Chapter 10: Nicola's Tangela
The silence in the Pokemon Center’s private lounge was heavy, smothering the usual post-battle buzz. Briv was scrolling through maps on his Pokéwatch, his jaw tight. Patricia sat close to him, absently stroking Buneary’s fur, while Dariana meticulously polished a speck of dirt from Gallade’s shoulder blade. The encounter with Samantha had left a residue, a psychic poison that made the air taste of ozone and anxiety.
Nicola couldn’t stand it. The forced calm, the unspoken fear. It felt like waiting. And Nicola Sunfall did not wait for threats to come to her.
“I’m going for a walk,” she announced, standing up abruptly. Her chair scraped against the floor.
Briv looked up, concern etched on his face. “Nic, maybe we should stick together. Axel said—”
“Axel isn’t my keeper,” she cut him off, her voice sharper than she intended. She softened it, but only slightly. “I need air. And I need to think. I won’t go far.” She needed more than air; she needed to move, to act, to replace the memory of that Drapion’s pincers with something she controlled.
Her Starly, perched on the back of her chair, chirped and fluttered to her shoulder, sensing her restlessness. It was a small comfort.
She headed back into the park, but not toward the sanitized battle plaza. She struck out westward, following a narrow, less-traveled path that wound away from the crystal towers of central Aethelburg and into the older, wilder heart of the grounds. Here, the trees were ancient, their gnarled roots breaking through the soil like skeletal fingers. The manicured flowerbeds gave way to thick ferns and clusters of pungent mushrooms. This was where real Pokémon lived, not the ones that lounged around waiting for trainers to throw balls at them.
The image of Samantha’s smirk flashed in her mind. I’m going to enjoy breaking that spirit of yours. The words weren’t just a threat; they were a challenge. A declaration of war on her very identity. Nicola’s competitiveness, usually a fun, fiery engine, now burned with a colder, more desperate fuel. She couldn’t be the weak link. She wouldn’t be the one who needed saving.
Starly, attuned to her mood, let out a soft, questioning coo.
“We need to get stronger, little guy,” she murmured, reaching up to scratch the feathers under its chin. “Being fast isn’t enough anymore. We need strategy. We need…” She trailed off, her eyes scanning the shadowy undergrowth. “We need an advantage.”
She walked for nearly an hour, the sounds of the city fading into a symphony of buzzing insects and trickling water. She found a small, clear stream cutting through a rocky crevice and decided to follow it upstream. The air grew cooler, damper. The dense canopy above blocked most of the afternoon sun, casting the area in a perpetual, moss-backed twilight.
It was there, in that quiet gloom, that Starly went rigid on her shoulder. Its head twitched, its focus锁定on a particularly dark thicket of bamboo-like plants. It let out a low, warning chirp, so different from its usual cheerful tones.
Nicola froze, her hand hovering near the lone Poké Ball on her belt. “What is it?”
Starly hopped from her shoulder, landing silently on a mossy rock beside the stream. It stared intently into the thicket. Nicola followed its gaze, her eyes straining to adjust. At first, she saw only shifting shadows and the gentle sway of plants. Then, she saw it.
A mass of tangled, deep blue vines shifted within the bamboo. It was large, much larger than any she’d seen in textbooks. Two dark, bewildered eyes peered out from the nest of vegetation, watching them. A Tangela. It wasn’t rare, but this one… there was a thickness to its vines, an aged, weathered quality that spoke of strength and experience. Perfect.
A slow, determined smile spread across Nicola’s face. This was it. This was the answer to the gnawing feeling in her gut. A Grass-type. A natural counter to the Rock and Ground-types that could give Starly trouble. A partner that could anchor her team, provide defense, control the battlefield.
“Okay, star,” she whispered, her voice steady and low. “This is it. Quick and precise. Remember the training. Don’t get caught.”
Starly puffed out its chest, a gleam of understanding in its beady eyes. It took to the air with a soft flutter, hovering between Nicola and the thicket.
The Tangela, sensing the challenge, emerged fully. It was indeed massive, its vines slithering over the damp earth like a dozen thick snakes. It let out a low, gurgling growl.
“Starly, Wing Attack!” Nicola commanded, her voice cutting through the forest’s hush.
Starly shot forward, a blur of brown and white. It angled its wings, aiming a sharp strike at the core of the vine mass. But the Tangela was surprisingly quick. A bundle of vines shot up like a whip, intercepting the attack. The two connected with a solid thwack. Starly was knocked back, tumbling in the air before righting itself.
“It’s faster than it looks,” Nicola muttered, reassessing. “Alright, don’t get close. Stay airborne. Use Quick Attack to build speed, then strike from different angles!”
Starly obeyed, becoming a dizzying spectator sport of motion. It zipped left, right, high and low, its movements a sudden burst of white energy. The Tangela thrashed, its vines lashing out in wide, powerful arcs, but they cut through empty air. Starly was too agile, a mote of dust in a sunbeam.
Crack! A Vine Whip shattered the bamboo stalk where Starly had been a millisecond earlier.
Thwip! Another vine narrowly missed its tail feathers.
Nicola’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was no plaza battle. There was no safety net, no Nurse Joy waiting just off-field. One solid hit from those vines could seriously injure her partner. The stakes were real, visceral. This was what Axel had meant.
“Now! Dive-bomb! Wing Attack from above!” she yelled.
Starly soared high, then tucked its wings and dropped like a stone. It spun, becoming a drilling corkscrew of kinetic energy aimed directly at the Tangela’s head. The Tangela, confused by the aerial barrage, was a fraction of a second too slow to raise its defenses.
The attack connected. A direct hit. The Tangela stumbled back, a pained gurgle escaping its mass. It was hurt. But not nearly enough.
Enraged, it shuddered violently. From its body, it released a cloud of fine, orange powder that shimmered in the dim light. Sleep Powder.
“Starly, evade! Upwind!” Nicola shouted, panic slicing through her focus.
Starly banked hard, but the powder cloud was wide. A few sparkling particles dusted its wings. Its flight became immediately erratic, sluggish. It wobbled in the air, its eyes fluttering.
“No! Fight it, Starly! Shake it off!” Nicola’s voice was raw. This was slipping away. The memory of being powerless against the Eclipse grunt flooded back. The feeling of being outmatched. Of losing.
No. Not again.
Her eyes darted around the clearing, searching for anything—an advantage, a distraction. They landed on the stream. Water.
“Starly!” she screamed, a new plan forming in a split second. “The stream! Fly low over the water!”
With a tremendous effort, the drowsy Starly obeyed, dipping down until its feet skimmed the surface of the stream. The cold water splashed up onto its wings, washing the sleep-inducing spores away. It shook its body vigorously, chirping with renewed alertness.
The Tangela, confident its trick had worked, was already beginning to advance, its vines reaching out for what it thought was an easy capture.
“It’s overconfident,” Nicola breathed, a fierce grin returning. “Now! While it’s exposed! One more Wing Attack, full power! Aim for the center mass!”
Cleansed and furious, Starly put every ounce of its strength into a final, blindingly fast charge. It wasn’t a fancy maneuver anymore; it was a missile. It hit the Tangela with a sound like a hammer striking wet clay. The vine Pokémon cried out, stumbling backward into the bamboo thicket. It lay there, dazed, its vines twitching weakly.
The forest was silent again, save for the babble of the stream and Starly’s panting as it landed unsteadily on a rock.
Nicola didn’t hesitate. Her hand, which had been clenched into a fist at her side, flew to her belt. The Poké Ball felt weighty, significant. This wasn’t just a capture; it was a declaration.
She threw it.
The ball sailed through the air in a perfect arc, striking the weakened Tangela square in its vine-covered body. It dissolved into red light and was sucked inside. The ball dropped to the mossy ground.
It shook once.
Twice.
A third time.
The click was impossibly loud in the quiet clearing.
Nicola stood frozen for a long moment, then let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She walked over, her legs feeling slightly weak, and picked up the Poké Ball. It was warm.
Starly fluttered down to her side, nuzzling her hand proudly.
She looked from the ball in her hand to the tired but triumphant bird beside her. They had done it. Alone. Against a stronger, trickier opponent. They had faced a real threat and adapted. They had won.
The gnawing anxiety in her gut was still there, but it was quieter now, overshadowed by a solid, burgeoning confidence. She had taken the first concrete step. She had answered Samantha’s challenge not with fear, but with action.
She recalled Starly with a soft word of praise, then attached the new ball containing Tangela to her belt. It settled next to her first, the second link in a chain she was determined to forge into unbreakable steel.
Turning away from the stream, she started back toward the city, the shadows of the ancient trees no longer feeling quite so menacing. She had a team to build, and a rival to prove wrong.
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She had a team to build, and a rival to prove wrong.
The walk back felt different, the weight of the new Poké Ball a solid promise against her hip. The shadows between the trees were just shadows now, not hiding places for threats. She pushed through a final curtain of weeping willow branches and stepped back onto the main path, the crystal spires of Aethelburg gleaming ahead. She could see the group still clustered outside the Center, their postures tense even from a distance.
Briv saw her first, his worried expression melting into relief. “There you are! We were about to send out a search party.” Chimchar chattered a greeting from his shoulder, its flame flickering brightly.
“I told you I could handle myself,” Nicola said, a touch of smugness in her voice. She tapped the new ball on her belt. “And I found us some reinforcements. Meet Tangela.”
Patricia’s eyes widened. “You caught one? Out here? By yourself?” Buneary hopped closer, sniffing the air curiously around Nicola’s waist.
Before Nicola could elaborate, a synchronized, violent buzzing erupted from all their wrists. It wasn’t a gentle notification; it was a seizure. Their Pokéwatch screens flooded with a pulsing, bloody red, so bright it seemed to stain their skin.
CRITICAL DANGER. LEVEL-RED INCIDENT. PROXIMITY: 500 METERS WEST. ALL TRAINERS EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION.
“What the hell is a level-red?” Dariana asked, her voice tight. She already had a hand on Gallade’s ball.
Axel was suddenly there, having moved from the shadow of the Center’s archway without a sound. His face was a granite mask. “It’s Eclipse. Their worst.” His green eyes scanned them, the intensity making the air feel thin. “Level-red means they’re not just stealing or fighting. They’re experimenting. Live-field modifications. It’s… surgical. And violent.”
A deep, guttural roar tore through the park, a sound of rending metal and raw animal agony fused into one horrific noise. It came from the west, from the same ancient part of the woods Nicola had just left. The ground transmitted a faint, sickening tremor through the soles of their shoes.
Briv’s face had lost all its color. “They’re… they’re doing that to a Pokémon? Right now?”
“We have to help it,” Patricia whispered, her hand closing around Briv’s arm. Her knuckles were white.
“That is precisely what we are not trained to do,” Axel stated, his voice cutting through their rising panic. “This is not a battle. It is a slaughterhouse. You go in there, you become part of the experiment.”
Another roar, closer this time, was followed by the sharp crack of splintering trees. The metallic shriek underlying the cry set Nicola’s teeth on edge. She thought of the determined Turtwig, of her new Tangela’s bewildered eyes. The image of something being taken apart and put back together wrong made her stomach lurch.
“We can’t just stand here,” Briv said, his voice low and shaking with a anger that was overpowering his fear. He looked at Axel. “You have Rotom. We have… we have something. We can’t leave it.”
Axel held his gaze for a long, silent moment. The sounds of chaos continued to echo from the forest. He seemed to be weighing their fragile resolve against the certain danger. Finally, he gave a single, sharp nod. “You follow my lead. You do exactly as I say. If I say run, you run. If I say abandon your Pokémon, you do it.” His eyes bored into Briv’s. “Your conscience will not save its life. Only my orders might.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He turned and began moving west, his form blending into the dappled shadows under the trees. Rotom materialized above his shoulder, its usual playful flicker replaced by a low, dangerous hum.
Briv didn’t hesitate. He looked at Patricia, at Dariana, at Nicola. He saw his own terror reflected in their eyes, but also a shared, stubborn fire. The same fire Samantha had promised to break.
“Let’s go,” he said, and it was not a question.
They moved as one, a silent, desperate unit plunging back into the gloom Nicola had just escaped. The cheerful sounds of the city vanished, swallowed by the oppressive quiet of the deep woods. It was a false quiet, punctuated by the distant, horrific sounds of the Eclipse Squad’s work and the frantic beating of their own hearts.
They pushed through thickets, their clothes snagging on thorns they no longer felt. The air grew thick with the smell of crushed greenery and something new, something acrid and chemical. It burned the back of Nicola’s throat.
Axel held up a clenched fist, bringing them to a halt behind a dense wall of ferns. He pointed through a gap in the foliage.
The clearing ahead was a scar on the forest. Several ancient trees had been snapped in half, their trunks oozing sap. In the center stood a machine, a brutish assembly of polished steel and glowing orange conduits, humming with malevolent energy. Wires snaked from it, connected to thick manacles that clamped down on the limbs of a massive, writhing form.
It was a Nidoking. Or it had been. Metallic plates were bolted crudely onto its purple hide, sparking with erratic energy. One of its horn drills was sheathed in a glowing, razor-sharp casing that seemed to be burning into its skull. The Pokémon thrashed against its restraints, its roars now distorted by a synthetic, grinding filter. Its eyes, once filled with territorial fury, were wide with pure, uncomprehending agony.
Two Eclipse grunts monitored screens on the machine, their expressions bored. A third, the one from the plaza—Marcus—stood with his arms crossed, a smirk playing on his lips as he watched the creature suffer.
“The subject is rejecting the armor plating,” one grunt droned. “Stress levels critical.”
“Increase the voltage,” Marcus said casually. “Break its will. The body will follow.”
Briv felt a white-hot rage eclipse his fear. He took a half-step forward, but Axel’s hand clamped onto his shoulder like a vise.
“Wait,” Axel breathed, his eyes scanning the perimeter. “There will be more. They never travel in just three.”
As if on cue, a figure dropped silently from the trees above the machine, landing with preternatural grace. Samantha Eterngust ran a hand almost lovingly over the shuddering flank of the tortured Nidoking.
“Such beautiful resistance,” she purred, her voice carrying easily across the clearing. She looked at Marcus. “But you’re being too rough, darling. You’ll break the toy before we get to play.”
She turned, her wild purple eyes seeming to look directly through the ferns, directly at them. A wide, knowing smile spread across her face.
“Isn’t that right?” she called out, her tone light and conversational. “We have guests. Come on out. Don’t you want to see what we’re building?”