Pokemon: The Journey

They walked in heavy silence through the forest. Yellow's prone unconscious body in his arms was the only thing in Ash's mind as Pikachu led them back to the main path with the help of the faint marks he had made in the trees while traversing this path nearly a week before.

Her tear-streaked face while she was trying to wake her uncle up from his eternal sleep was still haunting his mind till now.

'Ash.'

'Not now, Roshi.'

'I know that this is not the time to talk after everything that happened there. I want you to know that I might have found out why she was attacked.'

The brief falter in Ash's steps did not go unnoticed by Pikachu and Eevee.

'What do you mean?'

'Did you properly see the corpse's condition that time? Like anything weird that should not have been there?'

Narrowing his eyes at that, he tried to remember what else he had seen on the corpse. This was the first time he had seen a proper corpse, so he could not tell much, but he felt as if there was something weird with it that should not have been there.

'I think that you mean the melted foot and the purple tint of the body? I do not know.'

'Close enough. Haven't you seen the purple tint just a few days ago?'

'A few days ago? The only one with a purple tint was Doduo, and he was poisoned...Oh. You mean to say that Yellow's uncle was poisoned and thrown into the water?!'

'That and he was probably tortured a bit before he was dead. His foot and the tree trunks were melted off. It would mean somebody attacked using a strong acid there. I do not know if you noticed, but there were faint rope strangulation marks on his neck, and holes in his limbs, possibly gun wounds. There were also some faint marks of foam from his mouth, so he drowned in the water after he was thrown there. He could not swim back up due to the pain and drowned.'

'Monsters, ' Ash thought with absolute distaste.

They had currently reached the main league-approved route and were walking along it.

'Ash, we have to leave her in Pewter City after getting out of the forest.'

'What?! We cannot do that to her! She is injured!'

'Did you think that I would forget about it? We admit her to a hospital and then leave after informing the staff that you found her injured in the forest. They will take care of contacting her remaining family. We would start lowering the time of our visits each day. After winning the gym challenge, we leave.'

'But...'

'Her attacker might come after us as well. What will you do at that time? What if they kill you? How do you think your mother will feel when she gets to know that her son has been killed?'

'I-I...'

There was a falter in his beliefs, and he did not want his mother to look like Yellow when she found his body.

While this was going on, none of them noticed somebody sneak up on them behind the bushes who held something that gleamed in the low light that fell on them.