Pokemon: Bounty Hunter Alex

Panic ensued on the 4th floor of the Psychic Gym as Sabrina’s energy rampaged. Cages were ripped apart, Pokémon scampered, and gym trainers outside did their best to contain the damage to the floor. Fortunately, Sabrina’s own Pokémon came to the rescue, quickly containing her terrifying energy and sealing her in a bubble that prevented the ripples of her power from affecting anything around her.

They tried to do the same for Alex, but his Dark typing prevented them from so much as touching him without suffering significant backlash. All they could manage was contain him in a fragile bubble out of their own comfort rather than necessity. It was a good thing Alex’s energy wasn’t rampaging, as he simply floated there like a crucified corpse.

Inevitably, the chaos woke Celise and Talia from their psychic energy induced slumber. They found themselves in the middle of the devastation, protected by Sabrina’s Pokémon. The pair were surprised at first when they noticed the ripped flooring, cracked walls, shattered cages, and torn-up habitats, but quickly noticed Alex and his corpse-like state, with black eyes and no life force.

“Alex? Alex!” Celise shouted as she rushed toward him, only to be blocked by a thin psychic barrier.

“What happened? What have you done with Alex?” Talia screamed.

‘Calm!’ a demand from an aged voice within their minds ordered. ‘Whatever is happening is between Sabrina and your mate.’

“What do you mean?” Celise shouted.

‘Your mate is as responsible for Sabrina’s state as she is for his. There is no one here to blame. All we can do is wait for one of them to awaken.’

“Alex! Alex!” Talia shouted, but to no avail. “Arceus, he’s dead. He doesn’t even have any life force.”

‘And yet his heart beats, he floats under his own power, and Dark energy radiates from his mind,’ the voice replied. ‘Give them time, and we will learn what has happened to them once they have calmed.’

“Can you remove this?” Celise asked as she slammed her fist against the barrier. “Please. We just want to hold him.”

“I would not advise this course of action,” the voice replied.

“Please!” Talia begged as well.

“Very well but we hold no accountability.”

The barrier disappeared, allowing the pair to approach Alex. Without a shred of self-preservation, they grabbed his arms and yanked him to the ground. Luckily for them, they were unaffected by his Dark energy as they held him.

“Alex, please wake up, Alex,” Celise whispered softly, her voice breaking as tears spilled from her eyes.

Talia, feeling braver, reached for Alex’s dark eyes but was burned when her fingers approached. A sizzling sound followed as her skin appeared to suffer chemical-like burns. From this, she realized that touching him was fine, but not whatever energy radiated from his mind. It looked like Dark type energy, but it clearly wasn’t. It was caustic and dangerous.

Based on her medical knowledge, Alex should already be a corpse, with a hollow skull. Yet his heart still beat, and whatever was affecting him still wasn’t finished with Sabrina, who continued to scream in agonizing pain.

Talia could only hope he was still alive and that she was wrong about the nature of the energy. Hopefully, he was the source, which would make him immune, rather than a victim who would simply die.

“Alex, please be okay,” Talia whispered, while Celise supported him, filling him with their love and affection.

Meanwhile, Alex drifted in a void he already knew.

It was the same cold, lightless expanse he had seen when he bonded with Gothitelle. This was the source of that familiarity he had felt back then, but this time, through his memories, he recognized it clearly. Along with that recognition came existential dread, the terror of the unknown, and the certainty of nothing at all. He was bound here, never to move on, trapped in a stillness that no living being could endure and remain intact.

He was a simple wisp, a soul bound by nothing in a space that wasn’t a space. Here, there were no concepts to lean on. There was no time, no space, no energy, no matter. Existence itself was questionable, and yet he was experiencing it through his soul while his mind remained intact.

This, he recognized through his meagre ability of thought, was beyond the boundary of existence where nothing could be made sense of. There was no structure here for meaning to take hold, no logic to utilize. Every attempt to interpret it dissolved the moment it formed, as though understanding itself was incompatible with what he was immersed in.

Here he drifted, not in motion but in awareness, experiencing what couldn’t be experienced, forcing the vastness of it into the narrow limits of words, emotions, and feelings. Each translation fractured under its own weight, arriving distorted and incomplete, like echoes of knowledge too large to pass through him intact. Even the act of perceiving it felt inadequate, as if his senses were only skimming the surface of something immeasurably deeper.

He floated there, aimless, unknowing, and eternal, until a call drew him back, pulling him from nothing into something. He experienced love, care, and affection that felt all too comforting, real. He was drawn in until, with a slight pop, he found himself drifting in outer space. Here there was something. Here there were concepts. Here his mind could begin to process and put into words his experience.

He was in a familiar stretch of outer space, the closest comparison being the Distortion World where he'd once had a brief stint with death. In the distance, a battle raged as Giratina, Palkia, and Dialga assaulted what could only be described as a miniature black hole. It drifted forward, utterly indifferent to its surroundings as terrifying, world-ending amounts of multicolored energy crashed into it from all three god-like Pokémon.

Then a familiar figure came into view. The legendary Arceus watched as Alex, still in soul form, drifted past. With the slightest stomp of its hoof, Dark type energy wrapped around him before he was jolted elsewhere, shooting past dimensions and spiraling out of control.

Along the way, he passed a far more familiar place.

He was in outer space, flying toward a familiar blue planet. Except it wasn’t Earth; he recognized it as the Pokémon world. He drifted past a moon he knew from television, home to alien-like Pokémon battling a small human settlement at the south pole led by the Pokémon Professors. However, it wasn’t the sprawling city he remembered seeing, but a budding settlement. It seemed he was still moving through the past, chasing memories.

His trajectory carried him toward the planet, toward a chain of islands, and toward a particular Pokémon.

There, he was intercepted by a passing Master ranked Dusknoir wearing a nonchalant expression, finally bringing his journey to an end. His soul was molded, infused, and primed with energy before being shoved into the lifeless body of a child in a dilapidated house in Saffron City, Kanto.

GASP!!!

Alex breathed in deeply as he was jolted back into his body, cradled by Celise while Talia cried from the side. He looked around and recognized the devastation wrought by psychic energy on the 4th floor of Sabrina’s Psychic Gym. The Gym Leader in question had fainted and was being tended to by her Master ranked Alakazam.

“Alex? Alex!” Celise shouted as she hugged him tightly, with Talia hugging him as well while crying on his shoulder.

“What happened?” Alex groaned as he tried his best to rein in his rampaging memories.

He could remember his standoff with Sabrina, their trip down memory lane, and his eternity of nonexistence. There, in that place where nothing existed, he could recall the faint impression it left on him, seared into his mind like a brand, never to be forgotten.

“Alex!” Celise shouted, jolting him out of his deep pondering. “What’s wrong? You stopped breathing for a second.”

“Nothing, just trying to remember what happened.”

“We don’t know either,” Talia said. “The last thing we remember was waking up on the floor with the entire place already destroyed. We found you floating with darkened eyes, covered in Dark type energy.”

“How long was this?”

“About a minute since we woke up.”

As far as Alex was concerned, he had been in that place that wasn’t a place for multiple lifetimes, or perhaps no time at all. In any case, it was good he hadn’t been out for too long.

“What about Sabrina?” Alex asked as he looked over to her unconscious body.

She was being bombarded with Heal Pulse from over a dozen Psychic Pokémon and forced to consume Full Restores and Max Revives. There was even a Chimecho that used Healing Wish to no avail, fainting from the backlash of the move.

“She was the cause of this mess,” Celise said, her voice tight with fury. “Her psychic energy went on a rampage, destroying everything before her Pokémon managed to contain her. She was left screaming inside a psychic bubble to prevent further damage until you woke up, and then she fainted.”

“She probably saw what I saw but couldn’t comprehend it because she was still alive and full of senses,” Alex muttered under his breath. “It was probably far worse for her, since she had a powerful mind that could take in far more than mine.”

It wasn’t said with self-deprecation, as if he were an idiot who survived by ignorance, but as a logical conclusion. She could perceive more, yet still reached the same result, unable to comprehend what couldn’t be comprehended, and her mind was likely far more shattered than his own.

Alex, meanwhile, survived or thrived because he had already been marked, dipped in as a soul a long time ago, and so was more able to adapt. Still, he gleaned nothing from it, as there was nothing to glean beyond its contrary existence.

‘I see,’ an aged voice sounded in his mind. ‘Then the memory must be excised.’

“She’s going to throw a fit,” Alex answered with a smile. “She was quite obsessed with that, you know.”

‘Better alive to throw a childish tantrum than dead.’

A few seconds later, Sabrina sat straight up, headbutting all the Pokémon that hovered over her. She turned to the side and vomited up the excessive amounts of potions that had been forced down her throat to keep her alive. She opened her mouth to ask what had happened when she paused, the answer already arriving through her psychic link with her Pokémon.

“No. No, no, no, no, no. You removed all of it? How could you?” she screamed like a petulant child. “Couldn’t you have removed most of it and left me with a tiny morsel to digest? What do you mean you tried but I wouldn’t wake up? Did you at least save me a piece? It shattered? What the fuck is up with that!?”

Alakazam shrugged with a smile, simply happy that Sabrina was well enough to complain, considering she had undoubtedly been dying of brain death just a few seconds ago.

Suddenly, she turned to Alex with wild eyes, entertaining the idea of returning to his memories just to take a piece, a morsel, a crumb.

“Forget it,” Alex said, shaking his head as he slowly stood with Celise and Talia’s help. “All you need to know about what you experienced and forgot is that it cannot be comprehended.”

“Maybe not by someone like you,” Sabrina spat as she stood shakily, supported by her Pokémon.

“Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t ready. Come back when you surpass Master Rank and maybe you’ll be able to understand a glimpse of it. For now, you owe me Team Dominion’s coordinates.”

“Tch,” she muttered before sending the coordinates she had found directly into Alex’s mind.

“Thanks,” Alex said as he turned and began walking away, with Celise and Talia holding him up. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ll want to find out what’s on the other side even if you can comprehend it. There are things in the dark that are far more terrifying only when you understand them.”

“Just get out of here before I change my mind,” Sabrina said, turning away.

“Oh, also,” Alex added, turning back briefly. “I’m not paying for any of this shit. Don’t you dare send me a bill or I will complain to the League.”

And with those last words, Alex, with Celise and Talia, made their way out of the gym before teleporting back to the base, his mind already preoccupied with his imminent attack on Team Dominion and their mysterious island.

-----

We’re finally here. The beginning of the end. This chapter has been an idea I have been playing with since before I even wrote the first chapter, and I am ecstatic to have finally written it down. It feels so final and freeing.

Anyway, don’t worry, there are still at least a hundred or two more chapters in this story. Maybe even more if I get requests to visit certain places in the Pokémon universe. I’m sure you’ll understand by next month or the month after what I’m talking about.

Thanks for reaching this far in the story. I hope you’ve liked it so far as it begins its ultimate descent toward the ending. Why do I feel like a pilot making an announcement? Odd.