Chapter Forty-Three:
The Trail We Leave Behind
Disclaimer: I do not own the series Pokémon. Like, at all. It and all its respectable characters are © to Game Freak and Satoshi Tajiri. However, all writing contents and semi-plots here are © to me; unless it is stated otherwise. All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I do not own them.
Notes: And now, another "something different" chapter! It took me a while to finalize but I'm glad with how it turned out!
Current Team: Keno the Swampert, Sela the Mightyena, Ambrose the Kirlia, Faye the Swellow, Nux the Gyarados, Gunner the Aron
Badges Won: Stone Badge, Knuckle Badge, Dynamo Badge
I shall be telling this with a sigh.
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost, excerpt of "The Road Not Taken"
Sela remembered the chaos.
One moment, the skies were blue, wide, and welcoming. Not a cloud in the sky, no signs of inclement weather, no signs of eruptions or storms. A perfect day to hunt. In the blink of an eye, it changed. Darkness blanketed overhead, long before night was even expected to come. The air itself raged and crackled with unseen energy that felt wrong. So, so very wrong.
Sela felt she couldn't trust her eyes, let alone her nose. Bolts of the errant energy snapped and lashed out at random, unfettered and shocking. The fur along her hackles and backside rippled upward, leaving her nerves frayed and on-edge. Out of the sudden snaps of energy and light, Sela saw the silhouettes of foreign pokémon, ones she couldn't make heads or tails of, but she still skirted around regardless. The scent of burning ozone and brimstone, of fragrant grasses and harsh subzero ice deterred her from getting closer.
It was only in the thralls of confusion and trying to make sense of what was happening did she remember herself.
Shay…
…Shay! Her trainer was without protection, alone with only those other humans that Sela didn't trust. Not in keeping her trainer safe, not in the least. The panic clawed at her throat, rising higher and higher until the acrid taste invaded her mouth, stained her throat and tongue. The world itself seemed to be turning on its head. The forest that had cloaked her was suddenly so foreign and ominous, she couldn't smell any signs of familiarity she had painstakingly made sure to cover over and mark the last few weeks.
The sky above rumbled overhead, and the very earth beneath her paws trembled. The trees shook their branches in protest, the voices of thousands of leaves crying out and drowning out most other sounds. Instinct was ringing klaxon alarms inside Sela, bidding her to seek shelter until it was safe to venture out again. Sela chose to ignore all that, and bolted helter-skelter into the underbrush, back to where she knew her trainer was meant to be at.
The roaring of her blood, the drumming of her heart, pounded away inside her ears as though set to the tempo of a war drum. All she knew was that she needed to get back to Shay, to protect her, to be there for her trainer and her fellow teammates. Her new pack.
The sudden intrusion of that thought nearly set Sela to tripping over her own paws. Her sure-footed steps devolved into an erratic, graceless fumbling. Twice, she nearly toppled head over heels and onto her snout before she managed to come to a full and relatively safe stop. Her heart continued pounding within her chest, a tremble in every breathe she sucked in and let out.
Her teammates…were her pack now. Even that damnably smug psychic. And Shay…
Shay was their pack leader. Yet, she was so much more than just that. She was their caretaker, their confidante…their friend.
Once upon a time, Sela would never have admitted as such. Never about a human, at any rate.
She shook her head, as if to clear it of her tumultuous thoughts. Sela sniffed the air tentatively and froze at a familiar thread of a scent. It was faint, but it was there. She began to follow it, ducking under cover when one of the foreign pokémon treaded too close to her. They writhed and cried out, their wails of confusion and discomfort echoing in her ears.
Shutupshutupshutupshutup—!
She nearly fell over herself at the sudden lumbering wall of metal that rose up in front of her, her surprised maraschino-bright gaze staring right back at her in the shine of its hide.
She got a strong whiff of the living metal's scent and her snout pinched into a snarl.
"GUNNER?! What in the hell are you doing out here?!"
The Aron flinched away at the sound of her voice, bright blue eyes watering as they landed on her. "I…I was looking for food."
The answer only incensed Sela further. "YOU HAVE FOOD BACK AT CAMP! BACK WITH SHAY, WHERE YOU SHOULD BE!"
The Aron only shrunk further away from her, blue eyes glassy and wider than ever. "I…I'm sorry. I-I just…there's just not a l-lot of metal in-in the food. I…I needed more."
Gunner hiccupped and retreated a few steps away from Sela, terror written so plainly on his face. Sela's snarl momentarily dropped, shock overtaking her. Gunner was terrified of her. He stared at Sela as if he was about to die. Like she was going to attack him.
She took a step back, ears folding to press against her skull. "I...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
The little metal pokémon did not unfold from his quivering, curled position. Sela took a small step forward, lowering her head toward him. "We have to get back. The both of us. Now."
He finally stopped shaking and lifted his head, cautiously at first and meeting her gaze.
"What's going on? The sky isn't right, and…something in the air doesn't feel right either."
Sela swallowed back a snappish response. They were wasting time.
"I know. That's why we need to go, and we have to go now."
Slowly, Gunner unfolded himself and got up to his feet, looking up at Sela the entire time. She gave him an encouraging nudge with her nose and then turned it to the air, trying to pick out a familiar scent. Anything at all, even the faintest or oldest whiffs she could muster.
"What's wrong?"
"Everything…it's different now."
How had she missed it? The changing of the trees, the ground, the entirety of their environment—it was no longer a forest that hugged the rugged landscape at the base of a mountain. The trees and underbrush were sparser, leaving them with less cover. Sela could make out openings to sweeping, wide open spaces, adorned with fields of grasses and wildflowers.
In the distance, there were rocky outcroppings that rose upwards at a steady incline, and even the shimmer of a river caught her eye. She nudged at Gunner once more, encouraging him to move forward. It was late in the afternoon, the sun nearly setting in the western horizon.
They were no longer within the safety of the thick forests they had been camping in for the better part of nearly a month now. They were exposed and vulnerable to attack. The strange quality of the sky was still present, distorting the golden rays of the setting sun and the burning sky beyond, energy snapping and crackling in errant arcs that made Sela flinch.
Flashes of light sparked up around them, and when they faded, a pokémon stood in place. Some were merely confused and fearful. Others lashed out at the nearest living being they could find, triggering a brawl between two, then three, then five, until a sizeable group were at each other's throats. Strange pokémon that Sela didn't recognize, and some that sit right with her.
She turned to Gunner and began herding him away, trying to put as much distance between them and the battling pokémon. She flinched at their wild screams and demands for blood and retribution.
"What happened? Where's all the mountains? The trees?"
"I…I don't know, but we need to get to cover, right now."
An outcropping of rocks stood out to her, still within the confines of the strange dome that trapped them. It seemed to stretch on and on. She briefly wondered just how large it actually was. Miles, perhaps? The actual distance beyond this open valley were too fuzzy to make out clearly, distorted by the dome's fizzling energy. But everything around them felt wrong, smelled wrong.
They were a long way from home. Sela began herding Gunner towards the outcropping, shadowing his every step while acting as lookout. A vaguely familiar yellow pokémon with stripes down their backside and a long tail suddenly appeared in front of them. They shook their head, long ears whipping back and forth as they looked around in confusion around them, fear apparent in their eyes as they alit upon Sela and Gunner.
"Wh-what's going on here? Where am I?!"
They looked to Sela and Gunner pleadingly, desperation in their voice. They even followed after the pair before Sela bristled and snarled menacingly at the little rodent, flames sparking up in her maw. She settled herself between Gunner and the yellow pokémon, lips peeled back to show off her fiery teeth.
"We've got our own problems, get lost, rat!"
The pokémon bristled right back, errant sparks of electrical energy flaring out from its reddened cheeks.
"We don't know what's going on, either. We're sorry, but we can't help you."
Gunner's softer-edged words seemed to break the tension that held the other pokémon in place. Slowly, they crumpled in on themselves, looking helplessly between Sela and Gunner. They took a step back, then another, and kept going until they had turned tail, fleeing from the pair.
Sela snorted, extinguishing the flames from her fangs and glanced back at the Aron approvingly.
"Not the way I would have done it, but…good job. Now let's go."
She pivoted on her heels and nudged Gunner along, back toward their intended retreat. Already, she could spy what she suspected—a cleft in the rocks that could serve as a temporary shelter, just big enough for them both.
"You've been really defensive lately…it's kind of scary." Gunner replied back.
Sela growled. "I…I know. I just…felt like something bad was coming. And THIS—" she jerked her head to indicate their surroundings. "—looks pretty bad to me."
She should have stayed closer to camp. Closer to her trainer, and closer to keep an eye on everything. Instead, she had let her hungry gut decide for her on what to do for the day.
And it wasn't like Shay had been letting her go hungry, no. Among the many strange little rituals those humans were doing, she'd been learning to hunt and trap small prey animal better and more efficiently, like plump rabbits and lean deer. Animals that weren't pokémon in the least, even if they did share some manner of resemblance at times.
The first time Sela had seen a plain dog, it had been like looking in a distorted mirror. Everything had seemed wrong about that thing, like a mockery of what she was. Yes, it walked on four legs, had fur, a pointed muzzle and wagging tail—but there was just something about them that made her skin crawl and itch.
It was the eyes, she had decided at the time. There was something off about them through their eyes.
She didn't know why Shay ever got excited over the plain creatures.
Sela shook her head of those thoughts, growling to herself as she did. She nudged Gunner along until she had herded him inside the cleft of the stony outcropping, and she promptly took point, sitting ahead of him at the entrance. "Do you…do you think it's going to go away soon? And we'll get back to Shay soon?"
"…I hope so."
Above them, the sky rent out a terrible clap of thunder that shook the very air around them. Gunner pressed into Sela's haunches until it hurt, but she didn't have the heart to snap at him. She laid her head down, glowering at the unfamiliar world beyond their little shelter.
Sela's eyes snapped open, the pounding rush of her blood roaring in her ears. She'd fallen asleep.
She never fell asleep on watch. Not with her siblings, and never with Shay either.
And yet, she found her eyelids heavy, her body sluggish, and everything she tried to do was slow to react. Standing up, shaking her head, seeing and actually registering what she was looking at, hearing beyond the blood pounding away and her heartbeat in tandem.
Swirls of colour flowed before her, spinning in mesmerizing circles that began to make her dizzy and sleepy all at once. She almost let it lull her back into the black—but she was dimly aware of the klaxons going off in the back of her skull, screaming at her to stay on her paws and fight back.
Sela shook her head, trying to clear it—
—and Gunner's scream broke her out of the trance.
The being before her faltered and floundered, wide eyes growing wider in the face of her sudden clarity. Its body was wispy and incorporeal, flicking like a dark flame at its edges. Its jagged smile dipped into a frown of surprise.
"Oh—OH! Oh, no! She's waking up!"
"HOW?!"
Sela snarled and launched herself at the amorphous shape, instinct screaming inside her to attack, attack, ATTACK. Flames ignited along the tips of her teeth, and she slammed her jaws shut, and that wriggling something squealed in agony. It tried to break free from her, and that made her tighten her grip even more.
"Get 'er offa me! She's burning me!" A shrill, panicked voice screamed in her ears. She doubled down, snarling as she kept her jaws locked on the thing she had a hold of.
Gunner let out another wail. It broke her concentration and the thing trapped in her jaws ripped away from her, fleeing with a trail of smoke and flame following after it. Before she could gather her bearings, red-hot pain flared up along her backside; claws tearing her open.
The blow knocked the wind from her lungs, and she was sent careening to the ground, struggling to get air back into her. Something hot and liquid rushed through her thick fur and splattered to the ground.
Sela staggered upright, turning to face her attackers. She narrowed her eyes.
Ghost-types. She'd heard of them, once upon a time from her mother and father, but had never encountered one before. One was an amorphous floating ball of gas, their large eyes shimmering with disdain and a mouth that seemed all too wide and full of teeth. Everything about it screamed 'sinister'. The other was larger, its shape a bit more solid-looking, and this one had claws, separate from its body and floating about freely. Red liquid dripped from one of those detached set of claws. Gunner was tightly clutched in the other.
"Put. Him. Down. NOW!"
The larger of the two's face split into a menacing smile. They shook Gunner, earning another shout from the Aron.
"What? This little thing? But he's our new favourite toy!"
The ghosts began to drift in opposite directions. Sela eyed them both, figuring out which one she should attack first.
The larger ghost cackled. "Besides, what're you gonna do when we put you back to sleep, huh—WHOA!"
Sela lunged at the larger of the two, ignoring the burning that flared all along her backside and flank. Her sudden attack took both ghosts off guard, but the larger one was quicker than her.
He thrusted the hand holding Gunner in front of him like a shield, cackling all the while. Gunner whimpered, blue eyes growing round and wide as Sela came to a halt before him, a flash of terror crossing her face.
She didn't see the other hand coming in from above. It slammed home against her skull and she screamed as claws ripped downwards so deep and hard, she could hear claws scraping against bone. It evolved into mind-searing agony when one of those claws stabbed into her eye and dug in, ripping and tearing.
She tried pulling back, but the claws gripping her face, pulling in the opposite direction as her, and refusing to release their hold. She could barely hear the cackles of glee beneath the sound of her own screams. The taste of metal filled her mouth. Hot liquid poured down the side of her face and she stifled back a whimper, knowing the smell of blood when she caught wind of it.
Think, think think! Sela's jaws clenched tightly as she tried to find a solution, and it came to her a sudden bolt out of the blue.
"GUNNER! SHIELD UP!"
"Wha—Sela, what're you—?!"
"SHIELD! UP!"
She didn't hear anything after that and took that as understanding. She doubled down on her resolve to end this fast and dug even deeper than before. She reached for that power churning just under the surface and grasped at it desperately before letting it loose. A bolt of darkness pulsed around her, and she knew it had hit her targets, judging from the agonizing screams that followed shortly after. The claws that had gripped her tightly were suddenly gone, and so was the pressure they were pressing her down with. Sela peeped her other eye open but had to swipe at it a few times to clear the blood from it before she could see without everything being obscured by red. She saw the ghosts hovering just an inch or so on the ground, unmoving save for the incorporeal smoke that seemed to make up their bodies. Gunner was lying not far from them, shivering.
Slowly, Sela pushed herself up to her paws and staggered forward to Gunner's side. She nudged him with her snout, wincing at the jolt it sent through her head. Pain reverberated back through her, and she whined, waiting for the waves to slow and pass.
"Gunner. Gunner, get up. We have to go."
Slowly, the Aron opened his eyes. She spied new dents and scores in his metal armour, but he looked fine, otherwise. "I-is it over?"
"Yes." She paused. "Are you okay?"
"You mean your attack?" He replied flatly, giving her a baleful little glare. "No. It didn't hurt. I used Harden to toughen up."
Sela tried for a grin, and instead, it turned into a wince when another fresh wave of agony rolled through her, emanating from her skull and backside and shooting outwards to the rest of her. She wavered on suddenly timorous legs, struggling to stay upright. Gunner's miffed attitude disappeared altogether as he shuffled closer to her.
"Oh, that looks bad, Sela. You need some berries."
"I can't see well. Not with all this blood. Do you see any?"
"I…I can try. My eyesight's not great, but I've got a good nose. Even my mama said so."
"Please…try." Her voice cracked and she winced at how unsteady it sounded to her. She hated feeling weak and helpless, like a tiny Poochyena again—at the mercy of other wild pokémon who would see her as an easy mark to fight.
She hobbled after Gunner, wincing with each new flare of pain in every step she took. Gunner was easy to follow; his bright and metallic hide was hard to miss, even as she kept trying to swipe the blood from her one good eye. She didn't know how bad the other one was and she feared the worst. Her backside was another thing she wasn't quite ready to face.
The dome around them continued to spit errant energy at random; the air simply felt electrified and oppressive by the strangeness of it all. Sela thought she saw pokémon appear and disappear at random, but with her limited sight as it was, she couldn't say for certain.
Gunner finally stopped, and he turned to face her.
"I think there's some berries in this tree here."
"I can't see them very well."
She couldn't smell much either, not past the heavy stench of her blood clogging her nose. Gunner turned from her; his head angled upwards to stare at the branches above them.
"I can smell them."
"Can you get to them?"
Gunner didn't answer at first. Sela slowly let herself collapse to the ground, unable to keep upright on her paws, whimpering. Could she travel any farther than this? She didn't know if she had much strength left to stand, much less continue walking.
She heard Gunner speaking, but the sounds were growing too muffled to discern what was said.
She tried to keep her good eye open, for as long as she could, but she didn't remember slipping away. Minutes passed. Or perhaps hours? Days?
Something was gently nudging at her, trying to stir her back into the waking world. It took them a few tries to get her to even stir. It took even longer for her to crack open her good eye. The bleary image of Gunner swam before her. Sela tried lifting her head, but that simple action made her too dizzy, and the slow burn of pain made everything ache and flare up anew.
"Sela, here. Here, I got you some Oran berries. Eat!"
Blurry blue orbs were pushed into her and like an obedient pup, she ate at them. When she stopped, Gunner was there, telling her to keep eating until she felt better.
Slowly, that burning ache in her backside began to lessen, and so did the pain in her skull. Gunner kept pushing the berries towards her until she physically couldn't eat anymore. Something heavy and big pressed into her side, propping her upright. Heavy puffs of breath gusted into the side of her neck, and she knew it was Gunner lying against her.
It wasn't Shay shaking Sela awake that brought her back. It wasn't the light of day. It wasn't her own internal clock.
The bellows and roars of others—unknown entities—broke through her slumber.
Sela found she had more energy, more strength, to pull herself to her feet. She could open her right eye—her good eye—with little difficulty, but her left eye, it was too tacked over with blood and it still hurt in spite of the Oran berries she'd eaten. Her back, on the other hand, was doing much better. There was no longer that lingering and blistering pain, but there was still the ache of newly healed flesh straining as she leapt to her paws and bristled.
Gunner was trapped in a tight circle of large cat-like pokémon—blue and black and yellow and similar to Luna but so, so much larger—and looking ready to tear him to pieces.
Somehow, she found enough strength to fill her maw with flames and charged, attacking the closest that had their back to her. She slammed into them, digging her claws for purchase and sinking her fangs into their neck. They bucked and yowled, swatting at her with their own claws, trying to push her off and dislodge her. Sela felt a renewed vigor of strength coursing through her and that only fed the flames. It didn't take long for her to smell the stench of burning flesh and fur to fill her nostrils.
She caught the sounds of more yowling, more cries of pain—and she hoped that Gunner was giving the other two hell. Despite his small size, he made for a great heavy hitter, even if he didn't believe in himself as much—so long as he wasn't airlifted and dangling in the claws of others, that is.
She tore at the pokémon's scruff and neck proper, refusing to let up. Only when they collapsed beneath her did Sela deem them a neutralized threat before she turned toward the others.
Sela was just in time to witness Gunner barreling into one of the other cat-like pokémon and it was then that she felt the turning of the tides. Despite their size differences, Gunner wasn't rolling over. He left one with a crippled leg and whimpering as they hobbled off, and that left only one to handle. She loped over to his side and snarled at the last, keeping the flames alive in her maw.
"Come and get some!" Sela barked, taking a page out of her trainer's book. Shay had mentioned being in the military—whatever that meant—and how her "branch" had been called "Devil Dogs". She wasn't sure what tree branches had to do with devils and dogs, but Sela felt she fit that title, no matter the context.
Now seemed the perfect time to fulfill that title, by any means necessary. She wanted to make Shay proud, and she knew Shay would have wanted to see Gunner do the same.
She charged, and at her war cry, Gunner did the same. Gunner, being closer, slammed into the enemy with his hard, metal head. Sela was close on his heels, snarling with a mouthful of fire and smoke to finalize the blow. She was blinded momentarily by a flash of white light, but she met her mark all the same and snapped her jaws shut, refusing to let up. It's what her parents had taught her to do.
It's what Shay encouraged her to continue doing. Never let up, never give up. Not even in the face of adversity.
The yowls turned into screams, and her prey struggled, even when trapped in her jowls. Sela dug even deeper, calling deep for her father's grace of flame and fire, and let it out without abandon. Once again, a blaze flared out from either side of her jaws. She could feel their heat and intensity, spreading to burn whatever lay in their path—fur, flesh, and whatever else in-between.
Gunner took care of ramming into them. His forceful blows caused more damage from her fangs as flesh tore and burned. Their last enemy shrieked in agony, begging for mercy. A blast of electricity suddenly alit Sela and she was frozen, suddenly paralyzed, but it didn't have the effect her enemy thought it'd have. Instead of letting go, her jaws locked into place, she couldn't pry them open even if she had tried.
The blast lasted barely a few seconds, but the whiteness from the pain danced across her vision for ages. When she could finally see again from her good eye, she realized that the battle was won.
It was only when Sela assessed it was safe that she felt she could release her vice-like grip. The body beneath her didn't move but she could hear their laboured breathing. Sela panted, locking her limbs into place to keep herself a solid pillar of strength, afraid to move. Gunner shuffled closer and it was then that Sela realized he was different. Bigger.
Evolved.
"You've changed."
"I…I evolved."
"Clearly." Sela finalized dryly with an approving nod. Every ache and pain was returning anew, and made her want to return to the Oran berry tree. "Did the dome leave?"
"No. It's still here."
Sela shuffled away from her felled opponent. As long as they weren't a threat, period, she didn't care if they lived or died. She knew the smell of a wild pokémon that no human scent upon them.
"Damn it."
Gunner stifled a laugh. "You sound like Shay."
Sela regarded him calmly. "Aside from Keno, I've been with her the longest. I suppose she's rubbed off on me."
Gunner's eyes, still a bright and wide-eyed blue, stared at her. "Whoa. You must be old."
Sela bristled indignantly at him. "I'm not old! I'm still in my damned prime!"
Whatever argument that might have spawned from the fledgling argument was cut short by an air of propriety. Sela had hoped the sloping and sharp spines on Gunner's backside had proved he was enough of a deterrent against any attackers.
It was then that she realized that Gunner had been right. The sparking dome that surrounded them was still locked in place. And yet, she could sense a weakness in the air around them. It wasn't going to last much longer, and she felt as their time—hers—inside it was drawing to a close, and a desperation was rising in her gullet.
"Gunner," she said, her voice still hoarse and strained. "Gunner, if I don't make it—take care of Shay. Take care of everyone, make sure they're—!" That damning dome of energy and who-the-hell-knew-what-else seemed to slow and speed up all at the same time. The energy around them grew brighter, stronger, all-encompassing and for a moment, she felt it give her a flare of energy—and then it was gone, and so was the dome.
