Chapter 6: Vermilion’s Burn
Vermilion didn't glow.
It burned.
Every corner buzzed with light. Traffic lights blinked even when no one was crossing. Loudspeakers shouted ferry schedules in four languages. Neon signs rippled like electric water up the walls.
Cael stepped off the northern trail just past sunset.
The street heat hit him first—dense and synthetic, like someone had plugged the pavement into a generator and left it running too long. The hum of the city wasn't wind or movement. It was voltage.
Nyx surfaced beside him, sluggish.
He hovered lower than usual, mist rippling fast around his body, disturbed.
Vox didn't emerge at all. She stayed deep in Cael's shadow, shrinking from the unnatural brightness. Ghosts didn't like static fields. They slid off them—like oil on ice.
Only Rotom thrived.
It buzzed like a live wire through the inner lining of Cael's coat. The zipper shifted once. The sleeve seam twitched. A traffic camera above them sparked faintly as they passed beneath.
Cael didn't slow.
The city smelled like metal and ocean—ship grease, solder, and salt.
He moved through the docks without speaking, just one more figure in the crowd of ferry workers, tourists, and pokéball vendors selling spark-stickers to kids. No one noticed him.
But he noticed everything.
Especially the crowd near the harbor's edge.
They stood behind a roped-off training arena bolted into the pier—temporary battlefield rails, scorched floor plating, and a thunder icon stenciled in yellow at center.
At the far end stood a man.
Tall.
Loud.
Arms crossed over a sleeveless camo vest, dog tags glinting like teeth under the arena lights.
Lt. Surge.
Cael stopped at the edge of the ring and watched.
Surge wasn't battling. He was demonstrating.
"—and when your 'mon takes the field, don't ask it to hit first!" he barked. "Command it! Drive that power down their throat and keep it there!"
He clapped once—loud as a detonator.
A Raichu leapt forward, tail sparking like a live whip.
The arena lit up as it slammed a Thunder Wave into a target dummy across the field—shattering it into blackened, steaming plastic.
Kids clapped. Trainers took notes.
Surge grinned like a war god in boots.
Cael just stood still.
Nyx shuddered next to him.
"Too loud?" Cael murmured.
Nyx gave a low, vibrating hum of confirmation.
Cael didn't respond.
He just watched Surge turn to a young trainer and laugh.
"He's not afraid of ghosts," Cael whispered.
Rotom twitched in his sleeve like it was giggling.
Then Cael added, quiet enough only his team could hear:
"Good. Neither are we."
The Vermilion Gym looked more like a bunker than a League facility.
Steel walls. Concrete floor. Barred windows lined with mesh. The front desk was unmanned. No pamphlets. Just a wall-screen that buzzed to life when Cael entered:
"CHALLENGER DETECTED – REPORT TO MAIN FIELD."
No delay. No flair.
The system scanned his League ID the moment he crossed the sensor strip, and the heavy doors unlocked with a clang like a cell gate.
Inside, the air smelled like ozone and battery acid.
The arena was a half-cylinder chamber lined with scorched metal tiles and burnt lines from repeated overloads. Every light was too bright. Cameras sat in each corner like glass eyes, and the floor pulsed faintly under Cael's boots.
He stepped onto the challenger pad and said nothing.
A second door at the far end hissed open.
Lt. Surge entered like a storm cloud wearing boots.
Tall. Built like a Rhydon. Eyes sharp beneath a buzzcut. He didn't walk like a gym leader. He marched. Every step echoed like a countdown.
He stopped ten paces away and looked Cael over once.
"You the ghost kid?" Surge asked.
Cael blinked. "Is that what they're calling me?"
Surge grinned. "I call you whatever wins. You gonna float smoke at me, or do you actually command?"
Nyx emerged behind Cael, slow and silent.
Vox didn't surface—but her presence thickened like cold spreading through a steel pipe.
Rotom sparked faintly through Cael's collar seam. A bolt popped near one of the overhead lights.
Surge raised an eyebrow. "Huh. Guess the rumors weren't exaggerating."
He gestured to the field. "Three-on-three. No switching mid-round. No sensory interference outside your own team. That fog crap? You'd better control it."
Cael nodded once. "Agreed."
"No mind games. No trainer hypnosis garbage. I've heard stories."
"No need," Cael said flatly.
Surge grinned wider. "Good. I like straight talk."
He stepped onto his platform. "Now let's see if that grin of yours holds up when the lights go out."
Cael finally looked him in the eye. Not defiance.
Just stillness.
Then, like tossing a pebble into an ocean trench, he said:
"Then stop missing."
Surge's grin didn't disappear.
But it twitched.
And the Gym lights dimmed like the ghosts were already listening.
Title: Vermilion's Burn
Magneton hit the floor with a shriek of polarized steel.
The gym's sensors flared. Electricity raced across hidden coils in the arena floor—arcs of white-blue light flickering just under the surface like veins.
Surge crossed his arms on his platform.
"Magneton—zone control. Don't wait for the signal."
The hovering tri-core Pokémon hummed into motion, and the battlefield surged with static.
Cael didn't flinch.
Nyx floated lazily onto the field—still, smiling, his body trailing mist in slow, calculated arcs.
Vox didn't emerge physically, but the lights in the gym dimmed slightly, and the cameras in the corners flickered.
Rotom… was gone.
Or rather—everywhere.
Surge called out, "Thunder Wave spread—suppress ghost form!"
Magneton spun, its magnets charging, then released a wide pulse of electric shock—cage-shaped, designed to limit evasive phasing.
It passed straight through Nyx's decoy.
The smile remained.
But Nyx was gone.
From the far side of the field, the real Nyx rematerialized—upside-down, drifting sideways, his mist curling like ink in water.
A buzzing sound clicked in one of the ceiling speakers.
Then another.
Surge glanced up. "What the hell—?"
A light overhead exploded with a sharp POP.
Rotom's grin flashed for a half-second inside the bulb before vanishing.
Cael still hadn't spoken.
He watched, hands in his coat pockets.
Magneton recalibrated. Its center eye glowed white-blue, tracking Nyx's true position.
"Shock Cannon!" Surge barked.
The attack fired—a bolt of compressed voltage, barreling forward like a railgun shot.
Nyx didn't move.
But the floor did.
A metal panel under Magneton's rear edge lifted—just slightly—out of sync.
It wasn't part of the attack.
It was Rotom.
It shifted the magnetic plates mid-aim.
The shot missed by a meter.
The bolt shattered a camera mount on the far wall.
Surge stared. "That wasn't just fog. That was a redirect."
Another light popped.
Then a speaker on Surge's platform emitted his own voice—one second late:
"Shock Cannon—!"
Surge's eyes narrowed. "Oh you little bastard."
Rotom zipped again—this time through the central scoreboard. It lit up with a series of random characters:
[==CÆL₧==]
Surge pointed. "You're hacking the field!"
Cael finally spoke.
Softly. Calm.
"No. I'm haunting it."
Magneton spun, glitching slightly—its targeting sensors flickered red, then purple, then rebooted.
The mist across the battlefield deepened.
Nyx's duplicates began to multiply—slower than before, less about confusion, more about omnipresence.
Every time Magneton locked on, a Rotom-induced flash reset the lights.
Every time it charged a strike, the magnetic field shifted half a degree left.
Cael didn't launch an attack.
He didn't need to.
Magneton hadn't touched a thing.
Surge stared across the field, teeth grinding, breath shallow—not from anger.
From adjustment.
He was being outmaneuvered without being touched.
Outplayed by a kid who wasn't fighting.
A kid who was rewriting the room.
Another light went out.
Then a second.
Then half the room blinked—just once—but enough to stagger Magneton mid-hover.
The buzzing in the walls shifted tone, from sharp to low, then to something almost vocal.
It wasn't words. Not yet.
But it was getting closer.
Surge clenched a fist. "Lock orientation. System override—local terrain protocol on. Manual control."
The gym's floor surged—metal plates glowing, recalibrating.
The lights above flickered into a new pattern.
For three seconds, it looked like the field was his again.
Then the lights blinked in Morse code.
Dot. Dot. Pause. Dash. Dash. Dash.
[RUN.]
Rotom appeared again.
This time inside the floor.
It didn't materialize like a Pokémon—it bled upward from the circuitry like an infection blooming in steel.
Its body half-formed.
Its grin enormous.
It flickered left.
Then zipped through the scoreboard—again—then across the overhead wiring, dragging a line of blue fire behind it.
Magneton spun to track it—
And Vox whispered.
Not aloud.
Not from her position.
But from everywhere.
She didn't scream.
She echoed.
Surge's own voice—his earlier orders—reverberated from the corners of the room.
"Thunder Wave!"
"Cannon Shot!"
"Override terrain—"
"Override terrain—"
Each repeat distorted. Slower.
More mocking.
"OVERRRiiide… terrainn—"
Surge's brow furrowed.
Magneton sparked erratically—its center eye flickering, limbs trembling.
A targeting error flashed across its sensory core.
Then a system overload warning.
It rotated three full turns—
—and fired an attack directly into its own electric field.
The lights exploded.
The battlefield surged with blinding blue-white energy.
Metal screeched.
Vox vanished from view.
Nyx smiled wider.
Rotom emerged from a wall panel like a demon exiting a cracked mirror and hovered in front of Magneton for exactly one breath.
Then the lights died.
Total darkness.
No sound.
No commands.
Then:
Click.
Hummmm.
Backup power flared.
The lights returned.
Magneton was on the floor.
Not unconscious.
Just still.
Hovering motionless, eyes dull.
System: reset.
Cael hadn't moved an inch.
He hadn't flinched when the lights blew.
Hadn't blinked when the noise rose.
He stood like a shadow pretending to be human.
Rotom zipped back into his coat seam like a bird returning to a pocket.
Nyx rotated in lazy arcs again, as if nothing had happened.
Vox hovered behind Cael's shoulder now—completely silent.
Across the field, Surge stared.
Not angry.
Not confused.
Amused.
And beneath that—
A little afraid.
Surge said nothing at first.
He stepped off the platform, boots hitting scorched metal, his frame casting a long shadow over the fried remains of his own terrain.
He crouched beside Magneton.
Checked its sensors.
Tightened one bolt near its top joint.
It stirred—still functioning, but dazed.
Disarmed.
He gave it a single nod.
"Good job, soldier," he said quietly.
Then returned it to its ball.
He stood and turned to Cael.
Didn't salute.
Didn't smirk.
Just looked him in the eyes and said, "I've seen sabotage. I've seen illusions. I've seen tech tricks and baiting routines."
Cael waited.
"And none of them ever did what you just did."
A pause.
Then: "You didn't just win the fight. You convinced the building to switch sides."
Cael didn't respond.
Rotom buzzed softly in his coat—proud, not smug.
Vox hovered like a curtain of still breath.
Nyx simply blinked, once. Then faded down into Cael's shadow.
Surge reached into a lockbox on the wall and pulled out a Thunder Badge.
He didn't toss it.
He handed it.
Palm to palm.
Like something earned in blood.
Cael took it without ceremony.
But he didn't pocket it right away.
He turned it once between his fingers, slowly, like weighing something.
"Your field," he said at last. "It's not rigged. It's honest."
Surge raised an eyebrow.
"That's why I sent Rotom first."
Surge chuckled. "You scouted me."
Cael nodded.
"Good. Then we understand each other."
As Cael turned to go, the lights in the far corner of the gym flickered again—once.
Then again.
Deliberate.
Not mechanical.
Someone was still watching.
Up in the dark glass observation booth above the gym, a woman in a long black League coat clicked her pen once, leaned forward, and made a final note in the casefile open before her:
Unclassified Specialist – Ghost-Type
Name: Cael Silen
Badge Count: 3
Field Behavior: Nonverbal Coordination / Terrain Interference / Type-Specific Adaptation
Primary Threat Profile: Environmental Possession.
She stared at the boy on the gym floor as he walked out alone into the artificial dusk of Vermilion City.
Then closed the folder.
"He's awake now," she said quietly.
No one in the room answered.
End of Chapter 6 – Vermilion's Burn
Cael now holds:
Boulder Badge
Cascade Badge
Thunder Badge
He has officially drawn League surveillance interest.