Kris McKenna
Chapter 1-3 - The Jungle
Kris clutched Thing tightly while they both watched the Pokéball roll, to the point where Thing let out a sort of low growl and snapped her jaws, letting Kris know she wasn't entirely enjoying the experience. "Oh, sorry!" Kris quickly said, which was also the moment when the ball stopped rolling. "We did it! Thing, totally did it!" Kris hugged Thing tightly once more and then scrambled to get hold of the Pokéball.
"Okay, Thing? I'm going to release this little fellow now, and I want you to please stand by in case it tries to do something, okay?" Stare. Snap. The old familiar combination, but she did position herself in front of her trainer in defense. She took a deep breath, raised the newly filled ball and pressed its button.
The first thing the Millipede did was roll up and attempt to hit Thing again. It was good that Thing was prepared, she immediately chomped down on her new team mate who uncurled again, panting. It had hardly any energy left but Kris had to admire its stubbornness. "Let's not attack each other, shall we?" She suggested, to which the bug narrowed its eyes at her. "First things first, are you a boy or a girl?" The millipede huffed at the second, possibly narrowing its eyes even further. "A boy then. You're kind of ugly…" Kris noted, trying to think of a name for the creature. Her comment got him to narrow his eyes even further, to the point of slits. "Can you even see that way?" Kris thought, amused by the thing. "I think Jorg suits you, and Jorg you shall be."
She got out the Potion she'd used on Thing, there was still a little less than half its contents left, which she used on Jorg. He needed to help them get out of the jungle and he could hardly do that when he could barely walk. Plus, who knew what might be lurking still?
"Now Jorg, Thing and I are in a bit of a pinch at the moment," Kris told him. "We're trying to get to the end of this route but the road seemed to have stopped. This is where you come in, I would like you to show us the way." She purposely didn't pose it as a question, not wanting to give Jorg the leniency to refuse. It was an order and she hoped to the Gods of begrudging bug-Pokémon that it would have a sense of duty and not just refuse anyway. Or lead her into a trap of some kind. Jorg just huffed and started to walk forward on his own pace.
Unfortunately, that pace was a snail pace.
"Can't you walk faster?" Kris complained after a little while. She really hated how slow they were going, they'd been walking for over an hour now but she didn't feel like they'd gotten very far at all. She'd tried picking Jorg up once, to just have him give her the directions, but he'd sort of hissed and puffed up and let her know that wasn't okay with him at all. So walking it was. Walking so. Very. Slowly.
The sounds hadn't abated since she'd gained Jorg, there was still the clicking and howling sounds every once in a while, and the creepy rustling around her except this time she couldn't aim the beam of her flashlight at it out of fear for losing Jorg. For a purple bug he was rather good at camouflaging with the foliage around him.
If she'd been wishing for a machete before, she would sell her kingdom for one now. No path meant having to crash through the brush which meant dodging trees, trying not to get caught by bushes and tripping over roots every few steps. She'd taken off her jacket because it had kept getting stuck and there were quite a few small tears in it now but that also meant that her arms were full of angry scratches. She should have listened to herself and used the ocean path, why was she always so damned stubborn?!
Suddenly there came a very loud whine, the kind a dog-pokémon made when it was in pain. Kris' rescue-instincts came to life immediately. Without a second thought she crashed through the foliage towards the sound, aiming her flashlight wildly and quite uselessly.
She stopped in front of the source, panting and scratched but otherwise unharmed. Before her she could see a very small Poochyena (she knew this one) caught in a huge spiderweb. The creators of said web weren't anywhere to be found, which Kris was extremely grateful for. The Poochyena was entirely trapped, the sticky threads wrapped all around his feet and torso and one of the legs was badly twisted which explained the painful whining. Kris looked back with her flashlight but her Pokémon were nowhere to be found. Stupid, running away from them so impulsively, but if she yelled out to them then the web's creators might return and then what would she do?
She approached the dog but stopped when it snarled at her aggressively. She understood why, it was hurt and cornered which was when creatures, humans and Pokémon alike, were the most dangerous. She had once seen an older rebel in the same position during the first year of the takeover. He had been trapped in an ally right by Kris' bedroom window, nurturing a twisted ankle and a nasty burn and nothing to defend himself. He'd fought back the Acies' Elektrike bare-handed, beating it hard enough to knock it out even though he was getting shocked by its attacks. He'd downed the trainer as well, going so far as violently biting the other man's arm to get away, only to have the alley blocked off by several more Acies. In the end they'd had to kill the man to get him down.
Kris shook the memory out of her head and crouched down the closest she could get to the Poochyena's level. "Shhht," she hushed it, making sure not to make direct eye contact but keeping it in her peripheral vision. "It's okay, I'm just trying to help you." She tried to whisper calmly but her own nerves betrayed her. She wasn't very good at handling Pokémon at all and she was rather afraid of the creatures that had trapped the wolf. Aiming her flashlight around her she could see several more webs between the trees around her and as far as she could see (which, due to the thick vegetation, wasn't very far). These creatures had been quite active. She assumed there were more than one, she didn't want to think about what kind of Pokémon could create it all on its own, that would be way out of her league.
"My kingdom for a knife," she muttered, approaching a web about a meter from the Poochyena. It eyed her warily, emitting a low growl whenever she got too close to him. The web proved incredibly difficult to break. She'd first grabbed a branch from a bush to test it: the branch stuck to the web but it wouldn't break it and Kris couldn't detach it from the web either. She was very glad she hadn't used her hands. She thought back to the contents of her pack but there was nothing sharp to use.
She took a deep breath and grabbed onto the web with both her hands, dropping the flashlight as she did so. It felt disgustingly sticky (and Kris wasn't the kind of girl to easily get disgusted) but she tried to ignore the feeling and pulled the string apart. It took a lot of muscle to do so (and Kris
was the kind of girl to have muscles) but she was able to stretch the web to its breaking point, thus getting some tension off of the Poochyena. Getting the web off of her own hands was another challenge however. She managed to wrap the loosened threat that wasn't still attached to the wolf around a low-hanging branch of a tree and detached it from her hand.
She edged closer to the Poochyena, who growled again. She was seriously running out of patience. "Look, I'm trying to get you out of this trap before the ones who created it find us both," she hissed. "It would go a lot faster if you cooperated." The wolf let out another low growl, a warning, but didn't protest further as Kris approached it. She first put her free hand on its hide and pulled hard with the other one, to get the bit of severed web from its hide. It pulled a bunch of hair with it, causing it to whine but it didn't growl anymore.
She'd just started on the other thread when she heard the soft sound of multiple feet scrambling on the bark of a tree. She felt rather helpless, both hands still stuck to the web and her flashlight a little ways over. Poochyena growled again regardless of Kris' attempts to shush it. She doubted the growling would impress these creatures much and she didn't want to give away that they were there. Then again, they would most likely be adapted to seeing in the dark jungle. She was just going to have to man up and face them.
"Thing! Jorg!" She called out as loud as she could. "Come here quickly!" Now she only had to pray to the Gods of whatever-it-was-she-needed that they'd heard her. She heard a lot of angry clicking as the source of the web came towards them rapidly. In one quick motion she stood up, ripping the web with her. The flying tendrils stuck to everything it touched, including her arms and clothes and all over the Poochyena. She scrambled for the flashlight but before she could get there a new sticky thread of web attached to her hand. She pulled at it with all her might and heard a furious clicking over her head and then the sound of something hitting a tree. Before she could grab the light another thread attached to her elbow this time and almost simultaneously another to the wrist of her other hand. More threads were fired each attaching to some part of her and Kris was panicking quickly. She pulled her one arm and more clicking following thwats but almost immediately more threads attached themselves to her. Just how many were there?! She flicked one arm downwards, causing three creatures which she could vaguely see in the darkness to crash at her feet. Angrily she kicked two of them, causing them to fly into the bushes and against a tree trunk respectively. More webs took their places and she saw the two Pokémon she'd kicked creep away and into a tree again, ready to fire more webs.
She let out a sort of angry and desperate warcry and started to seriously pull at the webs, kicking every spider (for she could now vaguely see that's what they were) that made the mistake of getting within boot-range. A few stayed down but most just scrambled right into the trees again. "THING?! JORG?!" she called out quite desperate now. "HELP ME!" More pulling, more kicking, more critters that stayed down on the ground but always more in the trees. She felt something fly past her, and then another something getting caught in her shirt. She felt for it in the darkness and found a sort of dart, which she knew would be poisonous. She swore right then and there, and quite harshly too.
Then there was a sound of something crashing through the bushes. Several webs shot past her towards the noise and Kris used the distraction to pull herself free and dive for the flashlight. What she saw with her beam were first tree crawling with small green spiders who were now angrily firing at the cause of the rustling. She aimed her beam at it and slumped against a tree in relief: Thing and Jorg, the latter being on top of the former's head. Jorg looked pissed, but at least he had come. Thing was as unreadable as she always was.
There was a problem though, both Thing and Jorg were close-ranged fighters, and these spiders did their best works safely from a tree. And then she saw Thing do something she'd never seen her do: She burped. And not only did she burp (quite loudly too), she burped and for about two seconds a ring of white bubbles appeared in front of her mouth. She snapped her jaws multiple times after it disappeared, as confused about it as Kris was. Meanwhile Jorg, completely unnoticed by both Kris and Thing, had started rolling and rolled right up a tree. He rolled all over the length of a branch, throwing off the spiders left and right as he did so.
Kris aimed her flashlight around her, even more confused as to where Jorg had gone to. She was convinced the bug had taken his opportunity to leave when she noticed it was raining spiders all around her and aimed the beam at the trees. There Jorg was going nuts, rolling along the branches and hitting spiders left, right and center. Kris blinked, entirely confused by what was going on, meanwhile Thing was trying to get herself to burp again, not paying attention to what was going on. This spacing of hers got her a full string of web to the face while at the same time a spider shot a web at Jorg, causing him to fumble and fall to the ground.
Kris ran towards Thing, trying to pull the web from his face. There were poison darts being shot all around them, as well as webs to both Kris and her Pokémon. In a quick burst of inspiration Kris retrieved her jacket from her back and held it in the direction of the spiders. Within seconds it shook from the impact of several poison darts being fired at it, but thankfully none got through the fabric. Kris turned to Thing urgently. "That what you just did, I think it may have been a new attack for you," she said. "And it might be a very useful one. Do you think you can do it again?" Thing cocked her head but snapped her jaw in a way that Kris had come to understand meant "yes".
"Jorg!" Kris called over her shoulder just before her jacket got another load of poison darts. "I don't know exactly who you were doing that just now, but by all means, continue!" She didn't think her approving of Jorg's tactics would do him much, but she figured she should give them anyway. He was more than capable of handling himself but her encouragement was supposed to help in battles wasn't it? Thing was opening his mouth ever few seconds, trying to get the groove of the unknown move he'd used back. Kris could see a bright light building up in his throat when he did so but he was having major issues. "Come on Thing, you can do it!" She encouraged.
Jorg was now up in the trees again, curled in a ball and rolling madly one way or another. Any spider unfortunate enough to be in his path either got trampled or thrown out of the tree. Seeing him coming some spiders scurried away out of sight while other bravely stood their ground. Any poison dart fired his way would just bounce right off him, his skin thick and his momentum high. Any webs fired at him would cause the owner to fly madly behind him, or he'd reverse his way of rolling and meet the unfortunate critter head-on. The ground was started to get littered with fainted spiders to the point that most of the leftovers scrambled over each other to get the hell out of his way. In the end Jorg just stopped rolling as there was nothing in his path anymore. He looked at the leftover spiders, all punched up in one tree and looking at him wearily. His eyes narrowed and he shot a nasty glare at them. They all decided to choose life and scrambled away.
Kris lowered her jacket, noticing that it hadn't caught any darts in a while. She lifted her flashlight at the trees only to see Jorg perching on a branch triumphantly, looking content and cocky. Right at that moment Thing opened her mouth and shot a ring of circles at an empty tree. There was a bit of an explosion on impact and a whole branch fell to the ground with a thud. "You're a little late Thing," Kris said with a laugh, petting the orange Pokémon on her head. "But your contribution is noted."
Kris then remembered the Poochyena, the Pokémon all that had been about. She was still rather shaky from it all but squared her shoulders, doing her best to appear as if she had it all together. The small wolf was still stuck in the web and there were a few poison darts stuck in his hair but none seemed to have penetrated. They hadn't been aiming at it. Kris first very carefully plucked the darts from his hide and then, equally carefully, tried to pry the webs from him. Jorg had come down from the tree and approached the Poochyena as well. The wolf first growled, but Kris was quick to shush him. Together they managed to free it, Jorg having it quite easy as he just used his mandibles to severe the threads. Just as they had removed the last thread the Poochyena scrambled away as quick as it could on its wounded paw, trying to get away into the bush but Kris had been prepared and quickly threw a Pokéball.
"Sorry buddy but I can't leave you like that," Kris said to no one in particular as the ball was wriggling back and forther. "And Jorg, you're alright, you know that?" Jorg just glared at her, as if his help had been against his will and he still didn't approve of her. "And I don't think you're ugly after all."
