Vindicator

Part 4

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Jason was willing to grant that his first arrival on the third floor of the tower had been cautious. Careful, to the point of timid. He hadn’t known what to expect... whether he would be chasing a Gastly or a Haunter through an open morgue, or right into a cabal of other ghosts he and Kelly couldn’t possibly hope to confront even with their combined strength. He’d wanted to make sure an escape route was readily available when he’d taken that first step away from the staircase.

Now, however, he came prepared. One hand carried the Poké Ball in which Spearow had been caught, and the other bore his old friend Rattata, both of whom were capable of battling Ghost-Type Pokémon. In reserve, of course, was his Gyarados, which offered an intimidation factor no other on his team could boast – but Jason had no illusions that if it came down to unleashing Gyarados, it would be a last resort.

His arrival up here had been no more simple than getting to the transport terminal to trade Geodude for Rattata. Rachel had offered a strong objection to his ascent, but he’d made it clear that he was coming back for his Gastly, at the very least... even if he couldn’t dissuade the Kangaskhan, or whatever it was, from violent acts against him, he would get his Pokémon back and then vacate if need be.

Now he bounded up the stairs to the third floor and ran headlong into the dense purple smoke curling about the mausoleum. Time to unzip my fly, I guess... “Kangaskhan!” he called out. “My name is Jason! I’m a Pokémon trainer! I didn’t come here to hurt you!” He moved to what he felt reasonably sure was the center of the room, and turned slowly in place, looking for a sign that he’d been heard or understood.

“Waitedtoolongwaitedtoolongwaitedtoolongwaitedtool ong...”

The words rose out of the fog and mingled with the echoes of his salutation. They’d been spoken by one of the male voices he’d heard earlier, the deep one.

“Flamethrowerflamethrowerflamethrowerflamethrower. ..”

Jason gave an emphasized nod. “Your remains are up here. You were burned. Is that how you died?”

“KANGASKHAN!”

The bellow was so loud it shook the floor, and Jason clapped his hands over his ears, lest they fall off his head from the sheer force of the noise. Instinct had dictated he squeeze his eyes closed as well, but now he forced one eye open, hoping for some visual cue.

“I told you I’m not here to hurt you,” he ground out. “But I do wanna know who did.” He slowly pulled his hands away from his ears. “You understand? I want to help.”

“Helpmewiththishelpmewiththishelpmewiththishelpmew iththis...”

Jason squinted into the fog, and for a few moments he could still see nothing – but then there appeared to be something just barely visible within, just to his right. He could almost make out a pair of dark shapes inside the fog, and their proportional appearance suggested they were both on hands and knees. He could hear the sound of stone grinding against stone and he saw the figures moving something across the floor.

“Slab’supslab’supslab’supslab’sup...”

“Putherinputherinputherinputherin...”

Jason tried to push through the fog. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, you two!”

“Let’sgolet’sgolet’sgolet’sgo...”

Both figures suddenly rose from their positions. One placed an arm around the other’s shoulder. “Didgooddidgooddidgooddidgood...”

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” Jason pressed, and he increased his pace toward the men to a healthy jog – but no matter how fast he ran at them, he didn’t gain any ground. It was as if they were always going to maintain that distance.

He stopped chasing the apparitions just in time to avoid running headlong into a wall, through which the cloud carrying the images of the men osmosed with no difficulty. He restrained a shout and held up both arms to brace himself against smashing straight into it, but he couldn’t use his hands, loaded as they were with Poké Balls; his forearms smacked hard against the surface and pain jolted through his elbows.

He clenched his teeth as he worked through the pain. Just an image, he thought. I can’t reach out and touch it. Like a ghost’s version of a recording. Showing me what happened now, and not just hearing it. But wouldn’t that take a lot of effort? For Ghost-Types, less, maybe, since they deal in illusions all the time. But for a Pokémon that hasn’t lived as one?

“Can you show me more?” he asked aloud, turning around again to face the open space behind him. “Can you show me their faces?”

The smoke before him churned and roiled. For a breathless moment, Jason thought he could see a pair of faces being drawn in the haze, with features just beginning to define themselves. But just as Jason felt himself able to make any sense of their respective visages, both trailed away into the regular ebb and flow of the fog cycled by the floor’s air conditioning system.

He wasn’t willing to let that deter him. “You must be tired,” he said, trying to sound as sympathetic as he could. “Can you at least show me who you are? I’d like to meet you.”

“Kangaskhankangaskhankangaskhan...” The new voice was little more than a whisper, and remained as such, but the echo effect of the previous voices was not quite so pronounced. The voice itself was low, smooth, almost melodic.

“Well, that’s better than shouting at me.” Jason miniaturized the Poké Balls in his hands, risked returning them to his belt, and then held his open palms up. “You can see I’m not here to hurt you, or take anything from you. Actually...” He scoffed. “I wouldn’t know how to take anything from you, even if that was why I was here.”

He took a couple steps back into the central murk and away from the wall he’d almost broken his nose against. “You tried to make me leave, but if I go, I can’t help you.”

“Kangaskhankangaskhan...” The echo was fading, the voice becoming stronger. More cohesive. A single entity was uttering it instead of the conglomeration of every flat surface in the room casting it to each other and creating hundreds of replicas. Jason still couldn’t localize it, but it was perhaps an indication of the spirit’s attempt to meet Jason face-to-face.

“I’d introduce you to my Pokémon, but I kind of doubt you’d want to meet them right now. You probably already know my new Gastly... I don’t know where he went. He’s probably floating around here somewhere.” Jason cupped one hand to the side of his mouth. “Gastly! Are you here? I need you to come back!”

“Gaaast?”

The new voice sounded right next to Jason’s ear. The teen recoiled and resisted a violent urge to shout in surprise. With the voice came a face in the smoke with the most basic of features: a pair of wide eyes perpetually fixed in a strained glare, and a wide, grinning mouth with a pair of vicious fangs. The ghost guffawed at Jason when it observed his reaction.

Jason pointed a warning finger at it. “Hey, not like I’m not grateful that you came when I called, but do you really need to do it that way? You shouldn’t even be that strong anyway, I had Spearow and Paras knocking you around from here to...”

Then he stopped as the realization struck him. “You shouldn’t have gotten your strength back, not this quickly. Not the strength you’d need to fake me out like that. But... you did. Is it...?”

Is it because you were here? he thought. If it was, then this place could be some kind of... some kind of energizing place, some sort of boon for ghosts. No other place in Kanto has a legend or record of being haunted, not like this tower.

He pulled out Gastly’s Dusk Ball. “Return,” he said, his expression now contorted by contemplation and confusion. The orange tractor bolt wrapped around Gastly and drew it back inside, leaving Jason alone in the room with the Kangaskhan spirit.

“Kangaskhankangaskhan...”

“Listen,” he said tentatively, stepping forward. “I need to know more. I know you’re angry... please show me why. Who are those men? What did they do to you? Why...” He tried not to gulp. “Why did they kill you?”

“Getthebabygetthebabygetthebaby...”

“Didgooddidgooddidgood...”

He took another step forward. “What about your baby? Why did they want her?”

“KANGASKHAN!”

Jason jumped again at the vehement shout, and turned round and round in a vain attempt to locate the source. All he could see around him was the thick purple haze. The baby’s striking a nerve with her, he thought.

The concept was only reinforced in his mind by the sound of rapidly moving air to his right. Instinctively he dodged to the left and turned in the direction of the sound. For just a single instant, he thought he saw a retreating hand – or claw – vanishing into the smoke. As if it had tried to strike him.

He bridled. “Okay, so now you’re trying to attack me?” he called out. “How is that supposed to help you? I told you I want to help... what do you think you’re going to get out of attacking me? What about your baby?”

Another WHOOSH through the air, this time to Jason’s left, seemed to be the only answer his antagonist was interested in offering. He dodged again, but this time the raking claws sliced a pair of clean rips in his vest and jerked him off-balance. As he stumbled away, he grabbed the respective capture balls for Rattata and Gastly and released their contents. As soon as Rattata appeared on the ground, Jason could see its hackles rise and it let out a series of short, snapping barks at the fog. When the trainer looked to the Ghost-Type Pokémon he’d unleashed, he was intrigued to see that Gastly, too, was visibly unnerved. “Gaaas?”

Jason hoped Gastly would be able to understand him. “A little girl downstairs has a Gastly that knows how to blind this Kangaskhan... keep her from finding people. I need you to help me. Can you do that, too?”

But Gastly turned left to right, left to right again. “Gas-gastly...”

Jason faltered. “You can’t?”

“Gaa-gas.”

His head fell. “Great. Just great.”

“Justgreatjustgreatjustgreat...”

Jason raised his head. The words were his, but the voice wasn’t; it instead belonged to the man with the higher-pitched tone. Clouds again rolled and churned before him, and they twisted into the shape of the two figures he’d seen before – or at least, he presumed that’s who they were.

“Kangaskhaaaan...”

The image abruptly solidified. No longer was it just drawings in the fog, but a true, focused image that projected like a hologram in front of him. Most of it was dark... only a single light on either corner, offering only contrast and not feature to the people standing there. The perspective looked forced up from the corner of a room, a very large one.

“Just great. Why did the boss pick us to do this job?”

“We do what he says. He don’t want himself gettin’ his hands dirty. That’s what he pays schmucks like us for. He’s got lots of money, he uses it how he wants.” The shorter of the two men reached out and clasped the shoulder of his companion. “Don’t tell me you’re gettin’ squeamish, now, I mean you did walk all the way here with me.”

“I dunno, man, it just doesn’t seem quite right.”

“If it was right, how come you’re even with this outfit? You’re in the same boat as the rest of us, you ain’t even fit to be bartendin’. The boss gave you the job, now you do what he tells you or you’re back out on the street beggin’ again. Not what you want, right?”

“No...”

“Okay, so?”

A heavy sigh rippled through the darkness. “All right, I guess. Let’s go, Tentacruel.”

A burst of light split the black panorama before Jason; it had no color, just an explosion of white, but he still recognized its shape as that of an energized Pokémon emerging from a capture ball. As the light cleared, he could see the outline of a Tentacruel looming forward, looking more menacing than the average specimen.

Jason’s instincts took over even in spite of the knowledge that it was an illusion he was looking at. “Rattata, Gastly, stay right next to me,” he muttered.

The deep-voiced being continued. “Make sure you get the baby. The boss wants it, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. Tentacruel, hold down the mother and get the baby.”

“Kangaskhan! Kanga-kangaskhan!”

Jason winced, finding himself very much wanting to look away – but he kept his eyes on the image, knowing he might never see it again. The Tentacruel did as it was instructed, tentacles reaching out of sight but presumably to grasp its target’s limbs. The image shook violently back and forth, and only then did it occur to Jason that what he was looking at was the perspective of the Kangaskhan itself. Beneath its booming bellows, he could hear a smaller voice wailing; the image suddenly shifted downward to the sight of tentacles lifting the baby from Kangaskhan’s pouch. The infant was crying and reaching out towards its mother even as it helplessly retreated from the view of the elder Pokémon.

“Hold on, she’s breaking free.”

“No kidding, she’s pissed. But don’t worry, there’s no way out. Now all we gotta do is take her out.”

“They resist injury pretty well, especially in a blind rage.”

“Thanks for the biology lesson, Doc,” the deeper voice guffawed. “Not a problem, I brought insurance. Just wrap her up tight and lemme do the rest.”

“Yeah. Tentacruel, Wrap.”

“Kangas-kangas-kangaskhan!”

Suddenly there was a splashing noise, and the image became blurry. It shook back and forth violently, and Jason nearly looked away for the sudden case of vertigo he was feeling. But by now he couldn’t look away even though he wanted to. The image wobbled back and forth again and again, but the splashing continued.

“Think that’s about got it. C’mon out, Charmeleon.”

Jason grit his teeth at the sight of the flame-tailed lizard emerging from its capture ball. God, I’m about to watch a murder through the eyes of the murdered...

“All right, let’s go. Flamethrower!”

“Chaaaaar!”

Now Jason closed his eyes tightly, and it took all his strength to crank his head away from the image itself. But nothing could block out the sound of flame searing all around the Kangaskhan, nor the sound of her enraged and pained cries while she was burned to a crisp that could not have been achieved just by the flame of her antagonist alone. Somewhere along the line – perhaps it was only a few moments later, perhaps it was forever – her shouts became hoarse, then slackened, and then faded entirely. The sounds became steadily more muddled, but Jason could still hear the snapping and crackling of flame.

“She’s done. You happy now?” said the higher voice.

“Yeah, I’m happy. You did good. But it ain’t about me. It’s about the boss.”

“How very astute of you.”

Jason frowned and looked up. The image was nothing but blackness now, but the voice that had just spoken was brand new to the conversation. The sound was becoming more distorted with each passing second but he strained to hear what this newcomer had to say. It was far more precise with enunciation than either of the others were... emphasis seemed to be on each and every word.

“Boss!” the lower voice boomed out in surprise. “Thought you wanted us to take care of this ourselves. See, we got the baby, just like you wanted.”

“And so you have. But your work is not done. There is the matter of disposing of its body. Have you established plans for that?”

“Well... it ain’t like we was gonna leave her in the gym or anything. We figured to fly south, dump her off in the sea.” There was a long, drawn-out pause; the bass voice sounded a little more nervous when it spoke again. “Better’n makin’ a scene buryin’ her somewhere, right?”

“A fair plan. But I have a different one for you...”

Beyond that point, the voice was so muted and muffled that Jason could no longer comprehend it. The blackness in front of him gave way to the purple smoke once again, and throughout the floor a great shuddering moan went up from what sounded like several different voices overlapping each other. And above them was hers. “Khaaannn...”

Jason let out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been withholding, and he looked up. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “I know you’re angry, but staying up here and being mad at everyone else who sets foot in this place isn’t going to help you. If you let me, I think I can help. Let me help you find your baby. I can make her safe. I know a place where she’ll never be hurt, where bad people won’t take her away.”

“Khaaannn...”

Abruptly the sound of the bass voice boomed through his ears, and an image flashed before him for an instant – a replay of what he’d just seen... but a selective one. “Make sure you get the baby... the boss wants it... It ain’t about me, it’s about the boss...”

Jason frowned and tilted his head. She’s trying to talk to me with the words she heard. That’s new. But it proves she understands me. “Then I’ll help you find this ‘boss’, whoever he is. I’ll help you get her back from him. Just... just come with me. We can do it together.”

...there’s no way out...”

“I’ll bet there is a way out. Were you trained?”

“...yeah, yeah... we do what he says...”

Cautiously, he removed the one remaining Dusk Ball in his pack and held it up. “Then you know what this is. If you were trained, you probably spent a lot of time in one.” He gestured to his Gastly, who had not moved from its hovering position beside him. “It’s possible for this one to be in one of these, even though he’s hardly ever solid. Maybe the same can be true for you, too.”

There was a long silence in the room, followed by the precise voice from earlier. “...a fair plan...”

He took a deep breath. “Then come out and meet me. Show me who you are.”

The violet clouds churned once more, but this time instead of breaking apart and streaming all around him, they began to coalesce. Fog poured into an invisible mold before his eyes like sand in an hourglass. All around him he could hear a humming noise from craggy, croaking voices, as though the effort required as much energy from all the ghosts around her as it did from the Kangaskhan herself. The it seemed to harden, and the outline gained enough definition that there was no mistaking the image... even if Jason hadn’t already figured it out from the Pokémon’s cries.

He tried, but could not restrain a shudder as the phantasm coalesced into a fully realized body. This Kangaskhan was no bigger than any of its sisters in the wild, but it was unnerving to see one without a baby in its pouch – he had yet to see a fully-grown female without one. Its fists flexed while it kept both large eyes narrowed, as though discerning whether or not it was inclined to punch his lights out. But in that area, it was exercising restraint, and Jason figured that was at least a step in the right direction.

He spread both arms wide. “I’m not here to hurt you. I promise I’m not. Let me help you, and you can rest in peace. We can find her together. Okay?”

The Pokémon ghost’s reply was what appeared to be a hesitant, wary nod. Jason was thrown off again by another dichotomy – while Kangaskhan’s mouth did not open or even so much as twitch, nor did its body heave, its utterance still rumbled through the air. “Khaaannn...”

Jason held up the Dusk Ball once more. “Are you ready to come with me?”

Another nod.

He took another deep breath, then adopted a throwing stance and lobbed the ball at the image, silently praying that it would actually strike something. For that single harrowing instant, he thought he could see it starting to pass through the ghost, and the whole exercise would be for naught–

But no. The ball bounced backwards and up, and it spat out a wide orange beam of energy that wreathed about the Kangaskhan’s form. The Pokémon had just enough time to look up almost quizzically at the device before dissolving into a mixture of neon plasma and purple smoke that was drawn into the ball like some reverse form of Pandora’s box.

Then the ball fell to the floor – a quiet thud, the noise was strangely dull when one considered the eerie amplification of every other noise in the room up until now. Jason’s eyes were wide with anxiety and perhaps a touch of fear as he watched the ball roll back and forth across the floor... its central stud burned brightly, so much so that the light was spreading across the containment seal. The ball spun this way and that, and Jason knew that the capture was not taking place without a fight. No matter what, a Pokémon’s gonna resist the confinement of a capture ball when it’s not used to it... it’s the sudden claustrophobia, they say, something about being trapped inside they instantly rail against. I hope that thing’ll hold her, though, ‘cause if it doesn’t, I don’t have anything better that can...

And then, the glow began to fade. And continued to dissipate, on a ball that no longer rolled across the floor like an object possessed.

Jason refused to release his breath just yet. He glanced at his belt – only five capture balls filled it now (Gastly’s Dusk Ball, and the Poké Balls for Gyarados, Rattata, Spearow, and Paras), so the Dusk Ball that had just captured Kangaskhan would not vanish into the ether of the Pokémon Management System as had those before it.

He looked to Rattata and Gastly each in turn, barely willing to risk even a step forward. But they both offered him looks of silent expectation... boring the words directly into his brain. Take it. Just pick it up and take it.

He took a wary step forth... then another... and another, until the ball was so close he could prod it with his toe. He knelt down, and wrapped his fingers about it.

It was cool to the touch. Cooler than it should have been, given the struggle that had taken place in it just seconds earlier. Like I threw it at an ice cube and not a Pokémon, he thought. Before putting too much thought into it, he pressed the stud in the center and slotted it in the vacant port in his belt.

Beep.

The slightest crease formed in the center of his eyebrows. It’s... done.

“...oh, my god,” he breathed.

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© Matt Morwell, 2011