Chapter 13

You don’t actually feel that first blow, dazed and winded and from your fall and struggling to make sense of what’s going on. It’s not until the bird wrenches her beak free again, spattering you with gobbets of your own blood, that the pain hits, and you act without even thinking.

You use your good hand to slam a thunder punch into the fearow’s chest, toppling her with a surprised squawk. Then you clasp your mangled shoulder and channel healing energy, re-knitting muscle and stopping the arterial flood.

You push yourself back to your feet and flex the fingers on your injured arm to make sure everything’s working. As you bend to finish the struggling fearow off, a yell diverts your attention.

“Hey, dumbass!” The great Nathaniel Morgan’s over by the tree line, holding out his hand. The sneasel tosses him the pokédex, and he raises it over his head with a fleeting wince. “You want this?”

You don’t bother replying and rush into an extreme speed, hand already out to grab the pokédex. A black streak collides with you mid-pounce, and you fall to the ground with the sneasel on your chest, his hooked claws sunk in just above your collarbones.

You grab the dark-type around the neck and tear him off, heedless of the chunks of flesh that come away with him. Then you hesitate. The great Nathaniel Morgan hasn’t moved, but now he has company. Pokémon emerge from the brush around him: parasect, nidoran, rhyhorn, ekans. “That’s right, you stupid piece of shit,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “You want it, you’d better come and fucking get it. But if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the fuck out of here now, while you still can.”

Your response is a shattering roar of frustration, all fury and betrayal. The noise halts the pokémon’s advance for a moment, uncertainty rippling through their ranks.

He did this somehow, that conniving, evil little human. You save his life, and this is how he repays you? With some craven ambush, the very thing his despicable Rocket friends tried on him? You hurl your pokéballs at the gathering monsters. “Get them!”

Titan snorts in surprised distaste, leaning in over his tail to shield it from the rain. At first he just stares around, confused, but the situation is clear enough. The charizard spreads his wings and growls, and his teammates gather around him.

You move to join them, only to have the sneasel leap onto your back, grabbing at your throat with his claws. You drop to the ground, trying to catch him underneath you, but he lets go and jumps away, then dodges a swipe of your hand and spits an icy wind at you.

You roll onto your stomach and reach for him again, only to have the fearow come spearing down out of the sky, hitting you beak-first with a drill peck. It doesn’t hurt this time either, your heart racing and your body flush with adrenaline. There’s a jarring scrape as the spinning attack glances off your ribcage and drags a long, bloody streak down your back, but no more than that. The fearow’s momentum carries her beak on into the dirt, and she flaps and curses as she tries to wrench it free.

The sneasel leaps on you again, claws a blur as he covers you with gashes. Then Titan’s there, a blast of flame putting the sneasel into full retreat and lending extra energy to the fearow’s struggles. Her beak comes up in a shower of dirt, and she flops free. Fearow takes to the air as another flamethrower rushes her way, so Titan swings it around to threaten the sneasel instead. The dark-type retreats well out of reach, and Titan flares his wings and growls at him while you pull yourself into a crouch, injuries already knitting closed.

“Thanks, Titan,” you say. He stands over you with chest heaving, huffing out angry clouds of smoke. Behind him your other pokémon are embroiled in fights of their own, cut off from you by the enemies swarming out of the woods. Rats battles another raticate, the two of them locked in a hissing, spitting ball of sodden fur. War’s driven his beak deep into the soft earth to keep himself steady, lashing out with his stingers and pulling unwary opponents into a poisonous embrace. Meanwhile Thunderstorm sparks too bright to look at, thunder rolling as it sends jags of lightning in all directions.

Anxiety wars with anger in your gut. It’s disgusting, the audacity of these scum, daring to take you and your pokémon on. Worse that they caught you off guard, actually managed to injure you while you were stuck in a pathetically fragile human body.

But the great Nathaniel Morgan’s made a horrible mistake in attacking you, and a worse one by getting his friends involved. You’re going to have to kill them all, too, or at least most of them, enough to warn Team Rocket away from you in the future. They don’t stand a chance against you at full power, and they’re about to find out the hard way.

You transform, muscles expanding and skin growing tough and scaly. Armor plates slide out to cover your head, your chest, your shoulders; your fingertips merge and sharpen into stubby talons strong enough to tear apart solid rock. You stagger upright, clumsy as the last changes take hold, while Titan turns to meet a gaggle of enemies.

You ignore them, darkness bubbling around your claws as you prepare an attack. As you raise your arms above your head a black wave sweeps across the clearing, engulfing your opponents. A couple manage to pull themselves free, fly or dig out of reach of the spreading nightmarescape, but most are pulled under, dragged down into unnatural slumber.

“Get the humans!” you call to your friends as you hurry to do just that. They don’t move, though, and as you open your mouth to reproach their hestitation you’re distracted by the clunk and hiss of pokéballs going off in the woods. Just how many people are out there? There are at least a dozen pokémon scattered around the battlefield already, and that’s probably four humans, five. They’re sending more, though–make it six or seven on the inside.

You haven’t got the time to look for them just now. The sneasel leaps at you a final time, and you slam him into unconsciousness with a brick break. A thin shriek from overhead gives you the warning you need to put up a protect, and a second later the fearow crashes into it with a crackle of energy discharge. She’s on her way skyward a moment later, and you shield your eyes with a hand grown plate-sized and craggy as you draw a bead on her.

With the rain pouring down there’s plenty of free charge to harness, and you send a bolt of lightning ripping down and straight through your quarry. The brilliant streak of electricity leaves you blind for a moment, eyes clouded by neon afterimages. After the shredding blast of thunder that follows you strain your ears until you hear the wet thud of the fearow falling to earth.

You don’t get long to savor your revenge. The next threat announces itself in the form of a sodden boulder, which would have caught you in the side of your head if it didn’t hit an unseen barrier first. A gleaming-white crescent of energy flickers in the air over your head as the rock to shatters and vanishes in a cloud of grainy debris.

You spin around and find three pokémon sneaking up on you. They stare at you dumbly. “What the heck was that?” wonders the geodude responsible for blowing their cover, raising his voice over the sound of Thunderstorm calling more lightning in the background.

“Wonder guard, I think,” says the litleo next to him. “Shit. What the hell is this thing, anywa–?”

They scatter as you stomp on the ground and send a wash of dirty water over the group. “Ridge!” sputters the meowth who managed to stand strong against the attack. “We need to get Ridge over here. We’re screwed if we can’t even hit this thing. Ridge!”

You punt the struggling geodude into a golbat you see winging towards you, then turn your attention to the litleo, who’s soaked and shivering from the muddy water. One of his eyes is caked shut with mud, but he sees you coming and scrambles to get away, dodging the lazy volley of water guns you send after him. He turns to fling embers over his shoulder, but they fizzle uselessly against the wonder guard.

“Shit shit shit shit shit! What are you?!” the normal-type bawls. You don’t bother to answer, switching to a widespread bubble attack. The little normal-type’s already slipping and struggling on the soaking battlefield, and a barrage of rain-swelled bubbles is enough to drop him at last.

That leaves the meowth, who’s been chasing you the entire time, trying to distract you from her friend. Her claws only glance off your barrier, though; her teeth do no better, and you ignore her furious growling, reaching down and hooking her into the air with a sky uppercut. After that a comet punch sends her flying, out cold.

The meowth couldn’t do anything by herself, but finishing her off did serve to distract you. You don’t notice the golbat, recovered from her high-speed geodude encounter, until she flies up behind you and wraps her thick tongue around your neck.

You yell, reaching up to grab the warm, gooey thing as it slithers across your armor. A second later you regret the impulse as your hands become coated in the noxious substances oozing from the bat’s tongue. They burn into your scales, an awful wet itching spreading down your torso, and you roar and send electricity snaking over your body with a spark attack.

The golbat lets out a screech occluded by her hyperextended tongue, and her wings buffet the back of your head as she tries to remain airborne. You can feel them now that your wonder guard is fading, corroded by the gastro acid. You tug at the bat’s tongue again, claws biting deep, then stagger as her keening rises to a higher pitch, a supersonic attack that batters your eardrums and throws off your equilibrium.

For a while after that the battle is a blur. You shock the golbat, try to swat her away, and end up face-down in the mud on more than one occasion. More pokémon show up to join the attack, and you strike out at anything that comes close, filling the air around you with lightning and leaves and clouds of paralytic dust, anything to drive them back while you try to get your bearings.

In the end it’s the wave that breaks your confusion. You don’t notice it building, are caught off-guard by the abrupt transition from light and air to a world of freezing murk. Sticks and logs and floating pokémon buffet you as the surf attack sweeps them past, but you stand strong against it, too heavy to drag away. You gag and choke up gritty water as air breaks over your head again, pawing slimy leaves off your face and trying to figure out where the attack came from.

The surf pushed most of the pokémon to the edge of the clearing, but War remains, his tentacles reaching towards a drowzee and kadabra only now letting protect shields fall. Judging from what Rats is yelling, looking no more than half her normal size with her fur all plastered against her body, the tentracruel was the source of the surf. Thunderstorm lies sparking in the mud, a victim of his own teammate’s attack. Judging by the cries from the woods, the humans didn’t escape, either. How many voices? Seven?

You run towards War, feet sinking in sucking puddles. On the way you fire a thunderbolt at the wingull harrying Titan, who escaped the water by being in the skies.

The psychics stand out of reach of War’s tentacles and bombard him with bursts of telekinetic force. He retaliates with water pulses and hydro pumps, but it’s probably only a matter of time before he gets frustrated and tries to sweep them away with another surf.

You cover the last of the distance with an extreme speed, bowling a nidorina out of the way as you go. You ram into the kadabra and trample him underfoot as you rush on towards his partner. Then you turn too quickly, and your legs slew out from under you. You fall on your side, your momentum sending you sliding into a sleeping machoke.

She wakes up, of course, while you’re trying to stand, hands and feet slipping in the watery muck, and no sooner have you managed to rise than she tackles you to the ground again, driving your face into the mire.

You struggle and kick, trying to throw the machoke off, your mind blaring terror as you can’t breathe, can’t see, sink deeper into the clinging mud. The fighting-type shifts her weight, getting a better grip on you and riding out all your thrashing.

You call on heat, and raindrops fizz to nothing as they strike your burning skin. But it is raining, and between that and the half-liquid mire around you most of the overheat’s strength is leeched away to no good use. The machoke tightens her grip.

You call instead on lightning, sparks dancing across your body, and that gets a grunt of pain. The machoke’s tough, though. She hangs on with a determination you’d admire if you weren’t so afraid of passing out.

You stop for a moment, listening to your heartbeat echoing in your ears and trying to ignore the burning tightness in your chest. Pain spreads out across your back and arms, through all the metal-imbued tissues of your armor. The machoke shifts, and her surprised cry comes to you garbled through the water. She retreats a second later, and you push yourself up, gasping in a huge breath of air.

The machoke dives at you, fist raised, and you flip onto your back and fire a psybeam into her chest, which is stippled with bleeding holes from your armor’s new spines. The psychic attack is a solid hit, knocking the machoke over backwards, and you drag in more ragged gulps of air.

There’s a mienfoo headed towards you, skipping on fallen logs and fallen pokémon to avoid contact with the damp mess of the ground. You duck under her flying kick and rise up to engage, only to stagger as a blast of ice slams into the back of your head. You turn and fire a rainbow dazzle of energy at a bergmite clinging to a downed tree branch. The little ice-type loses his grip with a squeak, but the last glimmers of the power gem glint off the armor of a lairon trundling in your direction. You don’t have time to worry about him now. The mienfoo is back in the fight, sweeping your legs out from under you before you have a chance to brace yourself.

You collapse in the mud, slinging confusion attacks to drive the mienfoo back. She stumbles, dizzied by concentrated psychic energy, and you cast an air slash her way as you get to your knees, taking her out of the fight entirely.

Then you have to duck as a staravia swoops at your face. You knock him out of the air with a thunderbolt, then turn and blow an oddish away with gust. The gold-glittering powder he sent your way dissipates just before a persian makes a flying leap for your shoulder, claws digging into unprotected flesh and breath hot against your throat. You turn so he’s in the path of a fury attack from a darting beedrill, making his body your shield.

Then it’s fire for the bee; ice for the staravia newly risen; heat wave and razor leaf to keep the lot at bay; circle throw to put the persian out of the fight; stop and use close combat on the lairon, the rain of blows shattering armor and putting it down with a single attack; dragon rage and energy ball and thunderbolt and thunderbolt again and you’re standing in a clear space amidst downed opponents, breathing hard. Formless energy crackles over your scales, ready to leap at anything that comes near. The mud at your feet bubbles and lets off a stink like cooking garbage.

It looks like that’s the last of that wave. You duck your head and take a moment to recover, healing off bite wounds and lacerations and stinging energy burns. The move comes slow and taxing, and you sway as the strength runs out of your legs. You’ll need to stop and take a proper rest before you can do much more healing.

After a few seconds you straighten up, raising your head to look around, only to be jerked sideways by a sudden weight on your arm. You scream as the bones in your wrist give way with an audible crunch. The lairon you thought knocked out clamps down harder, sending stabs of agony racing up your arm with the slightest movement. The rock-type drags at your wrist, trying to pull you off your feet. You slam your fist into his face without even thinking, truly knocking him out this time, but then have to kneel and pry him off your arm as his jaws stay locked in a bulldog grip.

Mending the fracture leaves you lightheaded, and you take another long moment to catch your breath, rolling your wrist back and forth and wiggling your fingers. And then, then, when you finally feel recovered enough to go looking for another fight, a wave crests over your head and plunges you into chill darkness.

As the surf attack ebbs you turn to War and find him barely moving, his feeble strikes coming nowhere close to reaching the emolga who sails above him, peppering him with thunder shocks. The water around the tentacruel’s beak swirls and ripples as he tries to exert his power, but you doubt he has the strength to manage another surf, not that you want him to. You fumble his pokéball off your belt and recall him, then do the same for Rats, who’s sprawled in another cluster of fallen pokémon, out cold.

Thunderstorm is still kicking, but every time it tries to call lightning from the lowering clouds the bolt veers off course, striking the upraised club of a marowak hanging around the edge of the battlefield. Now and again the magneton sends a barrage of swift stars whirling at the ground-type, but most of its attention is focused on blasting a different group of pokémon.

And that group is… You choke down your anger and bow your head in brief concentration, then look up at a confused gaggle of enemies. You summon a blizzard before the pokémon can recover from their surprise, and chill winds swirl and gather, tugging at the tattered remains of your clothing. The ally switch sent Titan across the battlefield, and he’s still hunched down with his tail tucked close to his chest, defending himself against vanished opponents. He raises his head and lets out a snort of surprise, and then you lose sight of him behind a wall of pelting ice.

As the blizzard clears you kick out at the snow-covered pokémon around you, trying to figure out which are still conscious. Then a tooth-rattling rumble tears your attention away.

Great muck-covered boulders shiver their way out of the ground, rising ever higher as the marowak lifts her bone club over her head. You hurry to establish another psychic link with Titan, and in a flash you’re standing where he was, just in time for the rock slide to fall on your head instead of his.

You reach up and catch the first boulder, but the marowak directs more your way, the rocks following her club as though it were a conductor’s baton. Not far away, Thunderstorm is suffering a milder barrage, rocks ringing off his metal skin as they rain back to earth. You toss aside the boulder and raise your hands over your head, trying to catch the rest on a cushion of psychic force, but you’re too tired to sustain it and the lot comes tumbling down, burying you under a good half ton of rock and dirt.

For a few seconds you just lie where you are, crushed into the muck by the weight of the debris. The rock slide itself didn’t do you much harm, but you ache all over and fatigue is starting to gnaw at your muscles, stemming the tide of adrenaline that was pushing you forward and dulling your injuries.

Thinking of the great Nathaniel Morgan’s smug face is enough to get you moving again. You won’t let that disgusting human walk away from this one. The battle’s nearly over, and you’re going to win it.

You reach out with your mind, pushing up just enough to relieve some of the weight on your back, then shift to get your legs under you. You dig upwards, shoving boulders aside, tearing them off in chunks where they’re too large to move easily. Finally you clear a patch of dripping sky and worm through, back out to the battlefield.

You’re just in time to see Titan go down, a grimer clinging to the side of his neck, covering the charizard’s nose and mouth with extensions of his sludgy body. The poison-type holds on despite the flames Titan forces from his mouth, and the other pokémon who weathered your blizzard fall upon the fire-type as he collapses, pummeling him from all sides.

The charizard flares red and vanishes, and the grimer dribbles to the ground in an exhausted slump. He’s not done for yet, though, not him nor the rest of his group, and the remaining pokémon turn and start heading for Thunderstorm, muttering amongst themselves as they go.

You return Titan’s pokéball to your belt and hold your hand out towards Thunderstorm, leaning against a boulder for support as you toss a burst of energy at the magneton. The approaching pokémon slow as a haze of pink and gold shimmers swirls around Thunder, the heal pulse glinting off what bits of the magneton’s metallic skin aren’t muddied.

“Hit them with flash cannon, Thunder,” you say. “Swift if they split up. I’ll handle the marowak.”

She’s watching, calm and relaxed, as you step down from the rock pile. She lets you get close, close enough that you start conjuring ice in preparation for an attack, then lets her club fly with a sudden flick of the wrist.

You duck to the side, but the attack was never meant for you. “Wait! Thunder!”

You speed after the marowak’s club, arm outstretched to catch it, only to slip and land in a long slide. You reach up and fire a magical leaf after the club, trying to knock it off course, but it’s too late. Thunder’s filling the air with waves of brilliant white stars, content to let you deal with the marowak, and is too slow to respond to your cry.

Thunder’s swift bashes the grimer into unconsciousness and drives the others back, but then the bone club spins right through the magneton’s center, smashing its magnemite apart with a resonant clang. The magnemite scatter in the mud, fizzing with stray charge.

You bellow an incoherent challenge at the marowak as you recall Thunder, your hand shaking so badly that you miss the first time with the capture beam. The ground-type doesn’t respond, just raises a hand to catch the club on its return swing.

The Rockets gather behind her, stepping out of hiding places and standing at the ready. There’s eight of them–nine with the great Nathaniel Morgan, though he’s hanging back, embroiled in an argument with another human. You growl as you notice he’s still holding the pokédex limply in one hand. He’ll pay for this. You may be the only one left, and you may be worn out, but you’re still more than a match for a bunch of grunts. The great Nathaniel Morgan is going to regret betraying you for the rest of his loathsome life, which you’ll make sure is short indeed.

A cold thrill of fear passes over you as you notice that the Rockets have guns–your human memories, maybe, old associations getting the better of you. Just as suddenly you’re struck by the urge to laugh. Guns? And what do you have to fear from bullets?

You smile and raise your hands, darkness whirling and growing between them. Another wave of blackness rolls out across the battlefield, dragging most of your enemies deep into sleep. The man arguing with the great Nathaniel Morgan sways and leans against a tree for a moment, then looks around in confusion until he notices the other Rocket passed out in the dirt. He leaves the great Nathaniel Morgan to his nap, stepping up to the front lines and taking a gun from a sleeping comrade.

The marowak stands firm, her expression blank, maybe even bored. Unfortunate. You push your irritation aside and charge, swinging for the ground-type with a fistful of ice. She parries with her club, then swipes at your knee. You take a step back, slashing across her chest with a blade of compressed air.

Something pings off your chest plate, and it takes you a moment to realize the Rockets are firing at you. Darts, not bullets. You look down at one of the little fletched things lying in the mud, and an acid tingling spreads across your body as you realize what it means.

The Rockets aren’t trying to kill you. They want to capture you. That’s why the fearow didn’t try and stab you through the heart. They’ve been letting their pokémon wear you down to the point that you’re vulnerable to their weapons. They’re going to catch you and throw you into one of their fighting rings, maybe, or their labs. For a moment the world goes dead and gray, a constant flat humming in your ears as confused memories stir. You taste bile at the back of your throat, thick and sour.

You throw up a protect shield to give yourself a moment to think, and another volley of darts bounces off it in a spray of silver sparks. Marowak slams her bone into the barrier again and again, steady, patient.

This is too dangerous. You don’t have to fight these people–not now, not on their terms. All you have to do is break through their line, just fly over them if you have to. You can grab the great Nathaniel Morgan and teleport out, and once you’ve dealt with him, you’ll be back for the rest. Even if you have to retreat for now, you can’t just let this go. Team Rocket needs to learn that you are not a creature to be hunted.

You drop the protect and knock the marowak off her feet with a hydro pump. Then you turn your attention to the Rockets, the four of them awake, and pins and needles spread out from your palms as you gather energy for an attack.

“Hey.” The emolga’s sitting on one of the Rocket’s shoulders. The human ignores her, firing a dart that bounces off armor plating. “Not thinking of running, are you? Getting tired, not feeling up to a fight like this?”

Your concentration wavers, half from the emolga’s words, half with the recognition of what they mean. Oh, not that. Not now. You let your attack go half-formed, stray dazzles of light bursting in the air around you as you clamp your hands over your ears. You only have a second to prepare your defense–

The marowak’s club smashes into your side and you topple over, instinctively reaching out to break your fall.

“Not a surprise, I guess. Just disappointing. You put up a good fight, whatever you are. Some kind of ditto, am I right?”

Don’t listen, don’t listen. You kick the marowak away and stand up, but you can’t cover your ears anymore. Every time you try to move your hands, you feel like you want to punch something.

It’s so stupid. The taunts aren’t even any good. There’s no way they should be getting to you like this. You clench your teeth over bubbling irritation. It’s so stupid.

“Yeah, I guess you’re scarier than the average pile of goo, but you’re obviously still too weak to fight real pokémon. It’s a shame, really. All those attacks and you can’t even beat a marowak?”

Of course it’s not about the words, really. It’s the energy behind them. You have to get rid of the emolga before you fall under their sway. You have to get rid of the emolga now. If you let her go on she’s just going to pile on more of these inane, pointless insults.

“Why don’t you just hang tight for a few minutes, let the humans wrap this up, huh? Team Rocket’s not so bad, you know. At least they’ll make a real fighter out of you.”

That’s the last you hear. Your yell drowns out the rest. “Shut up! Shut up!” You spread your arms, closing your eyes against the brilliance of your own attack. The humans yell and try to run as the dazzling gleam spreads, ripping leaves off trees and skin off flesh as it flares in sheets of burning silver light.

You race into the tail end of it, before the Rockets have a chance to recover. The emolga’s words still buzz in your head, a constant irritant. You need to find her and get rid of her and make them stop.

Something tangles in your legs, and you trip, landing half on top of one of the fallen Rocket agents. She’s cradling a bleeding arm, but she still has the presence of mind to try and kick you. You cauterize the arm for her, and most of the rest of her torso, with a blast of flame. Then you look back, searching for what hit you.

Oh, the marowak. Did you forget about her somehow? You twist around and lunge for the ground-type, one hand out to grab her club. It hits your palm with numbing impact, but you manage to close your fingers on it anyway. You drag the bone aside and keep it out of the way while you soak the ground-type with another hydro pump, point blank range. Can’t even beat a marowak, was that it? This is how you beat a marowak.

Something bounces off the armor on your back, but you barely even notice. The marowak goes limp, but as soon as you relax and loosen your grip on her club she springs to life again. She wrenches the femur out of your hand and brings it down hard on the inside of your elbow, smashing bone at a single stroke.

You couldn’t care less. You claw at the marowak’s face, trying to tear her helmet off, while she lays into you with the club, denting armor as she swings at any part of you she can reach. You manage to get her in the stomach with a mega punch, and she lets out a surprised cough of air. You aim a water gun into her open mouth, sending into a fit of choking coughs. Her careful strikes degenerate into limp-wristed flailing, and you knock her down, pressing a foot on her throat to hold her while you conjure another attack, slush dripping between your fingers.

The marowak throws her bone at you, but it’s an unsteady toss, doesn’t even come close to hitting you. You grind down harder with your foot and pour more power into your attack. Small impacts rattle against your back. The… darts? Yes. More of them now. Most bounce off, but here and there one gets into a chink in your armor, hits just right so it doesn’t glance off your scales. They’re only tiny pinpricks of pain, hardly felt before they’re gone. There’s a spreading numbness, maybe from the cold.

Your right arm’s not working, hanging limp at your side and feathered with darts, but in your left hand the sheer cold is growing larger, a vortex of white and blue light that sucks greedily at the heat of your body and drains the warmth from the air around you. Your breath comes in billowing white gasps, and frozen raindrops patter to the ground around you. A couple more seconds now and you’ll finish Marowak off. Then you need to find that emolga, and once you’ve settled her you can deal with those irritating humans and their sting-firing guns.

Then the world cracks open, a silent explosion rocking your whole body. You black out for a moment, waking to find yourself collapsed atop the marowak. A great starburst of ice stretches out around you, and your chest is horribly cold and brittle-feeling, like it might crack at any moment. The back of your neck is warm, something wet spreading over your shoulders.

Your vision is blurry and dark-edged, but you don’t really mind. You think you were mad a minute ago. Or not mad, but–you were very excited for some reason. You wanted to hurt things. You can’t really remember why. Something someone said?

You don’t really want to hurt things now. You just want to lie here and stare at Marowak’s club, which is sticking in the mud near your shoulder, one end bloodied. That’s funny. You thought she threw it away earlier, but no, it was just lying there for some reason. Funny.

It feels hard to breathe, like your body’s too heavy for your lungs to push their way out. There’s something spreading through your veins, nice and warm but also heavy. Everything’s heavy, even your eyelids. What you can see keeps getting smaller and smaller.

It must be something to do with the humans. They knocked you down? No. They were doing something else. You want to sleep, but you feel like this must be important. Think first, then sleep. You close your eyes anyway. Think. The humans. Rockets. Team Rocket. Team Rocket has Mew. You have to get her back. Team Rocket took her, and now they’re here because… you. They have Mew, but they want you, too.

Now you think you want to move. You try to open your eyes but can’t get them to more than watery slits, a bit of graying light coming in through the cracks. You want to run away, but you can’t move your legs at all. Your heart starts beating faster as panic floods your brain, but your limbs no more than twitch. Weight rolls in like a heavy fog and smothers your resolve. It really is getting hard to breathe. You try to swallow and choke instead, saliva dribbling from your mouth. Your eyes close again, and you can’t get them open.

It’s poison. They poisoned you with whatever they put in those darts. They? Someone. You’re poisoned. Your thoughts are starting to fall apart, but you try to hold on to one thing, one last thing. Escape. Run. You have to get away from here. You have to heal yourself, get all the poison out. Escape.

It stops raining. The marowak is gone from under you, the bone-numbing ice traded for cold earth and a scattering of jabbing twigs. That’s all you know, that’s all you can tell, before you fall into a healing stupor and all the rest is lost.