Chapter 14: Sudden Turbulence
Life for Pokémon in the Cradle was in many ways similar to the lives their forebears led in the old world. Lives which would go on for long stretches with few major changes, only to suddenly be upended and sent in a new direction thanks to an unexpected event. Even on a Rescue Team, the same held true for Team Traveler. There was the first mission, the first reward, the first serious brush with danger, the first new teammates.
Most recently, there was making the first rank, Normal Rank, needed to become fully fledged rescuers. In each of these cases, these watershed events would wind up giving way to strange new days...
"Yip!"
That wound up becoming suspiciously similar to the days in the past, or at least it seemed as such to Elty as he leapt out of the way of an incoming glowing ball with a yelp. Battles were not new to the Growlithe, and neither were the glowing balls that his opponent spat up at him. He had encountered both before many moons ago in places far, far away from Tromba. Unlike all those prior occasions, the primary thing that hung in the balance of this battle's outcome was pride, the venue was a courtyard in a dojo with paper lanterns hung on strings above in a criss-crossing pattern, and the opponent...
"Elty?! How do you keep moving out of the way?!"
Was a 'Protector' that up until a few days ago, would've done as well staying in the air with the Nidoran currently perched on his back as a Rhyhorn would've done surfing across Bluewhorl's harbor.
The other thing askew with this new normal on that day was Kiran's presence, or more accurately the lack of it. He had instructed Elty's recently graduated teammates to care for their companions during today's training. "To prepare supplies for a team mission the day after tomorrow," he told Nida and Crom.
"Let's see how good you do under fire!" the Growlithe barked at the Lugia passing behind him. Elty whirled about after the bird to track the creature's awkward, arcing flight path, and inhaled deeply before he spat out some clumps of burning cinders into the air.
The little flecks of fire sailed towards the white bird, only for Nida to notice them and cry out "Look out, Pleo!" Her partner, catching sight of the approaching embers, abruptly pitched forward and let the flames coast past him along with Elty's self-assured confidence into a barrier of light held up by a Glaceon.
"Eh?! But that totally should've-!"
Too late, the mewa was already making a dive for him. While Pleo's awkward and jerky flying made it easy enough to weave about the Lugia's body, the Growlithe's smooth dodge was suddenly interrupted by a sudden pricking jab on his flank.
"Ow!"
Along with some cheers from some similarly prickly Druddigon who were spectating from the sidelines.
"Nice one, Nida!" Crom called out. His younger brother was also there clambered up a railing, his chores at the bakery out of mind and Pyry's problem to grapple with during this short break from work to cheer on his brother's companions.
"Yeah, dale duro!"
"Blurgh, about time," a Nidoran's voice added from further down the field. Elty looked and saw Nida perched on the Lugia in the air above the other end of the battlefield, her ears flat and her expression marked with impatient exasperation…
Wait. Was she expecting something to-?
Elty felt his stomach churn a little and gagged. The Growlithe cast a glance at his flank and saw a barb had sunk into his side. He nipped at the spike and pulled it out with his mouth, spitting it up onto the ground. Had the barb gotten poison into his body? Or was it just the shock of getting hit near his stomach by a fast-moving object that was making him feel so disagreeable? One way or another, he had to avoid moving around until he knew for certain. If he was poisoned, movement would just make it spread in his body. Simple enough...
"Oof! Nida! He's not chasing after us!" Pleo cried out. The Lugia's errant path steered one of his wings into one of the paper lanterns, sending it to the ground with a faint crumpling sound as Nida's voice cried back.
"Then take the fight to hi-! Aaaah!"
That is, it would've been simple enough if Pleo wasn't suddenly diving towards him again. The only small respite in this situation was that Nida was still a little stunned and defocused from Pleo's sudden loss of altitude as he dove towards Elty.
"Pleo! Sudden diving hurts the Nidoran!" she cried, the spike ball hastily trying to regain her wits and break free of her stunned cling to Pleo's plumage.
Make that very stunned and defocused. The Lugia was now bringing his wings together, to attempt another attack and then slip away, no doubt. In just a few more moments, Elty would be left with no option but to try and run after him just to get a shot at him.
Wait a minute...
Maybe he didn't need to move much to keep up with Pleo at all!
"Yeah, and so does this!" he growled. The orange dog leaped into the air over Pleo's head, drawing a sudden, surprised squawk from the young Protector as the Growlithe vanished from his field of view. Pleo then felt himself suddenly drop and just almost hit the ground as something much heavier landed on him. The seabird suddenly pulled himself back into the air in a panic, his body shooting up towards the paper lanterns above and suddenly feeling much lighter.
Smack
"ARGH!"
For a split second, no one on the field was really sure what just happened. Pleo was up in the air as he ought to be, all of the Pokémon who protected the edges of the battlefield were still in their places, Elty's voice was a little loud but could be heard behind him as expected, and Nida was… falling towards the ground? Suddenly, the startled voices of two Druddigon came from the sidelines.
"Pleo, look out!" Crom shouted, the Druddigon waving his arms at the young Protector desperately as his brother added a cry of his own.
"He's on top of you!"
Pleo's eyes widened realized that Elty's voice behind him was too loud and the load on his back too heavy. As Pleo looked back over his shoulder, sure enough, his opponent was perched squarely on the white bird's back where Nida was just a few moments ago.
The Growlithe watched as the spike ball hit the courtyard with a dull thud, and twitched stunned on the ground. The Lugia's body was a tight fit: a little further farther to the left or the right and Elty would have missed Pleo entirely. A little further behind, and he would have lost his footing and fallen back to earth with the Nidoran.
"You're not the only Pokémon that can hitch a ride, you know!" the dog taunted, taking a moment to stick his tongue out at the disoriented Nidoran on the ground below.
"Ack! Nida!" Pleo cried out. The bird's body wobbled wildly in the air and lurched here and there, barely missing wires and paper lanterns as he tried desperately to adjust himself with the sudden extra weight his new passenger brought along.
Tight fit or not, as Elty clung to Pleo's back, he had the Lugia exactly where he wanted him. The Growlithe inhaled deeply, and then spat a gout of small flames out… all over his opponent's back.
"A-Aah! Get off! Get off!"
Pleo pitched upwards wildly, crying out in pain from the burning embers all the while when suddenly Elty's luck ran out. First he felt their paws' grip against Pleo's back waver, then the vanes of Pleo's feathers, and then empty air as the dog fell flailing and yelping back to earth.
"W-Whoa!"
Then came the feeling of the ground slamming against his chin, and the sundry dull pains that pinwheeling along a courtyard was wont to do to a Pokémon. After a few tumbles, the Growlithe came to a groaning stop on his side.
"Ugh, okay, I should've used my jaws instea-"
"Here, have another!" Nida's voice huffed.
Before Elty could get back up, he felt a sharp pain on his stomach. The dog quickly threw himself onto his feet, just in time to see a Nidoran leg come straight for his head.
Thwack
"Agh!"
Elty cried out and recoiled from the little spike ball's still surprisingly tough kicks. When the Growlithe shook some sense back into his head, he found himself locking eyes with a glowering Nida for a fleeting moment.
"Hey!" he growled. The Growlithe lunged after the Nidoran to try and nip back at her, but the blue Pokémon managed to hop out of his way and sprint down the field as the orange dog continued fuming. "Were you just sitting there waiting for me to-?!"
Before Elty could finish his train of thought, he heard frantic squawking from above...
"H-Help!" the young Protector cried out. "This move's not as easy as I thought it wou-!"
And looked up just in time to watch Pleo get tangled in the wires above. The cords shuddered a moment and then snapped, sending the bird falling spread-winged along with a couple chains of paper lanterns onto the hapless Growlithe.
Wham
The sound of Pleo's crash into his opponent drew a chorus of winces from the Pokémon that were maintaining the customary barriers on the sidelines, as well as from a certain pair of observing Druddigon.
"Ooh…" Cenn shuddered.
"That fall looked like it hurt," Crom murmured, putting a claw to his mouth.
"Pollito!" Mosca squawked, her voice tinged with panic. "Are you alright?!"
"Is Plancha… Whatever it is supposed to hurt this much?" Pleo groaned as he tottered up and stumbled off of Elty, dragging some detached cords and paper lanterns along with him. Nida dashed over, expecting Elty to spring up at any second to continue harrying her dazed partner...
Except after a few moments, she noticed that Elty was still on the ground and not moving.
"I think that we should probably stop there for the day," Mosca hastily interjected, shaking her head.
The Hawlucha sprang up and vaulted over the barriers and onto the field, making her way towards Elty's prone body. As the Dojo's Maestra drew near to Elty's body, the Pokémon that maintained the barriers for the sparring session broke ranks and scattered along the Dojo's hallways for their customary breaks. Cenn also headed back for his mother's bakery with a cheery farewell and "Make sure that Gabite works his due!" between the two.
Nida harrumphed in the direction of the sprawled-out Growlithe as Pleo began to weakly waddle back over to the sidelines to get healed… and his wings untangled from their new 'accessories'. As the Nidoran followed after and reached the edge of the field, she hesitated a moment and turned her head back to Elty. The Growlithe still spread out on the ground as Mosca sidled up against the dog and prodded his unresponsive body.
"Figures you would overdo it," she sighed, before turning back to head over to the Growlithe's side. Before she reached her opponent, he finally opened his eyes, and stumbled to his feet in front of the Hawlucha.
"Urgh, can the room stop spinning a moment before we continue?" he groaned. The Pokémon then noticing the Nidoran beside him, and a scowling frown spread over his muzzle. "Why are you here anyways?"
"I'm not saying that you didn't deserve your beating for that stunt you pulled," Nida growled. "But you seemed like you could use a little help."
"I'm fine," Elty huffed, the Fire-Type consciously inching away from Mosca's claws. He could get back to the sidelines by himself, and certainly didn't need to be carried around like a tired pup. "And I could've turned things around if I'd noticed the feather duster above me sooner!"
Nida sighed and shook her head as the Growlithe limped off the field ahead of the Hawlucha, the magenta bird occasionally stopping to help ease the dog along back to the sidelines in spite of his audible insistence that he was fine. As Nida followed along after the two, she decided to stay mum about her frustrations from the battle. If she was going to chew Elty out, it would make more sense to do so when they were all feeling a bit better.
Perhaps it was the abundance of headaches between the three of them, or the fact that Crom was able to help a bit more than normal with some careful guidance from Mosca, but the process of treating Pleo, Nida, and Elty's wounds that day seemed to go by quicker than normal. The customary Oran berries were peeled, applied, and their remains devoured. Some Pecha juice was dabbed on Elty's flank just in case if Nida's poison was lingering in his body, the fruit that made it meeting a fate much the same as the Oran berries shortly afterwards. Before long, the three were drinking up water side-by-side from bowls set out before them, the strain and aches of battle having largely left their bodies.
"Good work out there, you two," Mosca congratulated. "And I must admit that you seem to be improving a bit yourself, Elty."
The Hawlucha gave a cheerful pat to the Growlithe's head before she carried on down the hallway. After she left, the Fire-Type shook his head and grumbled under his breath.
"I'd improve faster if you'd give me more to work with in these lopsided matches!"
"Elty, relax. It's not that bad as Community Service," Nida admonished, looking up from her bowl of water. "The more Pleo improves here, the sooner you can pull your weight doing something other than being a punching bag."
"Yeah, Kiran was talking about taking up a mission for after the training session tomorrow," Crom added. As Elty rolled his eyes at the suggestion, the Druddigon took a moment to shift and sun himself along the edge of the corridor before he continued on. "We should head back to get a look the mission board-"
"Wait!"
All eyes turned suddenly to Pleo, in awkward silence. After a pause, the young Protector shook his head as he began to explain to the group...
"Before that… there was one thing that I wanted to do first."
Pleo's 'one thing' soon lead the party out of the Dojo and along a path into the hillsides surrounding the town. The scenery was not particularly out of the ordinary from the walk towards Nida's burrow. There were the same reed mats spread out here and there with mailboxes sitting nearby, the same nests and burrows mixed with the occasional solitary shack, the same town by the sea could be seen below through the sparse treetops. Despite all of that, the team was still uneasy the entire time through the trek when they came to a fork to the left and to the right in the path.
"Look, I know you're trying to be nice to Cassie and all, but..." Crom murmured as he hopped over a root growing across the path. "Couldn't you just have Hariti give Cassie her picture back at the Day Care? It's been three days since we've been back from the testing mission!"
"Hariti said that she was sick with 'cold'!" Pleo answered. It had seemed strange to him, that being this 'cold' would make a Pokémon unable to come to the Day Care when Hariti was cold enough to freeze berries. Hariti insisted that despite that, she was perfectly healthy, even though she was by far the coldest Pokémon Pleo knew on Tromba.
"And I tried looking around for Ander's house to give it to her that way, but I didn't know where it was until last night."
"How on earth did you find out where Ander's house is anyways?" Nida asked.
"Oh, I asked the purple Pokémon with the belt and the black doggy at dinner! They said that if I went there and had them 'meet their makers,' I'd be doing the world a service!" Pleo chirped happily as he flew along the path and down the left fork.
Pleo's words immediately made Nida and Crom go silent and trade looks with each other. If Pleo was talking about that Machoke and Mightyena who intervened when he met Hatteras for the first time… then that meant...
"Except… I don't understand why they said 'makers.' They were talking about Cassie, right? She was the one who made the pictures... So couldn't they just meet her whenever they saw her? And does 'makers' mean that she has siblings like you, Nida?"
"Um… Pleo," Nida replied. As she followed along the left fork, the Nidoran flattened out her ears. No matter how that meeting went over, it couldn't possibly end well.
"Pleo?" Crom began, his voice uneasy and faltering. "I don't think that- that Pokémon-"
Before he could finish, he was interrupted by the sound of Pleo coming to a running stop along the ground.
"But if I give it back," he continued, turning back to the group. "Then she has to think I'm not mean anymore! Right?"
As Nida and Crom stammered and struggled to think of how to respond to Pleo, they were beaten to the punch by the Growlithe accompanying them.
"Look, I'd never say 'give up', but I honestly think you're throwing good effort after bad here," Elty sighed as he trotted along the path. The other two seemed to be having trouble explaining the Machoke and Mightyena's ill will to the little Pokémon, so maybe it was best to head things off by sending Pleo down a different Nidoran hole. "Marked are really klanowy types, and you can't ever count on them being too open with normal Pokémon."
"Hmm?" Pleo asked. "What do you mean by-?"
Before the little Lugia could finish his question, he felt a round and hard object brushing up against his foot. Which made him look down and see a round green nut stuck in the ground.
"Huh?"
One which immediately made Nida and Crom recoil its sight.
"Ack!" Nida squeaked.
"Pleo, get away from that!" Crom shouted. The Druddigon ran up and suddenly pulled Pleo back by his tail, staring wide-eyed at the seed on the ground. "It's dangerous!"
"Eh?!" Pleo cried out. After Crom's grip slipped on his tail, the Lugia flew up into a tree branch, staring down back at the nut anxiously from above. "What is it?!"
"Oh, please. It's harmless," Elty scoffed, rolling his eyes as he went up to the nut. Without bothering to so much as inspect the seed, he picked it up with his mouth and revealed it to be half of a nut that had been cleaved down the middle.
"I've never heard of half an Apricorn ever hurting anyone," he said, before spitting the green seed fragment out in front of him.
"'Apricorn'?" Pleo asked before fluttering back down to the ground. "What are they and why are they not dangerous when there's only half of one?"
"Some of the Pokémon in town call them Bonguris. They're big, colorful nuts that grow on short trees," Nida explained. "None on this side of the island, but if you ever see one, you should stay away from them. They aren't nicknamed breanueces for nothing."
"'Brea-' wha...?"
"They have a curse attached to them that will trap Pokémon that disturb them inside," Crom replied. "If you don't cleanly break them apart or if you're not tough enough to break out of them right away... You'll be stuck there without anything to eat or drink until someone finds the Apricorn and breaks you out of there!"
"But why is that so dangerous?" Pleo insisted as Crom kicked the chunk of Apricorn into the bushes.
"You know that 'meet your makers' thing those Pokémon told you about? That's what happens," Elty replied. "What on earth do you think happens if you don't get food or water for a long time?"
Pleo blanched and stared at the Growlithe. 'Meeting one's makers' was sounding less inviting than Pleo thought. Would one's 'makers' only come to you if you were miserable and extremely hungry and thirsty? Did those Pokémon want Pleo trap Ander and his family in tiny nuts? And what of the Pokémon that helped Ander make meat? He overheard at an earlier dinner that they too were supposed to also have 'met their makers'... So the help Ander got required Pokémon to also get trapped themselves?
Pleo shook his head. Whatever this phrase meant, it was clearly not something that was good at all.
"Oh…"
"On the other hand," Elty said as the group continued on down the path. "If you grind them up after you bust 'em, Apricorns apparently make for some really good shakes."
Maybe Elty was telling the truth, maybe he was leading them on in hopes that they might foolishly try to make these 'shakes' for themselves… But one thing was for certain in the minds of the other three Pokémon: they would much rather play it safe than try these 'shakes' out.
"We'll take your word for it, Elty," Nida mumbled.
As the group continued along the path, they noticed that their surroundings began to look a little strange. The path was still clearly marked, but there were no mats or mailboxes to be seen around them. Little patches here and there had undergrowth growing instead of being cleared out. And on top of all of that...
"Wait a minute, if there's no Apricorn trees on this side of the island," Pleo murmured. "Why would there be part of an Apricorn-?"
It was then that the team rounded a bend in the path. The form of a high-roofed hut with a small door, and wide but short windows near the eaves came into view. Some smoke puffed lazily from a hole in the back and along the side there was a mound of charred rubbish.
"Oh! I think that's the house!"
So this was a place where 'meat' was sold? He had gathered through bits and pieces of conversation that the 'meat' that 'scavvers' like Ander sold actually needed to be treated specially beforehand. It needed to be cleaned, dried, and preserved in order to make it look and smell different so that everyone in town would find it agreeable. On top of that, this meat had to specifically be made by scavvers finding Pokémon that had been found to 'have already met their makers' to maintain peace with the ferals outside town.
As the team continued up the entrance to the house, the contents of the rubbish heap became clearer and sent a chill down Pleo's back. Although much of the heap's contents had been blackened beyond recognition, little bits and pieces could still be made out. Chunks of Apricorns that had been hacked to pieces, loose feathers, scales, clumps of fur, and broken discolored objects that looked like pieces of burnt, white wood. Were these things left by the Pokémon Ander had found?
Pleo shuddered as he began wondering what sort of dreadful thing must happen to Pokémon that 'met their makers.' Why the 'meeting' must surely be something painful and frightening if the Pokémon left behind bits of the things that covered their bodies! That was what the doggy and the purple Pokémon wanted him to do to Ander and his family? Before Pleo could think longer about what else those Pokémon must have left in the pile or what the whitish things that looked like wood were, he heard Elty's voice calling out.
"Hey, buddy! You're a scavver, right? How much for your wares?"
The team turned and saw that Elty had spotted a Scyther with a blotch in the shape of a five-tailed comet on his head at the door, who cautiously answered the Growlithe...
"Hmm? It's-"
Until he spotted the white bird following along.
"I-It's not for sale!" Ander buzzed in a panic. "We're closed!"
The Scyther hopped back and slammed the door to the hut shut with a terrific crash. As the team recoiled from the din, they then heard the sound of a faint creaking, and then a second, softer crash. When they looked back at the doorway, they saw that the door to Ander's hut had fallen off of its hinges and toppled over...
"A-Aaaah!"
... much to the horror of the mantis, who was now fleeing deeper into the hut as fast as his legs and wings could carry him.
"How hard did he slam that thing?" Elty asked as he eyed the fallen door with a quizzical tilt.
"I'm not here to be mean!" Pleo squawked after the Bug-Type. "I'm not here to make you meet your makers!"
The rest of Team Traveller threw paws and claws over their faces. Of all of the ways Pleo could have tried to soothe Ander...
"Just listen to me a moment!" he insisted.
Much to everyone's astonishment, Pleo then suddenly flew up. The little Protector beating his wings and sailing into the hut, calling after the Scyther all the while as sounds of a racket and furniture upending began to break out.
"Pleo, wait!" Crom cried. "What are you-?!"
"Come back here!" Nida shouted. The Nidoran hopped bounded in after the young Lugia, her teammates rushing after her to keep up.
The inside of Ander's hut was a mess. In his rush to try and escape the Lugia, the mantis had upturned tables and scattered various shades of tan and reddish-brown dried matter, presumably meat, all over the ground. The Scyther flew up to one of the high windows to try and exit the house that way, only to lose his balance after brushing up against the wall and tumble to the ground, Pleo standing over him and in the way of any escape.
"Pl-Please!" the Scyther begged, the creature beginning to curl up and tremble. "T-Take anything you want! Just go away!"
"Wait, really?" the Growlithe asked excitedly from the side, as he began to sniff at the hunks of meat littering the hut's floor. "Because I could actually go for some-"
"Elty!" Nida scolded. She biffed the back of the dog's head and her eyes narrowed into a venomous glare, one that was joined by a similarly disapproving scowl by Crom. The Growlithe shook his head and huffed back defensively.
"What? He offered it!"
Pleo chirped insistently to the quailing Scyther, beating his wings to try and grab his attention. Couldn't he see that he was just trying to be helpful? Maybe if he just explained why he came...
"I wanted to give Cassie something!" he blurted out.
The Scyther stared up at the young bird blankly, stuttering as he began to repeat Pleo's words.
"You- You wanted to give-"
A horrified expression suddenly washed over his face… Pleo was here, for his daughter. The Scyther immediately propped himself up on the ground with his scythes and hissed back at Pleo.
"N-No! You leave her out of this!"
"B-But I-" Pleo stammered. While Ander's voice was clearly still frightened, it had suddenly developed a worrisome fierceness to it. Team Traveller's blood went cold as they realized that Ander was now advancing on Pleo, his blades drawn and pointed directly at him.
"Ander, wait!" Crom cried desperately. "It's not what you thi-!"
But before the Druddigon could finish, Ander interrupted him with a shriek as he swung a scythe at Pleo's breast.
"G-Get out!"
The Lugia hopped back with a cry, the scythe just barely missing him before it carried on into an upended table and dug itself into the wood. As Ander hastily tried to free his arm from the table, Pleo's nerves failed him.
"Aaaaah!"
The young Protector darted behind his also wide-eyed teammates, trying to hide behind them from this much bigger and erratic creature that had just slashed at him.
"Um, yeah. 'Running' would be a good option right about now!" Elty yelped, his fur standing wildly on end. Nida's pelt was in similar straits, flecked with upright barbs that made her look like a small, terrified, blue pincushion.
"C-Come on, let's get out of here!" she cried. Nida turned and bolted for the door, her teammates swiftly fleeing after her in a mad dash past the damaged doorway...
Directly into the path of a startled-looking mother Scyther and her accompanying child.
"A-Ack!" she buzzed. The Scyther hopped back and drew her blades, her startled voice joined by the frightened hiss of a young Scyther who quickly hid behind her mother for shelter.
"M-Mom?! What is the demon doing at our house?!"
"Why are you here?!" the mother shrieked, waving her scythes at the group. "And why did you bring that thing with you?!"
This was bad. The team could already hear Ander pulling himself free of the table he had gotten his blade stuck in, and here was his mate, in every bit as tense a mood, blocking their escape route.
"Oookay, on second thought, you can keep the jerky!" Elty whined, the color beginning to drain from his muzzle at the sight of the other Scyther.
"S-Sandra, please! It's us!" Crom pleaded, his wings folded back to make himself look small. "We're just other Pokémon from town! Mom buys things from you from time to time!"
"This is all just a misunderstanding!" Nida added, her ears lowered, her limbs stiff and unresponsive, and her heart racing as she hoped that the Bug-Types ahead would relent.
But no luck, this 'Sandra' was not budging. Worse still, she too was advancing on the group with blades drawn just as the team heard Ander finally pulling himself free inside the shop and rushing for the door with a sharp buzz. How had this even happened? Pleo had come to do something nice, and here these strange creatures were ready to attack him!
Pleo watched helplessly as Sandra lifted one of her blades into the air. Why did she have to attack him?! If only- If only they could just understand...
"I-I just wanted to give Cassie her picture back!" he cried out, screwing his eyes shut.
Nothing came afterwards. A long, uneasy, silent nothing. Pleo opened his eyes and saw Sandra had lowered her blade to her side, and was trading wary and hesitant looks with Ander and her daughter. Every now and then, their gaze would shift back to stare at the rest of the Team Traveller, the poor creatures still shivering from fright from their ordeal.
"Th-That's right! We've got it right here!" Crom cried. The Druddigon hastily dug out Cassie's drawing from a small satchel that Nida brought along and threw picture over, his claws still shaking as the paper fluttered to Cassie's feet.
The Scyther scooped up the paper in between the flats of her blades and quickly drew her drawing back to her chest, hiding behind her mother and avoiding eye contact with Pleo all the while.
"You dropped it the day before we went into the dungeon… I-I thought that you might want it back," he said in a small and quiet voice. "Wh-Why did you think that I came here?"
"T-To hurt us for knowing the truth about Pokémon like you!" the little Scyther suddenly buzzed back, causing expressions of panic to start to spread over her parents' faces.
"Huh?!" Pleo squawked in shock. "What truth?!"
"Cassie, wait!" Ander pleaded, waving his arms to the younger Scyther desperately to keep her from saying anything further. But it was too late, his child had already begun to bare her fears to the group.
"You're a demon! A nightmare from the Abyss that was brought to life! A-And after long enough, you'll just wind up bullying and destroying everything around you!" she cried from behind her mother. "A-And if we try and do anything about it, you'll try and end our world like the old demons!"
What? 'Demon'? 'Abyss'?
"I-I- Th-That's not true at all!" Pleo protested, beating his wings out. Nida and Crom immediately butted in, Pleo was supposed to be Tromba Island's Protector! How could the evil creature that Cassie was describing possibly be the same Pleo that Team Traveller had befriended and come to know over the last few weeks?
"Travellers Above! It's insane, that's what!" the Nidoran interjected.
"He's the Protector! He defends us!" the Druddigon cried.
"Is that why the town's been in such rough shape since you came, then?" Sandra asked. "The storm? The raid?"
The storm? The raid? Well- Yes, the second happened while he was around, and the first was supposed to have happened the night before he came to Bluewhorl, Pleo thought to himself. But they couldn't be his fault! It was impossible! … Wasn't it? He… He hadn't done anything directly to cause them… The young Protector opened his mouth to try and say something back, but every time, the words died as they came up.
Could it really be that somehow… he had made all those bad things happen without knowing about it?
"I- I-"
Pleo continued to stammer and his mind returned over and over to the dark possibilities that Cassie had raised when he felt a tug at his wing. Without thinking, he followed along, and slipped out of the cordon Ander and Sandra had formed with the rest of the group. Sandra and Cassie had went up beside Ander next to the broken door to their hut, the little one among them hiding behind their parents. In the other direction, the path was open, with no one left to block it.
"Pleo, Cassie's got her picture back," the Nidoran said, turning down the path. "Let's just get out of here."
"Maybe it would be better if we just parted ways here," Crom added uneasily. The dragon began to trudge on ahead when a panicked voice suddenly called out from behind, the group turning back to see Ander waving desperately.
"Wait!" the Bug-Type interrupted, his face carrying the same sort of look one develops after a sudden, sinking realization. "Before you go- Can we- Can we please keep what happened just between us?"
Elty's eyes narrowed into a venomous glare. After everything that happened, the bug had the gall to ask them to keep quiet?
"Eh?! Between us?!" the dog snarled back at the Scyther. "We're the weaker Pokémon here and you were the one who took a swing at us and flanked us with your mate! Why on earth should we shut up about that?!"
The mantis looked back at the group, his eyes becoming more and more despairing until Cassie spoke up.
"D-Daddy? Are they going to get us in trouble?"
Elty blinked and his glare softened. The young mantis had raised a good point. Even among pirates, going around trying to attack other Pokémon for no reason was a fast way to make enemies. (Granted, if they had something you wanted and you were tougher, that was usually a good enough reason to make them enemies anyways.) Did this family of Pokémon really need more of them?
"Because this is all we have," Ander finally replied, lowering his gaze to the ground. "And it only takes a few upset Pokémon to lose everything."
The other Pokémon on Team Traveler began look at each other uneasily. Yes, Ander and Sandra had accosted them... but if others knew about this incident, what would they think? The Marked were supposed to have been descended from the same Pokémon that put the world in its current state long, long ago…
Considering how Pleo even found out how to find this place, would everyone understand that Ander trying to attack Pleo was all due to a misunderstanding?
Would everyone even want to understand?
The question lingered in the minds of the team, and as much as they wanted to give a confident, reassuring answer back to Ander and his family... they simply couldn't.
"Please, just forget that today happened," Sandra said. Her voice carried a less timorous tone than her mate's but still had a worn, defeated air to it. "All we want is to be left alone and allowed to live in peace."
"Pokémon like us have already accepted there's nothing we can do to stop your kind," Ander buzzed glumly to Pleo. "Not anymore."
No one on Team Traveler said anything after that, they simply kept quiet and turned away, setting off on the path back towards town. As the shack faded away behind them, the four decided that it would be best to heed the scavenger family's pleas and not tell anyone else about the events that transpired on that little path in the hills. Little by little, they trudged down the path, away from that lonely hut surrounded by undergrowth, and back towards the Rescue Guild.
All the while, Pleo couldn't help but think to himself over and over again…
Could all of the bad things that happened to the town lately…
Could they all really have happened because of him?
Author's Notes:
- (¡)dale duro! - Spanish: roughly, "hit him hard!"
- klanowy - Polish: "clannish"
- Bonguris - Spanish: Localization name for "Apricorns", derived from name in Japanese language media. In Latin American dub of anime, "Apricorn" is used instead.
- breanueces - Spanish: "tarnuts"
