The Trial of Juno Saga [PG-13]

[Neo Emolga]

Chapter 9
The Separation

It was a long walk to get out of that giant stadium. Longer than it should have been and the thought of going backwards was making me sick. I had no idea how long we were going to have to wait now until we could fight him on his level, but it already began to feel like ages. We were all losing our patience. Some of us more than others…

We were back on the streets of Victory City, where everyone in town hated our guts more than alarm clocks from hell on a Monday morning. I swore, if one of these imaginary bastards called me "Lily Loser" one more time, I was going to make them eat their own arms and legs with an ice pick. We were just about to use a vacant alleyway for shelter from the idiocy before some punk hit me in the side of the head with a glass bottle, which stung like hell for a while.

“Well, that went swell,” David snapped sarcastically, looking at me with annoyance. “Just what do you expect to do now, Jake? I swear, he's bound to make a stupid mistake like always that we can take advantage of. It's a much better shot than wandering around this cesspool for longer than we need to!”

I was silent. I really didn’t know. I wanted a fast solution as much as David did, but there wasn’t one to be found. Still, David was looking at me like I made the worst choice possible.

“Look, maybe we’ll come across a solution,” I told him. “Randy can’t be invincible, not even in his own world. What Black and Depression gave us didn’t work, but there has to be something out there that can.”

“Well, hotshot,” David snapped at me, looking at me with a cold stare, “why didn’t we battle him? At least we could have given a try, you know. He's on a power trip, he might let his guard down at some point or another.”

“David,” I said honestly to him, “if we lose to Randy, we might just be suffering a blow we may never recover from, understand? This is exactly what he wants us to do! It could mean being stuck here forever. You saw what he did to our Pokémon! How the hell are we supposed to deal with that!? I don't even think those legendaries that Jeff and Frank were using took any real damage!”

David still looked at me like I was crazy, but I was guessing his rage was just clouding his judgment and ability to grasp what we were dealing with here. He was letting his hunger to get out of here blind him, and I knew for sure that was going to ruin us.

“Maybe not,” David said in a hopeful tone. “Look, it’s not for certain Randy would want to stay here even if we do lose to him. Sooner or later he’s going to get sick of his own world. It'll get just as dumb and boring as kicking rocks around.”

“Yeah, David,” Alex said to him, “not soon enough for me. Randy won’t ever want to leave this place. If he gets bored with it, all he has to do is change anything and everything to fit his desires and we're stuck having to live with it! Who the hell wants to live in a place where he's in control all the time!?”

David still didn’t care. Obviously he wasn’t heeding the warnings that Black and Depression had given to him. Still, he felt there was some hope. I wanted to believe there was something I could do about it myself, but the odds kept telling me otherwise. He just couldn’t see the reality of the situation…

“I’m not going to sit here hoping we just happen to bump into a solution,” David said with annoyance. “We've been walking out there for days and the only things we got out of it were useless trinkets that did nothing to help! I’ll battle Randy right now, and I don’t care if it’s all or nothing. And if I win, then you two owe me big time.”

“Go ahead then, David,” I told him, giving up on trying to convince him otherwise. “We’ll see you around.”

And not even a second later, David turned right back around and headed back into the stadium. I knew there was no way he could win. If he couldn’t beat Caska, he sure wasn’t going to beat Randy. I didn’t want to stick around to find out how he lost.

“Come on,” I told Alex. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Where?” Alex asked me, getting annoyed himself. “Back into the middle of nowhere again!? Come on, man, we've been out there! There's nothing!"

“One more shot,” I told Alex seriously. "This town hates our guts, and maybe Black and Depression didn't have exactly what we needed. There might be someone else.”

Alex really didn’t seem to agree. He just looked away and turned back at the stadium.

“Damn, I hate this place,” Alex told me, “I know you could be right, but damn, I really, really don't want to go back out there. Come on, Jake, look at what they did to us out there! Maybe we can find something here instead. We can just…”

“Look, Randy would be rolling over in laughter if he saw us arguing like this,” I told him. “If you really don't want to go back out there, I'll head out by myself to see what I can find on the outside, and if you want to see what's around this place, go for it. This city seems big enough and maybe it has a dark side to it also.”

"Heh, sure hope it does," Alex flashed a dark smile. "Good luck, man, just don't get lost out there."

And that was where we split up. I didn’t feel right by leaving Alex and David behind, but I didn’t want to stay in this blasted city either. After I said goodbye to Alex, I left them all behind and headed back outside into the wilderness.

I had hoped to find a way out of this forsaken world, even while I was walking away from the very source that could bring me back home. But even then, maybe Alex and David were right. How was I supposed to find the key to our escape by aimless walking? Where would I be going after all?

I felt like I was slowing going insane. After heading out of Victory City and walking down the highway, I was left alone with my thoughts as I tried to think all of options and alternatives over. I would be shocked and surprised if there was a single person in all of Victory City that was willing to help us. The chances of them being in there was next to none.

I started on the highway for the first few hours and just got bored of it, so I decided to just say screw it and not care if I got lost. I really didn't have much to lose at this point anyway. Day one was being alone again and traveling through valleys, swamps, rivers, and forests, day two was all about me nearly losing my mind in anger. I almost felt like I was beginning to just accept all this and admit I was just going to have to suck it up and deal with being a god-forsaken flower in Randy's world like I had no power over anything anymore.

When I reminded myself this would be for forever if I gave up, I got off my butt and decided to shut up and still keep up the effort. I had been walking for nearly three days, which seemed so much longer when I was constantly burdened by these same, endless thoughts and having to deal with Randy's bizarre and unpredictable landscapes and biomes. Not only that, but the only thing I could consume was water. What a nightmare. I wasn’t even human anymore and even my Pokémon had been warped because of all this.

I was really getting sick of the strange landscapes that weren't even making sense anymore. Snow on palm trees? A lake that was hot springs on the outside and frozen in the middle? It was easy to lose sanity here.. By now I was too far away to turn back and take my next to hopeless chances, and even if I could, what was the point? Could I possibly hope to accomplish the impossible? Nothing would have changed from before, only my morale would be diminished. At the moment, it seemed like nothing could be done about it, and this is how it was all supposed to end…

But on the evening of the third day, everything had changed.

During my searches that night, I had come across a strange, white, twenty-story office building with large, mirror-like rectangular windows that looked like it belonged in the middle of a big city, not in the middle of a valley with blue grass and trees. Despite the strange landscape, the building seemed pretty normal. I decided why the hell not, I'd take sitting in a cubicle farm for a few minutes to rejuvinate my sanity over the loony landscapes Randy's mind vomited out.

Honestly, I didn’t care if death itself was inside, I was ready to cope with anything right now. I approached the opposing double glass doors, grabbed the handle, and walked into what seemed like a totally normal office building lobby. At this point, I had nothing to lose, so I figured even if there was nothing in here, well, at least I freaking tried.

Recommended Listening: Resident Evil 2 Soundtrack - The Basement of the Police Station

Inside, it seemed empty, except for one large, side office that had an open door. I started looking around, and while it was quiet and motionless among the chairs, desks, and other office furniture, I felt compelled to go toward the one side office that had the only open door. I decided to walk on in to see why this one was different from all the others.

Inside, it was furbished pretty much the same way any senior manager would arrange it with a large desk with a cherry wood finish, shelves with books and a carpeted floor, and seemingly ordinary pictures of landscapes on the wall. Seated at the desk was a busy, middle-aged man with a bald head, a black goatee, and wearing a black business suit sitting in the leather, wheeled chair behind the desk. It looked like he had been busy writing notes in a black, leather journal before he looked up at me and crossed his arms. He had a serious look on his face and seemed to size me up. It made me feel like it was a job interview with an executive from one of the biggest corporations in the world. And here I was standing before this badass guy as a damn "overgrown Bellossom," as Alex put it.

“I have been expecting you, Jake Kossak,” He told me, looking at me like this was an FBI interrogation.

“How do you know me?” I asked him, wondering who this guy really was.

He furrowed his brow and his serious, soul-piercing eyes just looked right into mine. I could definitely tell what he was about to tell me next was something he definitely didn't want me to forget.

“I am Randy’s hatred, Jake,” He had told me. “The name is Coldblood. Look at this place and look at me. Stern. Serious. Formal. This is the future adult life that will inevitably come for him when he will have to earn a living working eight to seven on spreadsheets, forms, metrics, and analytical data after spending half the day in meetings and on the phone. It is everything Randy's childish and imaginative demeanor will loathe."

Wow, that was deep. I really didn't even know what to say to that.

"Think of it as you will, but I am one of the strongest forces of Randy’s mind," Coldblood continued, folding his hands together on his desk. "Because of me, his anger, sorrow, and depression exist in their fullest form, and they blind him and force him into making crucial mistakes. And you, Jake Kossak, are my most valuable ally right now.”

I was silent. I sure didn’t feel like it at the time while looking like this. I felt more like a loser that was a waste of space.

“Do not feel that way,” He told me, reading my expression. “I know how you feel. For the last few days, you have been feeling nothing but misery. I can easily take that away.”

“Yeah, how?” I asked him, seeing that had to be impossible.

But, he never answered my question, and I never figured it out on my own. He waved his hand in a strange way, and then I felt amazing relief spread all over me like comforting water. When I looked down, the flowers were gone and were rapidly vaporized within seconds. Everything was gone, and I was back in my normal clothing again as a human, something I suddenly appreciated more than I had ever before. But before I could even thank him, he spoke again.

“Jake, someone needs to take Randy out of business, and that someone is you,” Coldblood stated to me firmly. "This nonsense needed to be ended days ago."

“Not while he still has his stupid necklace,” I told him, hoping I didn’t sound like a whiner.

“I understand, but we can work around it,” He said to me. "Trust me. I may be all you have left."

Black and Depression had attempted to help us before, and it still didn’t work. What could Coldblood do that they couldn’t?

“Coldblood, Randy destroyed our protection, and he changed my Jolteon and my Weavile into a freaking Bellossom and a Lilligant,” I informed him. “What the hell am I supposed to do against power like that!?”

Coldblood was silent. It almost seemed like… he had been waiting for me to bring this up.

“Give me your Pokémon,” He told me, not giving me a clue as to what he was going to do with them.

What could I have done? I had nothing to lose anymore, and if he just blew them up for fun, I'd just shrug and ask him to do the same to me. I had no choice now but to trust him, even if it was dealing with a very dark side of Randy.

He laid out my Poké Balls on the desk, one by one. He placed his hand on one of them, and the whole Poké Ball began to glow white. When the white glow died down, he moved it aside and went onto the next. He had done it to all of them, one after another, and I just stood there just wondering what pray tell he was doing to my Pokémon. All of them, even the mysterious, unknown Pokémon that Black have given to me, had been blessed with something…

“What did you just do to them?” I asked Coldblood when he was finished.

“There,” he told me. “Now they are just as strong as Randy's. Your Jolteon and Weavile are completely back to normal as well.”

Well, that certainly made things a bit easier if he was telling the truth about all this. I had remembered Black telling me Randy’s Quista necklace would allow him to use any attack Randy’s whacked imagination could come up with. And I remembered the necklace Black gave us was supposed to protect against Randy's crap, and what a big waste of time that was.

"How are you even able to do this?" I asked Coldblood, wondering where and how he got these kinds of powers.

"Just like hatred can manipulate someone's mind," Coldbood told me, "I can manipulate some components of Randy's created world with the reality he dislikes. However, I cannot confront him myself and must keep my work secret, because to know one's enemy is dangerous knowledge to expose to him. I need you to be my emissary."

Man, this guy was really something else. Definitely not the kind of guy I'd ever think of double-crossing. He made Black and Depression look like a joke.

"I can do that," I told him, letting him know I was up for the job.

“Good,” Coldblood told me quickly. "However, this is not going to be your traditional approach. In order to stop Randy, you have to take your artifice to a whole new level."

I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that, but I figured digging in deeper would help me do the job we both wanted done.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked him.

“Randy cannot destroy something he cannot see,” He said to me. “Necklaces, rings, any perceivable and materialistic object like that is subject to whatever Randy wants to do with them. You need to have an innate power that Randy cannot touch. I am just the person who can give you that. It will allow you to attack Randy’s Pokémon with whatever you can think of and this time, it will hurt them the way it is supposed to. Only then will you be put on the same level as him and even the odds.”

I was sure hoping this wasn’t anything like intensive surgery. But even if it was, I had no other choice. What Coldblood said seemed to be making a lot of sense.

“It only takes about a day,” Coldblood told me in a firm voice. “You go to sleep, and a day later, you will have the power you need to fight Randy. But be warned, it is not half as powerful as Randy’s necklace, which can do much more than make Randy’s imagined attacks a reality. There are some powers that the necklace has that Randy doesn’t even know of yet.”

And so, after standing up, he took me to a conference room where there was a modern conference table surrounded by sturdy black chairs and a black leather couch in the other corner. He told me to lie down on the leather couch, simply go to sleep, and everything would be done as soon as I woke up.

I didn't know what to expect, but after sleeping out there in the middle of nowhere in dreamland, it was quick and easy to doze off on something normal and believable for once.