CHAPTER 78

Tangela curiously wrapped a vine around one of the shining crystals that had fallen from the cave’s ceiling and onto the ground.

“Angel, don’t touch that,” I said. “We don’t know what it’s made of, it could be bad for you.”

The grass type retracted his vine and wriggled.

“Sorry. I know this is all new and exciting for you, but I need you to stay sharp,” I said, squinting to alleviate the pain from my headache.

Frillish held out a tentacle and stopped me. There was something ahead.

“Tar!” Larvitar roared, which was more of a hiss. I had stopped carrying it, since it was so heavy, but it was thankfully still following us.

Even with the crystal lighting up the cave, I was still struggling to see well, and that was in part because of my illness. Elekid stepped in front of me and started whirling his arms around, generating electricity atop of his head, while Tangela created a barrier of some sort with his vines.

“What is it?” I asked.

Another few seconds passed in silence, and then a flurry of attacks erupted from my team. Frillish launched an enormous Water Pulse in front of himself, followed by a quick Bubblebeam. Tangela started breaking up rocks with Vine Whip, grabbing the smaller chunks and throwing them forward while Togetic erected an Ancient Power wall in front of me just before I heard something crash onto it.

The fight was over in just a few seconds. I carefully stepped forward an saw an unconscious Boldore splayed across the ground with some parts of itself blown off by my Pokemon’s attacks. I gulped.

“Good job,” I said. “That went about as well as it could have.”

“Kid!” Elekid said, his head downcast.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said. “I’ve already said this isn’t the best area for you to be fighting in. You’re my bodyguard.”

“Elekid…”

“I—” I winced and stumbled, but Tangela quickly stopped me from falling with his vines. “Ah, shit, this is— this is getting worse.”

The cave was too easy so far. Too quiet. Sure, this had been our fourth encounter with an aggressive wild Pokemon in around twenty minutes, but this place was deep into the mountain, and it had apparently been closed off for… who knew how many years. No human had stepped in here for decades, that was for sure.

So where were the incredible threats? Where were the Pokemon like the Rhydon we had encountered or that Tyranitar or Rhyperior?

Something felt off about this. I heard a slight, gurgly sound behind me and turned my head around, but Frillish had already sent another Water Pulse, knocking a just awaking Geodude out.

Did Geodudes make that sound?

“Let’s keep going,” I breathed out.

I was tiring out quickly, and I didn’t exactly have a direction in mind. I was just walking in a straight path, hoping I’d come across someone eventually. Unlike the upper level of the mountain, down there, there were multiple branching paths, tight corridors, and different elevations. Case in point.

“I don’t think I’m well enough to jump up there,” I said, nodding toward an elevated path.

Togetic chirped, and I felt the air around my body shift. She slowly lifted Larvitar and me up, placing me as gently as she could onto the ground. Tangela wrapped a vine tightly around Elekid and lifted him up before pulling himself up as well. Frillish’s red eyes darted toward the left, and I thought he would launch another attack, but he just stared at a wall.

“Is there something near?” I asked.

“Fri…”

“You’re not sure?”

The water type nodded and motioned for me to stay vigilant. A part of me considered just screaming, hoping someone would hear me and head in my direction, but that was probably my fever talking. Arceus, I felt like absolute trash. Still, I had to keep going. If I stopped, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand back up.

Around ten minutes later, I walked back to the same area Togetic had just lifted me to. It was like… like that mansion in Eterna Forest, except it wasn’t a Pokemon-induced illusion this time, it was just the mountain fucking with me. I was sure I wasn’t hallucinating since my team seemed just as perplexed as I was.

“I’ve had enough of this bullshit for a lifetime,” I sighed. “Let’s try again.”

It took a few more tries for me to finally get through… where? Get through the area I was in without being transported back to where I had just been, I supposed, and the time it took me to get there each time was seemingly random. Larvitar hissed at nothing in particular. I noticed that its sadness had been converted into anger now. Or maybe it was just trying to appear tough, it was hard to tell. The rock type was small but incredibly heavy, and I had an inkling it was asking to be carried again.

“Listen,” I told it. “You must weigh at least 130 pounds, I can’t keep carrying you.”

“Tar!”

“Don’t fight me on this. I know walking around must be tiring you out, but I’m sick, so I’m weaker than usual—”

I saw something move in the corner of my vision. A shadow. My body tensed.

“Did you see that, bud?” I said, pointing toward where I had seen movement. Frillish shook his head, probably saying that if he had, he would have done something. “Okay,” I said. “Must be that damn fever. Let’s keep going.”

I wiped the sweat off of my forehead and began walking again, slower this time. Elekid strode up to Larvitar and patted it on the back, but the rock type let out a juvenile roar and pushed him away.

“Shh!” I hissed. “Leave it alone for now, hon. It doesn’t want to be friends.”

I paused and stared at Larvitar again.

“It’s weird calling you ‘it’ all the time,” I said. “What are you? Are you a boy?”

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Larvitar stomped a foot against the ground, kicking up some dust.

“A girl?”

Larvitar nodded fiercely and hit her arms against her chest.

“Alright. A baby girl. Sounds good,” I whispered, holding myself up using a wall. This conversation was as much a bonding exercise as it was an urgent distraction from my increasingly worse fever and the intrusive thoughts that kept telling me Cece and Denzel were dead. “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?”

She gave me another nod, but flinched when angel rubbed her huge horn with one of his vines. Larvitar yelled, angling her head downward, and ran toward the grass type. I worried for a second before remembering that she was a newborn. Weak. Tangela pushed two vines forward, holding her in place as she desperately tried to run him through. Togetic let out a tiny giggle, and Elekid smirked, but everyone stopped when Frillish glared at them one by one.

“Frillish is right,” I said. “We have to keep going. This isn’t the time to be playing, we’ll do all of that when we find the others and get out.”

They all nodded, and we soldiered on. I beckoned Frillish, and he floated toward me.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I keep adding kids to the team. Must be annoying to be the only adult in the room, huh?”

He stared at me and nodded.

“It’d be good if the last member of the team was an oldie like you,” I laughed slightly. He shot me a suspicious look. “Right. I guess I haven’t told anyone I want to catch Larvitar… I guess my motivations are mostly me feeling bad for her. She’s a newborn, and she’s just lost her mother or father… I think that Tyranitar might be mortally injured. I doubt there was any coming back from her wounds.”

Frillish nodded before shooting another look behind us. Everybody was still following, but Larvitar had picked up some soft dirt that she was munching on, and Tangela was staring at her curiously, studying her every movement and trying to touch her without her noticing.

“I feel terrible for her. Losing a parent so young… must be crushing, and yet she’s been hiding the fact that she’s grieving ever since we found her hiding behind that rock,” I coughed, and he shot me a worried look. “Don’t worry, I’m a tough girl,” I dryly said. “But at the same time, she’s a Larvitar, you know? They’re… incredibly rare, and they evolve to be incredibly powerful. I’d be lying if I wasn’t thinking about having her as a potential battler when she grew up a little and if she evolved.”

“Fri…” Frillish warned me.

“Obviously, I won’t force her to come with me,” I answered. “I’ve learned to be better than that after catching you. But it won’t hurt to ask. I’ll at least get her out of Mount Coronet. Newborn Larvitar are usually protected by one of their parents, they can’t fend off threats on their own for weeks after being born.”

“Lish,” he sighed.

“I know, I know, another baby to take care of,” I said. “I promise I’ll try to make the last one older,” I smiled. “You can bond over how grumpy and old you are.”

He huffed, making me grin.

“Might be selfish to be thinking about the future like this in this horrible situation, but I have to look forward. If I don’t… if I let myself think that I have no future outside of here, I won’t find it in me to continue—” Frillish’s head darted toward another crease of the cave. This time we had both seen movement. I gestured at the team to stop. “There’s something there,” I warned. “It’s been following us the entire time. Stalking us.”

I took a few steps back, and my Pokemon stepped forward. Tangela held Larvitar back with his vines, much to her dismay. She wanted to fight, but she couldn’t. I took a few heavy breaths as the silence weighed onto me. Larvitar stepped behind me and calmed down.

“Honey,” I said, feeling my neck hair stand on end and my headache start to pound again. “Use Thundershock to light up the area.”

Elekid spun his arms and shot an arc of electricity in front of us.

A purple Pokemon with a shiny gem embedded in its torso and a huge, toothy grin stared back at us.

Frillish shot out a stream of bubbles, Togetic a quick Fairy Wind, and Tangela’s vines surged forward, but the Sableye sunk into the shadows like it was water and giggled— no, calling it a giggle wasn’t accurate. It was a low, gurgle-like sound that instilled physical discomfort into me.

Sableye appeared behind me, but Tangela quickly pulled me with a vine, and I narrowly avoided a Shadow Claw.

“It moves through shadows!” I yelled.

That was horrible news. I gulped as the dark type’s grin grew wider, and it sunk into the ground again with a terrible laugh. If it moved through shadows, that meant that any barrier of protection would be ineffective. That meant my Pokemon would have to protect me by using reflexes instead of the planning we had come up with.

“Keep a vine wrapped around me, angel,” I said, feeling his hold tighten. “Elekid, keep your arms spinning. Create light around us so it can’t get to me.”

Elekid nodded and once again, created electricity above his head, creating a ‘safe spot’ that I could at least stand in without being clawed in the back. I heard Sableye’s evil laugh reverberate all around me, and the dark type finally emerged again, this time below Frillish. It jumped at him and held on tightly, clawing across his face.

“No!” I yelled. “Tangela, get him off!”

Tangela sent five vines forward, grabbing the ghost type and slamming him against the wall, and Togetic wasted no time, hitting it with her Fairy Wind. Sableye hissed and sunk into the darkness again. I rushed toward Frillish, who had three large gashes on his face. He was a ghost type, so the damage would heal over time, and it wasn’t bleeding, but it was still disconcerting to see.

“Next time that fucker comes out, hit it with Thundershock,” I hissed. Elekid nodded, but the Sableye wasn’t coming out anymore. And yet I knew it was still there. It let me know, by laughing terribly all around me, taunting me.

And I couldn’t do anything about it.

I touched Frillish’s face, and the water type simply nodded as if to say he was fine. We still weren’t good enough with Acid Armor to switch up his state on a whim, so dodging a Pokemon as fast as Sableye was impossible.

“Everyone else okay—”

A large, shadowy ball shot out of a wall, but Togetic quickly raised a barrier using Ancient Power. The rock was destroyed, but she protected me from the sharp debris with Extrasensory. I let out a few quick breaths, expecting another flurry of attacks to come, but nothing happened.

“Arceus…” I sighed in relief. “Stay sharp, it’s going to attack again—”

Sableye grinned as he dropped from above me. Frillish immediately hit it with Water Pulse, creating an explosion that got water all over me. I expected to see the Pokemon crawl back into the shadows, but there was nothing. It had just been a Night Shade. Sableye clawed from the edge of Elekid’s light and jumped at me again, but Tangela finally managed to grab it with a vine. He wrapped another ten around the dark type, and began to drain its energy. Sableye groaned and tried clawing away at the vines, but it was too late. He finally went limp, and Tangela let him go.

“Good job, Angel,” I coughed. “You’re—”

Sableye sunk into the ground again. It had faked being unconscious to escape, but at least it seemed like it wasn’t going to attack again. It knew it was outclassed now. Still, I ordered Elekid to keep his light going, just in case the dark type got any ideas. I couldn’t be sure it had truly given up. Too bad Elekid could only sense ghosts, not ghost types. We waited for ten minutes, making sure that Sableye was gone before finally deciding to leave.

I tried walking again, but my knees buckled, and I collapsed on the ground. My body felt so heavy.

“Fuck,” I groaned. “It looks like I’m—” I coughed. “Tapped out.”

My team coalesced around me and clamored with worry, and Larvitar stood to the side, watching with a careful eye.

“I think I’m gonna pass out,” I said. “Frillish, take care of Larvitar and your siblings. You guys listen to him, he’s the leader when I’m not there—”

I heard another sound. Not Sableye, but steps this time. Chase Karlson stepped from behind a boulder, accompanied by his Riolu and Houndour, and he looked to be in terrible shape.

He clicked his tongue. “Of course, it’s you,” he sighed. “Thought I heard the sound of fighting,” I heard him say before I fell unconscious.