The microwave once again beeped that it was finished heating. After taking too long to register the meaning behind the noise, without conscious thought, Yellow pressed the buttons to make it heat another twenty seconds, staring without focus as the bulb lit up again, and the food slowly rotated on the disk within.
She didn't remember waking up, nor getting dressed, nor making the decision that she was too nauseas to eat breakfast herself, nor cooking the food, nor putting it in the microwave to keep it warm. It was as though she'd woken up the first time the machine had beeped that it was finished with its task.
Everything felt cold, though in reality it wasn't. If Yellow had her wits about her, she would've realized she just had the chills, but in her half-conscious state, the condition was merely a reflection of the psychological trauma she was suffering. Everything was cold because nowhere was safe–everywhere she went the pale phantoms could find her. The walls around her meant nothing; she might as well have been submerged in the waters of the Arctic.
The microwave beeped again. Yellow again took too long to process it, and then added another twenty seconds to the timer, letting it spin.
"Hey, uh... good morning," Red's voice said behind her. Yellow turned slowly and saw him unsurely entering the room. She hadn't noticed him wake up.
"Says who?" she muttered under her breath. "Yeah, good morning," she said out loud. The microwave beeped again and she, with a heavy heart at the sacrifice of the only thing she knew was under her power, took out the plate. "Here," she said, sliding the food and a fork over to Red. "Breakfast."
"Oh..." He trailed off. His eyes had lit up at the friendly gesture, but he'd just as quickly noticed the blatant despondence in her voice, and the lack of confidence in the situation had returned to him. "Ah... thanks," he decided, and sat down where the plate had landed.
"No problem." Yellow's voice was barely above a whisper. Yet another layer of fear had settled over her. Now in addition to worrying about phantoms, she had to fear herself. Every time she spoke to Red, she ran the risk of flipping her unknown switch and snapping at him. Every conversation was a gamble; emotionally isolating herself seemed to be the only option.
And yet even that led to more problems. As terrible as she now realized the high she'd had yesterday was, it had allowed her to temporarily forget her more existential fears. For a short time, the freezing cold had seemed to abate. If she isolated herself within those icy waters, though, she only grew colder. She found herself trapped between two insurmountable fears, weighing down like a lead coat on her chest, with no solution in sight.
"Are you hungry?" Red asked, concern in his face.
"No," Yellow replied honestly. She felt, from the combination of circumstances, sick enough that any food she managed to eat would quickly find itself in a trash can. "No, I'm fine," she assured him dishonestly. She was not fine, and blatantly so. But it was far easier to ignore it–pretend everything was okay, even though that would ultimately make things worse.
Silence. Yellow found herself longing for the familiar hum of the microwave to drown out the lack of sound. She could feel the pressure to start a conversation weighing on her, but didn't dare cave to it. It would be so nice to alleviate that demand with blissfully unmeaningful, under-control white noise, but that was sadly impossible.
After another agonizing few minutes, Red finally finished eating the microwaved eggs and sausage, and the two set out to meet Blue and Green.
The usual bright sun had given way to dismal gray clouds that cast a shadow over the entire Viridian area. The unnatural twilight weighed heavily on Yellow's heart. It seemed that nature itself, in spite of its regular, predictable cycles, sensed that an end was near, and felt it suitable to mimic that by manufacturing the end of the day. The air was humid, and that too seemed to have meaning. Rain was coming–nature was on the verge of tears.
They didn't talk much as they walked. Red seemed to be highly interested in his surroundings, looking everywhere but in Yellow's direction. It was obvious that he was wary, perhaps even scared, to talk to her. Miserably, she reflected that, if she were in his situation, she would be too.
They found Blue and Green in high spirits–that is to say, Blue seemed far more positive than usual, and Green's expression was slightly less monotonous. Yellow slowly remembered that they'd gone to dinner or something last night. It seemed that engagement had gone well.
Blue grinned at her and Red as they approached. "'Morning, guys! How's it going?"
'Terrible,' Yellow thought. "Fine," she said.
"Good enough," Red said with a noncommittal shrug.
Blue's smile flickered for a second, betraying her concern, but then it was back. Yellow appreciated her friend not voicing her worries. Sometimes it seemed Blue had a sixth sense about these sorts of things. It was as though without even speaking the older trainer could understand that Yellow wanted isolation.
"Well, we're doing well too," Blue announced, half-gesturing towards herself and Green. "I suppose you two are ready to go for another stakeout?"
'Ready?' Yellow felt like laughing, though the situation was truly devoid of humor. How could she possibly be 'ready?' Being 'ready' would mean being prepared to face phantoms, death, and a portal to a place that, in her mind, at least, had a strong likelihood of leading to actual Hell. 'Ready' was unattainable. "Yeah, I think so," she replied to Blue.
"We need to get there soon. Remember, this Guzma was happy to see the portal was bigger," Green reminded them. "And that means he'll probably open another as soon as possible."
"Right," Blue agreed with a nod, casting a glance over each of them and only wincing slightly when she saw Yellow's obvious despair. "Let's go."
Yellow didn't notice most of the walk back to the stakeout spot. For the most part, she stared without truly seeing at her feet, which were once again independently following the path to the place that so magnetically drew her. She didn't bother being circumspect–at this point, trapped as she was between the two terrible opposites, she'd given up. If something attacked or killed her while she wasn't looking, so be it.
She was so divorced from her surroundings that she almost forgot to crouch down in front of the bush that veiled the clearing. Taking a knee, she heard the other three do so near her, guaranteeing at least that she hadn't lost them in the forest due to her lack of focus.
A certain numbness had taken hold of Yellow. It was as though her entire self was a limb that had lost circulation in cold weather, and now had lost its ability to function at all. Despite the whirlpool of things to think about, her conscious mind was strangely devoid of any thought. It was as though it found itself unable to comprehend anything, and so it had given up trying. Her entire body had succumbed as well. When she reached for the bush, she fumbled with the branches four times before finally managing to part them, scraping her knuckles on the bark in the process.
When Yellow peered through the branches once again, her spirits sank further when she saw that Guzma was already there. It wasn't as though if he had been absent her fears would be alleviated–only that his presence succeeded in making the terror especially visceral and unignorable.
Vaguely aware of the others finding their own sight lines through the branches around her, Yellow watched Guzma as he held the same device as before in the air.
"Okay," he said, as though he was talking to an unpredictable subordinate. "Let's try to get this first time for once, huh?" And he pressed the button on the device, activating the static that was a precursor to the object of Yellow's fear.
The machine must have been fine-tuned from yesterday's session, because it immediately began to emit the telltale whistling, confirming its connection to whatever was on the other side.
Guzma grinned, his skull-like face accentuating his menacingly gritted teeth. "There it is," he said, and pressed one more button to open the portal.
The same light appeared in the air near the treetops, and, same as previous days, expanded into a crack that began to widen. Yellow, terrified beyond belief just as before, glanced at the dismal sky and heard thunder rumble in the distance, and realized that this was the breaking point. The storm was approaching. This was the day that would decide the situation. Either she would die at the hands of the phantoms from beyond this world, or...
Or what? No matter how many times she searched her thoughts, she could find no alternatives. How could she combat vengeful spirits? Hiding was out of the question. Fighting would serve no purpose–it would be just as useful to try to hold back the sea with her hands. It seemed that she had no options but to give in.
Meanwhile the whistling grew even louder. White figures flitted back and forth on the other side of the portal. Yellow didn't particularly care if they saw her–the one she was worried about, that of Lance, had already spotted her yesterday.
"Yes!" Guzma exclaimed, obviously pleased that this was progressing so quickly. "If I can just hold this connection stable for long enough..." He didn't finish the sentence, but Yellow filled in the blanks. If he could hold the connection for long enough, the things on the other side would cross through.
She felt the blood drain from her face and her muscles begin to fail her as the portal grew wider. It was now large enough to fit a small Pokémon through it. Chuchu would be able to pass through easily. How much longer before whatever was on the other side could slip through?
Finally, after an agonizingly long terror-filled wait, a pale white appendage slipped through the gateway. In Yellow's mind, this was a hand–the same hand that had closed around her throat in nightmares both waking and sleeping, clamping it until she couldn't breathe, until her lungs burned for air, and her field of vision shrunk, and she drifted towards death.
Following the white appendage was a torso, and then what appeared to be a head. Yellow couldn't properly see the figure that had just crossed into her world, since her vision had involuntarily gone blurry, as though her subconscious was trying to censor the image from her mind, perhaps hoping that if she couldn't see it well, she might not be afraid.
She was afraid, though–deathly so. The muscle-numbing cold that she experienced when she was near or had thoughts of the phantom that had invaded her reality had become so real that the tips of her fingers were turning white with lack of circulation. Her heart hammered against her ribcage so violently that she wondered whether anyone–perhaps the pale figure–was able to hear it. She was terrified beyond what anyone should have to suffer through–she simply lacked the willpower to do anything about it.
The worst part of all Yellow's trauma: she wondered–and she was starting to believe it–whether she deserved all this suffering. Perhaps this was justice, finally balancing things out after seven years. Was it really so hard to imagine? After all, she'd been the one to use Megavolt, which she knew full well would mean almost certain death for Lance. Surely there had been some other means of resolving the problem without taking his life.
She recalled her recurring nightmare where blood stained her hands scarlet, dripping from her fingertips. She'd been so preoccupied with thinking that she was imagining a world where she'd become like Lance that she hadn't considered that she might be seeing herself as she really was: a murderer. A murderer who deserved to have her crime repaid in full.
Thunder rumbled, close at hand now. The portal, seeming to have withstood all it could, fizzled out of existence, but the whistling didn't stop. Now it came from the phantasmagoric creature hovering in the air.
Guzma roared with laughter, glaring up at the creature. "YES! Finally! I've been waiting for this! This is gonna be FUN!"
The pale phantom didn't express a single word in response, but, as if Guzma hadn't spoken at all, turned and raced off in another direction entirely, dodging between trees.
Guzma's menacing grin faded, replaced with cold frustration. Pocketing the device, he said, "Fine, I'll find you eventually. Until then, though..." The smirk returned. "Wreck as much as you want." So saying, he laughed again and walked out from the clearing in a direction nearly perpendicular to the creature's path.
Yellow's breathing was shallow. The matter she'd been so worried about before–that her fears would become more real if she conveyed them to her friends–paled to what had just happened. She now had no choice in the matter. Even the thinnest barrier she'd created to cope with it–that it might not become reality if she didn't think about it–had shattered. Her demon was already here. There was no denying it.
But why hadn't it come after her immediately? There was no extra expedience in waiting to kill her, so why had it left? Instantly she knew the answer, for she'd known it all along, and had been ignoring it because of its horrible implications. She hadn't simply had a short confrontation with Lance–it had been long and drawn out until the final finishing attack. Lance wouldn't want to simply kill her in revenge. He would want to draw the process out–to torture her by threatening death, and then allowing her to live a little longer, but with the knowledge that at any moment he could return. He would want to break her as he'd been unable to in life–to utterly defeat her. Only then would he deal the finishing blow, completing his triumph.
"Oh... this is bad," Blue muttered, and for once there was no confidence or joking in her voice. "This is really bad."
"No kidding," Green agreed. "It's crisis time–we have to deal with this now." He shot a deadly serious look at Blue. "You and I go after the creature. You two..." He pointed at Red and Yellow. "Follow Guzma. Make sure he doesn't anything more. Got it?"
No one raised any objections, all too shocked, or in Yellow's case, petrified, to question what seemed to be a sensible plan.
"Let's move," Green said, and he and Blue rose to their feet and set out at almost a full sprint down the way the phantom had gone.
Red looked at Yellow–or rather, her hat–his expression a mixture of concern and determination. "You good to go?"
Yellow's heart was still pounding, but thankfully the shock was dying down, even if only temporarily. She took a few shallow breaths, unable to draw enough air to satiate her constricted lungs. She tried for speech, but it didn't come at first. The second time she tried, her voice was weak, but present. "Y-yeah. Let's do it."
They got to their feet–far slower than normal, but it happened nonetheless–and pushed through the bushes in front of them, setting out on Guzma's tail.
The forest blurred around Yellow as they walked. Distinct details began to fade into a simple curtain of green, darkened by the oppressive overhanging storm clouds. Eventually, she no longer knew where she was in the forest, which had only happened once before, when she was very young. Yet this time she couldn't muster the energy to care. At the moment, it didn't particularly matter to her whether she knew where she was or not.
After a while, Red noticed her lack of focus. With worry in his face, he glanced over at her. "Hey, are you okay, man?"
Something in Yellow snapped at his question. Her jaw tightened involuntarily, and her fists clenched. "Yeah," she snarled, uncontrollable bitterness mangling her voice with cruel sarcasm. "Oh yeah, I'm just FINE. Not a thing wrong with me! What could POSSIBLY make you think that?"
Red stared at her in shocked disbelief, but it quickly turned to anger. "Okay, that's it. I'm done putting up with this. What's the matter with you? What did I do to deserve you being such a jerk?!"
Instead of immediately feeling terrible at her agitation like she had after previous outbursts, this time Yellow burned even more with anger, hot blood coursing through her veins as it never had before. "Oh, I don't know, MAN," she snapped, adding biting emphasis to the word. "I have no idea what it could be, MAN."
Red's eyes narrowed furiously. "Is that it? Really?! Why is it so terrible that I call you 'man'?!"
An odd thing began to happen to Yellow as he asked this question. The anger she'd felt began to mix with sadness, and she started to cry, for what must have seemed like no logical reason, but she knew why. Now that they'd hit at the heart of the issue–and she knew they had beyond a shadow of a doubt, just the same as one knows where they've been bruised when it's pressed on–everything in the mixed pile of emotions she'd felt towards Red, which had intermingled and been augmented by the fear of the phantom, now made sense.
"I-I..." she choked out, finding it difficult to speak. "I just thought... after a-all this time... am I still just some boy to you?!"
She looked away, tears streaking down her face. She didn't want to be there right now. She didn't want to be anywhere right now. She turned and ran through the undergrowth, not caring about the thorns that caught her, filled with only one desire: to outrun everything–her emotions, the phantom, all of it–to outrun the inescapable.
Eventually she tripped over a root and fell to the ground. She wasn't sure whether the impact hurt, but at the moment it didn't matter either way. She sat up and hugged her knees close to her chest, burying her face in them and letting misery consume her.
Yellow didn't know how long she remained in that dark haze. It could have been minutes, or hours, or even days. The next thing she was aware of, though, was a cold drizzle from the broken storm peppering the top of her head, and a familiar voice calling her name. It was Red's voice, and he was close. Yellow contemplated running again, but she knew it would be useless. Once Red put his mind to something, there was no stopping him. So, instead, she sat motionless, sides still shaking with quiet sobs.
She looked up when she heard grass crunch in front of her. Red had kneeled down in front of her, his expression surprisingly soft in stark contrast to the furious expression he'd had during the previous explosion between them.
Seeing him again, the tears grew more intense, until Yellow was barely able to choke out words through them. Still, she spoke first, before he had a chance. "I-I'm so sorry!" she spluttered. "I-I've been s-so mean to you, a-and you don't deserve it, and I'm such a t-terrible person, and–"
"No," Red interrupted her, his voice calm and firm. "No, you're right."
"Wh-what...?"
"I haven't been fair to you–for years now, but especially since I got here. I–" Red sighed, looking down at the grass. "I haven't been honest with you, or with myself, and it's time I do that." He gave Yellow a compassionate look, and she was surprised to find that, in this of all situations, he met her eyes. "It's a pretty long story. Are you okay to listen to it?"
Yellow, still crying, though not as hard because her sadness had mixed with confusion at Red's sudden change of heart, nodded slowly, not knowing what else to do.
"When I..." Red started, but then faltered. He took a deep breath and tried again. "When I first learned you were a girl, I was really surprised. I thought... well, I just figured that wasn't the sort of thing someone would keep secret for... what was it, two years?... so it caught me completely off guard. But there wasn't a lot of time to think about it, considering, y'know, the whole world-in-danger crisis, so I just kind of... ignored it for a while, I guess is the best way of putting it."
He shrugged. "Well, after a while, when I did have time to think about it, it kind of hit me full force. It seriously changed the way I thought about you. That was the point when I started to think about you like... to feel..." He waved his hands, as though filling in what he left unstated.
"I tried to justify how I felt–to... to talk myself out of it, I guess. I told myself it was just because you had such a strong connection with Pika. I told myself that it was just because Pika and Chuchu had an egg. I told myself it was just because you saved the world. I told myself it was just because you spent so long looking for me when I was in danger. I told myself..." He trailed off. "Well, you get the point. I tried desperately to find some reason that what I was feeling wasn't real–that I didn't actually..." Again, he waved his hands.
"But none of it worked." He chuckled quietly. "The whole airship incident was enough to prove that to me. No matter how much I tried to explain away how I felt, I couldn't stop it. Nothing made sense except for what I was trying so hard to deny. So... I chose to ignore it. I thought that if I didn't acknowledge the things I felt, they wouldn't exist. And the easiest way to do that was... to treat you like a boy."
He heaved a heavy sigh. "I suppose I should explain why I was trying to deny... y'know..." More hand waving. "In the first place." He looked into her eyes with utmost sincerity. "Well, the reason for that is because... you were–and still are–my best friend. Don't get me wrong, Blue's nice and all, but she's stolen my trainer card six times now, and I always get the feeling that we're not really friends as much as temporary allies. And Green is... uh... Green."
To Yellow's surprise, she found herself giving a near-silent, watery laugh at that comment, and genuinely smiling, without even a hint of haze.
"I didn't want to make things awkward between us, so I tried as hard as possible to force myself not to feel what I felt. I tried to act like you were just one of the guys. But it's time I stopped lying to myself–to you." Red reached forward and grabbed the brim of Yellow's straw hat. "Do you mind if I...?" When she shook her head, he removed the hat, freeing her hair. "Thanks," he said with a smile. "You look much better like that."
Yellow's breathing was shallow again, but this time for an entirely different reason. This time the breathlessness came from excited surprise at Red's explanation. She'd never suspected anything he'd just said. Each new revelation–no, each word–touched somewhere new in her heart, warming it, making it beat faster.
"Yellow," Red said, his voice comfortingly strong with conviction. "You've never been just some boy to me. I was stupid to try to convince myself you were." He reached out with a hand to gently brush the comingled raindrops and tears off her cheek, but his hand lingered there, as if he was hesitant to break contact with her. "The truth is, I...l–"
Suddenly the world around them exploded in a torrent of water.
Yellow's senses reeled as she was swept off her feet. Tossed in the powerful current, she couldn't tell up from down. Desperate for some sort of foothold to stop herself from tumbling with the flow and find air, she extended her legs, and her feet scraped against ground. Almost immediately, she felt something catch her right foot at an awkward angle, and an explosion of pain shot from her ankle up her leg, so intense that her vision failed and she lost her balance.
By the time she regained sight, the water had subsided, and was now trickling away through the undergrowth. Whimpering involuntarily from the agony gripping her leg, she looked down towards her feet. There, caught under a protruding tree root, her right foot was pointed abnormally sideways, twisted much farther than it ever should be. She tried to move it, but the mere muscle impulse sent such scorching pain through her system that she nearly lost sight again.
Red, who had allowed the current to carry him and ended up facedown a few feet from Yellow, groaned and got to his feet. "Agh..." he muttered. "What the heck was that?"
"Ha! Got 'em!"
Yellow's heart sank as she recognized voice behind the triumphant shout. Looking towards the source confirmed her fear: it was Guzma.
The skull-faced man had a large grin stretched across his face. "I knew it!" he said, victory in his tone as he forced his way through the bushes he'd hidden behind, followed by the hulking Pokémon Yellow had seen before. "I knew someone was tailing me, and now I've got you!" He smirked, looking down at the two. "Don't look like much, do you?"
"That's what you think," Red retorted, forcing himself to his feet and pulling a Pokéball from his belt. Without wavering his gaze from his adversary, he said, "Yellow, let's do this! Go, Saur!" and sent out his Venusaur.
Yellow cast one glance at her mangled ankle and concluded that she wasn't going to be able to move. So, her fingers fumbling from the shock to her nervous system, she hastily pried Ratty's Pokéball from her belt and tossed it in front of her.
Guzma raised his eyebrows at the appearance of the two Pokémon. "Oh, okay. Maybe this'll be interesting." He smirked with a glare. "It won't make any difference, thought. Go, Golisopod! Water Pulse!"
The huge Pokémon by Guzma's side lumbered a few steps forward, and, perhaps sensing that it would have a type disadvantage against Saur, took aim at Yellow. She held her hands out in front of herself in a vain attempt to protect herself against the new onslaught of water. Instead, though, Ratty took the attack, shielding her with its body.
Yellow gritted her teeth as her Raticate slid back towards her across the slick grass, unconscious. One hit was all it had taken. Returning Ratty to its ball, she sent out Omny in its place, hoping that the strange Pokémon didn't know any grass type moves.
She shot a quick glance back at Red, who, at the same time, glanced over at her, his eyebrows furrowing. She suspected he'd noticed that she hadn't moved, and realized something must be wrong. "Saur, get in closer and use Vine Whip!" he ordered his Venusaur, and he and his Pokémon began edging forward, angling to put themselves between Guzma and Yellow.
The skull-faced man grinned. "Vine Whip, huh?" He shrugged, his expression still smug. "Okay, kid, go ahead."
As Red advanced and Guzma held his ground, Omny looked back at Yellow, waiting for commands.
"Uh..." Yellow tried to think, but couldn't formulate a coherent idea. Between the conversation she'd just had with Red, the agonizing pain in her ankle, and the still-remaining terror of the looming phantom, her thoughts were too muddled to make any sense. "S-stay put," she decided. "Look for an opening, and if you find one, use Rollout."
With the order given, Yellow cast another look down at her ankle to check the damage, glancing up every other moment to keep track of the battle. Her right foot was turned outward, almost perpendicular to her left foot, indicating that several important bones were broken. She grimaced. This was a far more severe injury than any she'd gotten before, and just when things seemed to be turning better...
At length–or, it felt like length, at least, despite only being around five seconds–she decided that she needed to move herself, and that required freeing her ankle. Taking a deep breath, she risked tensing the muscles necessary to move her foot. Immediately a powerful nausea arose in the pit of her stomach, accompanied by fiery, stabbing pain that shot up her leg and spots dancing in her vision. In an attempt to lessen the magnitude of the agony, she bit her knuckles so hard that they bled. 'Bad idea–very bad idea!'
"Saur!" Yellow heard Red's shout as though through a layer of cotton–the pain had dulled her senses–and she looked up immediately to see what was going on. To her utter surprise, the Red's Venusaur had collapsed, unconscious, its legs splayed, and Guzma's hulking Pokémon stood over it, its claws wreathed in darkness.
"Too easy!" Guzma gloated. "All you do is attack, attack, attack. Sucker Punch is great for taking out numbskulls like you!"
"That doesn't make any sense," Yellow heard Red mutter, his eyes flitting back and forth between his fallen Venusaur and the Guzma's foreign Pokémon. "It's gotta be a water type, so why didn't...?" He narrowed his eyes, thumbing through the Pokéballs on his belt. "Fine, then, it's gotta be a dark type too, so... Poli!" In a split second, he'd recalled Saur and sent out his Poliwrath, which landed in fighting stance, glaring at Guzma's Pokémon.
"Heh, getting clever, then?" Guzma grinned. "Fine, let's see if this one is any better."
Yellow, confident in Red's strategy, returned to her problem. Any movement below her knee sent so much pain through her body that she couldn't breathe, and her thoughts turned incoherent. So, making very sure to keep her ankle as still as possible, she slowly, with painstakingly hesitance, bent her knee, sliding her foot out from under the root.
Even with her carefulness, every centimeter she moved her foot felt like she was ripping it off. A blurry haze consumed her field of vision. It took all her willpower to force herself not to cry out. The normally mundane task engulfed her in agony so terrible she wished she were dead. She'd never drowned, but she imagined this was what it felt like. When, after what felt like years, it was over, she collapsed, unmoving, her chest heaving with labored gasps for air.
Finally, once her sight was cleared –or, at least, functional–she risked movement. With immense effort, she forced herself into a sitting position, propping herself up with her arms.
Good news wasn't waiting for her on the other end of her suffering. As she watched, Guzma's Pokémon lashed out at Poli with a clawed arm, knocking it out of the air and pinning it to the ground, before releasing it, unconscious.
"Another one," Guzma remarked. "Man, you're really freakin' bad at this, huh?"
"What the heck?!" Red demanded angrily, withdrawing Poli. "Grass moves don't work well, fighting moves don't work well–what is this thing?!"
Guzma shrugged. "It's better than you. That's what matters in a battle, right?" He smirked. "Listen, kid, I'd love to keep knocking you down, but I've got stuff to do. So why don't you and your friend get out of here, and we don't have any more trouble, huh?"
"In your dreams," Red retorted, going to his belt again.
Guzma shook his head. "Figured you'd say something stupid like that." He turned to his Pokémon. "All right, Iso. Pin Missile, and take aim at..." With a cruel grin, he pointed at Yellow, whose stomach dropped out from under her. "Her."
The Pokémon turned toward Yellow, raising a claw, ready to shoot some sort of lethal dart at her, but before it could, Red raised his hands and shouted, "Wait, don't do it!"
Guzma laughed without humor. "There we go. NOW you're being smart." He raised a hand to stop his Pokémon. "Now, if you'll excuse me..." He pulled another Pokéball from his pocket and sent out an Abra, which looked zoned-out, as Abra typically are. Guzma smirked. "These things are dead useful, y'know. I don't know why I never got one back home." He prodded the Pokémon in the side of the head. "Get us out of here."
In a shimmer of space, Guzma, his monster, and the Abra vanished.
It took a moment for the shock of what had just happened to set in. Gradually, Yellow began to replay the events. First, she'd broken her ankle. Then Red had fought and been losing to Guzma. Then Guzma had threatened to have his Pokémon kill her...
Yellow's eyes widened in sudden comprehension of that statement. She'd nearly been killed–murdered, no less. In the moment, the magnitude of the threat hadn't truly hit her, but now it struck full force. Death–which she'd almost forgotten about–now stabbed her with a cold reminder of its ever-present nature. And even more so now (her blood ran chill with the recollection) because the phantom still loomed in the shadows. A sudden panic seized her when she realized that it could be anywhere–behind that tree right there, or hidden in a bush, or even right behind her–and she couldn't even use her ankle to run (a false reassurance in the first place, but it was nevertheless calming).
Her breath turned choppy with hyperventilation. The peril of her situation had overwhelmed her, and she felt cold seep into her entire being. So cold. So alone.
A hand on her back jarred her from her panic. It was warm, despite the rain, and somehow its reassuring firmness steadied Yellow's breathing. "Are you okay?" Red asked, his voice gentle as he knelt beside her and looked into her eyes.
"Ah..." Yellow faltered, surprised that her voice worked. "N-no. My ankle is..." She cast her eyes down to her misaligned foot.
Red's gaze followed hers. He winced sympathetically when he saw the problem. "Ooh, yeah. I don't think feet are supposed to point that way." He frowned. "Is there any way I can help?"
Yellow shook her head. The cold had temporarily receded, and her thoughts now processed coherently. "Not with fixing it, no. I don't know how... I can't even move it without..." She trailed off, recalling something from years ago. With an idea in mind, she recalled Omny and sent out her Butterfree, Kitty. "Kitty, I need you to make a cast around my ankle."
The Butterfree looked at Yellow's foot, then glanced back at her with obvious confusion, appearing to ask, 'With it like that?'
Yellow nodded. "I know it doesn't look right, but casting it like that is better than nothing."
Kitty looked worried about the order–as worried as a Butterfree can look, that is–but proceeded to use String Shot, coating Yellow's ankle and foot with layers and layers of silk. By the time the process was done, the hardened silk looked like a large white boot, but it served its purpose and kept Yellow's foot rigid.
She withdrew Kitty, and said, "Thank you," through the transparent roof of its Pokéball.
Red looked impressed. "Wow," he said. "That's really smart. I would have never thought of using String Shot for something like that."
A small smile played on Yellow's lips at the compliment, but it faded just as quickly. "Thanks. We've got to get going, though. Can you...?" She held out her hand.
"Yeah, no problem." Red quickly rose to his feet and grabbed it, helping her to her feet–or, foot, as was the case, since she took particular care not to put any weight on her casted foot yet.
Yellow took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's see if I can..." She placed her cast on the ground and began to apply weight to it.
White hot pain shot up her leg, so intense that her knees buckled. The only reason she was able to keep standing was because Red caught her before she fell. It took a moment before she was able to speak again. "O-okay... weight is still a bad idea."
"I can support you," Red offered. "Here, just lean on me a little... put your arm like that..." He adjusted himself so that Yellow was able to lean herself against his side and place her hand on his other shoulder for balance. They were able to move like a three-legged creature, Red's support allowing Yellow to keep her casted foot elevated.
"Thank you," Yellow said, a tiny warmth sparking in her heart at his help, in defiance of the cold.
"Of course," Red replied, smiling slightly and giving her another kind look. "Now, let's get going."
And so the two set off in an unknown direction, searching for Guzma.