Chapter Text
"Hey Banette, got a minute?" Banette and Cacturne were leaning against the stone wall surrounding the wooper daycare when they looked up to see Roserade standing over them.
"It's a little early for you to be up, ain't it?" Banette flashed his signature smile and motioned with his chin towards the sunless horizon. Cacturne raised his head as she approached.
"Masq has been helping me work on this technique and I-"
"Needed a test subject?" Banette guessed, a disturbing level of excitement in his voice.
"You're not-it isn't…you know what, fine. Yes," Roserade eventually relented with a pout.
"What exactly are you testing out?" Cacturne pushed off the wall to face her.
"Masquerain was able to calm down the pink-haired girl with his Sweet Scent technique, so I figured he could teach it to me and in return I'd teach him how to do a Solar Beam."
"You got ripped off," Banette snorted, earning a new bump on his head from Cacturne.
"Drew's little bath stunt from last night has Masq running dry, so just in case the next town we find turns out like the last one, I want to be able to help if they need it."
"Then you know it won't work as well on me, I'm grass type as well," Cacturne reminded.
"I know. Which is why I…" Roserade slowly shifted her gaze to the haunted toy, now frantically bobbing in place, eyes bright.
"Say it," he mouthed, almost loud enough to be a whisper.
Roserade rolled her eyes and finished. "It pains me to say this, but I need him."
"You need whoooo?" Banette placed his hand over an imaginary ear.
"He won't stop until you say his name, otherwise you can kiss his help goodbye," came Cacturne's deadpan explanation.
"I need your help…Banette," Roserade groaned and watched the ghost shoot up into the air like a rocket then spin into a whirling blur, laughing maniacally all the way.
"Was that so hard?" Banette beamed as he floated back down.
"My only breakfast this morning has been sunlight and just watching you is making me want to heave."
"Is that how you plan on teaching Masquerain Solar Beam?"
Cacturne quickly found himself restraining the bouquet pokémon as she thrashed and uttered threats and curses that made the sand in his face heat up. Banette fled the scene, and even then it took a few minutes for her rage to die.
"Sorry you had to see me like that," she huffed.
"No need. He can get to everyone, but word to the wise. Once he knows he can get under your skin he'll keep trying until it gets old for him."
"How do you deal with him?"
"Mostly I tune him out, which annoys him to no end. And when that doesn't work I find new and inventive ways of reminding him how dumb he is."
"I resent that!" They heard Banette call from somewhere beyond the wall.
"Looks like he's ready to start. You wanna watch?"
"You're planning on testing experimental techniques on our psychotic friend? I wouldn't miss this for the world," Cacturne smiled and hopped over the stone barricade with Roserade following suit.
"Let's get this show on the road," Banette cried out, swinging his arms back and forth.
"You're awfully psyched about this," Masquerain commented, hovering down from the roof of the daycare to the backyard.
"Between you and me, my fluttering friend, this is just another opportunity for me to hold something over Rosey in the future. Ya know, like in case I need a favor."
"How devious," Masquerain smiled.
"Little old me?" Banette pointed at himself dramatically as Roserade and Cacturne rounded the corner of the house.
"Masq, go over there or something," Roserade barked, shooing him away with both bouquets.
"What's wrong with me being over here?"
"I don't like the two of you being together. Each of you by yourselves is annoying enough and I don't need you guys building off each other."
"Mental note made," Banette snickered.
"So, unless you also want to be on the receiving end of this, I suggest you move," Roserade hefted her red bouquet menacingly, or at least as menacingly as one could make a bouquet of roses. While not her most intimidating feature, the look in her eyes made the warning clear. Masquerain took the hint and fluttered towards his teammate.
"Cacturne. Old buddy, old pal?" Banette shivered in mock fear.
"What is it Bane?" Cacturne deadpanned back.
"If she messes up this technique and I die…again-"
"This technique can't kill you," Roserade reminded them.
"*When* she kills me," Banette continued, undeterred. "I want you to know something."
"What is it?" Cacturne stretched out the words with a groaned.
"Come closer," the haunted toy croaked.
"What?"
"Come closer and I'll tell you," Banette said through a series of overdramatized strangling sounds.
"No. I'm done. Hit him with your best shot, Rose."
"I thought you'd never ask," she smiled and released a cloud of green powder from her bouquets.
***
Whitney awoke with a start, rolling onto her side. May was no longer next to her. She swung her legs over to the edge and let them hang. Scenes of everything terrible in the last ten days still plagued her dreams and soured them into nightmares.
Ten days feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe it did happen in another life. The Whitney from Goldenrod, the farm girl, the gym leader is still back there. Maybe that Whitney's dead. So then, what's left? Who am I?
She shook her head and sighed. Even in this moment of relative comfort there wasn't time to ponder these things and get answers.
This Whitney probably keeps people up at night with her nightmares.
Harley had been kind enough to tell her that she often mumbled and cried in her sleep but that she shouldn't feel bad, because she wasn't the only one. The news had offered her some comfort but it was still embarrassing to imagine and worse if it was keeping someone else from sleeping. She slipped into her clothes, shifted off the bed and made for the stairs outside the room.
Each step summoned a creak from the wood beneath her bare feet. What Whitney hadn't expected to see was May, Harley, and Drew darting back and forth across the room, packing food, blankets, and other various travel items into makeshift backpacks.
"Morning, Whitney," May was the first to say, with Harley and Drew echoing the words soon after. Whitney nodded and managed a small smile once she looked around the room.
"I thought you two wanted to stay here a little longer."
"What Harley said last night… it reminded me of what's really important. Even if this kind of stuff isn't happening in Hoenn, our families have no idea if we made it out of the city. As far as they know, we died back there. Every second I use to get closer to a phone is another second I can spare them any more needless grief."
The others nodded silently and kept at their tasks.
"So, when do we head out?" Whitney asked.
"We were gonna finish packing here, then I was gonna whip up some breakfast for us and we could head out then," Harley explained.
"Sounds good. I'll head back up and start packing. While I'm at it I'll see if Miltank can spare some milk for today's breakfast."
"I look forward to it. I'll check and see if there's anything we need from the room upstairs."
Harley nodded and watched Whitney make her way back up before glancing over to the others.
"Are we sure she should come with us? She could stay here where it's safe," Harley whispered once he was sure she was out of earshot.
"The last thing she needs is to be alone, Harley. She said it herself, she wants to come with us," May handed him one of the bags to place with the others in a bundle on the floor.
"If we left her here," Drew reasoned, "in someone else's house, and someone came by and realized this wasn't her place…"
"Who would even come by to check?" Harley shot back.
Drew shrugged. "The authorities? The military?"
"Military?" Harley's eyebrow almost met his hairline.
"Yes, the military! You think an entire city's worth of people getting slaughtered just gets ignored? Every news station would be covering this, the region wouldn't exactly be sitting on their hands and watching it happen. The National Guard could be deployed with rescue vehicles."
"It's been ten days since then. We haven't exactly seen a lot of military presence," Harley countered.
"To be fair, Harley. We've spent two or three of those days in caves. This region's pretty big. It could take them a long time to comb through all the woods and caves to find people. Like Drew said, they might not even expect to have found survivors after what happened to the forest by Whitney's ranch," May's voice grew softer as she spoke. "Goldenrod might not even be the only place. The military would have its hands full if it was every major city."
"Before we went into the Onix Tunnel, the…where the town used to be, the forest was fine. We've only seen things created by humans be destroyed, nothing natural," Drew had left his bag unattended as he paced around the room.
"What about this place?" Harley swirled his finger around.
"Maybe the woman who lived here wasn't home. There were only wooper here. Whatever's doing this probably didn't see the point in destroying this building if…no it's still something manmade, so I don't know." May confessed.
"Maybe not manmade, maybe just…people. Someone or something might actually be targeting places with humans and only the humans if it can help it." Drew amended.
"The question is why?"
The room stayed silent.
***
"Glace, can we talk?" Blaziken asked. The ice eeveelution was at the front of the group once more, occasionally sniffing the air to catch any sign of wild pokémon in the area. Roserade took up her usual position by the rear while Masquerain floated above the group as their eyes in the sky.
"What's there to talk about?" Glaceon kept facing forward, her tone just as icy as her element.
"What happened back at the cave, I'm-"
"Your apologies won't bring those pokémon back," she hissed back, the hairs on her body forming quills.
"Those pokémon were going to follow us," Blaziken growled, his patience already eroding.
"You don't know that. We could've run away and the Onix could've left us alone. We will never know that because they were killed before they even had the chance to stop."
"Were you willing to take that chance? Willing to let May and her friends get hurt to have the moral high ground?" the fire starter's feathers fluffed up in agitation.
Glaceon was quiet for some time before she turned to him. "Yes. At least then if we did have to kill them, then it would've been justified."
Blaziken watched her dart past him towards the end of the group, keeping the quills of her fur raised until enough distance had passed between them. He watched her talk with Roserade for a few seconds before the Bouquet pokémon made her way over to him.
"She asked you to switch spots with her?" Blaziken deadpanned, to which Roserade nodded.
"Asking would've been the nice way of doing it, but yes. She did. I know she's your teammate so I don't want to butt in, but say the word and I'll give her a piece of my mind."
"As tempting as that sounds, I can't take you up on that offer. You're right, she is my teammate and it was my decision to attack the onix when we could've run away. This is something we should deal with. Enough about that now, how goes the Sweet Scent training?"
The mention of her morning sessions made her flinch.
"That bad, huh?"
"No… it, I think I did it or… I guess I'm not sure if lately my progress has been bad or good."
"Not sure I follow."
"Bad because I was trying to learn how to do Sweet Scent and I ended up making something else. Good, in a way, because Masq says the effect is stronger? Different..."
Blaziken's eyebrow arched. The moth was hovering towards them.
"What's the situation?" Blaziken whispered, feeling a surge of warmth flow through his arms, the feeling that always came before he let the fire burst from his wrists.
"There's no hostiles. It's another… was another human settlement. They'll be able to see it in a minute."
"How bad?" Roserade asked.
"Rosey, the last place we saw was a small town. This is-was a city. The only reason I know is because there's still something left of the skyscrapers," Masquerain looked to the end of the road with concern.
Roserade looked to Blaziken waiting for his call. The fire starter looked at his coordinator, the memory of her anguish in the first city still painfully fresh in his mind.
"How long does it last?"
"I don't know. A few hours maybe?" Roserade offered.
"They'll see it in thirty seconds," Masquerain reminded them.
Blaziken closed his eyes and gave a curt nod.
Roserade moved to the back of the group, releasing a green mist through her rose petals. The coordinators looked around for the source of the new smell, never once looking back at their own Pokémon as they breathed in deeply. The effect was subtle: a small relax of the shoulders, a glaze over the eyes. Their lips parted, mouths dry as they continued to breathe in. But they kept walking in silence, and within moments had reached the city.
Mounds of blackened bricks marked where buildings once stood, dollops of molten glass dotted the ashen ground surrounding each pile. Some buildings had survived the firestorm, though if they could still be considered buildings was another matter. Nearly all were missing roofs and half their walls. Patches of concrete had crumbled away from the walls revealing the girders and rebar underneath as if exposing metallic ribs. Yet there they stood. Wounded but defiant in the face of desolation.
A sea of ash hid the city streets from view, a scene all too familiar to them. The sight was disheartening, but Blaziken could only imagine what his coordinator and her friends were going through.
Each of them stared into the ruined remnants of the city, blinking a few times but otherwise unbothered by the sight. Even the pink haired girl looked upon the devastation without so much as misty eyes. Drew broke the silence by kicking one of the blackened stones.
"Well this sucks," Drew sighed, missing any actually dejection in his voice.
"Yeah," May echoed in the same disinterested tone. Whitney and Harley only nodded in agreement.
"Are you okay?" The others looked to Whitney. The girl from Goldenrod nodded slowly as if unsure of her answer but continued.
"I'm… alright. I guess I'm lost on what to do now."
The others took on thoughtful expressions before looked to each other for answers.
"I say we check and see what can find," Harley offered.
Vacant eyes stared back at him.
"Some of these buildings are still standing. Maybe somewhere in this city there's a basement with food or supplies we can use on the road," he clarified and received silent nods.
Their pokémon watched them walk into the city with guilty expressions.
***
I should be upset. The former gym leader walked through the city streets, every step leaving the imprint of her shoes into a thick layer of ash. Charred and shriveled figures, all that remained of the inhabitants, littered the streets. Whitney approached a row of corpses, all of them face down in the ash. Some of them had fused onto the asphalt, others were half-submerged in sections where the road had softened from the heat.
Her group had split up to cover more ground but when she looked around she couldn't even begin to guess what the remnants of the buildings once were. Any discernable markers, whether one building sold computers or cooking utensils, had been taken by the fire.
*I wonder if Goldenrod is like this?* Whitney found it surprising how no pain came with the memory. Her hand lifted to her face and found no moisture beneath her eyes.
She tried to imagine it, her city, her home, her ranch, her gym, her uncle Milton, the miltank she had raised. The images came and went, but she couldn't muster the emotions that she often associated with them. None of it stirred anything inside her.
*Do I even want to feel that pain anymore? Wouldn't this be better? Not to feel anything about those memories? To finally move on with my life?*
Masquerain floated quietly behind her, swiveling in place and actively looking for anything hostile. Whitney had half a mind to tell him to relax.
They were the only things still alive in the city.
***
Drew could see her off in the distance, her clothes the only source of color in this gray world. Just the sight of her was supposed to evoke the twinge of happiness he had come to feel in the days he spent with her. He kept waiting for it to happen, moving closer to her when it didn't arrive. She watched him approach, her expression still blank.
He stood in front of her, their faces just a few inches apart. She didn't seem bothered by his proximity and made no effort to move away. His focus zeroed in on her lips, ones that didn't smile at the sight of him or grimace at their surroundings. The brilliant blue of her eyes had dulled somehow. Faded. Lukewarm.
"Find anything?"
"Nothing. You?"
"I summoned Munchlax to see if he could find any food, but he didn't smell anything. We found a sign. This place was called Pamplona City."
Drew glanced around, struggling to imagine the city in its former glory until his mind drifted elsewhere. He noticed his Roserade standing before May's Blaziken, speaking to each other in harsh whispers.
"Should we keep looking or head back to the meetup point?" May asked.
Drew shook his head. "We can keep looking, but it's probably going to be more of the same. Let's just head out and wait for Whitney and Harley."
Blaziken watched his coordinator. A few strides of his long legs placed him ahead of her. Roserade watched her coordinator, how his hand occasionally brushed against May's. Drew eventually slipped his fingers around hers. They looked into each other's eyes, a muted stare mirrored back. After a few seconds they shifted their focus forward and kept walking silently, fingers eventually slipping from the other's grasp.
***
Harley marveled at the silence, how it smothered him like the oppressive lingering heat that hung over the city. He trudged past the half-melted shell of a car, a sight that was becoming more and more frequent the deeper he ventured. The lanes were congested with the corpses of cars and people alike. A few of the cars had lodged themselves into their neighbors in a desperate attempt to gain a few more inches of safety from the flames. Harley climbed atop one of the more intact vehicles and saw more of the same stretch down the road.
One car just ahead of him caught his eye. Like jagged black teeth in a gaping maw the shards of a windshield still clung to their slots. Harley could see the blackened bodies of the drivers, held safely in place by their seatbelts. He would've sighed or even chuckled bitterly at the irony of it all, but the sound never came.
He registered the clatter of bones every time he took a step, knowing it should've sent shivers through his own. And yet, the notion floated to the back of his mind and there it stayed. A floating concept, barred from the borderline of reality, never to be translated into feeling.
Harley stumbled when his foot caved in a bulbous mass of bone. He glanced down for moment then trudged onward. The constant cool aura he had felt at his back started to fade into warmth. He turned around to see Glaceon no longer shadowing him, stopping before the boneyard, staring at the spot where he had stumbled.
He'd caved in a skull with his foot. It was smaller than usual, the perfect size for a child. Shame, horror, and sadness hovered on the outer fringes of his psyche, just close enough for him to recognize their presence but not to process them. Glaceon hopped onto one of the cars, doing her best to avoid touching the ground, now more bone than asphalt.
Following the river of cars, Harley eventually came to the mouth of an underground parking garage. Harley slipped past the rows of cars and down the ramp, stopping at the border of where the light ended and shadows began.
He brought out Banette, who conjured ghostly embers into a ring around the toy's body without so much as a snicker or smile. Harley didn't question Banette's silence. He reasoned that the situation was so messed up that there was nothing for the giggly ghost to laugh about.
There had to be one car they could use, one that had been overlooked or at least capable of repair. Harley's patience was eventually rewarded when he found a gray sedan tucked away into a corner.
"Glaceon, go to the meeting spot and have the others follow you back here."
May and the rest of the group heard the engine running before they found Harley. There were no cheers, no sighs of relief when they found him in the car testing the headlights. Seeing them he turned off the car, pulling out the knife he had slid into the ignition and stepped out of the driver's seat.
"It's not a full tank but it should take us pretty far. If we're going to get out of here then we need to clear out the traffic in the streets."
May's response came in the form of three flashes where Blastoise, Venusaur, and Munchlax materialized. They looked into her eyes and were unsettled when they couldn't find any trace of warmth there.
"Get rid of the cars."