Chapter Text
The plan was simple, one they had down to routine.
Spikemuth Promenade was alight with the bright lights of casinos and arcades. Stretching out of the mountainside, it was the only part of Spikemuth the sun offered its rays to, which fuelled the fire with crowds of eager punters.
Easy targets.
“You remember what you gotta do, don’t you?” he asked, looking down at where Marnie’s bony fingers were intertwined with his.
She nodded and he let her go, watching from an alley as she waddled towards an arcade on her tiny legs. True to their plan, she dropped and began to scream her four-year-old lungs out. People ran to her side, which was his cue to slip out of the alley.
Several smaller children followed him. They moved through the crowd like ghosts, swift and silent, his hand slipping into pockets as though it were passing through them entirely. An eye watched the other children, and it was in this that he saw the time-stopping instance when one of them, little Paul, stumbled after someone walked into him from behind. This caused Paul to crash into the man whose pocket he was currently pilfering.
The man looked down, and upon seeing the scruffy child with a hand buried in his coat, his face turned redder than an applin.
“Oi!” roared the man. “What do you think you’re doing, you urchin?”
The urchins bolted. Their leader caught Marnie’s hand and pulled her with him down the street. Behind them came angry shouts. Away from the promenade the group ran, the sun disappearing as they were swallowed by the mountain, into its deep, dark bowels.
What foul bowels these were, buildings squashed together so tight there was barely room to breathe, rubbish piled on every corner and raggedy, grey men curled up in doorways.
They stopped at an abandoned warehouse, settling into the yard behind it.
“I’m sorry, Piers,” said Paul to their leader, eyes on his feet.
“It doesn’t matter,” replied Piers. “I think we got away.”
A quick headcount ensued, which told him they had all made it.
“Look what I got!” cried one girl, Susie, holding up a thin piece of cardboard. “It’s a League card! I think it’s a rare one?”
Piers took it from her and was greeted by the image of a buff, shaven-headed man in a sports kit designed to look like armour, who was flexing beside a copperajah.
“Dunno if it’s rare,” he said. “But it’s Steel Peony, the champion, so it should be worth a bob no matter what.”
Marnie leaned in to have a closer look at it.
“Y’know what a champion is, right, Marnie?” Piers asked her. “They’s the ones who make it to the end of the League, which –”
“I know what the League is,” Marnie cut him off. “I’m gonna win it.”
Piers almost wished he had her confidence.
“You’re too young, stupid,” he dismissed.
His sister pouted at him. “You go win it, then, stupid!”
“Good one. People from shitholes like Spikemuth don’t win Leagues. We ain’t got the fundin’, or the support, or anythin’...”
“Big Janis the Joyless was from Spikemuth, and she won the League.”
“That was fifty years ago. Things were different back then. Spikemuth actually had a gym, for one thing, and it was the biggest, baddest gym around. These days it ain’t like that, and anyway, these days anyone who gets to the final gets crushed by Peony here, and that’s the end of them.”
“Not anymore,” said Paul. “Ain’t you heard? Steel Peony might quit, they say. It was on the news!”
“What?” Now that was something Piers didn’t understand. “Why the hell would he quit? He’s on top of the world!”
“The old League chairman is retirin’ this year or somethin’, and Peony’s not happy about one of the blokes who’s lookin’ to take over. Said he might leave if that bloke gets it.”
“See?” said Marnie. “You could do it, Piers!”
She had to be joking, except she was too young for sarcasm. The sparkling enthusiasm in her eyes told no lies, either. It was that enthusiasm that made him think for a moment that maybe, just maybe, with no champion to face, he actually could.
“I’m still gonna be champion one day,” added Marnie.
Her unwavering self-belief was enough to put a smile on Piers’s face, despite it all. This smile disappeared when he saw the irate figures making their way towards his group. It was the man from the promenade, accompanied by two others.
“You little shits thought you could get away with it, did you?” barked the man.
Ahead of them lumbered a bulky rabbit-like pokémon with enormous ears: a diggersby. Eyes not leaving the diggersby, Piers thrust Marnie’s hand into Paul’s.
“Take Marnie and run,” he ordered. “I’ll deal with this.”
“But –”
“Go!”
They went. Marnie tried to grab Piers’s hand but was unsuccessful, pulled away by the others into the warehouse. Piers hoped she didn’t see the fact his legs were shaking, or the sweat beads on his skin. Swallowing, he pulled a Poké Ball out of his pocket and tossed it. There was a flash of light, and from that light, Ramone emerged. The sight of Ramone was enough to give his attackers pause, which was no surprise: Ramone was twice the average size of a zigzagoon, and covered in scabs and scars from the number of battles he had endured already.
This initial shock only lasted a few seconds. The diggersby threw itself at Ramone with one ear cocked back. Ramone rolled out of the way a second before it slammed into the earth. Taking advantage of his opponent’s slow recovery, Ramone lunged and sank his sharp fangs into the diggersby’s exposed side.
At the same time, the men advanced on Piers. Piers was lucky to get a pre-emptive groin shot in on one before something crashed into his stomach that must have been a car from how hard it hit him. All the air left his lungs in one violent burst. He hit the ground and lay there, wheezing like an elder. It could not have been a car that hit him, he realised, or he would be dead, but he almost wished he was from how much pain he was in. Through watery vision he saw Ramone go flying.
Get up, demanded a voice hardly audible over the blood pounding in his ears. Got to protect your friends. Protect Marnie.
The first man stood over him, looking down and laughing. A new kind of rage burned through him, then, intense enough to give his hands the strength to push him back up, no matter how much it hurt to do so.
He and Ramone put up a hell of a fight, if he said so himself, but in the end, all the gumption in the world meant nothing in the face of something bigger.
They left him by the side of road, beaten bloody to the degree his own mother wouldn’t have recognised him were she to rise from her grave. He felt fur brush against him that could only have been Ramone’s, and slid an arm around his zigzagoon. Together to the end.
A shadow fell over him. One eye was swollen shut, and the other was too blurry for him to make out anything but a greyish blob. He coughed, tasting copper as he struggled to get his words out; “Is – Marnie alright?”
The blurs sharpened for only a second, but that single second was all it took to turn his blood to ice.
A fang-filled maw. Razor sharp claws. Clanking golden scales.
All of these belonged to one being – a kommo-o.