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| Pokemon: Storms | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 17 2014, 10:34 PM (738 Views) | |
| Goku Black | Dec 17 2014, 10:34 PM Post #1 |
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Chapter 1: The Haven He lay down upon a cold, wet patch of grass, though it may as well have been a bed fit for a queen. It was soft and enveloping, like the sudden drowse that was pleasantly consuming him. He yawned, covering his mouth with his hand—herhand, pale-skinned and branching out into five separate fingers. This was not his hand. This was not his point of view. Something sky-blue appeared over the pale hand—his own, much simpler, fused hand, surrounded by a soft, multicolored glow. He looked into her eyes, though he knew he didn’t have to do so. He knew that they were closed, that their owner slept. He felt a sense of being asleep, too, yet remained awake. After all, it was only her sleep, which he happened to be experiencing vicariously, not his own. A second-hand sensation. Her last. He recoiled from the sudden, stark vacuum where her lifeforce had been and from the pain around the edges of the part of him that had been erased with the entirety of her being. Disarray exploded in his mind—his cumbersome nervous system had not unsynched in time, and now he couldn’t tell for certain whether he was living or dead, whether he was himself or the lifeless figure lying before him. Overwhelmed by these sensations, he staggered backward until something caught under one of his pods and nearly tripped him. His perception, all of his many senses, abruptly froze. For a moment, reality returned. Then he saw the object on which he had just stepped—something round in shape, red and white in color—and the distinction between him and the one whom he’d just lost was at last entirely swallowed by chaos, for this pokéball was his—but also hers… The pokéball rattled as it was lifted up in his shaking hands. The vestigial joints at his knuckles constricted around it, and with a final, caterwauling scream tearing its way through his throat, his psyche shattered as the pokéball he clutched did likewise… * * * The harsh sound of the pokéball’s implosion blasted him once again out of his brain’s unique perversion of the sleeping mind: two dreams, two perspectives, experienced at the same time. But now, as he reminded himself, they truly were only dreams, no matter how twisted, and nothing more. The pain was not really present, just a shadow of the feeling that was somewhere between remembered and imagined, and it was now confined to those dreams. It no longer besieged his conscious mind, no longer burned and frayed his nerves. Peace had been hard-won, however, through the efforts of many over years in the Haven. Lazily, still yet to fully awaken, his eyes opened and their inner membranes slid back to reveal a final view of his room there. It was a simple, small space, shut away from the outside world and its rude sun, perpetually shadowed in his preferred darkness. He flexed his spine and his limbs and detached his jaws in a massive yawn. There was a series of faint snaps as his joints relocated, followed by another sound: the trilling of the door alarm. As he got to his feet, he saw light blossom gradually in the space around him, a feature of the room for which he was quite grateful. It allowed eyes like his, accustomed to near-total darkness, to more gracefully adjust to the illumination on the other side of the door, which would not open until the light-adjustment process was finished. He would have personally preferred for the lights to not come on at all, and perhaps they wouldn’t have to save for the fact that the Haven’s staff were almost exclusively chansey. Their kind did not possess anything like the night-vision of his own and thus required light to be active and able to perform their sometimes critical work (though he’d often wondered why they didn’t just employ some nocturnal species to tend to the dark-sighted). At any rate, he was able to tolerate light to a degree, for he was used to it. Living with humans (and the hours that those humans kept) for part of his life had caused him to develop diurnal habits. He suspected that he’d probably end up half-blind before his first century and wholly so halfway through his second, but it would be worth it in his opinion. He had loved those years that he’d spent with humans, and outside of the occasional nightmare, he could now recall them with more joy than sorrow. The door slid open, and in stepped a chansey. A nametag clipped to her fur identified her as Teresa, at which Esaax smiled; she was his favorite among the staff at the Haven. She carried a form attached to a clipboard; beaming proudly, she turned it around so that the paper faced him Wobbuffet, male, the paper read in unown-script. Designation: Esaax Evergray. He’d been denying that name and the history that came with it ever since his new life among the humans had begun, but now, in his “second new life”, he embraced it once more. After all, once one gets over a thing like a spontaneous extinction, a little adolescent heartbreak is nothing… He shook his head clear of such thoughts, determined to stay in the present, and returned his attention to the form. His eyes scanned its surface quickly, skimming over several more lines of personal data until he found he was looking for: 4/15/14… “Well, this is it!” Teresa said cheerfully, matching Esaax’s thoughts at the moment almost word-for-word. Today, he would leave. Today, at last, he could. “Are you ready for your final tests?” the chansey asked. “Yes, ma’am,” Esaax answered, careful as always to prevent the automatic door from closing on his tail as he followed the chansey out of the room. “Now, you do realize this means you’ll have to go see Adn just one last time.” “I’m not scared of Adn,” the wobbuffet said, and for the most part he wasn’t. Nonetheless, his tone did suggest some sort of dread. “Never said you were, but still, I know his method isn’t the most comfortable…” “…But it’s what it takes and you’re gonna do it anyway, so…” Esaax shrugged in mock surrender. “Right. Anyway,” Teresa said as she led Esaax down the hall, “we’ll be saving him for last, which is fine since we have other things to take care of anyway. We’ll just get you in when he’s finished; he’s with another patient at the moment.” “Is he, now.” “Yes, a relicanth.” “Ouch.” “Oh yes, he’s been at it for three days. But he is almost done with him; I made sure.” Another door opened to admit the two of them. Therein were all the necessary resources for a basic physical exam, including a living resource, a pokémon who served as Teresa’s assistant—or, more precisely, as her hands. Specifically, this was a mr. mime by the name of Madeline. Her large and agile hands were well-suited for tools and equipment made for the very similar hands of humans, the sort of things for which the tiny, nearly-featureless paws of a chansey tended to be inadequate. “Why, look at you!” Madeline said. “We don’t really need to look him over, do we, Terry? He’s the very incarnation of health right here, I’d say. She came up to stand before him and studied him with an eyebrow raised and a finger resting on her lips in a way that one might gaze at a work of art. Then she smiled and said, “Still working out, I see. Bet we’ll fill this place twice over after you get out with all the women you’ll drive crazy, you handsome blue devil.” Flirting and teasing from Madeline—that wasn’t new. She hadn’t given him a break in that department even once since soon after she’d first met him. Esaax sincerely hoped that she was just joking around, but if she wasn’t… Esaax tried very, very hard not to think about that possibility. At any rate, her observation was correct—or the part about him working out was, anyway. Esaax had indeed been on a devout physical training regimen for quite some time now. Though Madeline liked to make him out to be some kind of beefcake, such was not the case at all. The effects of his training, though visible, were not dramatic. Esaax was no bodybuilder; the point of his training was simply to help him harness and become aware of strength that he already possessed. The idea to start him on such a program had originally arisen from the pokéball incident—that had actually happened, not just in his dreams. As was common among his kind, Esaax hadn’t known the full magnitude of his own physical strength on account of not really being able to bring it to bear against another living creature; as such, it had been suggested to Esaax that it might do him good to become conscious of his “idle power” lest anything else fall victim to it. He’d agreed to this instantly. All his life, he’d broken things by accident; the chance to learn how to leave his klutzy side in the past was irresistible to him. Soon after he’d begun this training, he’d discovered that the exercise also had the benefit of keeping his mind as well as his body busy and strong and had thus come to appreciate it all the more. While he no longer needed it in the therapeutic sense, he still enjoyed it as a hobby. He’d often wondered where he might train once he was released and had ultimately decided on the old human gym down the street, which fighting-types frequented. He imagined that if he did go there, some machamp or maybe a hitmon of some kind would likely pick a fight with him—he figured that they’d be unable to resist the allure of a psychic that they could whale on without fear of eating psybeam. One or another of them would just let loose with the mega punches and seismic tosses, only to have those attacks thrown right back in their face, doubled in power… The thought of such a thing was just too funny to Esaax. He might never have stopped laughing if his internal comedy weren’t interrupted then by something cold attaching itself to his chest. He looked at the stethoscope for a moment, and then his gaze traveled up to meet that of the mr. mime who’d put it there. “Aw, come on, Teresa. That’s just lazy,” Esaax said, though he did so lightheartedly. “You’ve never had to have her do this part before.” “She insisted,” said the chansey. Madeline just stood there with a smile that suggested that she had far more on her mind than anything Esaax’s heart was doing. “In fact,” Teresa went on, “Madeline asked if she could handle the entire examination herself. And I told her she could.” Esaax could do nothing but groan. * * * Minutes later, Esaax left the room alongside Teresa, who was failing miserably to stifle her laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said between giggles, half-breathless and on the verge of tears, “but you should have seen your face!” Esaax just scowled, his face flushed in the deep blue shade of his humiliation. She just wanted to give you something to remember her by, that’s all,” Teresa said. “How very thoughtful of her.” Esaax’s voice hinted at a desire to vomit. “So now what?” “Well, you could have your retaliatory empathy test now, or would you rather have something to eat first?” “Heh. That is such a ridiculous question.” “I know,” Teresa said with a chuckle. The two stopped in their tracks as another chansey stepped into their path from around the corner. “He’s here,” the newcomer said. “Oh good,” Teresa responded. “Tell him to wait in the cafeteria, okay?” She turned to Esaax. “I forgot to tell you, Esaax. A friend of yours has come to pick you up. You can chat with him over breakfast.” “A friend? Who?” Esaax asked. “Go and find out for yourself! I’m going to check up on Adn again and see if he’s anywhere near ready. See you later!” Esaax watched Teresa waddle off, then made his way to the cafeteria, feeling awfully puzzled for someone who was supposed to have achieved clarity at last. |
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| Goku Black | Dec 17 2014, 10:36 PM Post #2 |
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Chapter 2: Just A Little Favor With a large amount of food in tow, Esaax scanned the cafeteria for the mystery visitor but found no sign of him. So he opted to stop at a table, set his tray down, and let this “friend” come to him. It wasn’t long before his eyes picked out an arbok who was just making his entrance. The arbok spotted Esaax in the same instant and rushed to greet him without hesitation, failing to notice both the skiploom whom he ran over in the process and the sound of her cursing him out in her squeaky voice immediately afterward. “Syr? What in the world are you doing way out here?” Esaax rose and gave his old friend a massive hug as the arbok came to a stop beside the table. A bowl of oatmeal seemed to fall out of thin air, spilling all over Syr’s chest. Esaax had been balancing it on his head and had forgotten about it. “Oops…” “That’s okay,” Syr said through gritted teeth, shaking off the hot oatmeal (which thankfully didn’t land on anyone else). “Oh man, I haven’t seen you in years,” Esaax said before taking his seat once more and then devouring an entire watmel berry in one bite. “Thought I’d never see you again—what are you even doing all the way out here?” he asked again. “I live here now,” the arbok replied. “I found a pretty decent place. In fact, you can stay there for a while if you’d like. Would you?” “Don’t really have anywhere else to go, so yeah, sure. Hey, I’ll even move in with you. Wouldn’t want you to be all alone, after all…” “But I’m not alone. I adopted a son.” Esaax hadn’t seen that one coming. He nearly choked on a brownie. “Okay… so I’m gonna be sharing a house with a giant, venomous serpent and his bitey little snakeling?” he said jokingly, an eyebrow raised and a smirk on his face. Syr gave him an odd look. “He’s not a snakeling, he’s a snorunt. His name is Jeneth, but we just call him Jen. And yes, he knows bite, but he doesn’t just randomly use that on people.” “Snorunt? This is the wrong climate for those.” “Tell his kind that. Supposedly, a bunch of glalie decided to settle in these parts, though I can’t imagine why they would’ve wanted to, and most of the people I know say that they’ve seen at least one around. I still haven’t, and I hope I never do.” He shuddered. “Brrr. I get the creeps just thinking about them…” “Huh. So where is this Jen?” “Waiting in the car.” “You left a baby outside in a car?” “He’s not a baby, he’s a young man,” Syr said. “Whatever. You still shouldn’t have left an ice-type out there under the sun.” “He’s in the shade, Esaax. It’s his car; he drives it, and he gets to decide where to park it.” A snorunt driving a car. No, nothing weird about that image… Esaax decided to turn away from the topic of Jen and back to his gluttony. “You still haven’t explained how someone your size could possibly need to eat a third of his own weight every day,” Syr said teasingly. “You still haven’t explained how someone your size can only need to eat once a month,” Esaax retorted. “But who cares? What I really wanna know about is—” Esaax saw Teresa heading their way. “Whoops, looks like we’ll have to talk about it later.” He shoved the remainder of his breakfast down his throat at once and waved at the chansey. “What’s going on?” Syr asked. “Retaliatory empathy test. It’s just this exercise to make sure that some of my more… uh, complicated systems are working all right. It’s kind of neat—wanna watch?” “You can do more than just watch,” said a voice from beside Syr. Syr had not bothered to look and see whom Esaax had waved at; as such, Teresa’s unexpected voice nearly scared him right out of his skin. “Waaugh!” he shouted. “Daria could seriously use a break,” Teresa told Esaax, unfazed by the arbok’s outburst. “You could participate in her place,” she then added to Syr. Syr gained a somewhat worried expression, still unsure of just what the chansey and wobbuffet were talking about, let alone if it was anything of which he should want to have any part. “Please?” Esaax pleaded in his cheesiest mock-begging tone. “It’ll be fun, I promise. Please?” Syr sighed. “Well…” * * * Next thing Syr knew, they’d brought him into a very large and entirely empty room. It didn’t look at all equipped for any sort of medical testing. “I still don’t get it,” he admitted to Teresa. “What is it that we’re going to be doing here, exactly?” “We need to make sure his retaliatory abilities are in good shape. To do this, they must be triggered. That’s where you’ll come in,” the chansey said. Syr was now almost certain that he knew what was being asked of him and strongly hoped that he was wrong. Reluctantly, he reached for confirmation. “Esaax, what do I have to do to trigger these… abilities?” “Attack me.” Syr had dearly wished to be wrong about that… “Oh no, no, no, no, no. No. Come on, you honestly can’t expect me to… I mean, seriously…” The arbok began looking frantically about for an escape route. He nearly tied himself into a knot doing so. “Please, don’t make me do this. Please!” Snapping Syr out of it with a good pound to his head, Teresa lowered her voice to a very serious tone for his “ears” only. “It will smart, yes. But it’s crucial that we do this. It’s to make sure his tail’s all right. He’s sustained some kind of trauma to it before, and very serious complications can arise from a tail injury in his species—and has once before, in his case. We do not want him going into crisis again—do you know what that is?” Syr shook his head. “Autoempathic crisis is a vicious cycle caused by damage to a wobbuffet’s tail—or more specifically, to the pseudobrain in the tail, which is the source of their ability to use retaliatory attacks,” Teresa began to explain. “In crisis, the pseudobrain fails to distinguish pain with an internal cause from pain caused by an attacking enemy. It retaliates, involuntarily, by inflicting twice the pain on its source as usual—but with the source being the wobbuffet itself, it only creates a new, greater pain that it then must also counter. The cycle continues repeating, doubling the pain again and again, until the agony reaches a level that the wobbuffet’s body just can’t bear any longer. “I was there when he suffered his last crisis—it was awful. The convulsions, the screaming… God, how he screamed…” she whispered, sounding lost in the memory for a moment. “He was almost too far gone by the time we managed to stabilize him, and the dosage of painkillers it took to break the cycle nearly killed him in and of itself.” “My God…” Syr said almost voicelessly, both amazed and alarmed. “You know… just for the record, I think the ‘trauma’ to his tail you mentioned was someone stepping on it,” he said, not naming that someone out of respect for the dearly departed. “On more than one occasion, actually.” “Yikes,” Teresa said, grimacing. “Well, anyway… the damage to his retaliatory empathy centers can never be fully repaired. He’ll never be entirely out of the woods. We may be forced to… well, to remove his poor tail if it gets out of hand again. So hopefully you see why it’s important that we be made aware of any continuing problems he might have—we need to be able to take care of them before they get a chance to blow up in his face again. Will you help us?” “Of course,” Syr said. “Still, I don’t really want to hurt him…” “Just one acid and one bite,” Teresa said. “One special attack and one physical attack so that we can gauge both responses.” “You’re not testing his destiny bond?” “Luckily for you, no.” “Okay… okay, I can do that.” Syr turned toward Esaax and slithered somewhat closer to him, still nervous but knowing that he had to go through with this for Esaax’s sake. He called upon his acid technique, careful as he did so to keep the corrosive fluid relatively weak so as not to hurt his friend—and by extension, himself—more than was necessary. The acid swiftly filled his mouth, and he spat it in a forceful spray toward Esaax. Esaax was ready. His tail rose, its oculons collecting a vast spectrum of data about his opponent and any incoming attacks. Focusing hard, he opened the pathways to his retaliatory empathy centers. Doing this so consciously and deliberately was difficult for any wobbuffet, but years of practice had finally allowed him to master this ability. A bright pink aura flared around him as the acid hit its mark and seared the skin of his left arm, sending an amplified echo of the pain that the poison-type attack had caused back unto the arbok. Syr shouted in pain and recoiled as he suffered the effects of Esaax’s mirror coat, surprised by its force—it seemed that he hadn’t succeeded in weakening his acid attack quite as much as he’d intended. “Sorry…” he said, at which Esaax made a dismissive gesture despite the pain that was visible in his expression. “Very good,” Teresa said to Esaax. “Now this time, try to suppress it. Hit him a little harder, Syr,” she added, earning a rather uneasy look from the arbok. This time, Esaax braced himself. His efforts to develop his abilities had enhanced them to a point where it took very little to set them off. As he took Syr’s second acid attack in the other arm, he had to fight hard to suppress his body’s urge to retaliate. Luckily for Syr, Esaax succeeded. “Excellent! Syr, change attacks,” Teresa commanded. Syr lunged forward in a bite attack, his fangs taking on the violet-black glow of dark-type energy as they connected with Esaax’s side—he made a very conscious effort not to let his teeth sink in too deeply, however, still intent on causing both Esaax and himself as little pain as possible. An orange flash heralded what was nonetheless a very strong counter attack dealt in response, and the arbok was sent reeling back with a scream. “What the…” Syr’s voice faltered as he struggled somewhat to pick himself back up off of the ground, panting slightly. “What was that all about?” he demanded once he caught his breath, looking quite shaken. “You just hit a psychic pokémon with a dark attack. Figure it out,” Teresa replied. “Now bite him again.” Syr made a sound very much like that of a scared baby growlithe, with the puppy eyes to match. “He’ll hold that back this time. You ought to be fine,” Teresa assured him. Trembling, Syr approached the wobbuffet again, stopped in front of him, and gave one of his forearms a very weak little nibble, with a negligible amount of dark energy accompanying the attack. “You’ll have to do better than that,” Esaax said. Syr bit him harder—barely harder. “Come on, that one didn’t count, either!” “Do it, Syr,” Teresa said rather sternly. “I don’t want to!” Syr cried. "Do it!” Teresa ordered. “Okay, okay!” In his haste, Syr’s jaws snapped shut on their target so hard that both the sound of the strike itself and the cry of pain that the bite attack elicited from Esaax echoed in the room for several seconds. The arbok quickly let go of Esaax and cringed, but there was no orange flash and no painful retaliation. There was, however, an irregular semicircle of deep punctures around Esaax’s chest and left shoulder. The wobbuffet panted as he stared, quite astonished, at the wounds. Syr stared at the damage as well, looking equally surprised and fairly apologetic. Teresa managed to smile proudly at Esaax. “Congratulations,” she said. “If your tail can resist that, it can probably resist anything.” A frown swiftly found its place on her face once more as she watched the rivulets of cobalt-colored blood now trickling from Esaax’s wounds. “Looks like the prize you’ve just won for passing your test is a healthy dose of hyper potion…” |
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| Goku Black | Dec 17 2014, 10:37 PM Post #3 |
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Chapter 3: In Review Esaax’s wounds were cleaned and repaired, leaving only a faint series of scars where the stronger of Syr’s bites had connected and nothing at all of his lesser injuries. Just as his healing was completed, he was given the message that Adn was ready for him. Esaax told Syr to find someplace comfortable to wait. Then, taking a deep, steadying breath, he stepped into Adn’s office of his own accord where once he would have had to be pushed. Behind that door stood a blue-haired gardevoir by the name of Adn, who was the Haven’s psychic regression therapist. His method was to make patients relive various moments in their pasts and gauge their present states of mind by their conscious and subconscious emotional reactions to their induced recollections. Despite the marathon session that he was reported to have just endured, he still looked as far from exhaustion as one could possibly be. As always, not a word was spoken and no signal was made as Adn and his patient took their places. The scene of the office blurred and warped, then was swiftly replaced by very different surroundings. Once again, Esaax found himself thrust into a perfectly vivid replica of a scene from his memory. Now standing in this bygone time and place like a tourist in his own past, his regression began… * * * Esaax was born fifty-four years ago to the Evergray clan of the caves south of Blackthorn. His childhood was quiet and uneventful; not much changed from night to night until Esaax reached his mid-thirties. It was there and then, at the dawn of his adult life, that one evening brought something new—something that would alter the course of his life forever. From faraway Hoenn, a nomadic branch of a clan called the Fade somehow journeyed across the sea and into Evergray territory. The foreigners were readily welcomed and allowed to stay as honorary members of the community while in the area. Among the visitors was a female by the name of Ntairow. She and Esaax began spending time together and soon bonded, first as friends and then on other, more intimate levels. Then, only a few months after arriving, the Fade moved on. Though Ntairow demanded to stay, and Esaax offered up his own pleas for her to remain with the Evergray clan, the elders of the Fade would not allow it. Ntairow was forced to depart with the rest of her clan, held and carried away in the arms of her people, leaving Esaax behind. Esaax refused to accept this. He left the caves and tried to follow the Fade through the mountains, but he failed to catch up with them. The nomads were relatively swift, hardy, and used to traveling, whereas Esaax was out of shape. Thus it was that he collapsed there on the mountain trail under his very first sunrise. He lay there for hours, breathless, heartsick, hungry, sunburned, and alone. Then some very strange creatures came up the mountain trail and discovered him. They were humans, and they had come in search of unusual and uncommon pokémon, which were to be given away as prizes at the Goldenrod Game Corner. Drained of life as he was, Esaax could do nothing to resist the red beam that pulled him into a very strange state of unbeing. Week after week went by as Esaax remained in the confining void of what the humans called a “pokéball”. He was let out only to be fed, and the portions given to him were furthermore much too small and too infrequent for his liking. As time passed, he lost all hope of ever finding Ntairow again. When he learned that being the first and only wobbuffet acquired thus far by the Game Corner meant that he had a price in game tokens that virtually no one would be able to afford, he also lost all hope of ever escaping the empty routine into which his life had fallen. Then one day, quite literally against the odds, he was afforded. Esaax’s acquisitor was a man from Palmpona, who brought the wobbuffet home as a birthday present for his son, Benny. Now in the hands of very different humans, Esaax lived a very different life. Benny liked his new pokémon a great deal, and a strong friendship between the two was quick in forming. Wherever the human boy went, Esaax was taken along with him, and Esaax was never made to go into the pokéball once he’d made it clear how much he disliked it. Esaax lived this way for three years, and he loved it. He found himself wanting things to remain just as they were forever. But in Palmpona, it was inevitable for every pokémon to ultimately become fodder for the town’s trading obsession. Though Esaax didn’t understand Benny’s desire to trade him, he agreed to respect the young human’s wishes and allow himself to be put up for trade out of gratitude for the kindness that Benny had shown him. As it so happened, the year in which Esaax was involved in the trade expo was the first year in its history in which things would go awry. Thus it was that he accidentally became a member of Team Rocket. His partners consisted of two humans and four pokémon, one of the latter of which was able to speak the humans’ language. Though the Team Rocket way of existence seemed to be a cursed one, Esaax also sometimes found it quite amusing in a strange way—fun, even. Esaax’s new owner, Jessie, didn’t really understand much of anything about him, though—not his language, his needs, or his proper use in battle. She also failed to understand his feelings about being kept in a pokéball, but by that time, Esaax had learned how to break out of a pokéball, much to her vexation. It was while Esaax was in her possession that the problems with his tail first began to rear their heads. One day found him going into autoempathic crisis and very nearly dying from it. Nearly losing him had the effect of awakening a much greater appreciation for him in Jessie, and she soon became the best human friend that he’d ever had. Unfortunately, not long after they had finally connected, the world changed for pokémon—and ended for humans. A plague of fatal sleep mysteriously struck the entire human population all over the globe, bringing extinction to the species—in just a matter of hours. With Jessie lost in death and something of himself gone along with her, Esaax fled the scene of her demise to wander for days in shock. Sometime later, once his spirit had begun to mend itself, he began seeking old familiarities and acquaintances to use as a foundation on which to rebuild his life. In particular, he sought after his pokémon partners from Team Rocket. However, his quest yielded six no-shows, one rejection, and one successful reunion. That reunion was very promising in the beginning, but ultimately led to tragedy. That was the last straw—Esaax’s stability was dealt the killing blow. Once again, he tried to run from his sorrow. Eventually, he found himself in the city of Convergence. It was a place that had been the world’s first fully-integrated community, in which pokémon and humans had lived, worked, and learned as equals. Following the Extinction, many pokémon there continued to live the lifestyles that the humans had taught them, perhaps as an act of remembrance of the lost species. But Esaax had no more luck in finding serenity there than he’d had in any of the other places in which he’d searched. He fell into a spiral of sickness and despair that finally culminated with him trying to provoke a houndoom into killing him. She instead took pity on Esaax, delivering him to the Haven and thus to salvation… * * * With a gentle but nonetheless abrupt severing of mental connections, the session ended. It was still hard for Esaax to believe that over half of a century could be compressed into less than five minutes. As far as he was concerned, though, how it was possible was not important. It was what it determined that mattered. Usually, Adn would dismiss Esaax with a simple, psychic signal, not saying a single word. This time, however, much to Esaax’s surprise, Adn spoke to him for the very first time. “I see that the sorrows of your history can still evoke pain in you, Esaax,” the gardevoir said. Esaax pondered that for a moment. Then he wilted. “You mean I failed the test?” Even more unexpected than Adn’s speaking up was Adn’s suddenly bursting into laughter. “No, no!” he said. “You’ve passed! If you had not felt hurt by the memories of sadness in your life, then you would have failed. You ache where it is appropriate, and you rejoice where that is appropriate. For you, that is healthy. Numbness is not.” “…So I can go, then?” “Yes, you certainly may,” the gardevoir said, smiling proudly. “Farewell, and good luck to you!” * * * The time to return to the world at large had finally come. As Esaax stood before the exit alongside Syr, he bade farewell to the people who had taken such good care of him. Teresa made him smile, Madeline made him feel slightly ill, and a skiploom whom he didn’t even know just baffled him by doing something very rude with her tiny arms (which Esaax didn’t realize was not intended for him). Adn was not present, apparently already engrossed in another session, but he sent his kind regards with Teresa. On the verge of tears, yet beaming like the sun, Esaax thanked everyone for their support and waved one last goodbye. Then he passed through the doors as they opened, emerging into the world for what felt like the first time in eons. |
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| Goku Black | Jul 22 2015, 02:01 AM Post #4 |
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Forgot to post more ;p Chapter 4: The Messenger The nearest place to park in the shade was five blocks away from the Haven—five blocks to walk under the harsh midday sun, under which Esaax had not been for years. He certainly wasn’t enjoying it, and he continued to wonder how in the world a snorunt could tolerate it at all, shade or no shade. He still halfway expected to find a little gray-and-yellow corpse sitting behind the wheel—or perhaps just a puddle… Breaking away from that train of thought and the rather morbid turn that it had decided to take, Esaax thought of something that restored some of his sun-drained spirits. “You know what, Syr? I think I’d really like to drive. You just tell me where to go, and I’ll go there. Think Jan’ll let me?” “It’s ‘Jen’, Esaax, not ‘Jon’,” Syr corrected. “I said ‘Jan’.” “Well, whatever you said, it was wrong. And no, you can’t drive this car.” “You know I know perfectly well how to drive a car, Syr,” Esaax said a bit crossly. “Not this car. Besides which, I haven’t forgotten your record with motor vehicles. Every time you’d try to drive something, anything, you’d break it or wreck it, or else you’d just—” “But they fixed that at the Haven,” Esaax interrupted. “They made me stronger so that I could be more careful and less likely to break things.” The arbok at his side raised an eyebrow at him. “Doesn’t it seem like more strength should make someone less careful and more likely to break things?” “I’m not gonna wreck it! Just let me drive the stupid thing!” “I’ll only say this one more time. Listen very carefully. You can’t drive this car,” Syr said. Esaax was about to argue some more, but then he actually saw the car—a copper convertible—for himself and knew at first sight that Syr was absolutely right about it. The wobbuffet couldn’t drive it, no matter how much he wanted to or how carefully he thought he could do so. The driver’s seat had been modified, reshaped expressly for small species to put everything within their reach. The space was so small and everything in it crammed so closely together that it would have been awkward to the point of impossibility for someone Esaax’s size to occupy and use. And there was indeed a snorunt behind the wheel. Despite Esaax’s concerns, the ice-type was very much alive and well. Jen scrutinized Esaax through beady little eyes, nibbling every few seconds at a tropical snow cone as he stared. “That’s him?” he asked. “Yes, that’s Esaax… Where’d you get that snow cone?” Syr asked. “An ice cream truck went by not long ago,” Jen answered, continuing to stare at Esaax. Then he smiled at the wobbuffet with teeth that looked more than capable of taking off an arm. “I’m very delighted to meet you, Esaax. You can ride up front with me—if you want.” Esaax shivered, finding that smile more than a little unnerving. Nonetheless, he saw that he didn’t really have much choice with regards to the seating arrangements since Syr was really too big to ride anywhere but in the back, and so Esaax took his place next to the snorunt, albeit reluctantly. The arbok entered the vehicle after him, coiling loosely across the back seats. With everyone on board, they were on their way. “So tell me,” Esaax said to Jen shortly after they’d headed off, chatting more out of nervousness than actual interest, “how do you plan to drive this thing once you evolve and don’t have hands anymore?” “He’s not evolving,” Syr said. “Now, that’s not fair,” said Esaax. “You can’t forbid him to evolve just because you’re scared of—” “No, it’s all right,” said Jen. “I don’t want to become a glalie. If he said ‘do it’, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it for anyone.” “Huh. I always thought it’d be kind of neat to evolve,” said Esaax. “You never have?” Jen asked. “Well, yeah, I have, before I was born. But that doesn’t really count.” “Huh… Anyway, it isn’t ‘kind of neat’—it’s major. It isn’t just your shape that changes—your whole life changes. Especially when it comes to changing into a glalie…” Jen gave a small shudder and went dead silent, apparently not wanting to proceed any further with that topic. Luckily, they arrived at their destination just then, preventing things from getting any more awkward. The three of them got out of the car, and Jen unlocked the front door. Esaax, Syr, and Jen entered the house, and a place quite far from Esaax’s expectations opened up before him. This had once been a home for humans, and outwardly it appeared as though it still were one. But on the inside, only a scattered few furnishings, such as a television and a rather large, gray sofa, still spoke of its former residents. In the place of human décor, the home had largely taken on a more natural appearance, fashioned into a curious amalgam of a woodland burrow and a cave. Esaax tossed himself onto the sofa like a bean bag and stared up at the ceiling and the artificial stalactites that hung there; he had to shoo away an sudden, unbidden mental image of one of them breaking off and falling on him. “How long did it take to put all this together?” he asked, indicating his surroundings with a wave of his hand. “Couple of months,” Syr answered. “It was started right after I got Jen. We actually had a pretty small team working together on it; I’m surprised the work went by so fast.” “I think it’s cool,” Esaax said. “You guys did a good job.” “Nomel cookie?” Esaax looked over to his right from whence that voice had just sounded and found Jen offering him some dainty-looking little cookies on a tray. There was that disturbing smile again—was that a smile? Man, that kid’s creepy, Esaax thought. He took two of the cookies and thanked Jen so as not to risk offending the snorunt’s feelings—he didn’t want to find out the hard way just what those teeth could do. Esaax popped a couple of the cookies into his mouth, but a weird twinge prickling across the back of his mind in the next moment distracted him from their flavor at once. Someone—and something—was coming his way. He was given no time at all to figure out how or why he knew this, for just as soon as the notion had hit him, that someone was knocking at the door. “I’ll get it,” Syr said as he went to answer the door. He opened it and found a xatu standing on the other side. “Misters Esaax Evergray and Syr. Someone wishes to speak with you,” the xatu said. “How did you find us?” asked Esaax as he rose to join Syr. “Who wants to speak with us?” demanded Syr. “I foresaw myself arriving at this destination prior to leaving,” the xatu said in response to the first question. To the latter, “You are summoned by one Faurur ursh Nanku.” Both Esaax’s and Syr’s eyes widened dramatically at this. Syr’s mouth fell slightly open, but he remained silent. “I shall wait for you outside until you are ready to leave.” Without even touching it, the xatu closed the door on the bewildered recipients of his message. Esaax and Syr looked at each other for a few moments, neither saying a word. Finally, “Jen?” Syr spoke up, turning toward where Jen still stood with his cookie tray. “Esaax and I need to have a talk in private,” the arbok said. Jen nodded in acquiescence. Syr led Esaax into the bathroom and shut the door. Esaax noticed that unlike the other parts of the house that he’d seen, the bathroom was almost completely unchanged from the way that humans had intended it to be. All the fixtures were still intact—including the toilet. Unbidden curiosities made it to the surface of his mind, even in spite of the much heavier thoughts already there. Fortunately, Syr brought Esaax back into focus before he couldn’t help asking as well as wondering. “I’m not so sure about this,” the arbok said. “You’re the psychic. Tell me: can we really be so sure about this guy?” “I’m psychic, but I’m no mind-reader. Still, I’m pretty sure he’s for real. I got this… this feeling about him just before he showed up. I knew he was coming, and that his arrival was very important somehow.” “A premonition?” “I guess so. I can still feel the weight of that, plus… something else. I’ve just got this instinct about him, and it just feels really, really big.” He shrugged. “It’s enough for me to vouch for him, anyway.” The wobbuffet noticed then that he was pacing and realized that he’d been doing so ever since he’d entered the bathroom. He’d overestimated his nerves yet again. He managed to get his legs to stop moving, but his tail kept on anxiously switching back and forth. Though he tried, he could not calm it. Sighing in surrender to his unrest, Esaax said, “You know, that’s actually what I wanted to discuss with you back at the Haven—not the xatu, obviously. I mean, you know, what all you two did after you left T—” He felt his voice catch in his throat. “What you guys did after you left us, and how Faurur’s been lately…” “I actually haven’t talked with him in a long time,” Syr said, sounding a bit troubled. “Her,” Esaax corrected. “…What?” “You really haven’t seen Faurur in a long time…” Esaax remarked. “What’s been keeping you guys out of touch? I always thought you were like the ultimate best friends and all…” “Hey, it wasn’t like it was my fault!” Syr blurted out. The outburst surprised even him. He took a moment to stop and breathe. “Sorry… sorry, it’s not like it was really Faurur’s fault, either. Something happened—something weird. It happened almost right after Faurur and I parted ways with you. These lights that were like nothing I’d ever seen before appeared and moved across the sky one night. The next day, the koffing were all saying that their ‘gods’ had arrived. They demanded that my people swear loyalty to these gods, too. “We had no clue what they were talking about, and we weren’t about to just give ourselves and our faith to total strangers. So the koffing drove us all away—you wouldn’t believe how strong they can be in a group. I never did find out if Faurur was on their side… Anyway, since you obviously have seen him—her—more recently than I have, tell me: when you were with her then, how was she?” “Well, first of all,” Esaax tended first to the unspoken question that he suspected that Syr was harboring, “they’re able to do that by just deciding to do that. Change sexes, I mean. How they’re able to do that, I don’t know at all, but they are. Anyway, the reason Faurur did was because the koffing had chosen her to be their new colony leader, but the thing is, they have this law that the colony leader always has to be female. She told me that was why she made the change.” Esaax hesitated then. He didn’t really want to go on and tell of what had happened between himself and Faurur, for the memory pained him to no small degree. But at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling like he owed it to Syr given that the arbok and weezing had known each other and had been close friends long before he’d come into the picture. As Esaax began to tell his story, his voice underwent a marked transformation. His words were strained; it was all too clear that he was forcing them out. “After the Extinction,” Esaax began, “I tried to get back together with some of the old crew. No luck finding anybody other than Basath, but… well, she hates me… You never got to meet her, though, did you?” “No, I didn’t,” Syr confirmed. A strange, distinctly sour look took over Esaax’s features. “Well, consider yourself lucky,” he said, and his tone told that he was not at all interested in continuing any further on that subject. “Eventually, I managed to find Faurur,” he then said. “Now, as for these ‘gods’ you were talking about, she made no mention of any such thing. And when I asked her where you were, the answer she gave me was really ambiguous. She told me that you and the ekans just decided to go off on your own somewhere, and that you gave no explanation as to why. “What she said didn’t seem suspicious to me at the time. I don’t remember that anything about the situation did. But I’m not surprised that I missed the signs. I was… kind of in another mind at the time… “Anyway…” Esaax’s voice began to tremble and crack. “…Anyway, something went wrong—nothing to do with gods or sky-lights or any such crap. Faurur wanted to know, of course, whatever had become of her poor, precious ‘Master’. She actually, honestly didn’t know; that’s how far-removed her life had become. I had to break that news to her. I had to deliver that message—it was awful. “You can just imagine her reaction, right?” But before Syr could answer, “Wrong. You have no idea. I mean, the level of adoration there… it’s much greater than we ever thought. I told her, and it was like I’d just ripped her right open…” Esaax, having begun to pace again as he spoke, came to a stop once more. But this time, rather than standing, he sank, sliding down the wall until he was slouched against it on the floor with his spine bent at almost a right angle. “It was awful,” he repeated. “I just felt like a monster for making her feel that way. I swore that, no matter what, I would do anything to help her. I gave her that pain, so I had to be the one to take it away. I had to be there for her so she could recover.” His voice changed yet again; it was now barely more than an exhalation. “We became very, very close…” Syr had had his head lowered in the somberness that his friend was casting over the room. He looked back up at Esaax then and found the wobbuffet staring at nothing. “We became very close,” Esaax continued, “and then… and then we…” He swallowed very hard. “We had an egg.” For a moment, Syr was too surprised to say anything. When he found his voice and his wits again, he asked, “So… was it a boy, or a girl?” Esaax smiled very faintly. “It was a girl,” the wobbuffet answered. “A koffing, of course, but a little more blue than purple because of me. When she hatched, she was so tiny that I could hold her in one hand…” His smile widened, but became very shaky. “She was named Drasigon, and I really liked that name. Faurur told me that it means ‘never ignored’, and I agreed on it instantly.” Startlingly, his gaze locked back into focus in a single moment. With a stare like a homing missile straight into Syr’s eyes, Esaax said, “Guess how long she lasted.” “What?” “Come on, guess.” What kind of a thing is that to say? Syr wondered. “…How long?” he finally asked. There was no response. “How long?” Syr asked again, more gingerly this time. “Four days,” Esaax answered abruptly, harshly. “Four days. That’s all. Four days, and then she just burst into flames, just like that. And then she was gone, Syr, like some evil magic hit her. For no reason!” Esaax was shaking so hard at this point that it looked like he could just fall apart. His eyes closed, overflowing with tears. As Syr stared at him in shock and sorrow, he thought that he saw something that disconcerted him even further: for just a second, there seemed to be a faint, multicolored aura around Esaax. “And Faurur was there when it happened, too,” Esaax went on. “We were just frozen there for a little while. I looked her right in the eyes, and… and I just didn’t know what to do, so I… so I just ran…” Silently weeping, Syr gathered up the wobbuffet in his coils and embraced him tightly as if trying to hold him together. Though Syr certainly wanted to reunite with Faurur, he wasn’t sure it was such a good idea for Esaax to revisit that aspect of his past face-to-face (or faces, as it were), regardless of whether or not the wobbuffet wished to do so. In fact, Syr began to wonder if maybe the only place Esaax ought to be going was right back to the Haven… Before he could say anything to that effect, however, Esaax took a very deep breath, stood once more, and then removed himself from the arbok’s coils with total ease. “I have to go back to her,” the wobbuffet said. “Right now.” “Are… are you sure that’s such a good idea?” Syr asked quietly. “She needs us,” Esaax responded, wiping the tears from his face as well as he could. “Both of us. She wouldn’t have called for us both if she didn’t. If something happened to her because I couldn’t be there for her…” He swallowed hard again. “…I don’t think I could forgive myself, Syr.” Syr frowned at Esaax for a moment, still unsure about the situation. Esaax lowered his gaze, then turned toward the door. Sighing, Syr followed him out of the room and back to where the xatu was waiting, hoping that this was indeed the safer course of action for his friend to take. |
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| + Pyrus | Jul 22 2015, 04:06 AM Post #5 |
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How the hell has nobody commented on this yet? I haven't read much of it, but the writing is pretty good. You seem to have a solid grasp of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. |
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