Post by scissorhands on Jan 7, 2013 17:15:10 GMT -8
Three years earlier.
“Kersa,” Cairo began, honestly sympathetic, “I can't even imagine...Honestly, I hope that you know how brave you are, how strong you are.”
Strands of hair played before her face, dancing on light breeze. She took in a breath, leavening tension and subsequently pursing her lips, then exhaling. “You know,” she began, “I don't know that it's bravery in the truest sense.” She sort of looked off in another direction, contemplative for a moment before she sat down in the immense bed of yellow flowers that surrounded the two.
“How do you mean?” Cairo asked, eyes fixed on Kersa as he assumed a similar, seated position.
“I mean to say that there's a whole lot of things that are, whether people want to acknowledge it or not, reality. And when it comes down to things like...like reality and what you're to do in the face of it, then it becomes less about bravery and more about duty. Duty out of love, as the case is here. You know, I can be as brave as anyone else is, but, in the end, I'm honestly lucky to have been able to fulfill the type of duty that is paying your respects to one of the people in your life that you've come to love most.”
“Well, I admire you. I admire you and I admire Tyranitar, more than I could tell you.” Cairo assured Kersa, looking to a sun wrestling with the horizon, pinning it down and poised to let the sunlight leaking through to earth hide itself altogether soon enough. “Let's go to the Pokémon center, yeah?” He asked. “Yeah,” she was quick to respond, keeping her eyes stuck, momentarily but unrelentingly, to the last glimpse of her father's ashes dancing on a, now barely perceivable, breeze.
And so they walked.
The doors to the Pokémon center opened as was typical. The sound was typical, the motions were typical, the smell inside was typical. So why, then, was everything other than this place so atypical? They walked in, and Kersa found her way to the counter, waiting on nurse Joy. Cairo's wandering eyes found a curly-haired trainer, hands-in-pockets, eyes diligently fixed on the fireplace ahead. He was wearing a heavy sweater and jeans, looking, again, as typical as any given person, but something about him – something about everyone – remained off.
“Hey, Joel,” Cairo managed as he approached the trainer. Joel's head arched slightly in Cairo's direction before he nodded in acknowledgment. Cairo stood for a moment, looking, too, to the fire anticipating Joel to offer some semblance of a plan for dealing with team Galactic, clearly determined to do away with Cairo and all those associated with him. That plan never found its way from Joel's lips, though. Cairo looked around elsewhere, spying new friends Chad and Jessica on one of the couches, laughing, occasionally brushing against one another. Theirs were smiles that appeared more genuine than anything Cairo'd seen before. Theirs was a relationship starting freshly, honestly, and without latent triviality waiting in the wings. So why was his relationship with them riddled with all of that? He couldn't shake it, however much he wanted to.
“Hey!” a small, if weighty, voice carried into the Pokémon Center.
All of the trainers, and Joy herself, turned toward a small girl in the doorway, garbed in blacks and whites, a bow atop her head. The girl was, undoubtedly, the same one as was described as a member of team Galactic earlier by Joel, who, for whatever reason, seemed to know so much more than anyone else.
A ball fell from Cairo's belt with fluidity to his fingertips, rolling to their points and expanding before finding its way, clutched tightly, within his anxious palms.
“What gives? You're all just going to leave me in the woods with those purple maniacs, while you all just come and chill out? Do you understand that you're all, like, a hundred years older than I am? Jeez.” The girl called out convincingly as she rung some water from her hair. It had, evidently, started to rain.
“Stand down, now,” Cairo began, “Unless you plan to tell us what Galactic's plans are and why they are out to get all of us, I'm calling the cops.” He said with infallible aplomb.
She tilted her head to its side, hung her mouth open and peaked a brow, looking on in complete befuddlement. “What the heck are you on about, Cairo?”
“How do you know my –”
Cairo's sentiments were cut short as Joy sent a shriek carrying throughout the center, reverberating total fear from the walls and to the confused, vulnerable ears of the answerless trainers. A thud resonated as Joy's head slammed against the counter top, paralyzed before her body collapsed to the ground, revealing a Croagunk poised statuesque behind her, glowing fingertips pointed into where she'd stood.
Cairo's eyes grew wide as he watched Croagunk lower its fingers, and the lights in the Pokémon Center extinguish abruptly. A figure, silhouetted in moonlight from the window-ridden space, arose behind Croagunk. He was silent, as other figures, dressed similarly, filtered in from the stairwell and the entrance to the center, respectively. “Girafarig, go!” Cairo called out, whipping the Pokeball to the ground, flooding the room with temporary light, and calling out, “Psychic! Get Joy!” shortly thereafter.
Girafarig's eyes began glowing a smoky, refulgent blue as Joy's body took on a similar appearance. Joel, Jessica, Chad, Phoebe, and Kersa all followed suit, releasing five more Pokémon in blinding flashes. The Galactics, however, had, apparently, set aside deleterious motives for the moment, and were intent, solely, on kidnapping nurse Joy.
Rather than releasing Pokémon of their own, all of the members of the nefarious group sprinted at Joy, holding on to her with any and all strength they could muster, forcing her from psychic capture. Tried as he did, Girafarig could only sustain the move for so long, physically struggling to reel in Joy, ascending to his hind legs, before dropping from the exhaustion of sustaining the powerful move. All of the trainers ordered a slew of attacks, effectively destroying the counter before the grunts, but not stopping them from filtering out the back with the nurse.
“No time,” Joel began quickly, exhausted and breathing heavily, nerves making themselves evident, “we need to go. It's time to deal with this.”
Cairo looked on at him in question, desperate, now more than ever, for clarity. “Joel,” he managed, exasperated as well, “what is going on? You know what's going on! What's going?”
“No time,” he reiterated, “you'll know soon enough. We all need to go, as quickly as possible. Your Pokémon had better be prepared for this.”
Cairo nodded and drew a Pokeball from his belt, sending it careening to the ground, snapping open in a flood of light the grew to form Gengar, floating and following Cairo as he mounted Girafarig and prepared to depart the Pok?mon Center. The other trainers mounted Pokémon of their own before rushing out the doors of the center, and into the night, dark enough that it was difficult for even Joel, who knew exactly where they were going, to find his way.
Soon enough, though, it was in sight. Moonlight illuminated, from peak to base, a massive building, teeming with men dressed similarly to the criminals from earlier, and crawling with Pokémon of all types. And so Joel began, loudly, overpowering rushing winds as their Pokémon carried on at remarkable speeds, “Charge in. Do not stop. Release any and all Pokémon that you can. We are beating all of them, and destroying this building, because the rest of the world has decided they aren't a threat. Do not relent. We're going to end this and move on with our lives, once and for all.”
Though everyone was, at least, somewhat in the dark, seeming perennially unenlightened, they pressed on.
They tore up a hillside, through exclamations resounding from Galactic members who were now aware of the trainers' presence. Girafarig was first, leaping as Cairo cried, “Jump into a Stomp!” down onto the ground, crushing, with thunderous pressure, a Toxicroak who ululated sharply, falling to the grass, now becoming drenched in worsening rain. “Psybeam!” He cried, letting Girafarig throw a beam back and forth, shielding Cairo as he threw two more PokéBalls to the air, revealing, first, Beautifly, and, second, Marowak. Tiny feet pounding the ground, whipping his bone left, and then right, pounding Golbat and Woobat, sending them falling to the ground, Marowak sent himself sprinting up the back of a criminally-contolled Nidoking, distracted by Chad's Spinda, before leaping to the air atop Beautifly's back and taking aim at Pokémon below with its bone while Beautifly rained down Shadow Balls.
“Enough!” Cyrus cried, revealed in a flash of lightning, now directly adjacent to Cairo, whose back was up against Joel's, looking in opposite directions, as dozens of Pokémon assaulted one another at the commands of their respective trainers. He was brandishing a white orb, and as Joel turned his head over Cairo's shoulder to see the Galactic leader, his heart skipped a proverbial beat.
Joel knew what it was. The orb had taken Cairo's, Jessica's, and Chad's memories days prior. He also knew that, should it be broken, its effects would be irrevocably reversed. What he didn't know was whether or not it was right. Was it right to restore their memories, and bring them back to bitter opinions of the true Chad; to restore broken relationships? Was it right to let them live on in blissful ignorance?
Cairo lunged at Cyrus through the rain, as the Galactic Elite braced himself, and called his Weavile from a battle as it slashed its claws through the flesh of Joel's Snorlax, sending it to the ground, bloodied and unconscious. Cairo progressed, fist poised, before Weavile leapt into him, head first, sending him from his feet.
Cyrus looked on, rain trickling down his brow, peaked downward, as Cairo tried in vain to suppress dogged swipes by the agile, able Pokémon. His wrists tried to restrain Weavile's as its claws crept closer and closer to Cairo's vulnerable face. The only sounds around were dozens of Pokémon cries, from Spinda to Flygon. His eyes were directly beneath, now, vigorous rainfall, inhibiting his ability to so much as see his attacker. Weavile laughed as it began to generate a beam, first dull and then increasingly bright, from the orifice that was its mouth. Cairo struggled, agonizingly trying to throw the Pokémon before complete exhaustion bested his efforts, when, simultaneously an enormous flying Pokémon slammed into the Weavile, sending it careening to the side before turning its head to Cyrus and throwing dozens, then hundreds, of Razor Leaves at him.
As Cairo looked up, brushing rain from his face with newly freed hands, he watched as a sopping Dani Hopper dismounted a triumphant-looking Tropius that had just saved his life.
Cairo sat up, disoriented. Sounds were muted, rain clouded the scene, but he made out he and his trainer friends' Pokémon falling victim to sheer numbers. Sirens blazed on the horizon, officials approaching. Then he saw guns, brandished by desperate Galactics, prepared to do all but surrender their headquarters. He cried out, “Return!” resonating just barely through disoriented, muffled ears. The landscape was spinning. All of his Pokémon but one found their PokéBalls and made their ways assuredly to Cairo's belt. He made his way to weak knees, and limped along, slipping on grass that was more like ice, searching for his Blastoise. He called for his Pok?mon, quietly first, then graduating into screams before Chad appeared from a blur on his periphery, ducking beneath Hyperbeams, Stun Spores, and gunfire, and grabbed his arm violently. And suddenly, in a violent mental spark, he knew exactly who Chad was. Jessica was behind Chad, in tears, and he knew now, too, who she was entirely, and that she knew who Chad was. He recalled all of their adventures, from Sinnoh, through Orre, the Battle Frontier, Hoenn, Kanto, and full-circle back. He remembered Alison. He knew he hated Chad. He knew Jessica was broken. It was all back as he realized Cyrus must have broken the orb attempting to evade Tropius.
Then gunfire rang out so close it nearly deafened him entirely. He didn't like Chad, he hated Joel, and he couldn't find Blastoise. But as Dani came sprinting toward the group, and shoved Cairo in the direction of Chad's Salamence, what he wanted no longer mattered and all of the trainers had either mounted the dragon-type, or her Tropius, sprinting to take off, evading gunfire and Solar Beams. He cried out, violently, phlegm flying from his throat, his Blastoise's name before he, finally, saw it. The Pokémon refused to return as Cairo called out for it. Blastoise stood upright on the ledge they'd just taken off from, intentionally blocking any shot at the airborne trainers which the Galactics may have had, readily allowing itself to be lit up with gunfire. Whatever it had to do to protect its trainer is what it would have done.
Blastoise took the shoots and powered the last of its might into sprinting at the last remaining support beam of the HQ, decimating it under his collapsing, dying mass, and sending the building crumbling to its foundation in thunderous clouds.
Cairo cried out, inconsolably. He repeatedly called for returns until, finally, a lifeless Blastoise's body could no longer resist, and flew, via red beam of light, to Cairo's hands. He writhed about so vigorously, so riotously on Salamence's back, that Chad and Jessica had to restrain him all the way back home to Hoenn.
The air was frighteningly cold, biting them as they soared. In the distance, blue lights filtered the former HQ amidst torrential downpour, gunshots littering the landscape. On the opposite horizon, warm light broke the storm clouds, and illuminated a miniscule Oldale Town. It was beautiful.
“Kersa,” Cairo began, honestly sympathetic, “I can't even imagine...Honestly, I hope that you know how brave you are, how strong you are.”
Strands of hair played before her face, dancing on light breeze. She took in a breath, leavening tension and subsequently pursing her lips, then exhaling. “You know,” she began, “I don't know that it's bravery in the truest sense.” She sort of looked off in another direction, contemplative for a moment before she sat down in the immense bed of yellow flowers that surrounded the two.
“How do you mean?” Cairo asked, eyes fixed on Kersa as he assumed a similar, seated position.
“I mean to say that there's a whole lot of things that are, whether people want to acknowledge it or not, reality. And when it comes down to things like...like reality and what you're to do in the face of it, then it becomes less about bravery and more about duty. Duty out of love, as the case is here. You know, I can be as brave as anyone else is, but, in the end, I'm honestly lucky to have been able to fulfill the type of duty that is paying your respects to one of the people in your life that you've come to love most.”
“Well, I admire you. I admire you and I admire Tyranitar, more than I could tell you.” Cairo assured Kersa, looking to a sun wrestling with the horizon, pinning it down and poised to let the sunlight leaking through to earth hide itself altogether soon enough. “Let's go to the Pokémon center, yeah?” He asked. “Yeah,” she was quick to respond, keeping her eyes stuck, momentarily but unrelentingly, to the last glimpse of her father's ashes dancing on a, now barely perceivable, breeze.
And so they walked.
The doors to the Pokémon center opened as was typical. The sound was typical, the motions were typical, the smell inside was typical. So why, then, was everything other than this place so atypical? They walked in, and Kersa found her way to the counter, waiting on nurse Joy. Cairo's wandering eyes found a curly-haired trainer, hands-in-pockets, eyes diligently fixed on the fireplace ahead. He was wearing a heavy sweater and jeans, looking, again, as typical as any given person, but something about him – something about everyone – remained off.
“Hey, Joel,” Cairo managed as he approached the trainer. Joel's head arched slightly in Cairo's direction before he nodded in acknowledgment. Cairo stood for a moment, looking, too, to the fire anticipating Joel to offer some semblance of a plan for dealing with team Galactic, clearly determined to do away with Cairo and all those associated with him. That plan never found its way from Joel's lips, though. Cairo looked around elsewhere, spying new friends Chad and Jessica on one of the couches, laughing, occasionally brushing against one another. Theirs were smiles that appeared more genuine than anything Cairo'd seen before. Theirs was a relationship starting freshly, honestly, and without latent triviality waiting in the wings. So why was his relationship with them riddled with all of that? He couldn't shake it, however much he wanted to.
“Hey!” a small, if weighty, voice carried into the Pokémon Center.
All of the trainers, and Joy herself, turned toward a small girl in the doorway, garbed in blacks and whites, a bow atop her head. The girl was, undoubtedly, the same one as was described as a member of team Galactic earlier by Joel, who, for whatever reason, seemed to know so much more than anyone else.
A ball fell from Cairo's belt with fluidity to his fingertips, rolling to their points and expanding before finding its way, clutched tightly, within his anxious palms.
“What gives? You're all just going to leave me in the woods with those purple maniacs, while you all just come and chill out? Do you understand that you're all, like, a hundred years older than I am? Jeez.” The girl called out convincingly as she rung some water from her hair. It had, evidently, started to rain.
“Stand down, now,” Cairo began, “Unless you plan to tell us what Galactic's plans are and why they are out to get all of us, I'm calling the cops.” He said with infallible aplomb.
She tilted her head to its side, hung her mouth open and peaked a brow, looking on in complete befuddlement. “What the heck are you on about, Cairo?”
“How do you know my –”
Cairo's sentiments were cut short as Joy sent a shriek carrying throughout the center, reverberating total fear from the walls and to the confused, vulnerable ears of the answerless trainers. A thud resonated as Joy's head slammed against the counter top, paralyzed before her body collapsed to the ground, revealing a Croagunk poised statuesque behind her, glowing fingertips pointed into where she'd stood.
Cairo's eyes grew wide as he watched Croagunk lower its fingers, and the lights in the Pokémon Center extinguish abruptly. A figure, silhouetted in moonlight from the window-ridden space, arose behind Croagunk. He was silent, as other figures, dressed similarly, filtered in from the stairwell and the entrance to the center, respectively. “Girafarig, go!” Cairo called out, whipping the Pokeball to the ground, flooding the room with temporary light, and calling out, “Psychic! Get Joy!” shortly thereafter.
Girafarig's eyes began glowing a smoky, refulgent blue as Joy's body took on a similar appearance. Joel, Jessica, Chad, Phoebe, and Kersa all followed suit, releasing five more Pokémon in blinding flashes. The Galactics, however, had, apparently, set aside deleterious motives for the moment, and were intent, solely, on kidnapping nurse Joy.
Rather than releasing Pokémon of their own, all of the members of the nefarious group sprinted at Joy, holding on to her with any and all strength they could muster, forcing her from psychic capture. Tried as he did, Girafarig could only sustain the move for so long, physically struggling to reel in Joy, ascending to his hind legs, before dropping from the exhaustion of sustaining the powerful move. All of the trainers ordered a slew of attacks, effectively destroying the counter before the grunts, but not stopping them from filtering out the back with the nurse.
“No time,” Joel began quickly, exhausted and breathing heavily, nerves making themselves evident, “we need to go. It's time to deal with this.”
Cairo looked on at him in question, desperate, now more than ever, for clarity. “Joel,” he managed, exasperated as well, “what is going on? You know what's going on! What's going?”
“No time,” he reiterated, “you'll know soon enough. We all need to go, as quickly as possible. Your Pokémon had better be prepared for this.”
Cairo nodded and drew a Pokeball from his belt, sending it careening to the ground, snapping open in a flood of light the grew to form Gengar, floating and following Cairo as he mounted Girafarig and prepared to depart the Pok?mon Center. The other trainers mounted Pokémon of their own before rushing out the doors of the center, and into the night, dark enough that it was difficult for even Joel, who knew exactly where they were going, to find his way.
Soon enough, though, it was in sight. Moonlight illuminated, from peak to base, a massive building, teeming with men dressed similarly to the criminals from earlier, and crawling with Pokémon of all types. And so Joel began, loudly, overpowering rushing winds as their Pokémon carried on at remarkable speeds, “Charge in. Do not stop. Release any and all Pokémon that you can. We are beating all of them, and destroying this building, because the rest of the world has decided they aren't a threat. Do not relent. We're going to end this and move on with our lives, once and for all.”
Though everyone was, at least, somewhat in the dark, seeming perennially unenlightened, they pressed on.
They tore up a hillside, through exclamations resounding from Galactic members who were now aware of the trainers' presence. Girafarig was first, leaping as Cairo cried, “Jump into a Stomp!” down onto the ground, crushing, with thunderous pressure, a Toxicroak who ululated sharply, falling to the grass, now becoming drenched in worsening rain. “Psybeam!” He cried, letting Girafarig throw a beam back and forth, shielding Cairo as he threw two more PokéBalls to the air, revealing, first, Beautifly, and, second, Marowak. Tiny feet pounding the ground, whipping his bone left, and then right, pounding Golbat and Woobat, sending them falling to the ground, Marowak sent himself sprinting up the back of a criminally-contolled Nidoking, distracted by Chad's Spinda, before leaping to the air atop Beautifly's back and taking aim at Pokémon below with its bone while Beautifly rained down Shadow Balls.
“Enough!” Cyrus cried, revealed in a flash of lightning, now directly adjacent to Cairo, whose back was up against Joel's, looking in opposite directions, as dozens of Pokémon assaulted one another at the commands of their respective trainers. He was brandishing a white orb, and as Joel turned his head over Cairo's shoulder to see the Galactic leader, his heart skipped a proverbial beat.
Joel knew what it was. The orb had taken Cairo's, Jessica's, and Chad's memories days prior. He also knew that, should it be broken, its effects would be irrevocably reversed. What he didn't know was whether or not it was right. Was it right to restore their memories, and bring them back to bitter opinions of the true Chad; to restore broken relationships? Was it right to let them live on in blissful ignorance?
Cairo lunged at Cyrus through the rain, as the Galactic Elite braced himself, and called his Weavile from a battle as it slashed its claws through the flesh of Joel's Snorlax, sending it to the ground, bloodied and unconscious. Cairo progressed, fist poised, before Weavile leapt into him, head first, sending him from his feet.
Cyrus looked on, rain trickling down his brow, peaked downward, as Cairo tried in vain to suppress dogged swipes by the agile, able Pokémon. His wrists tried to restrain Weavile's as its claws crept closer and closer to Cairo's vulnerable face. The only sounds around were dozens of Pokémon cries, from Spinda to Flygon. His eyes were directly beneath, now, vigorous rainfall, inhibiting his ability to so much as see his attacker. Weavile laughed as it began to generate a beam, first dull and then increasingly bright, from the orifice that was its mouth. Cairo struggled, agonizingly trying to throw the Pokémon before complete exhaustion bested his efforts, when, simultaneously an enormous flying Pokémon slammed into the Weavile, sending it careening to the side before turning its head to Cyrus and throwing dozens, then hundreds, of Razor Leaves at him.
As Cairo looked up, brushing rain from his face with newly freed hands, he watched as a sopping Dani Hopper dismounted a triumphant-looking Tropius that had just saved his life.
Cairo sat up, disoriented. Sounds were muted, rain clouded the scene, but he made out he and his trainer friends' Pokémon falling victim to sheer numbers. Sirens blazed on the horizon, officials approaching. Then he saw guns, brandished by desperate Galactics, prepared to do all but surrender their headquarters. He cried out, “Return!” resonating just barely through disoriented, muffled ears. The landscape was spinning. All of his Pokémon but one found their PokéBalls and made their ways assuredly to Cairo's belt. He made his way to weak knees, and limped along, slipping on grass that was more like ice, searching for his Blastoise. He called for his Pok?mon, quietly first, then graduating into screams before Chad appeared from a blur on his periphery, ducking beneath Hyperbeams, Stun Spores, and gunfire, and grabbed his arm violently. And suddenly, in a violent mental spark, he knew exactly who Chad was. Jessica was behind Chad, in tears, and he knew now, too, who she was entirely, and that she knew who Chad was. He recalled all of their adventures, from Sinnoh, through Orre, the Battle Frontier, Hoenn, Kanto, and full-circle back. He remembered Alison. He knew he hated Chad. He knew Jessica was broken. It was all back as he realized Cyrus must have broken the orb attempting to evade Tropius.
Then gunfire rang out so close it nearly deafened him entirely. He didn't like Chad, he hated Joel, and he couldn't find Blastoise. But as Dani came sprinting toward the group, and shoved Cairo in the direction of Chad's Salamence, what he wanted no longer mattered and all of the trainers had either mounted the dragon-type, or her Tropius, sprinting to take off, evading gunfire and Solar Beams. He cried out, violently, phlegm flying from his throat, his Blastoise's name before he, finally, saw it. The Pokémon refused to return as Cairo called out for it. Blastoise stood upright on the ledge they'd just taken off from, intentionally blocking any shot at the airborne trainers which the Galactics may have had, readily allowing itself to be lit up with gunfire. Whatever it had to do to protect its trainer is what it would have done.
Blastoise took the shoots and powered the last of its might into sprinting at the last remaining support beam of the HQ, decimating it under his collapsing, dying mass, and sending the building crumbling to its foundation in thunderous clouds.
Cairo cried out, inconsolably. He repeatedly called for returns until, finally, a lifeless Blastoise's body could no longer resist, and flew, via red beam of light, to Cairo's hands. He writhed about so vigorously, so riotously on Salamence's back, that Chad and Jessica had to restrain him all the way back home to Hoenn.
The air was frighteningly cold, biting them as they soared. In the distance, blue lights filtered the former HQ amidst torrential downpour, gunshots littering the landscape. On the opposite horizon, warm light broke the storm clouds, and illuminated a miniscule Oldale Town. It was beautiful.