"What are you doing carrying a child into the Viridian Forest to head to Pewter City?" The first ranger asked while leaning over the counter with a raised eyebrow. "Can't you guys just use the Underground Metro to get over there?"
The second ranger elbowed him in the stomach hard enough to make the man wheeze and she smiled at the family of three standing at the counter.
"Don't mind him. As Rangers it isn't our job to tell people what to do, it's our job to protect them." She said and the tall black-haired man standing at the front of the family interrupted by raising his hand.
"I really don't mind it at all." Marc said while leaning on the counter casually. "My son's eleven which was supposed to be the one year older than official age for becoming a trainer, however since the Pokémon World Council upped the age to eighteen… he can't be one yet. I'm just trying to show him what Pokémon really look like outside of TV."
The female ranger smiled.
"You're being a really nice dad." She said, and Marc grinned at the compliment. The blonde woman standing next to him grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him back from the counter.
"If you try to flirt, I'm divorcing you." Solène said flatly, and Marc whined while throwing his hands up.
"I wasn't even going to do anything! Why would I flirt when I have a beautiful woman like you?" Marc said, and the little blond-haired eleven-year-old standing between them looked up at both of them.
"You guys are flirting." Félix said and Solène's face went red as she averted her eyes to the right.
Marc opened his mouth to respond but she had already let go of his collar and was staring at the wall like it had personally offended her.
They were currently in the station between Viridian City and Viridian Forest leading to Pewter City, a checkpoint where trainers had to register their names and could also heal up their Pokémon before entering the forest.
It was a small building with a medical station in the back, a reception counter at the front, and a map of the forest's League-controlled paths mounted on the wall behind the two rangers.
The female ranger brought out a clipboard with a list on it.
"You'll need to write your names here. This gets updated in our registry and then removed once you reach Pewter City or come back through here." She said, tapping the page. "The current names on this list are people who are either missing or in the League-controlled parts of Viridian Forest right now."
"Let me do it." Solène said, and the ranger handed her a pen. She wrote three names in clean handwriting:
Félix Duval… Marc Duval... Solène Duval…
The ranger took the clipboard back.
"Thank you. Now which Pokémon are you taking into the forest? You need at least one." She said, and before Marc could answer, Félix bent down and lifted up the Growlithe standing beside him by scooping under its front legs.
"Growly is coming with us." Félix said while holding the Pokémon up for the ranger to see.
Growlithe's tongue was hanging out and its tail was wagging and it looked absolutely nothing like a Pokémon prepared for the dangers of Viridian Forest.
The ranger gave him a warm smile, then turned to Marc.
"Could I see your Pokédex with Growlithe's information?" She asked, and Marc pulled out his Pokédex… a red handheld device that all people who trained Pokémon had and showed her the screen.
The ranger looked at the stats and nodded.
"Level 36… That's pretty good." She said. "Even if complications happen and you're attacked by wild Pokémon, you should be able to defend yourselves."
Marc and Solène both nodded.
"You're free to go but stay on the designated League Paths and don't go outside of them." She said firmly, then she leaned down slightly to look at Félix. "Little Félix, don't let them go off the path, alright?"
Félix nodded seriously, and Marc said thank you while taking his son's hand.
The family of three walked out of the station heading in the direction of Viridian Forest with Growlithe trotting alongside them.
The female ranger watched them go, then let out a long sigh.
"They're going to break the rules, aren't they?" She said. The first ranger nodded while rubbing the spot on his stomach where she had elbowed him.
"It's a trend now. Everybody tears away into the uncharted territories looking for rarer Pokémon." He said. "I just hope those parents don't do something stupid."
The second ranger nodded as well with another sigh.
She couldn't exactly say she was innocent. Before she became a ranger, she had been one of the most notorious people doing it as well and now she could finally feel the way the rangers used to be pissed off at people like her, since it always led to them organizing searches and rescue operations later.
She was receiving her karma in a way.
…
"I think this is far enough." Marc said.
They were now in the middle of the League Path heading to Pewter City. The trail was marked out by red rope lining both sides of the dirt road with signs posted every fifty meters reminding trainers to stay within the boundaries.
The trees beyond the rope were thicker and darker which was the kind that swallowed light about twenty feet in.
Marc walked over and lifted up the red rope, turning to his family.
"Let's go." He said and Félix raised his eyebrow.
"The Rangers said we shouldn't." He reminded them, and Solène took his hand and smiled warmly at him.
"We're explorers, so the woman didn't know what she was talking about." Solène said, and Marc backed it up immediately.
"We're exploring for your sake. Don't you want to meet many other Pokémon?" He said, and Félix's eyes lit up as he nodded.
They weren't actually explorers.
They were here on a mission to find a Kangaskhan. It was much bigger than the average Kangaskhan as it was an Alpha Pokémon, and not only that but it was a Shiny as well… They were being paid a lot to do this, and on a normal occasion they wouldn't have brought Félix along but the babysitter was attending the Pokémon Academy and coming really late today and there was no way they were leaving him alone so here they were.
Marc went to the other side and then lifted the rope high enough for Solène and Félix as well as Growlithe to pass through.
They did, and he dropped it down behind them. Just as they were about to move forward, a ranger suddenly appeared from the right side of the trail and shouted at them.
"Stay in place!" He ordered, reaching for his badge.
However before the ranger was able to speak again, they had already broken into a run down the slope into the tree line.
The ranger looked at the Murkrow perched above his head.
"Chase after them." He said, and Murkrow squawked and took off straight ahead.
The man followed. "Fuck fuck fuck… I need to get these people out and go report to Captain."
…
The four of them ran while Marc held onto the hand of his son with one hand and his Pokédex with the other.
The tracker's location was visible on the screen and it didn't seem to be too far off from here. They would manage to get there.
"Move faster!"
"I'm moving as fast as I can!" Solène called out from beside him.
He didn't want to get caught.
Running into uncharted areas that hadn't been marked out by the League like this one was illegal, and if they were caught by the Rangers they would have to pay a fine.
The fine wasn't the issue but what followed after was. A whole year suspension from Viridian Forest depending on where they went and what they caused, and it could even range to permanent rejection and the inability to ever enter the forest again.
If they were caught right now without catching that Kangaskhan then it was over and this high-paying job would be given to someone else… Marc didn't want that to happen.
He looked over at Solène.
"The clearing is just up ahead!" He said, and then the Murkrow appeared behind them with sharp squawks.
Marc turned his head without stopping.
"Growlithe, Flamethrower!"
Growlithe spun around mid-run and roared, firing off a Flamethrower that hit Murkrow dead center.
The bird Pokémon emerged from the smoke with a Protect barrier around it that crackled and slowly shattered apart as it pulled back.
It bought them enough time, and they burst through the tree line into the clearing however after that they all pulled to a stop.
Félix's knees began trembling while Marc and Solène's eyes went wide at the same time.
The client had told them it was a clearing full of Kangaskhan. It was not. Well… it had been.
The Alpha Shiny Kangaskhan lay on the ground in the center of the clearing as its head had been caved in from the top down… it was neither cracked nor punctured but split apart with the skull fragments pushed outward like something had driven a stake through it from above.
The brain matter had spread in a radius around the head and mixed with the dirt and leaves into a paste that flies were already gathering on.
The baby Kangaskhan was dead next to it, slumped on its side with three puncture wounds through its chest and a fourth through its throat with its mouth was still open but that wasn't the worst part.
The Alpha's stomach had been torn open from ribcage to pelvis and the organs had spilled out entirely… intestines pulled out in long ropes across the ground, liver burst into pulp and lungs visible from below where the ribs had been cracked inward.
The blood had pooled so thick under the body that the grass was no longer visible beneath it, replaced entirely by a dark red mirror that reflected the canopy above.
From where they were standing, they could even see the tracker device sitting in the mess… the client's tracker, still blinking green in the middle of all that red.
The other Kangaskhan in the clearing… four of them that had been all regular-sized were in various states of the same treatment.
One had been pinned to a tree by its arms with drill-like punctures holding it in place as its midsection was hollowed out. Another was face-down with its spine exposed where the flesh had been carved away in strips.
The third and fourth were piled together near the far edge of the clearing, torn apart so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where one body ended and the other began… and the things that had done it were still here.
Beedrill, it was a swarm of them.
Thirty, maybe forty, hovering in and around the treeline on the far side of the clearing with their drills stained dark and wet and at the center of them, hovering a full two feet above the rest, was an Alpha Beedrill… it was larger and darker with its compound eyes reflecting the light as its head turned slowly toward the Alpha Kangaskhan.
Marc took a step back, Solène clamped a hand across Félix's mouth to stop the scream she could feel building in his chest and they began backing off.
'They haven't noticed us,' Marc thought. 'If we back off now—'
The ranger came crashing through the treeline behind them with his badge raised while he was breathing hard.
"You are under arrest by authority of the Viridian Forest Ranger Corps!" He shouted, flashing the badge as Murkrow landed on his head with a squawk but his words died in his throat when he saw the clearing.
Every single Beedrill turned to face them, the Alpha buzzed once and the swarm moved.
The family broke into a run, Marc pulling Félix by the arm with Solène right beside them and all of them sprinting back toward the tree line they had come from.
Behind them, the ranger lagged… he was slower since he was weighed down by gear and his eyes were still processing what he had just seen.
"Murkrow, Tailwind!" He ordered while running, and the bird Pokémon flapped its wings hard, picking up a strong gust of wind that pushed all of them forward and boosted their speed across the ground.
The trees whipped past them as the wind assisted their sprint but the Alpha buzzed again.
The Beedrill at the front of the swarm raised their drills and fired. Pin Missiles… dozens of them tore through the gust of wind like it wasn't there and impacted Murkrow first.
The bird's body jerked in mid-air as three missiles punched through its torso in quick succession, one entering through the breast and exiting through the back trailing feathers and blood.
Murkrow dropped out of the air and hit the ground rolling.
The ranger turned to look and a Pin Missile hit him in the neck.
It went in through the front and stopped halfway, the point sticking out the back of his throat.
His hands went to his neck and his mouth opened but what came out wasn't words… it was blood, a thick pour of it running through his fingers.
A second missile hit him in the chest and a third went through his left eye as he went down face-first and didn't move again. The dirt under him turned dark immediately.
"FUCK! Growlithe, attack!" Marc cried out as they kept running.
Growlithe turned and fired a Flamethrower at full force, blasting a cluster of Beedrill head-on. Three of them burned to crisps instantly with their bodies dropping out of the air in smoking pieces but more replaced them immediately, pouring out from the trees on both sides like the swarm had no end to its numbers.
More Pin Missiles rained down around the family and one hit Marc in the shoulder from behind with enough force that the impact spun him sideways. He managed to push Félix forward with his good arm as he fell.
"KEEP RUNNING!" He screamed as his wife wanted to stop. "DON'T LOOK BACK!"
They kept running and Félix looked back.
A Beedrill landed on his father's back and drove its drill through the back of Marc's head. It went in at the base of the skull and came out through his left eye socket, popping the eye out of its housing entirely.
Marc's body seized once, then went limp. The Beedrill pulled the drill out with a wet sound and the body collapsed flat.
Blood and brain matter leaked from both entry and exit points into the dirt.
Félix screamed while Solène grabbed his arm and gritted her teeth so hard the muscles in her jaw stood out.
Ahead of them, Rangers were assembling along the League Path boundary. They had heard the noise and the shouting.
Three of them threw Pokéballs forward and their Pokémon formed up… a Nidoking, a Primeape, and an Arcanine.
"PROTECT! NOW!" One of the rangers shouted, and the Pokémon raised barriers of green energy across the path, forming a wall between the forest and the road.
Solène saw the barrier forming and threw her son forward with both hands. Félix slid underneath the barrier line on his stomach with Growlithe scrambling after him as its claws scraped the dirt.
"KEEP RUNNING!" She screamed at him.
She tried to run faster and she was three steps from the barrier however five Pin Missiles hit her in the back.
The first went through her right shoulder blade and came out the front of her chest. The second and third hit her spine and she arched backward involuntarily. The fourth caught her in the lower back and the fifth hit the base of her skull.
She was dead before she hit the ground… Her body fell forward and her hand landed past the barrier line with her fingers still reaching.
Félix screamed so hard something tore in his throat.
The barriers formed fully and the Beedrill slammed against them, the impacts rattling the energy walls.
Some of them went over the top and the rangers shouted orders… the Arcanine sprayed fire upward, the Nidoking swatted them out of the air with its tail, the Primeape caught one mid-dive and crushed its body in its fists but more Beedrill were coming from the sides, circling around the barrier line.
Félix ran under the battle with Growlithe dragging him by the back of his shirt. They reached the downward slope on the other side and Félix looked back.. if he fell now, he would roll down to his death because the terrain dropped off sharply into a rocky decline.
Growlithe turned and spat up one last burst of flame at the Beedrill closing in from above.
The fire caught two of them but a volley of Pin Missiles came through the flames in return and hit Growlithe in the chest… four of them, one after another, punching through the Pokémon's ribcage and exiting out the other side.
Growlithe's body jerked with each impact and then it bumped into Félix with the last of its momentum, knocking the boy backward.
Félix screamed as he rolled down across the ground with rocks and branches tearing at his face and arms and clothing. Instead of hitting a tree at the bottom, he hit mud… it was thick, cold and wet mud that absorbed the impact and covered him from head to waist.
He looked up the hill and he heard a whimper.
Growlithe had been sent flying backward from the last hit and had landed not too far away from him with several Pin Missiles through its chest… its breathing came in short bursts then it stopped breathing.
The Beedrill were swarming down the hill coming for him and he dragged himself backward through the mud.
"HELP!!"
More Beedrill came down from both sides, closing the distance between him and them with their drills forward.
"PIKAAAAAAAAAA…."
Some mud had gotten in his eye and he was trying to clean it off with his hand while crying. His hands were shaking too much to do it properly.
"PIKAAAAAAAA…."
What was making that sound and why did everything suddenly turn so hot?
"CHUUUUU!!!!!!"
What followed was a blast of lightning so powerful that the sound came after the light… a wall of yellow-white electricity that screamed across the hillside in a straight line, vaporizing mud, incinerating wood, and turning every Beedrill in its path into smoking husks.
The blast went up the hill as well, carving a deep trench into the earth as the ground was scorched black in a perfectly straight line from where the bolt originated to where it ended somewhere deep in the forest above.
The heat that followed was intense enough to dry the mud on Félix's face and arms solid.
The Beedrill corpses dropped out of the air in every direction.
What was left of them was mostly ash and the burned remains of their exoskeletons, scattered across the hillside like someone had taken a furnace and dragged it through the forest.
The trees in the direct path of the bolt had been split down the middle with the wood inside still glowing orange as smoke rose from the trench in thin grey lines.
Everything was silent and the buzzing had stopped completely for the first time since the clearing. The boy blinked and there was a trainer standing in front of him.
A tall young man with black hair that stuck up from under his cap in sharp spikes… it was messy and natural.
He wore a red and white cap with a black Pokéball insignia on the front that had been turned forward. A red short-sleeved jacket with white accents and white sleeves over a black t-shirt underneath, cuffed blue jeans, and red-and-white sneakers.
A Pikachu sat on his right shoulder with its cheeks still crackling with residual electricity as the air around it distorted from the heat.
A gust of wind blew through the destroyed hillside, catching the young man's jacket and his hair at the same time as Pikachu's cheeks sparked once more and then went quiet.
He turned back to Félix with a blunt look in his eyes…
Everyone knew who this man was, even the eleven-year-old covered in mud and blood with tears still running down his face knew who this man was.
He was the Champion Red.
…
For a moment, everything was silent.
Red kept looking down at him without any words… His face didn't change, he didn't kneel down neither did he didn't extend a hand.
He just stood there and looked at the boy sitting in the mud and assessed whether there was anything else coming down the hill that needed to be dealt with first.
There wasn't.
Pika hopped down from Red's shoulder and landed in the mud in front of Félix.
"Pika." Pika said, and then the small yellow Pokémon raised both paws and began wiping the dried mud off Félix's face.
It started with his left eye that had been sealed shut by the caked mud and then moved to the right side, working carefully around the cuts and scrapes across his cheeks and forehead.
The touch was light and warm and it was the first thing that had touched Félix in the last few minutes that hadn't been trying to kill him.
Immediately tears formed in his eyes.
Not because of the pain and not because of Pika's touch but because the moment something was gentle with him… everything he had been holding in his chest to keep running came flooding upward at once.
His face crumpled and his mouth opened and the sound that came out of him didn't sound like a ten-year-old boy.
A few Rangers looked down from the top of the hill.
They saw the boy crying in the mud and they saw the destroyed hillside then they saw Red standing over him and the moment they recognized who it was so the rangers pulled back immediately.
None of them came down.
The sky darkened suddenly as clouds rolled in fast from the west and within seconds the blue was gone entirely, replaced by a flat grey ceiling that pressed down on the forest below it.
The first droplets of rain hit the ground then it began falling heavily, dropping across all of them… across the mud, across the burned Beedrill corpses, across Red's clothes, Pika's fur, Félix's blond hair and the blood that was still visible on the hillside.
Regardless Félix kept crying.
"Waaaaahh… Waaahhhh…!" The sounds came out and he couldn't stop them.
His hands were clenched in the mud at his sides and the rain ran down his face mixing with the tears and the snot and the remaining dirt and he just kept going. "WAAAAHHH…! Hic… Waaahh…! WAAAAAHHHHH…!"
The crying echoed off the hillside and came back to him and it sounded like there were two of him out here hurting at the same time.
His shoulders heaved with each sob and his whole body shook and his fingernails dug into the mud until they hit dirt underneath.
Pika kept patting his head through all of it. The Pokémon didn't say anything else… It just sat in the mud in front of the crying boy and patted his head over and over and over while the rain soaked them both through entirely.
He didn't know how long he cried.
It might have been ten minutes or it might have been thirty. At some point the heavy sobs turned into shaking and the shaking turned into hiccups and the hiccups turned into silence, and he was sitting in a puddle looking at Pika with swollen eyes that were red and raw and barely able to stay open.
His mother… His father… Growly…
All of them were gone.
All of them had been alive minutes ago. His mother had held his hand and told him they were explorers and his father had lifted the red rope and Growly had been wagging his tail at the ranger station. Now all three of them were dead now and he was sitting in the rain covered in mud.
It all made him cry harder for a moment but there was nothing left, his eyes were dry and his chest hurt from the sobbing. He had nothing more to give.
"Pika?" Pika tilted its head at him. It was as if Pikachu was asking if he was done crying and Félix nodded slowly.
He felt warm. He looked around and realized that he was wearing a jacket that was too big for him tha was red and white with white sleeves.
There was a cap on his head to… it was red with a black Pokéball insignia on the front. His eyes widened as he looked forward and saw Champion Red sitting on a rock about ten feet away wearing only the black t-shirt underneath with his arms resting on his knees and rain running down his exposed arms and matting his black hair flat against his head.
The Champion was known for not talking.
In all the battles that Félix had seen on TV… every League broadcast, every tournament final, every exhibition match… the man had not spoken a single word.
Not to the referee, not to his opponents, and not even to his Pokémon during battle. People thought he was psychic.
Nobody could prove it and nobody could disprove it because the man simply never opened his mouth during a battle… His Pokémon just knew what to do.
The rain hit Red's black shirt and it clung to his frame, highlighting the muscles underneath. He wasn't big like a bodybuilder but he was fit.
Even sitting on a rock in the rain doing nothing, he looked like a person who could stand up and handle whatever came next without needing to prepare first.
'Would I look like this when I'm older?' Félix thought.
"Sorry." Red said suddenly.
Félix flinched.
The Champion was talking? What kind of witchery was this? The man that the entire world had only ever heard give short talk during official League ceremonies was talking to him directly?
Félix gulped.
He was still hurt but he couldn't cry anymore… He had to be strong like his mother used to tell him… He was a man after all.
That's what she said, even when he fell down and scraped his knees she would tell him that, and he would get up because she said it and she was always right.
"Sorry…?" Félix asked.
Red looked at the sky and let the rain flow down his hair and face. He sat there for a few seconds without responding then he looked at Growlithe's body lying on the mud a few meters away.
"Do you want to bury him?" Red asked.
While the boy had been crying, Red had gone up the hill to check.
He had seen everything… The ranger's body, the Kangaskhan clearing, Marc and Solène.
He knew what had happened up there and he wasn't sure how to comfort someone whose parents had just died in front of them.
He was never good at this… Battling was simple but this was not plus it had been a while since he had talked this much in one sitting.
"Bury…?" Félix looked at Growlithe and wanted to cry again. His throat seized up and his eyes burned but nothing came out.. he had used it all.
He cleaned his eyes with the back of his hand and nodded. "Yes. I want to bury him."
He swallowed.
"I also…" He sniffed.
"Want to…" Another sniff, harder this time as his whole body shuddered with it. "Bury my parents."
His throat felt suddenly dry from all the screaming and crying, like someone had taken sandpaper to the inside of it but he looked at Red and Red looked back at him and the Champion placed both feet on the ground and pushed off the rock to standing.
Pika ran up and climbed his body reaching his shoulder in one movement.
"Okay." Red said. "Let's get them."
They walked up the hill together. The boy in the Champion's oversized jacket and cap with the sleeves hanging past his hands and the hem reaching his knees, and the Champion in his black t-shirt with the rain running off him like it wasn't there.
The hill was steep and the mud made it difficult for Félix's small legs… he slipped twice and caught himself on roots sticking out of the ground but Red didn't slow down and Félix didn't ask him to because he didn't want to be the kind of person who made the Champion wait.
If Red could walk up this hill in the rain without shoes slipping then Félix could do it too. He just had to try harder.
They reached the top and looked at the wreckage.
A whole mess of Beedrill corpses were scattered everywhere… there were burned husks, severed wings and broken exoskeletons half-dissolved by the rain.
The line of lightning had spread here as well, tearing the route in half including the red ropes that marked the League Path with the posts snapped clean in two and the rope lying in the mud like dead snakes.
They kept walking through them.
The rangers watched from their positions but none of them approached.
A few of them opened their mouths to say something but they looked at Red and closed their mouths again.
Nobody told Champion Red what to do.
The first thing they saw was his mother's body.
It had been laid against a tree by one of the rangers. She was sitting upright with her back to the trunk and her legs stretched out in front of her.
She was unrecognizable apart from her blond hair which had blood matted through it and was sticking to the bark behind her head. The five entry points from the Pin Missiles were visible in her back and chest but there was a smile on her face.
Even through the blood and the damage and the rain washing everything into a pink runoff across her clothes, her mouth was curved slightly upward… She had died knowing her son had made it past the barrier.
Félix ran past Red and dropped to his knees in front of her.
He hugged her and her body was cold.
The warmth that had been in her hands when she held his an hour ago was completely gone, replaced by the temperature of the rain and the ground and nothing else. She didn't hug him back either…
He turned to look at Red and Red walked over and gave him a small pat on the head.
"Not easy." Red said. "But you have to tell her goodbye."
That was the longest sentence he had offered so far.
Félix's face crumpled again and more tears came out that he didn't believe he had left in the tank. He cried into her shoulder and hugged her tighter.
"M-mom… I'm… I'm gonna be a g-good boy, okay…?" He said between sobs with his words stuttering and breaking apart before they could fully form. "I'm g-gonna… I'll eat all my f-food and I won't c-complain and I'll… I'll brush my t-teeth every night like you s-said and I'll… I'll g-get strong too… I p-promise I'll get really s-strong so this… so n-nothing like this ever…"
He couldn't finish.
His voice gave out completely and he buried his face into her cold shoulder and held on and the rain kept falling on both of them.
Pika sat on the ground nearby with its ears down, watching without approaching… even the Pokémon knew there were moments you didn't interrupt.
Eventually he let go. His hands pulled away from her slowly and he stood up and stepped back and his eyes were so swollen he could barely see.
Red took out a Pokéball and clicked it.
"Poli!" Poliwrath appeared in a flash of light… it was blue, large and muscular with the spiral pattern on its stomach visible even through the rain. It stood at attention and looked at Red.
"Carry her." Red said.
That was all Poliwrath needed. The Pokémon walked over and lifted Solène's body gently, cradling her in a princess carry the same way someone would carry a sleeping person with one arm under her knees and one arm behind her back with her head resting against Poliwrath's chest.
The blood on her clothes soaked into Poliwrath's skin but the Pokémon didn't react. They walked forward some more as the rain continued.
Marc's body was next. He was laid across the ground face-down and headless… What remained of his head was nearby but had already begun to distort… the features were swollen and discolored as the skin was taking on a greenish tint around the drill wound.
Félix ran toward him and then stopped short, backing off with his hand over his mouth. His father's body had begun melting as the flesh around the wounds was dissolving at the edges, breaking down into something dark that was spreading outward from the puncture points.
"Wha…" Félix whispered.
"Poison." Red said simply. It was Beedrill venom, the drills weren't just drills… they injected toxin on contact and that toxin was now breaking down the tissue from the inside out.
Poliwrath lifted Marc's body with the other arm, holding both parents now… Solène in the right and Marc in the left with one intact and one falling apart.
The Pokémon carried them both without strain and they walked back down the hill in silence since the Ranger's body had been removed.
Poliwrath set both bodies down on the ground softly at the bottom of the hill near where Growlithe was lying.
The rain was lighter now but still steady… Red looked at the ground, then at Pika, then at Poliwrath.
"Three." Red said. "Deep."
Pika and Poliwrath both nodded.
Pika jumped down from Red's shoulder and its tail hardened into steel becoming an Iron Tail and it slammed it into the muddy ground, cracking the earth apart and loosening the soil.
Poliwrath followed immediately after, ripping the destabilized ground open with both hands, scooping out the mud and rock in heavy armfuls and piling it to the side.
They worked together in a rhythm with Pika breaking and Poliwrath digging until three deep rectangular holes had been carved into the earth side by side.
Félix watched.
Poliwrath lowered Marc's body into the first grave gently, placing him flat at the bottom, then the Pokémon began covering him with the mud that had been dug out, using both hands to push it over the body.
It covered his father's legs first, then his chest, then what remained of his head. The mud sealed over him completely then Poliwrath did the same for his mother, it lowered her in… covered her legs… covered her chest and then covered her face… that small smile disappearing under the wet earth for the last time.
The Pokémon made sure Félix would never have to see either of them like this again.
More tears dripped from his swollen eyes but he didn't make a sound this time. He just watched and the tears fell then he walked to Growly's body.
He knelt over the third grave and picked up a handful of dirt and put it inside.
Slowly… then another handful… then another.
His hands were small and the dirt was heavy with rainwater and it kept slipping through his fingers but he kept going, one handful at a time, filling in the grave around Growly's body by himself.
All of them had risked their lives to save him. They had loved him… His father had pushed him forward with a Pin Missile in his shoulder. His mother had thrown him under the barrier with both hands and Growly had bumped him down the hill with the last of his strength.
It made his chest hurt so badly he thought something was breaking inside.
'Mom, why did you leave me all alo—'
Another hand pushed mud into the grave alongside his.
It was not Poliwrath's hand but a human one.
Félix looked to his right. The Champion was on his knees in the mud next to him, pushing dirt into the grave with his bare hands.
On the other side, Pika was pushing mud in with its small yellow paws, saying "Pika" every time it shoved a clump into the hole while Poliwrath stood behind them watching quietly.
Félix joined back in and the three of them filled the grave together.
The mud was soon full and Félix patted the top of the grave with both hands, pressing it flat.
"Rest in peace, Growly." He said as his voice was barely there but the words came out clear. He turned around to the other two graves.
"Rest in peace, Mom and Dad too."
He stood up. His legs were shaking but they held… He wiped his face one last time with the sleeve of the Champion's jacket and then Red cleared his throat behind him.
"Stones?" Red asked.
Félix raised his swollen eyes. What did he mean by ston—
Minutes later, both the Champion and the young boy with blond hair walked away from the bottom of the hill, leaving behind a long flat gravestone that Poliwrath had carried from the riverbed nearby.
Pika had carved the letters into it with Iron Tail, one stroke at a time, while Félix told him what to write.
Félix didn't know how to spell some of the words properly but Pika carved what the boy said and that was enough.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle by then… The three graves sat side by side with the stone laid flat in front of all of them.
The stone read.
[HERE LIES MOM, DAD AND GROWLY]
…
[Author's Note]
I initially meant for the backstory to be in one chapter but I somehow lost the original file and have been writing this since so we'll have to break it off into two.
Thank you for reading and the Power Stones too…
As for our Power stone goals, how about 150 PS for 2 chapters? Anyway Kaigiri off and I hope you guys enjoy it, I really don't know how to do this so I tried my best...