“Tristan, please, just don’t tell mom and dad. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“But… Denis, aren’t you gonna get in trouble?”
“I’ll be fine, trust your big brother for once, okay?”
-
The wilderness east of Lumiose is a safe place, if you keep to the beaten path. That’s what they always say, and it’s true, but, by that same token, it’s spectacularly boring on that beaten path. All the interesting Pokemon are too well-hidden, or they come out at inconvenient hours. There’s bound to be something a little more fascinating if one just goes a bit further off the trail…
I have to see for myself. It’s late, I’ve timed this well, I think… No moon out, just my flashlight, should be able to see some of the shier creatures out here. I can hear their chirps and calls getting clearer as the distant city sounds start to fade. It feels like I’m actually stepping into the wilderness for once. I don’t get why mom and dad think it was a good idea giving it a few years before I considered getting into training, what else is there worth doing? ‘least, what is there that I’d be any good at…
I’m deep in the forest now… the grass has gotten a lot taller out here, no one’s around to keep it nice and trimmed. I can feel some smaller critters skirting past me, or see them rustling though the bushes… Wow… I thought this flashlight had more power than this… I can barely see a meter ahead of me. Things are starting to get quieter. Not a sound for a moment… then a jangling noise nearly makes me leap right out of my skin. I turn around to see it’s just a klefki… and a rather successful one, considering just how many of the little pieces of metal are hanging on its keyring-like body. It loses any interest in me once it realizes I’ve got nothing it wants and hastily floats off… Still, cool find, they’re usually pretty stealthy little guys.
The limited light can really mess with my senses, occasionally it seems like trees are looking right at me, but every time I check, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s only ever out of the corner of my eye. It keeps happening, but every time I just have to chalk it up to a trick of the mind. It gets worse every time though… now the faces sometimes seem to come from the smallest little stumps… and sometimes it feels like I keep looking back to see the same one right behind me, like I’m going in circles. There are ghost types that live in these parts but… ugh… I can’t remember which.
I’m trying to rack my brain to figure things out when I’m nearly knocked flat on my face by a murder of murkrow flying through the forest, and flying in a rather panicked fashion if some were close enough to the surface to nearly ram into me. Something must have spooked them. I freeze in place; I want to see if I can hear something coming up… but now the rustling from all sides is getting too loud to pinpoint anything. I’ve turned myself around too many times to count… crap… I forgot which way I came from… everything looks the same everywhere I look. Nothing’s all that familiar. This quickly turned into a bad idea, I don’t even have a compass. Gah, I’m such an idiot, I got too excited I forgot to prepare, should’ve known I’d let my eagerness get the better of me… I wasn’t supposed to go this far in the first place.
This was stupid, really stupid. I try not to panic, panicking’s just gonna make it worse, I have to stop and think. Rational, gotta be rational. No matter how far I got, there’s bound to be even the smallest clearing in the direction of Lumiose… even the smallest dot of distant light will tell me where I need to go. I turn off my flashlight, and I let my eyes adjust to what seems like pitch-black darkness, looking for the slightest glimmer up ahead…
Is that… I think that’s something? Yeah… Yeah, there’s a light just up there. I mean, it’s pretty small but hey, it’s something… It’s all I have to go on. I run in the direction of the light, and it gets closer a lot faster than I expected it to… but it’s got to be the city, I’m sure of it, I can hear some distant sounds of music, someone must be holding a concert. Kinda chilling melody though… I kinda want to slow down.
The light’s taking on a few shapes now that I’m getting closer. Looks sort of like a face now… Actually, it’s starting to look a lot like a face… Is someone else wandering around with a jack-o-lantern at this time of night? That singing’s gotten louder too… It’s doing something funny to my ears… they feel… cold. That cold’s running into my face and down the rest of me too… I’m shivering, but I can’t run away, I’ll just get more lost that way… It’s gotta just be my delusions. I just wish, whoever it is, they would stop with that creepy song they’re singing.
Now the thing is close enough for me to really see what it is… Some kind of Pokemon, no doubt, in a way it kinda looks… cute. It’s got this innocent, cheerful look on its real face, not the jack-o-lantern façade underneath. Its song is still piercing my senses like a knife, but it looks so happy while singing, like some careless little kid gallivanting about. It’s still heading in my direction, and now I can’t take my eyes off it as it keeps closing the gap between us… I want it to stop singing so badly, but I can’t really make the words out… It’s kinda difficult to talk for some reason… I watch as the creature’s hair, moving around like two loosely hanging limbs, suddenly lurches at me once I’m within reach, and I can’t react fast enough to avoid it.
Its innocent smile doesn’t look so innocent anymore up-close… and… something hurts…
Something hurts in a lot of places…
Something… sharp…
I can hear it tearing at something, but I can’t look down, it’s like it’s forcing me to look at it… Its hair tendrils scrape at my skin, and it keeps singing…
It’s singing louder…
Everything hurts now… I want to scream, but it’s like the worst kind of nightmare where I can’t make a sound… and the pain… and the singing…
Stop singing.
Please stop singing.
There’s… there’s someone coming this way… help… please do something…
Why aren’t you doing anything…?
You’re just watching?
Stop the singing... It’s all I can hear... I can’t feel anything… I can’t see anything…
There’s nothing but that song…
-
When you live in a city as grand as Lumiose, it’s hard not to look at all the massive buildings and bright lights and colors and not fall into the temptation of chasing fame and glory… Just like a lot of people I’m sure, I would love to be able to walk through these busy streets and have people point and whisper to each other in awe… “That’s THE Tristan Blanche. I can’t believe it!” To be a great trainer would be my method of choice for such an impossible aim… and I do mean it when I say it’s impossible, and not just because the task it daunting in itself… See… I only get to train Pokemon in the Summer months. My parents don’t want me to risk adventuring in the Fall. They’re frightened I might go missing, it’s too dangerous out there that time of year. Is that logical? Well, maybe not, but feelings of trauma can trump what one may call rational thoughts if they’re strong enough.
My older brother Denis was right about to start his own training journey years ago… He must’ve gotten too excited, maybe he just really wanted to get a head start on exploring, I don’t know, none of us do. The one thing we knew was that he never came back, couldn’t even figure out where his body could’ve ended up. Just, one night he snuck out, and that was it.
But there’s something I didn’t tell anyone, because I just don’t really know how to bring it up. Thing is, everyone went on the assumption that he left in the middle of the night, and, well, the assumption’s true, but the thing is, I saw Denis leave.
My brother begged me to keep it a secret, that he’d be back quickly. He never said where he was going, just… ‘out’. I was maybe like, 6 or so back then, so I didn’t think twice about keeping quiet, even when there wasn’t a trace of him come sunrise. I never thought my older brother could get lost, he seemed like as much of a grownup as my parents were. It wasn’t until I got to that age when I realized just how much of a kid he really had to be… because I sure wasn’t feeling like an adult by then, and a few years later, I still don’t, not really. I have to force myself not to think too much about it, because otherwise I start to imagine what he had to have felt, lost and confused, scared out of his mind, before who-knows-what happened…
If I were to tell anyone about it now, it feels like it wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t change anything... might just end up making my parents mad, and maybe they’d have every right to be. I just hold on to my futile promise, having to live with the fact that I could have shouted right then and there and woken my parents up, I could have at least tried to convince him it was a bad idea, I could have done anything except go right back to sleep that night. But I didn’t. I was a stupid kid, and I lost a brother because of it, and the dreams I’ve had since then will never let me forget that.
About that last part, I should probably explain… I get these nightmares sometimes, started not long after… all that unpleasantness. Most of it is too abstract to put into words, so often I just hear so many noises that disorient my subconsciousness. I do occasionally see some things though. Lately there’ve included a bunch of trees that seem to spring up just before the dream ends. I don’t know what it all means, but it’s been happening for so long that I just expect another one every couple days and try to mentally brace myself for it… It’s never easy though, but I don’t want to worry anyone, my family’s got enough paranoia as it is, I shouldn’t throw yet another misfortune into the pile.
You’d think I wouldn’t want to be a trainer at all if there’s so much mental baggage attached to it, but that’s not the case. It’s not just that Denis loved the idea of training Pokemon and aspired to become a master, but he got me hooked on the idea myself while he was around. That’s one of the few vivid memories I still have of him beyond that last night, and to give up something that we bonded over, well, it would feel wrong… and honestly, the only friend I’ve really got these days is my one and only Pokemon. I’d managed to buy a single Pokeball from the department store and figured I’d just try to catch something that wandered near the city limits. As fate or whatever would have it, I saw a quagsire waddling around unattended up on the north side, with that perpetual grin plastered on his face of course. I didn’t even do a good job sneaking up on him… in fact he turned and stared at me several paces away, but he didn’t run off or anything, just kinda tilted his head and watched intently. I figured I’d just wing it, and upon that first try, he let himself be captured without any kind of fuss…
Quagsire are carefree by nature, but, mine just seems that much more on the airy side, nothing gets him down. That constant cheeriness… it’s helped me through a lot of bad days, and while we’re not exactly top contenders, every summer it’s just fun to get in a few battles, explore a little around central Kalos, maybe one of these years I’ll feel confident enough to take on the local gym, I dunno… but this year doesn’t seem likely to be the one. Summer’s at its end, the leaves are turning bright shades of red and yellow, another short bout of training’s about to come to an end.
Usually I can reluctantly accept this and go back to finding some sort of odd job or two around the town to do for the rest of the year, that or dad will have me enrolled in some kind of class to nudge me into a more permanent line of work… but I can’t really focus on any of that. The dreams have somehow managed to get even worse than before…
It’s almost every night I get the same nightmares, hearing so many distinct little things… the distant echoes of some disturbing tune, this gargling noise like someone’s trying to scream but their throat won’t let them, the sound of what I can only guess is some kind of meat getting sliced up, and to top it all off, the visual of those trees growing into an entire forest… and a familiar one at that… and now I can’t wake up without seeing someone looking at me through the forestation, glaring with hollow eyes that I can never quite make out before it all abruptly ends. I’m not sleeping so well, big surprise… but I still would’ve just tried to ignore it somehow if I wasn’t seeing my parents looking very… out of it as well. They don’t say anything when they know I’m in the room, but I’ve listened in when they weren’t aware… They were talking about the dream too… The same exact one… Both of them were having it.
I always thought I’d be the only one to get these dreams. Not that I thought I was special, I just figured this was just some weird problem I’d just been unfortunate to stumble into, but, if the whole family’s experiencing the same thing, then there’s something much bigger going on, there has to be. I’m no psychologist, but three different people sharing the same dream on repeat seems like something that doesn’t just happen without an outside force… It’s not like there aren’t Pokemon out there that can mess with your head after all.
Whatever the cause, I can’t just ignore it anymore. I feel like this dream has to be some kind of bizarre form of communication. A message trying to get to one of us. That forest I see, it’s clearly the one just east of the city. I never get too close to it, the place gives me chills, the way the trees seem to go on forever, and how some of them seem to stare back at you if you look at them long enough. This dream though, it’s like a big arrow pointing in the forest’s direction, no doubt about it… The end of my seasonal training session will have to wait, I’ve got one more mini-expedition to take on…
I’ll admit I’m still wondering if I should have talked this over with mom and dad and had all of us explore the forest together, but I know they’re not in any condition to go hiking through any kind of wilderness. Maybe it’s because these dreams are newer for them, but they can barely go about their daily routines without nearly passing out… No, I can’t get them involved… Maybe I could get somebody else though, but… I don’t really think I know anyone who would believe in my dream theory, all that would do is probably get the three of us committed. Whether it’s the right or wrong thing to do, I feel like I can only trust myself on this one… Well… myself and Quagsire… I call him out from his Pokeball once I’m at the forest’s edge. He looks to me with the same smile, but, it’s one of his subtler ones… the closest thing he can get to conveying seriousness. I give him a pat on the head, but I say nothing, we just walk together into the foreboding vegetation. These dreams are coming to an end tonight.
-
I like this patch of flowers here… It always looks so nice and pleasant, welcoming… It’s pretty much my home, or at least, it’s been the closest thing I can imagine to one, for as long as I can remember. Not that I know too much about homes in the eyes of others. Everyone here seems to have their own take on one’s abode… Nests in the trees, mounds of dirt, bushes… take your pick, whatever suits your fancy I guess, but for us Phantumps, so long as we’ve got all those safe and secure trees surrounding us, that’s all that matters. My spot’s good enough for me. There used to be someone else here too, I think… They didn’t move much, but they really took to the ground… Sunk right into it after a while. More flowers sprung up where they used to be. A parting gift maybe? Very kind of them…
I don’t really like to explore the forest too much… Sometimes I float about, find a few berries if I’m hungry, wave to the others that pass by at a safe distance. Some of them wave back… others just seem to stare though. They give these empty looks, then they leave. Sometimes I feel like I ought to relate to them. Don’t know why though.
If I’m able to work up the courage I might drift over to the edge of the forest where the open trail lies… There’s something familiar about that path, and those humans that walk along it, not that I want to investigate further. Other Pokemon can be a little unnerving, but something about humans make them just that much more unsettling, I don’t want to risk them getting too close… With the way they have those Pokemon following them around, being carried in those spherical capsules? Nope, not looking to take any part in that. It’s safe and serene right where I am.
Lately though, something’s been bothering me despite everything. I mean, I know, being a type of ghost means I shouldn’t have expected to just live a conventional upbringing, or even have a family, but, I couldn’t have just spawned out of thin air, right? Earliest thing I can remember is finding this place, like I’ve always just sort of been here… but that can’t be true. Thinking back shouldn’t be this difficult either, but the days genuinely feel like they’ve passed by too quickly, it’s hard to even tell the years apart most of the time.
I can’t say I know how to deal with this feeling… now I’m really regretting not having some kind of friend to confide in… Why is this only bugging me now? I don’t get much time to mull over it, as I hear some unfamiliar rustling of the trees off in the distance, and from the way the noise seems to be getting steadily louder, whatever it is, it’s getting closer by the second.
Is that a human? What’s one of them doing out here? They never venture this deep into the forest, that’s one reason why this place has always felt so safe! Oh no, no no no… they’re coming this way too… I swoop into the nearest bush, peering out carefully to observe this human’s actions… If I’m lucky they’ll just keep walking and I’ll be able to laugh this off as nothing more than a little scare.
They finally come into view and I get a good glimpse… and suddenly… Strange… I’m not feeling quite so frightened anymore… Looking upon this human strikes up a feeling of familiarity… A human being familiar? It seems absurd, but here we are. I would’ve ducked completely out of sight by now, normally. Instead I’m doing the unthinkable… like, literally, it feels like I’m acting without thinking, because I’m actually floating my way towards this guy.
-
We’ve ventured pretty far into the forest now, I’m starting to doubt my logic of beginning my exploration so close to sundown, because the light’s starting to fade fast. It’s gonna be an unpleasant return journey most likely…
The Pokemon that scatter around us are starting to look a little more, well, haunting, I suppose. Fair enough, it’s getting darker and the ghost types are probably just naturally inclined to mill about in the evening. Most of them pay me and Quagsire little mind, guess there aren’t many tricksters inhabiting this area. Not that I’m complaining, I very much prefer not getting jump-scared by sinister spirits that could very well drain the life out of me in an instant if they really wanted to. Still, keeping an eye out, if my dreams were leading me in this direction, the chance that there’s something malicious out here seems all too likely.
We happen upon a flower bed, surprisingly vibrant compared to some of the area around it, almost like the soil was just a little bit more nutrient-rich or something. I figure this is a good spot to at least rest for a second and figure out just what we ought to do from here. Maybe this would be all I’d have to do, maybe it was as simple as exploring a place I’d grown afraid of for years… but that still left the question of why it was affecting my parents…
Quagsire merely gives the flower bed a curious glance before deciding to flop down and roll about on it… Of course, I’d be a fool to expect anything else from him, even in moments of coming dread, he’ll seek out some fun to be had.
I’m distracted by his shenanigans, it’s hard not to be, but usually we’re in a much safer place when he acts silly, and, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I look away from my partner Pokemon, I see a ghostly figure with a tree-stump for a head, floating squarely in my direction. I can’t help but scream, this Phantump startled me real bad… Did we trespass on its little territory here? I mean, sure it might seem silly getting such a harmless looking little fella peeved, but Pokemon are more than their appearances, you’d be making a fatal mistake to think otherwise… but I probably shouldn’t be thinking about fatal mistakes right now…
I should be running, but I seem to have taken another approach, freezing in place like a Deerling in the headlights. Quagsire’s stopped with his antics, I catch him with the corner of my eye just standing beside me as the Phantump gets uncomfortably close to my face, just staring me down. What is it trying to steal my soul or something? Can they even do that?! Dammit my mind’s racing too fast to think…
-
The human looks absolutely terrified of me… Do they all act this way around us? I’d wonder about that, but I’m still transfixed by how this face just seems to be so… recognizable somehow. What is it about him? I tilt my head from one side to another, but all I get is that nagging feeling, telling me that I must have forgotten something of importance.
“Hello!” I hear a gargly sort of voice suddenly pull me out of my focus. I nearly obey that initial instinct to flee again, though I halt myself once I see the voice came from the companion of this human, a Quagsire…
“Ah… hi?” I work up enough courage to reply.
“Is this where you live, little guy?” he asks.
“Y-yeah… All my life,” I answer, but as I say it, I nearly stop myself… It’s the sort of feeling… when doubt suddenly breaks into your perception of the truth… Only a few seconds in this human’s presence and I’m feeling that doubt creeping in.
“It’s a nice place! I like the colors, not enough water for my taste though… Hey! You ought’a get a stream to come through here! That’d be so nifty to have a little river next to these flowers, then it’d be perfect!”
Chatty one… he’s talking like we’ve known each other for years.
“I’ll keep that in mind… Might I ask what you two are doing here?” I say to try and keep the subject from careening headfirst into further discussions regarding the impossible task of building an artificial river in the middle of the forest.
“Oh, yeah! My master here’s been having some really bad dreams lately, and he thinks if he comes to this forest they might go away or something like that,” the Quagsire answers as he shifts back and forth, occasionally bumping into the human who hasn’t moved an inch.
“Bad dreams you say…” I murmur and I look back to the human. A shame these creatures can’t seem to understand us so well, at least not verbally. He does look pretty tired… how long have these dreams persisted, I wonder…
-
Quagsire’s more than happy to have a little chat with the Phantump, like some casual meeting between strangers at a public get-together. As usual I can’t make out a word of what they’re saying of course… but the ghost tree here doesn’t look ready to attack… Eventually they stop their chatter, and we all just stay there uncomfortably for… how many minutes has it been now? I can’t just stay put like this. It’s getting way too dark…
“W-well, nice to meet you, I think we’ll… just leave you be, huh?” I finally force myself to say as I grab one of Quagsire’s flipper-hands and we make our way… to… To the… You’ve got to be kidding me… Did I really screw this up so badly?
I muffle myself with my sleeve to drown out the frustrated curses as I realize I’ve gotten us lost, with no breadcrumbs in sight to follow back to the city. I can feel my heart racing as I try to fight off my anxiety and look through the acres of trees surrounding us, but nothing rings a bell at all.
-
That look of fear on the human’s face as he tries to leave… It’s… something I can empathize with? Like I can relate to it somehow… but I’ve never gotten lost out here, not to my immediate knowledge…? I feel inclined to help him… Now that would probably just be the right thing to do anyway, but there’s another layer to that feeling of helping out someone in need… There’s this strange additional feeling, like I ought to protect this guy, like that’s my job somehow… but it’s not like he tried catching me, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t miss that if it happened, so what’s with this obligation?
I can’t say, but it’s not long before I’m just acting upon it, floating back to the human as he continues to look around in a panic. I tap him on the shoulder and he jolts around to look back at me, his nerves clearly a little frayed.
-
I’ll be frank, my nerves are a little frayed. Even that supposedly friendly Phantump’s light shoulder tap nearly gives me a heart attack just from the stress I’m feeling right about now.
“Look, little fella, we’ll leave you be, I promise, I’m just, y’know, not sure which way’s the right way back…” I say, and it naturally doesn’t give me much of a response in the vocal department, but it looks thoughtful about something. After a moment’s time, as the growing darkness of the moonless night begins to make it difficult to see much more than the Phantump’s glowing red eyes, it reaches to grab my free hand and begins to lead the two of us off in a direction.
I feel some relief wash over me, it’s apparently sympathetic enough to help us get our way out of here. We must be closer to the city than I figured though, I can hear some music off in the distance and everything.
-
The new moon… It always seems to arrive a little sooner with every cycle. This one feels particularly special though… Perhaps it’s merely the nostalgia of this place. We have been gone for so long, so many years we have wandered this region, just the two of us, away from prying eyes as we seek out the nourishment my companion so deeply desires when the moon disappears from the sky.
Mother loved her Pumpkaboo… She so rarely expressed any sort of loving emotion that wasn’t directed towards her one and only Pokemon. I saw how happy she was with him, I liked to imagine she was speaking to me that way… with such a caring warmness, not the cold apathy I was more used to. I envied that, but I couldn’t feel any malice towards him… how could I? He made mother so happy. She would sing little tunes to him every night, and sometimes he would sing back, and I would listen… and I’d feel so happy.
Then she got old. She got sick. She stopped the singing, and she was giving up breathing soon after. The last thing she did was entrust her Pumpkaboo to me… Not with a word, but with a look, handing me the Pokeball, looking directly into my eyes… She never stopped staring, even as her life fizzled out completely… her dead eyes still stared me down… I think I must have kept looking back for hours…
Pumpkaboo evolved that very night into Gourgeist, and a massive Gourgeist at that. As it looked at my mother one last time, it sang their song once more… Such a beautiful serenating of the departed… but I knew it was more than that… it was his way of letting me know she would always be with him, and if I kept him happy, I would keep her happy too. That was all I wanted. Every new moon from then on, Gourgeist would hunger, and we would go out to satiate that hunger… It started with wild Pokemon, we’d usually find enough to satisfy him… but one night that wasn’t enough. We needed something more potent, something… different… That was the night we found that lost child.
I was so horrified when it happened at first, foolish enough to think this boy’s life had any more meaning than the creature’s we’d hunted down before… but I heard the gleeful song from Gourgeist as he tore into his meal, and I knew I had no reason to dread anything. That was the night I truly became the companion he needed to have, no longer limiting him to such small fare if his hunger yearned for something greater. So long as I got to hear that song, mother’s song… I would do anything.
Such lovely memories… and they’re so clear tonight as we walk through the very forest that opened my eyes to such enlightenment. Gourgeist’s song is as beautiful as ever as he leads the way, and I know just where he’s taking us. Hallowed ground.
-
That song… why do I feel so frightened by it? I’ve stopped moving, I think the human’s asking me why, but his voice is hazy, all I’m thinking about is that music… It’s bringing this feeling of dread… and more than that… images… I used to have these all the time, I’d forgotten about them… a Pokemon and a human, looking at me, singing this haunting melody… it always hurt so much to think about it, and it’s all coming back in full force.
I try to find the source; at first, I see nothing, but… there it is… That’s the face… the glowing façade of a face, rather… I’ve seen it before too… I want to fly away, right then and there, I feel like I need to get out of here, but as I turn around, I see the human’s confused expressions and those feelings of protectiveness come back… I don’t know what to do… I’m so confused… Why do I remember these things?!
-
We’ve stopped suddenly… That song looks like it’s freaking out the Phantump for some reason. I can’t fault it for that, I’m starting to feel chills myself… Something really unnatural about that tune… Even Quagsire looks a bit put off by it. Along with the singing I can see a glowing face headed our way, and I recognize it almost immediately… That’s the jack-o-lantern body of a Gourgeist… It was difficult to miss, but, the fact that it was here at all was baffling. The Pumpkaboo in these parts were somewhat common, but almost no one could say they saw their evolved forms out in the wild. Far more likely one would be accompanied by a trainer of some sort… Actually… yeah… wait… It’s close enough now that I can see the silhouette of someone walking closely beside it. They’re making their way towards us… and it looks like they’re picking up the pace…
-
Oh what blissful luck indeed! So close to that place where that first child breathed his last, here we have another! What a lovely bit of fate… Gourgeist looks so pleased already, he’s singing louder. We pick up the pace, there’s really no need to drag this out, we’ve anticipated such an opportunity like this again for so long.
This boy’s got Pokemon accompanying him, but that won’t matter, we’ll deal with them… make it a full course meal that way. Gourgeist likes to occasionally work for his food anyway. Nothing like a little bit of sport after all.
-
Quagsire isn’t always the quickest on the uptake, but he could sense something off about this man and his Gourgeist, and he’s made a point to stand in front of me. I can finally start to feel my legs starting to work again, but to assume I’ll be able to just outrun this guy all the way back to Lumiose is beyond wishful thinking.
This Gourgeist is massive… I know their sizes are notoriously varied, but I’ve never seen one quite like this, and it doesn’t even appear to have much of a focus on Quagsire… by all accounts that thing’s real eyes are locked on me and me alone. I back away as this monstrous gourd looks ready to swipe at me with its hair-like arms. Quagsire tries to blast it back with a mud shot, but it doesn’t hold it at bay for very long. Still, he follows that up with an ice beam, doing whatever he can to force the Gourgeist away. He finally forces it to give him its attention… That ice attack clearly made a mark, but now I’m realizing this might be a very bad thing actually… Gourgeists are part grass-type… Even with a few ice moves, my water/ground type companion is way out of his element.
I notice what appear to be green blades sliding along the Gourgeist’s arms. The man beside it mutters “razor leaf the pest…” and the blades swiftly launch at Quagsire… They cut deep, for the first time I can ever recall, his smile fades entirely and he staggers back. He doesn’t look so good, not at all… I have every reason to call him back, but I can’t just throw my hands up in forfeit. By this point, for whatever deranged reason, I think it’s becoming pretty clear this guy’s out to kill me… kinda makes accepting defeat a lot more difficult to swallow. The Phantump… I don’t know where he went, I’m too afraid to avert my eyes from our attackers to check.
“Time to feast, my friend,” the man says with a wide grin, and soon enough I’m wrapped up… and I feel those razor leaves beginning to slice at me… Each one hurts more than the last! I can see Quagsire desperately trying everything he can to force me out of the Gourgeist’s grasp, I can feel the very earth beginning to shake, but even then, it won’t let go, it won’t stop, and I can feel it beginning to drain energy out of the cut marks it leaves in what I can only assume is some kind of morbid giga drain attack. Every attack that lands is just being negated by my own life force…
I’m screaming now… but nothing’s happening… Dammit… I’m going to die, and like a complete idiot who didn’t even learn from his brother’s mistakes… Mom… Dad… I’m so sorry…
“…Denis…” I hear myself weakly saying as everything starts to get hazy… as this monster’s song begins to plague at what little thought I can muster… and I just want it to stop…
-
Denis… Denis… Frightened and mortified by what I’m watching, I hear the human say that name… and… it feels like time stops… I’ve been here before… This very moment… this very situation… except I was the one in this monster’s grasp… I’d died by its hand… I’d heard its song… the same one it’s singing now… Who was I? I… I was human… At one point I must have been one…
That name… it was my name… my parents gave me that name… my parents… they named someone else…
Someone I wanted to protect…
Like… like a brother…
My… brother…
…Tristan?... TRISTAN!
-
I feel myself hitting the dirt… Everything hurts… but the song… it’s stopped… Somehow I’m still conscious… and I can see the Gourgeist tumbling backwards… from the Phantump’s attack. I’d thought it had vanished, but it reappeared in an instant and took its foe completely by surprise… and it doesn’t stop. Before the Gourgeist can even hope to retaliate, the Phantump just keeps the offensive going… It must be too late, I have to be imagining this in some dying dream… no one fights with this much ferocity for a stranger…
-
It’s as if by instinct I start unleashing attacks I don’t even realize I could do… and ghost attacks on other ghosts? They sting, I can tell you, and right now, I really want them to… These monsters took everything, and for years I just drifted about, reincarnated as an amnesiac so blissfully unaware of what had led me to this situation in the first place… They just get away scot-free because I can’t remember I was killed? And then they go after my family… Last mistake they’ll ever make.
I can see my brother’s Quagsire, exhausted and on the verge of collapsing, still making every effort to blast the Gourgeist with ice, making sure it doesn’t get a single opening between our combined attacks.
-
These sniveling little whelps… what are they doing to you?! They think they have the right to stop you from feeding? Their lives are worthless compared to yours! How I want to wring their necks myself!
Mother deserves better than this, the people of this world didn’t deserve to live in her presence, any more than they deserve our beloved Gourgeist… I cannot stand by any longer, I jump in the way of the attacks…
I don’t care how much it hurts.
We’re ending this on our terms.
I cling to Gourgeist, I only have one thing I must tell it.
“Explosion…”
-
I don’t know what that freakin’ maniac said, but his Gourgeist suddenly begins to glow as sparks fly out of it… and it’s not too difficult to tell what usually comes after that… The bastard… aiming to take most of us out at once and leave the poor Phantump to watch this carnage…
I brace myself… I can only hope it’ll be quick…
The explosion is deafening…
…
I expected to feel some kind of extra pain; instead, I’m still in the same position I was in before. As my eyes adjust, through the darkness I see the remnant of a green barrier fade. With the Phantump floating in front of me, I can put 2 and 2 together. Not sure how many times over I owe this little spirit for saving my life by now, but it’s really starting to add up. A few minutes pass, I’m just making sure I’m actually still alive after all that… plus those injuries are still hurting pretty bad.
That murderous psychopath is gone… no sign of his Pokemon either. There’s just a crater… and a bunch of charred debris. I can hear the hectic motions of wild Pokemon moving to put out any flames…
I can’t find Quagsire though… I’m feeling my heart sink…
A few seconds later though, oh, thank whatever deity’s listening… there he is, digging himself out of his burrow. I’m pretty sure I’m crying right about now, I’m not ashamed of that. That derpy little land-fish has never acted so competently, but I suppose it’s never mattered as much as it did here. He’s pretty beaten up too though, we both need to get patched up, all the more reason to get out of this forest.
Phantump offers me a hand up, though I lean into the closest tree once I’m on my feet. I’ll manage, I just gotta adjust… though now the floating tree stump’s making a point to keep me on-balance.
“Hey… I mean, I appreciate all this, trust me I do…” I say, having an urge now to speak up about it, no matter how one-sided the conversation ends up getting.
“Why did you… endanger yourself to such an extent on my account though?” Maybe it’s cynical to ask, I don’t know, but I want to know the answer.
-
It takes me a moment to know how to answer that in a way he’ll understand. I resort to etching one word into the dirt, lighting a small will-o-wisp to illuminate it so he can see. The one word… just the name I’d forgotten was mine for… however long it’s been. Seeing how the little kid I remember is clearly a teenager now, well… it must have been a while, yet, some part of me still recognized him, in the face of so much memory loss.
He looks down at the etched “DENIS”, then back at me, words failing him at first, and, well… maybe this is more on account of the near-death experience of his own, but he looks like he’s about to break down in tears.
“You’re… serious? That’s… that’s you in there?” he asks. All I can do is nod, but even if I could say anything more, now’s not the time to chat, not when he’s still hurt like that. A shame I don’t really know any healing abilities, would’ve been useful right about now… Guess that’d be asking for too much. All I can do is take his hand and get back to helping him find his way back to Lumiose. I make sure he stays within reach of a tree to lean against if he needs it, and, smartly he finally calls back his Quagsire.
I have to talk down some of the Trevenants we pass by. No surprise they’re a bit irked about the earlier explosion, but they’re not completely unreasonable, and they part some of the trees that were keeping the nearest exit obscured. The light of the city, no tricks this time, was shining as brightly as ever as we arrive at the beaten path that I feel so stupid for complaining about now.
-
I’ve actually found him… I didn’t expect this outcome when I started. At most I expected just to face some fears, move on and hope the dreams would just fade off from that alone, but instead I actually find my older brother… and I do believe it’s him… I really don’t think a random Phantump would not only recognize my brother’s name but also have a reason to pretend he was him, completely assuming I would be someone who would have any connection to said individual just because I muttered it under a moment of duress. This is the real deal… Surreal beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, but, real all the same.
"Denis... I'm so sorry..." It's an apology a long time coming. "I should've stopped you when I had the chance, and I didn't and..." Before I can finish he ends up lightly smacking me on the forehead and shaking his head as if to say I had nothing to apologize for. Whether or not I believe it, it's at least of some comfort to know he apparently does.
I look to the city, I’m ready to limp over to the closest medical facility, though at the same time, I see Denis looking uncertain… Facing mom and dad like this is probably the thought running through his head, and if that’s true, I can’t blame him for being unsure about the idea.
“…You know… cliché as it is to say, seriously, they’ll love you no matter what you look like now… You know that, Denis… We’ve all missed you… It'll be alright... Just... Trust your little brother for once, okay?”
-
I know I can’t just go back to the forest now… When I couldn’t remember much of anything, sure, I could just let the days and weeks fly by without much of a care… but that’s not going to cut it anymore… I remember who I am… or was… or… no, I’m still me, Pokemon or not… Tristan’s right… It’s gonna be an awkward reunion, that’s unavoidable, but it’s gotta happen… At the very least it’ll bring closure to this nightmare that’s lasted for the bunch of us. I don’t know where things will go from there though… maybe I’ll just stick around the house, or you know… could even join Tristan’s team if he really wants to get more serious about training. Seems like we could make a good team if that skirmish was any indicator.
I owe it to him anyway... I owe it to all of them... There had to have been so much grief, because of my idiotic lapse of judgement. I should've been there... He's got the gall to apologize like he wasn't just a little kid who trusted his older brother wouldn't do anything so stupid... Maybe someday that trust of his will actually be something I deserve to have.
Whatever happens though, that’ll sort itself out when the time comes. For now, I just look to Tristan and give him a nod, and from his approving smile I take it he got the message. I grab his shoulder to help steady him as we slowly inch further towards the waiting entrance of a city I’d forgotten how much I missed… listening to the faint sound of a music that doesn’t elicit dread.
I just hope… for everyone’s sake… no one sings that song again.
“But… Denis, aren’t you gonna get in trouble?”
“I’ll be fine, trust your big brother for once, okay?”
-
The wilderness east of Lumiose is a safe place, if you keep to the beaten path. That’s what they always say, and it’s true, but, by that same token, it’s spectacularly boring on that beaten path. All the interesting Pokemon are too well-hidden, or they come out at inconvenient hours. There’s bound to be something a little more fascinating if one just goes a bit further off the trail…
I have to see for myself. It’s late, I’ve timed this well, I think… No moon out, just my flashlight, should be able to see some of the shier creatures out here. I can hear their chirps and calls getting clearer as the distant city sounds start to fade. It feels like I’m actually stepping into the wilderness for once. I don’t get why mom and dad think it was a good idea giving it a few years before I considered getting into training, what else is there worth doing? ‘least, what is there that I’d be any good at…
I’m deep in the forest now… the grass has gotten a lot taller out here, no one’s around to keep it nice and trimmed. I can feel some smaller critters skirting past me, or see them rustling though the bushes… Wow… I thought this flashlight had more power than this… I can barely see a meter ahead of me. Things are starting to get quieter. Not a sound for a moment… then a jangling noise nearly makes me leap right out of my skin. I turn around to see it’s just a klefki… and a rather successful one, considering just how many of the little pieces of metal are hanging on its keyring-like body. It loses any interest in me once it realizes I’ve got nothing it wants and hastily floats off… Still, cool find, they’re usually pretty stealthy little guys.
The limited light can really mess with my senses, occasionally it seems like trees are looking right at me, but every time I check, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s only ever out of the corner of my eye. It keeps happening, but every time I just have to chalk it up to a trick of the mind. It gets worse every time though… now the faces sometimes seem to come from the smallest little stumps… and sometimes it feels like I keep looking back to see the same one right behind me, like I’m going in circles. There are ghost types that live in these parts but… ugh… I can’t remember which.
I’m trying to rack my brain to figure things out when I’m nearly knocked flat on my face by a murder of murkrow flying through the forest, and flying in a rather panicked fashion if some were close enough to the surface to nearly ram into me. Something must have spooked them. I freeze in place; I want to see if I can hear something coming up… but now the rustling from all sides is getting too loud to pinpoint anything. I’ve turned myself around too many times to count… crap… I forgot which way I came from… everything looks the same everywhere I look. Nothing’s all that familiar. This quickly turned into a bad idea, I don’t even have a compass. Gah, I’m such an idiot, I got too excited I forgot to prepare, should’ve known I’d let my eagerness get the better of me… I wasn’t supposed to go this far in the first place.
This was stupid, really stupid. I try not to panic, panicking’s just gonna make it worse, I have to stop and think. Rational, gotta be rational. No matter how far I got, there’s bound to be even the smallest clearing in the direction of Lumiose… even the smallest dot of distant light will tell me where I need to go. I turn off my flashlight, and I let my eyes adjust to what seems like pitch-black darkness, looking for the slightest glimmer up ahead…
Is that… I think that’s something? Yeah… Yeah, there’s a light just up there. I mean, it’s pretty small but hey, it’s something… It’s all I have to go on. I run in the direction of the light, and it gets closer a lot faster than I expected it to… but it’s got to be the city, I’m sure of it, I can hear some distant sounds of music, someone must be holding a concert. Kinda chilling melody though… I kinda want to slow down.
The light’s taking on a few shapes now that I’m getting closer. Looks sort of like a face now… Actually, it’s starting to look a lot like a face… Is someone else wandering around with a jack-o-lantern at this time of night? That singing’s gotten louder too… It’s doing something funny to my ears… they feel… cold. That cold’s running into my face and down the rest of me too… I’m shivering, but I can’t run away, I’ll just get more lost that way… It’s gotta just be my delusions. I just wish, whoever it is, they would stop with that creepy song they’re singing.
Now the thing is close enough for me to really see what it is… Some kind of Pokemon, no doubt, in a way it kinda looks… cute. It’s got this innocent, cheerful look on its real face, not the jack-o-lantern façade underneath. Its song is still piercing my senses like a knife, but it looks so happy while singing, like some careless little kid gallivanting about. It’s still heading in my direction, and now I can’t take my eyes off it as it keeps closing the gap between us… I want it to stop singing so badly, but I can’t really make the words out… It’s kinda difficult to talk for some reason… I watch as the creature’s hair, moving around like two loosely hanging limbs, suddenly lurches at me once I’m within reach, and I can’t react fast enough to avoid it.
Its innocent smile doesn’t look so innocent anymore up-close… and… something hurts…
Something hurts in a lot of places…
Something… sharp…
I can hear it tearing at something, but I can’t look down, it’s like it’s forcing me to look at it… Its hair tendrils scrape at my skin, and it keeps singing…
It’s singing louder…
Everything hurts now… I want to scream, but it’s like the worst kind of nightmare where I can’t make a sound… and the pain… and the singing…
Stop singing.
Please stop singing.
There’s… there’s someone coming this way… help… please do something…
Why aren’t you doing anything…?
You’re just watching?
Stop the singing... It’s all I can hear... I can’t feel anything… I can’t see anything…
There’s nothing but that song…
-
When you live in a city as grand as Lumiose, it’s hard not to look at all the massive buildings and bright lights and colors and not fall into the temptation of chasing fame and glory… Just like a lot of people I’m sure, I would love to be able to walk through these busy streets and have people point and whisper to each other in awe… “That’s THE Tristan Blanche. I can’t believe it!” To be a great trainer would be my method of choice for such an impossible aim… and I do mean it when I say it’s impossible, and not just because the task it daunting in itself… See… I only get to train Pokemon in the Summer months. My parents don’t want me to risk adventuring in the Fall. They’re frightened I might go missing, it’s too dangerous out there that time of year. Is that logical? Well, maybe not, but feelings of trauma can trump what one may call rational thoughts if they’re strong enough.
My older brother Denis was right about to start his own training journey years ago… He must’ve gotten too excited, maybe he just really wanted to get a head start on exploring, I don’t know, none of us do. The one thing we knew was that he never came back, couldn’t even figure out where his body could’ve ended up. Just, one night he snuck out, and that was it.
But there’s something I didn’t tell anyone, because I just don’t really know how to bring it up. Thing is, everyone went on the assumption that he left in the middle of the night, and, well, the assumption’s true, but the thing is, I saw Denis leave.
My brother begged me to keep it a secret, that he’d be back quickly. He never said where he was going, just… ‘out’. I was maybe like, 6 or so back then, so I didn’t think twice about keeping quiet, even when there wasn’t a trace of him come sunrise. I never thought my older brother could get lost, he seemed like as much of a grownup as my parents were. It wasn’t until I got to that age when I realized just how much of a kid he really had to be… because I sure wasn’t feeling like an adult by then, and a few years later, I still don’t, not really. I have to force myself not to think too much about it, because otherwise I start to imagine what he had to have felt, lost and confused, scared out of his mind, before who-knows-what happened…
If I were to tell anyone about it now, it feels like it wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t change anything... might just end up making my parents mad, and maybe they’d have every right to be. I just hold on to my futile promise, having to live with the fact that I could have shouted right then and there and woken my parents up, I could have at least tried to convince him it was a bad idea, I could have done anything except go right back to sleep that night. But I didn’t. I was a stupid kid, and I lost a brother because of it, and the dreams I’ve had since then will never let me forget that.
About that last part, I should probably explain… I get these nightmares sometimes, started not long after… all that unpleasantness. Most of it is too abstract to put into words, so often I just hear so many noises that disorient my subconsciousness. I do occasionally see some things though. Lately there’ve included a bunch of trees that seem to spring up just before the dream ends. I don’t know what it all means, but it’s been happening for so long that I just expect another one every couple days and try to mentally brace myself for it… It’s never easy though, but I don’t want to worry anyone, my family’s got enough paranoia as it is, I shouldn’t throw yet another misfortune into the pile.
You’d think I wouldn’t want to be a trainer at all if there’s so much mental baggage attached to it, but that’s not the case. It’s not just that Denis loved the idea of training Pokemon and aspired to become a master, but he got me hooked on the idea myself while he was around. That’s one of the few vivid memories I still have of him beyond that last night, and to give up something that we bonded over, well, it would feel wrong… and honestly, the only friend I’ve really got these days is my one and only Pokemon. I’d managed to buy a single Pokeball from the department store and figured I’d just try to catch something that wandered near the city limits. As fate or whatever would have it, I saw a quagsire waddling around unattended up on the north side, with that perpetual grin plastered on his face of course. I didn’t even do a good job sneaking up on him… in fact he turned and stared at me several paces away, but he didn’t run off or anything, just kinda tilted his head and watched intently. I figured I’d just wing it, and upon that first try, he let himself be captured without any kind of fuss…
Quagsire are carefree by nature, but, mine just seems that much more on the airy side, nothing gets him down. That constant cheeriness… it’s helped me through a lot of bad days, and while we’re not exactly top contenders, every summer it’s just fun to get in a few battles, explore a little around central Kalos, maybe one of these years I’ll feel confident enough to take on the local gym, I dunno… but this year doesn’t seem likely to be the one. Summer’s at its end, the leaves are turning bright shades of red and yellow, another short bout of training’s about to come to an end.
Usually I can reluctantly accept this and go back to finding some sort of odd job or two around the town to do for the rest of the year, that or dad will have me enrolled in some kind of class to nudge me into a more permanent line of work… but I can’t really focus on any of that. The dreams have somehow managed to get even worse than before…
It’s almost every night I get the same nightmares, hearing so many distinct little things… the distant echoes of some disturbing tune, this gargling noise like someone’s trying to scream but their throat won’t let them, the sound of what I can only guess is some kind of meat getting sliced up, and to top it all off, the visual of those trees growing into an entire forest… and a familiar one at that… and now I can’t wake up without seeing someone looking at me through the forestation, glaring with hollow eyes that I can never quite make out before it all abruptly ends. I’m not sleeping so well, big surprise… but I still would’ve just tried to ignore it somehow if I wasn’t seeing my parents looking very… out of it as well. They don’t say anything when they know I’m in the room, but I’ve listened in when they weren’t aware… They were talking about the dream too… The same exact one… Both of them were having it.
I always thought I’d be the only one to get these dreams. Not that I thought I was special, I just figured this was just some weird problem I’d just been unfortunate to stumble into, but, if the whole family’s experiencing the same thing, then there’s something much bigger going on, there has to be. I’m no psychologist, but three different people sharing the same dream on repeat seems like something that doesn’t just happen without an outside force… It’s not like there aren’t Pokemon out there that can mess with your head after all.
Whatever the cause, I can’t just ignore it anymore. I feel like this dream has to be some kind of bizarre form of communication. A message trying to get to one of us. That forest I see, it’s clearly the one just east of the city. I never get too close to it, the place gives me chills, the way the trees seem to go on forever, and how some of them seem to stare back at you if you look at them long enough. This dream though, it’s like a big arrow pointing in the forest’s direction, no doubt about it… The end of my seasonal training session will have to wait, I’ve got one more mini-expedition to take on…
I’ll admit I’m still wondering if I should have talked this over with mom and dad and had all of us explore the forest together, but I know they’re not in any condition to go hiking through any kind of wilderness. Maybe it’s because these dreams are newer for them, but they can barely go about their daily routines without nearly passing out… No, I can’t get them involved… Maybe I could get somebody else though, but… I don’t really think I know anyone who would believe in my dream theory, all that would do is probably get the three of us committed. Whether it’s the right or wrong thing to do, I feel like I can only trust myself on this one… Well… myself and Quagsire… I call him out from his Pokeball once I’m at the forest’s edge. He looks to me with the same smile, but, it’s one of his subtler ones… the closest thing he can get to conveying seriousness. I give him a pat on the head, but I say nothing, we just walk together into the foreboding vegetation. These dreams are coming to an end tonight.
-
I like this patch of flowers here… It always looks so nice and pleasant, welcoming… It’s pretty much my home, or at least, it’s been the closest thing I can imagine to one, for as long as I can remember. Not that I know too much about homes in the eyes of others. Everyone here seems to have their own take on one’s abode… Nests in the trees, mounds of dirt, bushes… take your pick, whatever suits your fancy I guess, but for us Phantumps, so long as we’ve got all those safe and secure trees surrounding us, that’s all that matters. My spot’s good enough for me. There used to be someone else here too, I think… They didn’t move much, but they really took to the ground… Sunk right into it after a while. More flowers sprung up where they used to be. A parting gift maybe? Very kind of them…
I don’t really like to explore the forest too much… Sometimes I float about, find a few berries if I’m hungry, wave to the others that pass by at a safe distance. Some of them wave back… others just seem to stare though. They give these empty looks, then they leave. Sometimes I feel like I ought to relate to them. Don’t know why though.
If I’m able to work up the courage I might drift over to the edge of the forest where the open trail lies… There’s something familiar about that path, and those humans that walk along it, not that I want to investigate further. Other Pokemon can be a little unnerving, but something about humans make them just that much more unsettling, I don’t want to risk them getting too close… With the way they have those Pokemon following them around, being carried in those spherical capsules? Nope, not looking to take any part in that. It’s safe and serene right where I am.
Lately though, something’s been bothering me despite everything. I mean, I know, being a type of ghost means I shouldn’t have expected to just live a conventional upbringing, or even have a family, but, I couldn’t have just spawned out of thin air, right? Earliest thing I can remember is finding this place, like I’ve always just sort of been here… but that can’t be true. Thinking back shouldn’t be this difficult either, but the days genuinely feel like they’ve passed by too quickly, it’s hard to even tell the years apart most of the time.
I can’t say I know how to deal with this feeling… now I’m really regretting not having some kind of friend to confide in… Why is this only bugging me now? I don’t get much time to mull over it, as I hear some unfamiliar rustling of the trees off in the distance, and from the way the noise seems to be getting steadily louder, whatever it is, it’s getting closer by the second.
Is that a human? What’s one of them doing out here? They never venture this deep into the forest, that’s one reason why this place has always felt so safe! Oh no, no no no… they’re coming this way too… I swoop into the nearest bush, peering out carefully to observe this human’s actions… If I’m lucky they’ll just keep walking and I’ll be able to laugh this off as nothing more than a little scare.
They finally come into view and I get a good glimpse… and suddenly… Strange… I’m not feeling quite so frightened anymore… Looking upon this human strikes up a feeling of familiarity… A human being familiar? It seems absurd, but here we are. I would’ve ducked completely out of sight by now, normally. Instead I’m doing the unthinkable… like, literally, it feels like I’m acting without thinking, because I’m actually floating my way towards this guy.
-
We’ve ventured pretty far into the forest now, I’m starting to doubt my logic of beginning my exploration so close to sundown, because the light’s starting to fade fast. It’s gonna be an unpleasant return journey most likely…
The Pokemon that scatter around us are starting to look a little more, well, haunting, I suppose. Fair enough, it’s getting darker and the ghost types are probably just naturally inclined to mill about in the evening. Most of them pay me and Quagsire little mind, guess there aren’t many tricksters inhabiting this area. Not that I’m complaining, I very much prefer not getting jump-scared by sinister spirits that could very well drain the life out of me in an instant if they really wanted to. Still, keeping an eye out, if my dreams were leading me in this direction, the chance that there’s something malicious out here seems all too likely.
We happen upon a flower bed, surprisingly vibrant compared to some of the area around it, almost like the soil was just a little bit more nutrient-rich or something. I figure this is a good spot to at least rest for a second and figure out just what we ought to do from here. Maybe this would be all I’d have to do, maybe it was as simple as exploring a place I’d grown afraid of for years… but that still left the question of why it was affecting my parents…
Quagsire merely gives the flower bed a curious glance before deciding to flop down and roll about on it… Of course, I’d be a fool to expect anything else from him, even in moments of coming dread, he’ll seek out some fun to be had.
I’m distracted by his shenanigans, it’s hard not to be, but usually we’re in a much safer place when he acts silly, and, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I look away from my partner Pokemon, I see a ghostly figure with a tree-stump for a head, floating squarely in my direction. I can’t help but scream, this Phantump startled me real bad… Did we trespass on its little territory here? I mean, sure it might seem silly getting such a harmless looking little fella peeved, but Pokemon are more than their appearances, you’d be making a fatal mistake to think otherwise… but I probably shouldn’t be thinking about fatal mistakes right now…
I should be running, but I seem to have taken another approach, freezing in place like a Deerling in the headlights. Quagsire’s stopped with his antics, I catch him with the corner of my eye just standing beside me as the Phantump gets uncomfortably close to my face, just staring me down. What is it trying to steal my soul or something? Can they even do that?! Dammit my mind’s racing too fast to think…
-
The human looks absolutely terrified of me… Do they all act this way around us? I’d wonder about that, but I’m still transfixed by how this face just seems to be so… recognizable somehow. What is it about him? I tilt my head from one side to another, but all I get is that nagging feeling, telling me that I must have forgotten something of importance.
“Hello!” I hear a gargly sort of voice suddenly pull me out of my focus. I nearly obey that initial instinct to flee again, though I halt myself once I see the voice came from the companion of this human, a Quagsire…
“Ah… hi?” I work up enough courage to reply.
“Is this where you live, little guy?” he asks.
“Y-yeah… All my life,” I answer, but as I say it, I nearly stop myself… It’s the sort of feeling… when doubt suddenly breaks into your perception of the truth… Only a few seconds in this human’s presence and I’m feeling that doubt creeping in.
“It’s a nice place! I like the colors, not enough water for my taste though… Hey! You ought’a get a stream to come through here! That’d be so nifty to have a little river next to these flowers, then it’d be perfect!”
Chatty one… he’s talking like we’ve known each other for years.
“I’ll keep that in mind… Might I ask what you two are doing here?” I say to try and keep the subject from careening headfirst into further discussions regarding the impossible task of building an artificial river in the middle of the forest.
“Oh, yeah! My master here’s been having some really bad dreams lately, and he thinks if he comes to this forest they might go away or something like that,” the Quagsire answers as he shifts back and forth, occasionally bumping into the human who hasn’t moved an inch.
“Bad dreams you say…” I murmur and I look back to the human. A shame these creatures can’t seem to understand us so well, at least not verbally. He does look pretty tired… how long have these dreams persisted, I wonder…
-
Quagsire’s more than happy to have a little chat with the Phantump, like some casual meeting between strangers at a public get-together. As usual I can’t make out a word of what they’re saying of course… but the ghost tree here doesn’t look ready to attack… Eventually they stop their chatter, and we all just stay there uncomfortably for… how many minutes has it been now? I can’t just stay put like this. It’s getting way too dark…
“W-well, nice to meet you, I think we’ll… just leave you be, huh?” I finally force myself to say as I grab one of Quagsire’s flipper-hands and we make our way… to… To the… You’ve got to be kidding me… Did I really screw this up so badly?
I muffle myself with my sleeve to drown out the frustrated curses as I realize I’ve gotten us lost, with no breadcrumbs in sight to follow back to the city. I can feel my heart racing as I try to fight off my anxiety and look through the acres of trees surrounding us, but nothing rings a bell at all.
-
That look of fear on the human’s face as he tries to leave… It’s… something I can empathize with? Like I can relate to it somehow… but I’ve never gotten lost out here, not to my immediate knowledge…? I feel inclined to help him… Now that would probably just be the right thing to do anyway, but there’s another layer to that feeling of helping out someone in need… There’s this strange additional feeling, like I ought to protect this guy, like that’s my job somehow… but it’s not like he tried catching me, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t miss that if it happened, so what’s with this obligation?
I can’t say, but it’s not long before I’m just acting upon it, floating back to the human as he continues to look around in a panic. I tap him on the shoulder and he jolts around to look back at me, his nerves clearly a little frayed.
-
I’ll be frank, my nerves are a little frayed. Even that supposedly friendly Phantump’s light shoulder tap nearly gives me a heart attack just from the stress I’m feeling right about now.
“Look, little fella, we’ll leave you be, I promise, I’m just, y’know, not sure which way’s the right way back…” I say, and it naturally doesn’t give me much of a response in the vocal department, but it looks thoughtful about something. After a moment’s time, as the growing darkness of the moonless night begins to make it difficult to see much more than the Phantump’s glowing red eyes, it reaches to grab my free hand and begins to lead the two of us off in a direction.
I feel some relief wash over me, it’s apparently sympathetic enough to help us get our way out of here. We must be closer to the city than I figured though, I can hear some music off in the distance and everything.
-
The new moon… It always seems to arrive a little sooner with every cycle. This one feels particularly special though… Perhaps it’s merely the nostalgia of this place. We have been gone for so long, so many years we have wandered this region, just the two of us, away from prying eyes as we seek out the nourishment my companion so deeply desires when the moon disappears from the sky.
Mother loved her Pumpkaboo… She so rarely expressed any sort of loving emotion that wasn’t directed towards her one and only Pokemon. I saw how happy she was with him, I liked to imagine she was speaking to me that way… with such a caring warmness, not the cold apathy I was more used to. I envied that, but I couldn’t feel any malice towards him… how could I? He made mother so happy. She would sing little tunes to him every night, and sometimes he would sing back, and I would listen… and I’d feel so happy.
Then she got old. She got sick. She stopped the singing, and she was giving up breathing soon after. The last thing she did was entrust her Pumpkaboo to me… Not with a word, but with a look, handing me the Pokeball, looking directly into my eyes… She never stopped staring, even as her life fizzled out completely… her dead eyes still stared me down… I think I must have kept looking back for hours…
Pumpkaboo evolved that very night into Gourgeist, and a massive Gourgeist at that. As it looked at my mother one last time, it sang their song once more… Such a beautiful serenating of the departed… but I knew it was more than that… it was his way of letting me know she would always be with him, and if I kept him happy, I would keep her happy too. That was all I wanted. Every new moon from then on, Gourgeist would hunger, and we would go out to satiate that hunger… It started with wild Pokemon, we’d usually find enough to satisfy him… but one night that wasn’t enough. We needed something more potent, something… different… That was the night we found that lost child.
I was so horrified when it happened at first, foolish enough to think this boy’s life had any more meaning than the creature’s we’d hunted down before… but I heard the gleeful song from Gourgeist as he tore into his meal, and I knew I had no reason to dread anything. That was the night I truly became the companion he needed to have, no longer limiting him to such small fare if his hunger yearned for something greater. So long as I got to hear that song, mother’s song… I would do anything.
Such lovely memories… and they’re so clear tonight as we walk through the very forest that opened my eyes to such enlightenment. Gourgeist’s song is as beautiful as ever as he leads the way, and I know just where he’s taking us. Hallowed ground.
-
That song… why do I feel so frightened by it? I’ve stopped moving, I think the human’s asking me why, but his voice is hazy, all I’m thinking about is that music… It’s bringing this feeling of dread… and more than that… images… I used to have these all the time, I’d forgotten about them… a Pokemon and a human, looking at me, singing this haunting melody… it always hurt so much to think about it, and it’s all coming back in full force.
I try to find the source; at first, I see nothing, but… there it is… That’s the face… the glowing façade of a face, rather… I’ve seen it before too… I want to fly away, right then and there, I feel like I need to get out of here, but as I turn around, I see the human’s confused expressions and those feelings of protectiveness come back… I don’t know what to do… I’m so confused… Why do I remember these things?!
-
We’ve stopped suddenly… That song looks like it’s freaking out the Phantump for some reason. I can’t fault it for that, I’m starting to feel chills myself… Something really unnatural about that tune… Even Quagsire looks a bit put off by it. Along with the singing I can see a glowing face headed our way, and I recognize it almost immediately… That’s the jack-o-lantern body of a Gourgeist… It was difficult to miss, but, the fact that it was here at all was baffling. The Pumpkaboo in these parts were somewhat common, but almost no one could say they saw their evolved forms out in the wild. Far more likely one would be accompanied by a trainer of some sort… Actually… yeah… wait… It’s close enough now that I can see the silhouette of someone walking closely beside it. They’re making their way towards us… and it looks like they’re picking up the pace…
-
Oh what blissful luck indeed! So close to that place where that first child breathed his last, here we have another! What a lovely bit of fate… Gourgeist looks so pleased already, he’s singing louder. We pick up the pace, there’s really no need to drag this out, we’ve anticipated such an opportunity like this again for so long.
This boy’s got Pokemon accompanying him, but that won’t matter, we’ll deal with them… make it a full course meal that way. Gourgeist likes to occasionally work for his food anyway. Nothing like a little bit of sport after all.
-
Quagsire isn’t always the quickest on the uptake, but he could sense something off about this man and his Gourgeist, and he’s made a point to stand in front of me. I can finally start to feel my legs starting to work again, but to assume I’ll be able to just outrun this guy all the way back to Lumiose is beyond wishful thinking.
This Gourgeist is massive… I know their sizes are notoriously varied, but I’ve never seen one quite like this, and it doesn’t even appear to have much of a focus on Quagsire… by all accounts that thing’s real eyes are locked on me and me alone. I back away as this monstrous gourd looks ready to swipe at me with its hair-like arms. Quagsire tries to blast it back with a mud shot, but it doesn’t hold it at bay for very long. Still, he follows that up with an ice beam, doing whatever he can to force the Gourgeist away. He finally forces it to give him its attention… That ice attack clearly made a mark, but now I’m realizing this might be a very bad thing actually… Gourgeists are part grass-type… Even with a few ice moves, my water/ground type companion is way out of his element.
I notice what appear to be green blades sliding along the Gourgeist’s arms. The man beside it mutters “razor leaf the pest…” and the blades swiftly launch at Quagsire… They cut deep, for the first time I can ever recall, his smile fades entirely and he staggers back. He doesn’t look so good, not at all… I have every reason to call him back, but I can’t just throw my hands up in forfeit. By this point, for whatever deranged reason, I think it’s becoming pretty clear this guy’s out to kill me… kinda makes accepting defeat a lot more difficult to swallow. The Phantump… I don’t know where he went, I’m too afraid to avert my eyes from our attackers to check.
“Time to feast, my friend,” the man says with a wide grin, and soon enough I’m wrapped up… and I feel those razor leaves beginning to slice at me… Each one hurts more than the last! I can see Quagsire desperately trying everything he can to force me out of the Gourgeist’s grasp, I can feel the very earth beginning to shake, but even then, it won’t let go, it won’t stop, and I can feel it beginning to drain energy out of the cut marks it leaves in what I can only assume is some kind of morbid giga drain attack. Every attack that lands is just being negated by my own life force…
I’m screaming now… but nothing’s happening… Dammit… I’m going to die, and like a complete idiot who didn’t even learn from his brother’s mistakes… Mom… Dad… I’m so sorry…
“…Denis…” I hear myself weakly saying as everything starts to get hazy… as this monster’s song begins to plague at what little thought I can muster… and I just want it to stop…
-
Denis… Denis… Frightened and mortified by what I’m watching, I hear the human say that name… and… it feels like time stops… I’ve been here before… This very moment… this very situation… except I was the one in this monster’s grasp… I’d died by its hand… I’d heard its song… the same one it’s singing now… Who was I? I… I was human… At one point I must have been one…
That name… it was my name… my parents gave me that name… my parents… they named someone else…
Someone I wanted to protect…
Like… like a brother…
My… brother…
…Tristan?... TRISTAN!
-
I feel myself hitting the dirt… Everything hurts… but the song… it’s stopped… Somehow I’m still conscious… and I can see the Gourgeist tumbling backwards… from the Phantump’s attack. I’d thought it had vanished, but it reappeared in an instant and took its foe completely by surprise… and it doesn’t stop. Before the Gourgeist can even hope to retaliate, the Phantump just keeps the offensive going… It must be too late, I have to be imagining this in some dying dream… no one fights with this much ferocity for a stranger…
-
It’s as if by instinct I start unleashing attacks I don’t even realize I could do… and ghost attacks on other ghosts? They sting, I can tell you, and right now, I really want them to… These monsters took everything, and for years I just drifted about, reincarnated as an amnesiac so blissfully unaware of what had led me to this situation in the first place… They just get away scot-free because I can’t remember I was killed? And then they go after my family… Last mistake they’ll ever make.
I can see my brother’s Quagsire, exhausted and on the verge of collapsing, still making every effort to blast the Gourgeist with ice, making sure it doesn’t get a single opening between our combined attacks.
-
These sniveling little whelps… what are they doing to you?! They think they have the right to stop you from feeding? Their lives are worthless compared to yours! How I want to wring their necks myself!
Mother deserves better than this, the people of this world didn’t deserve to live in her presence, any more than they deserve our beloved Gourgeist… I cannot stand by any longer, I jump in the way of the attacks…
I don’t care how much it hurts.
We’re ending this on our terms.
I cling to Gourgeist, I only have one thing I must tell it.
“Explosion…”
-
I don’t know what that freakin’ maniac said, but his Gourgeist suddenly begins to glow as sparks fly out of it… and it’s not too difficult to tell what usually comes after that… The bastard… aiming to take most of us out at once and leave the poor Phantump to watch this carnage…
I brace myself… I can only hope it’ll be quick…
The explosion is deafening…
…
I expected to feel some kind of extra pain; instead, I’m still in the same position I was in before. As my eyes adjust, through the darkness I see the remnant of a green barrier fade. With the Phantump floating in front of me, I can put 2 and 2 together. Not sure how many times over I owe this little spirit for saving my life by now, but it’s really starting to add up. A few minutes pass, I’m just making sure I’m actually still alive after all that… plus those injuries are still hurting pretty bad.
That murderous psychopath is gone… no sign of his Pokemon either. There’s just a crater… and a bunch of charred debris. I can hear the hectic motions of wild Pokemon moving to put out any flames…
I can’t find Quagsire though… I’m feeling my heart sink…
A few seconds later though, oh, thank whatever deity’s listening… there he is, digging himself out of his burrow. I’m pretty sure I’m crying right about now, I’m not ashamed of that. That derpy little land-fish has never acted so competently, but I suppose it’s never mattered as much as it did here. He’s pretty beaten up too though, we both need to get patched up, all the more reason to get out of this forest.
Phantump offers me a hand up, though I lean into the closest tree once I’m on my feet. I’ll manage, I just gotta adjust… though now the floating tree stump’s making a point to keep me on-balance.
“Hey… I mean, I appreciate all this, trust me I do…” I say, having an urge now to speak up about it, no matter how one-sided the conversation ends up getting.
“Why did you… endanger yourself to such an extent on my account though?” Maybe it’s cynical to ask, I don’t know, but I want to know the answer.
-
It takes me a moment to know how to answer that in a way he’ll understand. I resort to etching one word into the dirt, lighting a small will-o-wisp to illuminate it so he can see. The one word… just the name I’d forgotten was mine for… however long it’s been. Seeing how the little kid I remember is clearly a teenager now, well… it must have been a while, yet, some part of me still recognized him, in the face of so much memory loss.
He looks down at the etched “DENIS”, then back at me, words failing him at first, and, well… maybe this is more on account of the near-death experience of his own, but he looks like he’s about to break down in tears.
“You’re… serious? That’s… that’s you in there?” he asks. All I can do is nod, but even if I could say anything more, now’s not the time to chat, not when he’s still hurt like that. A shame I don’t really know any healing abilities, would’ve been useful right about now… Guess that’d be asking for too much. All I can do is take his hand and get back to helping him find his way back to Lumiose. I make sure he stays within reach of a tree to lean against if he needs it, and, smartly he finally calls back his Quagsire.
I have to talk down some of the Trevenants we pass by. No surprise they’re a bit irked about the earlier explosion, but they’re not completely unreasonable, and they part some of the trees that were keeping the nearest exit obscured. The light of the city, no tricks this time, was shining as brightly as ever as we arrive at the beaten path that I feel so stupid for complaining about now.
-
I’ve actually found him… I didn’t expect this outcome when I started. At most I expected just to face some fears, move on and hope the dreams would just fade off from that alone, but instead I actually find my older brother… and I do believe it’s him… I really don’t think a random Phantump would not only recognize my brother’s name but also have a reason to pretend he was him, completely assuming I would be someone who would have any connection to said individual just because I muttered it under a moment of duress. This is the real deal… Surreal beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, but, real all the same.
"Denis... I'm so sorry..." It's an apology a long time coming. "I should've stopped you when I had the chance, and I didn't and..." Before I can finish he ends up lightly smacking me on the forehead and shaking his head as if to say I had nothing to apologize for. Whether or not I believe it, it's at least of some comfort to know he apparently does.
I look to the city, I’m ready to limp over to the closest medical facility, though at the same time, I see Denis looking uncertain… Facing mom and dad like this is probably the thought running through his head, and if that’s true, I can’t blame him for being unsure about the idea.
“…You know… cliché as it is to say, seriously, they’ll love you no matter what you look like now… You know that, Denis… We’ve all missed you… It'll be alright... Just... Trust your little brother for once, okay?”
-
I know I can’t just go back to the forest now… When I couldn’t remember much of anything, sure, I could just let the days and weeks fly by without much of a care… but that’s not going to cut it anymore… I remember who I am… or was… or… no, I’m still me, Pokemon or not… Tristan’s right… It’s gonna be an awkward reunion, that’s unavoidable, but it’s gotta happen… At the very least it’ll bring closure to this nightmare that’s lasted for the bunch of us. I don’t know where things will go from there though… maybe I’ll just stick around the house, or you know… could even join Tristan’s team if he really wants to get more serious about training. Seems like we could make a good team if that skirmish was any indicator.
I owe it to him anyway... I owe it to all of them... There had to have been so much grief, because of my idiotic lapse of judgement. I should've been there... He's got the gall to apologize like he wasn't just a little kid who trusted his older brother wouldn't do anything so stupid... Maybe someday that trust of his will actually be something I deserve to have.
Whatever happens though, that’ll sort itself out when the time comes. For now, I just look to Tristan and give him a nod, and from his approving smile I take it he got the message. I grab his shoulder to help steady him as we slowly inch further towards the waiting entrance of a city I’d forgotten how much I missed… listening to the faint sound of a music that doesn’t elicit dread.
I just hope… for everyone’s sake… no one sings that song again.
