Words to describe that which they were looking at wouldn’t express enough. Right above the meadow floated the shape of a Pokemon. It had a small, imp like body and a large head resembling a ladybug’s shell. The Pokemon, whose eyebrows resembled an Orbeetle’s, looked as if smothered in dark blue ink, in spite of the sun’s blessed light beaming down upon it. All its colours of its body had been dimmed to a near unrecognisable monochrome. The eyes had taken on a reddish purple glow, burying the pupils and irises under a sinister mask devoid of any emotion. All they did was stare lifelessly ahead, straight through the souls of the Oshawott and Charmander staring at the Pokemon in wide-jawed horror.

Before either of them had the chance to move, the Orbeetle threw its mouth open, releasing an ear-piercingly sharp hiss that stung George and Blitzer deep. Like the stinger of a Beedrill burrowing into its prey, it pierced their ears, kicking up a terrible headache in them both. An instinct sent George’s hand flying towards his scalchop. They weren’t leaving without a fight.

“Graah! You’ll pay for that, you creepy insectoid!”

Blitzer reeled backwards and spat out a glob of flame. The Orbeetle flicked its body sidewards: The fireball hit nothing but a shadowy trail that looked like black vapour. Blitzer looked stunned. The Orbeetle stretched its arms out over its large head; a giant ball of purple materialised above, and flung it at them. They jumped sidewards away from each other; an explosion hit the spot they were standing at, scraping past their hides and sending shrapnels of dirt flying through the air

“Aah!”

Coughing and sputtering from the taste of dirt, George got back up. No time to check up on Blitzer; the Orbeetle readied to strike again. He jumped the gun and pulled on his aquatic energies, spitting out a solid stream of water in the shadowy Pokemon’s general vicinity. It connected, to little effect. The ladybug Pokemon took the attack head on. It shrugged it off like mere drops of rain, then threw back its arms to retaliate. The purple glow in its eyes strengthened. A droning sound through the meadow and nearby forest. George could feel the beat of his heart under his ribs. Everywhere he could run, the attack would follow him. His instincts told him to run, yet he couldn’t. With eyes wide open, he watched as the Orbeetle threw its arms ahead, sending a beam crackling through the air straight towards him. A streak of orange jumped into the corner of his eye. Yelping, he was slammed onto his belly, sliding to a stop while clutching his scalchop tight in his hand.

“Argh!”

George rolled onto his back to see Blitzer standing beside him, sucking in a deep breath through his nose before spitting out a mixture of blue and red fire. A cry sounded in the distance. Blitzer closed his mouth and sighed with relief, then panted as he pulled George back onto two feet.

“You alright there?”

“Yeah, I think so… what was that?!”

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen anything like it! What’s with that glow in its eyes?”

“Glow? How about everything else?!”

George gritted his teeth and looked ahead into the meadow. The Orbeetle had landed somewhere in the back, its inky aura visible even from afar. It was stroking the blackened side of its head with one of its arms. It must have been nursing a burn, but just when they had thought they’d seen it all, the arm took on a black glow. The sound of sludge being smeared over an object crept into their ears, and for a brief second it felt as if they were smelling it too. Tasting it, even.

“What’s it doing…” Blitzer’s tail lashed back and forth nervously. George narrowed his eyes, then sucked a breath in between his teeth at what he saw. Black was turning blue.

“It’s healing itself!”

Blitzer shifted a foot backwards. “H-healing?! Is that even possible?”

George slapped his tail. “I don’t know, but I’m not sticking around here just to find out!” he exclaimed, then ran past the ridge and back into the Mystery Dungeon as fast as he could. His mind was racing. That shadow. Those eyes. That glow. The strength. Its resistance. Those sounds. What on earth was happening?

“Hey! Wait up, what if there’s more?” Blitzer yelled after George, who reflexively stopped dead in his tracks. “No! Keep going! Just don’t leave me!”

George grimaced. “Okay, just hurry up!” he exclaimed back.

It didn’t take long for Blitzer to catch up. Side by side they ran, desperately hoping that shadow wouldn’t follow. Still George felt the glare of those glowing eyes. They were out for blood. Their blood. It wasn’t a feral defending its territory, or a mugger back home demanding money at the point of a knife. Not a chance in hell. Adrenaline surged through their veins and boosted their legs; Blitzer even had his odd walk under control.

Ten minutes later, Blitzer pointed towards a tree just off the path. Without giving George a chance to voice his own thoughts, he crashed down onto his belly, heavily panting and clutching his head. Even if George wanted to protest, he was too exhausted. A prickling remnant of the attacks had forced its way into his body, as if each hair had been absorbing and letting them run rampant inside. Stranger things had been seen today.

George flopped backwards against the tree, his scarf loosening up after getting caught on a pointy shard of bark. Looking back the way they came, the coast seemed clear for now. But this was a world where eyes weren’t necessarily arbiters of the truth. Least of all now.

“What on earth was that…”

Blitzer rolled onto his back, letting his tail scorch some grass in the process. It didn’t take long before the smoky smell filled the air. “I’ve been running through this dungeon before I could even spit fire properly. Never, ever did I see anything like it.”

George clutched an arm over his chest, eyes shiftily going back and forth over the surrounding area in search of anything else that might be considered a threat. “Please tell me that’s a lie.”

“It’s not.”

“But… how? How is that even possible?”

Blitzer sighed. “I wish I knew the answer to that myself, George. I really do.” He had to hold up his head with one of his claws, whose white tips had gotten longer. George felt strangely compelled to look, as if some force was ordering him to, even though said struggle was anything but pretty. “Ugh, this is the worst time to have a headache…”

“That’s the umpteenth headache this week,” George said, scratching the side of his head. ‘And they’re getting worse too, looks like. Ugh, am I going to get these as well eventually?’

The Charmander angrily forced himself to sit upright. “Yeah, and I’m long past the point of being tired of them, I’m about ready to rip the legs off a Zubat! Ugh, why can’t these damn cramps just go away already? I try to fight, or anything basic at all, and they get worse!”

George pressed his back further against the tree, one eye drawn to a shifty patch of leaves deeper into a murky stretch of woods. “We should take a break from exploring. If we’re making it out of here alive, anyway.”

Blitzer winced as he processed what George had said? “What do you mean, ‘alive’? Of course we’re going to make it out alive, we’ve done it so many times before that I lost count. It’s a no brainer,” he said, trying to play it off like they hadn’t gotten themselves stuck in far more than they had ever bargained for. Of course, the body spoke a far more honest tongue. Nary a shred of confidence was visible in his slouched posture, or audible in his shaky breath. The cramps weren’t helping, of course. George lowered his head.

“That was before that… thing ever showed its face, wasn’t it.”

“Yeah…” Blitzer shook his head. “I’ve seen Orbeetle before, but nothing like this. One lives in the village, too. They’re tough enough, but-”

“That energy… I swear, I’ve felt it before,” George then said. Blitzer twitched his tail around in surprise.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know… it feels… familiar…” George said. An odd sense of deja vu had overcame him. He couldn’t explain it. All he could picture in his head was a pond. Then, a sharp sensation overwhelmed his gut. Imagining the energy wasn’t necessary anymore. It was staring him dead in the eye.

“b-Blitzer!! Run!!”

There was scant time to so much as blink. Blitzer’s head twisted just in time to see a swarm of blackened Spinarak skitter out of the bushes, their eyes glowing purple with a burning rage. The charmander gasped and kicked the ground: Chunks of muddy dirt split from the ground and pelted the spiders with the strength of the earth. The spiders shook themselves clean, brown turning to dark blue as they skittered ever closer to the Charmander whose mouth was now blazing.

A stream of fire roared through the woods. The cry was joined by a screech. George got up and took his scalchop into his hand. His heart pounded. A spider screeched; dark wings broke between the bushes with the speed of a drone. The shape of a Dustox emerged - and far more was on the horizon. It was as if the whole forest had woken from hibernation: Paras crawled in the distance, Dwebble emerged from behind pebbles. Caterpies, Weedles, Wurmples, every bug in the forest was sliding off the bark or through the grass, their carapaces gleaming with shadows. George bit his lip, and tightened his grip on the scalchop. The thought of running wasn’t even an idea anymore.

‘Focus, George… you can do this!’

The Oshawott tapped into his energy, hydrating his throat and stomach. The Dustox wings skittered with yellow pollen. George spat a blast of water square at its head, and hit the bullseye - the Dustox screeched as it was thrown back against a tree with enough force to send scraps of bark flying. Seeing his handy work as adrenaline pumped through his veins, George couldn’t resist the urge to smile.

‘Yeah. I did that.’

A current of flame scorched past into the push. Two Spinarak and a Weedle were left wildly flailing their flamed limbs around, weakly releasing their agonized hisses for their kin to hear, their now roasted bodies polluting the air with a noxious scent. The other bugs marching through the woods did not relent. Kricketunes whistled in the distance. Sewaddles and Sizzlipedes, Scatterbugs and Venipedes all crawled from burrows and thickets, each bearing their shadowy bodies towards the corpses of the other bugs, their hollow purple eyes eyeing the two as if they were objects. As if they were nothing. Space to be crawled through. Pebbles to crush. Food to be eaten. Blitzer spat and scorched all he could, and George brought a torrent down upon their heads, drowning the darkness out with a fury that seemed blessed by Kyogre itself.

So many fell. Burnt to a crisp, blasted to smithereens. But there were more. So many more. Too many to count. The ever growing mound of bugs was naught compared to the anger of their brethren. Their evolved forms fluttered through the branches. They crept past sidewards, claws and mandibles yearning to pounce from the back - it was a losing battle. Nothing demoralised this enemy. Nothing gave them second thoughts, not the ones missing their legs, not the ones twitching weakly, not the ones who had become part ash. The darkness that surrounded their bodies grew ever darker, and the glow of their eyes only intensified with the burning hatred and thirst for blood. George and Blitzer were aghast. The glow. The sound of a thousand bugs skittering. The stench of ash and innards.

How long had this gone on? How long could it even go on? The sea of bugs was endless. Everlasting. Drops of rain that stuck together to form a mighty storm. Blitzer and George, for the first time since the bugs had begun to crawl out of the woodworks, looked each other in the eye.

“...run!”

They turned their tail just as the wings above beat rapidly into a deep wind. Pollen scattered through the air. “Hold your breath!” Blitzer shouted, mouth half buried under one arm. George covered his mouth, but forgot to pinch his nose shut in the midst of the fog of war. A poisonous rash spread inside of him. It didn’t take long before his lungs began to feel like they were being squeezed by a large hand. A cough shot its way out of his throat. “HAGH!...Ngggh,” George hacked and uttered. A stinging sensation crept up his arms: He felt another cough brew inside of him before it shot up to his mouth as well.

“Haghh!”

“g-George! Did you breathe?”

“Y-yes- Ack!” Pain pulsed through George’s body k. Blitzer had gotten some distance on him, even with his wobbly steps.

“Just keep running! Hold on!”

They made their way back from where they came, pursued by winged shadows at every step. The path in front of George was dreary. His nose was ablaze: breathing had slathered pollen all across his respiratory system, and it made the mere act of drawing breath painful. Exhausting. Like sticking sour dip up a nostril, somehow going deep enough to reach the lung. How he wished it was just that much. Nothing more than an innocent mistake. His feet alone told him he was making progress. Cool grass or coarse dirt; neither seemed preferable. A wave of heat passed over him on occasion. It might have been Blitzer breathing fire. Was it? Nothing seemed certain anymore. The poison slowly gnawed away at him. The chattering of insectoid wings flattened his ears. He needed help, fast.

And that help would come from an unlikely source: An actual source, as a matter of fact. They reached the stream they had crossed on their way into the woods. From the first touch of cool water embracing his feet, a wave of clarity washed over. The pain lifted. The haze in his eyes dispersed, and the energy in his body surged. Out of the blue, he felt incredibly happy.

“g-George! What are you doing, they’re coming right for you!!”

The burst in energy couldn’t have come at a better time, for a Dustox and a Vivillion coated in dark blue shadows had caught up. He shifted his feet against the flow of the stream, letting the water wash over. The haze lifted. “I can handle this,” he shouted back to the fearful voice calling out to him. He didn’t pay attention to the response. Standing here, he had all the strength he needed.

“Here goes… NOTHNG!”

Water surged from his mouth and spat forth with the power of a cannon. The Dustox and the Vivillion didn’t know what had hit them: They scarcely uttered a cry before their tiny, shadowy bodies were thrown around like ragdolls, chips of their wings shattered and separated from the rest fluttering to the ground and losing their shadow. George heaved and dropped to his knees. The poison continued to do a number on him. Even then, he smiled.

‘That’s for the poison, you Pokemon sons of…’

Having seen George stand his ground, only to fall regardless, Blitzer rushed back to the stream with a tense breath, almost tripping over a bump in the road in the process. He reached for George’s arm and pulled him back to his feet, spilling hot breaths over the back of his head in the process.

“George? George! Are you alright?”

The human turned Oshawott had but a weak nod to give. “Yeah.”

“They’ve got you good… damnit, we’ve stuck around here for too long,” Blitzer grumbled with a swish of his tail, eyes turned to the path ahead. The horizon was clear. For now. “Come, we need to go. There’s some wild Pechas I saw on the way here closeby, c’mon.”

The thought of eating anything made George’s stomach churn harder than it already was. “I’m good, thank you… hagh!”

“No, you’re not! You’re poisoned, and we’re stuck here in the woods! Pechas are great against poison George, trust me! You’ve gotta eat one before you faint out here!” Blitzer yelled, tugging on George’s arm with enough force to catch George off guard.

“Ah!”

“Come on, I don’t want to get eaten by monster bugs either!”

George’s head throbbed, making it hard to think straight. The haze returned to his eyes; it wasn’t until now that George realised that Blitzer had pulled his feet out of the stream. Anything scarce of blasting the Charmander in the face with water wouldn’t be able to reverse that. So he left himself to Blitzer’s wims, clutching his head with the hand that wasn’t being dragged off.

“It’s around here somewhere, I swear. Damnit, don’t tell me now is the time to get lost…”

Blitzer grumbled to himself between steps. George didn’t reply, too busy keeping his own feet steady through the burning in his body, all while trying to avoid being burned by the tail swinging back and forth less than spitting distance away. He had to bite his lips. There weren’t any Pechas on the road back, none that he could see. A few berries, perhaps, but none as pink as they needed to be. This wasn’t the time to create false hope. George wasn’t angered. The aching and coughing sucked up all the energy needed to be angry. Then the urge to spew up joined in.

“There, there it is!”

A tug on George’s arm sent a chain reaction into motion. Arm, throat, mouth, stomach. Something was rising. George felt himself growing pale. ‘Oh no. Please no.’ His feet dragged on the floor. His stomach burned, his throat followed. It came. It came fast. He choked on his breath, then keeled over forwards. With a hack, a stream of green water drizzled from his mouth, hitting the ground with a smack and spattering over his legs. The sudden keeling caused Blitzer to yelp and stumble, letting go of George’s arm, face planting into the dirt just before a tiny tree with pinkish berries attached to it. He looked back and gagged: George was laying on the ground, the once white fur on his face dripping with a foul-smelling green liquid.

“Oh Arceus almighty that’s disgusting…”

“Nggghh… agh-”

George hacked up a spatter. Unfortunately, he happened to be looking up at Blitzer’s face when it happened. The spatter flew, and Blitzer pulled a sour face: His cream-colored belly now sported a green stain. He hissed between his teeth and clenched his fist; George weakly looked on, seeing a hazy claw come up to his face. He found his mouth being pried open.

“Alright, just eat this up, okay?”

Half of a berry was shoved into his mouth. Sweet, yet rough on the tongue at first, he slowly chewed it into a fine pulp, then swallowed. If it had an aftertaste, George couldn’t tell it apart from the taste of his own vomit. It certainly wasn’t much compared to the pechas Nera had served up. George sighed. He drew breath; the pain in his throat had lessened.

“Hey, how do you feel?” Blitzer asked.

“Alive.” ‘Like I’ve been on a rollercoaster for a week straight, but alive.’

Blitzer breathed out with an excited crackle coming from his tail. “Phew, that was a close one,” he chirped, wiping the puke off his chest. “Do you think you can run?”

George gave the Charmander a dull stare in return. “It’s been five seconds, Blitzer.”

“Yeah, but we need to hurry. More of them are on the way, there has to be.”

George slapped his tail around. “I know that, but… I just need to, hold on…” Slow as a Goomy, he rose back onto two feet. To Blitzer’s credit, the Pecha Berry seemed to be doing its job; the haze lifted from his eyes, the burning in his lungs and nose ceased, as did the stomach ache become manageable. All that stuck around was the sourness of his stomach acids, much to his displeasure.

“Come on George, I think I see them over there, let’s go!”

* * *

“There it is. We’ve got what we’ve come for.”

“Uhm, did you notice those ferals there, Skal?”

“Ferals? What ferals?”

“The bugs… they were coated in this black aura.”

“Hm. Didn’t see anything of the sort. Are you sure about that, Terez?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. What about them, Skal? If those things-“

“Don’t worry. You’ve said it yourself, that lad has all the strength in the world. They’re just bugs. Some magic crap won’t help ‘em much.”

“I hope you’re right…”