An Electric Tail (Pikachu Quest)

Chapter 5: Like no one ever was

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, and you have a promised threat to keep.

But first, you've really gotta ditch this Pokeball, because it's slowing you down enough that Mankey is gaining on you.

"Pika pi-pi pika ka!" you toss over your shoulder, and yelp as Mankey's answering howl comes from way closer than you thought he was, move move move get going. You juke left, hissing at the lack of traction two legs gets you compared to four, pour lightning into your hindpaws and blur forward on a diagonal with a thin enough margin that you feel one of those blunt-fingered paws start to close around your tail as you go. You hit a protruding root foot-first, kick off it into another lightning-burst, yelp again as splinters fly from a flying punch that barely misses - Mankey can move in bursts as well how is that fair never mind complain about it later - and let the Pokeball go as you rebound from an overhanging bough.

The little red-and-white ball sails swift and graceful through the air on a downward arc, bounces off a root, shoots back up with enough spin that it looks briefly pink, and plops down dead centre in the thickest patch of poison ivy you've ever seen in your life.

Excellent.

Now to get Mankey off your tail.

At the speed you're travelling, in the gloom under the canopy, identifying details in your surroundings is far from easy, even when they're brightly coloured. You're not deep enough into the woods for it to be slowing Beedrill down, either, and you can hear the buzzing of its wings behind you alongside Mankey's shrieks. They're splitting up, from the sound of it, moving out to pincer you on two sides so they can intercept if you change direction. That's not a problem, though. It suits your purposes just fine to keep going straight ahead. You keep your path erratic, leaping up to push off a treetrunk, ricocheting between half a dozen others in a blurred zigzag of jumps, then darting down to hightail it across a thick snarl of roots and slide under a thick cluster of Bluk Berry bushes.

There.

You see it as you slide out the other side of the bushes. You also hear Mankey hit them like a boulder and start tearing leaves and branches out of the way with frightening speed, as well as the deafening buzz of Beedrill closing in from your right. But they don't matter. You have your target now, and a few seconds lead. Jinking right and barely avoiding a volley of needles, you pour lightning into another burst of speed and head towards the patch of vivid pinks you can just about make out a little way off. Mankey is still close behind, and rather than shake him you project your actions clearly, being as obvious as possible in your choice of path and foothold.

You can't see if it's mimicking you. But you hope it is. And if it's smart, if Wenge has done as good a job training it as he boasted, it will be. After all, you know this terrain, and the safe paths through it. Mankey doesn't.

Such a pity that you're clever enough to turn that against him.

A scramble across another patch of roots, picking the thickest to trust your weight to with deliberate care. Duck an explosion of dirt and splinters from another of those vicious blows, then squeeze between two trees, using a protruding knot to push yourself through the small gap and forcing Beedrill to divert around them in a waste of precious time. Through another set of bushes, pulling in your limbs so as to pass through the tiny gap where only leaves and twigs bar your passage, in a gap between the branches.

When you hear the rattle of leaves behind you - still so close! - without the crack of breaking wood, you know you have him. You push lightning into another burst of speed, jump off a low branch, leap up to a second, leap again - up, up, up towards the canopy! - and turn. Mankey is in midair, the low branch bent under his weight, about to spring off towards the second.

You swing your tail and let bright lightning fly.

Mankey is fast, but your Thunder Shock is faster. The second branch explodes in a shower of sap and splinters, and Mankey is pelted with shrapnel that forces his eyes shut and knocks the breath out of him. Already jumping, and with his foothold gone and his vision cut off for a crucial second, he plummets down, down, down in a beautiful arc that lands him at the edge of the pink flower patch and sends him rolling and tumbling through it, releasing a fine cloud of sparkling pollen. It's dense - even denser than you expected; enough that you lose Mankey's shape in the cloud for a moment and his white fur is dyed pink when he rockets out of it. You can't help but wince, in appreciation if not in sympathy. You don't envy him the effects of that high a dosage.

Now it's a game of keep-away, and making him exert himself as much as possible. You leap higher, spiralling around the tree, and almost take a stinger bigger than you are to the face. Beedrill! You almost forgot about it, and now it's right there, gah! Throwing yourself sideways with a yelp, you race up the treetrunk with three sloppy, panicky bursts of lightning until you hit foliage, then plunge yourself into the leaves as the furious buzzing crashes against the thickening twigs and branches. Further in further in further in! You need to get deeper into the woods, in to where the vertical space is a maze of vines and branches and Beedrill won't have room to fly! Far below, Mankey has picked himself up, and you see him start the long climb up to where he can see his partner stabbing at the dense clusters of leaves and flowers and fruit.

Nope nope nope. Not hanging around here. Away from the scary bug and punchy-thing it is! You spring into action while Mankey is still trying to catch up to where he was when you sent him on his toxic little tumble, and race higher and deeper into the canopy. From gnarled, thick boughs that could support a Beedrill hive you climb to sturdy branches as wide across as you are, and then to supple leafy stems that sway under your feet and criss-cross so densely that Beedrill is left helplessly below, until finally you're jumping between twigs and shoots that can barely support even your tiny body, each one bending almost in half under your weight before springing back with whip-like speed as you jump to the next.

Mankey's spherical form might be small enough to fit through almost any gap you can get through, but he's bulkier and heavier, laden down with muscle. It makes him tougher, yes. It means that narrow crevices are no escape, yes. He can follow you through bushes and pursue you into tunnels, you can't divert him by dodging between closely-spaced trees or lose him in a burrow.

But he can't reach you here. You hear him howling down below, you hear the cracking and snapping of branches too thin to support his weight, and laugh. Trainers. Honestly. Always going for power, for the bigger, stronger breeds who focus on strength.

Idiots. Speed is what the winners pick. Speed and agility and being a tiny target. Really, what did Wenge think you had to learn from this?

The buzzing, thrumming beat of furious wings rises behind you like a thundercloud.

Crap.

How did Beedrill get up above the canopy layer? No, doesn't matter, it's up there now and shooting down. Where exactly is it, through that last layer of leaves and twigs? Never mind, irrelevant, you don't have a clear shot regardless. You can smell blood in the air - is it wounded? How much did it hurt itself, forcing its way through the canopy to get above you? Can it even see you, or is it just spraying needles wildly down and hoping to hit you by sheer saturation?

A dozen needles the length of your leg punch a stitched line that comes perilously close to your head, shredding two flowers and a berry on their way. Feathers beat and roosting Hoothoots screech as Beedrill's assault sends everything up here into blind panic. Right then. Moot point. However it's aiming, staying up here has just become a one-way trip to porcupine-hood, with all the quills the wrong way round. And since you've always personally thought Sandslashes look stupid, back down the trees it is, because Mankey can at least only try to punch you twice at any given time, while there are hundreds of needles perforating all the foliage around you at once.

Unfortunately, those two punches are directly between you and the relative safety of the forest floor.

Pulling your tail in close and flattening your ears against your head, you pass your next twiggy foothold and let yourself fall, paws outstretched. A thicker branch catches you after a few seconds of drop and you dig your claws in, riding it as it bends just long enough to bleed off momentum before pouncing off, onwards and downwards, leaving it to spring up with a whip-crack in your wake. A woody vine provides your next landing site, and it gives under your weight, snapping and tearing further up where it's anchored to one of the vast trunks whose bark flashes past like waterfalls of wood in reverse. You're already gone, slowed enough that another drop and another landing won't break your legs, angling for a thick protruding knot jutting out from a wall of moss and ivy.

A howl of anger comes from below and you freeze in mid-air, almost fumbling the landing. It's getting dark now; you're low enough in the canopy that the gloom is starting to press in, and wherever that howl came from, it wasn't as far back as you'd guessed. Mankey must have guessed you'd try this and come upwards on an inward diagonal just as you were going down on one. It sounded like he was directly below you.

You glance back at yourself. Bright yellow. You're not sparking, but you'll still be visible through the gloom. Urgh, you should have rolled in dirt to dull it before launching your ambush. Too late now, you'll just have to make the ground without being seen and-

A pink-white shape launches itself out of the dark, and you throw yourself clear. A half second later, the wood above the knot you were standing on explodes in a shower of bark and splinters.

Flee!

Mankey is above you now, but you're in helpless freefall, dropping without having aimed for any specific spot. You can't control or speed your fall, only watch helplessly as Mankey whips round, blunt fingers digging into the shattered side of the tree, and leaps at you again. His powerful legs propel him faster than you can fall, and you resign yourself to giving your position away to anyone looking again. Your tail lights up, and lightning splits the air a second time.

You get lucky. He locks up. But he doesn't stop, and you brace yourself for the impact, gulping air and squeezing your eyes and nostrils shut. His big, bulky body clips your feet with an impact that travels right up to your spine, and as fast as you can, you twist round to meet it with your feet and push off, leaving him to fall as you catch another branch, let go, drop to a hanging vine and scramble down it, leap off through a cluster of leaves, rebound off a treetrunk, a second, a third, dig your claws into bark to slow down, make one last leap...

Your paws punch four neat holes in the soft earth as you land, and the ground meets your belly with a whump that knocks the breath from you again. You gasp for air again as you pull your legs free and roll sideways, caking yourself with dirt to hide your coat, scrabbling to wipe your paws free of pollen on the loam until every bit is gone.

Some way off, you hear a crash and a splintering sound. Mankey has landed. A moment later, his roar of rage announces that he's still fit to fight.

But down here at the foot of the great trees, the darkness is near-total. The trunks are so closely packed together that you can cling to one and brush its neighbour with the tip of your tail. The space between them is packed full of strangling vines and climbing plants. Quiet as a clever mouse, you scurry forward, winding your way through the tangle of roots and fungi, trying not to brush against the latter. You can't see much of the maze of protruding wooden ridges and arches they make, but there's just enough light to make out the huge pillars that hold up the sky, and you make for the nearest one, hoping it has what you're looking for.

It takes a bit of searching. But you find it. A hollow pressed right up against the trunk, under the roots, where you can press yourself in and hide and wait. You curl up small and listen to the sounds of Mankey moving to and fro. Smashing up roots. Tearing apart mushrooms. Crushing mosses.

He's going to regret that, when the spores he's releasing kick in. On top of the pollen, they might actually threaten his life. In fact... now that you have a moment to think, you're pretty sure the pollen already has kicked in. You were a sitting mouse on that tree knot, bright yellow in the gloom, and yet he missed you by twice his height when he slammed into the tree. And while he hit you in midair, it was only with the very top of his head brushing your paws, far from the dead-on collision he should have tried for.

Put together with how he's crashing around... well well well. It looks like the big brute is having more vision troubles than just the lack of light. The toxins of the Forest must have blinded him, at least partially. And speaking of toxins... Beedrill was being pretty free with its needles up there in the canopy. Most of them hit leaves or harmless flowers and fruit, but some will have connected with the dangerous stuff. Wide-area attacks are dangerous around here.

Something scuttles past you and you stop breathing for a moment. But no, it's not Mankey. Just a Paras. You can still hear Mankey off in the distance - and it sounds like he's starting to slow down. The poisons are definitely taking their toll. Uncurling from your little hiding spot, you hiss at the Paras to send it scuttling away, hop over the root and creep off towards the sounds of Mankey's increasingly delirious thrashing.

Something else clicks above you. Another Paras? A Nincada?

Your eyes are just barely adjusted enough to the deep gloom to see the shape as it crawls down the trunk above you. Awkwardly crawling, with limbs not designed to cling to trees. Limbs that end in great... huge... spikes...

Oh. That's how it got up above the canopy.

This Beedrill can crawl.

The bolt of lightning is entirely instinctive, and lights up the forest in stark contrast as it slams into Beedrill in the instant before it stabs forward. Even as your eyes scream from the sudden brightness, you shriek and throw yourself backwards. Both great stingers slam down on where you'd been, but the bolt strikes true.

It also strikes the flowering moss that covers the bark of the tree. With a crackle of little popping noises, tiny bulbs all across the thick green carpet burst, spraying little bursts of clear liquid out around them. Normally that wouldn't matter, but Beedrill is big. Bigger than you or Mankey. Sending so many nests into violent panic up above the trees and then forcing its way back down through the dense branches of the canopy to escape their beaks and talons has left tears in its wings and shallow cuts and gouges all along its legs and sides.

There's a reason you led them to this part of the woods. The plants here are more dangerous than the Pokemon, and the inhabitants that survive them are vicious.

The clear liquid hits its open wounds, and its wings spread to beat in involuntary pain and distress at the feeling. You know it all too well, having trodden on poison moss before with torn-up paws. You'd only popped a couple of bulbs that day, and it had still left you limping for hours, and sick for days.

You take the opportunity to run as Beedrill's buzzing flinch gets its wings caught in another vine and sends it thrashing wildly. Your Shock ruined any hope of staying quiet and hidden in the dark, and Mankey is already barrelling towards you, still strong and fast even with toxins burning up his lungs and nose and clouding his eyes.

You, on the other hand, are flagging. Your reserves of charge are still going strong, but you're not built for physical endurance, and that brief stint spent hiding in the roots was not enough for you to get your breath back properly. And down here in the dark, you can't see what you're running over. Neither can Mankey, of course, but he can hear you fleeing, while you're dashing blindly into the unknown. You can't keep it up. Not for long.

Your first stumble is brief; an unseen root tripping you and sending you bouncing across a patch of mushrooms before you get your feet under you and keep running. Your second is harsher; a patch of stinging... something that set your paws to screaming and make every step painful. You bare your teeth and flatten back your ears and keep running, all too aware of the crashing, tearing approach of the beast behind.

The third misstep, though, is what costs you. In the dark, you don't see the Bulbasaur until you're on top of it, and you slam into the stupid thing in a mutual tangle of limbs and vines and shrieking. You charge your fur with paralytic lightning and savagely sink your teeth into the vine wrapped around your middle until it lets go, but before you can do more than struggle free in panic, Mankey is on you.

Blunt fingers close around your right hindleg, and you feel something give. It's not a break. You think. But something cracked, and your leg is pain pain pain pain pain and your paws feel like they're walking on thorns every time you rest your weight on them and... and...

Wailing, you pull your leg out of Mankey's paralysed grip, push off your good legs in a burst of lightning, and flash across the dimly-lit clearing in one last burst of speed to the shelter of a sprawling nest of roots at the base of a massive old Apricorn tree. Panting, you back into a crevice between two roots and let your charge build up, watching Mankey warily.

The crackling electric light fills the clearing, sending the bruised and bitten Bulbasaur scurrying off as its paralysis wears off. It doesn't matter. With your leg hurt, there will be no more running for you today. Either it has been long enough or it hasn't.

Mankey gets his twitching under control, lunges, and shrieks angrily as your Shock forces him to hop back out of range. Despite the throbbing pain from your leg, despite the stinging agony in your paws, you can't help but grin mockingly. His eyes are bloodshot, his paws and tail are quivering and he keeps listing sideways and having to catch himself. And now you're in the perfect defensive position. Unlike Machop, Mankey can't throw things. If he tries to circle round to flank you, he'll have to punch through either a second tree or a wall of high roots to do it. And charging straight ahead...

He lunges, and you hit him dead in the face with another brilliant arc of lightning, strong enough to singe his fur and send him reeling back, smoking.

"Mankey! Curse it..."

Your head snaps to the side. Wenge? When did Wenge get here? How did- ah, he must have followed the sounds and the flashes of your lightning. Not that it's done him much good. He's some way away, far enough to be on the edge of throwing range for a Pokeball, and the dense undergrowth has him trapped in the fork of a bramble thicket that bars him from getting any closer to your stalemate. Honestly, it's a surprise the blundering clod even got this far into the Forest. Humans, in your experience, are terrible at moving through wilderness.

You send Mankey dancing back again with a three-forked arc of electricity and eye his trainer for a moment longer. Is his hand going to his belt? You can't see his waist, but... no. No, that's definitely a frustrated look. One that he wouldn't be wearing if he'd found where you dropped Ekans, or had any way to help Mankey get past your defence, or really had any way of affecting the battle at all. No, he's impotent and useless and probably likely to spend the next few days retching his guts out after trespassing on this space, even if it likely won't do him any real harm. You can safely ignore him and concentrate on the fight.

Sheer naked spite, however, demands a different response. Drawing on your still-healthy reserves of charge, you throw first one, then two, and finally four simultaneous Shocks at Mankey, catching him full in the torso with one and landing a glancing hit on his tail with another on that third attempt. He freezes, momentarily paralysed, and you use the respite to edge out of your protective root-hollow, panting a little from the exertion.

Then you turn to the watching Human on throbbing paws and, with deliberate malice, bare your fangs at him.

"Pika pika chuuu!" you snarl, and send a thin tendril of a bolt lancing through the trees to sting his upraised hand as he stares.

And as if to punish you for your show of defiance, that buzzing, thunderous drone starts up behind you for the second time today.

But this time, you're not fast enough to dodge.

Four bright needle-points of pain flare along the length of your tail, a fifth scores a sharp line across your ribs and a sixth punches a clean hole through the tip of your right ear. You shriek and try to throw yourself back into cover, only to scream in pain rather than shock, twisting wildly to look at whatever's yanking so agonisingly on your tail from inside it...

... oh.

It was the Pin Missiles. You felt them hit you. But that's not all they hit.

Four long, thin needles are sunk straight through the jagged zig-zag of your tail and deep into the jutting root behind it. In a bit of brutal irony, it's the same one that was sheltering you from flanking fire had Mankey tried to go around and attack you from one side. Now it's your prison. With your tail pinned in four places, you can't twist around to get the rest of yourself back into the hollow of the roots, and with your paws near-numb through stinging poison, you've no hope of pulling all four out before Mankey is on you. Throwing a bitter lightning bolt in the direction the noise and needles came from, you spot Beedrill crawling along a downward-sloping vine, seeking a better vantage point.

In front of you, Mankey shrieks. You haven't heard him speak once, you realise distractedly as you throw another bolt to keep him back. The charge moving along your tail hurts, though the four little holes are nowhere near as painful as the dull aching throb of your cracked leg, and your vision starts to blur. You've still got lightning left, but not enough - not when you're out of cover like this. One charge is all Mankey will need.

... why hasn't he charged?

You blink slowly, lifting a foreleg to rub the haze out of your eyes before stopping halfway. Right. Stingy poison. Still on your paws. Bad for eyes. Don't be stupid like Mankey and get more poisoned than you already are. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to come here after all. Your little body's starting to feel the effects of the spores and toxic pollen your foes have filled the air with, even despite your attempts to keep away. You'd thought... you would have had longer... than them...

The fuzzy white-pink shape you can no longer see the details of still isn't charging. It's moving sideways instead. Staggering. Wobbling.

Collapsing.

Huh. Well, what do you know. You are a genius after all.

But there's still Beedrill.

It takes off - you hear it more than you see it - and buzzes over, firing more needles. You tense against the volley, but instead of more sharp points of pain, you hear the thud of stingers in wood and snapping vines and broken foliage. For a moment you don't understand. Then you do.

It knows you're stuck, so it's going to check on its partner first.

Your thoughts are dizzy and slow now, but they're still faster than any stupid bug, and despite the sting in your paws, the ache in your leg, the throbbing holes in your tail, you laugh. You can't help it. Wenge's own training in leashing his Pokemon's temper has beaten them for you. If it had given into rage and aimed for you from its branch, it would have won.

But it went to check on Mankey.

It flew to check on Mankey.

And flying is vigorous work.

With the dense growth cut back enough by its needles to give it wing-room, Beedrill settles beside Mankey. Wenge is shouting something that you don't really hear, and then there's a flash of red light as Mankey disappears and Beedrill lifts off again. You bare your teeth at it. Too, too stupid. It should have stayed crawling instead of seeking the air against an opponent it didn't need it for.

Three stingers turn your way and release a finishing volley.

It misses by half a tree's width.

The next one wanders even further off to the side. Beedrill's buzzing turns confused, distressed, as the moss poison that seeped in through its open cuts and torn wings is sent pumping round its body at ten times its previous speed by those droning, buzzing wingbeats. The third volley peters out halfway through as the huge wasp's flight turns erratic, tilting in midair and drifting sideways uncontrollably. It thrashes, it flails, and inevitably it careens out of the open space it's cut and into a tree.

Its legs twitch twice, trying to lift it from where it's fallen prone, before red light swallows it like Mankey.

You raise your head and meet Wenge's bewildered stare. Or what you imagine is his bewildered stare, anyway. You can't actually see him at this point, but you aim your eyes vaguely towards the bright white light that's probably coming from one of his metal-Berries and bare your teeth again, surging charge across your fur to surround yourself with an intimidating aura of lightning. Hopefully he won't realise that your odds of hitting any Pokeball he tries throwing in this state are slim to none. Assuming he has the space to throw one at all, which you're not sure he does.

You give him a warning hiss, just in case, and wait for the blubbering and yelling and denials.

Surprisingly, though, they don't come. Instead he speaks, so quiet and contemplative that you barely hear him over the crackle of your fur.

"You fight nothing like a duellist," he murmurs. "Stealing Pokeballs, using the environment to hinder and poison your opponents..."

There's a sound that might be him shaking his head. "I don't understand..."

Is he talking to you or himself? If he's asking you where he went wrong after coming after you with three-on-one odds and threatening to attack you in your sleep, he's got a lot of nerve. And could stand to speak up so you can hear him properly as well. And if he isn't talking to you, he's a weirdo for muttering to himself in the middle of the woods when you're the only one around.

"Chu," you spit back, on the grounds that it's an equally applicable response either way. He doesn't respond. Instead, he shakes his head again, stares a little longer, then steps back. You hear him pull out a metal-Berry that beeps at him as he retreats, and the light fades away as he follows it off towards where you're pretty sure you left Ekans.

Tch. That probably means you can't just steal all the Humans' Pokemon and hide them until they run out, if they can sniff out where their Pokeballs are hidden like that. Pity.

Ah well. You can plan... something else... some other... day...

The last thing you register before you pass out is rustling behind you, and familiar teeth clamping shut on the scruff of your neck.

---

You wake to a familiar ceiling. Where has your mother brought you to recover?
[ ] The nest you were born in, hidden under the brambles.
[ ] An abandoned Human dwelling near the edge of the Forest.
[ ] A tree hollow that once served as a playden when you were little.

She disapproves of what you've been doing, and while you have no plans of stopping, you're not so old or independent that you won't at least consider her advice. What does she suggest you do instead?
[ ] Travel. Your mother had a rebellious phase when she was as young as you, though not as destructive as yours, and her journeys helped her grow, mature and satisfy her wanderlust.
[ ] Teach. You have a new litter of siblings, and the last few Pichus from your own littermates could use your help in pushing past the last barrier of evolution. If nothing else, they'll be allies.
[ ] Trade. You've made a lot of enemies in your campaign against the Humans, but you've also stolen trophies you don't need or value much - and which others do, enough to pay you for them.