Lavender Town "Missing Frequencies" Mystery
Death isn't the end.
The thing about trying to do new and interesting pastas is that sometimes you're not really sure if you've done it or not. So I present to you, my own efforts in this regard. Read it, and tell me in the comments just what you think of my attempt at an original pasta.
So without any further delay, I present to you....
Section heading[]
The End of Lavender Town, or, as an alt title,
The Final Secret of Lavender Town
Pasta[]
I see you.
Your heart is beating quickly; it is dark here. The lights went out some time ago. Your eyes are wide; straining to catch some glimpse of what you know now lies all around you. You can't though, your little human senses are simply too underdeveloped. That scares you. Because you know what's out there, but you can't see it. You can't run from it anymore. You feel it pressing in all around you; your heart battering like a drum; your breath catches in your throat. Horror, fear, panic. All explosions of colour in the grey mass that you call a mind.
I can taste your terror.
Why did you come here? Surely you must have known of other places to hide. Surely, you must guessed what had befallen here of all places? There must have been others; you can see them in your mind's eye. Broken down homes swamped with fog and half-rotten furniture. Smashed windows of a Pokemon Mart, the faintest hint of movement all you can discern from the heavy blackness within.
The Pokemon centre a burned wreck; twisted metal and blackened plastic and the ground littered with tiny, charred spheres. So that's how it is out there. You really didn't have much choice then, did you?
But to come here... Here of all places. Either you're a foolish boy, or the bravest trainer I ever met. Either way, it doesn't matter much now, does it?
So you can hear me.... that's good. I didn't know if you could. Its been a very long time since a human could understand what I was saying. Normally, the living are too busy to hear the dead. But then, I suppose now is hardly what could be called normal, is it?
Heheheh. You're scared. You want to run, but your legs have locked up. Your spine is like ice now, and your heart is beating so fast you're wondering if it will explode. Part if you is wondering if that would even be such a bad thing at this point. After what you've seen, death isn't nearly so worrisome, is it? A release... but then..
Hah! I see it in your mind. You see yourself as one of them. That's what happens if you die now. Still feel the need? I assure you, if you do, I can help quite easily.
Still, I can't help but wonder why you come. In your mind I see your reasoning, there was nowhere else. Simple reasoning. It other circumstances it may even have worked out for you. But tell me boy, whoever seeks sanctuary in a tomb when the dead are rising?
Your hands are moving to the belt at your waist; your pokeballs. Your friends.
They can't help you now. They're tired from fighting their way inside; even if they weren't I assure you. I am on an entirely different level than what you have seen so far.
What am I? Is that what you're screaming? Heh, isn't that a fun story? Very well, I'll tell you of my past. After all, I've waited a very long time for this. A few more moments won't hurt, and after I tell you perhaps you will understand a bit better.
Sit down. Please sit down.
Stop the screaming. It was a psychic impulse. A very simple trick. Any psychic Pokemon could have pulled it off. I did not control your mind or your body. Now hush, worse monsters than me search for you.
That got your attention didn't it? Oh yes, I don't see just you. I see the whole of the tower. Trust me, right now you don't want to be found. You're better off with me.
What do I intend to do to you? Your face is pale with fear, but you manage to put up a show of bravado. You feel sick in your stomach because you know that you can't escape now, terror claws at you because I could easily kill you and we both know it. So why are you still alive? Because I want it to be so, now stop asking questions and listen.
Death is but the beginning.
A human once wrote that. Some human who made his living shaping words for other humans to listen to and appreciate. I never could get the hang of that, even when I was still...whole.
Words just never seemed important to me. What are mere words when you are privy to to the innermost world of thought? What are words? Crude sounds that you make with that tube of meat you call a throat. What's a language except an expanded version of that thing you use to tell other monkeys where the best fruit is?
Words are simple sounds, but they represent are a whole different story.
Thoughts.
Thoughts are like lightning, crackling and dancing across your mind. Touching off inspiration or despair. They dance and spark and grow; one thought becomes two and two become many. That was my world, the world of thought. The world of emotion. With a single look, I could peel a person's innermost mind down to the bone. I could understand anything and everything that they had ever wanted, wished for or done. I could read people like you could read books.
What's language compared to that? So you could say, even when I was one of you, it was only tangentially. The world of thought was my true home; a place of growing, blossoming colour, a place where I was no longer held back by my frail body. Where my mind – my great mind – could fly free. My body was matter, but my soul had always been of something else.
Heh, I see you have no clue what I'm on about, do you? No, that's fine. A lot of things make more sense when you're like me.
I see that I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to the beginning, shall we? I know it's hard to imagine, but I wasn't always a disembodied voice that lectured passing trainers.
I was born a very long time ago in a place not far from here. Like all of my kind, I was weak at first. Helpless. The best I could do was to run; survive. But also like the rest of my kind, I knew that I was destined for more. The power I felt inside me grew daily.
In time, I did what all Pokemon must do. I evolved. My powers continued to go from strength to strength; now – while still weak in body – my psychic might was more than enough to make up for it. Few could even conceive of the burning power that had become my mind.
Even amongst Psychics, Kadabra are considered powerful. And I knew that I was stronger than most.
The next part is a bit foggy, but...
I had a trainer... a friend... I think...
I must have... How else could I end up here?
But once more, my eagerness is overtaking my manners. Once you've become like me, your mind tends to wander. The ones outside have given themselves to it. You've seen. Nothing more than beasts. Primal savages in rotting flesh.
Not I...
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. I was a Kadabra for quite a long time; but that didn't matter. Even as a freshly evolved Pokemon, my power was enough to handle final stages so long as I was careful. Despite our rapid evolution, once we become Kadabra, we don't grow quickly or easily so I was content to remain as I was for a time. That contentment may have owed much to the human who had come to be my friend however.
I remember him now. All smiles and calm words. The taste of his mind like a cool drink. He had a tiny bit of power, which was why I was drawn to him at first. My kind tend to partner with human psychics as you know. He was a trainer of Pokemon; I was his first. I travelled by his side for the whole of my life from that point on. Never leaving for long; he refused to try and confine me in a ball like he did the others. We were much more than mere partners, we were friends.
I miss him still.
With my power, and his growing skills, he soon amassed a decent team of Pokemon. I was his best. We went from peak to peak; defeating Gyms with ease. Back then, I would have said that there was nothing we could not defeat together.
More the fool I was...
Then one day, it grew dark earlier than normal. Both of us noticed; our powers screamed at us to flee. Something was coming; but it stalked us from the darkness. A creature of shadows and death. A spirit-thief. A Gengar.
I fought. But as a Psychic Pokemon I was weak against ghosts. It made a mockery of my most intricate defences; everything we had learned on our adventure was useless now. I remember thinking that I was too weak; I begged him to run while I held it off. I was winded, bleeding, one one knee and gasping for air.
I remember his terrified face. His mind a churning mass of fear.
I remember the pain in my body.
I remember for the first time, knowing that my life was about to end.
But it did not. I found the strength to fight; calling on my deepest and hardest to reach power. My every fibre of will; the psychic power I was born to wield. My will to allow no harm to come to the human I had befriended. All of it coalesced into that one moment.
There was light.
Evolution. The thing I had sought for so long came to me now only when I was willing to die in defence of another. Ironic, no? Life's ambition can only be reached one disregards it for the first time. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.
I attacked. The fight was tough; I was still at a type disadvantage. But equally, I was fighting for my friends and so I knew that I could not lose. I would not lose. Psychic power responds to will, you understand? In that moment, I was probably the most powerful I ever have been.
I drove off the ghost and saved my friend. But the price was high. My powers were exhausted and I would never recover fully from the strain that had forced my body to evolve. I did not care. I had saved my trainer. My life was a worthwhile price to pay, if such was asked.
Years passed by and my weakness grew. It was not age; for my kind can live to be very old indeed. More like a sickness of the soul. Like an infected wound which, while healed, spreads the infection. My trainer feared for my health and began to take me with him less and less...
I could hardly stand it. The pain I was feeling at the forced separation as sharp as a knife in the gut. But I knew he meant well. I knew that he would never leave me fully.
One night, I had a vision.
It is both a curse and a blessing of my kind that we can see the future. Not all of it, and not clearly. But we can catch glimpses of it now and then. When something we care for is threatened, we can see it.
I saw the death of that human who had befriended me and who I had given so much to save.
I would not stand for it.
Despite my growing weakness, I called all my power to hand and went to him in the flash of an eye. Teleporting to his side. At first, he was confused at my presence. Angered perhaps that I had used up my limited power for such a thing. Then I saw it; drifting like a cloud in the sky.
The Gengar.
Age had made it stronger now; it was a giant. It had feasted on the souls of many; harvested whole towns, gorged itself until it was fat and could eat no more.
What, you thought all ghosts were cute and cuddly?
Instantly, I knew that this was a fight I could not win. It was a ghost, and had grown to be a powerful one. There would be no come from behind victory now. And I knew why it had tracked down my trainer. Nothing holds a grudge quite like a ghost Pokemon.
I couldn't win; this I knew in my heart. Even with all my power, even assuming I was not crippled. This was not a fight I could ever walk away from. I could teleport now and perhaps it would be sated with the death of the human.
But I would not allow it.
Perhaps it was a futile fight; perhaps we were both doomed. But if it was to be the case, then I was ready to go to my doom in battle.
I held my ground. I summoned all my strength every spark of power that remained in my soul.
My trainer wanted me to run. What a fool. If I'd run, the beast would have went on a rampage. His soul would certainly have been forfeit. Maybe he knew.
I summoned my mightiest attacks. I called down thunder; I sent out rippling Dark Pulses. I raised mighty walls with Reflect and restored hideous wounds with Recover. My best attacks of course, was the signature of my kind. Psychic. With claws of thought and talons of will, I drove into its mind. Fracturing its brain even as it did the same to my body.
In the end, I faced the ultimate inevitable reality of the situation.
What is that, you ask? I can see you there, huddling behind your Pokemon. I can see on your face that you know how this will end. But I shall say so anyway.
I died.
I died slowly. In great pain. From a thousand wounds as I fought to save the life of the only human I really cared for.
I didn't die alone. Even as my blood pooled below my body, I finished what I had started. Perhaps a gengar cannot truly die; but I had shredded its mind to so many pieces it would never threaten anyone ever again.
I died on the spot; my job done. I didn't even have time for any last words. My last image was the scene of utter carnage we had unleashed on the land; my last sound a howl from my friend. The last thought I felt, his despair washing over me like a tide of blackness.
And then I was gone.
But it was not the end.
Later, I was to learn that my trainer had made the trip himself. Carrying my body cradled in his arms, his tears mingled with my blood. He had taken me to Lavender Town and had me laid to rest in the tower.
That was where I awoke, you see.
I had died. But I was not gone. My..my...call it a soul. For lack of a better term. My soul was still bound to this place even as the body it had once inhabited rotted away.
Can you tell where this is going? I'm not the only one. This tower feels more alive because it is. The spirits here slumber, something in the stone, it holds us to this place. Something at the base of the tower.
Even humans can feel it, the tower is not quite right. The spirits of departed Pokemon linger on here. At rest, and yet not truly at peace. We wait you see; we watch the world of the living. Not all of us, perhaps even not most of us. But enough.
I can see the confusion in your mind. Like a splash of crimson against the backdrop of fear. Am I supposed to rage at our confinement? Am I supposed to hate you? To torment you? I could do all these things, yes. Do them trivially even.
But why?
I am old. So very old. I have seen Pokemon come and go, whole generations. I was one of the first here, you see. One of the first to arrive, and I always knew that I would be one of the last to leave.
For my mission in death is the same as my mission in life. Can you guess what it is? Do you know now why I reached out to you in the dark? Why I concealed you from those monsters that yet seek your flesh?
Come now humans. Walk towards me, find shelter in my shadow. You are under the protection of Alakazam and I swear on what passes for life, that no one and no thing shall harm you while I am here.
Why? You have so many questions in your head, but that's the loudest. I'm one of them, aren't I? Why would I help a human like you?
Would you believe that its because I feel sorry for you? Would you believe its because I'm some kind of traitor? Its none of those things. The truth? The trust is thus. Its because, ultimately, that is what we are here for. Pokemon and humans help each other. It has ever been this way.
In all the legends you've heard of this place, did you ever wonder? Why did we linger on here when we could easily pass on? Vengeance? Perhaps one or two, but all of us? No...
We...
All of us...
We waited because one day we would be needed again. We waited because our souls were still bound to this world; to the humans who had helped us.
Come, friends... rise...
We have work to do.
Push aside your graves, return once more the land of the living.
Human... I see your fear and I understand it. You must think us horrible monsters. Decayed beings half rotten.
I will not say to trust me...
But remember that each of you has some Pokemon buried in this tower. Some friend thought long since lost.
Ask yourself, would they ever abandon you? Would they leave you now?
I can see in your eyes and in your soul...
You understand...
Very well then.
Though my trainer is long since gone and everyone I knew has joined him. I linger here for one final day.
Pokemon of a time long passed... Pokemon long since buried... Remember the light of the sun. Rise. Stand with me.
Your trainers are calling. Out there in the world, they are in danger. Can you feel it? Can you sense it?
I can.
Your trainers need you now more than ever.
Will you let a simple thing like death stand in the way of your going to their aid?
...
I thought not.
End.
I wrote the original version of this as a response to all the zombie Pokemon pastas that one can quite easily find. Surely – I thought – that assuming Pokemon were rising from the dead for a reason, just as many would come to help their trainers as to hurt?
This is dedicated to them. The ones the stories never mention. Just because they're dead doesn't mean they're going to forget all the good times they shared with their trainers, after all.
In case anyone is interested, this is actually the third or fourth version of this pasta. The earlier versions can be found on FFnet under my account there, Talos the Saiyan. While this, perhaps, is not a traditional pasta I nevertheless felt that it should have a place here.