Rock Tunnel was pitch dark. No lamps, no strung lights. Just a long corridor of cold stone leading toward Lavender Town.
Adam's eyes had been fixed long ago; to him, the dark was just dark, not blindness. Ren needed the help. She kept a firm hand on his forearm, letting him guide her through the gloom. She could use her observation haki for this but she enjoyed it this way more. Ahead, the Butterfree fluttered, shedding a dim powder-glow that cut three feet into the dark.
"First place all week nothing's run from me," Ren said. Her voice muffled against the stone.
"They can't see you coming."
"So the trick is hunting in the dark. Like a monster."
"Your words."
Something skittered to the left. A Zubat, or a Machop. One of the things that owned the hollows. It caught the edge of the Butterfree's glow and vanished into a side fissure. Fleeing the light. Fleeing her, just like everything else under the sun. Adam kept his mouth shut. He was learning.
They broke out of the stone throat into a wall of grey.
Lavender Town was the quietest place Adam had been on this world.
It was a small grey town on a hill, crowned by a tower, tall and narrow and old. Everyone Adam passed on the way up spoke in low voices, or didn't speak at all. He understood why before Sage said a word. He'd been in enough places built around the dead to know one on sight.
"It's a graveyard," he said quietly. "The tower. People bring their Pokémon here when they die. That's what it's for."
Ren went still beside him. The teasing went out of her. Her hand found the Pidgey where it sat on her shoulder, stroking its feathers, the grumpy little bird uncharacteristically letting her.
"Oh," she said. "That's why it's so quiet."
They stood at the bottom for a while. He'd seen a lot of graves in two years. Most of them he'd made. This one was somebody's pet, and the one next to it, and the one next to that, and he didn't try to put words on why that landed harder.
"Let's go up." Not to catch anything, he thought. Just to see the top.
[ There is a Gastly line in here, if you want your ghost. ] A pause. [ But there is something higher up, Host. Grieving. And a red R stirring it. ]
Of course. Of course they were here too.
The lower floors were peaceful. Gastly drifted between the tombstones like patches of purple smoke, curious rather than hostile, and one of them followed Adam up two flights with the fascinated attention of a thing that had never met a person it couldn't spook. He let it. He liked it. He'd always liked the idea of the Gastly line, the joke and the menace of it, a ghost that grinned.
Higher up, the air changed. A cold that wasn't temperature. A pressure behind the eyes. The Gastly thinned and hung back.
On the fourth floor, three Team Rocket grunts had a Cubone cornered.
It was a small thing, an armored lizard wearing a larger skull like a helmet, and it stood over a fresh grave with its club raised in both hands, shaking, refusing to move. One of the grunts had a sack already half-full of pale curved shapes.
"Come on, just the one more," the grunt was saying, closing on the Cubone. "The little ones sell best. Cubone skull, whole, they pay stupid money for—"
"Hey," Adam said.
They turned. Adam took one step into the room, and for a moment he wanted, very badly, to put all three of them through the wall behind them. He'd killed men for less than this. His hand was already closing into a fist.
He made himself open it. I should not be the one doing it.
"Mankey."
The monkey had been sulking since the sunshine of Cerulean, benched and bored. It came off Adam's shoulder like it had been waiting its whole life for the word. These three were solid, corporeal, punchable things, and a punchable thing was the only thing the Mankey had ever wanted from the world. It went through the grunts' Zubat, Koffing and Rattata in a short brutal flurry of everything Adam had drilled into it. It was not gentle. It was over in seconds, and the monkey stood among three downed Pokémon breathing hard, glancing back for the approval it would rather die than ask for.
"Good," Adam said. It preened.
He looked at the grunts, who hadn't run yet. "Put them back. Every single one. Then get out, and tell whoever runs your Cinnabar shipment that he made a terrible new enemy."
They ran. They left the sack.
Ren crouched and started returning the skulls to the graves, careful, her hands not quite steady. Adam went to the Cubone.
It wouldn't leave the grave. It looked up at him from under the skull and made a sound he felt in his chest.
He crouched. He looked at the grave instead of the child, because the child was too much. Fresh earth, clawed and torn. A long scrape where a club had been dragged. Something had fought here, over this spot, and lost.
Its mother, he thought, and went cold and quiet.
The temperature dropped. The light went blue. She came up out of the floor.
She had been a Marowak once, the grown thing the Cubone would have become. Death had made her white and burning-eyed, huge with rage. She rose over the grave and over her child. She didn't know friend from enemy anymore, only that living things were near the thing she'd died for. Her empty gaze swept the room and landed on the nearest warm body, which was Adam.
She came at him.
He could do nothing. His fists went through her like she was the smoke. You cannot punch grief. His powers were locked, his monkey useless, his bug useless; Ren was across the room but she knew not to meddle in this, if Adam needed help he would say so.
Adam did the only thing left. He put himself over the Cubone, wrapped it up in his arms, turned his back to the ghost, and took the hit.
It landed like cold going all the way through, into a place his body didn't cover. He set his teeth and held on.
"I've got him," he said, through them. "He's safe. Look. He's safe."
The Marowak reared to strike again.
The strike never fell.
The shadow Adam cast on the floor stood up.
It peeled off the stone, smoke-grey and low, almost shaped like a person, and it stepped between him and the ghost. It caught her next blow on one arm and held it there. It didn't hit back. It just looked at her.
Her burning eyes went past it, to the Cubone in Adam's arms. Whole. Safe.
The rage went out of her. Whatever she'd become, came apart, and what was left was only tired and sad. She sank down toward the grave, and disappeared.
The Cubone stopped shaking.
The shadow turned around to face him.
Adam looked at it. It looked back, and its eyes were the only bright thing about it.
"...What are you?" he said.
It didn't answer. It reached down into his own shadow on the floor, drew out something small and round, and held it up to him. One of his own Poké Balls.
He stared at it. After all that. You want to come with me.
"Yeah," he said, rough. "Yeah. Okay."
He took the ball out of its hand, and it was already gone, folding back down into the sphere. A single click. There was no fight in it at all.
[ Congratulations Host. You caught your first mythical pokemon. ]
It followed us since we arrived, Adam thought. It watched all of it.
[ It did. ]
Ren crossed the room. She didn't say anything clever. She just put her arms around him and the Cubone both.
"You're cold," she said into his shoulder. "Are you ok?"
"I am fine, it will pass."
She pulled back and looked at him, worried, annoyed at herself for it. "You know you're insane, right? Normal people don't body-block a ghost for some kid they've never met." She hit him in the chest, not hard. "...Thank you. For being like that."
Adam looked down instead of answering. The Cubone had a fistful of his shirt and no plan to let go.
He didn't think about it long. "Hand me a ball."
"You're not even going to fight it."
"It's an orphan, Ren."
He touched the ball to the small weight against his chest, and it clicked, and that was that.
On the way down, the Gastly floated out from behind a pillar, grinning, the one that had followed him up. It looked at him and waggled where its eyebrows would be.
"Oh, come on, another one?" Adam said. He was too worn out to argue with a ghost. He held out the ball, and the Gastly went in cackling.
They came out of the tower into the grey evening with three Pokémon they hadn't had that morning.
Ren looked at his belt and started to laugh, halfway through trying to say something.
"You can't go anywhere," she got out. "You cannot go one single place without coming back with strays."
"I project safety."
"Really, even for ghosts?"
"He had sad eyes, he was probably afraid."
"It's a gas cloud, Adam. Its job is to scare people." Ren gave him the deadpan look.
He looked back at the tower, quiet now against the dark. He'd come up to pay his respects and he'd meant it. Somewhere in there it had turned into this instead. He found he was fine with that.
Behind them, his shadow lay flat and ordinary on the ground.
AN: If we get to 300 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 500, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123