Part 29

29

[3:29 AM. Cavernous Tree. Unnamed Forest. The next morning.]

Vi took a moment to vomit against his gag.
	The old woman noticed his predicament; with the restrained man more valuable to her alive than dead, she shook her head and removed the vines that pressed against his mouth. Bile poured from his mouth onto the floor of the cavern. He panted, tasting the stale air of the cave. The woman had stopped her assault.
	Vi hung from the chains. “How did that feel?” she chided.
	His head was swimming; everything was wrong—out of place. Everything flashed in his head like an irregular symphony of fireworks. Every blink was an exercise in pain; every breath felt like he was losing air. Vi was going to die, but he was two discombobulated to realize it.
	Trevenant laughed. Whatever it was doing was particularly sinister. Vi felt rage and impotence, both emotions feeding off each other; his anger grew as he tried in vain to break free, and his inability to break free merely served to stoke the fire of his rage.
	His pokeballs hung uselessly at his belt. All the mental summoning in the world could not bring forth his partners. Just one would get him out of this. In his pocket, he carried a lockpick. If he could just reach it, he’d be free; a holdover from his more street level days. He considered it a good luck charm. Some luck he had.
	“You’re fucking dead, you bitch,” Vi spat. He felt crushingly angry, like the breaks were off, like the only thing holding him back were the old chains. They rattled ominously with each pull. “I swear I will kill you and burn this whole damn forest down.”
	She clapped her hands and giggled. Vi could smell the acrid scent of smoke and sulphur on her breath. He spat in her face. Mid-laugh, she froze. She extended a long tongue and licked up the phlegm from her face. At any other time, VI would have been repulsed; now, her act only served to anger him even further. He lashed out against his restraints, gnashing and biting.
	“Fuck you.”
	The woman smiled at him and put a wart hand on his sweating face. “The more you struggle, the more difficult this will be.”
	“Good.”
	“For you.”
	The woman frowned. “I like you, boy. So I’m going to put this key inside your pocket. If you get out, I’m sure you can stop suffocating yourself.”
	“What the hell are you even talking about.”
	“Your dreams are rotten, because you are a rotten person. You are also weak, too weak to do anything. You’re holding back. All your life, all you’ve wanted to do is cause others harm, yet you hold back; you’re incompetence is not inherent, you just don’t seem to want to succeed.”
	Vi started yelling incoherently as the woman began to laugh and walk away. Her Trevenant followed. The Haunter continued to hover, giggle, blow raspberries, and generally place thoughts of violent suicide in Vi’s head. His strength drained, he let himself hang.
	“Do what you must; I leave it up to you.”

Time seemed to bend and contract inside the tree. He felt himself grow very old, die, and then be born again, only to wind up stuck to the wall again. Minutes felt like years as each heartbeat came at random intervals, as each breath threw itself against his dry throat, making him gag. The only thing he wanted more than to die was to kill something.
	He felt pain throughout his body. He had not cried, he had not begged, but now he laughed. It started as a quiet thing, growing like a poisonous weed in his chest until the cavern rang out with his cackling. Haunter gave him a strange look before joining in on the laughter.

Miles could hear soft laughter from deep inside the tree. He wiped the rain from his face and stepped inside. The cavern was large, massive, even. He felt drowned by it, overwhelmed. Each step he took felt like ten, then twenty. The tree was far too big inside than it was on the outside. He could see the faint glow of torches below. He continued to descend the earthy spiral staircase that hugged the walls of the tree. Deeper and deeper her walked until his feet touched earthy ground. In the far back of the wide room, a man hung in chains. He was laughing to himself. Miles ran towards the man, but every step took him two steps backwards; the man at the wall was moving away from him. “Vi! If that’s you, man, I need you to say something! Something’s weird about this place!” There was no answer. The man on the wall continued to laugh. Miles stopped. The room seemed to stretch. He released his Pinsir and instructed it to grip his shoulder to give him a jolt. The Pinsir nodded and gave Miles a slight bind. The pain shot through Miles’ body.
	When he opened his eyes, he saw that the earthy room he was in was quite small. Vi was chained to the wall, asleep. His face looked gaunt and thin. Miles tested the strength of the chains. They felt very sturdy, despite their age. He swore.
	Vi’s eye’s fluttered open. It took a moment to register the blurry silhouette of a man as Miles, but he exhaled when he did. He started to giggle.
	 I’m tired of holding back.
	“Miles…” Vi mustered.
	“Vi? I got you,  I got you. I’m gonna get you outta here. Wherever the hell here is.”
	“Miles, the key—the key. She put it in my pocket.”
	Miles reached in and found the old brass key. “Why the…” Quickly, he undid Vi’s restraints. The man fell to the ground with a dull thud. Miles helped him sit up. The Haunter furrowed its brown then disappeared.
	Vi took a moment to massage his wrists. He looked to Miles, “Thank you,” he said.
	Footsteps echoed in the cavern; the old woman was coming back. Miles released his Houndoom which shuddered in the cavern. Miles reached for his own pokemon, but Vi stopped him.
	“I need to deal with this myself,” he said. “Thank you Miles, but you’ve given me all I need.”
	Before he could react, the Houndoom went for Miles’ leg. It bit down through bone and tendon sending Miles to the ground. He looked up in horror at the twisted fate of Vi.
	“I’ll be sure to tell Molly how you heroically helped me escape. I’m sure she’ll understand.” He bent over and picked up the key.
 “Vi..?” Miles said through the rippling pain.
“It’s Vyro, the great and powerful Vyro. Maybe you’ve heard of me?” Miles merely shook his head in pain, shock, and confusion.
“Now you have.” He laughed and stomped on Miles’ face, knocking him out cold.
	The woman entered the cavern. She looked to Vi, then to Miles’ cold body, then to the spot on the wall where Vi had been kept.
	“I suppose you’re going to kill me know,” she said.

Molly saw the shadow approach from her boulder in the cave. She rushed out into the rain.
	“Miles? Vi?”
	Vi stepped in to the light of the cave fire. When they locked eyes, his body seemed to give out; he collapsed into her arms. Molly caught him and dragged him into the cave. Vi coughed as he crawled to the fire.
	“Vi? Vi! What happened? Where did you go? Where’s Miles?”
	“Old woman…empty tree…gave me…time…” His words were hindered by the cold as he struggled to get warm.
	“Vi, where’s Miles?”
	Vi looked up at Molly; her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Had she been worried about him?
	“He…he stayed behind.”
	Molly fell to her knees. Vi got up from the ground and reached out for her. He would have to explain everything, but that could wait until morning.

[8:13 AM. Route 7. Between Celadon City and Saffron City. A few hours later.]

Vi took one last look at the forest behind them.
	The rain had stopped briefly with the sunrise, and Molly, after much convincing, agreed that they needed to make it to Saffron. He helped her pack up their things. She took what they needed from Miles’ pack, and left the rest.
	“Maybe he’ll come back,” she had said.
	Vi put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s not coming back, Molly.”
	Saffron loomed ahead. Molly had released her Sceptile to walk with. Vi gave her space. There would be plenty of time to get to know her once they reached Saffron. All roads lead to Saffron, the saying went, and both of them were headed into the very heart of Kanto.
	“Why were you headed to Saffron, Vi? Why not Vermillion with the other refugees?”
	“I need to meet a man about a business deal,” he said.
	“What will you do after that?”
	Vi did not know. He had not thought out that far. All he knew was that he wanted Molly, and that he would have her, whether she wanted him or not.
	“Miles was a good man, Molly,” Vi said. “He saved my life twice. If he hadn’t have shown up, I would’ve died in that forest. I owe him in a way I couldn’t begin to know. Before he…I told him I’d keep an eye out for you, so that’s what I’m going to do.
Molly didn’t push the subject. She gripped Vi’s hand, as if the slightest breeze would carry him away from her. Everything felt so hollow and thin. They did not mention Miles after they left the forest; his name felt like a curse that hung over the two. To say his name was to invite bad luck.
Saffron was only a half-day’s walk away. A half a day from R.I.G—a half a day from vengeance. He squeezed Molly’s hand back and smiled to himself, playing his busted ankle perfectly.

[???.???.???.???]

The dark was oppressive; to open your eyes was to invite claustrophobia.
	Mile’s head was swimming. Where was he? He tried to remember. At the slightest move, white hot knives seemed to dig into his calf. He heard blood drip to the ground below.
	Below…
	He tried to move, but he was trapped. He pulled against his restraints, but found he was bound by a set of old and rusty chains. Panic crept up like the tide. It started in his stomach, the rose through his heart, sending chills to his extremities, then to his head, where he registered the feeling of primordial fear and ultimate abandonment.
	Vyro.
	The name burned into his mind.
	Vyro. Vyro. Vyro.
	He could not ignore the flashing of the name. Vi was Vyro. Vi was a mad man. Vi had Molly.
	Molly.
	He thrashed uselessly against his chains. He tried to scream, but his mouth was obstructed by a foul smelling vine of some sort. He gagged as the scent of bile filled his nose. He strained his ears to hear something—anything, but there was nothing. No torches illuminated his priso; no jailer kept watch, no window bled light.
	He was alone, and he was afraid.