Pokémon: Out of the Woods | A Galar, Unova & Sinnoh Fanfiction

Chapter 48: The Survivors

Light still crept around the curtains in Gloria's ivy-covered cottage. The Budew in the garden never went back to sleep. Nor did Elio. It had been two hours. Surely, if it was an innocent adventurer who crept into the Slumbering Weald, Gloria would have caught them and returned already? Then again, maybe it was a friend. Victor and Hop, at least when he still spent half of his time in Galar, often wandered into the woods.

But these aren't normal times...

Elio picked up his Z-Ring, the one he received from Tapu Koko 64 years ago, from the bedside table. As soon as he touched it, he felt the same inexplicable pull that Hop did. A chill shot down his spine. Something was wrong. Something was wrong and he let two hours pass before investigating it. He grabbed his jacket, returned the Pokémon sleeping in their baskets and ran out. The Budew were in the way. He was about to step over them, but they were trying to point something out. He glanced up to see blue hair in pigtails.

'Excuse me...'

The woman jumped at the sound of a voice. She bolted. Elio was as suspicious of her as he was of anything else, but that invisible force didn't pull him to follow her. It pulled him to the Slumbering Weald.

Truthfully, the woods creeped him out. When they first moved there, during a harsh and foggy winter, he was so unsettled by the looming trees and abandoned mansion opposite that he almost impulsively booked the next flight back to Alola. He laughed about it the next day, but as the fog grew thicker that night, like a reflection of the suffocating feeling of impending doom that intensified with each step, he began to wonder if it was a premonition.

Even at the entrance, where the fog was lightest, Elio didn't see a single wild Pokémon. Now he was at the eerie point where he could hardly hear, let alone see, but he was sure he was more alone than he had ever been before in those woods. Where were the Pokémon? What did Gloria find?

Something brushed past him. The sound was distant, as if it was miles away, but he was sure he heard panicked, heavy breathing. There was no point in looking around. He hardly knew which way he was going and he certainly couldn't see. Without the pull from his Z-Ring to guide him, he probably would have tripped over a root and ended up hurt on the damp ground already.

The fog was thickest on the bridge, right before it gave way to the ethereal clearing at the heart of the woods. The first rays of dawn danced on the perfectly-still lake. Elio saw the familiar pink of his wife's favourite dress first. She shivered violently, but she seemed otherwise frozen, unable to even pick her cardigan off the floor to cover her bare arms. Hop was face-down on the concrete. His lab coat was torn. Then Elio saw Victor. He didn't just feel a chill. He felt like his blood turned to ice. Hop was unconscious, but breathing. Victor was completely still. A scowl of defiance was frozen on his face. The blood that soaked his clothes and the ground beneath him was already dry.

Something protruded from the water. Elio shone his phone's flashlight to see the equally still face of Victor's Inteleon. He knelt in front of Gloria, but her gaze never left Victor's body, as if she couldn't even see her husband.

'Gloria. Gloria!'

There was no response. She didn't even flinch when he checked her pulse and waved a hand in front of her face to be sure that she was breathing. He shook Hop. He did react. His eyelids shot open. As amber trapped and preserved the past, a look of despair was perfectly preserved in Hop's eyes from the moment before he was hit with Sleep Powder.

'Hop, can you hear me?'

Hop's eyes turned to Victor. He swallowed a lump. His mouth opened and closed several times before any sound came out.

'...They... they... they killed him... we were useless... there was nothing... nothing... absolutely nothing... we could do... we were useless...'

Elio glanced at his phone. He tried to call 999, but there was no signal. He gave the phone to his Naganadel to carry out of the woods, back into town, to use the extension for Pokémon.

'What happened? Who killed him?'

'Team Plasma... we couldn't even stop Team Plasma... they took Zacian and Zamazenta... and Calyrex... and Spectrier... we were useless... we're just... we're just wastes of space like the cobwebs in the loft...'

Elio gathered their bags to rummage through them. Victor's Poké Balls were empty. Elio had a sinking feeling that he would find them all in the water, as cold and still as Inteleon. He didn't want to look up to prove that, but he did. He saw the horns of Hop's Dubwool first.

No... no... did they kill them all...?

He emptied Gloria's bag. Rillaboom's Poké Ball was empty. He already knew Calyrex was gone. So were Regieleki and Articuno. Her Dragapult and Urshifu were unconscious in their cracked Poké Balls. Elio's Primarina followed a trail of fallen leaves through the water until it stumbled on a familiar silhouette. It reached in to check Rillaboom's pulse. It was dead.

This... is worse than Lusamine... it's as bad as Cipher... if not worse...

There was a distant, shrill sound. Sirens. Naganadel's shadow eventually fell over the clearing as it led the air ambulance there. Even the paramedics were horrified. They never knew what to expect when Pokémon called, but they certainly weren't expecting to find Victor and several Pokémon dead. Elio felt as distant as his wife as he was lifted into the ambulance beside her. She finally snapped out of it at the sight of Victor, then Rillaboom, disappearing into body bags.

A Mega Latios landed as the ambulance left. Reira jumped off its back. The ambulance passed Khalid on his Garchomp. Below, Sam and his Pokémon cordoned off every entrance to the Slumbering Weald. More air ambulances took off from Wedgehurst. All of Victor's remaining Pokémon were delivered to the hospital in body bags, but of Hop's, Pincurchin was the only one pronounced dead at the scene. The others were rushed into surgery on stretchers.

Dubwool's injuries weren't as serious as they seemed. The attacker couldn't kill it. Its fur was too thick and it hardened after several Cotton Guards. Triton paced up and down in the corridor until it was released. It trotted after him into a free room to tell him what happened after Gloria and Hop were sent to sleep. Gloria's Urshifu and Dragapult never saw anything. They were knocked out as soon as they burst from their Poké Balls.

The attacker had four Shadow Pokémon that Dubwool recognised: Togekiss, Garchomp, Grimmsnarl and a cloned Galarian Zapdos. There was also one that looked like an Arcanine. Triton showed Dubwool a photo of a Hisuian Arcanine. It recognised it immediately. The other one, Dubwool said, was a 'scary monster,' but certainly a Pokémon. It had a black aura. Dubwool suspected it was a Zoroark's illusion. Unovan Zoroark rarely conjured up anything horrifyingly hideous, but according to Laventon's letters, Hisuian Zoroark did. If it was a Shadow Hisuian Zoroark, its illusions were probably even more terrifying.

Hop and Gloria remembered the attacker's greenish hair. They recalled, perfectly clearly, how agile and unflinching they were, like a Shadow Trainer. The attacker never said a word before knocking them out, but they assumed they would be able to kill every Pokémon witness who could report back to a Harmonia. Once their Trainers were asleep, the attacker spoke to taunt the Pokémon. They described their voice as cold and high-pitched. They couldn't be sure, but the Pokémon had a feeling the attacker understood them.

Triton printed off Reira's photos of the scene. He showed them to the Pokémon to judge the attacker's height by having them point at where they thought the top of their head reached. Hop and Gloria's guesses matched those made by the Pokémon. Triton was satisfied that the attacker was between 5'9" and 5'11".

'So we've got a high-pitched voice, slender build, greenish hair – which could be blue but looked green in the light there – and height between 5'9" and 5'11". They're agile and unfeeling. Any guesses?'