Chapter 8

The logistics of eating a Beedrill aren't quite as straightforward as you'd think. A simple matter of killing and chomping, you say? Oh you poor, misguided, most likely dead fool.

Cooper and I spent a good few hours coming up with a plan of attack, conversation peppered with the increasingly painful rumblings of our disgruntled stomachs. We had to figure out a way to pick off one Beedrill whilst simultaneously avoid being picked off ourselves. Also to try and do so with as minimal noise as possible.

Eventually we worked out the details of our attack plan, as if it were nothing more than a game of football, and with Butterfree in our stomachs (or perhaps that was just the dull ache of starvation), we followed Artemis, who had been instructed to find the closest Beedrill Platoon.

She reluctantly hopped along, Cooper and I creeping behind her with our hands continually twitching near our pokeballs. It was a tense situation, made not at all easier by the oppressive silence of Viridian.

It wasn't long until Artemis stopped moving, motioning in a direction with her antennae.

We had found the Beedrill.

A quick nod was all the instruction I needed to start setting up, releasing Felicity as I was hoisting myself up the nearest tree. Felicity clawed her way up with such speed that I had no doubt she was wearing a look of disdain for my laughably slow pace. Together we found a stable perch, giving Cooper a thumbs up.

He returned the gesture, releasing Bob, Sonic and Bruno and ordering them all into hidden positions; It had been decided that Homer would stay in reserve to assist with any getaway should things go awry, and Beelzebub… well that was somewhat of a tender subject still.

Cooper gave Bob a quick pat on the shoulder, before muttering a few words to him that I was unable to make out and reluctant to hear anyway. They locked eyes for a moment until Bob seemed to have had enough and flew off. Toward the Beedrill.

Cooper watched him go for a few seconds, then moved into a hiding position himself. We had pokemon set up all around the clearing we were in, setting up a net, ready to spring the trap.

Tense minutes passed by. An enterprising bead of sweat made its lazy way down my head, aware that I was too nervous to move and wipe it aside. It slid down my neck in an almost languid fashion, at last falling from me to the ground below.

I thought I heard a commotion, and Felicity it seemed felt the same, raising the fur on her tail as what was now an identifiable buzzing closed in on our position. The Beedrill were on their way.

With an explosion of leaves, Bob burst through the foliage of a tree opposite the clearing at breakneck speed, swerving around to hover low to the floor of the clearing. He was in a bad way, seeping cuts covered a great deal of his body and he was breathing heavy. Heavier than i'd been anticipating against a small group of Beedrill.

I was still in the process of putting two and two together when the first of the Beedrill burst through the hole Bob had made.

The first of many.

Artemis it seemed had yet to grasp the plan we set out upon to try and find the smallest platoon possible in order to minimise the danger. Either that or she didn't care. Spiteful little fuck.

As more and more beedrill poured into the clearing they circled above, no doubt waiting for the whole platoon before attacking Bob, I got a grasp of just how fucked we were.

The swarm moved higher in circular motions, a few brave souls attempted to meet Bob head on and were swiftly cut down.

Just those few Beedrill that were dead would have been enough to last us until Pewter. Irony was a cruel whore.

The swarm flew higher, on the verge of attacking when, no longer content to sit around waiting, a barrage of rocks was hurled from an underground hole dug by Sonic. The ensuing chaos was instant, Beedrill formation disintegrating into a jumbled mess, a large amount descended towards Bob only to be blasted aside by a powerful Confusion attack from a different direction. Artemis hopped from behind a tree twittering angrily.

As even more Beedrill switched their attention to Artemis, Bob took the opportunity to slice apart even more of the bugs, backing to one side of the clearing. Beedrill flew at him from a low angle only to be snatched from below by Sonic and dragged underground to a well deserved fate.

Somewhere in all the chaos Bruno had joined Artemis and was using well timed strikes to ward off the Beedrill that came too close to Artemis, who was continually doing a magnificent job of blasting them into oblivion with the super effective psychic attack.

Cooper had even joined the fray, standing with Bob and their backs to a tree trunk, using his knife to slash at any Beedrill who became too careless; the speed and precision of his strikes really made me pause and wonder who was doing more damage, him or the Scyther.

A lone Beedrill managed to get under both of their guards, and stuck a foot long stinger right into Bob's side, raising its second for the killing blow when, yowling like a Banshee, Felicity leaped from our perch onto the enemy bug, shredding it's wings and slashing it into a goopy mess, before leaping aside to clean her claws. Her moment of heroics over for now.

It was an inspiring sight, seeing Cooper's and my own pokemon fighting side by side, and though the floor was literally covered with the decimated corpses of Beedrill, I could see from my vantage point that even more were still filing in through the hole in the trees.

I heard a screech of pain and saw Sonic dive back underground from a particularly large Beedrill, and noticed the various cuts all along Bruno and Bob. Even Felicity had to forgo preening becoming dishevelled in the onslaught.

If things kept up we were going to lose badly.

It was this realisation that gave me the constitution to grab my last pokeball and hurl it, far to the other side of the clearing.

A flash of red and a blood chilling scream announced the arrival of Beelzebub.

He was still in a pretty bad way, cuts and scabs all over his body and one wound still visibly bleeding, however this was nothing to my juggernaut of a monster.

A group of Beedrill recognised the new threat and made a direct beeline for him.

They didn't last 5 seconds.

I laughed out loud as I watched him shred countless Beedrill; Releasing Beelzebub had been a good idea.

The commotion of a new enemy drew the attention of more and more Beedrill, much to the visible relief of our pokemon, and in a gory display of skill Beelzebub dispatched of them all. I really had been lucky to manage to take down such a titan with only Artemis and Felicity, I won't even deny it.

At last with Beelzebub's final scream of challenge, the Beedrill hive mind lost their nerve, deserting the new food source and fleeing into the forest. My demonic bug pokemon screamed in fury at their departure.

At last the battle was over.

For about a minute, until Beelzebub noticed the remaining pokemon that had yet to be torn apart.

Charging in an all too familiar fashion, he raced towards the closest target: Felicity, who was slowed down a great deal by a gash across her back leg.

I screamed as my world slowed down, this wasn't happening. Beelzebub drew closer as Felicity tried to get away, but it was futile, and in a moment i'll always remember in my nightmares, Beelzebubs spiked horns closed down upon Felicity's chest.

Only to be stopped mere inches away by a silver and gray curved blade.

Bob hissed menacingly at Beelzebub, who took to the challenge with sadistic glee, lunging forward once more with his horns; Bob merely opened his wings and flew backwards out of reach, countering with a low sweeping slash.

Beelzebub lowered an arm and caught the blade with his claws.

He then used his other hand to grab ahold of Bob's second blade at the top, screaming in victory as he raised Bob above his head to gore with his horns, however Bob, showing more strength than I was expecting, used his wings to fly both himself and Beelzebub up, keeping the latter too disoriented to finish the attack.

With a war cry that would bring a Spartan to climax, Bob angled towards the closest tree trunk and heaved Beelzebub against it, finally managing to get him to release his hold.

Beelzebub got up slowly, fixing Bob a stare of pure hatred, and began charging once more at the Scyther.

Cooper had seen enough, and whilst the two had been slugging it out, he'd managed to locate Beelzebub's ball, and with practiced accuracy, hit the rampaging bug pokemon squarely in the centre with the return beam.

Beelzebub disintegrated into red matter, disappearing with a final scream of anger.

Even his departures were dramatic.

I saw Cooper stare down at Beelzebub's pokeball, expecting to see him smash or bury it. Instead he threw it up to me on my perch and turned to take care of his pokemon.

He showed a real side of him right then, and lament as I am to admit it, I couldn't help but feel my respect for him grow a great deal.

The corpses of Beedrill around us were more than enough to last us to Pewter, and so with the help of our pokemon we separated them into piles of edible looking and disgusting. We then used our knives to cut away the poisonous sections and toss them onto the undesirable pile, ending at last with a fairly sizeable supply of, still rather disgusting, food. Not a word was said throughout the entire process and i'm not sure if it was because Cooper was too tired or angry to speak. I didn't even bother trying to start up conversation, too focused on the bug guts up to my elbows.

Our pokemon were given first pick of the cadavers, and the ones who preferred uncooked meat dug in, whilst the rest (namely Felicity and Bruno), waited patiently with Cooper and myself.

Finally when they had eaten their fill, we returned and thanked our pokemon, exhausting the last of our supply of antidotes and potions, we then packed up the remaining cadaver's we could carry and left the rest, deciding that we wanted to get as much distance between us and the area before camping down.

The walk was painful, not just because of the hunger that plagued us, but also due to the uncomfortable silence, and I reflected upon the fact that this was the second time on this journey that I had pissed Cooper off.

Even if Beelzebub had been the only reason we survived at all.

Though it was Artemis's assery that had gotten us in trouble in the first place.

Things weren't looking good for my defence.

It wasn't until a particularly loud and painful rumble from my stomach that Cooper muttered, "Here is a good enough place as any to eat", bringing tears of joy to my eyes.

Cooper set about on the task of gathering firewood, knowing that Beedrill didn't hunt at night due to their inability to see without the sun. In the meantime, I set down our sleeping bags and cleared some space for a fire pit, asking felicity for help in digging it. She unsurprisingly did not oblige.

At last Cooper returned with firewood and we enjoyed the luxury of a fire that had been lost to us for weeks. There's nothing quite as serene as a warm campfire on a cold night.

Homer was released to stand guard and at last I saw the wisdom in keeping him out of the fray, as a slow pokemon he would have been very little help and now he was fresh to watch over us for the night. Cooper once again impressed me with his foresight.

The meat itself was cooked and mixed with the salt Cooper produced from his bag (yet another tip I filed away to remember, curse that brain of his!), tasted sublime. I've never thought I would utter the words, "May I please have another serving of Beedrill?" with sincerity, but I did, licking my fingers as I waited. Cooper flashed me the first genuine smile he'd worn in a long time, which I unwittingly returned. For only a moment though, hastily replacing it with a scowl.

There was Beedrill to be eating after all.

The ice seemed to be broken however, and Cooper renounced his vow of silence, telling me stories about some of the less fortuitous places he'd had to camp, along with the least appealing meals he'd eaten on his journey. It's not like I was paying attention or anything, especially after he said he'd once had to cut open a dead Kangaskhan and sleep inside of it for warmth. Apparently they smelt worse on the inside then they did outside. I did not at the time realise he was joking, and had made another note to file away such important information for future survival.

We relaxed that night, for the first time in too long, Felicity even came and curled up next to me to sleep by the warmth of the fire, hissing the moment I tried to pet her. Artemis had been put on timeout after the little fucker's trick earlier. She stayed locked in her pokeball.

With the horrors of the day, and really the horrors of Viridian Forest behind us, the world seemed a little brighter and I slept the deepest sleep i'd had in far too long, safe and warm by the fire.

"Please just stop, I'm begging you. Nobody deserves to see this!"

Felicity walked past haughtily, unimpressed by my theatrics, yet equally antagonized by Cooper's antics, which today had taken the form of pausing every few minutes to take a selfie on his mobile. I had bore witness to "#mewithtreelol" "#mewithdifferenttree" "#meandnat" "#meandnatsmeowth" "#myscratchesfromnatsmeowth", to name a few gems. As to be expected, the more I complained and begged him to stop, the greater frequency of these abominations. I'd learnt long ago that simply ignoring him was doing me no favours also, and with no idea how to react I just scowled at him.

At least we only had one more day of this crap.

Fueled on with our Beedrill meat, we made good time and planned to arrive in Pewter sometime later this day. Not nearly soon enough. The moment we got into Pewter I was booking myself a room at the pokemon center as far from Cooper as humanly or pokemonly possible. After seeing the sights of course; I'd really wanted to check out the Museum for the longest time and see all those space exhibits.

Click.

"#natnotlookingpissedoff".

Not nearly soon enough.

It was late into the afternoon when we came upon the mining success story that is Pewter City. Originally just a pokemon centre on the other side of Mt Moon, it had been set up for the benefit of miner's working in the mountains, however any attempts to form a large colony were always rebuked by the wild pokemon of the area, resulting in only a few small buildings being able to withstand the barrage (something which the filthy Anti-Expansionists loved quoting as gospel to their fucking dichotomy).

It took the help of native Clefairy inhabiting the mountain to show the colonists a much more fertile and defensible location to set up what was to become the most successful mining town in all of Kanto. With quick access to Mt Moon, a hefty supply of food from Viridian Forest and the soon discovered riches within the mountain ranges to the north and west, Pewter flourished from the smallest settlement in Kanto, though never forgetting its roots. Easily one of the more traditional towns, Pewter used its vast wealth to fortify the town against pokemon attacks and expand its borders faster than any other settlement in Kanto, resulting in an often disputed border with Cerulean, the original home of Pewters inhabitants.

It's well known that Pewter held the resource wealth in all of Kanto, added with the fact that Pewter's population were a hard people, made tough by the constant aggressions of wild pokemon, all it really needed was a larger population and it would have the strength to conquer much more than the mountains. Fortunately the cause of Pewter's wealth was also the engender of its infamy; Isolation of the city making it quite an undesirable place to live. Plus being attacked by wild pokemon was a turn off apparently.

In a sadistically ironic twist of fate, Pewter was powerful because of its location yet unable to achieve the power it desired for the same reason.

Still, the town managed to find solace through other less sanctioned affairs, including illegal poaching, quite literal underground criminal enterprise and (as I once heard a Sinnoh native refer to it as), a political system more corrupt than a Porygon-z.

The one shining beacon of Pewter was its gym leader, Brock Takeshi. Only surviving child of Flint Takeshi after the house was mysteriously and unexpectedly firebombed. The explosion did not leave him unscathed however, doing severe damage to his retinas and leaving him almost completely blind. This in turn gave him the disconcerting habit of squinting to see clearly.

Many people said he would never live the life his father wanted for him; to continue the legacy of the Pewter Gym as a powerhouse, and continue with the criminal enterprise he had inherited from his own father.

Brock stood up to those naysayers and spat rocks in their eyes.

He not only trained hard enough to become the strongest Takeshi in generations, defeating his father at the mere age of 16 (Flint only having been able to defeat his own father at 31), he then made it his own personal mission to root out corruption and crime in the entire city, tearing down his father's legacy stone by stone.

He was a savant with rock pokemon, so skilled that it was rumoured he had developed their ability to detect the vibrations of rocks around him. Personally I think it was just elaborate bullshit, spewing initially from the pokemon League's odious PR office.

But as I was saying, Pewter City certainly lived up to it's rather underwhelming reputation. It was a mining town through and through; Flat, drab and as animated as a slowpoke. The real action all went on behind the curtains and so to the casual tourist (or itinerant pokemon trainer), it was just as it was supposed to be. A boring, brown little town. Though after the carnival that Viridian Forest had been I didn't care if it was fucking Lavender Town! I was just glad to get away from Coop and rest.

There's many moments in my journey I won't soon forget. My first view of Pewter was not among them. Cooper was talking shit in my ear about the merits of contest battling, a sport that had yet to catch on in Kanto, and I was doing my best attempt to look like a gave a damn when we saw the outer wall. Easily the size of a grown Onix, the wall stood in stark comparison to the forest before it. Stone gray and almost completely concrete, it looked so out of place right next to the green of Viridian. Even Cooper had shut his effervescent trap at the sight.

"This was not there before", he murmured, no doubt shocked by the aggressive expansion of the city.

I glanced up at him, "What was it like last time you came through here?"

He walked forward placing a hand against the wall, "The forest ended with some plains and then the wall of Pewter was visible. It never cut swathe, right through the forest."

Already bored by the incoming anti-expansionist lecture, I moved up to the wall then headed to the right, in the direction of the main path, "Coolio, either way i'd be willing to bet there's a gate somewhere along the path." And with no more conversation between us we headed off.

I had been right about the gate it seems, a 16 foot high monstrosity that would put old Lavender to shame. It was all cement and metal poles, with a small access door made entirely out of metal to the left side of the main thing.

Cooper was by this point completely blank faced (the Cooper equivalent to glaring), so I shrugged at him and knocked on the door.

As a voice rang out, "Who seeks entry?" I had to crane my neck up to see the head peeking out over the top of the wall, but was spared the effort of replying by a second proclamation from the guard, "pokemon trainers! We haven't seen any of your type for a while." The head disappeared from the wall to reappear after a minute behind the now opened door gesturing for us to come inside.

And that was our grand entrance to Pewter. No wild pokemon attacks, no unscrupulous individuals, just a big wall and a chatty guard. I wouldn't realise what a blessing it could be for a long time.

The view past the wall made Cooper gasp.

There was nothing there.

After seeing the wall so far in the forest, I think the both of us had expected to see a much larger city, but the truth of it was that the wall was a great deal from anything at all. a little bit past the top of a sloping valley, where Pewter City no doubt nestled at the bottom of, but in between the wall and the valley was simply dirt. One or two buildings, a guardhouse and some hovels, but that was it. Just dirt and rocks and dirt.

I could practically feel the anger radiating off of Cooper, "They tore down the Forest for nothing!"

It was a struggle not to roll my eyes, "And? The place is a fucking nightmare. At least here I don't have to worry about being attacked by Beedrill", I quickly looked across at the guard who had let us in, "right?"

He chuckled, scratching the back of his head, "Not here kid. We train high level rock pokemon to ward off any bugs that try to get over the wall. You'll find no trace of Viridian inside these walls." I looked at the clearly not 'high level' Graveller sitting in the dirt next to us skeptically. That should have been my first clue about this place.

"For how long?" We both looked behind us at Cooper who had turned back to the wall.

"Forever kid, like I said, we train rock pokemon. Rock's good against them bugs. I thought a trainer would know that."

Cooper laughed hollowly, "Don't call me kid, you Beedrill fucking brute", I felt a bizarre mixture of pride and jealousy as Cooper utilised the term I coined, "No doubt you couldn't train a geodude to tackle if you didn't have Brock here showing you how to wipe your own ass."

"The fuck you just say to me? Kid." He enunciated the word. I was really beginning to get annoyed with this guy as well. He was one Diglett short of a Dugtrio.

Cooper rounded on him, anger in his eyes making me step back some. "I said, that you're a dead man walking. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe even a few months from now, the Beedrill in that Forest are going to get desperate enough to come here in force, and the only thing stopping them from breaching that wall", he spat the word out like venom, "Is you and your pathetically under-trained pokemon. You people think you can just chop down an ancient forest, poach all the powerful pokemon in the area and live like nothings changed?! You're stupider than you look. You've already done irreparable damage to the ecosystem, and someday soon that ecosystem is going to do irreparable damage to you." Cooper stepped closer to the guard, sneering in perhaps my favourite grin of his i'd ever seen, "And I can guarantee that the first one to die will be you."

You could have heard a pin drop.

I stood to the side, near wetting myself out of sheer awe, whereas the guard was red as a Vulpix. He sputtered a few times trying to come up with a response, finally landing on, "We didn't poach any of the pokemon outside the wall!"

Cooper made a disgusted sound, storming off toward the city, but I gave the now out of breath guard a questioning look, "What do you mean you didn't poach outside the wall?"

He swallowed before continuing, "There was no need to, the wall was built to keep the dangerous wild pokemon out, why would we then go and risk our lives hunting them down?"

I looked at the bastard in disdain, "Don't you Pewter hicks know anything about wild pokemon? Just putting a wall in the territory of a dangerous pokemon isn't going to make it move somewhere else. But regardless, if you didn't poach all of the wild pokemon, then who did?"

A noncommittal shrug was the last straw of my patience, and making a sound of disgust similar to Cooper's, I left the most worthless security member in the history of existence, rushing to catch up with Cooper.

One thing was mulling over in my head though, 'If Pewter didn't hunt the wild pokemon of the forest, then who did?' I thought we would find the answers in Pewter.

Knowing what I do now, I kind of wish it had just been the work of an incompetent security force.