“Now stay in there!” shouted human-Guy, gloating as he tossed me into a basic, ramshackle cage, tugging off the muzzle and untying my leash as he did so. The ‘lock’ was just a single peg of wood. For that matter, the cage was made of little more than wood and twine. I had at least three ways I could get out in less than short order. Guy laughed, so reminiscent of his gengar self that I was momentarily worried his unwitting accomplices would yet spot the swap, yet they didn’t. That also tweaked that distinct feeling of something in this past-world being more ‘off’ than what I’d already seen.
As Guy backed off for a moment, I looked around. I was in some sort of stable-like area, I didn’t know what to call it. A prison? There weren’t many pokemon with me, though what there were, were as distraught and bereft of hope as the human beggars that lined the streets of this disaster of a city. The other pokemon were all in cages, most like mine and all of them equally as ramshackle, but with how thin and weak most of the occupants looked it was likely enough to keep them in place. It wouldn’t be enough for me physically, even if I didn’t have alternatives. I’d have to act quickly though, before hunger reduced my ability to fight, but it would take a while to get as bad as the natives.
I pushed myself into the back of the cage, acting as frightened as I could so as to seem not out of place. I spoke directly to Guy, nobody would understand an eevee in this blighted place anyway. The other pokemon trapped here would, of course. I swore to come back for them, no matter what.
“Listen everyone, I’m here to help. I’m escaping for now, but I swear I will return, and you will all be set free. The humans will pay for whatever this is. Guy, I’m getting out of here as soon as your friends’ backs are turned. Hang around a moment, stand over there, I want to try something.”
Guy didn’t say anything as he shuffled to the side, where my pleading gaze had indicated. His laughing friends turned away, giving each other congratulatory pats on the back. The moment their eyes left mine, I struck.
Guy had hidden in my shadow before all this started. I remembered that cold, haunting presence. I remembered the feeling of his very existence slipping into the cracks between this world and the next, tugging on my very soul. I’d done it before, borrowed moves. I’d done it plenty. I’d borrowed the moves of near god-like pokemon, so this was easy. A moment later, the cage was empty as I slipped into human-Guy’s shadow with less than a whisper. I saw him shudder, then leave the makeshift kennel without a second glance.
----------------------------------------
Guy strode through the city with hidden purpose. Outwardly he showed as little of this as he could — bar his trademarked grin — but he was on the lookout for information. He wanted to understand what he was seeing, it was so different to his own time. Everywhere were guards, more slaves, illness, open sewers and abject cruelty. Everything human beings are when there is nothing but rude despair and no time or energy for understanding or concern for others. Those with power — the strong, the rich — took what they wanted, whilst the rest struggled to fill their plates and quiet their bellies.
It was clear the city hadn’t always been like this, but whatever had caused the humans in the surrounding hamlets to abandon their crops and fill the streets of this place to overflowing meant that there just wasn’t enough left to go around.
‘This place is evil’, Lux’s voice echoed in his head. Surprisingly, there was a fleeting acknowledgement from Petri, whose body Guy wore.
Petri had remained quiet once he realized he was completely at the mercy of the ghost. The human’s spirit was scared, he had never seen a gengar before, and Guy’s ability to possess the human was a power leaps and bounds above what the hungry, malnourished maiju of this era could manage, and beyond anything he’d ever heard of, let alone experienced. Of all the stories of the maiju, Guy was something else.
That was an interesting thing, Guy pondered. They didn’t know the word ‘pokemon’; to these humans the magical, powerful beasts that roamed their world were split into two groups, animals and maiju. More to the point, humans were waging an open, no-holds-barred war with the latter, whilst seemingly doing their best to eradicate the former in the name of feeding the hungry masses… and that was apparently a more and more hopeless task with every day that passed.
It wasn’t something outright stated, but as more and more hungry, desperate refugees from far farmholds arrived at the city gates only to have their meager possessions confiscated, as more and more orphans lay unmoving in the streets with begging bowls and little but rags to their name were seen, as queues for the watery soup given as alms grew, it became more and more clear what was happening.
The crops were failing in farms for miles around. Petri — and therefore Guy — didn’t know how far, but it was as far as he or his friends had ever traveled at least. People were banding together in an attempt to find succor with their own kind, and were finding nothing but harsh treatment and more hunger as supplies dwindled. In desperation, the humans were turning to more and more wild, hopeless alternatives, even to things like bark and grass, to keep fed. Generosity was crumbling, replaced with cold, hard self-interest.
‘This place is…’ Guy felt Lux pause as the eevee’s awareness impinged on his own, seeing through the human’s eyes. ‘It’s just awful. I have to see how far it’s like this. There has to be a way to stop it.’ As Lux’s words echoed in his head, Guy’s grin froze on his face when a second triumphant group of roving guards entered through the city gates. Immediately a hubbub grew as people gathered for a show.
“We got one! To the tower!”
Guy followed the flow of humanity — far easier to go with the flow than against it, less suspicious at least — as it wound its way through the suddenly packed streets and up the hill to the watchtower, a rough-hewn and heavy set tower built out of moss-covered stone that stood on the edge of a cliff. Guy pushed his way around to the far side, where the edge of the cliff kept most of the humans away, the heights not bothering him, and realized he was looking down at some sort of quarry that took up a good portion of the city.
The quarry floor was bare flattened earth, and pocked with odd piles of roughly fitted stone mounds. The sun shone brightly on the rock and stone, but still there was a distinct chill in the air. Guy watched as a trio of humans took one of their strange pokeballs, clambered up to the top of one of the mounds of stone and… dropped it in?
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! Please forgive us!’ wailed Petri. Idly, angrily, Guy wondered how much of the trapped human’s wailing was self-preservation and how much was actual regret.
Guy felt a knot in his stomach as he listened to the panicked cries from the creature now trapped within the mound. He turned away, knowing what would come next. For a brief moment, he considered ‘falling’ off the cliff, which set Petri to blubbering louder inside. As cheers grew, a whiff of smoke reached his nostrils.
‘We’re leaving. Now.’ Guy murmured, as he strode for the city gates, pushing his way through anybody who got in his way. Luckily, nobody stopped him or attempted to join him. A long few minutes later, he stepped into the wilderness, breathing a sigh of relief. A short while after that, the oppressive air of the human city had faded along with the sight of its walls and the ghost found himself the only visible creature around.
“We’ve got to find the others, before something happens to them,” Guy muttered aloud. “Something may already have happened. They might be anywhere.”
‘Guy, I’m in here with Petri. I don’t think I can possess him, but I can certainly knock him out again and stop him from running off. I’m in his shadow and I’ll always be watching. He knows not to cross us. How about you fly up and see if you can spot Lucky and the guys?’ Lux said. Guy could feel the teeth in those words.
Guy considered Lux’s advice. They’d traveled far enough that nobody from the city would spot either Guy or the human for a while. And what could these humans do to a ghost? Normal attacks were completely ineffective on him, and it wasn’t like these humans could do much more than that. As long as he stayed out of range of a pokeball, he was safe, and even then it wouldn’t do much but be a momentary setback. Guy made a decision.
“Human, if you want to see another day, I suggest you do as we say,” Guy said ominously, aloud. “If I have to track you down because you decided to run, it’ll be the last thing you do. You will wait here, staying hidden, until I return.”
‘I promise!’ The human squeaked. ‘I’ll behave! Please don’t hurt me!’
Guy pushed himself up and out of Petri, the four-limbed phantasm emerging from the boy’s mouth before reforming properly, floating around and giving the human a direct glare.
“I’ll hold you to that. Wait here, stay out of sight.”
Petri may no longer have understood the words, but he got the gist. Guy disappeared from view — in more ways than one — as he flew off to search for the rest of the crew.
----------------------------------------
Petri slumped in the scrub, hidden by an overturned, broken cart, his head spinning. “What am I doing? I knew this would end badly.”
“What did you know, human?” I asked him, trusting my voice would echo in his mind. Hopefully he’d understand me as much as I understood him. Petri jumped. I felt his fear at the voice in his head. He searched around the area for me, but couldn’t find me. He’d thought he’d been rid of me? Really? I wasn’t in his head like Guy had been, but I was still nebulously connected to him. HIs words were clear, if strange.
“M-my pa, he said the famine was the maiju stealing our water,” he stammered, “blighting our crops. I-I said it wasn’t, that they were just hungry too. He said they were eatin’ what they didn’t curse, leaving us hungry. W-when the harvest failed, when the blight came, we left our farm. Heard there was work in Lavender HIlls.” The boy shook his head, sorrowfully. “There wasn’t. B-but we fought off the maiju, like Lord Marcus said, a-and we had food. For a bit. Then… then the famine came there too. The blight also. The crops failed again, and again. Lord Marcus said it were the maiju, like my pa before him.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
I was silent for a moment, as was the boy. Finally I answered him. “Of course it wasn’t a curse or anything like that,” I snorted, angrily. “Sometimes there’s just a bad harvest. If you’d worked with the pok — the maiju instead of against them, then they, we, could have fixed things. We could destroy your crops, but why would we want to? When we could make them grow and we could all share the bounty?”
Petri seemed stunned by that idea. “B-but w-why would maiju help humans?”
“In my time—’ I began, then I stopped. I could feel Petri’s eyes grow ten sizes. I started again. “Where I’m from, maiju and humans work together. Maiju have great powers, but humans have… humans have their own powers, and they use them in concert with us maiju. We live and work together.”
“Humans are like maiju? When, uh where you’re from?”
I mentally shook my head. “No, no. You humans, you have your own abilities. You make cities and pokeballs and computers and ships and stuff. You do things pokemon can’t. We work, humans and pokemon — maiju — both, together to do things that can’t be done by either alone.’
I suddenly thought of Chompy, startled as I found myself channeling the seviper’s words. I was silent for a while after that, pondering what it meant. The boy apparently felt my reticence to speak and stayed his own tongue. He slumped in the shade, grumbling. A couple of times he moved around, restlessly, watering the flowers a couple of times, but despite the urge I could feel within him, he didn’t attempt to flee. After some time, I started to get worried; had something happened to Guy? To the others? How much longer could I stay in Petri’s shadow? Would I be even able to leave, when I tried? I sorely wanted to leap out rather than stick in the shadowy non-world I currently found myself in, but if anybody did find us before the ghost’s return, it would be far better for me to be absolutely out of reach rather than discover I could no longer use the move I’d stolen to hide. The lingering worry that I’d given up Celebi’s time travel powers left a pit in my stomach, but one of the Celebis would be along soon enough, I had to trust in that, even if it would be a really, really angry one.
An hour or so passed in relative silence and boredom, before a zipping black and purple shape descended from the skies, becoming visible again as he popped into view in front of us.
“Come on, that way. If we cross enough fields, there’s a copse over yonder, a few miles away. No humans, I found the others, and… well, you’d better come with me.”
I leaped out of the human’s shadow, shaking the remaining wisps of darkness from my fur. A glare at the boy — he was older than I used to be! Wasn’t he? He seemed so much younger — had done wonders for making the human behave too, as the netherworld boiled off my fur.
Now that Guy was back we had two pokemon who could take over his body and walk him around like a skin-suit. Given the precarious situation we were all in, I’d not hesitate to do just that if he so much as twitched in the wrong direction.
“March, Dummy!” I told him, with a decisive bark, pointing a paw the way Guy had indicated.
“[Y-yes, s-sir, uh, ma’am!]” he whimpered. It seemed that a healthy pokemon was a frightening prospect for him. Good. I could only hope it would hold true for the rest of the wretches in this world, although we’d probably have to spend some time teaching them just what that meant.
Guy led the way as we tramped across dusty fields and through long-abandoned farmsteads, his form invisible from view, though he kept up a low conversation with me as we went, and reappeared often yet momentarily to point us in a new direction or just to keep us on the right track. Sticking to the edge of the deserted fields wasn’t even necessary, as the ground was hard-packed and solid, dry from drought. It was honestly thoroughly depressing.
Only once we’d left the farms behind did I start to see life return, though it was the wild, unkempt and unfriendly to humans type; the long grass that humans without pokemon are so afraid of. The first sign of animal and pokemon life came soon after. I heard them before I saw them, which wasn’t unexpected given we had a human with us. The way forward was obvious.
“Human! You will now be my ride!” I said imperiously. I turned, from where I’d been temporarily leading the way and leaped, scampering up his clothing until I was perching on his shoulder. For a brief moment he screamed helplessly, cowering. Even after I made myself comfortable I felt him trembling. I cuffed his ear lightly with a paw. “Don’t be such a big baby,” I chastised, then pointed onwards where Guy was leading. “Go on, that way, Dummy.”
“We’re getting close,” the gengar said, fading back into view once more. He raised one eyebrow at my antics, then grinned wider. As he turned back, two Kanto starters emerged before us. The bulbasaur’s vines whipped to and fro angrily in a show of force, whilst the charmander growled, his weak — to me — tail-flame flaring, doing his best to appear threatening. “In fact, I think we’re here. The human’s with us, Lux has him under control.”
“Hi, I’m Lux,” I said. “My pet here is called Petri, but you can call him ‘Dummy’. He’s not going to be any trouble.”
“[Umm, hi? I, uh—]” Petri began, sensing I wanted him to speak. I cuffed his ear again, mostly because I could.
“Shut up, Dummy.” His mouth snapped shut and he started quivering again. “See?” I preened from atop his shoulder.
The bulbasaur and charmander glared, growling at us, then they looked at each other. The bulbasaur eventually spoke.
“It’s not that he behaves when you’re watching him, it’s what he’ll do when you don’t. We can’t let him come any further.”
“That’s not going to be a problem,” I said. “He’s with me until I let him go, and I’m not planning on letting him go any time soon.”
“You can’t just… keep him indefinitely,” argued the charmander.
“I won’t need to,” I murmured darkly, as Guy once more faded from view, not even his grin remaining.
“You’re going to kill him?” the bulbasaur asked, surprised. “You don’t look the type.”
“Maybe.” I kicked Petri twice, lightly, on the back of the shoulder I was perched on and pointed a paw forwards. Slowly, haltingly, he moved, the whites of his eyes showing as he fearfully approached the two wild pokemon. They barred the way, looking at each other.
“I’ve,” I paused, thinking quickly before continuing, “I’ve been sent here, along with my friends, to deal with… well, this.” I waved a paw expansively. The bulbasaur and charmander looked at each other, then stood aside. I kicked Petri into motion and he walked slowly and hesitantly deeper into the thicket. “If that means killing this human, I will.”
I wasn’t sure I could if it came to that, so was very much hoping it didn’t, but this wasn’t the time to argue the finer points of mercy. “Before I decide, I need to know more about what’s been going on and what’s been happening. So, where are my friends? They’re here right, and they they’re okay?”
I’d surprised myself with how nonchalantly I spoke about ending the life of my ‘pet’ human. I wasn’t sure how much of it was bravado, but the fact that some of it wasn’t worried me. I shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t even be here, but I’d decided to flee across time running from a very angry Celebi and now I had to take my lumps. I shook my head. I didn’t have time for niceties right now.
Bulbasaur and Charmander looked at each other again from where they walked just ahead of me and my ride-on human. “You mean, uh, Lucky, Shadow and Bart?”
“They’re fine!” Guy said, chuckling, his voice echoing from free space above us. “Or they were when I last saw them. And we really are here to help. Celebi… sent us.”
“I think Arceus wanted her to get somebody to help,” I added, meaningfully, as Bulbasaur and Charmandar looked around for the once-more invisible ghost. “She got us.”
Bulbasaur and Charmander bowed their heads at the god’s name, then spoke amongst themselves. A few moments later they stared back up at me.
“What proof have you got?” asked Bulbasaur, narrowing his eyes. “It’s not that we don’t trust you… but we don’t trust you.”
“Um, I’m riding a human? From what I’ve seen, that’s the exact opposite of how things normally go here. I dunno, you could always ask Celebi if you can find her, she’s the time-traveler. We’re from the future, I think. I kind of borrowed her move to get here, and I think I hit the right direction on the ol’ transversal shimmy. What would be proof enough?”
“Something good to eat!” Bulbasaur said hopefully, patting his stomach with a couple of tentacles.
Something good to eat? That would be simple, if I were in fact being sent here by Celebi. Okay, time to think about this like a Celebi would: if I was going to get out of this, I’d definitely end up running into her, or at least travelling back through time again to go home. So it stood to reason I’d be able to make a pit stop or two, right?
“Yo Celebi!” I called tentatively, not too loudly, I didn’t actually want Celebi to hear me, after all. “One poffin for Bulbasaur here! Can you grab something from the snack table?” I called out to the ether, holding my breath and praying to Arceus. What would happen if I didn’t get a response?
I needn’t have worried though, as after a few moments there was a sudden, strange pulling sensation, and a pink poffin appeared in front of us. A pink poffin from one of Arceus’ snack tables. Everybody stared, me included. I hadn’t really thought that’d work… and now I realized why Celebi carried around a notebook. I would need to make sure I came back through and delivered that to myself, wouldn’t I? And the worst thing was, I couldn’t even say this was Future Lux’s problem, because I was Future Lux. Just not Future Enough, yet.
“You only get the one, though,” I hurriedly added to Bulbasaur. “Celebi’s got a lot to do and fetching snacks isn’t on the list.”
“You’re really from the future?” Charmander asked skeptically. I just shrugged, and pointed to the poffin, which was being greedily devoured by the plant-creature next to him. The bulbasaur hadn’t been convinced about the confectionery at first, but one sniff had got him drooling. The bud-carrying pokemon reluctantly broke off half of the treat and gave it to his friend.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” I huffed, “but do I have to do it standing here?”
“Huuuaarrrgh,” Charmandar grumbled in annoyance, rubbing his paws across and down his muzzle before staring angrily up at the sky. “I guess not! Come on, then. Ninetales keeps us all safe here, this is her glade, so she’ll have to actually let you in.”
“I did tell her I’d be back,” said Guy.
Bulbasaur, still wiping crumbs off his wide mouth, and Charmander led us deeper into the copse, flanking the human. Moments later, Guy took off, speeding through the encroaching trees as he spotted Bart and Shadow.
“I’m back! I’m back! We’re all safe! We’re here! Lux’s got a human with her!”
“I’m back!” I called. “Boy am I glad to see you guys!”
“Guy? Lux? You’re both safe! Thank Arceus!” Shadow came bounding out between the trees, trailed by Bart. Guy zipped to the first, giving him a high-three to the manectric’s paw, then head-butted the latter. Lucky slapped his tail against Guy’s stubbier one happily.
“I was so worried!” said Bart, wringing his paws together.
“Me too! I missed you all! I was so worried about you!”
“I knew you’d admit you missed me sooner or later, sweet-cheeks.” Lucky grinned.
“Yeah, yeah, even you,” I said, sticking my tongue out. “This place is awful!”
“Oh? I happen to think this little part of it is nice, at least,” came a clipped, serious voice, as I felt a powerful presence enter the glade.