29.

Ginter's Perfect Storm


"We don't like to use the term 'parasite.' Parasites hurt their hosts. When Rotom enters a machine, its plasma invigorates a steady charge throughout and keeps it running when it couldn't on its own. I like to say it's like a flame lighting up the tip of a candle. The flame doesn't cause the candle any pain, even if it is slowly wearing it down over time."

"But don't all Ghost-types feed on vitality?" Cyllene asked, shuffling quickly down the cavernous corridor by the light of Luxio's flickering fur. "Rei caught one of those Pokémon once for Eiffel to study, and it drained him just having it in the room. Then it blew out all the lights in Galaxy Hall, and when Kiku worked on them they flickered even worse than before."

"Expensive little rascals to take care of," Ginter agreed. "Electric-Ghost is a unique Typing, to say the least. There've been papers suggesting Rotom feeds on electricity the same way other Ghost-types would feed on vitality. They like to stay longer in machines that have a constant power source. But then, they also lose the Ghost type when they're inside a machine, and gain a different secondary Typing instead. When Rotom is a lawnmower, it's Electric-Grass, for example."

"And a lawnmower is… a…"

"It mows lawns."

"Well, that explains everything."

Ginter chuckled softly, digging his nails into his beard. "What else can I explain without spoiling you too much?"

"Sunyshore City," Cyllene answered without pause. "And Gym Leaders. How many of you are there? What happens when you lose a battle? Are you exiled?"

Now the old man went totally cold, almost stumbling before his right boot caught his weight in the middle of a puddle. His voice was gruff when he responded:

"Why is the name of my home city coming out of your mouth when I never told you what it was?"

Cyllene seemed sheepish. Her bad left shoulder shuddered as she tried to shrug. Ginter watched her forging on ahead to keep up with Ingo's impossible speed. He followed as quickly as he could with the air getting thin and his muscles aching.

"Can you hear my thoughts?"

"No."

"Is Abra telling you what I'm thinking?"

"Abra doesn't even tell me what it's thinking."

"Then where did you hear the name Sunyshore City? And Gym Leaders, too!"

"I'll explain it all later, Gint— Volkner. What's important right now is telling Ingo about my visions. I want to know if he knows anything about this voice I keep hearing."

"But why does this 'Ingo' need to know anything about you!? He's some kind of eldritch goblin or something!"

"He's the Pearl Clan's seer. iridA trusts him. Well, adamaN said she does. And I was supposed to come all the way here to meet him with adamaN, but we got attacked by a Spiritomb, and I panicked and turned adamaN into a Gengar."

Ginter coughed and shivered with cold. The hitch in his knees was getting to be too much to handle. Once they got out of this cave, he thought, he was going to find a good sturdy stick to use as a cane. Everything about it was depressing.

Luxio noticed his slowness, turning around and nipping him lightly on the ankle. A blue jolt of static shot up through his body and sent him stumbling backwards, almost falling before Cyllene was right there to push him up again.

Ginter could feel the heat of her left hand between his shoulder blades through the flimsy fabric of his kimono top. Oddly, only the left one. She steadied him on his feet, only flinching slightly at hot blue static lifting her hair into spikes, then linked her right arm in his left and carefully stepped down a steep patch of rock toward the bottom of the passage.

"Did you also turn the professor into a Snorlax?"

"He wouldn't eat his food. So I made him."

"Well, people weren't turning into Pokémon yesterday morning! Can you get me up to speed, at least? I don't like being slow on the uptake! This accursed, worn-out body slows me down enough as it is!"

Cyllene made an uncomfortable noise in her throat, almost like a growl. Ginter caught a rich red light in the corner of his eye, and followed it down to her left wrist, which she was struggling to conceal behind her back when it was glowing brighter and brighter in the depths.

"Cyllene, you don't have to do this. No one's forcing you. If… if you just give me time, I can devise a way for us to escape—!"

She only shook her head, saying nothing, and tugged him onward. It was only now when Ginter caught a glimpse of the symbol embroidered on her new jacket's sleeves above the cuffs. No longer the vague amalgam of the Galaxy Expedition Team.

Instead it was a golden G with serifs like spikes.

Alarm flared up in Ginter's chest like a firework. His heartbeat stalled, and if Cyllene weren't hanging onto him, he would've crumpled and fallen on his face. But before he could ask about the symbol or the red glow, the passageway finally opened into a vast cavern, and two eyes like huge silver disks were staring at him from fifty feet up in the air.

Instinct clicked. His right hand swung out to aim. His left hand clenched with intensity, and his heels swiveled his whole body into position:

"LUXRAY! THUNDERSHOCK, FULL POW-ACH!"

A long, white, squirming, snakelike arm stretched down out from the shadows and wrapped itself tightly around the old man's neck, silencing him. Two knobby tendril-like fingers on the end of it reached up to tip his chin from side to side. The silver disks of Ingo's eyes narrowed and glowed even brighter.

"Now that I get a better look at this one, he is verrry… different," Ingo rasped from above. "Your smell is incredibly potent. Are you a god?"

Ginter grunted. "I used to be a thunder god. And if you make me piss myself I'll smell even worse."

A blinding red flash cut through the darkness. One moment the snake of Ingo's arm was coiling tighter and tighter around Ginter's neck. The next, its length was wrapped in glowing red chains that seared the skin and tore it into paper. The muscle beneath was shiny and purplish-black.

The hand convulsed. A squelch had the limb slithering and releasing. Ingo made a slight noise — of muted intrigue rather than horror or pain — and he scuttled closer to the two of them over the surface of the ceiling.

Ginter finally succumbed to his tiredness and sank, heaving, to his knees. He took his pack off his shoulders and rummaged around inside for his medicine. In Luxio's light, his hands looked like shriveled old gloves — grayish and dry. Was it possible for knuckles to ache? For veins to bulge out of his skin like spiderwebs and bruise? For fingertips to throb and twitch with the rapid ticking of his pulse? For nails to go brittle and break and bleed?

He popped off the lid and shook out a single pink tablet. Put it in his mouth and choked it down the best he could without water. Cringed at the taste of bitter powder sapping all the moisture out of his tongue. Feeling scars and wrinkles crease and stretch around his lips as he pined for his esophagus to accept it.

Then he rattled the vial and heard the smallest plink-plink within. One tiny tablet left. All that remained of a three-month supply of a life-saving compound that wouldn't be synthesized in a lab for centuries.

This is all a perfect nightmare, Ginter thought, panicked. Vertigo washed over him, and he was suddenly feeling much more Volkner than Ginter. The young man trapped. The Gym Leader lost.

It's like my own personal perfect storm. My power is gone. My identity's a secret. I wreck things instead of fixing them. I'm old as dirt, and NOW the one I've been waiting for all this time is right in front of me. She could PUNCH me if she wanted. Not that it does me any good. I'm dying the day after tomorrow. I'll attract a thunderbolt and this time my heart will explode.

The Red Chain slipped from Ingo's retracting arm, shrinking with the sound of crumbling ashes and curling up on Cyllene's wrist as a bracelet again.

"Did you do this to me, Flint? Did I really piss you off that much? I thought you were the happiest man alive. You sure looked like it when I found you in my room—"

"Who's Flint?" Cyllene asked. She was kneeling near him, warm left hand clutching his shoulder. Her small pink lips were pursed in concern. Her blue-moon eyes were wide with shock and a subtle, magical glint, like lava.

"Hey. You good?"

And then Ginter kissed her.

The orange vial slipped from his fingers and plinked on the hard stone floor. Too quickly he leaned forward, combing his fingers through those stiff blue spikes, static tingling, and his lips fit over hers so perfectly — dried-out, stubbly leather brushing over supple silk.

He was hungry for her warmth. His own heat kept bubbling in his chest. His heart was on the verge of bursting already, and he'd take it. Cyllene was blue lightning. She was physical and real and soft and thrilling and damn if this was a nightmare he was going to turn it lucid and break his own curse before it killed him—

Cyllene shoved him away so hard he could feel his heartbeat in his temples, then boxed him on the ear so sharply his cap fell off. He went totally limp, slumping onto his back and heaving. One of those shriveled gloves came up to stifle the blush creeping over his features. Hide the smile, at least. Grip his nose in a mixture of joy and horror and accursed accursed ACCURSED THAT WAS FUN.

"Jump me," Ginter choked out. "Jump me. End me. Shock me to death."

Luxio snarled, sparking, but wouldn't come forward. Cyllene had stood up and was walking away, toward Ingo, who on his undamaged arm descended slowly from his perch among the stalactites and hovered before her.

The woman shivered, shocked speechless in multiple ways.

"Who is that one?" asked the pair of silver disks.

Cyllene shrugged the best she could. "He… says his name is Volkner. He's a Gym Leader from Sunyshore City. In the future."

"And who are you?"

"I'm…"

The legs stretched this time, and the silver disks scrutinized her from ten, twenty, thirty feet up. Fourteen fingers clutched her shoulders. Purple flesh was flickering where it was torn, then shuddering and knitting with incredible speed.

"I'm Cyllene," she admitted. "That's all I know. I'm Cyllene. I'm a scrivener. And I'm scared."


please help me...


~N~

I've been listening to The Hobbit while knitting sweaters again and wow old crusty wizards sure do like to cast lightning spells in caves.

Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net and by scrivenernoodz (with original illustrations) on Ao3 January 8th, 2024. Don't repost. Do review!