Chapter 27
It wasn’t when the Voltorb exploded and I was ripped from the battle faster than the Stingray’s barb from Irwin’s chest that I realised it. It wasn’t when Xander kicked the bucket—and boy did he go down swinging, rest in fucking pieces you magnificent bastard—nor even when Ichabod begged for his life, true to form and a coward to the end, and vanished with tears running down his face. Not even when I saw Miyoko, Total’s one true disciple, look genuinely scared for the first time in her short life, [i]oh[/i] no no no. It was fifteen minutes or so after the battle ended, and I realised maybe it wasn’t just the adrenaline’s fault I was still shaking. Despite everything—all my confidence, the fucking façade-if-you-could-call-it-that, all the talk and all the faith in the world—I was [i]weak[/i]. Weaker than Xander, who at least had the balls to go in and make a fucking impact, weaker than Miyoko whose confidence in Total never quite wavered right until the end. Maybe not as weak as Ichabod, but that didn’t say much in my favour.

I was weak, and that was reality. Xander was dead. The coward was dead. Total was incapacitated on the bed in the Pokemon Center, out like a light and had been so all day, didn’t show a sign of moving and who could blame her? How guilty must you feel for forcing someone as weak as Ichabod to die for you?

It wasn’t until I saw Miyoko staring into space, zoned out entirely, that I realised we both had the same fatal flaw. Too much faith in our Trainer. Sure, Total was fiery at times, but did I expect too much of her, or did she fail to meet my expectations? That question danced on my tongue, but I couldn’t voice it. Not like anyone would listen, anyhow. Total was dead to the world and Miyoko was quite possibly following her, god forbid.

In the end, I kept my mouth shut, because as much as I desperately wanted a second opinion, the only people who would’ve been capable of giving it were [i]dead[/i].

And maybe if I’d been stronger, I could have saved the two of them, or at least Xander who could carry his own damn weight—isn’t that what I was meant to think in this situation? Except I regretted nothing, because I actually [i]tried[/i] my hardest, and I still wasn’t [i]nearly[/i] enough to save them. Had Ichabod not been our meat shield, and Xander not gone down guns ablazing, I’d have undoubtedly been reduced to pixels and data in the mastermind’s Recycle Bin.

Wasn’t it kind of funny how I started to respect him after death? The bastard tried to kill me; and yet somehow there was something heroic about him that I had to respect. In the end, he trusted Total, and gave his life to save the rest of us. That us included me—I guess that was something else to be grateful for.

I had a lot of things to be grateful for, didn’t I? Not that it mattered—what use was gratitude to a dead man? Yeah, thanks a fucking lot for taking the headshot instead of me, see you in hell? What were you meant to [i]say[/i]?

There was nothing to say, so perhaps I could pretend those trickles of care and sadness that had seeped through the cracks in my teeth didn’t exist. Except they did, and it was a goddamn fucking shame I didn’t get to express that before the both of them kicked the bucket.

It was a pretty twisted way of appreciating someone else’s existence, but whatever.

Regardless of how or what or why, there were only three of us left, and that was somehow meant to be a good thing – a useless Trainer who couldn’t quite seem to decide on what she wanted, a starter who had far too much faith in said Trainer and not nearly enough of a backbone [i]except[/i] when it came to said Trainer, and a weak teammate who couldn’t kill a Caterpie.
Wasn’t this the end, or something? It wasn’t as if we could keep going like this. We’d die – even if I wanted to get stronger at any cost, anything was better than death – and for whatever reason, Total’s life was more important that any of ours. She came from a world outside of our own, where pixels existed only on screens, and bodies weren’t made out of polygons. It was bigger, it was greater, it was more important, or something. I didn’t really get it. A life was a life, right? The only reason we fought was because the Trainers couldn’t. We protected them, and our bond with them allowed us to grow and get stronger, to travel, learn and live, rather than sitting in the same patch of tall grass for one’s entire life. Death was never supposed to be a part of the deal. Sure, it happened in the wild, but not with a Trainer.