Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ The Forgotten Son ❯ Back to the Place I Once Knew ( Chapter 10 )

Cecelia rose uncomfortably from her bed as the last of her sleep drained out of her. Something was off today. She could tell instantly.

 

She did, however, manage to convince herself to forget her foreboding feelings and get out of bed, sliding open her curtains to let in a lackluster gray flicker of light from the overcast, gloomy sky. She wandered downstairs to the kitchen sleepily and poured herself a cup of coffee, sipping at it gingerly as the heat tingled on her lips.

 

She looked at the clock apprehensively, waiting for it to be eleven so she could work her day shift as a waitress in a small-time restaurant. Without her job her life would truly be empty and meaningless after the men in her life all left in one fell swoop; two sons and her husband, though the husband's parting was in large part through her force and not his.

 

The boys, however, broke her heart when they left. Her therapist had told her one day that her search for them was coming to a point of borderline obsession, however, and for her mental health it was “suggested” that she not continue looking for them and was helped instead to suppress the memories of her boys.

 

She took another sip of her coffee, this time a large gulp as the coffee was cooled off to just the right temperature. She wore a sad smile on her face as she looked into her worn out reflection in the black coffee.

 

It was then she heard the rustling of grass, signaling that somebody was approaching her house. On any day she would have treated this with apathy, but today she felt compellingly curious about the source of the noise. She laid her coffee on the dining table softly and shuffled towards the door as knocks came from it, slowly pulling the door open.

 

She found herself looking into the eyes of her son.

 

***

 

Kenshin, Miltank, Woop and Magikarp stayed on the outskirts of Mahogany once they reached the cold northern city. Luke had asked them to, after all, preferring a one man journey in and out of the town with no distractions.

 

Luke frowned as he looked at the sprawling Mahogany City. Everything looked completely normal, almost dull, but he couldn't help but see every house and building as a demented version of itself, as if his hometown was built by madmen and had become some breeding ground for fear and terror.

 

And as he stepped through the moist grass and cast an uncaring look at the empty sky, he could feel an eerie silence flowing through the place. Every sound that DID come- a barking dog, perhaps, or a baby's cry- made Luke more and more uncomfortable being here. When he finally reached his old home, he looked back and forth warily before knocking on the door lightly.

 

The silence following his knock felt somehow even creepier. The city around him felt so quiet and empty he may as well have been the only thing alive on Earth, alone with only the door to gloomily accompany him.

 

After what seemed like an eternity the door opened hesitantly, his mother standing in its frame. Her face was wrinkled and seemed worn and troubled, her eyes slightly faded.

 

At least, that was her appearance in the instant before she recognized the boy standing at the other side of the door.

 

Her pupils shrunk to a size of almost non-existence and her mouth dropped. Her face paled instantly and she took a fearful step back.

 

“You!” She said, startled.

 

“Yeah, mom.” Luke said, taking a step forward as worry filtered into his voice. “Are you okay?”

 

She took a step back, then another and another until she backed into the kitchen counter, her body shivering compulsively.

 

“The visions… I thought they would end!” She cried out, holding her head with her hands as if to shield it. “Go away! Stop coming back!”

 

Her eyes shut tightly as she dropped onto the ground, curling up on the tiled floor.

 

“Mom…” Luke said in a kind of wonder.

 

“GO AWAY!” She shrieked hoarsely, her call echoing out from the housed and into the cold emptiness outside.

 

Luke's mouth quivered as he looked at her helpless quivering body on the ground. Even though his body WANTED to leave and escape this sad truth of his mother who feared his presence, he couldn't. His body was frozen in place, his expression harboring an astonished kind of dread.

 

She chanced a look at her son, but upon seeing his still frame standing above her she shrieked, quickly averting her gaze. She edged away from him, her breathing uneven and shallow.

 

She moved hardly a foot before suddenly her breathing ceased and she collapsed, her head sinking soon before the rest of her followed suit and sprawled out on the ground. After a painful moment of stillness her frame shook and resumed breathing.

 

The grave silence faded back into place, leaving Luke alone in the world with the motionless body of his mother on the ground before him. The only thing that dared to interrupt this moment was the wind, which saw fit to disturb Luke with an eerie draft through the ajar front door.

 

Luke bolted out from the house, gasping for air. What had he done? What if he'd somehow injured her permanently- what if she was about to die? Would it all of been his fault? He stopped running suddenly, pausing and wondering if he should go back to help. But a dark aura seemed to pour out from that house, creating some kind of wall that pushed him away. No matter how he tried he just could not bring himself to take a single step closer towards the house.

 

He shuddered and his face slowly melted into distress. Unable to do anything else, he just turned and continued to run.

 

***

 

He ran for a long time, and when he finally slowed down he was far outside of Mahogany, climbing a tall, grassy hill that lead him to his pokemon. They seemed to be interacting contentedly, but with Luke came a sudden sadness that fell on them like a heavy weight, crushing them along with their spirits.

 

He sat down beside them, breathing heavily and uncomfortably. His eyes were tightly shut and he kept running his hands through his thick, long hair as his breathing grew lighter and lighter. The others simply watched him in a kind of awe, never having seen him so shaken.

 

Finally, his breathing had returned to a normal volume, yet his body still seemed to grow and shrink with each inhale and exhale. A shadow hid his face, which was tilted down toward the earth. His pokemon looked at each other nervously, unsure of what was wrong.

 

It was a long time before Luke finally picked his head up, casting a gloomy stare at his pokemon and then averting his tragic gaze toward Mahogany City, which seemed to return the gaze with an equally cold look. Luke's eyes seemed fixed on the city.

 

And finally after that he pushed himself upright, sighing and then beckoning his pokemon to follow with a simple dark glance. He wanted to leave the city, he really did, but at the same time he was also gripped by an awful hunger that he was sure his pokemon felt too; his time spent in the caverns had left him fed little, and the king had provided him with plenty of monetary provisions to support himself upon his exit. He didn't have time to wander all the way back through the caverns, so his only choice was to return to the city.

 

***

 

Luke felt very uneasy as he trekked through Mahogany with his pokemon. Regular passerby seemed to be looking at him grimly or with anger and hate when in reality they paid no attention to him. He constantly felt like he was being followed, but always glanced behind himself nervously to see nobody there. By the time he'd found a restaurant on the opposite side of town from his home he had broken into a cold sweat.

 

Luke paused as he studied it and the surrounding structures. The others seemed excited to eat, but he looked at the building like he saw his own home, and he began to feel the same wall pushing him away. A vision of his mother lying on the ground passed through his mind again, and he shuddered as she began to appear inside all of the buildings and even on the road in front of him.

 

His breathing felt loud and overpowering. Sweat began to drip down his face and he grimaced, apparently in pain. His pokemon looked at him curiously as he struggled to regain his composure, but his nervous breakdown was soon interrupted by a piercing roar in the distance. It seemed to shake everything.

 

Everybody in town, even the distracted Luke, turned toward the direction of that roar, finding themselves to be facing North towards the Lake of Rage. Again the beastly roar sounded, causing the ground beneath Luke's feet to shudder as if an earthquake was happening. The roar was louder this time.

 

Luke fell uncomfortably on his ass, losing his balance after the last quake. There was a short pause before a thick beam of orange and yellow energy erupted out from the distance, ripping through the air like a ballistic missile and whizzing over the buildings ominously. The roar sounded again, and in a matter of seconds a huge pokemon loomed over the buildings, staring down at the screaming citizens of Mahogany.

 

Luke remained motionless. He'd never seen such a huge pokemon. It was blue and long, with a white underbelly. On its tail there was a fin and its face seemed to hold a permanent look of hatred, its fangs hanging out of its mouth grimly. The gyarados snarled at the terrorized citizens of Mahogany who fled as if they were being chased by Godzilla in the city of Tokyo. Only Luke remained still, his will and ability to move all but lost in the darkness of his own mind. He seemed enraptured with the sea serpent pokemon as much as he was gripped with immeasurable fear, his pokemon yelling at him and shaking him hopelessly.

 

The gyarados let loose another crazed howl of rage, hoping to instill some form of consciousness to this fearless prey. Self-awareness sparked momentarily in Luke then immediately flickered out like a lit match in the face of a hurricane. More roars sounded out from the distance as gyarados began to gather from all directions, most ignoring the motionless Luke save for the curious original.

 

Luke shuddered and screamed as he fell back into reality, startling many of the nearby gyarados and gaining their attention. He gasped and felt his chest heaving with the weight of his madly pumping heart as he stared into the face of each of the angry pokemon one by one, his voice running away along with his ability to think logically.

 

He stood and ran. Really fast.

 

Many gyarados followed him immediately, curious of this hysterical angsty teenager. Luke did not run for long, as he soon slipped on the damp grass, toppling onto his arm and sliding through the slippery grass. He rolled over in time to catch gyarados staring down at him from all directions when suddenly he felt the ground begin to quake.

 

The source seemed to be from behind him, so he twisted his head to see what exactly it was. He saw his miltank, her pupils thin and hazy, staring down at magikarp, who she had apparently dropped. He was shaking uncontrollably, releasing a low booming sound as his body began to glow a powerful shade of yellow. As his true colors disappeared into yellow the shaking grew and the ground began to tremble, and in an explosion of light the little fish's mass multiplied by factor of dozens, growing huge and pushing out the surrounding Luke and company with his growing body. A tremendous roar shook out as the yellow faded away, revealing another gyarados just as large as the others. They looked at it with confusion, and as it released another roar they fled, bewildered as to what was going on.

 

Luke stared up into the sky, his jaw dropping so low it appeared to have been unhinged from his skull. The massive sea serpent stared down at him, his eyes giving off a feeling of warmness and kindness but his gaze stuck in a permanent look of anger.

 

Luke screamed again, shuffling onto his knees and crawling away pathetically as he found his balance again, pushing himself upright and fleeing in terror. The gyarados hummed at him sadly, slithering towards him. Luke yelled again as he saw the approaching serpent, ignoring the calls of his other pokemon and continuing to run.

 

Something was dreadfully wrong. Magikarp had always been something he felt an unnamed kinship with, someone who was weak and disliked for it, somebody who Luke felt an unmatched bond with. Now he was facing a creature who knew only to mindlessly destroy, something that would attack and kill even its own mother. Luke was too lost in fear to understand that this was still the same magikarp, and ran away not only from the imminent danger of a massive sea serpent but also what he feared was himself, too.

 

There was a low booming sound suddenly, and from in front of Luke an orange blur zipped across the sky, barely visible as it streaked directly into Luke's gyarados, releasing a shockwave of flame and energy. The gyarados snarled and grew angry as it stared at the dragon pokemon, wings spread wide and flapping as its tail wagged apprehensively. As gyarados shot forward to take a bite out of the dragonite, the pokemon shot out a wave of blue flame that entered directly into the sea serpent's ajar mouth and encircled it, causing a scream of great terror before the sea serpent collapsed under the power of this high-level pokemon. Luke stood gasping, his chest still heaving and body shivering as he looked into the empty eyes of the gyarados, knocked unconscious.

 

“Run, kid!” A voice yelled from above, and he caught the figure of a red-haired human riding on the back of the dragonite, an imposing black cape flapping behind him. “Get inside and hide! Gyarados have gone nuts and are rampaging everywhere!”

 

“Whuh- what?” Luke cried, unable to discern any meaning from what the man was shouting.

 

“Team rocket's forcing magikarp into evolution!!” He cried out, hurried and desperate to reach this dumbfounded kid. “You have to hide!!”

 

Luke looked with awe at the screaming man and then at the motionless body of what he was starting to remember may have been a friend.

 

“Buh? Whuh...”

 

“GO!” Screamed the man, and with that dragonite grew tired of this and flapped its wings, cutting off towards other gyarados.

 

Luke stared up at the sky, in awe for a few moments before he blinked and began running away as quickly as he could, leaving what was once his friend behind without a second thought.