Music in Media: The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel

13 January, Thursday, 4:15 p.m. | Winter

A city plunged in darkness. A sky peppered with storm clouds. Screams rained on the streets.

"We should head back," said Cheren as he stole a glance at the sky. "I wonder if Professor Juniper and Rae are alright?"

"They have no reason not to be," Fennel told him and directed his gaze to the neon signs all around Castelia City gradually flickering to life.

Behind them, walking at a slower pace, Icosa lifted Amanita in the air and spun her around to allay her fears. The screams subsided and the sound of silence droned on. Icosa caught a glimpse of light pulsing in the windows of several buildings. Of course, some of them must have Fire-types or candles. Would Electric-types be useful in a blackout? Perhaps those with the electricians.

"Big Bro Icosa, I'm dizzy!"

Icosa mumbled an apology and dropped her onto her two feet. It helped not to be distracted. The storm and the blackout... Too coincidental. It might be an effect of the doom jazz instrumental, but it had been cut off. Or was it the power of silence? What darkness was left to be uncovered in this city? He clicked his tongue and tuned in to the sound of silence stirring.

Someone was singing a tune. Another person was playing the piano. Was silence such an insufferable thing? No, he couldn't afford to be distracted.

"Hello darkness, my old friend..." Icosa sang. He continued despite the looks he was receiving. His virulent energy, what he assumed to be the case anyway, made the city sing along. He was sure among the crowd, Linus and Calliope were singing too.

They turned into Gym Street. A frenzied Professor Juniper burst out of the apartment building just as they were about to enter, her lips quivering.

Cheren held her close. "What's wrong, Professor? Is Rae alright?"

She stomped her foot. "I don't know, Cheren! I can't contact her."

"What do you mean?"

"She's in the Gym."

"She's battling Burgh?" Icosa hazarded a guess. Judging from Professor Juniper's apprehension, he must be far off. "Okay, she isn't battling Burgh, but she's in the Gym."

"Oh, oh, oh! There's that tea!" Professor Juniper clutched her heart. "I saw the police walk Burgh down the street in handcuffs! The news said he's under arrest for the murder of the jazz band members. Rae never came out of the Gym."

Amanita knocked on the door of the Gym and turned to them. "It's locked."

"How do you know that?"

"The knocks... They're more muffled than usual." Amanita shrugged and looked at them. "Something must be blocking the door from inside."

On the other side of the Gym, Rae had just attested to the girl's theory. She and the Harlequins had gathered at the entrance shortly after the blackout began only to discover the door locked using copious amounts of honey and String Shot that extended even to the outside world through the gap between the door and the floor.

"Uh-um... Who did this?" Rae swept her eyes across them. They bore unreadable expressions. But it made no sense. Why bother trapping her, a random stranger, in their Gym?

"Gosh, you're really a kiddo, aren't cha? You don't ever ask direct questions like this. Doesn't work." Jack tched and nudged his Scyther. The Pokémon brandished its razor-sharp wing an inch shy of every Harlequin's throat as it walked past them. "Seems like they don't wanna own up too."

"And I can trust you?" Rae raised a brow at him.

"You can't," said Gary. "Children always want to trust adults. So fucking naïve and annoying."

"Hey, hey, Gary!" Louis smacked the back of Gary's head. "Don't frighten her. She's still young."

"That's not an excuse. She has to grow up."

Anders smashed their heads together and blood trickled down their scalps. "Oh, shut up, for Arceus's sake!"

The pair confronted him and sealed him in a cocoon before turning to face everyone. Rick sighed and gave Clarence the stink eye. Clarence rolled his eyes and approached Rae.

"We will not hurt you, girl. That's not our intention," he said with his hands up in surrender. The other Harlequins mirrored the gesture.

"What is your intention?"

"We should split up and find a way to light up the Gym. And find evidence to clear Burgh's name." Jack patted Clarence's shoulder, then lowered himself till his eyes levelled Rae's. "You'll come with me. We have flashlights on us, so we'll be fine."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone might have intruded and locked us in here. The real murderer's here in the dark."

Seeing as she had no other choice, Rae agreed and they parted from the group. To make herself more comfortable, she let Tabutabu out to accompany her and Noko-Noko. If there was any healing to be done physically or emotionally, at least she would be tended to. Besides, she wasn't sure she could trust Jack. Tabutabu picked up with his feelers the speediness of Jack's heartbeat.

They walked close to the walls in silence.

"Do you hear singing?" Rae asked.

"Yeah," replied Jack. "It's a Unovan thing. Singing during blackouts."

Rae thought he was joking and didn't wish to delve deeper into the topic. Something about the way the Harlequins carried themselves perturbed her and Tabutabu shared her sentiments. Their heartbeats were fast - she could feel them because the Audino touched her with a feeler while extending his other feeler to the open air, allowing the trainer and Pokémon to be in sync. In the quiet dark, she retreated into the crevasses of her mind.

Rae thought about the musical perversion. The effects of the music had been relatively mild. Or could it be that because Aspertia City and Virbank City were far from the mainland, the effects weren't as severe as in Castelia City and perhaps everywhere else? Could the Relic Crown be so powerful to affect different parts of the region this selectively?

She followed Jack as he led her into another part of the Gym after pressing a button on the wall, opening up a new space altogether complete with framed paintings and a honeycomb maze. From where they stood they could see walls of honey bridging two walls together, glowing where the flashlight hit.

"This is the old Gym setup," he told her. Scyther slashed at the honey wall before them and its scythe dripped with the sticky golden liquid. "Dammit, Scyther. Go wipe it off."

"Scy..." moaned the Pokémon.

"The honey must have come from here. I bet there's a good chunk of evidence in here too."

Rae studied Jack's profile in the flashlight. It was highly possible he was speaking the truth. She felt he was egging her on to find the evidence for him. From the way he continuously avoided her gaze, she supposed he had a guilty conscience. Perhaps he was tasked with destroying the evidence.

"What are we looking for?" Rae prodded him.

"A SD card. The police said it, didn't they? It was missing from the surveillance camera. The real murderer probably left it here somewhere."

The police said nothing about it at all. Rae sucked in a breath and shared a quick glance with Tabutabu. She could well be with the murderer.

They trod all about the old Gym setup, bursting through honey which coated their beings. Passing through a honey wall felt no different from pushing her body against a trampoline and the aftermath of each passing left her reeling with a slight dizziness as though she had been bouncing on the trampoline for minutes on end. The first few times Jack or Scyther caught her before she made a nosedive to the floor. She gradually improved. She found out it was easier to pass through the centre of each honey wall head-on, calmly and without too much force, as if blending with the honey for a moment, then fading out. At times it felt like they were going around in circles, passing by the same paintings of the same Bug-type Pokémon over and over again; other times it felt like the paintings had been shifted or the Pokémon in the paintings switched poses.

What caught her attention were the short metal poles at the top of each honey wall. The poles had sharpened tails and if they weren't careful, they might be scratched. Jack explained that the old Gym puzzle required challengers to press switches on the floor to raise the iron gates blocking their access to the honey walls. Challengers will do this a couple of times and battle the Harlequins along the way till they reached Burgh at the end of the honeycomb maze.

"That sounds intense."

"The wait was intense for us. We couldn't do anything but stare into space. Burgh, though, could keep himself occupied by painting the challenger at various angles. Attached to the ceiling and walls are numerous cameras, though you can't see them now because they aren't functioning any longer and so they don't have that blinking red light. Anyway, challengers tended to get lost easily. The new puzzle's friendlier."

"That's good, right?"

"Yeah. Sorta." Jack pointed the flashlight to yet another honey wall. "This is the last one. Behind the one lies Burgh. Used to."

They went through the wall. Unlike the rest of the maze, this place was full of paintings of Ultra Beasts.

"Burgh was an escapist artist," said Jack. "And there, that laptop. He used it to watch the surveillance footage."

Jack stared at the painting above the laptop and knitted his brows. The painting illustrated a Leavanny doing a waltz with Burgh himself, though it was slanted as if both trainer and Pokémon were slipping off a slope. Rae trailed his gaze and checked the back of the painting. An SD card was stuck onto the canvas using String Shot.

"I found it," Rae said as she waved the item at Jack's flashlight, then popped it into the laptop. She quickly found the footage from last night.

Given the unfamiliar territory of a staircase leading from underneath the city to an area blocked out by dull buildings in the footage, she reckoned the location of the murder was somewhere in the lungs of Castelia. The band played their doom jazz music solemnly, without a care for the encroaching shadows, their presence made visible involuntarily by the streetlights. There were twelve of them in total, six humans, six Pokémon.

Rae reeled back with a gasp just as a gloved hand pressed on her shoulder and squeezed her shoulder blades hard.

The shadows revealed themselves as the Harlequins and their Pokémon. Rae's heart thrashed about in her ribcage like the red Gyarados in the Lake of Rage when the four band members carried on playing their music with a few breaths in between, their curious gaze on the visitors gifting anticipation. But perhaps what caught her attention was the string of floating musical notes above the jazz band which vanished when the Harlequins made their move. Scyther's agility allowed it to knock the members out with the back of its scythes while Jack brought out a speaker that likely played a recording of the instrumental. Once the four band members had collapsed onto the ground, Anders had Pineco use Rapid Spin to create shallow cuts all across the band members' clothes and bodies, especially the vital organs and the hearts. Next up was Lokix's Axe Kick. Rick's Pokémon, having attached serrated leaves to its heels, kicked up and brought its feet crashing against the cuts so the leaves sank in. Thereafter came Louis's Shelmet, using Absorb and Mega Drain to dry up the nutrients from the leaf blades.

Rae shut her eyes. She didn't want to watch any more of it. It was clear they were the ones who framed Burgh.

"Watch it," commanded Jack with a snicker. Scyther placed a scythe on Rae's throat, the coldness of it causing her to snap her eyes open.

On screen, Clarence now had Vikavolt trim the leaf blades with its long mandibles. Vice Grip, Rae noted. The final Pokémon to act was Gary's Larvesta who traced the cuts with its fiery horns, giving the leaves a fermented look, warming up the cuts so blood oozed and mixed with skin and leaves. Jack then ordered his Scyther to unleash the finishing strike, pushing the leaves into the flesh and deeper into the heart so the next day the police would find finely cut leaves mixed in the veins of the deceased. He switched off the speakers and the Harlequins took their leave.

"How do you like it?" Jack sneered at Rae when the footage cut off. Rae snatched the SD card when it was ejected. He simply laughed. "Go ahead. It's not like you're going anywhere with it."

"Don't kill me." A whimper was all she could manage.

Jack shook his head. "Do you see it now? The music calls for celebration. That was cathartic, you know? I mean, murder is the most cathartic thing in the universe. A wimp like you won't understand till you really take a life." He scratched his neck. "Think about it, Rae. Tragedies tend to end in cold blood and the audience goes through that emotional purgation."

"That's wrong."

"Tell that to the writers of tragedies. No, to humanity. Schadenfreude is a way of life. You can't deny it."

"Why are you doing this?"

Jack grabbed a mass of her hair and Rae whined. He sniffed her and cackled. "Let me tell you what Burgh doesn't know. We are all murderers here. Murder is just another form of art."

"How did you keep it from him?"

"We kill in the lungs. A big city doesn't really count how much they've lost anyway." Jack broke into a sinister smile. "Besides, hardly anyone goes there."

And the police only knew about the murder of the jazz band members because the music had stopped. It was the only explanation.

"This is messed up."

"Every human is messed up, girl." Jack walked away from her shivering frame. "Especially the righteous ones... like you."

Rae found herself stuck to the floor, as if the honey had sealed her where Burgh had once been.

"Why now of all times?"

"Arceus, you ask so many fucking questions. I thought you're quieter than that." Jack slapped his forehead. As his hand slipped down to his smirk, he leered at her. "You will not understand even if I tell you. But if you must know, it's all for Harmonia."

It was too much for Rae. For now, she had to ensure her safety.

"But why? D-D-Don't come close! You said you wouldn't hurt me. Or kill me."

"I'm not. I'm just leaving you here to rot." Jack and his Scyther broke through the honey wall. On the other side, before their footfalls echoed throughout the area, he added, "You should be glad. The music has changed to reveal all the truths in the world a child like you must face."

Rae was glad Tabutabu and Noko-Noko were here with her. She was glad they didn't try to attack Jack or his Scyther; she wouldn't want them getting hurt. She sent Chilchil out of her Poké Ball and curled up on the floor. All three Pokémon embraced her.

Her mind whirred in the discomfort of the dripping honey. Was it so wrong to trust others? Could a child not trust someone older to care for her? As unreadable as Icosa was, he did whatever he could to shower her with care and concern, and he certainly didn't go to such lengths to destroy her like this. Even the Shadow Triad were kind enough to just lock her in a cabin and have Calliope keep her company. These people she thought had the potential to be vile weren't as horrible as these Harlequins whom Burgh had trusted his life with, and she, too.

And what did Jack mean, saying she was messed up? If she were a character in a novel, she was lucky to not suffer from a tragic backstory. She came from a well-to-do family, had a nice brother and a great mentor and friend. She cleared the Johto League in a span of days. She didn't have to go head to head with Team Rocket which had disbanded long ago. She couldn't pinpoint what went wrong or where in her short life did she stray from the path she had set on.

Did she not know the truths of the world? Not exactly. Her brother was stuck in a harem on her mother's whims. It could've been a tragedy, but it became a comedy. Or was this where her life, which up till now had been more comedy than anything else, diving into the trenches of tragedy?

It wasn't her fault things came easily to her, that she achieved great feats. It wasn't her fault she was born sheltered and lived with the hand she was dealt with. So why did Jack blame her for turning out the way she currently was?

"Why do adults hate children so much?" She petted Noko-Noko and sneezed. "Remember the flight? Ken and Karen complained about children and about us. But adults were children too."

"Dundun..." The Dunsparce cried, unable to come to a conclusion.

"It seems like I just can't do anything on my own, huh?" Rae turned to Chilchil and Tabutabu. "If you think about it, I only met you two because I happened to. No, even Noko-Noko was given to me..."

She recalled her party Pokémon in Johto. How many of those encounters were because she got lucky? Six out of six.

Heavy silence lingered in the air. Rae couldn't remember a time she spent moping around like this. She hardly broke down. She always had that cheery demeanour.

Tabutabu brought a Heal Pulse to Rae's heart, but she declined the offer.

"I can't keep depending on others." Rae got up and faced the honey wall. "I guess I just have to grow up."

Taking the lead, she slipped into the wall, let the golden liquid stick to her skin, her clothes, her snot and stumbled her way through the honeycomb maze. Noko-Noko, Chilchil and Tabutabu talked behind her, but they couldn't figure out a way to help her.

Twenty minutes later, she hit a concrete wall. Jack locked her in there. Of course he did. She knocked on the wall, then pressed her ear against it.

She could only hear the sound of silence.