blueteamnovel Chapter 270.5
Chapter 270.5
He awoke with a suffocating wheeze, the taste of blood in his mouth and a cumbersome weight against his chest.This was his norm now — his body broken beyond repair. He was thankful to even draw breath without choking on phlegm.
He should have allowed death to claim him upon his defeat. Although, exactly when that was, he could not tell. Was it when he debased his honor to collude with those wretches he once scorned? Or was it when he sacrificed his dignity but still failed to triumph against his sworn nemesis?
The man stirred, his body rebelling against his every move, the rustling of straw serenading his wake. Why was he alive? He had lost everything, so what was even the point in clinging to such a hollow existence.
He scowled, fighting every urge to reach for that aggravating itch, especially knowing that his limbs were simply too broken for the strain.
Wincing all the way, he managed to coax his body off the straw bedding, head propped against the rotten wooden walls, pushing and dragging like a spineless worm.
He hissed, spittle spewing from his lips before finally gasping for that desperate, much needed breath, lungs set aflame and voice raspy from silent profanities. Such a glorious way to start the day.
Truly, what was even the point of such a pitiful existence.
Once he was done wallowing in the quagmire of his self-loathing, the man forced himself to stand, his bones protesting all the way, like hot iron against his flesh. His leg creaked, the mechanical one, a cheap wooden prosthesis he jury-rigged from scraps. The lines were wonky and contours ugly, but it was the best he could do with a rusty chisel and his shaky arms.
With a shambling gait, he walked, feet dragging against a muddy puddle along the way and eliciting a vicious scowl from his pale and wrinkled visage. The ramshackle little hut he had claimed as shelter was structurally unsound and prone to leakage. The man counted the days when the whole thing would collapse onto him and end his misery.
Not like he had a buffet of choices when it came to accommodation anyway. The abandoned off-route village he was hiding in was one decimated by disaster. This little hut — once a modest larder of mouldy rice and rotten pickles — was all that remained standing.
On the bright side, the village’s well was still intact and its waters pure enough that it wouldn’t upset his bowels. A key consideration, given how challenging it was for him to defecate with any shred of civility these days.
He winced as the morning sun shone down on his bloodshot eyes, stumbled a little at the elevated threshold, spat out a curse and a thick globule of blood before limping his way to the well in question.
But of course, given the secluded nature of the abandoned settlement, so far detached from any main routes and human civilization as it was, the surrounding wildlife was correspondingly feral as evident by the shining red eyes of the Raticate pack skittering about in the ruins’ shadows.
“Ra! Ticate…” A cautionary hissed sounded out as a dirty and dishevelled brown blur barred his way, all while timid purple specks slinked out of the shadows to surround him on all sides.
The man snorted in disdain. Just yesterday he had to clear out an unruly band of Zubats before he could go to sleep. And now, he had even more vermin getting in the way of his thirst.
His fingers trembled and, with much effort, painfully contorted into a sign, prompting the shadows to deepen and a purple fog to permeate the air.
“Rat!” The Raticate bristled, matted fur standing on edge as its instincts screamed for it to run, just like its lesser brethrens who had already scattered in a deluge of fearful squeaks.
“Raticate! Rat!” However, the creature’s abandonment only seemed to stoke its ire, further emboldening its futile defiance as a glow of Type Energy soaked into its yellow-stained teeth, all chipped and crooked but no less lethal in its jagged sharpness — Super Fang.
The man responded to the sight with a nonchalant huff. He was impressed, honestly. Not by the move — Super Fang was a signature of the species and came naturally to them. No, he was most affected by the rodent's bravado, foolish as it may be. In the past, he might have even deigned to capture it on a whim and tame that unkempt ferocity had he not been reduced to such a decrepit state.
“Rat!” With a determined cry, the Raticate charged, fangs veering towards his vulnerable neck, only to be struck from the side with a silent Shadow Ball.
“Don’t Poison it. No sense in wasting edible meat.” He commanded. Raticate meat was stringy and smelled like Garbador, but the man was in no state to hunt otherwise.
His Gengar emerged with a scoff then quickly pacified the flagging rodent with a Hypnosis before feasting upon the Raticate’s sentient mind with a Dream Eater and leaving behind a hollow husk of comatosed meat and fur.
“Don’t play with the food and put it out of its misery.” The man was in no mood to be dirtying his hands right now.
“Gen-gen-gen-gen…” But the Ghost was heedless of his words, cackling as the surrounding fog thickened, those ominous red eyes glaring back at his feeble trainer with a manic hunger.
The man scoffed. It had been a long time coming. A Pokemon Trainer needed to be stalwart and strong to control the beasts under their stable, ruthlessly crushing any burgeoning dissent and bending their wills to his whim — something that he was no longer capable of doing in his broken state. So it was natural, then, that the unruly creature would turn on him at some point.
There was no room for sympathy, no room for love as his daughter often espoused. He sighed, the thought of that precocious girl and her rebellious smile dulling his edge. “Do as you wish…” With a clumsy swipe, the former Pokemon Master pulled a Pokeball from his belt and dropped it onto the ground.
“Gen?” The Gengar titled his head in confusion as he watched the human turn his back towards him, utterly indifferent towards the threat he posed to his life.
The man continued limping along, his Gengar could have whatever dregs of his sanity still remained if he so wished. Right now, all he wanted was a sip of water to wash away the taste of blood in his mouth.
However, surprisingly, he managed to reach the well unmolested and was able to nudge the leaky bucket perching precariously atop its edge into the abyss down below, nearly stumbling and throwing his sickly body into the depths alongside it. That would have been less than ideal. As dejected as he was, the man would still prefer a swift end if possible, as opposed to slowly starving to death over the course of however many weeks.
“Urgh.” He grunted, trying and failing to reel in the fraying strand of hemp tied to the now-weighty bucket of water. His arms, once powerful enough to choke a Machop to death, now flopped against his flank like limp, overcooked noodles.
“Gen.”
But in his vapid struggles, a shadowy hand abruptly nudged him aside and began pulling at the rope in his stead.
The man watched with a suspicious glare. “What is the meaning of this?” A prank, perhaps? “If you wish to devour me then do so expediently. Prolonging my suffering will do nothing to enhance the flavor. Heh. If anything, my mind will only become more rancid as my faculties decline.” Even now, he could feel whatever remained of his lucid self dissipating like morning dew.
“Gen. Gengar.” But in lieu of a reply, the Gengar simply plopped the sloshing bucket of water onto the lip of the well, perfectly within the man’s crippled reach.
He scowled once more, his mind, obscured by fever, struggled to understand the ploy. “Why does it even matter?” He wanted death. Why does it matter in what form it was delivered?
But just as he approached tentatively for a drink, a powerful gust of wind blew the cripple off his feet and sent him sprawling on the ground.
“Gen!” The Gengar stiffened and jumped to his trainer’s defense, decades of training having thoroughly conditioned his instincts.
The man glared up from his prone form, towards the red-haired scoundrel hovering above him on his mighty Dragonite, a condescending smirk hanging from that gaijin’s infuriating visage. “Lance Blackthorn…” He hissed.
“Well, well… Lookie what the Growlithe sniffed out. How’s it going, Koga? You’re looking err… resplendent today.” Lance paused, then chuckled. “Sorry, I forgot. You’re not a Koga anymore are you, Kyou? That title belongs to your daughter now. Good lass, by the way. Much better head on her shoulders with a bleeding heart for Pokemon. How a guy like you managed to raise a girl like her, I will never know…”
The man’s scowl deepened. “What do you want, outsider?! Here to mop up your failings?” Kyou, formerly head of the Koga clan, cackled then began wheezing with a bloodied cough. “Heh… Go ahead, fool… claim your quarry. Revel in the glory of parading my broken corpse around your stone walls like the savage that you are… Just as your kin did with my son!”
Lance’s smirk faltered as he got off his Ride with a sigh. “What I want, you can’t give me, Kyou. Not anymore…” He casually sauntered over to the well with his flamboyant gait and grabbed hold of the bucket, pushing it back down the well and refilling it before placing the vessel right in front of his incapacitated colleague — former colleague.
“And… For what it’s worth. I never approved of the war, nor the reprehensible conduct of my predecessors.” With a flap of his cape and an exaggerated grunt, Lance plopped himself down on the ground to look Kyou straight in the eyes. “Believe me when I say that no one is as eager as me to see those senile old fools lynched for their crimes.”
It was why Lance had sought to seize power when he saw the chance and why his first act as Champion of Indigo was to declare an end to their hostilities, even if it meant bloodying the maws of his Pokemon for one last time.
“You think me a fool!” Kyou growled. “You and your ilk, you are all cut from the same cloth! Arrogant! Insolent! And you… indolent! A mindless puppet decorating the throne, all while murderers and criminals are free to govern from the shadows! When was the last time you deigned to take an interest in our region’s affairs, huh?! Always traipsing around, thrill seeking—!” The man wheezed, bloody phlegm flooding his mouth as he hacked and spat.
Lance held back his disgust and reached over to give the sad cripple a few soothing pats on the back, only to have his hand bounced off by a forceful shrug. “Look… I’m sorry things didn’t end up exactly the way that you envisioned, Kyou. But as far as I’m concerned, better to throw all the Ekans in a pit and let them bite at each other’s tails than allow them to embroil innocents in their games.”
What Lance had left unsaid was that he considered the disgraced nobleman before him as one of the Ekans in question. But he liked to think Kyou got the message, judging by his seething silence. “Better politics than bloodshed, you know?” The Champion beamed — that same pompous and indifferent grin that Kyou so loathed. “Or better yet, just let the Pokemon duke it out in the arena. We are Pokemon Trainers after all.”
“You are a child! An insufferable, indolent manchild!”
“Ha! Better a child than a bigot.”
An uncomfortable silence settled, with Kyou simmering in resentment while Lance leaned back with the self-assured smugness of someone who had just won an argument.
“Kill me.”
“No.”
Kyou scowled. “KILL ME! I am a traitor to your cause! A terrorist! Fulfill your duty as Champion of Indigo! Do not seek to disgrace me with the indignity of a fraudulent trial!”
Lance chuckled. “No. And no to the Kangaskhan court either. I don’t care for the pageantry, nor do I have the patience for it.”
“Then why are you here?! What do you want from me?!”
The Champion sighed and responded with a gaze full of pity. “I did originally come to put you down — tie up loose ends and all that.” Especially knowing what the former Poison Type Master was capable of, Lance simply could not allow the risk of being caught unawares by some mysterious plague sweeping through his region. “Now though… Looking at the state of you, Kyou, I change my mind.”
The former patriarch of the Koga clan was no longer capable of revenge, only self-loathing. The man once dubbed the Omen of Kanto was long gone, burned to cinders in that fateful battle months ago.
“Kill me! KILL ME, DAMN IT!!!” Kyou howled, almost pleading in his anguish.
“Gen-gen-gen-gen…” To the side, his Gengar cackled, souping ravenously on his trainer’s delectable despair.
“No, I will not kill you, Kyou.” Lance repeated, Aura flaring, eyes unyielding. “Instead I offer you a chance at redemption.”
The reigning patriarch of the region’s foremost clan of Dragon tamers reached into his pockets to pull out an oval device with a tiny screen and a blinking green light by the corner. “This here is an emergency call beacon.” He explained. “A courier showed up recently and saddled me with it at Clair’s insistence,” said the unruly Champion with a bitter tone.
“Supposedly, it’s to allow one of Sabrina’s people to come fetch me when the time comes for some top secret operation.” The operation to demolish Team Rocket once and for all. “Take it, Kyou. Show the world that there’s still some good in you — that although the terror of Johto has fallen, the warden of Kanto still lives.”
The nameless sneered, then looked down sharply at the beacon with a wary gaze.