Chapter 9: Will-O-Wisp
"Mei said this was the best place to train," Risa said, staring up at the pagoda in front of her.
"You said it's called 'The Bellsprout Tower'."
"Yeah. It says so right there." Risa pointed to the sign on the gate, a dull bronze plaque with traditional script and an engraved outline of a bellsprout. "Apparently, there's a legend that says there's a really big bellsprout in the middle of the tower." She turned back to stare up at the pagoda. "That's why it moves and shakes."
Heat looked up at her, his eyes wide with excitement. (Which, for his squinty eyes, wasn't very wide.) "Really?"
"No," his trainer replied. "That's the legend. It's really shaking 'cause there're people training inside."
The cyndaquil sighed, looking down dejectedly. "Oh. Wait - people train in it?"
"Yeah, Heat, that's why we're here. 'Cause you lost at the gym and -"
"STOP REMINDING ME ABOUT THAT AND YOU KNOW I DON'T LIKE HEARING ABOUT IT AND IT WAS YOUR FAULT TOO AND I HATE BIRDS."
Risa shrugged. "Fine. But we still need to train so we can get the stupid badge so I can go home."
Heat stared up at her. "What about the next badge?"
"Ugh, fine, that badge, too! AND THEN I can go home! Now let's go!" With that, she hoisted Heat into the air and stomped into the first level of the tower.
Once inside, the air seemed to close in around them, and Risa noted that there was no real indoor lighting system other than the occasional candle. The light streamed in through tiny, high-up gaps between the wood doors and the ceiling, and the rice paper walls let in a diffuse glow from the sun. In the center of the dim room stood a huge pillar, one that seemed to shake slowly back and forth. Bronze bellsprout statues dotted the room, all staring back at the newcomers with dull metallic eyes.
Risa slowly put Heat down onto the tatami floor, looking around. "D'you think I should take off my shoes?" Heat shrugged, and Risa just stood there, unsure of what to do. "Where is everyone?"
"I hear scratching coming from up there," Heat said, pointing towards an old, creaky wood staircase. It moaned and groaned with the slow shaking of the tower, making Risa wonder if it was safe wood to stand on. "Let's go! They're probably pokemon that're waiting for us! Let's go beat them now!"
"Okay, okay." Risa lifted her foot to stand on the main floor of the tower, then thought against it. "One sec," she said, sitting down and slipping off her shoes. Now that she was sitting down, she noticed that there were a few pairs of running shoes and hiking boots off to the side, in a dim corner, so she put them there. Right next to them were a few pairs of neatly lined-up grey slippers, so she grabbed a pair, slid them on, and jogged after Heat (who had ignored her and started to waddle towards the staircase). "I told you to wait up!"
"I don't wanna wait for slowpokes," Heat said as they both started to walk up the stairs to the next level. (To Heat's dismay, Risa could go up stairs a lot quicker than he could, making him the "slowpoke".)
"Hey, I'm a person! Not a -" Risa stopped. She had reached the end of the staircase and was looking into a dark room filled with glowing eyes, dark purple mist, and laughing gaseous faces with huge teeth and tongues. "Gastly!"
Heat, who was a few steps behind her coming up the staircase due to his size, called from behind, "I called you a slowpoke, stupid, not a -" Then he reached the top of the staircase as well. "Gastly."
"See what I mean?" his trainer hissed, not taking her eyes off the mass of ghosts.
"Yeah. Sorry 'bout that."
"Did - did you just apologize to me?"
"No."
"But -" She couldn't finish her sentence, because the entire roomful of gastly descended upon them, tongues out, teeth bared, and ghost mists diving straight into Risa and Heat's throats. Risa could barely choke out an, "ember!" before the chaos of the floor-turned-battlefield stole her ability to process anything into short-term memory.
"Just - ember! HEAT, THERE'S ONE RIGHT BEHIND YOU! Ember - no! Run in a circle! AIIIEEEE HEAT GET IT OFF ME, GET IT OFF! Wait - you can go through them? Ember from the inside of one - I don't care if it's creepy, do it! Ember! Ember! Do what you did again -
"Ember!
"Ember!
"EMBER!"
---
"Wait 'til its mouth is open - NOW!"
Heat blew a handful of half-choked off embers into the gastly's mouth the split second before the lick attack would have gotten him. The gastly's large eyes rolled up and behind, the gaseous pokemon swirling around and finally hanging limply a few centimeters above the floor. It was out cold.
A panting, sweaty Risa scanned the floor. "I - I think - that's all," she wheezed between ragged breaths. "Good - good job."
"Thanks," Heat grumbled, collapsing on the floor. "I'm so tiiired," he whined, "and I can't spit out anymore fire, so - gaaaah I can't breathe - so if anymore come, we're gonna die."
"We - huff - we're not gonna die," his trainer said, straightening up and ignoring the tingling feelings in her thighs. Even though in a normal trainer battle, one with rules and a clear battlefield and only one opponent for every pokemon she had out, she never had to move much, Risa had to do a lot of sprinting during the gastly ambush. After the first few moments, Risa had realized that if she got hit by a gastly's attack, she'd go down a lot quicker than her pokemon - humans weren't meant to take pokemon attacks and bounce right back. And, judging by the way Heat flailed about when she didn't give him directions, that would spell instant defeat for him, too.
And then the ghosts would eat them, since ghosts were probably the kinds of beings that would do such a thing. (Or, at least, Risa figured they'd do something like eat them. Maybe absorb their life energy or turn them into ghosts to make an army. Or just torment their souls for the rest of eternity. Something creepy like that.)
Heat looked up at her, wearing his best "I am serious" face. Unfortunately for him, his "I am serious" face looked more like his "I have something in my eyes and it is causing me much pain" face than anything else. "No, we're gonna die. Which means we won't get to beat the Elite Four."
"I told you, Heat, we're not gonna -"
"AND IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT!"
"Heat, we're not - AAAAAAAAH!" Risa had to scream as the lights on the entire floor flickered on. Both trainer and cyndaquil had to squeeze their eyes shut, spots appearing on the backs of their eyelids. "I didn't know there were lights!"
"There aren't."
Risa squeaked in surprise at the voice, opening her eyes a little. As the blinding afterimages disappeared, she saw that on the other side of the room stood an old man in monk togs and a glowing bellsprout. She looked up - the monk was right. The ceiling was bare hardwood, no electric lights or candles to be seen.
"You did a good job on your ambush training, miss," the man said, walking forward through the mass of unconscious ghosts, his bellsprout trailing behind.
Risa gaped. "T-training! This was training?"
The monk frowned. "Of course. Why else would you be here?"
"Well - yeah, but - I mean," she exchanged a glance with Heat, "y-you could have told us, or something! Or - I d'no - taught us something!"
The monk's bellsprout snickered (though it stopped when Heat glared at him and coughed out an ember - Risa guessed it didn't know that the little sputter was Heat's last ember), but the monk merely smiled. "If we told you, you wouldn't have learned nearly as much. By the end of it, you developed some good strategies."
"We beat 'em!" Heat exclaimed.
"Yeah, Heat, we did," mumbled his trainer. "But..."
"Would you like more training? If you come to the top level," the monk explained, "we can do more formal training, one-on-one and outside of battles. It is usually extremely beneficial to all who take part."
Risa thought for a moment, staring down at her bedraggled-yet-battle-high cyndaquil. "...Okay. But, um, can we heal first? Or rest? We're really tired."
The monk turned, but Risa caught a twinkle in his brown eyes. "Of course not. In order to defeat powerful enemies, you need to have stamina. If you wish to take part in our training, follow me. If you wish to take an unneeded break, then go back to where you came."
Risa and Heat looked at each other for a moment, then both wordlessly followed the monk to the top level.
---
"Your gym battle is the day after tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Risa replied as she and Heat stretched. They had been training all day, but weren't quite as worn out as they had been at the end of the previous two days of training in the tower. She gulped down some water and felt her thighs. They were still sore. "I think we're gonna train on one of the routes tomorrow, though. At least a little."
"Ah," the monk, who had been her and Heat's (sort of) "personal trainer" for the past three days, turned to the panting cyndaquil, peering down at him with interest. "His flames aren't out quite yet."
"I GOT STRONGER, WHADDYA EXPECT?" Heat snarled, his flames bursting out of his back.
"Heat, be nice," Risa hissed.
The monk just smiled like he always did. "Very well. I wish you luck and bid you goodnight."
Risa nodded, grabbing her things and motioning for Heat to follow her out. "Bye, and thanks!"
"Bye, old man!"
"Heat! That's not nice!"
As they stepped out into the evening and started to walk towards the Pokemon Center, Risa stopped to watch a flock of hoothoots take to the air and fly off towards the center of town. When she looked down again, Heat had already made it to the gym, which stood along their path back to the Center.
"We're gonna take 'em down," he kindly informed her as she caught up.
"Yeah," Risa mumbled, pointedly not looking at the building. Unlike her pokemon, she couldn't seem to shake the feeling of imminent defeat as they grew closer to their rematch. "Let's go."
They kept walking.
"Twenty left..."
"What?"
"Nothing..." Risa shook her head. "It's nothing. Let's go."
---
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I do own the original characters in this story.