Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: The Forest Temple (Ch5)

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	Clefairy and Skitty stared up in shocked silence at the sight of their companion, impaled by what appeared to be a sharp-tipped root. Clefairy covered her mouth with her hands, and tears welled up in her eyes… but nowhere near the amount falling from Skitty’s. Skitty spun around to face the Abyssal Trevenant, and with a wordless scream of rage, she lunged at the enemy. However, she only phased right through it and landed on the ground behind it, her Normal-type attack doing nothing to it. The Abyssal Trevenant turned, raising an arm. The limb turned pitch-black again, and it swung the arm down in another Wood Hammer attack. Skitty recovered just in time to avoid it, and fired a Water Pulse at her enemy. But once again, her attack did nothing to the Abyssal Trevenant, the pulse of energy simply going right through it. The Ghost/Grass-type retaliated by raising its arms and swinging them down in another Wood Hammer, which the Normal-type barely avoided by leaping back.

	As the two fought, Skitty’s attacks doing nothing and the Abyssal Trevenant barely missing with its own attacks, Clefairy was still staring at the sight of Cyndaquil impaled on the root. If she was less terrified by the sight, she would have been able to think straight and realize that the Trevenant must have used its natural ability to control plant life to command a root, perhaps one of the ones forming the walls of the room, to emerge from the ground and pierce Cyndaquil. As she stood there, though, her only thought was about whether Cyndaquil had survived the attack.

	“No… h-he can’t be dead…” she stammered under her breath. “H-he’s probably j-just unconscious… There’s no way he could get killed just like that!”

	A high-pitched scream broke her concentration, and she turned just in time to see Skitty fly into a wall, having been tossed by an attack by the Trevenant. She bounced off the wall of roots and hit the ground hard, lying on her belly and moaning in pain. As she lay there, the sounds morphed into sobbing, as the Normal-type cried for her friend and for her own failure to avenge him. The Abyssal Trevenant paid no mind to her, ignoring his fallen foe and turned towards Clefairy. The Fairy-type stumbled back, past the motionless, impaled body of Cyndaquil, and struggled to take her eyes off the morbid sight in order to focus on her foe.

	“I-it’s up to me again,” Clefairy stammered, looking in fear at the Abyssal Trevenant as it rose up to its full height and glared at her. Her two companions were unable to battle, and she was alone to face this foe. “But… like Cyndaquil said: there’s always hope, but we just have to find it.”

	She looked down at her hands, and smiled. “And I think I just found it,” she murmured.

	As the Abyssal Trevenant approached her, its arms turning black again as it waked past the impaled Cyndaquil, Clefairy stopped backing up and raised her hands, pointing upwards with two fingers and waggling them to use Metronome once again. It was the only thing she could do.

	As she waggled her fingers, she glowed light green, and like what happened back in the Monster House, the name of the upcoming move came to her. “Heal Order!” she shouted, as a swarm of small green orbs of energy surrounded her, glowing brightly before fading out.

	“That doesn’t help me at all!” she cried. “I haven’t taken any damage yet!”

	She started backpedaling quickly, as the Abyssal Trevenant slowly and menacingly scuttled towards her. She waggled her fingers again, quick enough that they became blurred, watching the Abyssal Trevenant fearfully and hoping to get a better move, hopefully one that would actually do damage. This time, she began to glow yellow, a sign of an upcoming electric move.

	“Electro Ball!” she cried. A ball of crackling electricity flew at the Abyssal Trevenant, making it twitch slightly as the electricity coursed through it, but it did not seem to take any damage, and continued to approach Clefairy.

	“Let’s try that again!” the Fairy-type cried, waggling a finger vigorously. After a few moments, she glowed light purple, and knew what move she would use.

	“Imprison!” she announced. And then, to her surprise, the Trevenant froze in place. Its red eye was still glaring at her, and its arms were still blackened, and its body was still giving off dark smoke… but the Abyssal Trevenant had become completely motionless.

	“That’s right,” she murmured. “I remember learning about that—in dungeons, Imprison can make the enemy unable to do anything at all for a little bit. That’s really lucky! But, now what do I do?”

	She looked up at the Abyssal Trevenant and shuddered. “It’s too powerful to fight, but if I keep using Metronome, maybe I’ll get a move strong enough to defeat it. But what are the odds of that?” She shook her head. “Probably too low to be practical. But if I can't fight it, what should I do?”

	The Fairy-type looked around the room, and her eyes fell again upon the motionless body of Cyndaquil impaled on the root in the center of the room. She stared at the scene for a few moments, and she fought back tears until she was able to turn away and look at the quietly sobbing form of Skitty on the ground near a wall. As she did, she finally got an idea.

	“I think my chances would be better if they were able to help me,” Clefairy said to herself. “I should help them first. Maybe one of them can help me figure out what to do. They said they fought an Abyssal Pokémon before. Maybe they’ll have advice? And if they don’t… It’s still better to have allies in a fight like this.”

	The Fairy-type jumped into the air, and her wings glowed as she swiftly hovered over to Skitty, the one of her companions who seemed the most capable of helping her at the moment. The Normal-type was still alive, but her ears were drooping and she seemed to be having difficulty breathing. She had stopped moaning and sobbing, and the only sound that came from her was her heavy breathing. Clefairy landed beside her and reached for one of the brown fabric bags she wore at her side. The Fairy-type opened it, reaching in and taking out a blue Oran Berry. She moved in front of Skitty, and looked down at the fallen Normal-type as she held the berry out to her.

	“Skitty, the Trevenant is petrified for a little bit,” she explained. “Quick, eat this Oran Berry.”

	Skitty weakly lifted her head, looking up at Clefairy. Clefairy could see that her furry cheeks were damp with tears.

	“C-Cyn…” she whispered, her voice weak and choked-up. She opened her mouth to keep talking, but then she suddenly gasped and her head dropped down to the ground. She was too wounded to keep it up.

	“Take the berry, quick!” Clefairy said. “That Trevenant’s going to turn back to normal any second now! I’ll need your help fighting it.”

	“Cyn… da…” Skitty stammered. “Cynda… quil…”

	“What?” Clefairy asked. “What are you saying?”

	“Cynda… I’m sorry…”

	Clefairy felt more tears well up as she listened to Skitty, but she shook her head quickly to try to get rid of them. Something in her had changed after having twice seen her two companions be taken out of commission, leaving her to fend for herself. She no longer wanted to cower or cry. She no longer feared the dungeon. She wanted to keep fighting, and make it out of this place alive.

	“Don’t feel sorry,” Clefairy said to Skitty. “It’s not your fault. But listen to me. Like Cyndaquil said, there’s always hope. And there’s hope that he’s okay. Things will only be hopeless if you don’t get back up and keep fighting that Trevenant, okay? Come on, Skitty!”

	The Normal-type looked up, with an expression somewhere between confusion and surprise on her face. Clefairy only took it in for a second before quickly and unceremoniously shoving the Oran Berry into the Normal-type’s mouth. Skitty almost gagged on it, but recovered quickly and chewed on it, swallowing the berry and feeling her energy return to her. Clefairy stepped back, and watched in glee as the Normal-type staggered to her feet. Her ears and tail were drooping, but more out of sadness than weakness. She had recovered from her wounds, and was able to fight again.

	“Clefairy…” Skitty said. “Thank you. But… I don’t know what we can do. That Trevenant is too strong, and Cyndaquil…” She fell silent, and

	“Let’s just focus on fighting the Trevenant for now,” Clefairy said. “Let’s try to think of a plan to take it out. There has to be something we can—”

	A high-pitched screech cut her off, and the two Pokémon grunted in pain as the sound hurt their ears. They looked over towards the center of the room to find that the Abyssal Trevenant had recovered from Clefairy’s Imprison. The two Pokémon faced their foe, preparing for any upcoming attack, but both looked in confusion as the Abyssal Trevenant simply closed its eye and moaned quietly as it raised its arms, seemingly not using an attack.

	“Wait, what’s it doing?” Clefairy asked. “Hang on, that’s the same thing it did before—Skitty! Dodge!”

	The two Pokémon jumped away from each other, barely avoiding a pair of sharp roots that erupted from the ground beneath where they had stood. They landed on their feet and glared at the Abyssal Trevenant. The Ghost/Grass-type lowered its arms again, and the roots descended back into the ground. Their enemy glared back at them in return, before closing its eye and raising its arms once again. Expecting such an attack this time, Skitty and Clefairy were able to easily dodge the two roots that came out of the ground. They landed on their feet again, and the Abyssal Trevenant changed tactics, slowly approaching them as its arms darkened in preparation for a physical attack. Skitty and Clefairy backed up, going in a loop around the room, eying the Abyssal Trevenant warily.

	“It was trying to stab us,” Clefairy said. “Like it did with Cyndaquil.”

	“It looks like it has to concentrate to use that attack,” Skitty noted. “I wonder if we could try to attack it while it’s distracted like that.”

	“Concentrate…” Clefairy murmured. Something about that word clicked in her, and with a gasp, she turned to Skitty. “Wait, Skitty! Remember what you talked about earlier? When we fought that one Exeggutor?”

	Skitty cocked her head to the side as she looked to her companion. “You mean when I broke its concentration with Fake Out, and stopped it from attacking?”

	“Exactly! I just remembered: A normal Trevenant has the power to control plant life, and apparently, this Abyssal one can do the same, considering how it’s been controlling these roots. That means the root that it used on Cyndaquil… it’s probably under its control. So, if we break its concentration somehow…”

	“…It might lose control of all of these roots, including…” Skitty glanced over at the sight of her impaled partner in the middle of the room, and took a deep breath. “Okay. I think we can try that out. Clefairy, I have an idea. Open the bag on my left side and look for a small yellow seed. Quickly!”

	As the Abyssal Trevenant approached them, steadily getting closer and closer as Clefairy and Skitty kept backing up around the perimeter of the room, Clefairy reached into Skitty’s bag and took out a small yellow seed. She held it towards Skitty, who shook her head.

	“No, that’s a Reviver Seed,” she said. “We need a Sleep Seed, okay?”

	Clefairy nodded and, holding the seed in one hand, reached in with the other and withdrew a small yellow seed.

	“No, that’s a Heal Seed!” Skitty shouted. “Get a Sleep Seed!”

	“This looks just like the last seed, though,” she said as she reached into the bag again. She pulled out a third small yellow seed, and Skitty growled at her.

	“That’s just another Reviver Seed!” Skitty said angrily. “Fine. I’ll do it myself!”

	She dipped her tail into the bag and flicked it, tossing out a small yellow seed behind her. She jumped backwards and stood over it, and Clefairy looked at it incredulously, stopping in her tracks despite the Abyssal Trevenant having almost reached her.

	“That’s identical to the other three!” she cried.

	“Only in its appearance,” Skitty said. “Watch this!”

	Skitty picked up the seed in her mouth and spat it at the Abyssal Trevenant. The seed flew towards it, and hit the corrupted Pokémon right below the eye. The seed vanished, and the Abyssal Trevenant blinked once. Clefairy and Skitty watched it warily.

	A moment later, its eye closed, and the Abyssal Trevenant went limp. It toppled over backwards, landing on the ground with a heavy thud, kicking up around it a small cloud of dirt from the ground. Skitty and Clefairy watched the sight, and as one, let out a long sigh of relief. The Abyssal Trevenant, at least for a short while, was unconscious.

	“Good thinking, Clefairy,” Skitty said to her partner, smiling widely. “Just like I said before, some enemies are too difficult to fight with brute force. Sometimes, a little bit of strategy is required. This Abyssal Trevenant resists our attacks, but it’s still susceptible to status ailments. It should be asleep for a little bit. Now, the question is: were those roots really under its control in the sense that making it go to sleep for a bit and breaking its concentration will make them go away?”

	The two Pokémon looked around the room, watching the roots intently to find their answer. As they looked on, the walls of roots shuddered, and the small lights that covered them dimmed. With a loud creaking and groaning noise, the roots began to move. They retracted up, their tapered tips emerging from the ground and receding into the ceiling. And, to their surprise, Skitty and Clefairy saw that the roots had actually been cutting off a section in the middle of a larger room, which was now revealed once they went away. The real room had walls of smooth stone with some torches mounted on them, and it resembled the foyer of the Forest Temple, that the two Delvers and the Watcher had stood in what felt like a long time ago.

	“Hey, this is the Temple!” Clefairy shouted. “We were in the Temple all along! This is the Shrine! Look!”

	Another wall of roots blocked off one end of the room about a dozen feet away, but as Clefairy pointed them out to Skitty, they retracted into the ceiling as well. And as they did, Skitty and Clefairy saw an intriguing sight. Set on the dirt floor behind the retracting roots was a large stone slab, like an altar, with a few unlit candles, a couple earthenware jars, and various parts of plants—leaves, branches, fruits, flowers—scattered about on top of it. But the most notable thing was a small green Pokémon sitting hunched over in the middle, a thin root descending from the ceiling and stabbing into its back.

	“Is that…” Skitty murmured.

	“Celebi!” Clefairy said. As she looked at the Mythical Pokémon, she noticed the root impaled in his back, and gasped. “But he’s got a root stabbed into him, like Cyndaquil! Did the Trevenant do that? And why isn’t that root going away like the others?”

	Skitty spun around, and gazed upon the sight of Cyndaquil’s motionless body still pierced by another root, suspended several feet above the ground. “And, Cyndaquil… he’s still… that root isn’t going away either!”

	The two Pokémon heard a low groan, and quickly looked over at Celebi in time to see the green Pokémon stir, open his eyes, and look around groggily. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the root stabbing into his back, and grimaced. He weakly raised an arm, and the root shuddered before pulling out of his back and going back up into the ceiling. A pair of small, translucent wings fluttered on Celebi’s back, and he slowly floated up into the air, looking out at the scene of the two Pokémon standing a dozen feet away, with an unconscious Trevenant and an impaled Cyndaquil behind them.

	“W-what happened?” Celebi stammered. His smooth and high-pitched voice had an unnatural echo to it, and sounded very weak. He looked to Skitty and Clefairy and cocked his head to the side. “You two. Why are you here? Wait—Clefairy! I recognize you. You’re a Watcher. You’ve come here before. Why are you here now?”

	“Celebi, we came here to see if you were okay,” Clefairy said, stepping forward. “But we’re running out of time. That Trevenant is very strong, and will wake up any moment now. And the Cyndaquil back there…”

	Clefairy trailed off, and Celebi looked over at the motionless body of the Fire-type. The green Pokémon nodded as he observed the sight. “I might be able to save him.”

	“Really?” Skitty cried. “Please, Celebi! Help him!”

	The green Pokémon closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly waved an arm towards the root. On cue, the root that had run Cyndaquil through shook before quickly descending into the ground, depositing Cyndaquil on the dirt floor of the Shrine. Skitty ran over to his side, staring in horror at the wound on his back where the root had run him through. The root had only been around an inch wide, so the wound was relatively small, and it had mostly closed up once the root pulled out of it. Even so, it was still very noticeable, and blood was seeping out of both the entry and exit wounds, forming into a pool underneath Cyndaquil.

	“Cyndaquil!” she cried. “Cyndaquil, are you… can you hear me?”

	The Fire-type did not react, and Skitty began to cry again. She was barely able to speak, as sorrow made her choke up. “Please… C-Cynda—”

	An earsplitting screech, familiar by this point, interrupted her, and she grunted in pain. Along with Clefairy and Celebi, she looked over towards the Abyssal Trevenant, and saw that it was rising again. The hostile Pokémon stood tall, glaring at its gathered foes. Skitty leapt between the Abyssal Trevenant and the fallen Cyndaquil, baring her fangs at the enemy. Clefairy hurried to her side, ready to help her in any way she could. Meanwhile, Celebi simply frowned at the corrupted Pokémon, and floated down to land atop the altar.

	“So, you’re the Abyssal?” he said, as he reached into a simple brown earthenware jar sitting on the altar. “You showed up pretty quickly. Too quickly for me to take you out. But now... I guess I’ll finally get my second chance.”

	Celebi took a small black crystalline shard from the jar, and held it high. The shard glowed bright white, and the Abyssal Trevenant shrieked loudly, flailing its arms and stumbling backwards. Skitty and Clefairy watched it in surprise. Then, in an instant, it was gone, dissolved into a cloud of black smoke that then flew towards the shard. The cloud was absorbed into the crystal, and Celebi carefully placed it into the jar again.

	“There. I’m glad that worked,” he said with a sigh.

	“What was that?” asked Clefairy, perplexed

	“I will explain momentarily. But first, we should attend to this Cyndaquil.”

	Clefairy nodded, and Celebi flew over to Cyndaquil, hovering over him. Skitty lay at the side of her partner, crying softly.

	“W-will he be okay?” she stammered as Celebi landed beside her. The green Pokémon raised a hand towards the Fire-type, closing his eyes as he tried to sense his vital signs using his psychic abilities. He soon lowered his hand and turned to Skitty, and the Normal-type gasped as she saw him smile at her.

	“Yes, he will live,” Celebi said. “But he is close to death. That attack very nearly killed him, and he’s been just barely clinging to life this whole time. I can heal him a little bit, but my powers only go so far. Healing is not my forte. You should seek out a Pokémon with more healing prowess than me, though I will do what I can to help him.”

	Celebi placed a hand on Cyndaquil’s back, beside the wound. His hand glowed, and Skitty watched in awe as the wound seemed to change shape, growing smaller and smaller. But it did not vanish completely. Celebi grunted and removed his hand, breathing heavily from the exertion, and observed Cyndaquil. Skitty and Clefairy watched the Fire-type closely, as well. For a few moments, he remained motionless, and the three Pokémon feared he would never move again.

	But then, Cyndaquil began to stir. His limbs and snout twitched, and he began to breathe again. Skitty stared at her partner, too overcome with joy to do anything but stare at him. Her glee quickly diminished, however, when she realized that his breath was shaky and came in short gasps, and his expression had turned into a grimace that did not go away.

	“N-no…” he stammered, the pain he felt clear in his weak and strangled voice. “No… no… no more, please… Please help me… Skitty…”

	“It’s okay, Cyndaquil,” Skitty said, crouching down beside him. “You’re gonna be alright. Just stay with me!”

	“S-Skitty…” Cyndaquil moaned. “H-help…”

	“I’m here,” Skitty said, leaning in and nuzzling her partner's cheek. “It’s okay. Just hang on! We’ll get you healed up!”

	Celebi crossed his arms. “There’s nothing more I can do for him. That was the limit of my healing ability. I brought him back from the brink, but it will be up to others to ensure he doesn’t fall back to it. I can’t heal him fully myself. If you know any medics, you should take him to them right away, because he needs healing. Badly.”

	“But there aren’t any healers nearby,” Skitty said, looking over at Celebi. “The closest town is Azure Village, and that’s a long way away.”

	“That’s not a problem,” Clefairy said. “Like most Temples, this one has the ability to warp you to any Steeple.” She pointed at the wall opposite the altar. “There’s a door over there. It’s tough to see, because it’s made of stone that mostly matches the walls—just like the door back at the start of the Temple, in the room with the tapestries—but it’s there. There’s a pressure plate in front of it that you have to stand on to open it, but once you do that, you can go out into the main room of the Temple, and in the center will be a round mosaic on the floor. Just stand in the middle, and you’ll warp out to a Steeple of your choosing.”

	“That’s… convenient,” Skitty said. “In that case, I’ll take Cyndaquil back to Shukuba Village. There’s a Steeple there, and our guild is in that town too. We have good healers there. I’ll bring Cyndaquil there and get him healed up.”

	“Do you need any help taking him there?” Clefairy asked.

	“No, I can take care of that myself,” Skitty said. “I’ll just carry him on my back.”

	“But he’s still bleeding! You’ll get blood on yourself.”

	“That really doesn’t matter right now,” Skitty replied. “Besides, we have nothing to cover the wound with.”

	“Actually…” Celebi began, as he flew back to the altar and grabbed a long length of thick vine. He brought it over to Cyndaquil, who was still lying on the ground, breathing in gasps and shuddering occasionally. With the help of Clefairy, Celebi managed to wrap the vine around Cyndaquil’s chest and back a few times, tying it tightly and covering up the pair of wounds on his back and chest. The Fire-type grunted as the two Pokémon moved him in their effort to wrap the vine around him, the movement apparently hurting him, but it was for the best, as the vine was capable of covering the wounds and applying pressure to them.

	“It's not the best solution, but it should help somewhat," Celebi said. "And don’t worry. The vine is clean. It will not infect the wound.”

	Once the vine was tightened around Cyndaquil, Clefairy and Celebi, using their levitation abilities, picked the Fire-type up and carefully placed him onto Skitty’s back. His head hung over one side and his legs off the other, and Skitty grunted as she tried to support his weight, but she was able to hold him up regardless. As soon as he was in place, she wasted no time in running towards the door and hopping on the pressure plate, revealing the hidden door leading to the main room of the Temple. It was a large, plain room, with four walls and four hidden doors, including the one Skitty had just opened. In the center of the dirt floor was a mosaic of multi-colored rocks, in an abstract pattern. Skitty ran towards it, and stepped into the middle of the mosaic. The rocks all began to glow brightly, in myriad colors, and Skitty turned to face Clefairy and Celebi, who were hovering just in front of the door, in the main room of the Temple.

	“Just think about your destination, and you will warp there,” Celebi explained. Skitty concentrated on the Steeple at Shukuba, a sight she had seen often, and the light coming from the rocks beneath her paws grew brighter. In seconds, it had become blinding, and then she was gone, warped to the Steeple, on her way to get her friend healed.


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