Chapter Text
I only watched as Stantler went down, something like blood suddenly staining her blonde hair red. Houndoom, shocked into silence for once, turned and watched her friend fall. Nick raised the bloody shovel again for another strike.
"Ike, jump! Des, Magnitude!" I yelled suddenly, only half aware of the fact that I was speaking at all. The Luxray leapt into the air as the Camerupt brought both of his front paws down onto the ground, cracking it. The Rapidash's legs buckled and it fell with a whinny. Carlita and I were both knocked off our feet, but not too much worse for wear. The fire around us suffered a bit, completely going out in some places, but that wasn't even on my mind.
Most importantly, Nick lost his balance and dropped the shovel. Houndoom fell, as did the Floatzel. Ike landed lightly on the ground, looking almost smug that he didn't get any of that attack.
Nick looked around for the source, and his eyes finally found mine.
Almost immediately, he looked away, something unreadable as his expression. He cast about him for something and knelt down. When he stood back up, the shovel was once again in his hands. Houndoom was getting up in front of him, not even looking at him and the shovel about to come down on her head.
"Someone—Stop him!" I shouted to no one in particular, wishing now more than ever that Konstantin was still with us. Then he could have just floated over and spooked Nick, or attacked him, or brought me over to him with a Shadow Sneak. I only now realized that the circle of fire that was once protecting us was now keeping us in.
Ike sent a Thunderbolt at him, but Chase intercepted it in the air easily. He did it again when Ike tried again. Des shot a Flamethrower at the Garchomp too, but once again, Chase effortlessly combated it with one of his own.
Carlita shot past me, and with a running jump, made it over one of the smaller patches of flames. She ran right into Nick, sending them both flying and skidding to a stop well away from the rest of them. He tore her off of him and sat up, trying to get to his feet. She tackled him from behind, digging her sharp claws into his shoulders. She hung on, even as he struggled to his feet and tried to force her off of him. Finally, he managed to get her off. It ripped a good portion of his hoodie and smeared blood over his exposed shoulders, but he got Carlita off all the same.
He ran over to where he'd dropped the shovel while she was getting back to her feet. For one heart stopping moment, I thought he was going to attack my Pokemon with it. I was almost relieved when he swung it at Houndoom instead. She went down to the ground, obscured from my sight by the fire between us. Carlita screamed at him, but Nick ignored her and continued beating Houndoom with the flat side of the shovel.
Over the shouting, flames, and Carlita's screaming, I couldn't hear what he was saying. But he was speaking the entire time; I could see his mouth moving. With each swing, I noticed something splatter up onto his clothes. The shovel was dripping with the stuff. Stuff that looked red, that looked alarmingly like blood. Carlita, even as I shouted to stop her, lunged at him again—only to get halted by Chase. The Garchomp picked her up and, with a growl, tossed her back into the ring of fire. When I turned back from her, making sure she was okay, Chase was pulling Nick away from the fallen girls, snapping the shovel casually with one of his claws. He growled something softly and picked his trainer up, glaring at me over the fire. I backed up a step. Instead of attacking, however, he leapt into the sky.
Chase circled around us once, and then breathed down a jet of fire towards where the girls had fallen.
Behind me, trainers finally poured out of the burning building, screaming and gasping and sobbing as they did so. From around the corner, more of the supporters ran out, only to be confronted by the ever-growing flames. I only watched Chase and Nick fly off into the blood red sunset.
-.-.-
I hung my head in my hands. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried not to… Cry? Throw up? Scream? I didn't know. I didn't know so many things, but these unknowns were piling up on me, suffocating me, crushing me.
Video cameras, at least until they were burned up in the inferno, had taped the entire thing and played it live on the air. No one stopped it. So all of Sinnoh got to see two teenage girls lock thousands of lives in a building and set it on fire. All of Sinnoh had seen the early escapees murdered. All of Sinnoh got to see my daring breakout and subsequent attack.
All of Sinnoh, once again, saw Nicholas Sayre murder.
The police, no longer blocked and beaten by the rebellious group, were still digging bodies out of the wreckage. Either all of that group were dead or had long since fled Jubilife. Not everyone had made it out of that burning building, either.
Not even half had.
There was so much confusion and pain in the leftover of The Tournament. People weren't even sure where to begin. The death toll kept getting higher and higher. Investigators weren't sure who died of what—was it smoke inhalation? Trampled to death? Burned alive? The fire made everything ridiculously chaotic and blurry, since it destroyed so much. So much evidence, so many rationales, so many lives.
The media and public couldn't even begin to figure out who to blame. Nick's last-minute role in everything seemed to shock everyone. He had, after all, publicly, loudly, and violently renounced what they were doing. He beat that much into them. But hadn't Houndoom and Stantler been following his philosophies on training to begin with? The television station, now under its own control again, had a heyday trying to figure it all out.
Byron was dead, too. No one could figure out how he fit into it all. Did Nick kill him, too? He had appeared with his shovel. But then again, it was the other group that had been holding him hostage and freely declaring they'd kill him if need be. Most people seemed to agree that it was Nick who did it, if only for the fact that they had a Gym leader serial killer on their hands to gossip about.
The Gym leaders hadn't known what to do. Roark and Gardenia were in Jubilife now, but what they had been doing, no one knew. The Elite Four and Champion were silent on the matter. The training government hadn't seem to do much—or, if they had, it simply hadn't worked. The trainers had been left on their own. It made for hushed, angry conversations and rebellious glares. Gym leaders and the Elite Four hadn't done anything. It was the trainers who had fixed it, however badly. Another Gym leader was now dead, which left their number at six, and the training population had been decimated far beyond that percentage.
I clenched my fists and rubbed my eyes, pressing my palms against them. I wasn't crying. Far from it. I took another deep breath. I had survived, my team and I had survived. We had minimal injuries. My shoulder was burned. Des had nearly exhausted his fire sac, and had taken a nasty hit on his leg from the Rapidash. Ike was worn out, too, sulky and rebellious still. Most of his injures came from Carlita. Carlita, however, was the most injured of us. She had minor burns and scrapes all along her body, the Nidoqueen had fractured her tail, and she was still shaken from the entire ordeal.
I still had to figure out what to do with them all, too. I wasn't looking forward to that part. Des and I seemed cool enough with each other now, but Ike was openly angry with me, and Carlita wouldn't stop shivering or whimpering. Not for the first time, I found myself missing Konstantin.
The day after the catastrophe, television crews found me. Someone had managed to put two and two together and identify me from the Abomasnow attack. More than that, though, they wanted to interview the hero who saved so many from the burning building.
Too bad I had aimed to save all of them.
I continually brushed off reporters and cameramen, dearly thankful that they didn't figure out I had been friends with Nick, once upon a time. They pestered me, though, so I routinely had to retreat to my room in the Center for any semblance of privacy. I was putting off talking to my team, and I knew it. But I wasn't going to hold that conversation in Jubilife, and I couldn't easily get out of Jubilife without a squad of cameras following me.
Oh, if only I had known then what fate had in store for me. I probably would have rather dealt with them.
My phone had been ringing off the hook all throughout The Tournament. Most of it was calls from my parents or Hanna. Eventually, though, it stopped ringing. I didn't bother with feeling grateful for the small miracle. I found out soon enough, though, why the calls had stopped.
I peeked out into the Center lobby. There was a reporter and cameraman in the corner interviewing one of the trainers who had won the first round (and thus got out of the death fire that followed). As long as I could sneak by them, it looked like I would be home free.
Oh how wrong I was.
I took three steps out into the lobby, completely passing by the couple talking urgently to the Nurse Joy. I halted, however, when one of them turned around and demanded, "Where do you think you're going, young man?!"
"…Dad?!" I hadn't been expecting my parents. The thought that they'd come to find me hadn't even crossed my mind. Sure, they were only a couple hours from Jubilife by car, but they weren't trainers. They didn't have to participate in The Tournament or worry about some of its ramifications. Nevermind the fact that their only son had been forced into it and lost in the first round, only to break out of the burning building in time to stop nothing from happening—
My train of thought was cut off as my mother threw her arms around me and managed to lift me. I felt wetness on my forehead. I craned my neck back to see that she was crying. Not even little tears, either; she was fully crying, sobbing even, and by the looks of it, had been for the last couple days. "Y-You almost died!"
I didn't mention that that was not a new occurrence. Instead, I flailed a bit until she set me back on the ground and let go of me. I tried not to notice that we'd caught the attention of the camera. "Mom… I'm fine." It was all I could say, really. And even that was a partial lie. What did one say to one's mother after that?
"You almost died!" she repeated firmly, voice shaking. "Those horrid, vicious people, trying to put on that—that barbaric fight! And making you fight!"
"Mom, I'm fine. Really. See?" I waved my arms to demonstrate this fact. "Nothing's broken this time. I-I got out." My voice caught on that last part. Not for the first time, I realized how lucky I was to have survived that. The death count had already broken a thousand, and it was hardly starting to let up. In between the tear jerking recounts of what had happened, another story going on was how many more trainers were dropping out of training. So far, from what I could tell, about three-fourths of those who lost the first round (and survived) stopped training. About a third of those who won also quit. I wasn't very good with math, but I knew trainer numbers were dwindling.
"Y-You are coming home right this instant. You a-are stopping this dangerous training of yours—oh, I knew we shouldn't have let you start in the first place—an-and you are going to stop this! You will b-be safe at home with your family again!"
I pushed my mother away. My father, standing over us, narrowed his eyes warningly at me. I squeezed my eyes shut and balled my hands into fists. "No."
"Are you talking back to us? Are you serious about trying to continue training after all of this?!" he said, voice dangerously quiet. He only got that tone when I was really in trouble, but somehow, it didn't scare me as much as it did when I was younger.
"M-Mom… Dad… I am serious about this. I have my team. We're all still alive. I'm sticking with them. They're my family, too—"
"We are your family as well! We're not saying you have to get rid of your Pokemon! Of course they can come live with us—!" my mother cried desperately, trying to capture me in a hug again. I ducked out of her arms.
"These are battling Pokemon, mom, not pets!" I didn't even want to think what Ike would try to do if I announced he'd have to become a house pet. "I'm staying a trainer."
"We'll pull your trainer's license," my dad growled.
I narrowed my eyes up at him. "You legally can't after a trainer earns four badges. I have eight. …Don't you see? I have a good team, I'm actually good at this! This—Training makes me happy, and even if I have to—to try not to get distracted by all of these injustices in the world and try not to get angry, or bitter, or turn dark, or any of that, I'm still good at this and I'm a good trainer and I have a good team and this makes me happy!"
"It's still too dangerous for you," my mother said with a note of finality.
I really didn't want to get into this argument. Then again, I was already neck-deep in this argument, so I couldn't help it at this point. I reined in my runaway emotions and tried logic. "…I have three Pokemon. They're pretty aggressive, too. You remember Ike, my Shinx? Well, he evolved and he's a Luxray now. He will not be a good pet. An-And I have a fighter, too! A very energetic fighter who couldn't stand to live in one place all the time. She would get into so much trouble. And mom, I have Des. That Numel you gave me evolved into a Camerupt and he got big. We can't support a giant, fiery camel. But I can. I'm a trainer, and I can keep all of them as my team. Not pets."
"You are not returning on this journey of yours! The training world right now is too dangerous. Even Gym leaders are dying left and right! That Sayre kid is on the loose, and look at what he did just yesterday! Do you know how close that came to being you?!" my mother said with a half-suppressed sob.
My father took over from there. "You've gotten your eight badges. You became a good trainer. You can retire now. We have plenty of room for your Pokemon, and I think they will behave better than you'd think. You are retiring now."
"You can't do that." Something in me just snapped. I took a step away from them. The pokeballs and ultra ball in my pocket felt much too heavy. "You have no right! I am the trainer here! I have my badges—you can't stop me from being a trainer—I am not going to stop being a trainer! Not after all this! I-I have to finish this."
"What do you have to finish?" my father asked icily.
"Nick." It was the first time I'd ever said it aloud, the first time I admitted it. "I have to stop him. I have to get to the bottom of this. If I don't stop him, who will, dad?! The police are scared of him, the Gym leaders can't stand up to him, and he's crippled the Champion!" I shouted, throwing my arms out wide.
"Why do you have to?!" my mother demanded, crying again. She stepped closer, but I just backed away again. "You're just a child! You can't fight him—"
"I'm the only one who can, didn't you hear me?!"
"He has a full team! If there's one thing about trainers I know, they're supposed to have six Pokemon, and that Sayre does. You don't."
"My Pokemon are strong enough! I-I can catch more if I need to—but it has to be me to stop Nick from becoming the monster!" I howled, unable to stop myself any longer. I had to stop Nick. I had to ask him what the heck he thought he was doing, abandoning me and becoming evil. He wasn't allowed to. He never had been. I had to stop him, beat some sense into him, and drag the answers out of him if need be. I had to.
"You have three! Even if I was going along with this, I would not put my son up against that terrorist with those odds!" Even my father's voice was rising now.
I was about to continue my raving, but then cool, soft paws wrapped themselves around my eyes and head from behind. My head was pulled gently back, resting against teeth. "My comrade has four Pokemon. And he will stop the monster, given time."