Last time on Jojo’s bizarre Pokemon adventures
Joey looked to the side to see Agatha, whose face, other than being scrunched up in minor annoyance, remained incredibly calm. “Couldn’t have done it better myself,” the crone said approvingly, her gaze finally sharpening on the Haunter. “Now die.”
Agatha then, for lack of a better word, disappeared, becoming nothing more than a ghostly swirl in the air.
And from that swirl, with a loud rush of wind, a tornado of ghosts large enough to fill the entire chamber emerged and shot at the ancient Haunter.
Joey had to hold up his arms to defend himself against the wind, but was blown back regardless and was smashed painfully against the wall alongside Phoebe.
He just managed to refocus his eyesight in time to see the army of howling ghosts collide with the black Haunter in an explosion of energies that crackled and exploded like thousands of live wires being dropped into a puddle.
“Yare yare daze,” Joey muttered with a sigh.
To be continued!
The forces of darkness fought against the forces of darkness, just that one of the forces was evil, and the other one was also evil, but in a different way.
Well, in other words, Agatha and the ancient Haunter, lovingly referred to as the Black Fog, were having an all-out brawl and honestly, Joey was just not vibing with it.
“This is really scary!” Phoebe exclaimed from next to him as they covered in the corner of the tomb while the Black Fog warded off the dozens of ghosts that Agatha had somehow summoned.
The old lady in question was once again present as a human entity and was commanding her ghost army with sharp words and intense waves of her wooden cane, like some sort of demonic conductor.
Howls of ghosts and the crackle of distortion filled the chamber.
“You tell me, sister,” Joey muttered quietly as he wondered if there was even a point in summoning his team. Agatha had a multitude of ghosts at her disposal, each one probably stronger than any of his Pokemon, and she still wasn’t crushing the ancient Haunter as would have been proper. “What is that thing?” he cursed.
The only one he was really comfortable sending out was Rattata, due to his immunity to ghost-type moves, but even then, an errant attack of any other type would wipe him off the plane of existence.
Rather than taking out any of his team and thus risking their lives, his eyes swivelled to the side, to the stairwell leading out of this death chamber.
An explosion resounded as the Black Fog triggered another large-scale Dark Pulse, which, in its large claws, rather than being a single directional -if wide- attack, created rings of darkness flying in all directions and causing Agatha’s ghosts to wail in pain as they were hit.
“We need to get out of here,” Joey determined, continuing to cower as he looked longingly at the stairs leading up to the ground floor of the Pokémon tower.
“Would we even survive the attempt?” Phoebe asked.
The Black Fog was being pressed into a corner directly opposite the one they were staying in, and the stairs were unfortunately inlaid on the wall to its left. That meant that if they wanted to jump into the stairwell, they’d have to get much, much closer to the deafening battle going on.
“Fuck, it’s too dangerous,” Joey cursed in agreement.
“No, I mean, there’s a film of ghostly energy surrounding the entire chamber,” Phoebe explained briefly, straining her almond-shaped eyes, which were flaring up with ghost-type energy.
Joey took the cue for what it was and immediately channelled the same distortion to his eyes. It was with that additional ocular strength that he was finally able to distinguish between the hazy ghostly energy filling the large chamber and the basketball field-sized bubble sectioning off the battle between Agatha and the Haunter, but with it, also the stairwell.
“Agatha made a boundary to prevent it from escaping,” Joey concluded after analysing the situation. “After Arceus knows how many millennia of sleep, it’s the weakest it will ever be; we have to eliminate it now.”
Another explosion as a coordinated artillery strike of Shadowballs struck at the Black Fog. The ancient Haunter shrank back before catching one of the Gengar hovering around it and pelting it with Confusion into one large clawed hand. The hand glowed a ghostly purple and crushed the Gengar into ectoplasmic paste, which splattered on the floor.
“You have a Diglett, right!?” Phoebe suddenly interrupted. “That weirdo came with a Rhydon!”
Joey paused before nodding. “You’re right!” he exclaimed, picking Diglett’s pokeball from his waist and releasing the Pokemon.
However, after the small ground-type finished materialising from the red light, before Joey could even issue an order, he collapsed in on himself and fell to the floor unconscious.
Joey gritted his teeth and recalled his Pokemon. The air was tinted purple, black and crackled like static electricity whenever you moved through it with even the smallest gesture.
“The air is saturated in so much distortion it’s basically an attack,” Joey cursed as he felt himself grow out of breath. A hand went up to grasp his rapidly palpitating heart.
“Watch out!” Phoebe suddenly shouted, putting a hand on Joey’s chest and pushing him back as she herself ducked.
An enormous Shadow Ball smashed into where their heads had previously been and annihilated the wall they’d been cowering in front of. Joey turned his head just in time to see that the Shadow Ball had cut a hole in the ward, keeping the battle contained, and that the large ancient Haunter was flying right towards them with wide eyes and a sadistic grin bigger than most tables.
Joey was just about ready to attempt a Shadow Sneak into the floor despite the contaminated space, which would potentially scramble his coordinates, and scatter his body parts across the Pokemon Tower, when the ancient Haunter suddenly froze in its tracks.
Eyes full of killing intent suddenly turned confused, and a clawed head went up to grasp at its head. A flinch, the Black Fog sank slowly to the floor, as if losing its ability to float.
Joey looked behind the weakening monster and saw a row of ghosts connecting their shadows to the Black Fog in a move that he recognised as Destiny Bond, before being annihilated by a large Gengar using Shadow Ball, which Joey identified as being Agatha’s main Pokemon.
Joey recognised the sacrifice play for what it was and scrambled away from the wilting Black Fog alongside Phoebe so as to avoid becoming a hostage. Not that Agatha likely would have cared about any hostages.
“Haunterrrrrr!” The Black Fog groaned loudly, having fallen completely onto the floor where it now supported itself with its two hands to prevent falling face-first onto the ground.
The young duo scrambled further away from the Haunter, maintaining vigilance as it seemingly weakened more and more as Agatha sacrificed more and more of her ghosts.
Joey realised in complete shock that the thing had already survived ten Destiny Bonds.
The battle became a war of materials, more and more of Agatha’s ghost types sacrificing themselves to bring down the Haunter, and just when it seemed that she would use every one of the forty or so ghosts that she’d summoned, the ancient Haunter finally went still on the floor.
At which point, for safety’s sake, Agatha had her remaining Pokemon blast it with a barrage of moves for another 10 minutes to finally make it dissipate completely into thin wisps of black distortion.
As quickly as the legendary battle had started, it ended. It had only taken half an hour, but in that half an hour, Joey felt like he’d aged twenty years.
He watched silently as Agatha slowly recalled most of her ghosts, sucking them right into her own shadow, leaving behind only six, the main team, apparently.
“What now?” Phoebe asked into the suddenly quiet chamber as the Elite Four member just stood there with a severe frown on her face.
“Ghosts don’t die,” the old woman said sullenly. “They can reform after a certain period of time.”
Joey looked at the three broken orbs which had previously been used to contain the monster.
“Trap it in a Pokeball?” Joey asked, holding up a hand to his face and seeing that he was still shivering, as if he’d been submerged in ice water during the entirety of the battle.
“Currently, there’s nothing to capture,” Agatha said. “And once there is, we’ll have this whole mess all over again. Regardless, there’s likely not a Pokeball in existence strong enough to contain this monster.”
Joey remained silent, not knowing anything productive to say. “That fucking idiot with the Rhydon,” he cursed instead.
“The tax agency will be hearing from me,” Agatha said ominously, sounding for all intents and purposes as if she was going to start killing people any second now. “If we’d managed to seal it… It would have been fine. You two are competent enough to recharge the seal. As for recreating it, forget about it… I’d need another two channelers close to my level,” she muttered angrily.
“How long does it take for it to reform?” Joey couldn’t help but ask.
“A week or so normally, but I can delay it with a few tricks, drag it out for a few years, leave behind a warning system for when it’s almost done,” Agatha muttered. She turned to the two young trainers and shook her head, grey hair flying left and right from a bun that had loosened itself in the chaos. “This is now an issue for the league,” she announced. “If I had managed to resolve this on my own, we could have spared many resources. Now, there will have to be a full-blown investigation, and we’ll have to set up a task force.”
Joey had never wanted to be involved in this mess in the first place, and when he saw an exit, he was willing to take it. He was just about to suggest that they leave when Phoebe opened her big fat mouth.
“Auntie, in a few years me and Jojo will be much stronger! Call us when it's time, and we’ll deal with this issue once and for all!” she exclaimed, pumping her fist.
Agatha looked at the girl, for the first time, in confusion and with a tilted head.
Joey, meanwhile, looked at her as if he’d just stepped in shit.
“Well, I appreciate the offer,” the Elite Four member said, almost seeming a tad embarrassed. “Regardless, I need to go report this immediately and start assembling a response team. You two find your own way out,” she said, before disappearing into her own shadow and leaving Joey and Phoebe behind in the chamber alongside Agatha’s Pokemon team, which looked scuffed, tired and done with their non-life.
The ghostly energies filling the chamber slowly started dissipating into the ether.
Joey unceremoniously stood up and started heading for the stairs, after which Phoebe also sprang up.
“Wait for me!” The girl shouted and ran after him, exaggeratedly swinging her arms, seemingly almost completely unaffected by the almost legendary-tier battle that had taken place beneath the Pokemon Tower that day.
Joey trudged up the stairs like an old man with arthritic knees before eventually reaching the sealed floor serving as an exit. Thankfully, it didn’t require any combination and simply opened after he stepped on what felt like a pressure plate.
Him and Phoebe emerged on the ground floor of the Pokemon Tower and immediately started hearing the sound of several sirens piercing through the previous quiet of the underground.
Joey didn’t care, dragging his feet past the numerous graves and eventually emerging into the light of day as he exited the Pokemon Tower, only to immediately find himself facing a blockade of three police vehicles and a dozen or so Growlithe alongside their blue-uniformed trainers.
A man in a suit with an impressively golden badge held a megaphone in his hand as he crouched behind an opened car door and promptly shouted at them as what seemed like the entire population of Lavender watched from behind the blockade, gawking at the scene and sipping at the occasional can of soda or beer which entrepreneurial hawkers had started selling from the vendor trays they were carrying around.
“Jonathan Joestar, we do not want this to escalate!” The police chief, it must have been the police chief, shouted. “You have been accused of tax evasion, syndicalism and communist revolution by a reliable source. We do not know what you were doing inside the Pokemon Tower, but we would like you to ask to come to the station to discuss this peacefully!” the man shouted, not very quietly.
Joey, for his part, just stood on the steps of the Pokemon Tower, let the sun wash over his face as he looked up, and closed his eyes.
The moron who’d interrupted the resealing likely hadn’t mentioned that Agatha was also present, or else his call would have been laughed off by the police. Unfortunately, the man had somehow, before dying, managed to create one more problem for Joey.
Considering his emotional state, he sincerely wanted to shout something like ’you’ll never catch me alive,’ and run at the police, arms flailing, thus committing unalive.
Thankfully, he had enough emotional maturity to believe in the due process of the Kanto Police and thus only sank to his knees, putting his hands behind his head.
“Come here and wrap your cold steel around my arms yourself!” he shouted provocatively while Phoebe stood next to him, looking incredibly confused. “You may put me in chains, but considering the fate of the proletariat in this corrupt world, I’ll be in good company!” Joey contained, fully losing his mind on the day he was having. “You may take our lives, but you will never take our freedom! Workers of the world, unite!”
“He does know that they’ll take his freedom, not his life, right?” Someone muttered into the absurd silence following Joey’s inflammatory statement.
“Face me, cowards!” Joey continued shouting. “Immortalise yourself through the arrest of a child whose sole wish was to uphold justice in this dark world!”
“Uh, are you okay, Jojo?” Phoebe asked as she stood next to him.
None of the police officers dared approach them, leading to an incredibly awkward stand-off where one person was kneeling down, calling for his own arrest, while the police of poor little Lavender Town stood around exchanging glances, not wanting to be the one photographed arresting a thirteen-year-old.
Joey sighed and stood up, striding over to the police chief in careful, non-threatening steps, trying not to enter a self-defence situation. “I even have to present myself to the police for arrest,” he complained quietly under his breath. “I guess this is the final humiliation.”
Finally, he reached the car in the middle, where he stopped in front of the closest police officer. He extended his hands again. “C’mon, let’s go already!” he complained loudly. “I haven’t even had breakfast yet, you better have donuts at the station!”
A loud flash suddenly resounded through the scene, causing everyone to look over and see a journalist snapping a picture with a rather large camera device.
“Uh, no need for that,” the police officer said quietly. “Just get in the back of the car.” He paused. “We have doughnuts at the station. There was a discount on fried jelly doughnuts…”
Joey silently went to sit in the back of the police car, letting the officer close the door behind him. “Do you have chocolate?” he asked as the two police officers sat down in front of the vehicle and started the engine.
“No.”
“God fucking damnit.”
As Joey was driven off towards the police station, he caught Sabrina’s gaze, who had been standing in the crowd and staring at him with a face showcasing extreme surprise.
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He threw her a couple of improvised gang signs for good measure and left the scene stylishly, with a personal chauffeur.
-/-
“This coffee is disgusting,” Joey complained from his seat behind the interrogation table as he sipped at a paper cup, his fifth one of the day.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” the police officer standing at the door said with a sigh while adjusting his cap. “We keep asking for a better product, but the higher-ups never find the budget.”
“Considering most of society runs on coffee, that’s a pretty stupid decision,” Joey muttered before sighing and laying down on the steel table.
Silence descended on the interrogation room for a few more minutes.
“You’re very relaxed,” the police officer standing guard eventually said. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties, still delegated to the grunt work.
“I can tell my friends I spent half a day in a police interrogation room in the future, life’s all about experiences, you know. Never do anything interesting, and you finish life with a blank autobiography.”
“You could just explain what happened in that underground chamber,” the good cop proposed.
“No point,” Joey shot back. “And I don’t talk without my lawyer present. I’m just waiting for the League to pick me up.”
The steel door to the room suddenly opened, upon which the police chief, who had previously been speaking into the megaphone in front of the Pokemon Tower, entered.
“League dispatch, but no mission statement,” the man complained. “So informal!”
“Was doing a favour for Agatha, as I already said,” Joey retorted, spreading his fingers. “Off the books. She’s probably stuck in a meeting room right now. I hope she hears about my internment sooner rather than later so I can go get some real food.” He gave the chief a pitying look. “Your food budget must suck. Honestly, I feel bad for you.”
The police chief was about to say something when the door burst open again, revealing an orange-clad ranger with Phoebe trailing behind him. The girl shot Joey a thumbs-up and a wide grin from behind.
“Documents,” the ranger said promptly and handed a stack of papers to the police chief.
The police chief tousled his meticulously groomed hair before starting to flip through the pile he’d just been handed. At first, he looked rather lazy in the way he was going about it, but then the franticness came.
“Does the report explain the anomaly?” Joey asked curiously.
The ranger turned to him, looking like he’d spent the whole day sucking on a lemon. “Everyone here is in the know or will be cleared soon; the Lavender Police department can hardly remain uninformed about… the abomination.”
“A what now!” the police chief shouted as he read frantically, descending quickly into unintelligible mumbles.
“Uncuff me, boss, I’m innocent,” Joey complained, holding up his hands.
“You’re not wearing handcuffs,” the police officer at the door explained helpfully.
“You’re free to go,” the police chief suddenly exclaimed, shooing Joey off. “That fucking Columbus, I see now why he was kicked off the force all those years ago!” he cursed, explaining why Columbus had managed to ruffle up such a large police response with merely a phone call.
Discharged officer, he probably still had some connections.
Or, well, had had some connections.
The epithet would have to change to deceased discharged officer as well.
Joey stood up, stretched and made his way to the door.
“Tell Agatha thanks for the save, and to call me never,” he told the ranger before grabbing Phoebe by the hand and rushing the girl out of the police station as fast as he could.
“You’re so eager to leave,” the girl mumbled as they crashed through the front door and exited onto the streets of Lavender. “It must have been hard for you!”
“It wasn’t hard at all. I was just reading entries on my Pokedex,” Joey muttered. “I’m just hungry as hell, the food they had was straight up trash, and with how low the budget was, I didn’t want to give them the money to order takeout; they probably would have pocketed it to afford some better coffee.”
“Oh,” Phoebe muttered, “I guess that’s good, anyway, I was running around trying to contact someone from the Kanto League the whole morning, took me a while, I’m from Hoenn, hahaha!”
“Anyway, we’re out now,” Joey said as he looked around the street, promptly identifying a ramen place. He turned to Phoebe and clapped a hand on her bare shoulder. “Phoebe, I've got to tell you. First reaction when seeing a homie go in is to get them out. You're a real one. My treat, eat what you want.”
-/-
Joey finished slurping his noodles and looked at the slowly darkening street. The whole day had almost passed. What a waste.
“I’m ditching this shithole,” he told the girl sitting beside him.
“I’m not familiar with Kanto geography! Where are you going?” the girl exclaimed with a finger to her cheek, acting cute. To be fair, she was.
“North through the cave to Cerulean,” Joey grunted.
“But it’s dark?”
“The cave has no light anyway, no difference, I just want to get out of here.”
“Alright, well, an Alakazam is supposed to take me back to Hoenn in a few hours,” Phoebe replied.
“I’ll see you next season,” Joey told her as he started walking off.
“But we’re not from the same region? Ah, I get it, alright, see you next year!”
Joey departed with a wave over his shoulder.
-/-
An hour later, he was at the entrance of the rock tunnel.
“Man, fuck Lavender Town,” Joey exclaimed before walking straight through.
“Where’s my money, huh?”
“Didn’t even get paid for that PTSD.”
-/-
It was after having walked through the whole cave in one night and setting up camp on the other side that Joey finally called out his team and started processing his emotions.
What a mess.