see the barest sliver of furious black eyes under matted fur. And then it practically glowed in pale blue and rushed me. Frost danced under rampaging hooves as it barreled in my direction.
With a burst of black energy, another swinub crashed into the first one's side, sending it into a pile of rubble along the wall. A spray of red oozed across the ground as the injured swinub's wound split further under the pressure.
"Zen!" I cried, and the illusion around my zorua faded, revealing the black fox in all her snarling glory. Another shadow filled pursuit attack, and a vicious bite on the snout had the swinub squealing in defeat and it dashed off out of the tunnel into the rain.
"Bastion! Frappez le encore! Forte!" (5) Louis' voice echoed behind me. A glance back revealed that his riolu had joined the fracas. The bipedal puppy slammed a rough palm strike into a swinub being held down by the smoking fangs of its litleo teammate. A rough shake from the lion, and the pig went limp. A second, equally still pile of brown fur lay smoking behind them.
Feeling bad for the dead pokémon barely crossed my mind. I liked animals, sure, but wild pigs were a special kind of monster. They caused devastation wherever they went, entirely too smart and too vicious to be anything but an invasive pest. I turned back to my own pokémon.
"Zen," I called to my little fox, "Back Levi up!"
The swinub the marill was facing was level twenty-one, and thus higher than my mouse. Levi had type advantage, but the strain of evolution was clearly wearing on him. Zen's body shifted, illusions forming a dark ripple as it covered her. With two loud stomps that didn't splash as much as they should have but a fairly convincing snarl, the false form of a tyrunt lumbered menacingly toward the ongoing fight.
The swinub's covered eyes jerked in the direction of Zen's illusionary body, then jolted back to Levi, now glowing pink as the marill charged up a draining kiss. Another prehistoric snarl distracted the pig long enough for the fairy type attack to land. That was it. A brief moment of flailing, squeals bouncing sharply in the stone of the tunnel, and that swinub ran too.
"Kkeutnassseo. Bul." (6) Ilima's firm command sounded flat after the chaos of the fight. The piloswine hung from stoutland's jaws, very clearly dead.
"That," Ilima stressed as he slicked wet hair back with one hand. "Was a mess."
"Je méprise les cochons," (7) Louis nodded from a few feet away, carefully prying his own kill from Feugneur's unwilling jaws. The litleo grumbled ash, but released the swinub. Only to go chew on the other.
"Doesn't everyone," the older teen agreed, stepping carefully over twisted tracks to check on each of us.
Scooping up a cheering Levi, quickly praising him again for being so fabulous, I took in the disaster left behind from the battle. Sloughs of earth were upturned, crisscrossing the tunnel floor like jagged scars. Metal rails were bent, wooden ties were shattered, and clumps of ice cluttered the mud. And mud. Mud was everywhere. Plastered all over my legs and arms, splashed up one side of Lisette all the way to her hair wrap. Ilima was splattered all over, turning his sturdy khakis a greyish beige. Louis had it the worst though, earth dripping all the way up to his chin and caked in his hair. He shook himself limply twice before trudging to the tunnel entrance to stand under the water long enough to rinse the worst off.
"That was disgusting," Lisette cringed when I handed her a towel. "There's la gadou everywhere. C'est une porcherie." (8)
"What else can you expect from swine?" Ilima clucked irreverently as he and Louis moved to drag the bodies out of the tunnel. "And we can't even cook in this weather."
Grimacing, I bent to scratch Zen on the nose for a moment and drop Levi safely on the ground. My zorua had brought me the pokeball I'd tossed at the one tiny swinub, and I'd used the motion to wave away the various game alerts trying to clog my vision. Rising, I moved to grab a leg of the piloswine with Ilima pulling the other. With stoutland's jaws still around the neck, the once ferocious sow was hauled off in short order.
But just because there was no hope of dry wood to cook with didn't mean Ilima was willing to let good meat go to waste.
"There are too many carnivores on our teams to just let them rot," he explained, showing me the proper way to begin skinning the pigs. "You need an actual hunting knife," he'd said pointedly. "A dagger is good for fighting, but dreadful for the work that comes after."
His own blade, which the game labeled only as a survival knife, punched through the skin on the abdomen. He slid the knife about half the length of the belly before handing it to me. Swallowing the surge of bile that threatened to escape my own stomach, I followed his instructions to cut the rest of the way down. Skin was peeled back, cutting sideways into what remained of the fat on wild pigs at the end of winter when tough hide didn't want to come away from tougher muscles.
I didn't retch when Ilima started handing me intestines… but it was a near thing. Loops of them dangled steaming in my arms as I stood frozen resolutely in the rain. I could feel Louis smirking behind me as he cut up his own swinub, but at least he wasn't outright laughing at my inexperience. Ilima also sported a darkly amused twinkle in his grey eyes, but he only nodded respectfully as he passed me more organs. Those were tossed off the cliff with no small amount of relief. The lingering weather was now a blessing, rinsing blood from my hands and clothes before anything could stick.
The game did give me a large hide as a loot item once we were done slicing the skin off. Ilima made it all looks so easy, clearly familiar with the process. A small ax for chopping wood was used to remove the head and to separate the bones in the legs once the older teen had cut through the muscles. I couldn't help the full body shudder at the thud when the ax head impacted bone. The pig skull was also tossed like the organs, as we didn't want to attract scavengers, and this time I got medium tusks as loot.
Congratulations! Due to a special action, a new skill has been created! You can now use [Field Dressing]! Level 1- 5% to next level.
Shaking my arms steadily to remove … anything left, I glared through the rain at the game window.
As necessary as it surely was, that was not an ability I looked forward to using.
XYXYXY
It felt dreadfully unfair to be chewing dry meal bars in the tiny service alcove in the backside of the tunnel while our pokémon feasted of wild boar. Between Loxley, Delacour, and Feugneur being fire types and stoutland and tyrunt knowing fire fang, the alluring aroma of roasting meat filled the tunnel despite the lack of a campfire.
And didn't my tyrunt look all comfy-cozy and perfectly content to be in what amounted to a cave? My grumpy dinosaur had still snorted dismissively at all the other pokémon, and outright snarled at us measly humans, but she been happy enough to stomp back and forth through the tunnel, rubbing her sides against the stone wall. Not too pleased with the rain still falling at either entrance, but a sparkly pink wiggle of Vivi's ears had her stalking back to the main gathering in the center. The giant back leg bone currently splintering between her fangs was completely beside the point.
Levi was in and out of my lap, wanting praise from me and all of my other pokémon for finally evolving. It was rather adorable seeing him bounce and spin around, showing off his new and much more mobile form. There was a bit of steam when Loxley intercepted a stream of bubbles with flame, but other than that all my pokémon were happy to let Levi cuddle into them. Except the tyrunt. She growled once around the pork haunch she was eating and Levi wisely bounced right back over to me. Where he was rewarded with several bites of my granola bar.
Louis and Ilima were tracing over the map again as we ate. My flashlight had a lantern feature, and we were using that in lieu of fire light. It was fading fast though, and the solar charger I had hanging just inside the tunnel out of the rain was at barely forty percent. Between the rain and the waning afternoon light, I wasn't going to get much charge out of it.
"We need to keep at least one phone charged at all time," Ilima had advised. As our de facto team leader, we were quick to defer to the older teen's experience in the matter of travel and training. "You never know when you need to call for a rescue. Fire types make lanterns and such a little less of a priority. Even more so when they can actually light you a fire."
I blinked innocently at the arched candy pink eyebrow thrown my direction, but didn't say anything in my own defense. The weather was awful, and I'd been the one adamant to be out in it. It hadn't stopped me from peeling off my clothes and bra as soon as the guys had turned their backs. A vaguely dry t-shirt and spare jeans were all I was wearing at the moment; it was miserably damp even with the shelter the train pass provided. At least the service platform was high enough to keep our packs and sleeping bags dry.
And the afternoon had brought a break of much needed warmth, despite the wet.
"The only potential trouble is the old bridge," Louis admitted, tapping the map several kilometers from our current position. "It gets dark early still, so we might not get there in time to cross safely. It was just fine last autumn!" His voice rose insistently at the alarmed looks Lisette and I both gave him. "But if you're still worried about winter damage it's best to go in full daylight. That's all!"
"And after that the town of Cerf-à-vol?" Ilima questioned, tanned hand tracing the paper as well.
"Un hameau medieval," (9) Louis dismissed. "It's been abandoned nearly as long as the train…"
Trusting the pair to navigate far better than I could, I leaned back against my pack for a long overdue nap. A quick purr from Loxley had my team gulping down the rest of their dinners to cuddle pile on top of me to everyone's laughter, especially my own.
"You really think someone will want that little marcacrin?" Lisette asked as she settled down next to me later. Her wingull had tucked itself under Tobio and happily nestled in between the two of us.
"The swinub?" I mumbled, eyelids heavy with the promise of sleep. "I don't see why not. Pigs are smart and pretty friendly if they get socialized right…Good typing, three level evolution…"
"Still a pig," Louis retorted as he plopped down next to Lisette. He was smiling though, so I was pretty sure he didn't mean it.
"Mammokkuri are powerful when they evolve," Ilima soothed as he came over. "Someone with a little patience will do well with it."
The Alolan teen settled in on my other side, and I blearily noted that he and Louis had effectively set themselves as the outside guard. I almost wanted to protest, but it made sense. Ignoring the fact that they were both male, and the chauvinism that potentially influenced the position, they were older and more experienced so it did make sense to let them take point. I was safe under a giant pile of fluff regardless.
Late afternoon melted into evening, and I did not wake up.
1-mandibuzz
2- those fiends (ref. to Team Flare)
3-Stoutland, go! Fire Fang! (Korean)
4-Feugneur, ember!
5-Bastion, hit him again! Force (palm)!
6- It's over. Fire. (Korean)
7- I despise pigs.
8- muck/slime, It's a pigsty.
9- a medieval hamlet