Silver Lining

I'm just moving to this site and so I'm getting some of my older stories here. Not sure what format this site follows but I'll add a little disclaimer here just in case.

Pokemon belongs to Nintendo/GameFreak. I own nothing of the following but my characters, which are but a derivation of the original work.

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Day and night were visually unchanging at the Petalburg woods. The vast treetops blotted out the sunlight, reducing to nothing more than a dim shade similar to the moonlight. Strangely enough, the moonlight easily filtered through the treetops, yet with a moon that was impossible to see through the branches it was hard to tell if the sun had risen up or set down.

Still, the local inhabitants seemed to know by other means when the sun had set and the moon rose; perhaps it was only instinct. Unluckily enough, this wasn't the case of the small Zigzagoon who was simply passing by.

Was it still daytime? It had to be, it was still early by the time she had decided to venture into the woods. She couldn't have spent that much time already, at much perhaps the sun was beginning to set by now. If only she could find her way out before nightfall.

"A-choo!" she let out another violent sneeze before slowly opening her eyes; those spores were really starting to take a toll on her.

Just to think about why she was here right now made her feel stupid: She had been curious about knowing what a Shroomish was like. Next time she would think twice before letting curiosity get the best of her.

Had she only knew that Shroomish preferred the night and that it was wise not to disturb them in their sleep, for they were easily startled. Now it was just too late.

As she kept on her way she felt how her movement slowly became numb and how her strength gradually diminished. The startled Shroomish had bumped into her face, leaving a combination of paralyzing, poisonous and energy-leeching spores on her that were now slowly weakening her.

Her movement eventually numbed down to the point where she was even unable to move her hind legs, so she began to crawl. After a few moments she was struggling to even drag her body over the ground.

She was sweating deeply as her head began to burn in fever. In less than a minute it had become so hard to move that she lost the will to keep the constant struggle and gave up. A chill wave ran down her spine before beginning to shiver uncontrollably; the world had become even colder than the harshest winter she could remember.

As her whole unwilling body trembled violently she felt her strength decay, her eyelids become heavy, and everything around her begin to blur. The very moment before her eyes were fully closed she could swear she saw a small silhouette at the distance...

***

A boy rushed through the woods as fast as his legs could carry him. He finally came to a stop at a clearing and tried to regain his breath. A small Torchic shortly caught up with him and did the same.

"I... I think we finally lost it," the boy managed to word out through his panting.

"Chick..." the fire type agreed as he caught his breath.

""Go get a Dustox at the Petalburg woods," he said, "it will be a breeze," he said. Yeah, he forgot to mention those things are huge!" Axel complained at the suggestion made by that trainer back at Petalburg town's Pokemon Center.

Indeed, when he had suggested him to get one if he was going to challenge the Rustboro he should have realized it had to be a strong Pokemon. If he could at least catch one of the weaker ones.

Axel once again cursed his bad luck. If right now he was where he was it was mostly due to favors; so far he had proven to be a terrible trainer: he hadn't been able to catch even the most ordinary Pokemon. Reason one was that he still instinctively ran away from most of them. The second reason was perhaps caused by the first one: With such a few battles his Torchic was eager to fight, resulting in getting carried away by the heat of the battle and not realizing he wasn't supposed  finish his foes until it was already too late.