Pokemon Fan Fiction / Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Charon's Pursuit ❯ Botana ( Chapter 16 )

Chapter 16

Dreams.

They are often believed to be memories and experiences that the subconscious seizes and smash together, most likely to remind living things that they still possess life when they lie like the dead. Nothing in a dream is real. They are normally random in nature and don’t have any reason to follow any sort of structure at all.

Not everyone is so lucky. For the less fortunate, their dreams follow a certain, harrowing routine. The thought of sleep instills fear. The desperate ones do everything in their power to delay the inevitable, to prepare for what would come to them when they do, only to realize that they would never be prepared enough.

Charon, when he first came to the wild, was one of those cursed by the recurring nightmare. He would stand amidst the forest canopy and watch the activity of the nocturnal creatures, sometimes until the crack of dawn. When he succumbed to rest, he would writhe within the hour and abruptly awake in cold sweat. It repeated for weeks until he had accepted his life of solitude.

When he left his familiar woods to pursue the herd of pikachu, he felt anxiety over the fact that the harrowing dreams might swiftly return. Once, and then twice, he managed to endure the night without snapping awake. But when he lost consciousness in the midst of his emotional breakdown, his nightmare crashed down upon his comatose mind with almost deadly force.

First came the smell. The rancid odor tormented the raichu’s nostrils, nauseating him, reminding him of excrement. Then came the cold touch of the lifeless ground beneath his feet, flat and hard as rock. A bright, unnatural glow filled his eyes, nearly blinding him from seeing the filthiness that surrounded him, but not nearly enough. He had to look away or else he would collapse and vomit as the memories of the time he was trapped there, in that small, depressing prison, rush back to him.

Out of the corner of his eye he spots another trapped with him. He turns to see who it is, only to have his stomach churn. Azelia was lying upon her side, her face contorted by suffering as she stared into empty space, whimpering. Cuts and bruises stood out amidst her sullied, yellow fur, its shine having long since disappeared. There were deep cuts, particularly, in her cheeks, closed by grotesque stitches. Her tail lied flat on the ground, as though she was already dead.

Why is it I never see her the way she was? Charon thought, recalling their idyllic time together when they were only offspring, back when Azelia beamed with joy, enjoyed his company, and giggled at his attempts to impress her.

Charon lowered himself to all fours, for he hated how he easily towered over her. He walks towards Azelia, hoping he could comfort her somehow. Azelia catches sight of him and begins to tremble, yet does not rise from her position to move away. What had happened to her shattered her confidence in resisting those who would abuse her.

You always tremble when I approach, Charon thought, as the distance closed between them, You never remember me anymore. You thought the Charon you befriended had died and been replaced by a goddamn monster. I can’t say that I blame you.

Charon stopped a few inches from her. Disgust overtook him, for even when he was on all fours he still dwarfed the little pikachu. He lowers himself even further, resting upon his stomach, his body outstretched and chilled by the cold ground. He looks face-to-face into Azelia’s fearing expression.

“W-what are you doing?” The pikachu stammered, her voice weak and quivering.

“Admiring you,” Charon responded, “I would embrace you, but you fear me and you’re too fragile to touch.”

The raichu could almost see the growing tension in her, in the way she grasped the ground. “You mean…you don’t want to-?”

“I wouldn’t think of such a thing. It just wouldn’t be right.”

Azelia’s anxiety continues to linger. She had been deceived and betrayed many times by males who trapped her with kind words. In many cases they didn’t even speak words. Charon sighs, pressing his forehead against the ground.

“I didn’t choose to be this way, Azelia,” Charon spoke, not looking at her anymore, “I’m not like the others. At least, I believe I’m not. I would do everything and anything to protect you and respect you. Even now I’m resisting the urge to indulge in your scent. So can you please not be frightened of me anymore?”

Azelia doesn’t answer. Instead, she starts to whimper. An ominous feeling grows within Charon’s instincts as he realizes they’re no longer alone. He wastes no time to rise back to his feet, but as soon as he does so a heavy force slams against the back of his head. He staggers and cries out as the concussion rattles his noggin. Stumbling to Azelia’s side, he whips around to face the unseen hostile, only to be faced with a swarm. The blow to his head distorted his vision, causing their bodies to morph into ambiguous shapes, but he knew that they were surrounded by raichus and other creatures of large stature. By the lingering musk that added to the rancid stench of the sterile prison, he knew all too well that they were all male.“Damn cowards!” Charon cursed them, trying to steady himself. He could barely see where he was going and the throbbing seemed strong enough to pump the brain out of his very skull. He hears Azelia cry out. He turns to see the distorted shapes trying to grab her. She tries to scurry away, her only viable defenses having long been stolen from her, but it is futile, for the villains surrounded Charon and the Pikachu at every turn. “Get away from her!” Charon tries to shout, but in mid-sentence he is tackled and pinned by the ambiguous shapes, booming with the hormone-fueled cries of male domination. The weight upon his frame is tremendous, but Charon resists with every ounce of might…that is, until the pummeling starts. The mob violently bashes his head, driving his percussion to a deadly intensity. The shapes of the bloodthirsty males distort even further, resembling sinister demons. Amidst the shouts, the hollers, and the bellowing of the swarm, he hears Azelia starting to cry. He knew what was happening to her. He realized he was about to fail her.It was then that he snapped.Sensitivities were discarded. Reason was obliterated. All the thoughts in Charon’s mind narrowed to a simple, instinctive plan: He had to kill them all.

It was at that point in the nightmare that he always awoke.

*********************************************************** *******

The raichu snapped awake, his fur moist with cold sweat and his heart beating rapidly. Deep, but short breaths worked his lungs that calmed as he realized that he was no longer in the midst of his nightmare. He groaned softly, however, as the wounds in his shoulders still throbbed with tenderness, irritated somewhat by the grain rubbing against his back.
Taking a moment to recall the last things he could remember, he cursed himself silently. “That was damn stupid of me,” He muttered to no one in particular, for as far as he could tell he was completely alone, “I thought I had gotten over that by now.” He carefully placed his forepaws on his forehead, not wanting to strain his wounds. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I did what had to be done. They should still be alive, at least, unless the entire damn forest cursed us.” He repeated this in his mind several times, so that eventually he would actually believe it. In truth he couldn’t be sure of anything, except that he screwed himself over big time.

As his eyes became more accustomed to the dark, he soon began to realize that a few important details were missing from his senses. For one, there didn’t appear to be a sky in his upward gaze, for he only saw blackness whichever way he looked. Second, the usual forest ambiance seemed nearly nonexistent, muffled perhaps by soil. Third, the smell of the dripping dew from the night’s showers did not exist, for in its place was an amazingly strong scent that reminded him of garden flowers. And lastly, inexplicitly, it came to his realization that a weight was resting upon his body…a weight that he swore was breathing and emitting warmth.

Charon felt the anxiety creeping into him. “Did I…miss something that night? I don’t remember these things at all.”The raichu nervously reached forward with one of his paws, half-expecting to feel a mass of fur and a fan of fluffy tails, as well as the groans of a familiar voice that ought to be several feet away from him. What he felt instead was something – or rather, someone – whose hide was smooth, soft, and a tad squishy, as though he was stroking the surface of a giant grape. He could even feel the presence of a leaf as large as his head. Needless to say, this shot even more anxiety into him. When the mystery object murmured with a soft, feminine tone, its breath blowing right against his face, he downright petrified.

“Oooooh,” The voice cooed, very much in an arousing fashion, “Please don’t stop, este muy bieeeen.” In return, it was starting to massage his chest, to which Charon reacted by nearly having an aneurysm.What the hell is going on?! Charon cried in his mind, as his other paw suddenly dug into the ground below him, his grasp so tight that any bugs caught in the soil would’ve been mercilessly crushed to death. No longer could he go on clueless in the surrounding dark. He had to know, even if the truth would kill him. In pursuit of such suicidal tendencies he slightly charged the electric pouches stored in his cheeks and suspended the energy inside of them. The resulting glow of his face illuminated his surroundings, thus revealing to him a few interesting facts: he lied in a small, burrowed den, the light from outside was snuffed out by leaves stuffed tightly inside the sole tunnel leading out of the den, and at the present moment there was a female chikorita half asleep upon him, its leaf rubbing against the ceiling. She was either quite delusional or deliberately seeking to become familiar with him in ways that chilled his very spine.

Chikoritas are easy to envision. If one was to take a green pear about the size of a housecat, slap a nose-less face with colossal dinner-plate eyes on the smaller end, stick four stubby legs and an equally stubby tail on the larger end, then endow that oddly constructed pear with dark-green bumps around the “neck” and a leaf protruding from the head that radiated with the most pleasure-inducing, natural scent in the known universe, one would have a creature created by a deity who recently spiked on hallucinogens. It still happens to be a chikorita, however.

“What’re you –Ugh!” Charon, in mid-sentence, tried to lift his back in an effort to rise to his feet. The Chikorita, apparently, intended to keep him on the ground, for she forced him back with a sudden push to the chest. The raichu stared back at her with the sort of surprise reserved for heterosexual men who realize they stumbled into a gay bar.

“Who are you and what are you doing to me?” Charon asked the little plant creature, not bothering to hide his growing urge to run like hell.

The chikorita grinned, peering into his gaze seductively. “Me llamo Botana, mi roedor guapo. Yo te rescaté. Como te llamas?”Charon’s face drew a blank stare. “What?”Botana frowned, at once irritated and dissapointed. She visibly struggled to rephrase the words coming out of her mouth. “I…call myself Botana. What…what…do you call yourself!” She forced the words out of her mouth as though they were barbs to her tongue.

“Charon. It’s Charon,” The raichu answered anxiously, “Can you move off of me? Please?”

Botana hesitated, the words escaping her. “No. I am alone,” She says desperately, pressing against Charon, “Te quiero tener mi cuerpo y darme muchos bebés!”

The raichu shook his head as his heart began to race, “I have no damn clue what you’re saying! Look, I really can’t stay, I have to go find my-!”

Botana was having none of it. “Dios mio, I want you to bone me for babies! Por favoooooor!”

At that moment, Charon immediately spazzed. Encountering another “broken” who wanted to jump into his pants, so to speak, was one of the worst things he could think of.
“Oh no, no, shit no! I can’t do that! You’re a damn PLANT! Dammit, I gotta get out of here!”

Charon scrambled to push the Chikorita aside, plow though the leaves blocking the exit, and scurry like mad away from the desperate female, hoping to run across his company in the process. Botana put up quite a fight blocking his path, though, since the tiny space of the den forced the two close together no matter which way Charon squirmed. Botana thus had an easy time counter-squirming him, especially since the scent of the leaf, for the Chikorita at least, was acting like an aphrodisiac. It drove her iron will to be boned by the raichu to legendary proportions.

“Te queda conmigo, Charon! Te quiero! Te necesito!” Botana cried to him.“What part of ‘I can’t do that’ don’t you understand?! I could mate with you a billion times and you still wouldn’t have offspring!” Charon yelled at her. Desperate to get out, he tackles Botana, hoping the force will break through the barrier behind her and allow him to get out of this newfound, personal hell. This impromptu plan, unfortunately, quickly turns awry. It became apparent to both of them that the entrance of her den, carved out of the earth, was never intended for a rapid exit. Rather than embrace freedom, Charon plowed through the barrier of leaves only to be promptly corked by the hole. Both Botana’s and Charon’s bodies poked halfway out of the den, exposing their heads to the open, morning air, and on top of that – much to the raichu’s despair – they were sandwiched together, chest-to-chest, with Charon right on top of the plant anomaly.

“Shit!” Charon cursed. He pushes up against the top of the hole, more desperate than ever to elude the apparent lust of Botana. He chips at the earth pinning him down. The chikorita, overwhelmed by the sudden sandwich, found it impossible to speak. The conflicting emotions and sensations in her mind and body confused her. Staring up at the raichu as he struggles to get free, she comes to realize what she nearly committed. The thought of kidnapping a random, convenient male, not even of her own species, just to relieve herself of her own loneliness came across to her not only as mad, but also downright depressing. In face of this retrospect, her lust soundly obliterated itself, replaced by the sudden urge to bawl like an actress on a soap opera.

Charon petrifies once again. To put it bluntly, he now had no idea what exactly was going on anymore. Anyone whose mood swung like a drunken pendulum hung by thread tended to have more than a few screws loose, but regardless he couldn’t ignore the sight of crying no matter how insane the creature may be. Forgetting for a moment the suggestiveness of his position as well as the frantic escape attempt that resulted from it, Charon attempts the diplomatic approach on the chikorita, if only to get her to quiet down.

“Hey, um…you really shouldn’t take it personally,” Charon says nervously to the sobbing Botana, trying to choose his words carefully so as to not dig a deeper hole for himself, “It just wouldn’t work out the way you want it to, you know? I mean, I’m glad you saved me, don’t get me wrong, but I’m a mammal and you’re…um, I’m not really sure what you are, technically, but it’s not quite what I am, so the chances of us having offspring are nil…you know?”Botana responded by wailing even louder. Charon bit his lip, now speculating he was much better off keeping his goddamn mouth shut. Still, he didn’t have the heart to leave the chikorita as an emotional wreck. In a way they shared similar woes, but Charon doubted Botana even had the hope of seeing another of her kind. But he had to do something, and quickly, before the trail of his companions is lost to him.
Charon gives her a few more moments to cry. As she does so, he calmly chips away at the hole again. Softened from the rainfall of the past night, it takes just a minute or two to widen the hole enough for Charon to lift his body comfortably off of Botana. Backing up a few feet, he then softly pushes the chikorita out of her den, who was so depressed she lacked the mental focus to even move. Moments later the two of them finally took in the morning atmosphere of the forest in full, revealing to the raichu its peaceful demeanor for a change. Charon stood on all fours, so as to speak face-to-face to the lying female beside him, who by now started to quiet down a tad. A chill runs through him as a few elements of the scene evokes déjà vu.

“I’m not from around these parts, Botana,” Charon says to him, “I left my home a few days before to seek out exactly what you’re looking for. While I can’t give you what you want, maybe if you travel with me you’ll find that someone. What do you say?”

Botana looked up to him, her eyes watery from the shedding of tears. “I never moved far from home…los fantasmas me dan miedo.”Charon sighed. “I really don’t know what you’re-.” He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, for suddenly the chikorita’s eyes grew wide in fright, her mouth gaping open.

“Están aquí! Están aquí! Están aquí!” cried Botana, pointing behind the raichu.

Charon turned just in time to see what looked like a big ball of smoke sticking out a large tongue, charging forward to lick the raichu right in the kisser. With a cry of surprise, Charon dove to the side, rising to stand on his hindlegs as the tongue rushed past him. The ball of smoke hit the chikorita dead-on, who cried out as the tongue lashed against her body.

“What the hell?!” Charon yelled. There was no time to speculate what that thing was doing, but it was clearly something hostile. Without hesitation he blasts a stream of electricity at the monstrosity, his cheeks already charged due to the tension with Botana earlier. “Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!” The monster cries, rattled by the electricity as though shot by a taser. As soon as Charon stops the discharge, the smoke-like creature withers, floating to the ground like a dropped piece of paper before apparently phasing out of existence. Charon’s moment to relax, however, quickly escapes from him when he hears a harrowing voice.

“Oy! I thought that rodent was injured! You think you’re a real hot-shot, don’t you? Just wait until I get my buddies. They’ll show you a thing or two about poltergeists! You hear me?! You’re going to pay!” The voice fades off with those last words, leaving Charon more than a tad frightened.

“That must’ve been one of the ‘fantasmas’ she was talking about,” Charon whispered to himself, biting his lip in anxiety, “And I thought the zangoose was bad.” It quickly came to him that he lacked the luxury of time to ponder. The poltergeists would soon come in force to do whatever it was they wanted to him. He had a hard time imagining it would be anything pleasant. With such beings around, it convinced him more than ever that he had to find his companions, before the “fantasmas” find them first.

First, however, he had to check on the chikorita. He at once rushed to her, but he then noticed that Botana no longer moved as much as she would. Being an electric pokemon, he knew all too well the symptoms of temporary paralysis. He cursed under his breath.

“Botana, can you hear me? It’s not safe here anymore,” Charon said to her, as he started to lift her up, placing her firmly on his back, “I have friends lost out there in the woods who might be in the same danger as we are. If we find them, we might have a fighting chance against these ‘fantasmas’ of yours. After that we’ll find some sanctuary.”Botana is unable to respond, her paralysis so severe she could barely even breathe. Charon knows this, but after what happened the last night he has tried all he could to suppress his weaker emotions. I’d rather die right now than screw up again, he thought, as he sniffed the air, hoping for some trail of a scent. Moments later, he catches the scent of someone familiar. He is not certain, but it reminds him of the scent of the offspring, Ivy, yet at the same time there seemed to be something different about it. Then, he realized: Ivy might be all by herself again. Her scent usually mingled with that of the vulpixes’, but no such accentuation filled his nose. If that is the case, what happened to Calien and Lily?No more time remained to think about such things, however. Charon sped off in the direction of the offspring’s scent, the paralyzed chikorita in tow, doing his best to ignore the pain in his shoulders. He hoped to at least reach Ivy before the ghosts showed their faces again, wielding their waggling tongues paralyze his own body.