The Lavender Song (PKMN) (NOT CANON)

This fic takes place during Decoda's travels as a musician, before he goes on a journey with his new friends in the RP, Pokemon: Beyond the Tall Grass (Reboot).

Enjoy!

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As the eerie mist began to swarm around his body in the cool evening, Decoda removed his hat from his head and began to fan it out, flapping it rapidly around using only his wrist.  Wearing a hat all the time was a bit of a strain on his thick brick-red hair, never really being able to do anything with it other than letting it hang around his neck and shoulders.  He didn’t mind it too much, considering he had been doing it for years now, but it was still nice to take it off every now and then to help the growing follicles get some air and light.

“I should probably find somewhere to park it for the night,” he told himself aloud, replacing the hat sloppily on his dome.  Shifting his posture and baggage around so he could pick up his pace, Decoda continued on the slowly disappearing path before him.  He hoped to run into this town called “Lavender”, or so his map was labeled.

Minutes later, the sun was now completely vanished from the dimming sky, and the crescent moon creeped over the Kanto mountainside.  The mist drifted away to reveal a arrow-shaped sign to the traveling musician.  Curious, he looked over and read it.

“Lavender Town, the Noble Purple Town; 2 miles ahead.  Well, that’s a relief.  Good to know I wasn’t going in the wrong direction!” he smiled before turning away from the wooden sign.

What he didn’t notice on the sign was a few engraved claw-like markings around its borders.

The trip was finally tiring the guitarist out, until he saw lights in the distance.  A small section of Lavender Town was comprised of city, while the other part was more suburban and secluded.  Two large towers and a chapel of some kind were clearly present beside the furthest mountain face.  One of these towers looked brighter than its neighbor, with a much more modern appearance, as if it had been recently built.  What did each of them contain, he wondered?

Happy to be now inside the central town area, he visited the nearest hotel to get himself a room to stay in for the night.  Approaching the counter, a young blonde girl greeted him with a sleepy smile.  She was pretty cute, her tan skin showing off her fluorescent green eyes.  He obviously wasn’t there to pick up babes, though, so he cut right to the chase.

“Hi, ah, you have any room here?” he asked, accidentally letting out a loud yawn afterwards.  He cupped his hands over his mouth quickly, causing her to snicker at his behavior.

“It’s okay!  It is about one in the morning, after all,” she mused, scanning a few pieces of paper carefully.  Within moments, she looked back up at him, his mouth uncovered and replaced with blush.  “Looks like you’re in luck.  We’ve got about two rooms open on the top floor, and—“

Suddenly, a man dressed in a dark uniform and chef’s apron ran towards them from the left - presumably where the kitchen was - his face full of fear and his eyes wide.  Shouting “no!” quite loudly, he jumped over the counter at the girl before she could reach for one set of keys behind her.  She yelped and Decoda jumped back in surprise when he fell behind the large desk onto his front, slowly picking himself back up.  His crazed expression remained as he looked at her, his body trembling.

“Don’t ever give a customer those keys!  If you do, they’ll be seriously hurt!”

“W-What?!  No!  I wasn’t trying to hurt him!” she stammered, a bit afraid of the apron-wearing night-shifter.  Decoda returned to his spot close to the counter, leaning in and wearing a concerned look.

“How can someone be hurt from a hotel room?!  You don’t have to act psycho over that kind of thing!” he chimed in, a bit more awake now that all this was going on.

The dark haired man only shook his head as he explained a wavy voice, “It’s not the room itself, but the spirits that haunt it!  We keep those rooms empty for a reason, so don’t let this seasonal employee tell you otherwise!”

“Then how come no one told me this during my interview?!” she retorted angrily, and rightly so.  She was being insulted for not knowing about a place she had barely worked for?!  Decoda agreed, tightening his lips and looking back at the flustered man.  He too, looked young, about a few years older than Decoda, but the bags under his eyes and the slouchy posture made him appear much older and more bitter than any chipper teen would be at that range.

“It was so you wouldn’t tell the customers that they couldn’t rent it out because there were ghosts,” he said, crossing his arms.  “It was a risk we were willing to take.”

“What was I supposed to say if I had known?  That they were under perpetual construction?  What other kinds of lies are you telling me and our patrons?” she said, fuming.  Her sweet smile was long gone, replace with bored teeth and a crinkled nose.  This got the guy sweating a little, but engaging Decoda much more into finding out what exactly was up there!

“So, you’re obviously reacting really badly about this, but what is so bad about these ghosts?” the traveler inquired, a little more soft spoken now in order to help cool things down.

“They’re the ghosts of Pokemon and their trainers.  About a two decades ago, when the Radio tower was brand new, two aspiring stars - a singer and an instrumentalist - were going to be the first in the area to have their music play on the radio.  They met here, and fell in love at first sight, but their Pokemon disliked each other greatly.  In order to stop them from fighting, the trainers rented out separate rooms, but had them right next door to one another.  The young woman’s Seviper and the young man’s Mawile awoke later that night to find both of their trainers missing.  Believing it was one another who had gotten rid of the opposite trainer because they did not want them to be together, the two Pokemon went immediately to war.  Their trainers later returned that dawn - who had left on their own - found that not only did their Pokemon kill each other on their behalf, but left poison gas about the top floor for everyone to inhale.  Luckily, all of the other stays at the hotel were evacuated out, but the young, lovestruck entertainers remained with their Pokemon.  It took mere minutes for them to die from the gases, but it is said that you can still hear the cries of the Pokemon and the wails of their human companions from those two rooms.”

Both Decoda and the young clerk’s mouths hit the floor.  What a sad, yet frightening story, the musician thought!  …And how ironic it was for him to be a musician of all things…  However, one thing wasn’t certain: why was it dangerous to be there?

“Y-You had this place fumigated after that, right?  ‘Cause I rented out the other two rooms up there, and I don’t want them to get sick!” the worried girl confessed.

“Yes, and we’re very lucky this place hadn’t been shut down because of that incident,” the other worker answered.

“But if this place is as okay as you say it is, then why is it a hazard to stay up there for the night?” Decoda interjected.

“Apparently, we tried that the very month we were cleared to allow visitors back in.  Not that there were any more deaths, but the guests who did stay up in those third floor rooms were reported to be injured by the moving furniture and ‘invisible attackers’.  They came out the next day, complaining that they had cuts and bruises on them that weren’t there before, and also complained about the noise level, arguing that the employees at the time didn’t inform them this was a battler’s hotel!  There’s no denying it!  This place - or those two rooms - are definitely haunted!”

The red head was silent after that argument.  He could easily respond with a demand for proof, but then he really wouldn’t be getting any kind of sleep.  The best thing to do now was to just try to find a place that offered a bed for him to temporarily use.  Putting his open palms up in the air, facing the guy and girl behind the counter, he sighed heavily and began his walk out the door.

“Alright, fine.  I won’t stay here.  Thanks for the nightmares, though.  Totally appreciate it.  Maybe it was a better idea to keep it a secret,” he said with a touch of snark in his tone.  He could catch the start of a “sorry” from the young girl as he closed the door behind him on his way back outside.

He didn’t feel bad, but he sure did feel unnecessarily on edge and exhausted.

Looking all over town until three in the morning was a terrible idea.  When there were no other hotels in the vicinity, and the Pokemon Center was only available for Pokemon trainers WITH their Pokemon, Decoda felt like knocking on civilians doors to look for someone with maybe a spare room on their hands.  That would be far too rude and uncalled for, though.  He couldn’t bring himself down that low.  He wasn’t a beggar, and wouldn’t start to act like one until he was on his last leg of financial support.  For the time being, though, the only logical action he could take now, was to camp out.

The apparent Radio tower seemed like a great place to reside beside; a bench under a berry-producing tree was the perfect spot for him to relax.  The sun wouldn’t be too bright when morning came, and the bench looked long enough for him to stretch his whole, tall body across.

After sitting down upon its strong planks and taking his guitar case off his back, he set it beside him, tying up the strap to his leg so no one would steal it.  At last, he was able to lean his head back, his arms gently laying at his sides.  While worse than a bed, this was much better than dirt.

He must have dozed off quite quickly, because the next moment his eyes were open, rays of sunshine glittered through the tree branches above him, and a big bell’s chime had rung in the distance.  As his ears slowly started to work again, he could hear the increasingly loud noises coming from the busy parts of the city.  He was almost glad he was off to the side, where he got little to no attention from passer-bys.  He rolled his head back around and looked down at his guitar - still in its case.  Good.  He then looked to left.

What he saw caused him to scream.

An old woman with long white hair, some tied up in a bun, and a round wrinkly face sat beside him.  Her eyes were barely open, and her clothing looked that of a shrine maiden’s.  A long medal hung from a golden chain around her shriveled neck, and her hands were clasped together loosely.  He certainly got her attention when he screamed.

“I’m sorry, did I frighten you?  Oho, that happens quite often…” she stated in a hoarse voice, not really bothered by his fearful expression or the way his body was now contorted against the opposite side of the bench.

“Y-You probably should have told me that you were there, lady!” he barked, stuttering out of surprise.

She merely smiled at him, her blue-gray eyes in full view.  The wrinkles around her neck almost made it look like she was twisting it 270 degrees.  “I didn’t want to wake the precious sleeping guitarist!”

“How did you know I play?” he asked, quite stupidly forgetting about the case attached to his leg.

“You have a guitar in there, don’t you?” she gestured towards the bag.  “That’s why you’re here, to play at the Radio tower, are you not?”

He felt a little dumbfounded, and thought a moment before emitting a response.  He heard only about this tower once, and had forgotten about it since leaving on his journey.  He also hadn’t told anyone about his musical abilities - not the two from the hotel, and not any other travelers he saw.  In other words, he wasn’t really planning to actually go into the tower any time soon, but now that it was brought up… maybe he should give it a shot?

“Well, I don’t know… do you think I should?”

Her head slowly returned to its original position, but her hunched over body carefully straightened out.  She was much taller this way, but still not quite as tall as the Gym Trainer.

“I think it is worth it.  If you are passionate about your skills, like many young people are, you need to pursue them in the best way possible.  If you need inspiration, look in to your future to find the courage you need to succeed,” she told him, her long hair gusting about her face.  There was something really mystical about this old lady, and it fascinated Decoda a little.  “If you need a song to play, however…”

His eyes widened when she began to sing softly.  The words were incomprehensible, but the melody was hypnotic.  Her long nails tapping on her golden medal were perfectly timed with the metronome of the song, keeping time and beat with the ups and downs in her pitch.  Quietly, but quickly, he withdrew his instrument, tuned it as fast as he possibly could and began to follow her with the plucks of his strings.

This music was soothing, gentle, but filled with something almost weighted - something that seemed sad.  As he played, the more and more he thought of the story he heard last night, about the musicians and their Pokemon.  In a way, he really did pity their loss, but he was happy that they could be with one another in eternal rest.  He tried as hard as he could not to cry, stopping his fingers so they could cover his eyes.  The old woman stopped, too.  She turned again, to look at him.

“You don’t have to worry, young man.  It was just a story,” she said.  This caught him off guard, and he quickly lifted his head to look to her.  How did she know what he was thinking?  Maybe she was referring to her song that he couldn’t understand?  Her smiling face was as sweet as ever, reminding him of someone’s dear grandmother.  He just couldn’t ask her about specifics.  He felt his lips curl into a smile of his own, letting a tear free fall off of his cheek.

Packing up his things was easy, but somehow he didn’t want to say goodbye to this humble woman.  “Thanks for your kindness… I actually really appreciate it,” he told her as he rose to his feet, stretching a little on his way up.

“The pleasure was mine, good sir.  May your future be bright and filled with happiness.”

“Thanks.”

After that, Decoda had decided to go into the Radio tower and record the very song he had learned mere hours before.  Others whispered about from behind the recording room at him for his choice of music, he paid no mind to it, believing it was just because he chose to play as soft tune with an electric instrument.  While no one picked him up straight away as he hoped, he understood that just one song wouldn’t make him a hit overnight.  Following the mysterious old woman’s advice, he went back on the road to the next town, hoping to find more opportunities to achieve his dream.

He never did get the name of the song, or the old woman.