บท 81: 1-9
Awareness came to me slowly over the years. I remember reading about people reincarnating and remembering the time they spent in their mother's womb, their own birth, every excruciating little detail of the life of a baby that I assume most everyone else doesn't remember. I didn't remember all of that, thank fuck. No, my first memory was of cuddling with my new mother as she read me a bedtime story. Things built up from there, with new memories being forged and big chunks of old memories from my past life slotting in and forming the person I used to be around the core of the new person I was growing up to be. My past life hadn't been a particularly long life, nor one particularly well acquainted with happiness and other positive things, but I think if nothing else it helped me better appreciate the new life I'd been born into.
On balance, the new life was an upgrade really, better genes if my new mother was anything to go by, super model looks, smart as hell, and one of the sweetest people I'd ever known. Not to mention that I got the feel that she was the kind to be very picky about who she took to bed, so they had to be at least similarly impressive. We had money from from her own career before having me, which given the standard of living we had must have been something suitably impressive. All of this before even taking into account the Pokemon, or my new genetic femaleness. Really, I'd have jumped into some shitty lives for a chance at either of those, but getting both and great circumstances at the same time? Sign me the fuck up.
I was lucky as all hell and I was more than willing to take this new life to be a "Sorry about the past one" apology from whatever deity was in charge up there. I mean, my new mother's starter had been a Ralts, one of my favorites of all time, and she'd asked her now Gardevoir to provide an egg for me to be able to grow up with a companion to play with. Luna hatched a month before I was born, and New Mother and Gardevoir named her after the patron legendary pokemon of the Alola region. Huh. There's a thought. I knew how to get a Lunala. And a few others. Hm, ideas...
It didn't take long for me to realize that I had really, really, won the genetics lottery. Forget the looks, not the smarts though, forget the height, whatever. No, it was all about that one time when my favorite mug in this new world of mine fell off the table and I just reached and suddenly it was being held just above the floor by a corona of blue light. It took a second to fully sink in, to feel the mug with my mind, it was like an entirely new sense had revealed itself, a third eye through which I saw the world in an entirely new manner.
I could feel Luna sleeping on the couch to my left, could feel Mother outside watering her garden greenhouse with Gardevoir by her side. Could feel as Gardevoir turned to look at me through the walls of the house, feel her attention and just how very startled she was. I suppose it's not often you get to feel a human use psychic abilities. Then I slipped off my chair and banged my head against the table on the way down. Got six stitches right over the end of my right eyebrow and it's probably the reason my mother ended up going silver before she was even thirty. Well that and the constant worrying over my nascent psychic abilities and her fears that I would be taken from her and exploited. Which to be fair was probably a very legitimate worry, what with the ridiculous glut of criminal organizations that infested the Pokemon world, all of varying levels of evilness.
Oh, maybe my father was the leader of one of those organizations and that was why she was so worried people would find out about my abilities, and then rumor would spread and reach Evil Father, ensuing a legal battle for custody the likes only seen in the most dramatic of movies or tv series. Damn. I really had to double down on keeping my psychic abilities secret. As much as I would like a father, I didn't want mother worrying so much and having to fight to keep me. Besides, I can't imagine Evil Father would be that good a father. They all seemed pretty bad at the responsible adult thing, what with their doomsday plans and stuff that got easily foiled by a champion to be preteen or tween who happens to be passing by.
But I digress. After the awakening of my psychic abilities playing with Luna became an entirely new level of fun, believe me, nothing beats playing catch with telekinesis and multiple objects at the same time. For all that I had the life experiences of a twentysomething year old, there was a simple joy to using psychic powers to just have fun. Well that and being a child again seemed to mess with my mind a little. Still, I kept enough of my adult mind to make everything into training. Or try to anyway. For all that playing catch was fun, I made sure to keep increasing the force and speed of the balls over time. I figured if ever there was a training method that simulated EV training in the games for special attack, it was this. Given that Luna's telekinesis (and my own) kept getting stronger and stronger, I figure I was probably right.
Hopefully one day we'd get to supersonic bullet levels of telekinesis and overcome the weakness to dark types through the application of sufficient firepower. Not that there was any such thing of course, any self respecting aspirant to telekinetic bullets knows there's never enough firepower, just that there is such a thing as 'one at sufficient velocity'. If we couldn't achieve sufficient velocity, then by Inari Okami, about the only deity I ever cared about or for, we would drown them in bullet hell. I suppose the paranoia made it through the reincarnation. But I mean, is it really paranoia if they're probably to out get you on general principle of having psychic abilities?
So we sat in our porch, Luna and I, watching snow fall, gathering it and compressing it into balls of ice which we juggled and played tug of war with. It was quite peaceful really. Perhaps it had something to do with childhood, but there were many more moments where there was no worry, no anxiety, no sadness or depression, just tranquility, and just happy contentedness. Time had little meaning in those moments and it felt like days passed just watching the snow and playing with telekinesis. In reality it couldn't have been more than a few hours from beginning to the time mother found us cuddled up in a pile of blankets and herded us back inside for lunch. Well, not more than a few hours the first time it happened anyway.
We sat at the dinner table, eating a rather delicious creamy pasta dish, when a thought occurred to me. I could be a trainer. I could go out into the world and conquer. I know, it's hard to believe the thought hadn't ever crossed my mind before, but ever since awakening my psychic powers I'd been entirely focused on training them, honing them into a deadly weapon, for the purpose of gaining personal power, so that I could never be powerless no matter what. A goal inherited from my past self, I suspected, but one I'd pursued with the whole of my new being. Not training Luna had never been an option. She was as close to me as it was possible without being an extension of myself, and really to a degree we were extensions of each other through our psychic bond. We were inseparable, where I went she went, and where she went I went. Of course she'd accompany me through my journey to unlimited power. Power for the sake of power, and I was more than fine with that, but being able to put that power to use?
The mere thought made me shudder in anticipation.
There was an outside chance I may have some sort of megalomania. One more point for the Evil Father theory. That had to come from somewhere and New Mother was way too sweet to be the bloodthirsty conqueror type who wanted to see her enemies driven before her and to hear the lamentations of their women, or men, you know, whatever, not picky as long as lamentations are had. So in service of that I took a pause in between bites of deliciousness and asked my mother a very important question.
"Hey mom?"
"Yeah pumpkin?"
"How old am I?"
The look she gave me was incredulous and I wasn't sure why. I mean it's not like there was much use to age beyond knowing whether you could buy booze or not, how appropriate sexual behaviors were, a few others odds and ends, and I was most definitely not old enough for that yet. Really, not even close to even being able to consider the possibility of it for years to come.
"Honey, are you okay? You should know this."
"I suppose, but it's a number! There's so many more interesting things than numbers! Well, numbers that small anyway."
She stared at me, opened her mouth then closed it without saying anything, shook her head, sighed, and finally answered.
"You're five, love."
"Ah."
Well damn. I still had five more years to go before I could go out and smash faces in.
"What's wrong?"
"Wish I were ten."
Which wasn't entirely true. My past life had given me perspective on the issue of wishing you were older than your actual age. That is to say that as you got older the more you wished you were younger, an inverse from wishing your were older when you were younger. I was perfectly content to continue this idyllic existence of peace and quiet spent training phenomenal cosmic powers to new heights and was in no rush to leave it behind, but I would love to eventually experience the act of going out and conquering.
Mother was silent at that, something I hadn't expected. I looked up at her to see hurt on her beautiful face, mingled with fear and sadness. Luna and Gardevoir had noticed too and they were looking at us. Not surprising, Ralts were the Feeling Pokemon and I couldn't imagine they lost the ability as they evolved. Empathy was an aspect of my powers I hadn't explored much, lacking the instinctual talent for it my Luna did, and preferring to focus on the direct application of force over it, I was incapable of passively picking up on emotions like she could, but I could feel them if I focused on a person hard enough.
I loved my mother. It was hard to put into words how much, just like with Luna and Gardevoir, but I did. I'd cared for my mother in my past life, but we'd always been distant, both as a result of our dispositions and from a very tumultuous relationship. I'd cared, but we'd been so very distant. It hurt to remember. In this new life, mother made herself so very easy to love and adore and it hurt even worse to see her in pain, especially knowing that I'd caused it, somehow. So I opened that sense, that third eye, to its fullest extent and focused it on her.
It was a flood of information, so many tiny futures extending a few seconds ahead, the feel of her mind, of her soul, indistinct whispers of thought kept behind mental shields built up over years of contact with a psychic pokemon. So much, too much even. Within a second I had a headache, and within two it was monumental, but I persevered. By second three I had a truly epic migraine and was drawing on my psychic power hard enough that my eyes were probably glowing, but I'd managed to narrow in on her emotions and clamped down on the sense, closing the third eye most of the way until it was looking only at what she was feeling and nothing else.
I felt her fear that if I left to go on a pokemon journey I would be an easy target for anyone trying to nab themselves a powerful psychic. Sadness that I would be away from her, that I wanted to go away. And pain, hurt, so very strong and poignant at the thought that her five year old daughter wanted to leave so very much that she wished she were five years older, that her daughter was so very dissatisfied with her failure of a mother that she couldn't wait to leave.
I couldn't breathe. How? How had I not noticed this?
I cast my mind back to my admittedly limited memories, trying to see if I could spot any indications as to my mother's insecurities and worries. To see if there was anything I could have done to help, to make it better, to prevent her from feeling this horrible pain, and found nothing. Nothing but my perfect, loving, and caring mother who'd done so very well in raising me so far. I was relieved. I wasn't so terrible a daughter for not having seen the signs since there had been no signs to see. Well, that or I was oblivious. I hoped it was the former.
So I hugged her as hard as my five year old body could manage. Wasn't much, but if ever there was a situation where 'it's the thought that counts' it was this. I hoped. I did my best to hug her harder just in case, not that it did much. Her emotion shifted, affection, love, the hurt diminishing a little. I pulled back and used the space to climb on top of her so I wasn't just hugging her waist. Perks of being tiny. Then I dope slapped her. The look she gave me was glorious.
"Silly mom. You're not a failure, you are the best ever. Probably. I mean, I have a kinda limited sample size, but so far I'm pretty satisfied with the job you've done in raising me. More than satisfied even. So don't think like that, rest assured that you're awesome and I love you."
Judging by the shift in her emotions to incredulity and then to sheer utter love, I'd succeeded in making her feel better. The hug I got in return that could only be classified as fierce and the happy crying session that followed were just confirmation.
The great thing about psychic powers, outside of being psychic powers, was that people didn't question it when you knew things you shouldn't. Well, they didn't question it too hard. This made getting away with my reincarnated knowledge easy, and when mother started making noise about me going to school soon instead of letting me continue doing my thing with Luna in our quest for unbelievable cosmic power it was a matter of getting in contact with the administration of the school and testing out.
Which I did. Honestly the hardest part was managing to get out of the house and to the school because I was pretty sure mother wouldn't approve of my plan. I couldn't wait to learn how to teleport. So I waited until Gardevoir was taking a nap and mother was cooking lunch. We lived on the outskirts of Snowpoint City, something that had taken me an embarrassingly long time to bother asking about, and the the school was a half hour walk away.
For being such a weird mishmash of futuristic and dated, I'd expected something more… interesting, design-wise, from the world of Pokemon when it came to the the school, but it was so generic that for all I knew it had come out of some random city in my old life. So I went in and asked the first person I saw where the administrative offices were, and walked through hallways that reminded me of my old highschool, what with all the lockers on the walls and the boring neutral color scheme. I was so skipping out on this bullshit.
The tests were nothing special, I mean, how could they be? They were elementary school level tests. The hardest part was history which I passed only by virtue of having played most of the games up to the Alola region, though I was sure I'd only barely scraped together a passing grade. When I got to the essay section in the language portion of the exams I couldn't help the grin on my face when I cut loose with a critique of rote learning vs. meaningful learning and the benefits provided by the latter over the former. So I'd overheard some lectures on my way to the tests and been unimpressed, sue me.
Five hours later and I was feeling a bit guilty about not having left a more informative note, but in my defense "Going out, be back later, I'll be okay" had seemed like a perfectly acceptable note, I'd simply forgotten to think about how long testing out of school would take. I should probably think things through a bit more in the future. Nothing to do about it now except get colossally grounded. Man, that was going to be annoying. I walked back home, Luna beside me frolicking in the snow, and pondered how to spin it. I mean, parents were supposed to be excited about their children's academic achievements right? Maybe I could dazzle her with my near perfect testing scores (damn you history!) and distract her enough to get away with it. Yeah, that'd probably work.
Or not. I was pretty sure the police motorcycle parked by the front yard meant mother was past freaking out. Damn. Maybe I could wait a little longer and she'd calm down? The door opening with enough force to have it bang against the wall and then being enveloped in a huge hug by mother while Gardevoir did the same for Luna put paid to that idea.
"Oh, thank Arceus, you're alright. Where were you? I was so worried!" Mother's guilting game was on point. She did it masterfully without even trying. She was crying, and I could feel the all consuming fear in her at the thought that something might have happened to me. I was a terrible human being for driving her to this state. She grabbed me by the shoulders and held me in front of her so she could get a better look at me, and once she was assured I was more or less alright, some of the fear turned to anger. "Where were you?"
There's something to be said for the saying that you never stop listening to your parents even when you become an adult, because in that moment I just about forgot about anything other than trying to please her and stop her being angry with me. So I did the only thing I could think of and just put the documents the school had given me in front of her face. She read them and just gave me this Look. It was capitalized and everything. I could feel the emphasis. It was equal parts exasperation, frustration, relief, and a few other emotions I could barely make sense of even by listening in with empathy.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess everything is okay and this was all a misunderstanding?" said a tall woman with long dark blue hair in a police uniform. Wow, Officer Jennies came from really good stock because the one behind mother was really beautiful. Maybe she was like the one overachieving Jenny of the family who was perfect at everything and even got all of the best genes in the family or something. I needed to meet more Jennies to make sure.
Oh.
Idea.
"Mom, is this your girlfriend?"
Officer Jenny turned a particularly bright shade of red and mother choked on air. Then also turned red. Psychic senses tingled and a picture began to form in my mind. Well. That was unexpected. I'd need to see about making this a thing then. Mother deserved to be happy and Perfect Officer Jenny seemed like a good way to accomplish that. How to do it? I suppose I could get lost again, but there was no guarantee that they'd send the same officer to answer the call, and it seemed to me that worrying over your daughter's well being wasn't conducive to starting a relationship.
I suppose I could become a problem child and use my phenomenal cosmic power to make sure that it was always Perfect Officer Jenny who picked me up for whatever misconduct I participated in, but I didn't want to put mother through the stress. Guess I'd have to make it a meet cute, somehow. I'd figure it out later. Right now it was time to push for advantage or the moment to distract mother would be lost.
"She's pretty mom." I said, before looking up at Officer Jenny, "You keep mom safe and treat her well, okay?"
Mother's grip on my shoulders had slackened by the surprise, and I took advantage to step forward, hug her, slip away from her grip, hug Officer Jenny's waist, pick up Luna, and go inside. Mission accomplished, I'd say. Now lunch, well, lunchdinner. Once in the kitchen I did something I'd thought about on the way over and started pulling plates and cutlery out of their cupboards and serving something that looked like cheesy mashed potatoes with corn, popcorn chicken, and gravy. Now I felt like an even bigger heel. She'd made one of my favorite meals in both lives.
On the one hand she got a girlfriend, on the other I worried her terribly, I wonder if it evened out?
I was halfway finished with my plate when mother came into the kitchen and stood to my right. I swear could feel her Stare. Maybe she had a slight psychic talent after all. I continued eating. She continued to Stare. The tableau held for a full two minutes before she sighed and broke the silence.
"You're still grounded. No dessert for two weeks, and I still expect you to keep learning things however it is you learned six years of school in five years of life. And no, you can't go on a journey before you're ten just because you've already completed the educational requirements."
"That's fair." As eager as I was to go on my pokemon journey I had become attached to mother and was in no rush to separate from her or Gardevoir, so her limitations weren't particularly cumbersome. Still, I wasn't looking forward to two weeks without mother's excellent dessert making skills. The woman may be a bit limited on what she could do well reliably to a few dishes, but it was like what she lacked in skill on making regular meals she more than made up for in talent and creativity for desserts.
Another sigh, a huge hug, and she went outside to her greenhouse. I suppose being a mother to a powerful psychic had to be trying at times, had to make sure to incorporate relaxation time in there somewhere, and I knew she loved tending to her garden.
Wait.
Wouldn't this past encounter between mother and Officer Jenny count as a meet cute all on its own? Yes. Yes it would, wouldn't it? Now I just had to make sure that a relationship progressed from it. How did it go in the movies? Damn you past me for having zero interest in the genre and not watching a single movie of the kind for years and years before dying. Now that I thought about it, how the fuck did I even die?
3
I wasn't sure at what point mother and Ashely, Officer Jenny's first name as I'd learned, actually became a thing, I mean, I'd completely forgotten to play cupid for them. I was pretty sure mother was keeping it quiet because she didn't want to give me the satisfaction though. I just knew that one morning a month and a half after the whole missing thing I woke up and walked into the kitchen to find Ashely, then known to me only as Perfect Officer Jenny, wearing a large button down shirt, a pair of handcuffs dangling off her left wrist, and I assumed nothing more, making coffee while singing to herself and dancing.
I did my now usual routine and served myself some cereal through judicious abuse of telekinesis, taking extra care to make it as quiet as possible. Wouldn't do to ruin the good officer's groove. I ate my cereal, some delicious thing with tons of sugar and almonds, eventually she turned, saw me, and flinched hard enough that my intervention was the only reason she didn't end up with hot coffee all over herself. I couldn't help the grin, especially when she turned bright red.
"Oh, um… hi." Adorable.
"Hello Officer, you might want to add cinnamon to that, she loves it that way, and one more sugar packet."
"Thank you?"
"You're welcome."
I could practically feel her embarrassment as she added the recommended condiments and scurried out of the kitchen trying to balance the coffee cups while hiding the handcuffs. Truly adorable. Adorkable? Thoughts for later. I finished my bowl and washed it. I wanted to learn to fly, failing that, at least learn to float. Seriously, couldn't believe no one had ever thought to do it. Then again maybe they had and no one knew because there weren't that many of us psychics powerful enough to manage and the internet was barely a thing here. Shame about the internet really, I fucking missed Reddit.
I couldn't wait for Youtube and Google. Maybe I should learn coding and make them myself? I'd be rich as hell. Need to make a note of it. Did I even need to learn coding? For all that I practiced with my abilities extensively I tended to neglect the more esoteric branches, what could be crudely termed as "mindfuckery", not due to a lack of talent or interest mind you, but because telekinetic supersonic bullets were very distracting. Perhaps I could actually learn things by going through people's heads and, uh, appropriating the knowledge. I'd have to look into it.
I settled myself on the back porch, kneeling in seiza before opening my senses just a tad, feeling the currents of psychic energy produced by all living beings. I felt Luna in our room, still sleeping, mother and Ashely in mother's bedroom, snuggled together and... what was that feeling? I couldn't see it clearly without opening that extra sense more. It tasted a little like excitement. An effort of will and the world around me came into sharper focus. Luna was dreaming of being a Gardevoir and single handedly annihilating teams and teams of pokemon. I felt my heart warm at that. My big sister had such beautiful dreams. Had to make sure they became reality, nothing but the best for her.
I turned my focus to mother and Ashely, trying to decipher that odd feeling. It was excitement, affection, intimacy, a smidge of embarrassment and what were they doing? Why was Ashley handcuffing mother, and why was Ashley sliding down to- Oh. I was not blushing. My face was not burning up. Nope. Wait, was that Gardevoir watching…? Nope, no way, moving on.
I focused power around myself, shrouding my body in it, and pulled. It was harder than I imagined it'd be. Like trying to lift literally anything with my actual arms. Guess I needed to exercise my telekinesis on heavier things. Did I just call myself fat? Ah well, no other way about it. I set an alarm on my poketch for lunch, in case time got away from me, or mother, since she seemed preoccupied, and floated there, swaying up and down. Psychic pushups.
My mind wandered, swimming against invisible currents, futures branching out like cracks on a piece of glass, infinity laid bare. It was proving to be a problem. The future seemed to want to be seen, pushing against my mind if I opened the sense just a little, each time more insistent than the last, clearer, further out, always there. It was an enormous effort all on it's own to block the visions, the knowledge, and even then they leaked through as feelings and intuition and knowledge I couldn't have known even through my past life.
What a problem to have, being too good at seeing the future. Who would have thought?
The alarm sounded and the future escaped my hold for a second, a spike of agony driving itself through my brain. The world scorched to cinders by unquenchable fire or drowned in an unending tide, the world erased from existence, Unova turned into a lifeless wasteland, the world wiped clean of all life, the world infested by extradimensional creatures. So much was coming, so very much, and I couldn't know that the people who solved it all on another reality could or would do so in this one.
Sometimes, phenomenal cosmic power wasn't a fun thing to have. Haha, who the fuck am I kidding, phenomenal cosmic power is always a fun and great thing to have, even when it comes with pain and visions of horrible apocalyptic futures.
I was so getting myself a legendary team to back Luna up for when shit started hitting the fan and the crazies came out of the woodwork to purposefully or ignorantly cause an extinction level event. There better be an Ash in this world, or the game protagonists, because I definitely did not feel like shouldering so much responsibility. Saving the world felt like the kind of thing that would cut into gaming or psychic practice time, and I really couldn't have that.
The world shrank back down to the present, and there was mother, holding us to her, worried again. I was such a terrible daughter, even if unintentionally. My arms ached, my whole body ached really, but I made myself hug her hoping that maybe she would feel better.
"What happened pumpkin? You fell down and just collapsed."
"Saw too much. Lost track of time and the alarm surprised me." I had explained to mother some about what my psychic abilities were like, how the future wanted to be seen. She worried, but she knew I'd sooner cut out my eyes than give up my ability, and that for all that Gardevoir was strong she couldn't stop me from using it. So she hugged me and didn't let go until my stomach growled. I hugged her back, and when the time to eat came I let her mother me until the worry faded and was forgotten for the moment.
The future wanted to be seen and I had to learn to ignore it. There was little else to be done about it. Better enjoy what I could when I could... Wait, did I really just consider ignoring my ability to see the future instead of using it and maliciously and viciously exploiting it for my own fun and profit?! What the fuck me? Big Small Sis would be so disappointed in me if she ever learned of this moment of failure.
Officer Ashely Jenny slowly became a fixture in my life. Mother tried to slide her in all discrete like, playing the "just close friends" angle and likely hoping to mix in the girlfriend bit sometime down the line and hope I didn't realize. Problem for her was I'd caught on from the very start and more often than not had to make a solid effort to keep from witnessing things going on between them that I shouldn't be witnessing at my current age.
She came around for meals, watched television with us, 'babysat' me when mother had to go out and couldn't take me with her, and fuck if I wasn't curious what she was doing when she did that, she even knew about my phenomenal cosmic power after feeling the genuineness and strength of her feelings for mother and myself. It was… difficult. I wasn't exactly a social person, a trait that had been with me for most of my previous life as well, and letting someone new into my life was something I wasn't good at. But I was starting to love her so very much as well.
I did my best anyway and since she seemed to like me I figured I was doing well enough with the social thing. Her being there did have the unintended side effect of me occasionally catching glimpses of the man's button up shirt from that first morning, which Ashely seemed to like wearing in the mornings before getting ready. Could it be my father's? There really was no other reason for it to be in the house, mother hadn't dated at all until Ashley. It was a fairly nice looking shirt too, black, looked like silk. He must have been a good dresser.
This was one of those mornings when Ashely came out to make coffee for herself and mother. When this happened and she woke before me, she'd either set out my customary breakfast cereal or cook an actual breakfast meal for me. It was one of those things that endeared her to both myself and mother.
Today was one of those days, and so I sat and watched her as she worked. She was wearing the shirt. I couldn't help staring. I didn't want to ask mother, she already felt inadequate as a parent and asking would probably only make it worse. So I stared at what could be the only link I had to my father. I could almost picture him, a striking figure in the black shirt and black slacks, my red hair in a shorter style and different shade, face in shadows. He had a set of pokeballs clipped to his belt, an Arcanine stood before him, and then I saw Gardevoir facing off against it, mother looking oh so much younger behind her.
The past, I realized, the headache that came hand in hand with looking through the currents of time was as good as anything could be as confirmation. I wasn't sure how to feel.
"You okay love?" Ashely said, and I realized she was no longer cooking anything and was in fact beside me, hands on my shoulders and a worried look on her face.
"Yes, I'm sorry, I spaced out."
"Want to talk about it?"
I shook my head and thanked her for the scrambled eggs sitting on a plate in front of me. She looked reluctant to leave, but an "I'm okay, don't worry!" eventually convinced to return to mother. So I ate my eggs, and pondered the past. Luna joined me not long after and we shared the eggs and some cereal while she did her best to help me sort out the tangled mess that were my feelings and thoughts. Big Small Sis was awesome like that.
4
I stood before mother and Gardevoir and today would be the day we finally managed to land a hit on our second mother in combat. Ashely sat on the house porch with her Growlithe out cuddled up to her for warmth, ready to be entertained by my flailings. Luna and I had started using psychic fuckery to keep warm without having to wear cumbersomely numerous layers of clothing in the constant snows of Snowpoint so we were mostly good. Heat was simply waste energy of all kinds after all, and as a psion I had the unique ability to manipulate energy in ways that most everyone and everything else couldn't. It'd taken some practice, but eventually we'd learned to vibrate the air molecules around us until they began emitting the extra energy as waste heat and acting as a heating system. We'd practiced the opposite successfully too, just in case we were ever someplace too hot for comfort.
As a result I was clad in a crimson skirt, white stockings, a strappy top, and a jacket that was almost an exact replica in coloration style of what the most popular representations of Pokemon Trainer Red used, except with long billowy sleeves like you'd see in miko haori, and a longer cut that had the bottom of the jacket a little past what was my admittedly too short skirt for my age. Mama was wearing like three coats and pants to keep warm. Score for phenomenal cosmic powers.
She thought I was silly and being too dramatic and stuff with my outfit, but I was a damned anime/manga/video game protagonist, and if I was going to have to deal with the bullshit that often came with such I was going to at least wear something like the super cool outfits endemic to the mediums. Not to mention, if I was going to be wearing them successfully, I needed to get practice for later when I was older, so the younger I started the better I'd be able pull them off when the time came to really look badass. Flawless logic. Totally. The Looks I'd gotten from her, Ashely, and Gardevoir when I explained my reasoning were very obviously impressed looks awe and envy at my foresight. Definitely. Luna agreed with me after all, and she was my wise Big Small Sis.
We'd actually had to have the pattern for the jacket/haori combo custom made and a few of them custom ordered, but with the pattern on hand it'd be a simple matter of getting measured and getting new ones made whenever I outgrew my old ones. I was still debating whether to get Red's iconic hat. On the one hand I wouldn't really be Red without it, no matter what my birth and circumstances had to say on the matter, but on the other I wasn't really a hat kinda girl.
I suppose I was going to be walking around in the sun for long periods of time, and I couldn't have sun damage doing bad things to my hair. I might have to go for it just for that alone, nevermind my super fair skin that burned when the sun looked at it funny. Full finger gloves as well given that, I suppose, instead of the half fingers the character used. Combine with comfy cool looking boots and I was ready to be a badass looking bitc-
"Ow, what the fuck?!" I yelped out when a rubber ball smacked me in the head.
"Stop spacing out honey. We're in a battle, pay attention to your opponent. Also, language." She gave me this Glare about the "Fuck" and it was very hard to keep in mind I was in reality twentysomething and was therefore totally not intimidated. Totally.
So of course we answered in the only appropriate and reasonable manner for such a grievous slight against my person. With overwhelming power and extreme amounts of bullet hell Psychics and Confusions directed at Gardemom. She responded by redirecting them upwards, matching them with her own, or straight up seizing them mid air and dispersing the energy. All of this without moving a single centimeter from where she was standing. She didn't even have the decency to look like she was trying.
I couldn't even really use my psychic bond with Luna to come up with and execute a plan at the speed of thought as an advantage, since Mama and Gardemom had their own after so many years together. Didn't mean we weren't going to try anyway. I was pretty sure both Luna and I were objectively superior versions of our parents, a newer better generation to lead our dreams of power to the future, and that was something we could exploit. We were younger too, with faster reaction times and speed of thought.
They'd know we were planning something of course, Luna's rate of fire slowed down, as did the power behind her attacks, but this was something new. I'd heard of nothing like this ever being attempted before, and outside context knowledge was a hell of a thing. Instant Transmission Kamehameha, meet Teleport Charged Shaped Psychic Blast, you two would have a blast together.
We were pretty sure we had a good grasp of what Gardemom could do on the defense and how quickly she could react. We weren't arrogant enough to think Luna was fast enough to Teleport in and blow the Psychic before Gardemom raised a defense, but maybe we were fast enough to catch her while distracted by an unusually numerous barrage of attacks launched before the Teleport and use that to keep her from raising a full defense in time to block the attack, and that the shaped aspect of the blast would be enough to penetrate what she did manage to raise.
We noticed when the moms started readying for an offensive, it wasn't anything major, barely a whisper on our psychic senses, but enough, and so Luna started rapid fire barraging Gardemom. We got an instant's warning when she let loose her own attack, a barely there Confusion for her, but something that dwarfed anything we could do put together. It was enough warning. The moment the attack left Gardemom's mind Luna was behind her, releasing all the energy she'd been charging up since the start of the fight, compressing it into as dense a spear of psychic energy as she could manage.
It was a sight to behold. An extremely bright lance of purple light blooming out behind Gardemom impacting a hastily raised defensive barrier and penetrating through with a sound like a cannon firing and glass shattering. It blew her off her feet and into the air for all of an instant before she was behind Luna and launching her at me, knocking me down on my back, my sister lying in a heap on top of me. I belatedly registered the Confusion that started the end of the fight impact off to my right but couldn't really raise the energy to care. We were winded, bruised, generally shook up, and yet I couldn't keep the huge grin off my face or help the intense feeling of pride that I felt for Luna at this very moment. I hugged her to me and lay there on the grass, daydreaming of a bright future.
5
The training fights with the moms were a semi regular thing, but to be perfectly honest the only ones that weren't completely one sided stomps were the ones against Ashely's Police Issue Team, something that was apparently a thing that was. I guess it kind of made sense you know? Police forces in my old life had standardized training programs to produce trained animals to perform tasks for them and help them do their job, why wouldn't the police forces here do the same with the much, much more capable animals of the pokeworld?
The standard issue team of Snowpoint City Police consisted of a well trained Growlithe for general firepower, heat generation, and tracking capabilities, a trained member of the Starly line for aerial scouting and air support, and a trained member of the Machop line for close in brute force takedowns. It was honestly really quite well thought out, with officers ranked on their capacity to take on a specific threat level by the evolution stages of their team and their ability to effectively command them. Unknown threat causing damage near the edges of the city? A Staravia or Staraptor tier officer with Machoke support gets sent. Some random punk causing trouble downtown? A Growlithe with Machop support should be more than enough to handle them, and a Starly would be more than good enough to spot them at a distance if there was a positive id.
Ashely, I'd found out, was semi retired as a result of an injury acquired in the line of duty. Medical disability essentially. She'd been faced with the choice of full retirement or relegation to the lower tiers of crime combat and prevention, and as top tier standard issue teams like her old one were in high demand for city defense she'd been relieved of them and issued a Growlithe/Starly/Machop team. Incidentally, her Starly had been out looking for us way back when the school thing happened and had arrived seconds after we had.
But I digress, as one might deduce, Ashely hadn't been ready to let go of the police life and had chosen the technical demotion so she could stay on the force, something for which I was extremely grateful given how things had turned out for us. Curiously, due to the circumstances of her situation she'd kept more or less her previous pay rate as a combination of retirement benefits and salary. She'd taken the extra free time and money to train up her own private team and while I'd yet to see them or even know what its member were, not sure how that was a thing by the way since psychic here, I got a Feeling that it was something very impressive.
So Luna and I fought Growlithe, Starly, and Machop, often three on one or three on two, since compared to the level of fighting Gardemom and Mama demanded any one of those alone would not have been… fair. To put it mildly. At all. Honestly it was really only Ashely's excellent grasp of tactics and general high level command abilities that allowed the three on ones and three on twos to be a challenge despite the quality of opponent.
It wasn't long into the routine that Ashely got slapped with a big fat raise and given new starter standard issue teams to rotate out teams that started performing above the tiers she was allowed handle. I found this hilarious as fuck because she kept mum on how she was doing it and full on refused to say how, threatening to quit before talking, and especially if they tried spying on her to find out how. The brass had backed down in light of the influx of very well trained strong teams and the potential to lose out on more of them if they pressed. I was become training montage of death, trainer of police forces.
The moms thought they were being sneaky and subtle in what they were doing. Training both me and Luna to handle high danger situations by constantly exposing us to them in a controlled environment. I was being trained just like Luna was, if perhaps not as much given that I wasn't a pokemon and thus lacked their more rugged developmental profile, but we were both being trained. It was most obvious with Ashely, how she used the three on two fights to teach us how to handle being attacked by multiple wild pokemon, but Mama and Gardemom were the ones whose training didn't immediately click at first beyond learning how to fight a tough opponent.
That wasn't the real the purpose of their training, merely a happy coincidence. No, they were training us in how to survive an encounter with a truly monstrous pokemon attack. The pokeworld I lived in wasn't some horrible deathworld like you'd often see portrayed in ratfic takes on Pokemon, but it wasn't all happy cuddly clouds either. There were truly dangerous pokemon that any trainer could have the misfortune of encountering and be very lucky to survive. Beedrill hives were very carefully monitored for example, since there were very few things capable of fighting, much less surviving, a swarming cloud of angry meter tall waspbees.
We were lucky really, Sinnoh didn't have very many pokemon that were exceedingly dangerous and aggressive that you didn't have to purposefully seek out to find and confront. At that point, trainers took their lives in their and their pokemon's hands in the pursuit of glory and power. But our moms knew us. They could feel the drive for power, not necessarily glory, though we wouldn't reject it, but we felt such a soul deep need to fight, to challenge foes stronger than us and beat them by sheer force of fuck you and willpower. We were satisfied for now, training until we could go out and have our conquests officially recognized, to have our names immortalized as synonyms of pure power. And so at least for now they didn't have to fear us going out and trying to find an Abomasnow to fight or something like that.
Time passed like this, growing in power, in experience, and skill. We studied everything there was to know about pokemon, just so we'd be well prepared to face any foe that dared stand before us. The years closed in on the time I'd be allowed to get a Special Exemption Early Start Trainer License, because apparently not all the people in charge were entirely fucking retarded and just let some rando ten year old go out into a dangerous world unprepared. Thus you had to prove that you were capable of not dying horribly a day into your journey. Still, reading up on what the examinations consisted of I wasn't terribly impressed even by what little gatekeeping they tried to do. I hope that's just the past life experience making things seem terribly easy and not that they are in actuality terribly easy for ten year olds to pass.
It was thus, as I was submerged in study and training, that what happened the day of my eight year birthday managed to catch me completely and utterly by surprise. There had been no whisper of it in the minds of my mothers, which was particularly notable given that Ashely was still not as capable as Mama or Gardemom at keeping her thoughts from slipping out. They must have made a real effort to keep it secret.
Because my father had come to Snowpoint City.
6
We celebrated Luna's birthday with a small dinner party on May 21. It was a lovely affair really. We doted on her the whole day, but dinner was a work of art. Unlike Mama, Ashley was a great cook, and with Gardemom's help she prepared a feast. Mama was relegated to dessert, something which we we all agreed was more her style. Luna's plushie collection grew by a stuffed Ralts doll that had he cracking up when she first saw it.
We went out to the city the next day and visited one of the parks, just the two of us. We chose the one most popular with trainers looking for good fites, the one with those trainers that were battle crazy, went at you with everything, and held nothing back in pursuit of victory. There was a different park for the more casual trainers who just wanted to have fun, but really, me there? It'd be a slaughter. Eh, maybe we'll go seal clubbing for my birthday. The casuals could come up with innovative stuff just as much as the hardcore trainers, the difference simply lay in the frequency.
I was a regular at the park, often thought of as that unbeatable creepy quiet girl and her weird freakishly powerful Ralts. Because for all that this was the blood knighting crowd, for all that these were the strongest trainers in the city, they were the strongest trainers still in the city. They were the failed champions to be who still didn't realize it, or who still tried despite the realization of their own inadequacies, or of the difficulty of the mission they'd taken upon, they were those not willing to let their dreams die unfulfilled. I was not a champion to be. No, I was the champion to be, the legend made flesh. I was Red, and no local trainer had what it took to take me or Luna on.
When I got there I saw a new face. Not entirely uncommon, but there was a weight about him, potential, destiny, much more of it than that of all the regulars or other passersbies combined. A worthy opponent. I could feel it in my bones, in my very soul. A perfect way to celebrate my sister's birthday. We could tell when the regulars noticed me, the sudden rise in everyone's expectations, they expected a battle the likes they saw only rarely. Clearly the newcomer had made an impression on the others here and proven himself their better.
All that remained was to see if he was strong enough to beat Snowpoint's best.
I was sure we were all willing to oblige.
He had bright reddish orange hair and confident grey eyes. There was a self-assurance to him, a boldness, he knew he was damned good and he was willing to prove it to anyone who wanted a demonstration. He turned away from his latest defeated opponent, someone I recognized as one of the best in the city, with good combat instincts and a strong team. They recalled their pokemon, a battered looking Lopunny for the redhead and an unconscious Piloswine, exchanged the post battle good fight pleasantries, and then the local pointed to me.
The stranger turned and beheld who he was told was strongest. There was amusement in his face at first, he couldn't believe it of course, how could a child be so much better than all of these older experienced trainers? But his amusement was replaced with this intense look, eyes narrowed. He was good. He recognized a worthy opponent on sight as well and he didn't even have the advantage of psychic senses like I did.
"You're the strongest here. When I saw you I thought they'd played a joke on me, but you're like some of the others I've seen along my journey. You have more of what it takes than anyone I've met before, Little Red." He had a good voice, strong. "I'm told you only do one on ones for the serious battles, so I saved my starter just for you."
"Good." On many fronts. Someone with a destiny had called me Red. Today the Legend was truly born. Oh, sure, I'd had a reputation and since I never once introduced myself to anyone here they did call me Red or Little Red because of my hair and eyes, but the people here were, in the end, just the people here. This trainer was a legend in the making of his own, to defeat him here would be the true start of mine.
"You know, even now, feeling what I feel, I can't help but think I'm taking advantage."
"Then you're certain to lose."
"Hah! Bring it on then, Little Red! Go Infernape!"
It was a formidable specimen, corded muscles showing through its fur, and the fur itself was shiny and rich. His crown of fire burned hot, and I could see intense heat shimmers coming off him. But it was recently evolved, still unused to its new body, clumsy in some of its movement. He overcompensated in slight ways, leaning too far forward, not crouching low enough, but the most telling of, simultaneously one of the things that made it look so formidable, was that he was flaring his crown. It wasn't that hot naturally, he was wasting energy to look impressive.
We could exploit this.
Luna skipped forward and our monsters stood between us in the park's main courtyard.
"Infernape, Ember!"
He spit out a bright ball of flame at Luna. Strong, but still just a test, a gauge of our level. Luna didn't even have to exert any effort to crush the ball of fire out of existence. The Psychic that she launched was full power and full speed. It was a testament to the Infernape's reflexes that he managed to dodge any of it at all. As it was, it detonated against its shoulder with a small explosion of sound and a lot of force. It flew in a brief corkscrew before catching himself during the spin on the ground with its hands.
We felt their surprise, brief though it was, and then determination.
"Mach Punch!"
The reflex Teleport came almost too late, and half the spectators gasped, believing the match ended by the Infernape's overwhelming physical might and Luna's relative fragility. The other half knew us too well or had too much faith in us and kept watching as Luna fired another Psychic the very instant she came out of the Teleport flanking her opponent. A Psychic the damned monkey dodged blind on pure battle instinct, turned on a dime and Flame Wheeled straight at Luna.
We went with Protect. Because it was an excellent move in general, and because it was tactically advantageous. The Infernape barrelled full tilt into a barrier that was nigh unbreakable and stopped flat, stunned. Luna slammed a Psychic center mass that threw it against a tree hard enough to crack it. Then the fucking monkey proceeded to use it as a springboard and launch himself at Luna so fast he managed to clip her and send her flying. She wasn't as fast as our mother on the Teleport Counterattack, Luna actually got some decent air before she replicated the trick. Still, in an instant she was behind the Infernape, a differently tuned kind of Psychic hitting its back.
Psychic was psionic energy acting like a hammer blow of kinetic energy upon contact, it could even be argued that it was direct kinetic energy manipulation and well, we could go on and on on the finer points of the workings and mechanisms of our best attack. We'd started on the basics some years ago, and our best effort so far had been the one we used to land our first blow on Gardemom. But only because we'd been keeping the newer versions under wraps even from our mothers. Needed a few aces up our sleeves to land our first win against them, and my sleeves were very wide indeed.
The Psychic that hit was one of the more brutal ones we'd yet designed, though admittedly far from the worst one in our heads. Still, we made sure to aim well, just in case it proved to be too much of an attack. We weren't sure medical technology here could heal pulverized vertebrae and crushed spines. It certainly couldn't in my old life. Where the normal Psychic was a strong attack spread over a relatively wide area, this one was the whole power of the attack compressed into a pinprick. The detonation wasn't loud enough to cover the sound of the Infernape's breaking shoulder blade.
The following shitshow does not bear thinking about too much, but in the end we were both true trainers, and my sister and that Infernape true warriors. We knew the risks, we were prepared for them. Luna could have been grievously injured or killed by a strong hit from the Infernape, as it was she was pretty hurt from the glancing blow she did take, her bones with hairline fractures and deep tissue damage all along her left side.
Some of the spectators though? I felt their fear at the realization of what we could truly do when pressed, at what a true battle could be like and the stakes they were fought at. I had a feeling that more than a few of them would abandon their dreams as a result of this fight. I carried Luna to the Pokemon Center, she'd rather the pain and discomfort than going into her pokeball. Flint, as I learned my opponent was called, recalled Infernape and walked with us. He'd lost the battle fair, his a broken bone that important? Instant battle stopper. Unlike many others he didn't protest losing to a preteen. No, instead he was excited to see where I would end up like when I grew up and became a full trainer. We parted amicably, promising to keep in touch, and when he asked for my name I gave him the only one that I could: Pokemon Trainer Red.
We returned home so very satisfied. If he'd fought with his whole team we would have lost, we knew this, but one on one? We'd won, we'd beaten someone with true potential, with a destiny behind them. Our mothers though… They were proud enough of us when we told them, but for a moment we felt like we were drowning in their worry and fear. The cuddle pile that followed was very comforting and life affirming.
Still, I could Feel something coming. Destiny building up momentum. We would go back to the park on my birthday too.
7
The day of my birthday I awoke to feel the future pressing down on me. Today something would happen. Luna and I were up earlier than our usual as a result. I could have tried looking into the future, tried to find out what it was, but chances were good all I would get would be a head splitting migraine of epic proportions. If by some chance I did see more than my migraine it would be nothing more than brief confusing glimpses and scenes that made absolutely no sense except in hindsight, and even then... For all that the future wanted me to see it, it only wanted me to see it when it wanted to and no time else.
Still, I wasn't sure if it was some part of me somewhere deep within, or the future itself given a mind, that sometimes felt ahead when something momentous could happen. Sometimes it was even subtle, instead of the overbearing feeling of significance that had been leading to and pervaded today. I felt almost possessed, as we got ready for the day, and walked out of the house towards the city, barely remembering to leave a note.
There weren't many trainers out at the park that early in the morning, but there were enough to get a good din of combat going. I recognized most of the spectators, there was a handsome oldish guy with grey hair I didn't recognize but could Feel from where I was standing. Hm, handsome oldish guy? Did I have daddy issues? I didn't pay them any more mind for the most part, ignoring the Feeling coming from the benches. It was time to fight. It was about an hour to run the gauntlet of everyone there, sometime during the fighting the pervading feeling of momentousness mostly dissipated and I couldn't for the life of me tell what the fuck that had been all about. Fucking hated when that fucking happened. Oh something huge is going to happen, there, it's happened, what? You don't know what it was? Well too bad. Ugh.
Fucking Wailord sized butterflies, being fucking annoying and fucking enormous and just ugh. It was time to go home anyway.
But first, ice cream!
Well, Pokemon Center then ice cream.
When we got to the Center it was in sort of a an elongated crowd of some of the trainers from this morning, so Nurse Joy was a tad unamused by the sudden surge in patients, but she still did her thing and healed the lot of us, giving Luna a tiny chunk of processed Chancey egg to munch on so she'd be back to tip top shape. We took up one of the couches in the lobby while she ate her medicine, because apparently you had to eat it slow for some weird contrived reason. Made no damn sense since as far as I could remember from somewhere, the regular Chancey eggs were just cracked open over heads. But hey, what the hell did I know? I wasn't a pokemon doctor or nurse.
I was curled up against Luna while she ate when the old guy from the park sat across from us in a couch of his own. Khaki pants, red polo shirt, and an air of destiny that felt weird. Hm, still handsomeish up close, even if he did seem older than I initially thought.
"That was some impressive battling out there. Not often you see someone so young be so successful." His voice was smooth and strong, like that one college professor from my past life that always had fights for spots on his classes. "A very impressive Ralts too, reminds me of a Gardevoir I fought when I was younger, though she didn't have such a fascinating coloration as yours. Her trainer was quite impressive too."
"I see." So my more or less hikikomori lifestyle hadn't left me well versed in being capable of social interactions like small talk with strangers, sue me. My past life hadn't been good at it either. I'm pretty sure Luna was better at it than me. There was something in his eyes I couldn't decipher, and he seemed experienced enough with psychic exposure, or naturally resistant, that I couldn't just get it straight out of his head.
My instincts weren't warning me away from him, but my instincts couldn't be fully trusted with someone capable of defending their mind and who was also significant. Paranoia was the name of my game, and here was a stranger showing interest in both myself and Luna, as well as knowledgeable enough to notice that she was a shiny. I could brute force my way in, or try to anyway, Luna would help, or I could do it the awkward way and try to talk information out of him.
Right. Mind fuckery it-
Luna smacked me over the head, sending me a very clear feeling of "Stop being silly and either start talking or start walking"
But social interaction is hard! And besides, if we're quick enough we can hold his mind and make it so he doesn't notice a thing and then we could skip all the talking!
My sister was not impressed. I could tell.
And walking was totally not an option, the man had shown an interest, and not just the casual interest of the common trainer or lay person, no, he was Interested in some manner I couldn't tell, and he was Someone. For all I knew leaving him with the knowledge of us could lead to negative things happening in the future and then where would we be just because someone didn't want to engage in psychic surgery?
My sister continued to not be impressed. In fact she was so very not impressed by that particular train of thought that she smacked me again. So mean.
The man noticed the byplay, though I was fairly certain he didn't know what it was about or he would be, uh, indignant? Is that the right emotion to experience when you learn someone was considering the best way and how hard it'd be to crack your mind open for all of its secrets? Hm, yes, indignant seemed like it'd be the most appropriate word. Instead he seemed to be fascinated and curious about it. He was even more Interested now, damnit.
"You have a very strong bond with your Ralts. I think I could count on one hand with fingers left over the number of pairs with bonds like yours, and even then, I suspect there's more to yours than others. And you," He turned his attention to Luna, "You're really quite the marvel. You'll be a terror in the battlefield one day." He paused for a second, considering, "Well, more of a terror."
He stood with that tired way people develop when they get older, and started heading out. "I look forward to seeing what you can achieve, maybe we'll even meet again."
For some reason he said the last part with clear amusement in his tone
I couldn't help it at that point, I'd gotten no information and he had gleaned so much just by looking at us. Luna would have none of it when it came to a psychic solution, so I resorted to the only option I had left. I picked Luna up and stood up after the man, letting slip a question rather more emotive manner than my usual.
"Wait! Who are you?"
He turned, looking rather startled, as well as another emotion I couldn't quite pick up or decipher. He gave me what could only be called a kind, and if I wasn't messing up on my social cues, reassuring smile before he answered.
"Ah, I'm sorry, I'm so used to being recognized on sight that I just don't have many chances to introduce myself and often it just slips my mind. I'm afraid my manners have atrophied like that. I'm Samuel Oak, the Pokemon Professor."
8
Motherfucking Samuel Oak strode out of the Pokemon Center like he motherfucking owned the place. I had no fucking problem feeling the smug, amused satisfaction at what was most likely a hilarious expression on my face. There was also a bit of puzzlement I couldn't figure out, but well, who could figure out the inner workings of the mind of a crazy genius?
I mean I probably could, but fuck it, too much effort to try, especially since Luna didn't want to do psychic surgery with me. Meeting Samuel Oak for my birthday in fucking Snowpoint City of all fucking places, whereupon he saw me fight my way through trainers many years my senior and was later told by him we were hella fucking badass was enough excitement for one day. We were going for our goddamned ice cream and no more bullshit was going to happen.
So of course that's exactly what happened.
Not really, they'd just run out of almond chocolate, so we had to settle for regular chocolate. We walked back home at a leisurely pace, momentousness building slowly in the background, being an annoying cunt. What the fuck was so fucking important about my eight birthday? Like seriously, it was nothing special in either of my lives, like fifteen years? Big thing in some cultures, like a sweet sixteen in others. Here? I had no fucking clue about that, but I was pretty sure that ten was the first important birthday, what with the Special Exemption Early Start Trainer License tests. Huh, what the fuck was the regular age anyhow? Eh.
We got home to an odd phenomenon. Which probably meant bullshit was going to or was in the process of happening. I couldn't help the pout that came my face, I really couldn't.
Gardemom was using her own vastly more bullshit phenomenal cosmic powers to dampen everything within the house. I couldn't see in, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to See at all once inside without resorting to the kind of power and conflict one doesn't employ against their mother. They were scheming something. Couldn't be a surprise party, since it had been roughly planned over the last week, and, you know, I didn't have any friends.
They wouldn't try to make me make friends either, not after the first and only failed attempt. No one wanted a repeat of that particular shitshow. Well, maybe Luna, but she'd had fun.
We stood at the edge of the field, and considered whether we really wanted to go in and face whatever was being plotted in there. On the one hand, delicious food, dessert, and most likely some sort of stress inducing shenanigans, on the other lack of delicious noms and family time. But maybe we could get more training done. I let out a very defeated sigh. Food and family time was too much to give up over the possibility of shenanigans.
Today better not get any crazier. Fucking Samuel fucking Oak of all fucking people in fucking Snowpoint fucking City in my usual fucking park at just the right fucking time and at the right fucking moment at the fucking Pokemon Center.
Fuck.
It's probably a good thing none of my mothers can read my mind anymore. Now I just had to make sure not to also speak any future rant similar enough and I was golden.
We walked home like women condemned, heading towards certain death, or at least extreme aggravation. Well, I walked that way, Luna thought I was being overdramatic and just skipped forward frolicking through the snow like she always did, the traitor.
She opened the door with an exuberant "Ralts!" that meant, more or less, "Hi hi, we're home after tyrannosaurus recking some scrubs and eating some deliciousness!"
So I may have been a tad loose in my translation, fite me.
I was not so naive as my perfect Big Small Sis, so I entered the house ready for anything, my own well of psychic power surging forth and gathering energy under my skin, because Gardemom's trick didn't block my ability to use power inside of myself, only dampened it, and couldn't touch my own personal well of power at all.
We hadn't practiced much when it came to the more physical aspects of psychic power, because I had zero intentions of ever needing to have to tank a hit from anything, and Luna was a pokemon. Still, I'm sure I'd come up with something in the next few moments if I really needed to, necessity and invention and stuff, yeah? I'm sure I'd manage.
"We're in the kitchen!" Mama said, happiness and nervousness in her voice.
Luna beelined it there because them being in kitchen meant food and she's a glutton like that, even after ice cream. I suppose battling does work up an appetite, and she was the one doing most of the work.
I followed her and beheld devastation. In my sister's face. Because there wasn't actually food. Mama, Gardemom, and Ashely were sitting at the kitchen table, and I couldn't for the life of me decipher what they were feeling. I didn't mean psychically either, as the dampening field was still up, but their body language, expressions, and generally their whole body just seemed tense.
"Hey loves, come on, sit down, there's something important we need to talk to you about." Mama said to us, directing the second part towards me.
Those… those were not words that I liked hearing.
"Why?" I tried keeping in the instinctive threat response, I really did. The seriousness, the tense mood, the generally confrontational feeling of the whole thing. It set me on edge. Further on edge. The day had already done an excellent job of being a right cunt and it was barely noon. Judging by the alarmed looks on their faces I didn't succeed. The power I'd been holding slipped my control, bleeding out into static discharges and light shimmers.
They came half off their chairs, their mood shifting to something more familiar: worry. A lot of it. Luna was by my side in an instant, hugging herself to me, my power flowing over her harmlessly like she was a part of me. Which being honest, she was. I felt the safety of her presence next to me, helping me calm down and grounding out the energy running outside of my control.
"Wow, honey, nothing's wrong, calm down."
"Baby, it's okay."
And a strong feeling of reassurance and safety.
I couldn't tell who'd said what, Gardemom being the only obvious one, though Ashely was the one who called me baby most often. My metaphorical hackles lowered slowly, and Luna pulled me to my usual place at the table before climbing up to sit on my lap. Our mothers were giving me looks that I did not like sitting on their faces. It wasn't right, they shouldn't worry so much.
"W-What's this about then?"
"The last few months we've been discussing something that involves you, honey. It's nothing bad, it's just different, okay?" Mama rushed to reassure me when I started tensing up again. "I know you've never asked about your father, but I know you've wondered. You're a smart girl, I've seen you looking at Ashely's preferred choice of morning wear more than once."
She paused, as if searching for the best way to say what she needed. My brain took the time to puzzle it's way through the situation and finally settled on bad things weren't likely to happen and fully relaxed. If my father were anything bad, Mama would have thrown out the shirt long ago. I hugged Luna to me, trying to settle after two adrenaline highs in a row. There were only a few things this could be about, the mood would be a lot different if he'd died and they were preparing to tell me.
"I- We thought it best if you were to meet him, and well, we set about it but we forgot to ask if you if this was something you wanted. We think it'll be good for you, help you grow if you get to know him. He's very smart and knowledgeable about pokemon too, so you can learn a lot from him if you want."
She paused to take a deep breath before continuing.
"He's in town right now, and if you're willing, he can come to your birthday dinner tonight."
I was conflicted. Mind you, not for the reasons you'd think. No. I'd done my best along with Ashely, Gardemom, and Luna to work through Mama's issues and feelings of inadequacy with regards to her parenting skills and our love for her, but I worried that accepting her offer would cause problems. I'd be lying if I said I was uninterested in my father but quite honestly it was mostly just curiosity about who he could be, and a little about what circumstances had led to my conception, because Mama was very young. She'd had to have been like eighteen or nineteen.
"If I answer yes, will you take it as commentary on your parenting skills and our love for you?"
I took the exasperation on her face as mission success on that front. "I won't, you four have made yourselves very clear about that. Is that a yes then?"
I nodded my assent.
"I'll call him and have him come over for dinner then."
9
Despite whatever else I maybe have said or thought about the matter, I was nervous about meeting my father. I'd asked about why Gardemom's field continued being a thing after the talk, and it was wholly because Mama wanted to keep it a surprise, and knew that if the field dropped there was a significant chance I'd find out even if I didn't try to. Be it from an accidental stray thought, an accidental slip in my grip on my future sight, or the future itself deciding it wanted me to know and fuck what anyone involved wanted.
To be perfectly honest, she was completely correct, but it was extremely uncomfortable. I felt like a part of my brain had been cut out and I was missing half my senses, and most of my limbs, the less said about how paranoid I was starting to feel about not being capable of exercising power in an emergency if needed, the better. I was getting twitchy, and everyone was noticing.
When Gardemom noticed the actual level of… discomfort, shall we say, I was in, she didn't take long to offer to drop the field, surprise be damned, but being honest with myself, I kind of wanted the surprise. It wasn't something that had occasion to happen often. I could bear through feeling like I was a lobotomized carrot about to be under assault and needing to defend myself for a little bit.
Then she dropped the field and so I told Luna to put it back up. She wasn't as powerful, but I was willing and only needed it around myself and not the entire house and lands. Gardemom told her to drop it or she was grounded and there would be no dessert. Luna hesitated because she loved me lots and and I'd asked it of her. I argued that as the birthday girl I was entitled to be the one who decided whether the field stayed up or not. Gardemom argued that it was clearly hurting me and thus necessary to take it down. My counter was that slight discomfort wasn't hurting me and as such was of no consequence.
Then I got Looks from all of them.
"What?"
"Baby, you looked like you were in the middle of an anxiety attack headed for a second concurrent anxiety attack at the same time, somehow, and about to grab a knife and go guerilla warfare ninja Gallade, hide in the attic, and booby trap the whole house."
The Looks were now being evenly divided between myself and Ashely.
Ashely turned betrayed outraged eyes upon her… Huh, what would you call them? Wives? Was that legal? There hadn't been a wedding, or at least I didn't remember one, but well. Lovers? Committed Life Partners? Super hot trio if you ignored the fact they were my mothers? Question for later, I suppose.
"What? You're all thinking it." She pointed an accusatory finger at Luna, "You've been pretty much stuck to her side trying to keep her from flipping out."
"We were trying to be gentle, Ash, you know, keep from startling our high strung daughter. Also you were a bit, uh, out there."
"But not inaccurate!"
What even was my life sometimes. I swear, this day, and it was barely halfway through with a sure promise of more coming our way.
"Enough." My voice cut the banter before it could really get going. While watching them go at it was usually amusing, I was so not in the mood, especially with being the subject over which they were bickering. "Just… Just let it up. Today has been a day, and I think a nice surprise would be a good way of making it better. Yes, this thing is wholly unpleasant in ways I don't think I'm capable of explaining, but it's a lot better when Luna is the one doing it, so please."
I closed my eyes, just focusing on my sister's presence to try and keep calm. We were too close for the field to keep us out of each other when it was her projecting it. Wait. I opened my eyes and turned to look to Mama. Needed to be sure.
"Meeting my father would be a nice surprise, yes?"
I had to be sure, I really did, with how today had been I really had to ask.
She looked startled at the question, likely because… You know what I had no goddamned clue why she looked startled and had no way of finding out without directly asking and I had no energy or motivation for that right now.
"Well, yes, very nice. He's a good man, very charismatic, talented, can be very loving. Honestly, we should have done this earlier."
"Okay then." And that was that. I cuddled Luna up to me, and the sounds of dinner being prepared rose up around me. Usually I'd help, but Luna was very comfy and without phenomenal cosmic power use I wouldn't be much help. I was, to put it bluntly, underdeveloped for my age. I'd checked. Doctors had checked too and all they could come up with was that this was one of the few things where I'd gotten completely fucked in the genetic lottery. I wasn't too worried, growth spurt time was still a few years away and those could do magic. There was a faint memory of a short scrawny boy from school who'd ended up NBA tall and with a natural steroid popping bodybuilder build.
So yeah, I'd probably shoot up to Mama's 5'9" or something around there when I hit puberty and I was totally not ignoring the photo albums that showed she'd had no such issues with slow early development. It was totally just quirkiness from father's genes. Oh fuck, what if he was super short and Mama just likes them small? Ashely was a nicely muscled 5'7", smaller even if not by that much, but Gardemom was much smaller and super dainty at the average height for the species of 5'3".
I was this close to asking how tall my father was when the sound of a plate being set in front of me caused me to open my eyes. The plate was, unfortunately for my hungry stomach, empty, but the rest of the table was set, and wonderful smells filled the kitchen slash dining room. The doorbell rang in the distance. Oh. How long had I spaced out? A glance at my poketch showed I'd somehow managed to vege my way all the way to 7:03 PM.
That was probably for the best. I may have actually gone guerilla warfare ninja Gallade if I hadn't just dived into Luna's presence for the intervening hours. My father would be arriving soon and the dampening field wouldn't be necessary anymore and-
"Honey?" Mama said from the doorway to the kitchen. I turned in my chair with Luna to face her as she continued. "I'd like you to meet your father, Samuel Oak."
…
…
…
Haha.
Hahaha.
Hahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Yeah, sure, why the fuck not, motherfucking Samuel fucking Oak's my father.
Wait...
Fuuuuu-
Yes, of fucking course fucking Samuel literally motherfucking Oak, the motherfucking fucker, is my fucking father, makes total fucking sense, fucking somehow I'm sure. Really, totally, makes sense, and it's not like he's fucking twice Mama's age, oh, fucking wait, he is. Which what the utter fuck because she's pretty damned young right now, you damned cradle robbing dirty motherfucking old man. Which meant Things that meant that I really needed to get the story of how they hooked up out of one of them, because what the fuck. I needed to know if I needed to learn how to use my psychic powers to cause erectile dysfunction and avenge Mama's honor.
And you know the best part? It was totally in line with the rest of today. I fucking knew something like this would happen, I just knew it. I'd Felt it all day.
Judging by the, uh, let's be generous and call them disturbed, looks on everyone's faces, I'd done something that wasn't good for the continued belief in my mental health and stability. Had I said that rant out loud?
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