The first step inside this cursed building meant nothing good. The atmosphere of despair and sorrow grew even stronger as we entered the tower. The first floor was almost empty – just the counter with a girl behind it, and some people moving higher upstairs or returning back from the upper floors.
All those people were actually so sad… They came here to visit the graves of their once beloved pets. Or, maybe, to bring here the new ones. Anyway, interrupting these people`s sorrow wasn`t in our plans.
"Hey there!" Douchebag suddenly came to the girl behind the counter. "Where can we find ghost pokemon here?"
"Oh, great, just another trainers!" She replied irritably. "This is a graveyard, why don`t you just leave the poor souls alone?"
"Because these souls are too powerful to leave them alone!" My irritating companion replied confidently. "So… Where are they?"
"Meh… I control the graveyard, not the ghosts that fly here. Look at the upper levels." The girl answered and turned away, not going to continue the dialogue.
"Thanks!" Douchebag quickly ran to the stairs.
I approached the girl and apologized.
"Excuse him. He is a moron." After that I followed the ladder up to the second floor.
I found Douchebag standing right in the middle of the door, staring into darkness.
"Hey, what`s happened? Scared?" I asked him and pushed into the room.
"Damn it, I`m not scared! This… this just doesn`t feel right…" He pointed at the rows of graves in the concrete floor. Some people were standing there, crying over the gravestones. A slight fog covered the whole large room, making it almost unable to see the walls.
As I went through the doorway I also felt something… Really disturbing. Really, really bad feeling. Intuition still didn`t asked to run away in fear, but something was pushing on me psychologically.
"Who`s scared now, huh?" Douchebag clicked his fingers before me. Looks like I fell in some sort of transe for some second, like he did.
"Shut up. Let`s move higher. I don`t think ghost are found in such crowded places."
Douchebag wanted to reply something sarcastic in return, but quickly changed his mind and moved forward, along the road between graves. We could hear cries and wails from the people around. Maybe the place itself is very psychologically-pressing, but together with all those disturbing sounds… Damn this is so horrible.
I wanted to leave this place at once, and never return. This wasn`t fear, this was something else. Maybe just two things made me continue following forward: my mission and the fact that Douchebag haven`t run away screaming yet.
We reached the third floor, and immediately felt the difference. The fog became so thick we could barely see anything at all. I could hear a couple of people not far from here, but that definitely sounded not like wails. I couldn`t understand what the voices were saying, maybe those weren`t people at all.
"Okay, ghost, come out!" Douchebag gladly shouted and released his Quartz the Blastoise out. I have to say, the dark atmosphere affected his pokemon much stronger than his trainer. It was quite fun to see how large Blastoise looks around, shaking in fear, and then runs behind his master to hide.
"Hey, Quartz, what are you doing?" Douchebag tried to move away from him, but pokemon quickly hid behind the strong trainer`s back again.
"Dumpling, just look at this!" I released my pokemon to look at it. It think, my Charmeleon was very glad to see his all-life rival shivering in fear. "Seems like your Quartz is a bit… cowardly?" I said with smile.
"Shut up! He is not a coward. How can such big and strong beast be coward, right, Quartz?" Douchebag turned back to his pokemon and looked in his eyes. Blastoise closed then and covered head with hands.
Damn, this doesn`t look normally. My Dumpling seemed to be fine here, but this… This isn`t natural fear at all. All this damn pressure and atmosphere.
Meanwhile my Charmeleon slowly stole up behind Quartz and suddenly roared right at him. This definitely scared me and Douchebag, but didn`t work on Blastoise at all. Quartz angrily turned around to give Dumpling menacing look and shoot two water pulses at him. My pokemon easily dodged the first one, but the second hit him hard, throwing at the wall. Dumpling got from the ground and prepared to attack, but I had to stop this.
"Hey, come on! We don`t have time for that!" I shouted for both of them. Dumpling resentfully turned away, and Quartz just snorted in reply. His fear faded away completely.
"Oh, we WILL have time for that after we deal with ghosts here." Douchebag said. I think he is going to challenge me to battle after all.
"Shut up and keep moving. Ghosts don`t find themselves. Let`s go, Dumpling." I entered the fog with my partner behind. After some second I noticed the absence of my partner behind…
Charmeleon was hiding behind the grave nearest to the ladder down, outside of the fog. I could barely see him, just the flame on his tail. And by the source of loud Douchebag`s laugh.
"I know what the karma is now!" He joyfully shouted.
"Come here, Dumpling, stop entertaining this ugly gentleman!"
But my pokemon seriously refused to come out of his shelter. He felt safer there.
"Quartz, smoke him out from there with Water Pulse!" I commanded to Blastoise. The pokemon questionably looked at his master, and he nodded in agreement. Quartz stood on his fourth and shot some water from his cannon into my Dumpling. Charmeleon wasn`t expecting that, and got the hit from the first pulse, but successfully dodged the second and ran to me, angrily barking something.
"What the heck is happening to our pokemon?" I questioned. Douchebag changed his face seriously as he didn`t know the answer. But he was interested in this too. Definitely it is the dark atmosphere of tower is to be fault.
Douchebag and Quartz finally found some courage to step into dark fog and follow us. My Dumpling was coming near me, periodically giving me angry looks. I see that he got enough from Quartz because of this strange fear exchange, so I decided to replace him with Harry.
"Okay, Dumpling, you can have some rest." I returned him back to pokeball and released Weepinbell outside. "Harry, use Flash."
I thought that Flash will help us see in the darkness of tower, but for some reason it didn`t work. Weepinbell shined brightly, but it was like the light doesn`t come from him, lights just Harry himself and not the surroundings.
"What a useless waste of move." Douchebag commented our failure. Well, he actually had nothing to help us now.
We moved forward across the large hall, passing old gravestones and strange people, listening to their maddening hum. Maybe these were just my imagination or somehow the images from the past of this place. The constantly ringing sound in my ear makes me madder and madder every second. And I also started to feel… sleepy…
The images started to run before me… I saw some people running around me… Children. Unfamiliar children. What the heck are doing here?
Just great, I have hallucinations! It`s been a while…
Now it was Misty running around me. She threw watermelons at me, and I was too tired even to dodge that. Anyway, hallucinations don`t hurt much.
"No… No… Get away…" I heard Douchebag`s voice behind me. He was standing nearby, swinging his hands in the air like he`s driving away small Beedrills… Maybe he is having different hallucinations.
How the heck haunted tower with ghosts turned into a mad field with hallucinations?
Suddenly I noticed two small violet clouds of fog behind Douchebag dividing from the surrounding one. They looked much denser and darker… And… They had large eyes?
"Oh shit… We`ve found them!" I notified Douchebag. But I wasn`t sure if he is in state to catch anything – he was still driving the imaginary Beedrills away and didn`t even notice two large phantoms nearly as large as he is.
"Screw you, idiot, I do it myself…" I made a couple of steps closer and pointed at the left cloud. "Harry, use Vine Whip!"
But even Harry – the bravest of my pokemon – covered himself behind me. Crap, this thing actually scares everyone away.
Suddenly I felt a very strong fatigue in my body. Too tired even to keep my eyes open.
"No! I won`t give up!" I shouted at them. I have no idea what pokemon these are – just a formless cloud… I don`t even know whether these are pokemon at all. But I withstood all the pressure they did at me, and took a pokeball. But suddenly my hand shook, losing the capsule. It fell on the floor and rolled somewhere in the fog, completely lost.
Suddenly Douchebag turned around him and finally noticed these shadows behind himself.
"Holy shit!" He shouted at them. I don`t know if he startled them or not, but the pressure on my mind temporarily weakened, and I threw another pokeball right into the cloud. The capsule flew through it and disappeared in the fog again.
At least, this distracted them a little, giving Douchebag a chance to move away from them. I noticed him taking something from the coat – something like the high-tech glasses. He directed the device right at the pokemon, clicked it… and the shining light revealed the true form of these pokemon.
Actually, their true form wasn`t that differ from the cloud – now it was something like dark ball with big white eyes covered with purple cloud.
"Gastlys!" Douchebag shouted and made a step back from the ghost pokemon, stumbling over the rock and falling behind. The device fell on ground and cracked.
I have no idea what this device is – but I understood that Douchebag came here actually prepared. Technically, at least, but not mentally. I used this moment to try to catch the right pokemon again – and with another throw of pokeball the black ball was sucked inside the red-white ball. This distracted another Gastly and this time Douchebag used the moment to catch another one.
"This one is for you!" He shouted furiously and threw his ball. It was not red-and-white, like a usual pokeball, but it was blue-colored top with two red stripes. A Greatball.
Two capsules fell on the ground, still shaking from the rage of pokemon inside.
Mine shook once…
Twice…
And suddenly the capsule exploded into pieces, and the shadowy figure flew outside, becoming Gastly again.
"Crap! He escaped!" I swore and pulled my hand to take another pokeball and aimed right between the eyes. This time the figure was sucked inside and maybe had much less chance to escape.
One shake…
Second shake…
Third shake…
The pokeball clicked quietly as a sign of victory.
I approached the capsule and took it from the ground. Douchebag caught his in a greatball and have already took it back.
"So… I was still first to catch it, huh?" He confidently said.
"Ah, get the hell out of here!" I replied and turned away to take my PokeDex and scan my new pokemon.
Gastly. The gas pokemon. Almost invisible, this gaseous Pokémon cloaks the target and puts it to sleep without notice.
Not bad, I guess. This could be useful. And this can also explain the strong drowsiness and these crazy dreams in reality in the form of hallucinations.
Well, at least for now the hallucinations faded, and the fog seemed to dissolve slowly. Maybe there are more ghost pokemon here, but we don`t need any more.
"What was that thing?" I asked Douchebag. He didn`t reply immediately and just looked under his feet where the pieces if that thing were lying.
"A Silph Scope. Device developed to convert ghosts into pokemon." He explained sadly. I guess this thing costed him a lot.
"Wow, this sounds a bit… wrong, don`t you think?"
"Why? These souls were angry and lost. They would have turn into pokemon anyway; I just accelerated this process and even made it less… painful."
I looked at my newly acquired pokeball. As the fog dissolved a bit, the light of Harry started to actually light surroundings, and now the pokeball was glowing too.
Suddenly I heard quick steps and loud voices approaching from below. A very bad feeling appeared again.
"Harry, turn off the lights… And come here…" I commanded to him and covered behind the gravestone. To my surprise, Douchebag silently returned back his Quartz and covered behind the gravestone too.
I carefully looked out of my shelter and noticed some guys passing nearby. These guys were in black uniform… with "R" sign on them.
"Team Rocket!" I whispered to Douchebag.
"Who are they leading?" He asked after me.
I looked better at the silhouette that was slowly coming behind them. It was… Mr. Fuji! Looks like they took him as a hostage for some reason. Douchebag noticed the interested look on my face.
"Do you know this old man?" He asked.
"Yes… He helped me in my investigation a bit. Maybe this is why they captured him. We must save him!"
I waited for some seconds for them to walk away to the upper floor, and slowly followed them.
"Are you crazy? Get the hell out of here, this is not your business!" Douchebag tried to stop me. But he couldn`t.
"This man helped me, and because of this he is caught! I can`t just leave him there."
I turned away and headed upstairs. After some seconds I heard Douchebag`s angry roar and steps following me.
As we were walking up to the next floor, the sense of troubles grew even stronger. I realized that the highest floors of this tower are older – which is very strange – and maybe much heavier inhabited by other crazy ghost pokemon. Anyway, Team Rocket entered there without any problem at all. Maybe we can do so too…
I was running through the dense fog that was becoming just thicker and thicker. The crazy voices of other Gastlys were surrounding me, but I didn`t care about them. I completely ignored the new drowsiness and fake images of naked girls before me.
I got to the fourth floor of this damn tower and started to run up the ladder as suddenly another shadow cloud appeared right before me, throwing down with an incredible force. Luckily I landed on Harry and Douchebag, so it wasn`t that hurt. But it was pretty hurt for them, I guess.
"Leave… this… place…" The fog pronounced slowly and scary.
"Hey! You… you can talk!" I shouted. At this moment I was more excited than scared. Finally, a talking pokemon!
"LEAVE!"
The ground before us shook, and three of us were thrown back again, crushing into someone`s gravestone. This time the main damage came to me.
"Harry, use Vine Whip!" I quickly got up and ordered a command to my pokemon. Weepinbell jumped closer and stretched his vines to hit the opponent, but the fog easily dodged it.
This doesn`t look good… In the fog state we can`t attack this thing and we can`t catch it… And judging by the look, the phantom is pretty serious in not allowing us to go up.
"I can`t believe I`m saying it…" I whispered to Douchebag and Harry. "But I command to RUN!"
We jumped away from the tombstone right at the moment the pokemon attacked us with something large. I couldn`t see it properly, but I`m sure it was a very sharp… bone.
The three of us were running away from this damn creature for all the floors down. It continued attacking us, each time throwing something large and sharp at us, almost hitting every time. I`m sure if we weren`t so lucky at dodging all these, the monster would do a large hole in every one of us.
Our trio reached the second floor where ordinary people were crying over their pokemon… And, despite of us shouting loudly to all of them to run the heck away, the monster swept literally all of them in pursue of us. I hope there will not be additional graves after this…
And on the first floor we scared the remaining crowd and almost reached the exit as my Harry, very tired of hopping behind us, fell on the ground. Damn it, I completely forgot that it`s very hard for him to run!
As the dark cloud approached my Weepinbell, I rushed to him in order to save. Somehow, I don`t know, I didn`t have a plan… Just the basic instinct made me cover Harry with my body. I was ready to anything, but not to what happened…
Weepinbell looked up at the cloud handing over us, made a deep breath and spit a large ball of purple acid into it. I`m not sure if this made some damage, but this gave us some time to get up and run away, outside the wretched Lavender tower.
We appeared to be among the crowd of people, heavily breathing after the run, completely shocked by this.
"Is everyone all right?" The girl from the counter asked. After some people telling her that they are okay, she noticed us and quickly approached. "What the heck have you two done?"
"Oh… Give me a second…" I tried to normalize my breathing for some time. "We need help! Team Rocket caught Mr. Fuji, and they are up there, on the highest floor! Guarded by this damn ghost…"
"My… My granddad?" The girl suddenly was startled. "Oh my god…"
"Your granddad? Well, you know then how important it is!"
"How did they pass me? Anyone saw Team Rocket here?" She asked the people. No one seemed to see these bandits.
"Okay, I got what I wanted, I`m outta here!" Douchebag waved at us all and walked away, but I grabbed his hand and dragged back.
"You. Stand here." I ordered him strictly. "You seem to know the Lavender tower very well." I addressed the girl. "This ghost is much stronger than the rest… What is it?"
"Eh… I don`t know… I don`t know! Please, save my granddad!"
"We need to get to the highest floor. But to beat this creature, we need another Silph Scope. Where did you get it?" I asked Douchebag.
"Erm… In Celadon City, in an electronic store of PokeMart." He answered unsurely.
"Hah, isn`t this just amazing! All path lead to Celadon City." I sarcastically shouted. "You, guard this place and watch over the ghosts and Team Rocket. Don`t let them escape until I will be back!"
"Why would I do that?"
"Because I asked you nicely. This isn`t a usual thing, yes?"
Douchebag was too confused to say something in return. So I sighed, returned Harry back to his pokeball and follows down the road.
I noticed a figure on bike right near us. As I came closer, the figure turned out to be a girl. In a very familiar clothes.
The figure took off her helmet and playfully stared at me.
"So, handsome, need a ride?" Leaf asked me.