- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Partners
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So! This was my contest entry. It takes place in between Pokemon Colosseum and Gale of Darkness (immediately before Gale, in fact). There's a couple of references in here that anyone who played the game should get, but if not, hopefully nothing is off-putting. (I will say that the ending is directly related to Gale's plot, which is why this ends the way it does, for better or for worse. I have not edited anything since the judges have gone over it other than re-adding the formatting when it was copy/pasted to this thread, and this opening note, so as to preserve the original. I may go back and correct some things that the judges pointed out later, though, and maybe even expand on this at some point, because I definitely was feeling the 10k word limit by the end of it and I had to crunch some bits together. Without that word limit, I feel like I can flesh out some parts properly, but that's for another time.)
(Also for another time, I'll try to respond to some of the judge's comments later, as I do have things I want to acknowledge... but it is late at time of posting and so I will have to come back to it.)
A cry of “Thunder!” was the only warning given before the room lit up, a static charge filling the air. A deafening crack followed, nearly drowning out a loud screech of agony from somewhere in the center of the room as electricity jolted down from above and through the unfortunate target pokémon’s body.
The static lingered, but eventually the black-haired girl had blinked enough to readjust her eyes to the normal, artificial light in the windowless room. Not that she needed to see to know that her pokémon had been knocked out by the electrical attack; her fourth attempt at this battle had ended the same as the first, and the second, and the third. No matter how much she trained or what strategies she tried, neither of her pokémon could overcome their type disadvantages. With an air of resignation, she lifted her head to eye her opponent’s pokémon.
“Thunder? Really? You could have gone a little easy on us.”
The man across from her had stepped up to his manectric and scratched the pokémon’s head. “But if I did that, you’ll never improve. You’re still one of the strongest trainers here.”
“I’ve also been here the longest,” she replied, trudging towards her masquerain, who was already stirring. If nothing else, he was recovering faster after each knockout. “Face it, Justy, I’m just going to be stuck as one of your junior peons until you retire.”
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Justy replied. His manectric barked, probably in agreement. “Both of your pokémon are weak to electricity.”
“It’s not like I can just go and catch something else,” she replied, spritzing her bug-type with a potion spray. He was airborne again now, but he hadn’t said anything yet; it was obvious he was upset about his most recent loss.
“Well, where did you get Strider and Lyrid?” Justy asked, curiously.
“Family,” she replied. She gently stroked her masquerain’s head as he hovered in place. “Strider was a family pet until he evolved. And my sister sent me Lyrid as a birthday gift a couple of years ago.”
“You should battle with it more. You can trust the team here, you know.” He must have been referencing her minior – unless she were home or taking on a challenger, she usually tried to keep the rock-type out of sight. Only a handful of her co-workers knew she had a second pokémon.
“Does anyone in this entire region even know what Lyrid is? There are too many shady people around, even in the city. I’d rather not take my chances. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get Strider to the center.”
She was grateful that Justy and his manectric let her go, though she knew he wouldn’t let that subject drop that easily. It was an issue for tomorrow, though. But as the elevator reached the main level and she stepped out, someone else called out to her.
“Hey Kaeli, have you even scored a single KO?”
Kaeli looked to her left, vision obscured slightly by a wing of Strider’s (who was hitching a ride on his trainer’s head), and found the source of the feminine voice seated at Justy’s control panel. “Be quiet, Marin.”
Marin was out of her chair and had reached the door to the gym before Kaeli. The brunette put a hand on her friend’s shoulder as she approached. Her voice was little more than a whisper as though she were afraid to be overheard, although no one else was currently on the ground floor. “Listen, I heard you were looking for another pokémon?”
Kaeli stared blankly at her. “Why are you whispering?” she answered.
Marin shifted her weight, reaching into her pocket, and Kaeli started to get that sinking feeling in her gut; why was her friend suddenly nervous? “I don’t want Justy to hear this, but… I know where you can get one, if you’re interested.”
Kaeli returned home only slightly less unsettled than she had been in the alley. She hadn’t thought Marin the type to associate with such shady individuals, but even in Phenac those types weren’t uncommon if you knew where to look. After getting her masquerain checked out at the only pokémon center around for miles, she had done as suggested; Marin had given her a small pin to wear in the shape a “C” and told her to wander the alleys near the mayor’s house, and her contact, Cassandra, would find her.
The woman that appeared didn’t look like a criminal, for certain, but something about her unsettled Kaeli, something more than the fact that they were meeting in a dark alleyway. Her short brown hair was up in a tight bun, and her blazer, tight skirt, and heels suggested she was preparing for a fancy office party than a back-alley transaction. Kaeli asked more than once what the catch was, but the uptight woman who handed her the pokéball insisted there wasn’t one, she was simply doing a favor for a friend. And while Kaeli didn’t trust this woman at all, she did trust Marin… although now she had a lot to talk about with her friend.
Kaeli decided she’d better let her new pokémon out before going inside; Cassandra hadn’t told her what it was, and the last thing she needed was an onix smashing his head through the floor of the apartment upstairs. She released Strider first; though she didn’t want to scare the new arrival, she had no idea how it was going to react and decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Whatever it was could meet Lyrid later.
The pokeball opened and she was initially excited to see it materialize into a donphan. Finally, a ground-type! Justy was as good as defeated. The donphan didn’t seem to feel threatened – in fact, it hardly moved. If it noticed that she wasn’t Cassandra, it didn’t seem to care.
“Hi there! I’m Kaeli.” The donphan didn’t look up at her as she spoke. She knelt down instead, trying to look it in the eye, but the pokémon remained unusually immobile. Its tusks were long – a male, then. His eyes looked unfocused, empty. Was he sick? Depressed? Kaeli wouldn’t have been surprised by either guess, considering where he came from. “Uh, well, I don’t know if your old trainer told you, but I’m your new trainer. Do you have a name?”
Finally, the donphan inclined his head towards her voice. He scratched at the pavement briefly, distracted, but still did not speak. She realized then that he was shivering. She hadn’t noticed until he started pawing at the ground.
Kaeli cast a sideways glance at Strider, hovering in the air next to her, and her bug fluttered closer. Immediately, the donphan shrieked and plodded backwards. Kaeli, startled, sprung to her feet. “Ack, no, I’m sorry! Strider, return for now.” Idiot. You forgot about intimidate. No wonder you can’t beat Justy.
She stepped back to give the panicking donphan some space and knelt down again, her hand outstretched and waiting. “Hey there, I’m sorry about him! Here, let’s calm down a little, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you.”
But by that point the ground-type had curled into a nearly perfect ball, and with no time to stand and move, Kaeli had to recall him before he rolled into her.
“You… you don’t know earthquake?!” Kaeli called desperately. What fully evolved ground-type couldn’t use earthquake?
Cooper simply stomped the ground in response, backing away from Justy’s manectric in a panic. Maybe it wasn’t intimidate that scared him before?
Justy’s mien of interest at the black-haired girl’s new pokémon gave way to confidence at the verbal revelation; his pokémon’s type disadvantage wouldn’t matter if his opponent had no moves to target it. “Gizmo, you’re in the clear. Use hyper voice!”
The manectric, crouched down and ready to pounce, let out an earsplitting howl. Cooper’s stomping only increased and he began to curl up.
“Alright then, use rollout!” Kaeli ordered.
But again, her pokémon didn’t obey. He simply sat there, curled in a ball, rocking back and forth under his opponent’s attack. Was he unable to even use rollout, a move that some considered donphan’s signature attack? Or was there something else wrong that she wasn’t seeing?
Justy appeared as confused as she did, but Kaeli knew that didn’t matter anymore; once battle begun, he was in it to win it. “Now, overheat.”
“Get out of the way, Cooper!” She could already feel the heat rolling off the manectric as the fire built up in his muzzle. Still, her donphan remained curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth but otherwise remained unresponsive. “Do something! Get out of there! Attack it! Just rush it or something!” This wasn’t how this battle was supposed to go at all.
Again, Kaeli was just as surprised as Justy when her donphan finally took off rolling. Gizmo assailed him as he approached with a sizzling blast of white-hot fire, and she was only surprised further when that failed to even slow her pokémon down. That attack had enough power to topple a hippowdon, and Cooper just kept rolling… it wasn’t until she focused on her pokémon’s silhouette through the flames that she noticed something was wrong. Since when was fire… purple?
The overheat dispersed as Cooper bowled over Gizmo and circled around for another strike. Without the cover of the attack, Kaeli noticed the purple flames were still engulfing her donphan – and that they were not flames at all.
Justy seemed to come to the same conclusion. “That looks like… Kaeli, call him off. I concede. I concede!”
His words stunned her, but only for a moment, as her donphan tore into the prone manectric. Gizmo hadn’t fully risen before the ground-type toppled him over again and began digging his tusks into the electric-type’s side. “Cooper! Cooper, no! Stop, what are you doing?”
Her words did nothing to settle the donphan, and only seemed to fuel his rage. He roared.as he began stomping down on the other pokémon’s legs. Gizmo howled in pain and tried to electrocute him but Cooper gave no sign that he’d even noticed, until Justy recalled his pokémon.
“Cooper, what was that?” Kaeli asked, down on the battlefield now, his pokéball held in front of her like a shield. The ground-type turned at the sound of her voice and roared before curling up and, with Gizmo no longer within stomping reach, rolling towards her. The pokéball’s recall beam hit him before he could reach her, but that didn’t stop her from screaming.
Though both Kaeli and Justy had spent an entire week researching shadow pokémon, they found surprisingly few details on just how to cure them. The incident that happened nearly five years prior had been solved by another trainer and his companion, and though they had managed to shut down the entire operation, they’d left their methods of healing the affected pokémon a mystery, as though they were the only two in the entire Orre region who bothered to even try. Kaeli did find information on a professor Krane who was supposedly building some sort of “purification” machine, but she could find no mention of a timeline for completion.
Instead, Kaeli resorted to trial and error. She found that further battling didn’t seem to help; While he could still use his strange charging technique on many occasions without apparent negative effect, Cooper frequently flew into a rage during fights and could not be controlled once that strange blackish aura flared up all around him. Kaeli had managed to snap him out of it once or twice through simply pleading for him to calm down, but more often than not, she’d had to recall him instead.
One thing battling did do, though, was reveal that apparently Cooper had more than one “shadow”-type attack he could perform; the one he’d used against Gizmo matched the descriptions of the “shadow rush” technique the previous shadow pokémon used, but then in another battle, Cooper somehow sent his fiery, purple aura along the ground where it erupted upwards into solid, physical spikes. She could find no other evidence of such a move ever being recorded.
She was hesitant to let the donphan outside of his ball when not in battle, but she discovered when she finally did that he was much more docile than he’d appeared. In fact, the blackish aura was nowhere to be seen when not using those shadow moves. He curled up and cowered at anything unfamiliar to him, though Kaeli soon realized he wouldn’t actually attack unless something invaded his personal space. So long as he was left alone, he might almost be a normal pokémon. So, she went about her day, training with her other two pokémon in the courtyard behind her apartment, while leaving Cooper to himself with a few berries in a corner for him to keep busy with.
Cooper sniffed at the berries cautiously. They didn’t smell unusual. But then, neither did the ones the people in lab coats fed to him, and he always felt wrong after eating those. He couldn’t even identify these berries. They looked nothing like the colorful ones he’d been given before. Curiosity eventually won out over caution, if only because he was hungry, and he sliced one in half with one of his tusks. It oozed juice and he tilted his head up to let it drip into his mouth. It had a strange mix of flavors but he noticed its sweetness above the others, and he quite enjoyed it. He looked down at the two halves of the berry and cast a glance over at this new human. The bug and the floating rock with her seemed to be enjoying themselves. Maybe she could be… no, he couldn’t think that way. Trusting humans is what led to his never-ending pain. Even now, he could feel the sting on his back…
Actually, now that he thought about it, the sting wasn’t too bad right now. That wasn’t a good sign. It’s been too long. It must be about time for them to take him to a cage, any minute now they’d surround him and cuff his legs together, and…
He let out a distressed roar, curling up into a ball, because he didn’t know what else to do. Eventually they would either find a way to splay him out or simply jab him in the back anyway.
He felt something on his back and roared again, rocking back and forth in a vague effort of resistance; there it was, they had reached him and any second now his back would explode in a flare of agony even worse than the last as they tranquillized him, if he were lucky. There was a soft hissing sound above him and he really began to panic now; what was that sound, he’d never heard that sound before, what were they doing?
Then, something unexpected… the hand on his back began to move, in light, almost gentle strokes. What were they doing? Did they have some new experiment planned today? Then that thought was distracted by a soft buzzing sound, and then there were voices, voices so soft that he almost didn’t catch them, although he tried to drown them out, he found that this time he couldn’t, and it almost sounded like they were talking to him instead of about him.
The buzzing stopped and he was are of another pokémon beside him, but the soft hissing sound remained. He knew he’d never heard it before, and yet… it was somehow… vaguely familiar. What could that be? Why did he recognize it? He stopped wobbling, straining to hear better. Definitely words, and then…
“…It’s okay, Cooper, I’m here, you’re okay, you’re safe….”
That name. He’d only been called that name recently. Where did that name come from? He slowly uncurled himself. The other pokémon beside him vanished; maybe he scared it? There was a human in front of him, too. She knelt down, right there in front of him, arm stretched out over him, reaching out of his vision… was that her hand stroking him? She smiled when he looked up at her, and he was surprised to realize he wasn’t afraid of it. If there was malice in it, he couldn’t see it. What was she doing?
“Did you like this?” she asked him. She held out one of the berry halves to him. No, no, he didn’t want that. It tasted good, but there was always some price to pay for that. He squealed and tripped backwards.
“Oh! Okay, no sitrus berries, got it. Look, see, it’s gone now!” she turned and threw the berry half away. Why did she do that? Wasn’t she going to force him to eat it? How else was she going to get whatever she put in the berry into his body? That was how they made him sick.
Something shifted in his vision and there was the flying bug, snatching the other half of the sitrus berry from the pile and carrying it back into the air and out of sight. No, he can’t do that… he’ll get sick too! He squealed out a warning to the bug, although he couldn’t see him at all.
“Don’t eat that! It’s a trap! Makes you sick!” The human withdrew her hand, looking vaguely alarmed as he shouted his warning, but she didn’t back away, and looked up when, from somewhere above, a reply came.
“Sick? Why would Kaeli want to make me sick? These are my favorite berry. Don’t you like them?”
“Not… sick?”
“No! Try one!” The next thing he knew, one of those same berries had dropped from the sky to land in front of him, followed by the masquerain. He shuffled back. Too close, too close!
But the bug didn’t creep any closer, nor did the human; he simply pushed the sitrus berry closer with a wing. Cooper looked between it and the bug, then to the human. She was smiling again, rolling the berry ever closer. Cooper slowly chopped it in half with a tusk, just as he had the first, except this time he picked up one of them and stuffed it in his mouth. The bug reached out with a wing and drew the other half back to himself to nibble on, his real eyes never leaving the donphan.
Sometime later, after the human and the bug and the floating rock had returned to their training and Cooper had eaten another couple of berries, he realized he had yet to feel sick. For the first time in a while, he wasn’t just ‘not hungry’, he was full.
“Stone edge!” Kaeli’s opponent ordered.
Her armaldo was on his last leg, weakened by Strider’s water attacks, but still his stomp was so hard that he cracked the battle arena floor – and it had just been repaired! – and in response numerous sharp rocks jolted upwards from the ground. Strider was faster, but only just, and he couldn’t predict where the rocks were going to erupt. He managed another hydro pump in between erratic dodging but by some stroke of misfortune, a sharp rock materialized in front of his target before his attack reached the other bug-type. Oh, come on! We just need to land one more good attack… the armaldo couldn’t actually be controlling the rocks, can he?
“Strider, just fly up! Up and over them!” Kaeli countered.
“That’s the cue, Locaris,” the other trainer shouted.
Before Kaeli could wonder what that meant, Strider had already started falling from the sky. She hadn’t even seen where that rock came from, small as it was, but it tore a hole right through Strider’s wing and he couldn’t stay airborne. Another stone edge jutted out of the ground as he fell and the bug was unconscious before he reached the floor.
“That’s one knockout for challenger Leden,” Justy announced while Kaeli recalled Strider.
It was a two-on-two fight and there were no other trainers in the gym yet this morning so if the challenger got through her, she’d get to take on Justy. She hesitated before sending Lyrid into the fight, casting a glance towards the minior on the sidelines, who was silently observing the battle with Cooper.
The donphan had been slightly better over the last week. He was accepting food now, though when Kaeli attempted to involve him on her team training, he still had a bad habit of flaring up in a panic. So, if she planned to continue this fight, there was no way she could send in Cooper. He only knew two moves, and what would happen if word got out that she had a shadow pokémon?
On the other hand, while Cooper was her newest addition, Lyrid wasn’t exactly a veteran either. And judging by the skill of Leden’s first pokémon, she wasn’t confident that the minior had enough training to defeat whatever their opponent sent out next; even if the armaldo had a rock weakness, so did her minior. While she debated just giving this girl her victory and let her move on to Justy, Cooper wandered onto the battlefield and stared down the armaldo with a roar.
“Wait, wha– Cooper, no!” she cried, oblivious to her opponent’s grimace. “You’re not supposed to be there!”
The donphan roared again, stomping at the ground. It almost seems as if he wants to battle…
“Hey, if you wanna switch for your other pokémon, be my guest,” Leden answered, arms crossed. “I’ll happily take that type advantage back.”
Of course, I get to fight the one person in Orre who knows what a minior is…
“Uhm…” Kaeli was at a loss and her worries were making her anxiety spike; how could she let him battle when he only knew shadow moves? Surely Justy would allow her an exception in this case, since he knew about the shadow pokémon thing already. But as she turned to him to ask his approval for a swap, Cooper once again acted on his own.
Reacting to a roar and a stomp from the ground-type, the remains of the armaldo’s stone edge shattered and flew through the air, burying Locaris underneath the rubble. The stone pile rumbled as the fossil tried to crawl his way out, but eventually he lay still.
Justy must have been as confused as Kaeli, if his voice was any indication. Since when could Cooper use something other than a shadow move? “That’s one knockout for Kaeli. Score, one knockout each. Next knockout wins.” Great, now I’m locked into using him…
Leden groaned as she recalled her defeated pokémon. To Kaeli, she said, “Well, I didn’t want to do this… but I really need to take on your leader. Let’s go, Skyshear!”
Kaeli tensed as Leden’s second pokéball hit the ground… and released a scyther.
And suddenly, her nervousness had given way to confusion, despite the bug-type’s obvious strength. Why would she send out a pokémon with such a significant rock weakness after what just happened to her armaldo? Did she only train bugs?
She got her answer when Leden gave her command; “Shadow rush!”
“What?”
The bug-type let out a battle cry, and Kaeli actually flinched as Skyshear erupted in an all-too-familiar purple-black aura. Her words caught in her throat as she tried to order Cooper to get out of the way, but the scyther was so fast that it had already rammed into her pokémon before she could do anything more than squeal.
Oddly enough, Cooper didn’t appear to feel the impact, despite the fact that he had skidded backwards into a rock as a result of it. Kaeli was again perplexed; the last time she’d seen that attack from Cooper, it had done some serious damage. What is even going on right now?
Evidently, Leden agreed. “Huh. That was… unexpected,” she noted, pensive. Her eyes rested on Kaeli’s pokémon. “Tell me, is there anything… unusual about your donphan?”
“Uh… I, uh…”
Leden made a noise that she probably intended to be a laugh, but came out as more of a snort. “He’s a shadow, isn’t he? There’s no other way he could have taken that attack so effortlessly. Tell me, how did you teach him a non-shadow technique? I wasn’t aware that was possible.”
Kaeli simply stared, her brain still trying to process how this scyther could exist. The shadow pokémon incident happened nearly five years ago. She had assumed her donphan had been somehow missed in the aftermath, and as far as she knew there had been no other reports of any further shadow pokémon sightings since Wes had left Orre. The fact that even one had eluded him was a shock; he had been thorough in his trek through the region, almost as though he knew exactly what shadow pokémon Cipher had created. Had he missed others?
“I think the question is,” Justy started, and Kaeli jumped; she hadn’t noticed him stepping down from his control panel to stand beside her. “How do you have a shadow pokémon?”
“Oh, there’s quite a few of them around,” Leden said casually as Skyshear shadow-rushed around the purple aura spikes that Cooper kept trying to impale him with, regarding the technique with interest. Then an expression of genuine confusion spread across her face as she turned to her black-haired opponent. “You haven’t heard? I had assumed, since you own one…” she trailed off.
“No, I hadn’t,” Justy answered for her, an edge to his voice that Kaeli had only heard once before; when she had very obviously thrown a battle to a challenger. She’d never forget how badly he’d let her have it afterwards. “I’m going to need you to tell me everything you know about where this scyther came from.”
This time Leden did genuinely laugh at him. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’m in enough trouble as it is for this setback. I think it’s time we go.”
“What’s that supposed to –”
“Skyshear, it’s time for shadow mist!” shouted over Justy’s question.
Kaeli didn’t even have time to be surprised at hearing the name of another new shadow move as she caught sight of her senior throwing a pokéball out, realizing that Gizmo wouldn’t even form in time. “Cooper, rock slide! Bring him down!”
Somehow, Cooper had not yet succumbed to that hollow rage he normally fell victim to in battle, but even before he could lift the rocks, the scyther’s fiery, purple shadow-rush aura began to seep away from his body like steam. The room filled quicker than Kaeli thought possible, obscuring everything else from view; she could just barely make out a silhouette next to her that must be Justy, but that was it.
Thankfully, they had been battling on the gym’s ground floor. Kaeli tried to turn and run for the door – for better or worse, there was only one way out of Phenac’s gym – but her entire body felt sluggish. Was this an effect of the shadow mist?
She tripped on something, she couldn’t tell what, and somehow managed to get her hands in front of her in time to keep from smashing her face on the tiled floor. The something that she tripped on moved into her vision, but then stopped, staying nearby, and there appeared to be another silhouetted figure now, floating just above the first.
Justy, of course, did not trip, and the shadow mist easily drained from the room through the door he managed to open. Or at least, Kaeli hoped it was Justy. Or Marin, or one of the other trainers, finally showing up for their shift. Anyone but Leden getting away. Either way, her movement was easier as the shadow mist dissipated, so she forced herself to her knees.
As soon as she righted herself, something large and heavy flopped into her lap, preventing her from standing. As her vision returned, Kaeli saw her donphan draped over her legs, looking around frantically as though he expected an attack, and occasionally jabbing his tusks towards Lyrid, who hovered just outside his reach. “Cooper, are you… trying to protect me?”
Cooper stopped looking around the room to gaze up at his trainer instead. They locked eyes for a moment; then Cooper flinched as though shocked, and curled into a ball.
Cooper was already beginning to grow irritable at the sight of the courtyard the human kept taking him to. It was quickly feeling like the cage the lab coats kept him in, even though he’d yet be chained up here. Their training spot was all he’d seen in some time now, ever since he had battled that other pokémon, the one like him. All he’d wanted to do was battle… he wasn’t even sure why, if he was honest with himself. It had felt important to his trainer, and he’d only wanted to help… Had he done something wrong? Was this his punishment?
The human girl had left something she called ‘incense’ with him today; Cooper had no idea what it was, but he was immediately suspicious of it, despite its pleasant smell… in fact, it was a very pleasant smell, and that only made Cooper more cautious. His trainer had said it was supposed to be calm and relaxing for pokémon. But Cooper knew that anything intended to calm him wasn’t a good sign… it meant pain was likely to follow. He knew his trainer had been mad about something he did in that battle. This proved it. Sure, she hadn’t done anything to him yet, and the berries had turned out to be a very pleasing recurring treat, but…
He looked around, and there it was; the bowl of assorted berries in its usual spot. She was still feeding him… a quick glance around revealed his trainer and his two teammates training in the otherwise empty lot, so he wasn’t being locked away, despite how he felt about the courtyard. And whatever this incense thing was, he did feel more at ease for some reason… if he was being punished, this certainly was an unusual way to go about it. The scent hadn’t made him feel sick or anything else that he could tell so far. He pawed at the ground for a moment, then skewered a berry and settled down to watch what his teammates would do today. No point in worrying over what she was going to do to him until she did it.
He lost track of time watching his teammates train today, just as he did every other day he was out here. The human seemed content to simply let him out and leave him alone in his corner with his berries to watch while she and her other pokémon trained. Which was fine with him. He was curious, sure, but the battle against the scyther convinced him that he had done something wrong, he just couldn’t figure out what it was. Better to not risk doing it again, in case the human changed her mind about punishing him.
The sky was orange when his teammates finally decided they’d trained enough for the day. The masquerain – no, Strider, he said to call him – shouted his name. Why? They’d never bothered him before, what could they want today? Was it punishment time? “Hey, Cooper! Are you awake over there? We’re gonna go watch the sun!”
“Watch… the sun?” Cooper asked.
“Yes, it’s pretty! I found a nice spot in the city, and I want to show Kaeli! Come with us!”
“Uh… I’m not allowed in the city,” Cooper replied, ashamed but not entirely sure why.
“Why wouldn’t you be allowed in the city?” Strider asked. “Come on, it’ll be fun!”
They didn’t bother waiting for a reply before the masquerain, the minior, and the human began walking away. Before she was out of sight, the girl turned back towards him, watching him with a smile. She said nothing, but pulled a sitrus berry out of the bag at her side and held it out in his direction.
Well, she hadn’t done anything to him so far… and he’d get another berry out of it. Maybe watching the sun wouldn’t be as scary as it sounded.
A short time later and they were in the center of the city. Cooper had no idea what made this spot so great, but there were many things about his teammates that he didn’t really understand. He looked up at his human, a mystery all her own. She sat above him, at the base of a statue in the fountain, looking up at the darkening sky. The masquerain rested on her head, the minior in her lap.
So far, she hadn’t treated him at all like the lab coats had. Somehow, having a trainer wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Surely, they had been doing all those experiments on him for something besides just… lounging around watching the sky? And yet, here they were.
The minior shifted in her lap, and she only cast a quick glance down at it before realizing Cooper was watching her. “Feeling lonely?” she asked. Before he knew it, she’d leapt from the fountain to the pavement, sitting down beside him and throwing one arm over his back. The minior returned to her lap as she leaned against Cooper’s side and resumed looking upwards.
And as he leaned into his trainer, Cooper thought – just this once – it might be safe to just try to enjoy this moment together.
Kaeli was going to be late for her shift at the gym, but she could live with that if she caught up to the brunette woman.
She’d seen Cassandra in a crowd in the middle of Phenac not five minutes ago – Kaeli didn’t see her face, but she definitely recognized the hair – and nearly ran into a cyclist in her haste to turn around give chase. She was sure this woman had to know where her shadow donphan came from, or maybe even was directly responsible for it. Either way, Kaeli needed to know. Marin insisted she had no idea what Kaeli was talking about, that she had no idea her contact had anything to do with shadow pokémon, so talking to her was useless. If Cassandra knew even the slightest detail about how it happened, Kaeli might also get a clue on how to reverse it.
Granted, Cooper had improved greatly over the last month. He especially seemed to enjoy the different incense she kept bringing home for him. He was eating regularly, he no longer curled into a ball whenever Kaeli or her other pokémon approached, and he had even started showing some proper emotion on a regular basis. On top of that, he could even battle more often than not without any issues, although still he occasionally got caught up in a moment of pure, raw shadow-induced rage that Kaeli had yet to discover how to prevent. Kaeli could only guess how far along he was on the road to recovery, but she was sure the end had to be in sight. She suspected there was one final key, something missing from the equation, and she now was in pursuit of the person she thought might hold that answer.
Cassandra must have realized she was being followed, because she ducked down the first dark alley she came to. Kaeli stayed on her heels, but it didn’t take long until she found her target; the woman was leaning against a brick wall casually, as if waiting for her. She sneered when Kaeli rounded the corner.
“Fancy meeting you again. Looking for another pokémon?”
“How do I change him back?” Kaeli asked instead of replying.
The brunette’s voice was tainted with faux innocence when she replied, tapping her chin thoughtfully; “Change him back? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t give me that. Tell me what you did to him and how to reverse it.”
She frowned now. “Making demands now, are we? Not very polite.”
Kaeli wasn’t sure what was coming over her, but the woman’s attitude was making her angry. She’d already had a pokéball in hand before she consciously considered a fight, letting Cooper out in a flash of light. The donphan squealed upon seeing the woman in front of him and pressed himself close to Kaeli’s legs. Cassandra only spared him a moment’s glance.
“You don’t want to do that, sweetie,” Cassandra said, nodding her head towards the alley behind Kaeli, who spun around to find her path blocked; she hadn’t seen or heard the other two people creep up behind her, their own balls ready. And when Kaeli shifted her attention back to Cassandra, she too had an ultra ball held at her side.
“I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me!” Kaeli insisted, but she knew this was a battle she couldn’t win. On the other hand, her escape route was blocked now, so why shouldn’t she keep pressing?
“Honey, you’re in way over your head here. You have no idea just who you’re getting involved with. If you leave now, I’ll forget you threatened me. I don’t have all day, so this is your last chance.” Oh. That’s why. She felt her resolve waver and hoped it didn’t show in her posture.
Kaeli shot another quick glace behind her and noticed the two men there slowly creeping closer. Cassandra had her ultra ball out in front of her now, ready to drop it at a moment’s notice.
She debated charging the other woman, but thought better of it and recalling Cooper to his ball, and returning it to her belt, relaxing her stance. She took a few cautious steps backwards.
“Let her go,” Cassandra commanded, nodding her head at the other two in the alley. Kaeli looked behind her and saw them exchange confused expressions before pressing themselves to the wall to allow her passage.
As Kaeli backed out of the alley and made to run, she paused only to hear other woman’s final words: “Smart choice, girl. You have no idea what you just avoided getting yourself into.”
A week later and Kaeli had lost count of the number of trainers who had come into the pre-gym with a shadow pokémon, bringing with them even more shadow techniques that she’d never seen before, hoping to score some easy wins. And they’d usually get those easy wins from the two trainers before her. The only thing that seemed to hold them off was Cooper; it seemed that, as a shadow pokémon himself, he was able to withstand the shadow attacks of others, whereas normal pokémon appeared to have a type-weakness to them, regardless of what their own elemental type was. Kaeli wondered why so many of them were showing up to challenge the gym, too. The pre-gym was one of the few non-tournament locations in Orre for practice battles, but it’s not as though they’d get a badge here, like in a normal region with a normal league.
Kaeli was at a loss; Cooper had finally seemed to open up to her, behaving almost like any normal pokémon, but still he suffered those rage-filled lapses in battle, and she had no idea how to stop them. He could only do so much in battle without resorting to shadow moves – it appeared that he never could learn anything beyond rock slide and magnitude. She’d tried giving up on even using the shadow moves entirely for over a week and even that didn’t stop the fits of anger; even other shadow pokémon were apparently enough to trigger whatever instinct Cooper had been given.
After another relatively easy battle, Justy called her up to his computer terminal, showing her a news article from earlier that morning. Apparently, the man working on the purification chamber some time ago, professor Krane, had vanished. Kaeli decided to head out to his lab and investigate; she’d completely forgotten about his project, and by now he must have had something to show for it, right? And even if not, maybe she could help find him and assist in the project. She had no other leads.
She packed for a long trip, not expecting to be back to Phenac for some time while she sorted things out. It would take at least a few days just to get to Krane’s lab; it was on the complete opposite side of Orre. After that, who knows how long she’d be there before heading home. She’d made sure to thank Justy for letting her take some time off but he’d only waved her off, assuring her that he wanted Cooper to recover as much as she did.
She was disappointed when she finally arrived at Krane’s lab only for his wife Lily to inform her that he’d been kidnapped and had yet to be seen. Upon news of Kaeli’s shadow pokémon, Lily told her that she’d sent her son to pick up a part she needed to finish the purification chamber, but she had no idea when he would be back or how long it would take her to finish the project on her own, even with that part.
Kaeli’s heart sank, but Lily offered an alternative solution, one she hadn’t found in her online research. Apparently, with no purification chamber in existence at the time, the previous shadow pokémon were taken somewhere in Agate, although Lily couldn’t tell her why. Thankfully, Agate wasn’t too far from the lab, and was in fact along her route back to Phenac. With renewed determination, thanks for Lily’s advice, and well wishes for Krane’s recovery, Kaeli set off once again.
Cooper felt highly uncomfortable in the forest, as though he didn’t belong here, and it had little to do with all the grass hampering his connection to the earth – although, that certainly didn’t put him at ease, either. Something about this forest was old, very old… and yet, at the same time, it was teeming with life energy.
He stuck as close as he could to his trainer’s leg; neither Kaeli nor the old man traveling with them seemed to notice any of this. The humans were engaged in their own leisurely conversation as they walked, although Kaeli did seem particularly excitable today. And the old man wasn’t exactly lazy, either; he walked lightly, almost with a spring in his step that, were the ground not obscured by all this grass, Cooper was sure he’d be able to feel. Even so, he still felt that life energy, and it was growing ever stronger. He wondered if they were heading towards its source, but whether or not that was the intent, it was very close to them now. And also…
The humans were distracted from their conversation at the same time Cooper picked up on the other life forces in the area around them. Several other humans stepped out from the bushes all around them – and Cooper recognized them. Or, at least, their outfits. Not the lab coats, but the soldiers who had captured him.
Immediately he panicked, roaring and stomping backwards, only to dive forwards again as one of them laughed from behind him. Kaeli knelt down and tried to calm him, but Cooper could see in her eyes that she was afraid. He couldn’t count, but he knew there were far more of them than his trainer and the old man could handle. It wasn’t a fair fight, she knew that, and she was terrified, yet she was still here trying to settle him down.
“You two should leave if you know what’s good for you,” one of them said, and Cooper felt a chill. “All we want is this here rock, and we’ll be on our way.”
“You can’t! That is the relic stone, a sacred monument to Celebi! What would you want with it?” the old man replied. Cooper could sense no fear in the man’s voice, not that he could tell, but he’d seen many pokémon stand against a foe much larger or stronger before. Maybe humans weren’t that different.
“We want to destroy it, of course,” another voice said. “We know this thing can purify shadow pokémon. We can’t allow it to exist.”
Kaeli’s attention snapped away from Cooper to reply to the voice. “You’re responsible for the shadow pokémon!” Unlike the old man, Kaeli couldn’t hide the fear in her tone. And suddenly, his trainer was on her feet, her pokéballs hitting the ground and spilling out Strider and Lyrid.
A third voice laughed, and suddenly pokémon were being released all around them. Shadow pokémon, Cooper realized. Many of them looked like him, or how he used to be; some were feral, ready to tear into any opponent without remorse, others looked empty, void of emotion, programmed to attack whatever they were told to. “Do you really want to do this, kid?”
Cooper watched as his trainer trembled, and the old man put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me–”
“Strider, stun spore!”
And before he knew it, there was chaos. Shadow pokémon were charging left and right. Kaeli ducked as her two other pokémon came under assault from various shadow attacks as they tried to fly around and avoid them while launching counter attacks of their own. Cooper lost sight of the old man, but he had his own problems to worry about; a hitmontop was barreling towards him in a dizzying spin.
Cooper roared and reared up onto his hind legs before slamming down and triggering a magnitude, knocking over not only the incoming hitmontop, but a handful of other pokémon nearby, as well as his trainer. He was immediately under siege from a lunatone and a butterfree that had escaped his previous move, and tried to throw them off with a rock slide instead.
“Don’t damage the stone!” Cooper heard the old man say from somewhere outside his vision.
“Cooper, be careful, please,” Kaeli added, somewhere to his left.
He just managed to stop from tearing away the boulder underneath the relic stone before he was struck in the side by something. He never saw what it was, because when he looked up, a growlithe had sunk its fangs into Kaeli’s leg.
“NO!” Cooper heard himself roar. He couldn’t do either of his normal attacks now, not with his trainer that close to his target. But he knew what he could do, and this time he would control it. There was no way he couldn’t, because Kaeli was hurt, the one person who’d ever shown him kindness was hurt, and that was not okay. He was barely aware of the darkness swirling around him as he charged and barreled into the growlithe. He stomped down on it a few times before realizing there were several other pokémon approaching from all sides.
No matter. They wouldn’t even get close. He would handle them all. With another roar, he sent his shadow aura into the ground below him, spread it out. Then a stomp, and every single incoming pokémon was perfectly impaled by the shadowy spikes he’d triggered, while also creating a small ring around himself and Kaeli. A small hurdle, to be sure, but it would slow down anyone trying to reach them without flying.
On cue, a pidgeotto approached from the sky and Cooper glared at it, sending another shadowy spike up into its path and didn’t bother watching it crash, instead charging directly for an exeggutor that was just beginning to stand.
“Cooper!” He immediately stopped picking out his next target upon hearing his trainer’s voice call for him; she was standing now, favoring her uninjured leg. Cooper dashed towards her and she screamed, but he skidded to a stop in front of her, sending another shadow rave attack into a pinsir, a kangaskhan, and a rhydon behind her in the process, then turned around and sent another one at an incoming paras, golduck, and weepinbell. “What’s happening to you?” he heard her ask. He wasn’t sure what she meant by that; it was obvious, wasn’t it? He was using the shadow powers and the rage they gave him to protect her.
Still, he began to realize as a starmie and an altaria bared down on them, they were in trouble. He could keep launching attack after attack, even taking down multiple pokémon at once, but most of them were like him – he could knock them down easily enough, but they would keep getting up and coming at him. He was already beginning to feel tired.
“Kaeli, get down!” came a voice, and somehow, Cooper recognized it as the old man. Kaeli only spared a second to recall her other two pokémon before obeying. As his trainer shot to the ground, Cooper sensed the static in the air and, knowing what was coming, dove on top of her.
The thunder still blinded him but he felt nothing, and hoped he covered Kaeli enough to shield her entirely. Cooper refused to look away just in case any of the other shadow pokémon avoided the attack and tried to get closer to his trainer. That wasn’t going to happen today. But when the smoke cleared, the only thing still standing in the area was himself, a pikachu, and an old man behind him.
“Are you ready, Cooper?” Kaeli asked, once the Cipher group had taken off, vowing vengeance. Her donphan roared with purpose, staring up at the relic stone. “Alright, let’s give this a try. Um…” She looked towards Eagun. “What do I do?”
“Nothing, really,” the old man replied. “Offer Celebi a prayer, and make your request.”
Kaeli nodded. What sort of prayer would Celebi want? Perhaps something for the forest… She bowed her head and reached out to touch the stone. It was mildly cool to the touch, at least for a moment. The instant that Cooper touched it with his trunk, the stone became warm under her skin. Not a burning warmth; but a soothing warmth. Then the stone began to glow, first feint, then brightly, a swirling mixture of greens that almost seemed to flow like water down the sides of the stone, along the cracks, into the ground.
Cooper made a sound akin to a gasp as he too began to glow green… and then Kaeli gasped too, when the coloring began to flow up her arm as well. Eagun remained calm, though, so she hesitated to pull away. Then she cringed again as Cooper started to flare up in that blackish-purple aura she’d come to associate with the donphan’s fits of uncontrolled rage – the ones that, until today, he’d never been in control of. Slowly, the blackish aura transitioned into the same mixed greens as the stone and surrounding ground, until finally, nothing remained of it. The color then seeped back into the stone, both from her donphan as well as herself, which flickered and went dark, becoming cold once again.
Cooper stepped away from the relic stone first, looking around as though he were seeing the forest for the first time. His eyes fell on Kaeli and he smiled – really, truly smiled, and she smiled back at him. “How do you feel, buddy? She asked, kneeing down to put a hand on his head.
He surprised her by squealing and tackling her, licking her face like a baby poochyena. Sticky as it was, she wasn’t about to let this moment be spoiled. He didn’t stay long, however, leaping off her and wandering around the stone, sniffing at the grass and bouncing around, unable to sit still, bounding between Kaeli, the stone, and whatever caught his attention next.
“That was amazing, Cooper!” Kaeli said, her arms outstretched, and Cooper leapt into them again, nuzzling against her for the first time she could remember. “What do you say we go back home?”
“It’s been a while since we’ve been home… do you remember it?” As Kaeli walked the streets of Phenac city with Cooper at her side, she was aware of an odd sensation in her gut. Something was wrong, though she couldn’t see what. People were walking around normally, few of them though there were today, going about their business, but it was unusually quiet.
Cooper looked as though he sensed something too, preferring to stick so close to her that she’d nearly tripped over him more than once, the way he did while they’d walked though Agate’s forest. The entire trip home, when not in his ball, he’d spent wandering around exploring his surroundings like an excitable zigzagoon. Now, though he was quiet. He’d simply looked up at her question, then resumed to monitoring their surroundings.
She’d arrived back only yesterday after a long trip, and immediately returned home to sleep. Today, though, she figured she’d better head to the pre-gym and check in with Justy – even if not to work, he’d want to know how her little adventure turned out. But when they finally arrived at their destination, the pre-gym’s doors were locked.
“Huh… I know we’re not supposed to be closed today. Justy never closes.” She started to move towards a window to peek into.
Cooper suddenly squealed and she turned around, face to face with several familiar, unwelcome faces. The tallest one in the front held a pokéball in front of her – Cooper’s ball, she realized, when her donphan vanished in its red recall beam. She reached down to her belt for her others, only to realize they were missing, too.
“Yeah, she’s the one,” one of them said, and Kaeli recognized that voice; she hadn’t heard it in over a month now, but she was sure she wouldn’t forget the first incident in the gym. Leden.
And right next to her… “Fancy meeting you here. Welcome home, kid,” Cassandra said with a sneer. She knocked on the gym’s door a few times, some rhythmic pattern that Kaeli only realized was some sort of pre-determined code when the doors slid open. “Get in.”
(Also for another time, I'll try to respond to some of the judge's comments later, as I do have things I want to acknowledge... but it is late at time of posting and so I will have to come back to it.)
A cry of “Thunder!” was the only warning given before the room lit up, a static charge filling the air. A deafening crack followed, nearly drowning out a loud screech of agony from somewhere in the center of the room as electricity jolted down from above and through the unfortunate target pokémon’s body.
The static lingered, but eventually the black-haired girl had blinked enough to readjust her eyes to the normal, artificial light in the windowless room. Not that she needed to see to know that her pokémon had been knocked out by the electrical attack; her fourth attempt at this battle had ended the same as the first, and the second, and the third. No matter how much she trained or what strategies she tried, neither of her pokémon could overcome their type disadvantages. With an air of resignation, she lifted her head to eye her opponent’s pokémon.
“Thunder? Really? You could have gone a little easy on us.”
The man across from her had stepped up to his manectric and scratched the pokémon’s head. “But if I did that, you’ll never improve. You’re still one of the strongest trainers here.”
“I’ve also been here the longest,” she replied, trudging towards her masquerain, who was already stirring. If nothing else, he was recovering faster after each knockout. “Face it, Justy, I’m just going to be stuck as one of your junior peons until you retire.”
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Justy replied. His manectric barked, probably in agreement. “Both of your pokémon are weak to electricity.”
“It’s not like I can just go and catch something else,” she replied, spritzing her bug-type with a potion spray. He was airborne again now, but he hadn’t said anything yet; it was obvious he was upset about his most recent loss.
“Well, where did you get Strider and Lyrid?” Justy asked, curiously.
“Family,” she replied. She gently stroked her masquerain’s head as he hovered in place. “Strider was a family pet until he evolved. And my sister sent me Lyrid as a birthday gift a couple of years ago.”
“You should battle with it more. You can trust the team here, you know.” He must have been referencing her minior – unless she were home or taking on a challenger, she usually tried to keep the rock-type out of sight. Only a handful of her co-workers knew she had a second pokémon.
“Does anyone in this entire region even know what Lyrid is? There are too many shady people around, even in the city. I’d rather not take my chances. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get Strider to the center.”
She was grateful that Justy and his manectric let her go, though she knew he wouldn’t let that subject drop that easily. It was an issue for tomorrow, though. But as the elevator reached the main level and she stepped out, someone else called out to her.
“Hey Kaeli, have you even scored a single KO?”
Kaeli looked to her left, vision obscured slightly by a wing of Strider’s (who was hitching a ride on his trainer’s head), and found the source of the feminine voice seated at Justy’s control panel. “Be quiet, Marin.”
Marin was out of her chair and had reached the door to the gym before Kaeli. The brunette put a hand on her friend’s shoulder as she approached. Her voice was little more than a whisper as though she were afraid to be overheard, although no one else was currently on the ground floor. “Listen, I heard you were looking for another pokémon?”
Kaeli stared blankly at her. “Why are you whispering?” she answered.
Marin shifted her weight, reaching into her pocket, and Kaeli started to get that sinking feeling in her gut; why was her friend suddenly nervous? “I don’t want Justy to hear this, but… I know where you can get one, if you’re interested.”
Kaeli returned home only slightly less unsettled than she had been in the alley. She hadn’t thought Marin the type to associate with such shady individuals, but even in Phenac those types weren’t uncommon if you knew where to look. After getting her masquerain checked out at the only pokémon center around for miles, she had done as suggested; Marin had given her a small pin to wear in the shape a “C” and told her to wander the alleys near the mayor’s house, and her contact, Cassandra, would find her.
The woman that appeared didn’t look like a criminal, for certain, but something about her unsettled Kaeli, something more than the fact that they were meeting in a dark alleyway. Her short brown hair was up in a tight bun, and her blazer, tight skirt, and heels suggested she was preparing for a fancy office party than a back-alley transaction. Kaeli asked more than once what the catch was, but the uptight woman who handed her the pokéball insisted there wasn’t one, she was simply doing a favor for a friend. And while Kaeli didn’t trust this woman at all, she did trust Marin… although now she had a lot to talk about with her friend.
Kaeli decided she’d better let her new pokémon out before going inside; Cassandra hadn’t told her what it was, and the last thing she needed was an onix smashing his head through the floor of the apartment upstairs. She released Strider first; though she didn’t want to scare the new arrival, she had no idea how it was going to react and decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Whatever it was could meet Lyrid later.
The pokeball opened and she was initially excited to see it materialize into a donphan. Finally, a ground-type! Justy was as good as defeated. The donphan didn’t seem to feel threatened – in fact, it hardly moved. If it noticed that she wasn’t Cassandra, it didn’t seem to care.
“Hi there! I’m Kaeli.” The donphan didn’t look up at her as she spoke. She knelt down instead, trying to look it in the eye, but the pokémon remained unusually immobile. Its tusks were long – a male, then. His eyes looked unfocused, empty. Was he sick? Depressed? Kaeli wouldn’t have been surprised by either guess, considering where he came from. “Uh, well, I don’t know if your old trainer told you, but I’m your new trainer. Do you have a name?”
Finally, the donphan inclined his head towards her voice. He scratched at the pavement briefly, distracted, but still did not speak. She realized then that he was shivering. She hadn’t noticed until he started pawing at the ground.
Kaeli cast a sideways glance at Strider, hovering in the air next to her, and her bug fluttered closer. Immediately, the donphan shrieked and plodded backwards. Kaeli, startled, sprung to her feet. “Ack, no, I’m sorry! Strider, return for now.” Idiot. You forgot about intimidate. No wonder you can’t beat Justy.
She stepped back to give the panicking donphan some space and knelt down again, her hand outstretched and waiting. “Hey there, I’m sorry about him! Here, let’s calm down a little, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you.”
But by that point the ground-type had curled into a nearly perfect ball, and with no time to stand and move, Kaeli had to recall him before he rolled into her.
“You… you don’t know earthquake?!” Kaeli called desperately. What fully evolved ground-type couldn’t use earthquake?
Cooper simply stomped the ground in response, backing away from Justy’s manectric in a panic. Maybe it wasn’t intimidate that scared him before?
Justy’s mien of interest at the black-haired girl’s new pokémon gave way to confidence at the verbal revelation; his pokémon’s type disadvantage wouldn’t matter if his opponent had no moves to target it. “Gizmo, you’re in the clear. Use hyper voice!”
The manectric, crouched down and ready to pounce, let out an earsplitting howl. Cooper’s stomping only increased and he began to curl up.
“Alright then, use rollout!” Kaeli ordered.
But again, her pokémon didn’t obey. He simply sat there, curled in a ball, rocking back and forth under his opponent’s attack. Was he unable to even use rollout, a move that some considered donphan’s signature attack? Or was there something else wrong that she wasn’t seeing?
Justy appeared as confused as she did, but Kaeli knew that didn’t matter anymore; once battle begun, he was in it to win it. “Now, overheat.”
“Get out of the way, Cooper!” She could already feel the heat rolling off the manectric as the fire built up in his muzzle. Still, her donphan remained curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth but otherwise remained unresponsive. “Do something! Get out of there! Attack it! Just rush it or something!” This wasn’t how this battle was supposed to go at all.
Again, Kaeli was just as surprised as Justy when her donphan finally took off rolling. Gizmo assailed him as he approached with a sizzling blast of white-hot fire, and she was only surprised further when that failed to even slow her pokémon down. That attack had enough power to topple a hippowdon, and Cooper just kept rolling… it wasn’t until she focused on her pokémon’s silhouette through the flames that she noticed something was wrong. Since when was fire… purple?
The overheat dispersed as Cooper bowled over Gizmo and circled around for another strike. Without the cover of the attack, Kaeli noticed the purple flames were still engulfing her donphan – and that they were not flames at all.
Justy seemed to come to the same conclusion. “That looks like… Kaeli, call him off. I concede. I concede!”
His words stunned her, but only for a moment, as her donphan tore into the prone manectric. Gizmo hadn’t fully risen before the ground-type toppled him over again and began digging his tusks into the electric-type’s side. “Cooper! Cooper, no! Stop, what are you doing?”
Her words did nothing to settle the donphan, and only seemed to fuel his rage. He roared.as he began stomping down on the other pokémon’s legs. Gizmo howled in pain and tried to electrocute him but Cooper gave no sign that he’d even noticed, until Justy recalled his pokémon.
“Cooper, what was that?” Kaeli asked, down on the battlefield now, his pokéball held in front of her like a shield. The ground-type turned at the sound of her voice and roared before curling up and, with Gizmo no longer within stomping reach, rolling towards her. The pokéball’s recall beam hit him before he could reach her, but that didn’t stop her from screaming.
Though both Kaeli and Justy had spent an entire week researching shadow pokémon, they found surprisingly few details on just how to cure them. The incident that happened nearly five years prior had been solved by another trainer and his companion, and though they had managed to shut down the entire operation, they’d left their methods of healing the affected pokémon a mystery, as though they were the only two in the entire Orre region who bothered to even try. Kaeli did find information on a professor Krane who was supposedly building some sort of “purification” machine, but she could find no mention of a timeline for completion.
Instead, Kaeli resorted to trial and error. She found that further battling didn’t seem to help; While he could still use his strange charging technique on many occasions without apparent negative effect, Cooper frequently flew into a rage during fights and could not be controlled once that strange blackish aura flared up all around him. Kaeli had managed to snap him out of it once or twice through simply pleading for him to calm down, but more often than not, she’d had to recall him instead.
One thing battling did do, though, was reveal that apparently Cooper had more than one “shadow”-type attack he could perform; the one he’d used against Gizmo matched the descriptions of the “shadow rush” technique the previous shadow pokémon used, but then in another battle, Cooper somehow sent his fiery, purple aura along the ground where it erupted upwards into solid, physical spikes. She could find no other evidence of such a move ever being recorded.
She was hesitant to let the donphan outside of his ball when not in battle, but she discovered when she finally did that he was much more docile than he’d appeared. In fact, the blackish aura was nowhere to be seen when not using those shadow moves. He curled up and cowered at anything unfamiliar to him, though Kaeli soon realized he wouldn’t actually attack unless something invaded his personal space. So long as he was left alone, he might almost be a normal pokémon. So, she went about her day, training with her other two pokémon in the courtyard behind her apartment, while leaving Cooper to himself with a few berries in a corner for him to keep busy with.
Cooper sniffed at the berries cautiously. They didn’t smell unusual. But then, neither did the ones the people in lab coats fed to him, and he always felt wrong after eating those. He couldn’t even identify these berries. They looked nothing like the colorful ones he’d been given before. Curiosity eventually won out over caution, if only because he was hungry, and he sliced one in half with one of his tusks. It oozed juice and he tilted his head up to let it drip into his mouth. It had a strange mix of flavors but he noticed its sweetness above the others, and he quite enjoyed it. He looked down at the two halves of the berry and cast a glance over at this new human. The bug and the floating rock with her seemed to be enjoying themselves. Maybe she could be… no, he couldn’t think that way. Trusting humans is what led to his never-ending pain. Even now, he could feel the sting on his back…
Actually, now that he thought about it, the sting wasn’t too bad right now. That wasn’t a good sign. It’s been too long. It must be about time for them to take him to a cage, any minute now they’d surround him and cuff his legs together, and…
He let out a distressed roar, curling up into a ball, because he didn’t know what else to do. Eventually they would either find a way to splay him out or simply jab him in the back anyway.
He felt something on his back and roared again, rocking back and forth in a vague effort of resistance; there it was, they had reached him and any second now his back would explode in a flare of agony even worse than the last as they tranquillized him, if he were lucky. There was a soft hissing sound above him and he really began to panic now; what was that sound, he’d never heard that sound before, what were they doing?
Then, something unexpected… the hand on his back began to move, in light, almost gentle strokes. What were they doing? Did they have some new experiment planned today? Then that thought was distracted by a soft buzzing sound, and then there were voices, voices so soft that he almost didn’t catch them, although he tried to drown them out, he found that this time he couldn’t, and it almost sounded like they were talking to him instead of about him.
The buzzing stopped and he was are of another pokémon beside him, but the soft hissing sound remained. He knew he’d never heard it before, and yet… it was somehow… vaguely familiar. What could that be? Why did he recognize it? He stopped wobbling, straining to hear better. Definitely words, and then…
“…It’s okay, Cooper, I’m here, you’re okay, you’re safe….”
That name. He’d only been called that name recently. Where did that name come from? He slowly uncurled himself. The other pokémon beside him vanished; maybe he scared it? There was a human in front of him, too. She knelt down, right there in front of him, arm stretched out over him, reaching out of his vision… was that her hand stroking him? She smiled when he looked up at her, and he was surprised to realize he wasn’t afraid of it. If there was malice in it, he couldn’t see it. What was she doing?
“Did you like this?” she asked him. She held out one of the berry halves to him. No, no, he didn’t want that. It tasted good, but there was always some price to pay for that. He squealed and tripped backwards.
“Oh! Okay, no sitrus berries, got it. Look, see, it’s gone now!” she turned and threw the berry half away. Why did she do that? Wasn’t she going to force him to eat it? How else was she going to get whatever she put in the berry into his body? That was how they made him sick.
Something shifted in his vision and there was the flying bug, snatching the other half of the sitrus berry from the pile and carrying it back into the air and out of sight. No, he can’t do that… he’ll get sick too! He squealed out a warning to the bug, although he couldn’t see him at all.
“Don’t eat that! It’s a trap! Makes you sick!” The human withdrew her hand, looking vaguely alarmed as he shouted his warning, but she didn’t back away, and looked up when, from somewhere above, a reply came.
“Sick? Why would Kaeli want to make me sick? These are my favorite berry. Don’t you like them?”
“Not… sick?”
“No! Try one!” The next thing he knew, one of those same berries had dropped from the sky to land in front of him, followed by the masquerain. He shuffled back. Too close, too close!
But the bug didn’t creep any closer, nor did the human; he simply pushed the sitrus berry closer with a wing. Cooper looked between it and the bug, then to the human. She was smiling again, rolling the berry ever closer. Cooper slowly chopped it in half with a tusk, just as he had the first, except this time he picked up one of them and stuffed it in his mouth. The bug reached out with a wing and drew the other half back to himself to nibble on, his real eyes never leaving the donphan.
Sometime later, after the human and the bug and the floating rock had returned to their training and Cooper had eaten another couple of berries, he realized he had yet to feel sick. For the first time in a while, he wasn’t just ‘not hungry’, he was full.
“Stone edge!” Kaeli’s opponent ordered.
Her armaldo was on his last leg, weakened by Strider’s water attacks, but still his stomp was so hard that he cracked the battle arena floor – and it had just been repaired! – and in response numerous sharp rocks jolted upwards from the ground. Strider was faster, but only just, and he couldn’t predict where the rocks were going to erupt. He managed another hydro pump in between erratic dodging but by some stroke of misfortune, a sharp rock materialized in front of his target before his attack reached the other bug-type. Oh, come on! We just need to land one more good attack… the armaldo couldn’t actually be controlling the rocks, can he?
“Strider, just fly up! Up and over them!” Kaeli countered.
“That’s the cue, Locaris,” the other trainer shouted.
Before Kaeli could wonder what that meant, Strider had already started falling from the sky. She hadn’t even seen where that rock came from, small as it was, but it tore a hole right through Strider’s wing and he couldn’t stay airborne. Another stone edge jutted out of the ground as he fell and the bug was unconscious before he reached the floor.
“That’s one knockout for challenger Leden,” Justy announced while Kaeli recalled Strider.
It was a two-on-two fight and there were no other trainers in the gym yet this morning so if the challenger got through her, she’d get to take on Justy. She hesitated before sending Lyrid into the fight, casting a glance towards the minior on the sidelines, who was silently observing the battle with Cooper.
The donphan had been slightly better over the last week. He was accepting food now, though when Kaeli attempted to involve him on her team training, he still had a bad habit of flaring up in a panic. So, if she planned to continue this fight, there was no way she could send in Cooper. He only knew two moves, and what would happen if word got out that she had a shadow pokémon?
On the other hand, while Cooper was her newest addition, Lyrid wasn’t exactly a veteran either. And judging by the skill of Leden’s first pokémon, she wasn’t confident that the minior had enough training to defeat whatever their opponent sent out next; even if the armaldo had a rock weakness, so did her minior. While she debated just giving this girl her victory and let her move on to Justy, Cooper wandered onto the battlefield and stared down the armaldo with a roar.
“Wait, wha– Cooper, no!” she cried, oblivious to her opponent’s grimace. “You’re not supposed to be there!”
The donphan roared again, stomping at the ground. It almost seems as if he wants to battle…
“Hey, if you wanna switch for your other pokémon, be my guest,” Leden answered, arms crossed. “I’ll happily take that type advantage back.”
Of course, I get to fight the one person in Orre who knows what a minior is…
“Uhm…” Kaeli was at a loss and her worries were making her anxiety spike; how could she let him battle when he only knew shadow moves? Surely Justy would allow her an exception in this case, since he knew about the shadow pokémon thing already. But as she turned to him to ask his approval for a swap, Cooper once again acted on his own.
Reacting to a roar and a stomp from the ground-type, the remains of the armaldo’s stone edge shattered and flew through the air, burying Locaris underneath the rubble. The stone pile rumbled as the fossil tried to crawl his way out, but eventually he lay still.
Justy must have been as confused as Kaeli, if his voice was any indication. Since when could Cooper use something other than a shadow move? “That’s one knockout for Kaeli. Score, one knockout each. Next knockout wins.” Great, now I’m locked into using him…
Leden groaned as she recalled her defeated pokémon. To Kaeli, she said, “Well, I didn’t want to do this… but I really need to take on your leader. Let’s go, Skyshear!”
Kaeli tensed as Leden’s second pokéball hit the ground… and released a scyther.
And suddenly, her nervousness had given way to confusion, despite the bug-type’s obvious strength. Why would she send out a pokémon with such a significant rock weakness after what just happened to her armaldo? Did she only train bugs?
She got her answer when Leden gave her command; “Shadow rush!”
“What?”
The bug-type let out a battle cry, and Kaeli actually flinched as Skyshear erupted in an all-too-familiar purple-black aura. Her words caught in her throat as she tried to order Cooper to get out of the way, but the scyther was so fast that it had already rammed into her pokémon before she could do anything more than squeal.
Oddly enough, Cooper didn’t appear to feel the impact, despite the fact that he had skidded backwards into a rock as a result of it. Kaeli was again perplexed; the last time she’d seen that attack from Cooper, it had done some serious damage. What is even going on right now?
Evidently, Leden agreed. “Huh. That was… unexpected,” she noted, pensive. Her eyes rested on Kaeli’s pokémon. “Tell me, is there anything… unusual about your donphan?”
“Uh… I, uh…”
Leden made a noise that she probably intended to be a laugh, but came out as more of a snort. “He’s a shadow, isn’t he? There’s no other way he could have taken that attack so effortlessly. Tell me, how did you teach him a non-shadow technique? I wasn’t aware that was possible.”
Kaeli simply stared, her brain still trying to process how this scyther could exist. The shadow pokémon incident happened nearly five years ago. She had assumed her donphan had been somehow missed in the aftermath, and as far as she knew there had been no other reports of any further shadow pokémon sightings since Wes had left Orre. The fact that even one had eluded him was a shock; he had been thorough in his trek through the region, almost as though he knew exactly what shadow pokémon Cipher had created. Had he missed others?
“I think the question is,” Justy started, and Kaeli jumped; she hadn’t noticed him stepping down from his control panel to stand beside her. “How do you have a shadow pokémon?”
“Oh, there’s quite a few of them around,” Leden said casually as Skyshear shadow-rushed around the purple aura spikes that Cooper kept trying to impale him with, regarding the technique with interest. Then an expression of genuine confusion spread across her face as she turned to her black-haired opponent. “You haven’t heard? I had assumed, since you own one…” she trailed off.
“No, I hadn’t,” Justy answered for her, an edge to his voice that Kaeli had only heard once before; when she had very obviously thrown a battle to a challenger. She’d never forget how badly he’d let her have it afterwards. “I’m going to need you to tell me everything you know about where this scyther came from.”
This time Leden did genuinely laugh at him. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’m in enough trouble as it is for this setback. I think it’s time we go.”
“What’s that supposed to –”
“Skyshear, it’s time for shadow mist!” shouted over Justy’s question.
Kaeli didn’t even have time to be surprised at hearing the name of another new shadow move as she caught sight of her senior throwing a pokéball out, realizing that Gizmo wouldn’t even form in time. “Cooper, rock slide! Bring him down!”
Somehow, Cooper had not yet succumbed to that hollow rage he normally fell victim to in battle, but even before he could lift the rocks, the scyther’s fiery, purple shadow-rush aura began to seep away from his body like steam. The room filled quicker than Kaeli thought possible, obscuring everything else from view; she could just barely make out a silhouette next to her that must be Justy, but that was it.
Thankfully, they had been battling on the gym’s ground floor. Kaeli tried to turn and run for the door – for better or worse, there was only one way out of Phenac’s gym – but her entire body felt sluggish. Was this an effect of the shadow mist?
She tripped on something, she couldn’t tell what, and somehow managed to get her hands in front of her in time to keep from smashing her face on the tiled floor. The something that she tripped on moved into her vision, but then stopped, staying nearby, and there appeared to be another silhouetted figure now, floating just above the first.
Justy, of course, did not trip, and the shadow mist easily drained from the room through the door he managed to open. Or at least, Kaeli hoped it was Justy. Or Marin, or one of the other trainers, finally showing up for their shift. Anyone but Leden getting away. Either way, her movement was easier as the shadow mist dissipated, so she forced herself to her knees.
As soon as she righted herself, something large and heavy flopped into her lap, preventing her from standing. As her vision returned, Kaeli saw her donphan draped over her legs, looking around frantically as though he expected an attack, and occasionally jabbing his tusks towards Lyrid, who hovered just outside his reach. “Cooper, are you… trying to protect me?”
Cooper stopped looking around the room to gaze up at his trainer instead. They locked eyes for a moment; then Cooper flinched as though shocked, and curled into a ball.
Cooper was already beginning to grow irritable at the sight of the courtyard the human kept taking him to. It was quickly feeling like the cage the lab coats kept him in, even though he’d yet be chained up here. Their training spot was all he’d seen in some time now, ever since he had battled that other pokémon, the one like him. All he’d wanted to do was battle… he wasn’t even sure why, if he was honest with himself. It had felt important to his trainer, and he’d only wanted to help… Had he done something wrong? Was this his punishment?
The human girl had left something she called ‘incense’ with him today; Cooper had no idea what it was, but he was immediately suspicious of it, despite its pleasant smell… in fact, it was a very pleasant smell, and that only made Cooper more cautious. His trainer had said it was supposed to be calm and relaxing for pokémon. But Cooper knew that anything intended to calm him wasn’t a good sign… it meant pain was likely to follow. He knew his trainer had been mad about something he did in that battle. This proved it. Sure, she hadn’t done anything to him yet, and the berries had turned out to be a very pleasing recurring treat, but…
He looked around, and there it was; the bowl of assorted berries in its usual spot. She was still feeding him… a quick glance around revealed his trainer and his two teammates training in the otherwise empty lot, so he wasn’t being locked away, despite how he felt about the courtyard. And whatever this incense thing was, he did feel more at ease for some reason… if he was being punished, this certainly was an unusual way to go about it. The scent hadn’t made him feel sick or anything else that he could tell so far. He pawed at the ground for a moment, then skewered a berry and settled down to watch what his teammates would do today. No point in worrying over what she was going to do to him until she did it.
He lost track of time watching his teammates train today, just as he did every other day he was out here. The human seemed content to simply let him out and leave him alone in his corner with his berries to watch while she and her other pokémon trained. Which was fine with him. He was curious, sure, but the battle against the scyther convinced him that he had done something wrong, he just couldn’t figure out what it was. Better to not risk doing it again, in case the human changed her mind about punishing him.
The sky was orange when his teammates finally decided they’d trained enough for the day. The masquerain – no, Strider, he said to call him – shouted his name. Why? They’d never bothered him before, what could they want today? Was it punishment time? “Hey, Cooper! Are you awake over there? We’re gonna go watch the sun!”
“Watch… the sun?” Cooper asked.
“Yes, it’s pretty! I found a nice spot in the city, and I want to show Kaeli! Come with us!”
“Uh… I’m not allowed in the city,” Cooper replied, ashamed but not entirely sure why.
“Why wouldn’t you be allowed in the city?” Strider asked. “Come on, it’ll be fun!”
They didn’t bother waiting for a reply before the masquerain, the minior, and the human began walking away. Before she was out of sight, the girl turned back towards him, watching him with a smile. She said nothing, but pulled a sitrus berry out of the bag at her side and held it out in his direction.
Well, she hadn’t done anything to him so far… and he’d get another berry out of it. Maybe watching the sun wouldn’t be as scary as it sounded.
A short time later and they were in the center of the city. Cooper had no idea what made this spot so great, but there were many things about his teammates that he didn’t really understand. He looked up at his human, a mystery all her own. She sat above him, at the base of a statue in the fountain, looking up at the darkening sky. The masquerain rested on her head, the minior in her lap.
So far, she hadn’t treated him at all like the lab coats had. Somehow, having a trainer wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Surely, they had been doing all those experiments on him for something besides just… lounging around watching the sky? And yet, here they were.
The minior shifted in her lap, and she only cast a quick glance down at it before realizing Cooper was watching her. “Feeling lonely?” she asked. Before he knew it, she’d leapt from the fountain to the pavement, sitting down beside him and throwing one arm over his back. The minior returned to her lap as she leaned against Cooper’s side and resumed looking upwards.
And as he leaned into his trainer, Cooper thought – just this once – it might be safe to just try to enjoy this moment together.
Kaeli was going to be late for her shift at the gym, but she could live with that if she caught up to the brunette woman.
She’d seen Cassandra in a crowd in the middle of Phenac not five minutes ago – Kaeli didn’t see her face, but she definitely recognized the hair – and nearly ran into a cyclist in her haste to turn around give chase. She was sure this woman had to know where her shadow donphan came from, or maybe even was directly responsible for it. Either way, Kaeli needed to know. Marin insisted she had no idea what Kaeli was talking about, that she had no idea her contact had anything to do with shadow pokémon, so talking to her was useless. If Cassandra knew even the slightest detail about how it happened, Kaeli might also get a clue on how to reverse it.
Granted, Cooper had improved greatly over the last month. He especially seemed to enjoy the different incense she kept bringing home for him. He was eating regularly, he no longer curled into a ball whenever Kaeli or her other pokémon approached, and he had even started showing some proper emotion on a regular basis. On top of that, he could even battle more often than not without any issues, although still he occasionally got caught up in a moment of pure, raw shadow-induced rage that Kaeli had yet to discover how to prevent. Kaeli could only guess how far along he was on the road to recovery, but she was sure the end had to be in sight. She suspected there was one final key, something missing from the equation, and she now was in pursuit of the person she thought might hold that answer.
Cassandra must have realized she was being followed, because she ducked down the first dark alley she came to. Kaeli stayed on her heels, but it didn’t take long until she found her target; the woman was leaning against a brick wall casually, as if waiting for her. She sneered when Kaeli rounded the corner.
“Fancy meeting you again. Looking for another pokémon?”
“How do I change him back?” Kaeli asked instead of replying.
The brunette’s voice was tainted with faux innocence when she replied, tapping her chin thoughtfully; “Change him back? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t give me that. Tell me what you did to him and how to reverse it.”
She frowned now. “Making demands now, are we? Not very polite.”
Kaeli wasn’t sure what was coming over her, but the woman’s attitude was making her angry. She’d already had a pokéball in hand before she consciously considered a fight, letting Cooper out in a flash of light. The donphan squealed upon seeing the woman in front of him and pressed himself close to Kaeli’s legs. Cassandra only spared him a moment’s glance.
“You don’t want to do that, sweetie,” Cassandra said, nodding her head towards the alley behind Kaeli, who spun around to find her path blocked; she hadn’t seen or heard the other two people creep up behind her, their own balls ready. And when Kaeli shifted her attention back to Cassandra, she too had an ultra ball held at her side.
“I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me!” Kaeli insisted, but she knew this was a battle she couldn’t win. On the other hand, her escape route was blocked now, so why shouldn’t she keep pressing?
“Honey, you’re in way over your head here. You have no idea just who you’re getting involved with. If you leave now, I’ll forget you threatened me. I don’t have all day, so this is your last chance.” Oh. That’s why. She felt her resolve waver and hoped it didn’t show in her posture.
Kaeli shot another quick glace behind her and noticed the two men there slowly creeping closer. Cassandra had her ultra ball out in front of her now, ready to drop it at a moment’s notice.
She debated charging the other woman, but thought better of it and recalling Cooper to his ball, and returning it to her belt, relaxing her stance. She took a few cautious steps backwards.
“Let her go,” Cassandra commanded, nodding her head at the other two in the alley. Kaeli looked behind her and saw them exchange confused expressions before pressing themselves to the wall to allow her passage.
As Kaeli backed out of the alley and made to run, she paused only to hear other woman’s final words: “Smart choice, girl. You have no idea what you just avoided getting yourself into.”
A week later and Kaeli had lost count of the number of trainers who had come into the pre-gym with a shadow pokémon, bringing with them even more shadow techniques that she’d never seen before, hoping to score some easy wins. And they’d usually get those easy wins from the two trainers before her. The only thing that seemed to hold them off was Cooper; it seemed that, as a shadow pokémon himself, he was able to withstand the shadow attacks of others, whereas normal pokémon appeared to have a type-weakness to them, regardless of what their own elemental type was. Kaeli wondered why so many of them were showing up to challenge the gym, too. The pre-gym was one of the few non-tournament locations in Orre for practice battles, but it’s not as though they’d get a badge here, like in a normal region with a normal league.
Kaeli was at a loss; Cooper had finally seemed to open up to her, behaving almost like any normal pokémon, but still he suffered those rage-filled lapses in battle, and she had no idea how to stop them. He could only do so much in battle without resorting to shadow moves – it appeared that he never could learn anything beyond rock slide and magnitude. She’d tried giving up on even using the shadow moves entirely for over a week and even that didn’t stop the fits of anger; even other shadow pokémon were apparently enough to trigger whatever instinct Cooper had been given.
After another relatively easy battle, Justy called her up to his computer terminal, showing her a news article from earlier that morning. Apparently, the man working on the purification chamber some time ago, professor Krane, had vanished. Kaeli decided to head out to his lab and investigate; she’d completely forgotten about his project, and by now he must have had something to show for it, right? And even if not, maybe she could help find him and assist in the project. She had no other leads.
She packed for a long trip, not expecting to be back to Phenac for some time while she sorted things out. It would take at least a few days just to get to Krane’s lab; it was on the complete opposite side of Orre. After that, who knows how long she’d be there before heading home. She’d made sure to thank Justy for letting her take some time off but he’d only waved her off, assuring her that he wanted Cooper to recover as much as she did.
She was disappointed when she finally arrived at Krane’s lab only for his wife Lily to inform her that he’d been kidnapped and had yet to be seen. Upon news of Kaeli’s shadow pokémon, Lily told her that she’d sent her son to pick up a part she needed to finish the purification chamber, but she had no idea when he would be back or how long it would take her to finish the project on her own, even with that part.
Kaeli’s heart sank, but Lily offered an alternative solution, one she hadn’t found in her online research. Apparently, with no purification chamber in existence at the time, the previous shadow pokémon were taken somewhere in Agate, although Lily couldn’t tell her why. Thankfully, Agate wasn’t too far from the lab, and was in fact along her route back to Phenac. With renewed determination, thanks for Lily’s advice, and well wishes for Krane’s recovery, Kaeli set off once again.
Cooper felt highly uncomfortable in the forest, as though he didn’t belong here, and it had little to do with all the grass hampering his connection to the earth – although, that certainly didn’t put him at ease, either. Something about this forest was old, very old… and yet, at the same time, it was teeming with life energy.
He stuck as close as he could to his trainer’s leg; neither Kaeli nor the old man traveling with them seemed to notice any of this. The humans were engaged in their own leisurely conversation as they walked, although Kaeli did seem particularly excitable today. And the old man wasn’t exactly lazy, either; he walked lightly, almost with a spring in his step that, were the ground not obscured by all this grass, Cooper was sure he’d be able to feel. Even so, he still felt that life energy, and it was growing ever stronger. He wondered if they were heading towards its source, but whether or not that was the intent, it was very close to them now. And also…
The humans were distracted from their conversation at the same time Cooper picked up on the other life forces in the area around them. Several other humans stepped out from the bushes all around them – and Cooper recognized them. Or, at least, their outfits. Not the lab coats, but the soldiers who had captured him.
Immediately he panicked, roaring and stomping backwards, only to dive forwards again as one of them laughed from behind him. Kaeli knelt down and tried to calm him, but Cooper could see in her eyes that she was afraid. He couldn’t count, but he knew there were far more of them than his trainer and the old man could handle. It wasn’t a fair fight, she knew that, and she was terrified, yet she was still here trying to settle him down.
“You two should leave if you know what’s good for you,” one of them said, and Cooper felt a chill. “All we want is this here rock, and we’ll be on our way.”
“You can’t! That is the relic stone, a sacred monument to Celebi! What would you want with it?” the old man replied. Cooper could sense no fear in the man’s voice, not that he could tell, but he’d seen many pokémon stand against a foe much larger or stronger before. Maybe humans weren’t that different.
“We want to destroy it, of course,” another voice said. “We know this thing can purify shadow pokémon. We can’t allow it to exist.”
Kaeli’s attention snapped away from Cooper to reply to the voice. “You’re responsible for the shadow pokémon!” Unlike the old man, Kaeli couldn’t hide the fear in her tone. And suddenly, his trainer was on her feet, her pokéballs hitting the ground and spilling out Strider and Lyrid.
A third voice laughed, and suddenly pokémon were being released all around them. Shadow pokémon, Cooper realized. Many of them looked like him, or how he used to be; some were feral, ready to tear into any opponent without remorse, others looked empty, void of emotion, programmed to attack whatever they were told to. “Do you really want to do this, kid?”
Cooper watched as his trainer trembled, and the old man put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me–”
“Strider, stun spore!”
And before he knew it, there was chaos. Shadow pokémon were charging left and right. Kaeli ducked as her two other pokémon came under assault from various shadow attacks as they tried to fly around and avoid them while launching counter attacks of their own. Cooper lost sight of the old man, but he had his own problems to worry about; a hitmontop was barreling towards him in a dizzying spin.
Cooper roared and reared up onto his hind legs before slamming down and triggering a magnitude, knocking over not only the incoming hitmontop, but a handful of other pokémon nearby, as well as his trainer. He was immediately under siege from a lunatone and a butterfree that had escaped his previous move, and tried to throw them off with a rock slide instead.
“Don’t damage the stone!” Cooper heard the old man say from somewhere outside his vision.
“Cooper, be careful, please,” Kaeli added, somewhere to his left.
He just managed to stop from tearing away the boulder underneath the relic stone before he was struck in the side by something. He never saw what it was, because when he looked up, a growlithe had sunk its fangs into Kaeli’s leg.
“NO!” Cooper heard himself roar. He couldn’t do either of his normal attacks now, not with his trainer that close to his target. But he knew what he could do, and this time he would control it. There was no way he couldn’t, because Kaeli was hurt, the one person who’d ever shown him kindness was hurt, and that was not okay. He was barely aware of the darkness swirling around him as he charged and barreled into the growlithe. He stomped down on it a few times before realizing there were several other pokémon approaching from all sides.
No matter. They wouldn’t even get close. He would handle them all. With another roar, he sent his shadow aura into the ground below him, spread it out. Then a stomp, and every single incoming pokémon was perfectly impaled by the shadowy spikes he’d triggered, while also creating a small ring around himself and Kaeli. A small hurdle, to be sure, but it would slow down anyone trying to reach them without flying.
On cue, a pidgeotto approached from the sky and Cooper glared at it, sending another shadowy spike up into its path and didn’t bother watching it crash, instead charging directly for an exeggutor that was just beginning to stand.
“Cooper!” He immediately stopped picking out his next target upon hearing his trainer’s voice call for him; she was standing now, favoring her uninjured leg. Cooper dashed towards her and she screamed, but he skidded to a stop in front of her, sending another shadow rave attack into a pinsir, a kangaskhan, and a rhydon behind her in the process, then turned around and sent another one at an incoming paras, golduck, and weepinbell. “What’s happening to you?” he heard her ask. He wasn’t sure what she meant by that; it was obvious, wasn’t it? He was using the shadow powers and the rage they gave him to protect her.
Still, he began to realize as a starmie and an altaria bared down on them, they were in trouble. He could keep launching attack after attack, even taking down multiple pokémon at once, but most of them were like him – he could knock them down easily enough, but they would keep getting up and coming at him. He was already beginning to feel tired.
“Kaeli, get down!” came a voice, and somehow, Cooper recognized it as the old man. Kaeli only spared a second to recall her other two pokémon before obeying. As his trainer shot to the ground, Cooper sensed the static in the air and, knowing what was coming, dove on top of her.
The thunder still blinded him but he felt nothing, and hoped he covered Kaeli enough to shield her entirely. Cooper refused to look away just in case any of the other shadow pokémon avoided the attack and tried to get closer to his trainer. That wasn’t going to happen today. But when the smoke cleared, the only thing still standing in the area was himself, a pikachu, and an old man behind him.
“Are you ready, Cooper?” Kaeli asked, once the Cipher group had taken off, vowing vengeance. Her donphan roared with purpose, staring up at the relic stone. “Alright, let’s give this a try. Um…” She looked towards Eagun. “What do I do?”
“Nothing, really,” the old man replied. “Offer Celebi a prayer, and make your request.”
Kaeli nodded. What sort of prayer would Celebi want? Perhaps something for the forest… She bowed her head and reached out to touch the stone. It was mildly cool to the touch, at least for a moment. The instant that Cooper touched it with his trunk, the stone became warm under her skin. Not a burning warmth; but a soothing warmth. Then the stone began to glow, first feint, then brightly, a swirling mixture of greens that almost seemed to flow like water down the sides of the stone, along the cracks, into the ground.
Cooper made a sound akin to a gasp as he too began to glow green… and then Kaeli gasped too, when the coloring began to flow up her arm as well. Eagun remained calm, though, so she hesitated to pull away. Then she cringed again as Cooper started to flare up in that blackish-purple aura she’d come to associate with the donphan’s fits of uncontrolled rage – the ones that, until today, he’d never been in control of. Slowly, the blackish aura transitioned into the same mixed greens as the stone and surrounding ground, until finally, nothing remained of it. The color then seeped back into the stone, both from her donphan as well as herself, which flickered and went dark, becoming cold once again.
Cooper stepped away from the relic stone first, looking around as though he were seeing the forest for the first time. His eyes fell on Kaeli and he smiled – really, truly smiled, and she smiled back at him. “How do you feel, buddy? She asked, kneeing down to put a hand on his head.
He surprised her by squealing and tackling her, licking her face like a baby poochyena. Sticky as it was, she wasn’t about to let this moment be spoiled. He didn’t stay long, however, leaping off her and wandering around the stone, sniffing at the grass and bouncing around, unable to sit still, bounding between Kaeli, the stone, and whatever caught his attention next.
“That was amazing, Cooper!” Kaeli said, her arms outstretched, and Cooper leapt into them again, nuzzling against her for the first time she could remember. “What do you say we go back home?”
“It’s been a while since we’ve been home… do you remember it?” As Kaeli walked the streets of Phenac city with Cooper at her side, she was aware of an odd sensation in her gut. Something was wrong, though she couldn’t see what. People were walking around normally, few of them though there were today, going about their business, but it was unusually quiet.
Cooper looked as though he sensed something too, preferring to stick so close to her that she’d nearly tripped over him more than once, the way he did while they’d walked though Agate’s forest. The entire trip home, when not in his ball, he’d spent wandering around exploring his surroundings like an excitable zigzagoon. Now, though he was quiet. He’d simply looked up at her question, then resumed to monitoring their surroundings.
She’d arrived back only yesterday after a long trip, and immediately returned home to sleep. Today, though, she figured she’d better head to the pre-gym and check in with Justy – even if not to work, he’d want to know how her little adventure turned out. But when they finally arrived at their destination, the pre-gym’s doors were locked.
“Huh… I know we’re not supposed to be closed today. Justy never closes.” She started to move towards a window to peek into.
Cooper suddenly squealed and she turned around, face to face with several familiar, unwelcome faces. The tallest one in the front held a pokéball in front of her – Cooper’s ball, she realized, when her donphan vanished in its red recall beam. She reached down to her belt for her others, only to realize they were missing, too.
“Yeah, she’s the one,” one of them said, and Kaeli recognized that voice; she hadn’t heard it in over a month now, but she was sure she wouldn’t forget the first incident in the gym. Leden.
And right next to her… “Fancy meeting you here. Welcome home, kid,” Cassandra said with a sneer. She knocked on the gym’s door a few times, some rhythmic pattern that Kaeli only realized was some sort of pre-determined code when the doors slid open. “Get in.”
