Was I scared?

You bet I was.

Walking around Vermilion at night wasn't something I'd ever done before, and wasn't something I had exactly planned either. I had searched the city a few times over and had found no one. What scraps of information I gathered about him was too sparse to be coherent. The only thing that everybody agreed on was that he had a Gengar, and loved to terrify people before wiping the floor with them. Well, I vowed not to be the next one.

So I was sat in the park underneath a few floodlights with Flame pacing around angrily, clearly frustrated that our mission had ended up fruitless. I had started to understand what they were saying – not as if they were talking English, but I just…knew. Something in my mind flexed and I just got it. It wasn't something I could explain and was something I wanted to hone and focus on.

But focusing on my idea, that we would find this fucker – we'd spent hours upon hours looking for an invisible man. And it was pretty obvious by now that Flame had had enough. For some comfort, I sent out Ace and Lily. Ace was happy enough just to see his friends, but seemed intimidated – Lily, as always, was just chilling the hell out.

"Charmeleon!" Flame cried. I gave him a startled look.

"Flame, boy, what's wrong?"

"Meleon! Charmeleon!" he flailed his arms and body; I saw the fire dribble at the corners of his mouth. Dave had taught me that was common behaviour in Fire Pokémon – it meant they were angry or frustrated. Flame was clearly both, all of the time.

"Od-od," Lily said, and made a noise that sounded like a sigh. She was saying he was unhappy.

"I know."

"Oddish…odd…ish," she shrugged – if she had arms to shrug with. I didn't get it.

"Pika pika!"Now Ace was being defiant.

Were they arguing?

Then it hit me.

"Really, Flame? You think that we're weak? Because we can't find him?"

"Charmele-meleon," he nodded stiffly. I clenched my teeth.

"Who's the trainer around here?"

"Char-meleon!" he shouted, gesticulating. It wasn't hard to see what his meaning was.

"I know I'm trying to act like one and you know it too! I'm trying my damn hardest!" I left Lily and Ace on the bench, both staring at me curiously. I stood up, looking up and breathing deeply, trying to calm the hell down. I kept telling myself that it was only natural for Flame to be super pissed if something didn't go right.

"Char!" he interrupted anything further from me.

"Listen to me, boy, there's a lot going on right now!" I spun to face him, chest heaving with anger. "I'm trying to save this city from someone who will kill you if he finds us! He'll kill all of you, and I won't be able to stop it! Not even Storm will be able to help you! Fuck, he'll probably do away with me as well! And if I'm going to stop him, then I need you to work with me!"

"Charmeleon," he replied – I detected a sort of defeated sigh, but I wasn't sure if he was delivering me some kind of Pokémon sarcasm. I looked at Ace, who just looked completely amazed; Lily was still as calm and as cool as ever.

I sighed and nearly let my palm meet my forehead. "You listen, kid. You're family. Ace and Lily and Storm are family. And you don't leave your damn family behind. I wouldn't let you go. You're strong for us all the time, boy, so now I'm gonna have to be strong for you. I'm supposed to protect you."

He was silent. I kept going.

"And we are not weak."

He turned his face to look at me with one eye. I saw a hint of a smile. He wanted me to say it.

"I didn't start to do this just so I could give up not even halfway through. I didn't do this without knowing there was gonna be risks and fights and all kinds of shit. Are you really gonna hold this against me? Knowing something we did didn't go right? Well, we're gonna make it go right. And I need you, all of you –" I motioned to Ace and Lily too. "—to be strong right now."

Flame turned to me and his shoulders heaved, like some heavy weight had been lifted. I moved over to him slowly, hands in front of me, expecting for him to unleash an Ember attack on me, but I would have been willing to take the blast.

Much reminiscent of when we first met, before I knew it, he was hugging my leg. He held a lot tighter, though, and he hid his face into the creases of my trousers. After a few moments of him nuzzling my leg and growling softly, Ace and Lily scampered from the bench to join in. I held Storm's Poké Ball in my hand and behind me, released him. It seemed awfully out of place to have three small Pokémon and then an enormous dragon behind me, but he bent down as if he sensed the feelings, and let out a small rumble as a growl.

"Pika pika chu?"

"Yeah. Let's go on, guys!"

Time sliced on but we still had no luck. Flame was conserving his anger and frustration for other occasions, so when we reached a large, empty plaza in Vermilion, I let him release his inner fire as long as he needed to. Storm was safe in my pocket for now; I couldn't really walk about with a Gyarados without some head-turning. I checked my watch. Just gone half past one in the morning.

My mum would have killed me.

Then my phone went off and I was treated to the gentle caressing of Death as my new ringtone. Ace looked up at me, intrigued by the music.

"Hello?"

"Darrell! Are you alright?"

Ah, Dave.

"Fine, dude. We've no luck so far."

"Glad you're alright…listen, bro. We need you to come back, stat. Real shit is going down here. There are so many people coming in and we can't take much more—"

I had hung up before he'd even finished. I was all ready to start running to the Center with Ace and Flame at my heels, but I'd only taken one step before I heard something suspicious. Flame was growling, much louder than before – the same kind of growl when danger was approaching. I whirled round, expecting to see some stray Pokémon or something, but what faced me was much, much worse.

He was silent as he approached me, and I saw the cherry shimmer of a Poké Ball in his hand. I backed away slowly, and kept softly telling Flame to come back to me, but he stood fiercely in front of me and kept on growling. His sounds would have scared any other Pokémon, but this guy wasn't fazed even the slightest. I expected something rash and it never came.

"…you ain't from here, are ya? Pallet Town. I heard. Fucking scum."

"Hey, now!" I said, and instantly regretted it, but I kept talking. Hopefully if I spoke like I meant business, I would start to feel that way. Damn, was I fucking terrified. This was like Gary Fucking Oak all over again and man, was that something I did not want to relive. My hand curled around Storm's Poké Ball. If my words wouldn't scare him, Storm could. "Leave me alone."

"Hmm…nah, I don't think I will. You and me, we'll battle. Right now. You win, I leave you alone. You lose…" In the shadows, I could still see his mouth curl into a menacing grin. I felt it.

And it pissed me the hell off.

"If I lose, I get the fuck out of here. Hit me with your best damn shot, because I'm not scared of a lowlife rogue like you."

He sent out his Poké Ball to reveal the Gengar I'd been told about - and instantly, I could literally feel the air sag with cold as the temperature dropped; I shuddered. I'd learnt that from Dave. Gengar could make the temperature plummet by ten degrees and damn, this seemed to be about forty degrees less than what it had been. Man, these things were scary. I hoped Dave would keep Shadow as a Haunter forever.

"Come on then," he smirked. His voice was deep - too deep for Gary Oak to recreate, so any threat of him coming back for revenge was vanquished. Whoever he was, though, he was still terrifying and I wanted to be anywhere other than around him. Since Flame was there, and angry enough to beat down anything, I nodded at him and he got the message.

I commanded my lizard to use Ember, and he heard me but he didn't obey. Instead, he let the Gengar cast out invisible rays to try and confuse him. He avoided them and in a mad fit of rage that something had actually tried to hurt him, he let out an enormous roar, one so loud I didn't even think his lungs were capable of it - and a huge blast of fire erupted from his mouth. It wasn't Fire Blast, Flamethrower, none of them...he was just obeying me and giving it all he had because he understood my anger.

The Gengar had backed off a little but it was just staring into space. The man was shouting, ordering commands that it couldn't give and I started to worry - had Flame seriously hurt it? I shouldn't have cared, this thing was murdering Pokémon, but I couldn't help but bite my lip and say nothing. What was happening? The thing wasn't moving and Flame moved to go in again, but I gripped his shoulder and said no.

What happened next truly shocked me.

I'd been shocked before. However you defined the stupid word. I'd been pretty surprised at horror movies; appalled at the behaviour of some world leader on TV; startled at the fact Professor Oak entrusted me with a Charmander and then sent me on my merry way. But shocked was the only word I could have chosen for this situation. The man, the monster, whatever he was. He began to shout. He was damn loud at it; so loud that it irritated Flame and the blazes of fire began to dribble from the corners of his mouth again, but he remained calm. Calm in his terms, at least.

"You useless piece of shit! Can't you see we're in battle, you stupid fucking—"

He was interrupted by his own screams, and I had covered my eyes from the blast. It had happened so quickly. I didn't understand what had happened, didn't get it, until I saw him lying on the concrete ground, smoke billowing from the bottom half of his body. The heat dissolved in front of me, distorting the air, and Flame looked damn fucking proud of himself – even when my hands met my mouth, and I couldn't control my heavy breathing. But he hadn't even noticed. Once he'd opened his eyes, his jaw dropped to the floor and he stared at me, like I had an answer to his motives.

"Flame, what did you do?"

"Charmeleon! Char-char!"

The man didn't get up when I shrieked at him to get up. I took thirteen steps – thirteen exactly, I counted them – to his body and fell to my knees. I hadn't controlled my Pokémon. This was my fault. This was a man nearing death because of me. I started to panic. More like, I was already in motherfucking panic. Oh God. Oh shit oh fuck oh no. What if he dies? I didn't want to worry about him because he'd already caused so much grief and horror in Vermilion already. But the good person inside of me told me otherwise.

"Can you hear me? Wake up! Get up! It's alright! Please get up!"

He didn't, and the panic surrounded me like the shadows of the night, as the temperature just kept on dropping and I felt the air sag and die with the cold. I rubbed my body with my arms to generate heat, but nothing, nothing would wash away guilt.