Chapter 7

It wasn't until long after our uncomfortable silence had begun that I fell asleep lying next to Cooper in the undergrowth. Even if he was mad at me, he didn't seem to mind lying together for warmth, made all the more necessary by the fact that we were both too exhausted to get one of the sleeping bags out. Luckily for me he seemed to radiate heat, something that I hadn't noticed before, and kept us both comfortable enough for the duration of the night. Cooper decided to wake me with a shake saying that we should move on. We still had at least a day of walking until we would reach the second, larger dark zone.

It was with no words that we ate a cold breakfast of energy bars and headed off once more, Felicity being the only pokemon released this time. Fortunately Cooper seemed to know the way without the help of his Ekans and lead us along in yet more awkward silence. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Cooper's demeanour hurt me, but what had previously been an unenjoyable trip had swiftly degraded into something akin to getting a prostate exam by a doctor with cold hands whilst simultaneously having a cavity removed by your dentist who had a bad habit of trying to talk to you with cotton buds in your mouth, all the while listening to your parents have anal sex for the first time. Every twig I stepped on that failed to elicit a response from him was like having the doctor touch that "special" place inside of me. Snap. Ooh. Snap. Oh.

I actually ended up holding in a desperately needed bathroom break for fear of what might happen if I tried to speak to him, however a scorned bladder can only be contained for so long, and it was with more Butterfree in my stomach than I'd care to admit when I finally uttered a curt "ahem."

Showing no signs of stopping, I assumed that Cooper had just not heard me, and so repeated the noise again with more emphasis. Yet again he seemed to ignore me, something I seriously suspected considering the volume of my third, also unsuccessful, attempt.

Thoroughly miffed at his behaviour I opted for a more time and tested way to get his attention, "Hey Asshole!" Still nothing. "Hey Cooper! What the hell is your problem? I'm talking to you!"

"Hasti." He muttered.

"The fuck does that mean?"

He didn't slow down his pace or turn around but I could still somehow hear him murmuring to me, "Her name was Hasti."

I was getting real sick of this cryptic, emo bullshit, and so scowling fiercely I quickened my pace and grabbed Cooper by the arm, stopping us both from walking, and turning him to face me, "Who the fucking fuck is Hasti? And why the fucking bumpkins are you acting like-"

A look of pure anger on Cooper's face shut me up, just in time for him to shove me backwards, shouting, "My Ekans! The Ekans that saved your life yesterday! The Ekans that was ripped in half by the bloodthirsty fucking monster that you decided to add to your team! That's the fucking fuck who Hasti was!"

My normally sunny and amicable personality aside, I never take criticism well, let alone criticism about my pokemon, and never one to take a beating lying down, I stepped forward and shoved him back, matching his level of anger, "Don't you talk fucking shit about Beelzebub! Whichever pokemon I decide to capture is my own fucking Mew damned choice, something I'd have thought that a proper trainer would understand! So maybe you should stop sulking like you just lost your dear fucking grandma and act like a real trainer!"

His face a full flushed red, Cooper returned the gesture again, shoving me violently enough to send me sprawling, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted, "You're telling me I'm not acting like a trainer?! The ungrateful, stupid, beginner trainer who wanted to head through Viridian Forest is telling me I'm not a real trainer?! You're a joke Nathaniel! Your starter pokemon is a psychotic degenerate, you have a Meowth that doesn't listen to a thing you say and now to add to the freakshow you have a mindless killing machine, who would sooner rip his own limbs off than take orders from a human! Better yet, who would sooner rip your limbs off than take orders from a human! You didn't even want to become a trainer, so you have no idea what it means! Being a trainer is about raising pokemon, friends, from their weakest moment to their strongest! It's about making connections with the pokemon who fight for you on a daily basis and not just about finding the strongest pokemon you can to beat everyone up! So you'll fucking excuse me if I want to spend at least a day mourning the loss of a friend of mine!"

A wave of disgust swept over me, this fucker was lecturing me about loss? Talking about losing pokemon like they mattered, when in reality he had no idea! I stood up and punched him across the cheek throwing as much force as my exhausted body could manage, "So your Ekans died! Big fucking whoop! pokemon die, Cooper! People die! The world isn't all sparkles and smiles like you seem to think! One moment you could be living your life when bam! everything gets thrown upside down and you're stuck on your own!" Were those tears rolling down my cheeks? I hadn't noticed. Cooper stood there gaping at me in shock, "You think I want to live this life?! Spending every day in mortal terror?! I decided to become a trainer because I had no fucking choice! I may be inexperienced at it but at least I'm not nearly as naïve as you! You think you can just be best friends with everyone and not expect to lose them? You're just as fucked in the head as I am-"

I didn't even notice the warm embrace come around me, or my face burying itself in Cooper's chest, nor even that my face was soaking wet. I just kept on going, releasing months of pent up anger and pain, built upon a platform of fear, "I don't care what you think Cooper! Beelzebub is exactly what I need; A soulless fighter that won't leave me reeling when he leaves me! I won't put myself through it Cooper! I won't! You can just fuck off if you think I will! Fuck off!" I choked as my voice gave out.

We were both silent for a while, until eventually he whispered, "I'm sorry for your loss."

So naturally I shoved him away and kicked him in the shin.

Asshole had no right to feel sorry for me.

I didn't want or need his sympathy.

He rubbed his shin and smiled up at me, seemingly happy with the way things turned out, before proclaiming with more cheer than anybody should be allowed, "Well it's only a few hours until we reach the second dark zone, we might as well keep going on through until dark, the sooner we get out of this forest, the sooner I can have a hot shower, and like, some decent food!" Turning with a flare and forced cheer, he marched off, almost as if he didn't care that he was heading to the perimeter of one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Asshole.

I wiped my face then followed after him, Felicity at my side.

"Don't you fucking dare treat me different because of this," I shot down at her.

Her response was to pick up her pace, ignoring me and walking with her usual primp like the uptight little bitch that she was.

"Good." I muttered, glad that we could agree on at least one thing.

Unlike the first trek, which consisted of a sombre air and little to no conversation, the walk to the second dark zone was peppered with an overabundance of Cooper stink; lame jokes, sexual innuendos and enough forced cheer to kill a Gloom had me rolling my eyes so many times I got dizzy. Coopers best efforts, however, were powerless against the impermeable atmosphere of the forest, at last giving in to the oppressive silence. We had arrived at the dark zone.

With a few hours of daylight left, Cooper turned back to me and shrugged before soldering onwards. I followed in silence.

At the risk of boring you with the truth, I could only describe this second trip as vapid and completely lacking in the levels of tension that the first dark zone exuded. Surprising considering that this one was both larger and (according to Cooper, though I still think he was just trying to sound like a tool) more ancient. He kept on mumbling to himself the whole trip about something "not being right" or "too bizarre". I swear, one time as I was doing my business and ended up being spooked by a Caterpie (Side note, those fuckers are scary up close, okay? Buggy eyes and hair sticking out all along their body is not what you want to see when your pants are down), he was more upset that my scream hadn't attracted any huge predator pokemon than the fact that I had literally had the shit scared out of me by a Caterpie.

That isn't to say the trip was swift or lacking in any pokemon at all, we saw more than our fair share of Beedrill, so much so that it became almost a daily ritual of our long trek to duck for cover and hide for about half an hour as a swarm of Beedrill flew by. Sometimes multiple times in a day! This also was not right, and had Cooper weirded out beyond words. Beyond sentences, I should say, as I got more than my fair share of muttered words from him, "not right", "unusual" and most common of the bunch, "nope".

I'd have been inclined to ignore him and enjoy the almost not unenjoyable trip had I not been able to notice the fact that nighttime was just as quiet as its opposite. Whereas in the first dark zone nighttime had been the theatre for cat calls of death, this one was silent as the grave. So instead of breezily walking along in the quiet, ducking from the seemingly endless swarms of Beedrill and having an altogether less stressful affair than last time, we spent the majority of the trip on high alert, waiting for attacks that didn't come, or the sounds of pokemon that weren't Beedrill.

It wasn't until we cleared the dark zone altogether that we managed to breathe a sigh of relief, after having ducked from yet another Beedrill hunting platoon (a name I coined the fourth time we were forced to hide from them inside the log of some fallen down tree)

Our food had been down to the rations of Cooper's food for the past few days, and it was perhaps hunger which strengthened our nerves enough to attempt hunting. With the dark zone at our backs and the path still a few days directly to Pewter we decided that if we had to eat one more half of a Mew damned Beedrill fucking (a term i'd become quite fond of as of late) energy bar, we were going to eat each other. And so it was with our common sense dimmed that I released Felicity and Cooper released his wildly impressive Scyther. Bob.

Stuck between being impressed and annoyed I rounded on Cooper, "Just tell me why," I pleaded.

A genuine grin flashed over his face, one of the rarer sights of the past few weeks, "So people ask me to tell them why!" He replied in a way that had no doubt been well rehearsed.

"Scy," Came the affirmative response from Bob. The Scyther. Bob the Scyther.

I shared a look with Felicity who seemed to agree with me on this as well. At this rate we we're going to be buddy buddy with each other by the end of the week.

Bonding over our mutual disdain for Cooper.

True friendship.

Cooper interrupted the beautiful moment by moving out, with Felicity and I taking off after him as Bob took to the air, all of us searching for something to eat.

Unfortunately, what had previously been a boon, now turned out to be a curse, as nothing, not even the teensiest of tiny Caterpie were anywhere to be seen. Alarmingly so. A forest as untamed and full of life as Viridian should not have been this dead.

Our search took us further and further from the null of a dark zone that we had just traversed and still no pokemon were around. It made no sense, the Viridian City side of the forest had been teeming with life but here, mere days away from Pewter City there was nothing.

After a full hour of scouring the environment, Cooper called us all in, "This is, like, really weird." He muttered softly to us, "Last time I came through here I spent most of my time zig zagging to avoid being eaten."

"Scy!" Bob nodded.

I spared a glance at Felicity who had raised her hackles the moment Bob had landed and was now in the process hissing at him. A not-so-soft shove with my foot put a stop to that behaviour, causing her instead to prowl around haughtily. So long as she wasn't aggravating powerful pokemon I didn't mind.

I returned my gaze to Cooper who had a sincere smile on his face, he had apparently been watching our little interaction. I scowled back at him. "So what could cause all the pokemon to pack up and leave?" I asked, folding my arms annoyed.

Looking thoughtful, he shared a glance with Bob, "Any number of things really… It could have been a recent natural disaster, or disturbance, possibly human in nature. I haven't been to Pewter in a long time and it's possible that they've increased their deforestation of the forest exponentially", a dark look crossed his face, "Despite every credible expert warning them of the dangers of doing so."

Cooper it seemed, was a Beedrill Fucking Anti-Expantionist. An ideology that swept through Kanto 30 or so years ago after the incident at the Neon Power Plant, once the main supplier of electricity for the entire Kanto grid; It had been a technological marvel. The result of aggressive expansion and human innovation, it had been set up north of the infamous Rock Cave, near the small settlement of Neon City. Thanks to the abundance of electrical type pokemon who seemed to flock to the area it was an ideal location, attracting wild electrical pokemon with magnetic fields and draining their excess electricity before releasing them to go and build up their electricity once more and become unable to resist the pull of the plant again.

With the power supplied by the Plant, Kanto had flourished, securing itself as the most powerful of all known regions, however as demand invariably grew, the cycle of draining excess electricity from the wildlife wasn't enough. That's when the Power Plant was sold to an anonymous new proprietor and began the process of catching and keeping the wild electric pokemon.

In order to keep up with rising demand, the Power Plant turned into a concentration camp, all off the record of course (even though everyone in Neon City knew what was happening). The wild electrical pokemon were captured and then kept locked up, constantly drained of their electricity.

The destruction of the Power Plant has been a point of contention since the very event, some claiming that it was a terrorist attack from another region, some people claiming a young hero raided the Plant and released all of the pokemon. And of course there's always the nutjobs who say it was the work of the Mighty Lightning god Zapdos drawn to the cries of the suffering electric pokemon, who brought the Power Plant down to its foundations. Considering none of the workers actually survived it had been pretty much impossible to determine the real cause of its destruction, and thus the Anti-Expansion idea was formed. The idea that unchecked expansion into wild terrain would cause wild pokemon to retaliate.

Honestly the whole debate came down to Anti-Expansionists thinking that humanity needed to tiptoe around wild areas so as to not upset some archaic gods, and informed people knowing that expansion was dangerous only when expanding beyond your means.

Not oblivious to my attitude Cooper placed his hands on his hips and gave me a look, "How can you still think expansion is a good idea after what we've just been through? What trainer in all of Pewter has the strength to stop the pokemon from the dark zones? Brock himself has said on multiple occasions that even he is against expansion into Viridian Forest."

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, "What pokemon exactly should Pewter be worried about Cooper? So far we've seen neither hair nor feather of anything other than Mew Fucking Beedri-" I stopped instantly as it dawned on me.

It was so obvious and it had been staring right at us this whole time! The lack of pokemon anywhere mixed with the increased frequency of Beedrill hives, not to mention Beedrill hives located right along the main path! They were connected in the most sick of ways!

Cooper cleared his throat, aware that I had come to an epiphany and waiting for enlightenment.

I cleared my own throat before continuing, "Beedrill. Cooper, what usually keeps the Beedrill population in check here?"

Understanding dawned on his face (much faster than I was expecting), "A variety of wild pokemon, all they need to do is catch a single Beedrill out of a group and the others will leave it to it's fate."

"So what would happen if all of the wild pokemon were to suddenly disappear?"

Cooper jumped in eagerly, "The Beedrill population would spread unchecked, and due to a lack of readily available food spread into areas that had previously been unavailable… like the main path." Cooper scrunched his brow up, "But that still doesn't quite make sense, if all the pokemon disappeared suddenly then what would have sustained the Beedrill population enough for it to grow so large? And perhaps more importantly, what could cause every pokemon that wasn't a Beedrill to suddenly disappear?"

Brainstorming as I spoke, I continued on, "Well, it wouldn't have to be instantaneous, there could have been a gradual decline in wild pokemon population."

"Possibly caused by, like, an increase of poachers and hunters or Pewter expansion, maybe even both", Cooper added.

"Right, and it wouldn't make sense for every pokemon to disappear, only the ones strong enough to hunt Beedrill. In fact that would have to be the case, in order to leave behind enough weaker pokemon for Beedrill to feed off."

"That lowers the likelihood of it being Pewter expansion", Cooper grinned from ear to ear. "If this were a case of Pewter becoming greedy," I couldn't help rolling my eyes, "then it would be the weaker pokemon to disappear and not the stronger ones."

I counted the facts off my fingers, "So we have a gradual disappearance of strong pokemon from Viridian Forest, allowing the Beedrill population to grow unchecked and feed off the weaker pokemon until they're almost all gone, resulting in Beedrill colonies being located closer to humanity and more frequent hunting efforts by Beedrill."

Cooper piped up, "And we know that the powerful pokemon began disappearing on the northern side of Viridian Forest."

"There's just one problem with our theory", I muttered disheartened. Cooper gave me a questioning look, prompting me to continue, "If all of this is true then it means that there won't be an edible pokemon this side of Viridian Forest at all."

Cooper saw where I was heading and grimaced accordingly, "There is one pokemon we can find in abundance around here", he began. I merely nodded sombrely.

A moment of contemplative silence passed between us as we both considered our options. Starve to death trying to make it out of the Forest or hunt down and eat the very pokemon that had been haunting our nights and days for the past few weeks.

Cooper clapped his hands together with forced cheer, "Well then, let's go hunt us some Beedrill."