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Pedestal: Chapter 119

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"Holy freaking sh—" Some of the wild Pokemon in the area were getting nosy, or perhaps weren't shy to begin with. Either way, more than once, I woke up in the middle of the night with an Ariados or Venomoth hovering over me. Des would usually wake up about that time, or Konstantin would notice, or Ike would slink out of the shadows. Either way, the wild Pokemon never hurt me. They only scared the crap out of me. Bug pokemon were big when they wanted to be.

Not to mention that my exclamations usually woke the quadruplets.

Screaming baby Pidgey weren't something else you wanted in the middle of the night. They also didn't like to calm down unless you picked them up and carried them until they fell back asleep. I dimly remembered my mother saying the same thing about me, so I figured it was karma and bit the bullet.

We worked our way steadily north. When I was up walking the babies around, I had taken to returning Des and Carlita and moving camp. Even if it was just a couple hundred yards, it was progress. And hey, I was up anyway. The nighttime walks slipped into our daily traveling ritual so smoothly that I was starting to feel comfortable with the nightly wake-up calls, even if it was probably taking years off my life to be frightened so often.

I lost track of the days, but it was probably early during the second week that my phone died completely. I sighed at its loss, but aside from quieter evenings, I survived.

Two days after my phone died, I met up with another contestant.

I was stumbling through the pitch black forest, head drooping, eyes hardly open. I was getting good at sleepwalking. The chicks were still peeping occasionally, but they were dropping off too, so I was hoping it wouldn't be too much longer. It had been a rough day; Konstantin had nearly been carried off by a Purugly and Carlita and I had to go chasing through the undergrowth to get him back.

My shoe caught something, and to my immense surprise, there was a muffled swear. I went sprawling, however, and my main concern was the chicks in my backpack-turned-baby-carrier. I managed to flop over onto my back and not squish them, but the fall had woken them and they were once more shrieking at the top of their lungs.

Before I could even get the chance to get back to my feet and offer more than a halfhearted shush to the Pidgey, I felt something stab me in the thigh.

I swore and kicked on reflex, the curse slipping off into a hiss. I dropped the backpack back onto my stomach and my hands found the wound—only to get my finger cut open. With the chicks squawking bloody murder and my shorts rapidly turning a dark shade and my finger bleeding just as profusely, I was rapidly running out of patience.

Fortunately or unfortunately, my night guard arrived to investigate all of the noise. They could both see better than I could in the near black, and I was concentrating on figuring out what the hell was in my leg, so I didn't have time to call them off. Next thing I knew, with a snarl, Ike leapt and landed right next to me. He actually smacked me in the face with his lashing tail. I felt Konstantin pulling on my shoulders, pulling me away from what was immediately turned into a tussle.

There was a high scream, childlike and heart stopping. All I could think was that Ike was killing something else's mother. I threw myself forward, trying to latch onto him, but all I managed to do was ram the thing in my leg deeper in by the chick-filled backpack. I snarled a curse and glared down at the thing—only, with no small amount of horror, to realize what it was. It was the hilt of a knife sticking out of my leg.

"Ike, get off of her!" I desperately lunged for my Luxray again, only a bit late; he was kicked away and narrowly missed me (and the still-screaming Pidgey chicks).

Sure enough, barely visible in the darkness, Sela Schaffer was crouched over her Lopunny, orange hair tousled, face bleeding, eyes hard.

-.-.-

I didn't blame her for stabbing me. If I had a knife on me, and I was as harsh as she was, and someone had tripped over me in the middle of the night, I probably would've done something like that, too.

That said, it sucked. I couldn't walk anymore. While Des had carried me after my poison incident and I had gotten better, this wasn't going to get better like that. Not to mention how much it hurt, getting stabbed. To be fair, thanks to Ike, Sela was just as injured as I was. The only difference was that hers was around the face and—I sighed in shame—neck. He had been going for the throat. I couldn't blame him, but still… He at least had to have known that she was there. He could see perfectly in the darkness, after all.

I also figured out what had stalled her up and was the reason that she had fallen so far behind after her early lead.

Dana, her Lopunny, had a broken leg.

"Yeah, it sucks ass," she griped over breakfast. "But since she hates being in her ball, I've been carrying her."

"You've been carrying her?" I asked incredulously. Sela nodded, mouth full of oatmeal. "You're never going to finish at this rate!" Definitely not if I was overtaking her. Then again, with my leg (thanks to her) injured, that wouldn't last very long.

"You think I don't know that?" she snapped. Her Lopunny hid her face in her long ears, making a whimpering sound. Sela's face immediately softened and she leaned over, pulling the rabbit onto her lap. "Dana, it's not your fault…" She looked back up at me. "For the record, she was injured protecting me from a Pinsir."

"I didn't…" I trailed off faintly under her hard stare. The wilderness had done nothing but make her even more terrifying. Her reddish-orange hair was even messier than normal, her eyes were practically blood-colored (not to mention bloodshot), she now had scratches along both cheeks, and she was in (almost) full combat gear. Including some of the weaponry. She was prepared for war—and judging on how well she was faring, she was perfectly content to take it to that. She was still in it to win it.

I halfheartedly wondered if she had stabbed me on purpose.

"What's up with the chicks, oh hero?" Sela asked, nodding towards the backpack on my stomach.

I couldn't help but wrap my arms around it protectively. "Ike, that adorable fluff ball you met last night, decided to make a meal out of their mother. I'm carrying them with me until I can get them back to a breeder friend of mine."

"How noble of you." I glared at her through my bangs. She made it sound so… bad. Sela heaved a sigh, stood up, and carefully helped her Lopunny up like a gentleman helping a lady. That was actually a pretty apt way to describe the way she treated Dana, come to think of it. "…So, how have you been faring on this hellish race?"

"Oh, fine. I fought off a Tentacruel, got poisoned and got my ankles roughed up, have been fending off Pidgey strong enough to take out my Breloom in one hit, been woken up I don't know how many times by bug Pokemon larger than I am, had my Luxray orphan four baby Pidgey that I am now the mother to, and most recently, nearly got gutted."

She gave me the first grin I'd seen from her since we had met. "Nice. I'm glad to see you're not the pushover you look," Sela said regally, before turning and scooping up her Lopunny bridal-style. "Come on. We can talk as we travel. I'd rather still stand a chance at winning this."

"That would be nice," I muttered, gingerly standing up. I could at least stand on the leg, albeit with my weight on the other.

We started walking—well, I did try to hobble but Des would have none of it, so Carlita forced me onto him—and Sela was unusually talkative. At first, we traded information. Archie had already passed her, so we were, at best, in second place. Last I had heard, Vaikuntha had retaken first place from Lola, but since that was a couple days ago, I had no idea anymore. Benjamin had not passed her, so he either managed to miss her or was still behind us.

"We could very well end up last," I lamented, sinking back against Des' volcano.

"Hell no. I'm not about to let that happen." She shifted Dana with a grunt. Her Lopunny whined and wiggled, but Sela held her still.

"If she doesn't want to be carried—?"

"It's none of your business. She can't walk on a broken leg if she wants it to heal properly, and she's not going back into her pokeball," Sela said shortly. I could sense there was something more to it, but I wasn't about to push her. She had already stabbed me once.

"Fine then," I mumbled and peeked into the backpack. Four inquisitive little birds looked back up at me. One of them peeped. I cooed at them and they happily cooed back.

"You're being a good mommy, I see. Have you named them?" I grimaced and withdrew out of the backpack, turning to her with eyes narrowed. She shrugged as best she could. She was still being very unusually talkative. It was worse than traveling with Benjamin. At least he was my gender and in my age group. "…I never acted like a mother to any of my Pokemon," Sela said after a long silence. She hastily turned to me and gave me a sharp look, adding, "And if you say anything so chauvinistic as to implicate that just because I am a woman I should feel maternal instincts—!"

"I wouldn't dream of it!" I really wouldn't. I didn't feel like giving her more of an excuse to maim me. (Okay, so maybe I was a little bitter.)

"…But it looks cute on you, the motherly persona." I couldn't tell if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult. Her Lopunny whispered something in her ear and Sela gave a derisive snort. "I can't wait to see where you'll be in ten years. Hell, even five."

"Why do you care?" I deadpanned.

Sela paused in mid-step, just long enough for me to notice. I'm not sure if any of my team did, however, although judging by the expression on Dana's face, she had noticed as well. "…Did you know," Sela said, with a very casual air, "That I'm the oldest Gym race trainer?"

It was all I could do not to retort with a 'duh'. I settled on a, "Yeah".

"I'm almost thirty."

"Okay?" I had no idea what she was getting at, but I had a sinking feeling. She had been so talkative; she had something she wanted to say to me. I just couldn't figure out what. I wasn't sure I could handle too much more information at this point.

"I also grew up in Oreburgh," she continued with that disturbingly casual air. Her Lopunny gave me a look I couldn't even begin to decipher. "I didn't start training until my late teens. I finished out school instead. I never really had an interest in Pokemon… Well, until later, obviously." Dana tightened her hold on her trainer and curled her ears around them both. Sela grinned at her, and then turned back to me. "I definitely wasn't like any of you young things, running around with Pokemon at ten."

"I wasn't, either," I told her primly.

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "…Is that so." She turned back to the faint path ahead of us.

"Yeah, it is," I said, defiantly. I wasn't like the other trainers she was so condescending towards, my age and starting age the least of the reasons why. "Sela, what is it you're trying to tell me?"

"Trainer," Des mumbled, looking back at me. I turned to him in nothing less than shock—why was he suddenly speaking? Unless he had figured out what Sela was getting at before I had. "…Can you add?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Your Camerupt's caught on," she noted with some approval. I leaned over him and glared at her. "Since I wasn't a trainer, I had to get money somehow. Oh, when I was younger, I was obnoxious. All shopping and makeup and gossip and boys. I needed spending money to buy new clothes and other unimportant stuff." I had a very hard time imagining Sela as a regular teenage girl. This woman beside me, carrying a Lopunny like it was nothing, decked out in combat fatigues and boots, hair cut short and expression perpetually hard, she had once acted like Hanna?

"What happened to change you?"

"I found Dana, but that's not what I'm getting at."

"Then what are you getting at?" I cried in exasperation.

"I babysat for money. I was sixteen when I started, and he was seven. I thought you had known he'd grown up in Oreburgh," Sela replied, voice quiet for the first time since she started forcing the issue. I blinked at her, confused. "I… was actually really relieved to find out you were his friend. Someone else had known him when he was just another sweet, dorky, want-to-rule-the-world Pokemon trainer."

"…You knew Nick?"

"Him and Mattie both. Of course, I babysat him before his brother came along."

I tried to process this information—and why she was sharing it. Was she still trying to get at something, or was this the extent of her topic? Sela was a blunt woman, so I figured she could deal with her own medicine. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I told you. I'm just glad that someone else isn't so caught up in the fact that he snapped. And I thought you should know that I'm not fond of thinking of him in killer terms, either."

"You were—You were just as mad at me as everyone else when this came out!" I snarled at her.

"I was," Sela replied calmly.

"Then why—?"

"I was mad. Because unlike you, I realize that he is a serial killer now. But unlike most of the others, I can appreciate the difference between Nick Sayre the trainer and Nick Sayre the killer. All I wanted was for you to know that we're not all high-strung and so blinded by our own nobility that we can't realize that we learned a lot from that kid. Not to mention—" She cut herself off, turning away. Dana pressed her tiny paws against her cheeks and gave her a kiss on the nose. Sela returned it with a chuckle.

"…Not to mention what?" I asked, ignoring the cutesy, very out-of-character action.

"Not to mention the fact that when you get to be this high in the world, especially in today's training climate, we're all about five minutes from pulling a Nick Sayre."

"No we're—"

"I don't know where you were, but I was in Sunyshore fighting off trainers and Pokemon with my goddamn fists when that riot broke out. You were all fighting tooth and nail against each other. And judging on your Luxray's behavior, you're not a perfectly innocent trainer, either," she snapped, cold once more. I reeled back, caught off guard by the personality change. "The fact of the matter is that each and every one of us has the potential to turn just as bad, if not worse, than he is. All it takes is the proper trigger. For him, it was Matthew."

"I know." I sunk low between Des' volcanoes, looking down at the fluffy chicks in my backpack. I knew all about what she was talking about, of course. The three greater tragedies of training, losing things, losing loved ones. I wasn't sure what I'd do if I heard my parents had been killed. …I knew I would snap if it was one of my Pokemon.

"At least you realize it," Sela replied, voice distant.

"I do. I was there with Nick, don't forget," I reminded her flatly. "I saw him as a trainer. You saw him as a little kid."

"Ha, I saw him as a trainer, too. We actually got our training licenses at the same time. I doubt he recognized me since I'd cut all my hair off and stopped wearing skirts by then, but I sure as heck recognized the little guy. Especially with Matthew hanging off of him the entire time."

"…What was he like?"

"Who?" She turned to me, suspicion and curiosity written all across her face.

"Matthew," I whispered.

"…Oh." She turned away again. "Well… I-I only saw him a couple times. After he was born, the boys' parents decided to stay home with them more often, so I only babysat him a handful of times, and he was so tiny. He was a cute infant, though. He had a full head of the softest brown hair right away, and hazel eyes that were just like his brother's."

I tried to picture that. I had never met Matthew, even if Nick had talked about him incessantly every time he was brought up. He was younger than I was, and Nick had always been trying to send him Pokemon to spoil him and watch over him… Obviously that hadn't worked. I felt as if I had a small, fleeting little window into Nick's mind—he must have felt so guilty because of that…

"He took me on as a foster brother, practically," I said with a sigh. "He told me that I reminded him of his brother a couple times. He acted like my brother."

"Do you have any siblings?" Sela asked. I shook my head. "Me neither. I guess we can't step into his shoes, as much as we try. But you know, that's in the past, right?"

"I know that—"

"Do you?"

I paused and gave it some thought. I knew it, yes. But had I realized it? Or maybe I had those backwards. The fact of the matter was that I usually ignored it and clung pretty hard to those memories. "…Why are we discussing the worst serial killer in the history of Sinnoh like this?" I asked her with a forced grin.

"Because we're both saps and too sentimental for our own good," she responded, laughing harshly. Dana buried her face into Sela's neck with a sad whimper. Aside from how she treated her Lopunny, however, I couldn't see Sela Schaffer as sentimental. The only emotion she regularly showed was anger.

Or maybe I—along with the others—had judged her too callously and too quickly. After all, in my eyes she was now a stabbing, sentimental, Lopunny-carrying, Nick-babysitting feminist. Which was certainly an upgrade from a violent, cursing, dress code-breaking feminist. Right?

Unlike Benjamin, Sela stuck around. Perhaps we were just traveling at about the same pace, or perhaps she felt guilty for hurting me, but she didn't leave one morning like he had. I wasn't sure to be glad or very, very worried. It was a mixture of both that I eventually ended up feeling. On one hand, the company was survivable and she kept wild Pokemon away. On the other, I simply felt awkward around her.

And we were competing against each other.

"Why is the blood-haired one still here?" Ike asked on the second night. Sela bared her teeth at him. He backed up against Des, hackles raised, lip curled. He turned his head towards me, but kept his eyes on her. "I understand that you enjoy keeping monstrosities around that injure you regularly, but perhaps you are going too far this time?"

"I really hope you realize that you are the other one in that group, right?" I asked, looking at Sela's hair. It wasn't blood-colored, but then again, he was a feline Pokemon. Maybe his sense of color was warped. Or maybe he just preferred that sort of language.

"The Krabby injures you as well," Ike said shortly, and with that and a swish of his tail, stalked off into the night. Sela snorted at his departure.

Konstantin floated over and wiggled into the space between Des and I. "Comrade," he whispered into my shoulder, taking care not to be overheard, "I am also worried about the woman trainer. She may be trying to sabotage you."

"Mission accomplished, then." I winced as I raised my leg to prove the point.

"I am serious!" he hissed, paws tightening on my shirt.

"Kostya, I don't think she would go that far. She already has apologized a lot for the leg incident. And Ike hurt her in return, so it's not like she came out unscathed."

"I agree with the ghost," Des rumbled. I turned to him, but his head was facing away from us, resting on his front legs. I nervously turned towards our guest, but she was busy tending the fire, and if she was eavesdropping, she was doing a good job of it.

"Guys, this isn't going to be a permanent thing. I'm sure she'll be leaving soon. And if she doesn't, we always can."

"I believe we should," Konstantin said firmly. "She may simply be accompanying you up until the end, and then cripple you further so that she may be the winner."

"I'm already pretty crippled—"

"She can do worse!" he whined. He buried his skull in my shoulder, teeth pressing uncomfortably into my chest. "Comrade, you have already been through much in this insane pursuit of a career. We have followed you with nothing but loyalty and devotion. But if you keep going down this path—"

"What path?" I said in exasperation, finally prying him away from my chest with my good hand. "I'm hoping to become a Gym leader so I can help people! So I can stop Nick!"

"Why haven't you been doing that to begin with? You've wasted all this time only getting yourself hurt," Des said simply. He shifted so that he faced us now, eyes lidded, not bothering to look upset with me like the Duskull.

"This was—"

"Not just that. Your hand? The light-haired female? Becoming a pariah just because you once knew the wrong trainer?"

"Nick wasn't wrong, and don't bring Alicia into this."

"Being with other trainers only hurts you. They don't understand you," he said lowly, reaching down to lick the top of my head. "We only worry about you."

"Thanks, mom, but I can handle it. So I'm a little accident-prone. Nothing's stopped us yet, and this is almost over, anyway. Tough out a couple more days, or weeks, or some time and battles. Then we can either go back, triumphant, or back to how things were."

"We're just worried," he repeated with a sigh.

-.-.-

"Interesting names," Sela quipped with a grin. I ignored her and continued trying to beckon two of the chicks over. They were growing rapidly, and I had to regularly let them out of the backpack now that they'd figured out how to waddle and hop around. The two boys, Oonu and Voonu, were also starting to get a little bigger than the two girls. I could at least tell them apart by gender.

"It's a long story and I can't be held responsible for it."

"I'm sure."

"I named one!" Carlita bubbled excitedly, picking up Oonu. He shrieked and flailed in her grasp, but if she noticed, she didn't let it deter her from swinging him around. I hastily took the baby Pidgey away from her.

"It was a group effort," Des said curtly.

"…That Camerupt of yours doesn't seem to like me much," Sela said, facing me but eyes on him. Des snorted out a plume of smoke and flicked his ears back.

"Des, play nice. Oh—Voonu, get off!" I plucked the Pidgey off of his sister. She peeped angrily at him and fluffed up further (if such a thing was possible), then strutted off once she was sure I restrained him properly.

They were losing more and more of their fluff every day, and they all had full feathers on their wings now. I hadn't know they would grow this quickly, but come to think of it, Zarek had grown pretty quick, too. Then again, he was a crustacean.

He also didn't appreciate their place in the team. He had since realized that they had taken over his position of both the newest and the youngest—and, most recently, the mute. I had to regularly chase him away from them, lest they lose a couple feathers or worse. He had taken to approaching Ike and asking him to eat or electrocute them. I wasn't sure which to be more worried about, his aggression or his fearlessness. Ike clearly had no idea how to react to him, either.

"It doesn't even look like it's getting closer," Sela said with a sigh. I glanced up at Stark Mountain, looming over us. It seemed so far away… I idly wondered if anyone had made it there yet. "I'm starting to think of changing tactics."

"What, stab more of your competition to get them out of the way?" I asked mildly, wiggling my finger to distract Vi from pecking at Alice's tail feathers. Of course, all that succeeded in was getting me pecked.

"Flying." I looked up at her, not surprised, but rather, concerned. She rolled her shoulders back in a shrug. "We're allowed five minutes a day. Might as well take advantage of it. It'd be five minutes less walking, and since we're starting to head uphill, it would be a lot faster."

I thought about that. It would be handy, and even if it's a couple hundred feet more, it would be more progress. I looked over at Alice, but she was absorbed in bickering with Konstantin. She wasn't that large of a bird. She could carry me, yes, but it took her a couple minutes to get used to my weight and get back up to speed. Would five minutes be enough to counterbalance that?

Well, I may as well try, I supposed.

"Also… We are getting closer, even if it doesn't look it. And you can at least hobble along on that leg of yours now."

"Barely, and no thanks to you."

She took it in stride, although Dana giggled nervously. "I'm saying that we should split up."

I looked up at her for the first time in the conversation, brow furrowed. "Huh?"

"You can travel faster than I can. I don't have any large Pokemon to ride, aside from Hark, and I can only use him for five minutes a day…"

"Are you telling me to go on without you?" I also couldn't tell if she was trying to be noble or simply wanted this to be a competition again instead of a friendly stroll through the never-ending forest.

"I guess I am." I don't know how a person could say something so arrogantly, but she managed it with ease.

"Why?" I couldn't help but ask. We were beyond rudeness and courtesy; Sela was a being that spoke her mind and expected others to. I obliged. It was a little refreshing, being so frank with someone. (Someone who didn't see Nick as a complete monster, but oddly, that didn't come up much.)

"I'm a favorite, remember?" The sharp grin was back. "I can afford to be a little slow, a little sloppy. Maybe I'd like to see how badly the Gym leaders play favorites, maybe I'd like to play the odds a bit."

"You're crazy," I told her. But it didn't stop me from leaving the next morning, with her cocky blessing. She may have been tiring, or she may have honestly wanted to push the envelope. I didn't think she was that nice, though. She couldn't have been that selfless.

Maybe she still felt bad for the knife thing.

Either way, I wound up on my own again. I found out that Alice could indeed get a fair distance in five minutes and began using that, although she told me that we could get farther if I didn't have to lug around four Pidgey constantly. During the days, I could walk a ways myself, more and more with each passing day. Des was perfectly happy to be the team's pack mule in the meantime. I would even go as far as to say he enjoyed it. I realized that we never really spent that much time together anymore, but now we had hours to simply converse and head steadily towards Stark Mountain.

Almost a week after I left Sela—although even then, the days were blurring and I may have lost count, I had been out here for forever—I could pretty much tell the quadruplets apart. Oonu and Voonu were recognizably the larger two, Vi was the most fearless, and Woonu seemed to have a fascination with Konstantin.

"At the rate they're growing, you're going to have to teach them to fly." I had, in fact, directed the offhand remark at Konstantin, but Alice fluffed up and hissed at me for it, anyway.

"You teach them!" she snapped.

"Alice, I didn't mean—"

"I'm not teaching them anything until I'm done teaching Zarek to fly," she added stuffily. She landed on the back edge of Des' volcano and set about to preening. I didn't even know what to say to that and instead looked at Zarek, who was currently being carried by Konstantin. "Also, I cannot wait until we're out of the wilderness! The Pokemon here are too strong and too hostile. I'm starting to get tired."

"But think of all the muscle mass you're gaining!" Carlita replied cheerfully. She bounded on ahead with dance-like movements. I guess that was the difference between my girls: one hated it out here, the other loved it.

"Are you calling me fat?" Alice shouted, bowing her head, tail feathers frizzing up like a cat's.

"No?" Carlita said, pausing mid-step. She tilted her head to one side, confused—but then, the moment passed, and she danced along again.

As Alice took Zarek back and flapped off again, Konstantin made me get back onto Des. As I was clambering on, I tried not to move my leg that much. Still, as I settled into the hollow between the volcanoes, I noticed that my shorts were bloody again. I casually set the Pidgey-backpack on my lap and hoped Konstantin hadn't seen. Every time the wound started to heal, I would manage to tear it back open. I could walk on it, though, so it had to be healing on some level… But just not enough that my worries were assuaged.

Poison's gone, I think. Ankle's still a little tender. Leg starts bleeding if I move it too much. Hand is still in a mitten. That was all I could think of and could remember. The upside was that my hand had been properly taken care of and was probably healing nicely, and, well, I could still walk. Just not for long distances. And due to the fact that my shorts were already stained red for almost the entire right leg, no one thus far had noticed when it started bleeding again. It wasn't as if it gushed down my leg or anything. It was just complaining.

I looked out over the daylight team. Carlita was ecstatic but had fainted more often than any other member of the team. At least we were mostly out of Pidgey territory now. Des was probably the most well-off, since we hadn't come across anything (yet) that had been much of a fight for him. Konstantin had earned a couple more scrapes on his mask and I'd noticed that he was holding his paw a little funny, but hadn't complained about anything yet. Alice was cautious, never strayed too far, and she was starting to sleep more and more heavily. Some days, she didn't even wake up when I released her.

Zarek, we had found out very belatedly, had hurt his claw in the Tentacruel fight. He could still use it and didn't say much about it, but he was now preferring his other instead. He had also been knocked out a fair amount. Ike was faring well, but he was roughed up in a very general sense. His fur was dark with blood—his or not, I didn't dare ask—that he couldn't keep up with trying to get out, at some point one of his ears had gotten a notch torn in it, and Zarek had clipped a nice little gash into the star on his tail.

My team was doing better than I was. This was good. I would take all the injuries if I could, although they'd take that treatment kicking and screaming.

I thought back to what Sela had said. We were all five minutes from pulling a Nick Sayre, provided we had the proper trigger for it. I smiled darkly. Well, that was true.

"But you guys are all fine, aren't you!" I cooed into the backpack. One of the girls—I think it was Woonu—tweeted back at me. They weren't so much of a burden anymore. They were cute, too. And making faces at them was entertainment while I was stuck being a passenger.

"Are you sure you'll be able to give them up?" Des asked dubiously, carefully stepping over a fallen tree.

"…It's not like I could never see them ever again," I replied after a very telling pause. "They're not going away for forever. Just to Jude."

"What if he sells them?" Konstantin asked, tone curious. He floated over and peered into the open backpack, only for Woonu to screech excitedly at his appearance.

"I'll ask him not to. Besides, even if I did keep them… I couldn't use them in battles, or I couldn't have you guys with me. Even for adorable baby Pidgey, I wouldn't trade you guys." I grinned at them. Konstantin ducked away from me, hiding his face in embarrassment. Des grunted a dry laugh.

And so the days passed. Not with a bang, but with cooing at baby Pidgey.

I felt like I was getting behind, though. Even with Alice flying me for five minutes every morning, even with me being able to walk for awhile, I felt so stagnant. Stark Mountain remained stubbornly out of reach. I began traveling later and later, after sunset, after Alice and Zarek went in and Ike came out. Even after Carlita fell asleep (and I returned her secretly, letting her back out when we had stopped for the night).

"This isn't good for you," Des told me on one such night.

"We're so close to winning…" I panted back at him, ignoring the way I could feel something hot run down my injured leg. It was dark out. No one could see the blood. Or so I told myself. I was impatient, and getting more so with each passing minute. "Des, I want to win. We're almost at the finish line."

"Yeah, well, don't trip over it," he muttered.

"If you're tired, I could put you back into your pokeball."

"And leave you out here alone? You'd die without me." I thought about the giant bugs that haunted the forest at night and shuddered.

And as if I had predicted it, I walked straight into a web. I screamed and flailed on impulse, but only managed to get more tangled up in it. The chicks, woken up by the noise and jostling, joined in with the shrieking and generally made things more annoying.

Annoying transformed immediately into horror as an Ariados, nearly as large as I was, crawled out onto the branch above me that the web was connected to. I writhed in the trap it had set; Des, being a little ways behind me, hastily jogged up the slope to get to me. Unfortunately, with my heart pumping and with all of the flailing, not to mention a day of travel, my leg had decided enough was enough and gave up. I went down, the web catching me and further ensnaring me.

I felt a disgustingly sticky string latch onto the back of my neck and suddenly I was hauled up, towards the trees. I tried to reach back to dislodge it, but the web was starting to impede my movements, and the backpack's straps were in the way. As quickly as humanly possible, I fought to get the backpack off, one hand still around the squawking chicks, the other arm reaching back to claw at the String Shot the Ariados was attempting to pull me up with.

I dropped neatly back to the ground, the web probably slowing my fall a bit. Good thing, too, as my leg refused to support my weight and I immediately sunk to my knees. I gasped for breath, heart thundering from the pain and terror both, all but ignoring the chicks' racket. I sensed more than saw Konstantin's appearance on the scene and Des had finally waddled up to me. It had all taken only a couple seconds, but it was terrifying.

Then, it got worse.

Apparently, the Ariados didn't pay the Camerupt or Duskull any heed, because it looped another thread around me. I turned and snarled at it, half-hoping to scare it off. It didn't work. It screeched, voice high and grating, and shot another String Shot at me. I clawed at this one, too, even as I was dragged up to my feet.

It hit me with another web assault, and this time, I flew up into the air. The problem was the backpack. I was ten feet in the air before the momentum caught up with me. It wasn't on me anymore; it slipped out of my hands.

My heart must have stopped. I threw out my hands to catch it again, just barely managing to snag one of the straps.

The problem was that the backpack had momentum, too. It swung down off of my fingers, flying open, now upside-down.

And I watched helplessly as two of the Pidgey fell out with shrieks high enough to rival the arachnid's. Two tiny, infant Pidgey who couldn't fly, who were frail and weak and hollow-boned, fell and hit the ground below mercilessly.

The backpack continued swinging gracefully—it had only taken but a moment—and then swung itself out of my hands. Konstantin made it in time to catch it, eye wide in its socket, looking at me instead of the Pidgey below us. One of them wasn't moving. The other was peeping feebly, wing splayed out at a painfully awkward angle.

I was hardly aware of the rest of the journey up into the tree, or the fact that the Ariados attempted to make a snack out of me and got as far as plunging its teeth into my shoulder before Ike arrived and Thunderbolted us both out of the tree. I landed on top of it, holding my shoulder more on instinct than anything else, eyes still on the Pidgey. The unmoving one had a black strip tied around its leg, the other one kicked a red-tied leg in something that scarily reminded me of the way Ike's prey would kick.

I felt a blast of heat go over me and the Ariados screeched again. I crawled over to the Pidgey, leg trailing blood, shoulder just now informing me of the pain. Black and red. Black and red—why couldn't I remember which ones had been black and red? I wanted to reach out to them, but I didn't want to touch them. The moving one stopped moving and laid still.

I slowly turned to look at the Ariados, which was unconscious and slightly charred on the other side of the remains of the web. Des was standing over it, volcanoes roaring, mouth still dripping flame. Konstantin hesitantly floated down and looked nervously between the Pidgey chicks and me.

It had all lasted just a couple seconds. It had been quick. But why did it feel like this had been the end of a horribly long battle?

I hesitantly reached out to one of the birds, but halted before my fingers made contact with the downy feathers.

"Des." I heard him turn back towards me and calm down a little. I turned completely to look at him, expression perfectly blank. "Kill it."
HAPPY END OF NOVEMBER I'M GONNA GO DROP INTO A COMA NOW

--

NOTES:
+OBVIOUS FORESHADOWING IS OBVIOUS AND LEADS TO IMMEDIATE RESULTS. My favorite kind.
+The shrill/childlike scream came from Dana the Lopunny; have you ever heard a rabbit scream?
+NamNar's mouth is steadily getting more foul. Is he growing up? Or is he simply losing patience? I'll leave that up to you. ;D
+Dana's behavior and Sela's backstory will be explored - I cannot wait! (they probably have my second favorite backstory) Want a hint to it? Sela's trigger - it happened a long time ago. >w>


REFERENCES thus far:
+The fact that Ike can see in the dark is a reference to the pokedex entries, which state that it can see through anything; xray vision. And darkness.
© 2010 - 2024 Digital-Skitty
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Nix501st's avatar
Jeeeezzz... your fanfic is going to have the 'Anyone can Die' trope?