Chương 86: 44-50
I awoke to a fully new experience. Well, okay, the horrible pain wasn't new, and I guess the waking up in a medical facility thing wasn't also fully new, but as Luna communicated to me not long after waking, this was a full on big city hospital and not some dinky town clinic. We were, apparently, in Viridian City Hospital, the city's biggest hospital, receiving the very best medical care my family's combined money and reputation could buy. I was also still receiving medical care, which was actually a fully new experience, given that at Lavender I'd woken days after I'd stopped needing active care beyond maintenance of my unconscious body. Though, for as much that we liked new experiences, this was one I did not care to repeat.
Still, according to what Luna had seen and heard, I now had a rather nasty cross-shaped scar on the left side of my neck and, at least for the moment, an artificially paralyzed larynx to keep me from accidentally making things worse. How the fuck had they managed that? Still, I appreciated not needing to be kept unconscious the whole time I healed. Not like we could get bored when we had two bodies to do things with, and this way I could start working out what fuck had happened. Obviously something somewhere had gone wrong, and this time we couldn't just escape and hope no one identified us.
Our bond reformed and Luna sent over the details of our current situation. Things hadn't gone to plan and I'd insisted on asking our mothers for help. Well, fuck. Everything was so fuzzy, and I couldn't remember much beyond a lot of unpleasant feelings and slight impressions. A small effort showed me there were memories of the missing time, but they were suppressed. Double fuck. How bad had it been? A memory from Luna showed me lying in bed, writhing in pain, three frankly horrible burns along the sides of my head and neck. Yeah, that looked like it sucked.
Apparently having a hole burned through your throat causes all sorts of nasty little issues that are hard to heal even with the rather ridiculous medical technology they had here. Who knew the larynx was so delicate? At least the burns on the sides of my head hadn't fried my brain, even if there was a significant chance of permanent damage to my voice and lungs. The doctors were still trying to assess the extent of my injuries and how much of it could be repaired. We had to get something really nice for Lucky-tchii and Daisy, because if what the doctors had said was right, the family pink blob of love and sweetness was the only reason things hadn't been worse.
"She's going to be okay loves. Azula's strong, and she's young. She'll bounce back in no time. She survived a Haunter swarm, somehow, this will be nothing in comparison."
Wait, Haunter swarm? The fuck had I missed? How the fuck did they know about that?! Ah, father had blabbed when they were questioning Big Little Sis, and wow, wasn't that an impressive hate boner. What the fuck had father done? It couldn't have been just because he talked. I needed to recover those memories, but Big Little Sis insisted that I wait until I was healed and released from the hospital before opening up that mess.
"But she could be mute!"
We fucking hoped not. We liked my voice, and we liked talking to our mothers and Marina and Daisy. I tried looking ahead, to see if maybe the future could shed some light into that doubt, but the future was turbulent and indistinct. That… only happened when we'd done something directly connected to the future we wanted to see, which said all kinds of disturbing things about the repressed memories. Big Little Sis was insistent that we wait though, she didn't want me to hurt myself if I reacted badly. Well, more badly than she expected me to react already. Plus side, I couldn't tell my mothers something I didn't remember, or have to lie about it! There was already so much we'd have to tell them, one less thing was always good. Hopefully Mom would be the comforting pillar of reason that she usually was and help make them feel better.
"At least she's psychic?"
Or not. Damn. It was always like that, she either made things better or tried making a joke and failed. This was going to be awkward. Maybe we could fake being asleep and nevermind, Gardemom had already sensed both halves of us were awake and she'd rushed inside with Mama and Mom following behind her. Fuck. We were not ready.
Concern. Fear. Relief. Joy.
We felt her hands on my right hand, then Mama joined in, and then Mom. There were a lot of tears falling. I felt pretty fucking guilty. I'd ended up hurting them anyway, just in a different, if admittedly unexpected, way and we hadn't even gotten around to telling them anything yet. Damnit all.
"We were so worried about you pumpkin. Please don't scare us like that again."
"Ra-Ralts."
"You must clearly be feeling okay if you're being a smartass."
Judging by their expressions and the feelings coming from them, telling your distraught mothers not to worry, that you're totally fine and that you're barely getting started on the crazy things you plan on doing isn't a good icebreaker. Who could have known?
"Ralts."
Maintaining our cavalier devil may care attitude was remarkably difficult in the face of our mothers' love and concern. We had an image to maintain, damnit! And yet here we were, apologizing. We were totally not pouting.
"Don't pout."
"Ralts!" We were not!
"Sure you weren't, baby girls. Now, how are you feeling Azula?"
"Ralts."
Terrible pain, horrible cold, general discomfort, hunger, a terrible craving for a fucking hit of morphine. Really any sort of comfort would do at this point. Though we made sure not to mention the bit about the morphine. I'd rather keep that one to ourselves for now, until they were less worried. No need to pile on more problems on them. Better pace things out, keep them from being too overwhelmed.
"We can get a doctor to give you some painkillers if it..."
Big Little Sis' response was emphatic, though I'll admit mine wasn't quite as strong as hers. I wanted to say yes, to give in and let the pain fade away in a blissful rush of warmth, I wanted that so much. I almost wanted to cry. Something about my inner struggle must have shown on my face or emotions, because they all looked pretty concerned about the whole thing.
But I knew what my response had to be.
No.
"Are you sure?"
No painkillers.
Yeah. They were suspicious now, Mom especially. We could practically feel her thoughts going down a path we didn't want them her to consider yet. Dread was clawing up her insides. She was law enforcement, she had to know what withdrawal was like, what someone acted like when high as a kite. They'd thought something was odd about me when we came back home, the horrible nightmares and low energy weren't normal for me. Probably about the only reason I'd skated by was because who would seriously expect a ten year old to have a drug problem?
"Baby?" Mom's voice was weak, trembling with fear and pain.
Later, please.
"Ralts." After everything that had happened, we just wanted a day with our mothers. The specialist doctor in charge of making sure my fleshy insides were healing well, as well as correcting any errors in said healing, dropped by to check on me. I'd been dreading having a camera shoved into my mouth and down my throat, but apparently they had better options here. Fucking yay for advanced technology and real time 3D imaging without the need for big unwieldy machines. Seriously, dude just had this device on wheels with a nice big screen rolled in, and waved a wand over my throat and my chest.
"You're healing as well as can be expected given your circumstances, Miss Sato." He settled the wand over my chest and gestured at the screen. There was something in his expression we couldn't quite figure out. "The primary points of interest are the scarring on the inside of your lungs, and the damage to your larynx."
"You're very lucky, young lady. As early as ten years ago the damage to your lungs could have turned into a slow death sentence. Now, it's not certain that it would have, but the damage was extensive, and that increased the chance." Oh, oh my. That's an interesting feeling. Utter terror and immeasurable relief at the same time, especially when felt by literally everyone in the room. "We'll monitor the situation over the next few months, during which you'll need to take medication just in case. If our fears are unfounded then you'll be in the clear, if not, then you'll have to take medication for the rest of your life. Unfortunate, but I figure you'd rather that than a slow death. It shouldn't affect your quality of life any more than the initial loss of pulmonary function you've already suffered, but of course, we'll have to wait and see. All of this, of course, only if you're diligent about keeping up with the medication you'll be prescribed."
"We'll make sure of it doctor." / "Ralts!" / Acquiescence.
Yeah, pretty sure we'd all be very keen to follow the good doctor's orders if it kept me alive. Still, I had a very fucking important question.
"Ralts."
"It shouldn't affect your viability as a trainer too much, so long as you make sure to check in with a doctor at least once a month to make sure the exertion of traveling doesn't cause issues or overwhelm the effects of the medication. I'm afraid the damage to your larynx might be a bigger issue with regards to your abilities as a trainer, since there's a chance your voice box might might not be up to the task of shouting commands anymore. You'll likely have problems speaking for long periods of time, both from pain and from weakness of the associated muscles."
Oh, good, nothing of too much consequence from that angle, at least. I was alive, and that meant we could continue our quest, and maybe hunt a legendary that could heal me completely. After all, the hardest part would probably be finding it. Still, we'd need to find a way to talk with Marina in the meantime.
"You should be ready to be discharged as early as the day after tomorrow." Ecstatic happy hugs and tears all around. "You'll be instructed as to how to take care of yourself in light of your injuries before you leave."
He left not much later after answering some questions from our mothers. We mostly concerned ourselves with basking in their presence and planning our next moves. I wondered, why was father not here as well? And wow, sis, that's one massive fucking hate boner you got going on there, what the fuck. This was the second time. What the hell had I forgotten in those repressed memories? Probably very bad things, if Big Little Sis' feelings on the matter were anything to go by.
By an unspoken accord we all kept to light topics during the next two days, putting off talking about the pink donphan dancing around us, but we could only put off talking about things for so long. Eventually we'd need to talk. Hopefully it could be put off for long enough for my voice to be sufficiently healed that I could speak . It was all rather anxiety inducing if we were being honest, it made me itch for morphine. Hopefully the urge would decrease with time. I was thankful to have sis with me, I wasn't sure I would have managed to hold off with such easy access until I was discharged, not without her support.
As things stood, we were certain Mom had already figured it out given my rather strained reactions any time I was asked if I was in pain or needed anything. I wasn't sure how to feel about the feelings coming from her, and we were fairly sure our other mothers had noticed something going on with her. She felt so much pain for us, such compassion. It hurt.
We Teleported home once I was discharged. The small flare of pain from the mostly healed soul wound did not go unnoticed though, which was bad but manageable. We had been to speak as often as possible, but to stop at the first sign of pain until all soreness receded. There'd been a few breathing exercises too, but that was easy. We may not meditate often anymore, but we spent most of our lives up until we left for our journey meditating to improve our phenomenal cosmic power. It'd worked pretty well, we thought, given we were obscenely powerful and others weren't.
Daisy ran up to us and hugged us as soon as she saw we were home. We hugged her back. We'd missed her. Our mothers took this as an invitation to start a group hug and then that day was pretty much over because no one wanted to end it. I tried speaking for the first time since I awoken. It was rough and scratchy, a far cry from the voice we were used to and one that instantly brought down the mood a little when they first heard it, but the words made up for it. No one else must ever learn of this, it would destroy our image. I could already hear the calls of "Mama's girl" if it got out.
"Love you Daisy. Love you moms. I'm sorry." For causing you pain, for disappointing you, for so many things.
45
I awoke in my bed, my sister curled up to me and my arms around her. Huh. Group hug girl's night. That had been amazingly cathartic. We had totally not cried because we'd missed our mothers or because being surrounded by so many people had actually managed to beat back the cold. Good way to distract myself from the pain too. I disentangled myself from her and went to put on my jacket so I could go get breakfast and wait… I didn't need to hide the scars anymore, did I? Right then, I grabbed my sister, guess I was carrying her to the kitchen in my arms and not her usual spot.
Just as well, I actually liked my scars. They were all still an angry red, but even so, I liked them, and to a degree was proud of them. We'd survived were others would have died. Well, the ones on my arm. I wasn't sure how the new one on my neck had come about yet, and sis insisted on me waiting before finding out. Given that she was usually the more levelheaded of the two of us I went with her suggestion, but I was seriously getting some bad vibes about the whole thing.
I found father in the kitchen, looking frankly horrible. Like holy shit, poor guy looked like he hadn't slept for a week, or showered, or eaten. He looked completely miserable. Even asleep, sis' hatred towards him was strong. It was hard to see him, and it was hard to see him like this. And he was drinking. I checked my poketch, 8:24 AM. Looking into the future showed nothing but indistinct shadows. Damn. His back was to us, so he didn't notice me walking up to him, or me setting sis down on a chair beside him. He did notice when I hugged him, and he was more than a little surprised. He kinda jumped in his seat. Yay for ninja stealth skills.
"I thought we'd tal… talked about t… this, father. You really... shouldn't be drinking s… so much, it worries me." It was a little demoralizing to hear my own voice sound so rough, so different. I felt like that one villain from those space movies from my past life, Darth Vader or something. Speaking was hard, it seemed like my voice gave out after a few words, and saying that much had already made my throat sore. The biggest takeaway though was his reaction to hearing my voice. He went from despondent to utterly crushed and depressed. He turned to me so quickly it startled me, hugging me, crying, and muttering apologies. I tried to comfort him as best I could, but every time I tried speaking he got worse. Eventually, I settled for sending him comforting emotions and meaning directly into his mind. He felt responsible, guilty even, for what had happened to me, but why?
Sis woke up around then, and father flinched from the hate coming off from her when she saw him. I could feel her struggling to reign in her emotions, and so I did for her what she usually did for me. I dove into her mind and pushed down her anger, her fear, it was hard, and I didn't manage to fully rearrange them, but it helped a great deal. She was now merely slightly annoyed at him. Progress. We couldn't properly deal with this until I remembered whatever the fuck it was I was forgetting. Father wanted to leave now, and we had a feeling he was going to drown his sorrows. Fucking hell. How the fuck did things get to this? Besides being a horrible cunt to him, of course, this seemed like a little more than just that.
"Please take care of… yourself."
He hugged me harder for a moment, before leaving. We had to fix that. It hurt to see him like that, and to do so I would need to remember so I could know what the issue was. Information passed between sis and I, and we settled on a time. After we spoke to our mothers about the morphine. Big Little Sis felt I should have their support for this, and wasn't that ominous as fuck.
Enough of heavy things for now. It was time to make breakfast with our phenomenal cosmic powers. What to make? Something soft would be best. Fried eggs, and maybe a huge mug of chocolate. Wonder what kind of pokemon laid the eggs we ate. We'd do some training with our pokemon after. It felt weird not to train, even if we were fresh out of the hospital. We finished our food and grabbed some snacks for our other pokemon, then passed through our room to pick up the rest of our team.
We sat down on a rock near the river that ran through the compound's grounds. Yeah, this was pretty fucking nice. Rushing river, pleasant breeze, cloudy skies, fucking perfect day out. Only way it could be better would be if we had a smart device and we could browse reddit, or watch videos, or fuck about on forums. Oh, we could invent conspiracy theories! We definitely needed to speed up the internet's development here. Zeus and Sozin went at each other as best they could what with still being at their first stage, and the rest of our pokemon had a nice free for all a little bit away from us. Hopefully my lungs would be well enough that I could train with Zeus when he evolved. What best way to improve my middling fighting skills and firebending than to train with one of the best fighting and fire type pokemon in the world?
We'd been outside for a couple hours when Mama sat down beside us and hugged us to her. We cuddled up to her. We sat like that for a few minutes, us silently directing our pokemon, and Mom watching. She took a deep breath and kissed the top of my head, then she put a bottle of pills in front my face. Ah. Damn. First day out and I'd already forgotten. I fished a pill out and downed it dry. At least we had experience with that.
"I love you baby girls, so much. We all love you. Please know that you can talk to us about anything, okay? We're here for you."
"I don't want… to worry you." There wasn't any energy left to the protest anymore, really, it was pretty much pro forma. We'd already decided to talk to them. They knew there was a problem now, and not talking would be hurting them, likely a lot more than simply biting the bullet and telling them the truth, especially Mama. Wouldn't want her insecurities to resurface. More than they probably already would, given how much we'd kept secret.
"We're your mothers, baby girl. It's our job to worry about you."
That… They were, weren't they, and it was, wasn't it? I'd never thought about it like that. We were so used to doing everything on our own, relying exclusively on ourselves and our abilities. My past life had been like that too, nearly incapable of asking for help, and unused to having family that not only wanted to help, but also cared enough to actually make an effort to help. It felt weird, so very weird. It began to occur to us that we may have issues and deficiencies on the subject of asking for help. And trusting people with our problems. And a bunch of other things.
"I know it may be tough, you have all these memories… But please, talk to us?"
All these memories? What…
"You- You know. How do you know?"
"Pumpkin, you didn't exactly make much of an effort to hide it. We didn't know for sure until Oak visited, but well, we had theories about it for a while before that."
"Oh." Well, fuck. Obviously they didn't think I was some sort of evil spirit possessing their poor daughter or something asinine like that, so at least there was that. I wasn't sure how to feel about our mothers knowing about my past life though. It was kind of a private thing.
"We're waiting for… my voice to get a little... better."
"We'll be here for you as long as it takes, pumpkin." We spent a few hours like that, before heading back in for lunch. We were going to break her heart with what we had to say, I just knew it.
It took about a week for my voice to strengthen up until I could get through a whole sentence without it giving out after a few words. Everything was so tense, and dealing with stress was not a thing I did well. Sis helped a lot, keeping me from freaking out or Teleporting out to find morphine with which to check out from all problems surrounding us. On that front, what the utter fuck? How had I gotten so dependant on it and not noticed? At least Zeus had evolved into a Combusken now, which meant I could try to fight him as soon as the doctors gave me the all clear on strenuous activities.
We'd switched our daily calls to Marina for long text message conversations. We hadn't told her why yet, but we'd call her soon, or maybe visit, and tell her. Well, as soon as I knew what had happened. It would be hard to tell her something I didn't know. Not impossible, since I was me and sis knew, but it'd likely be simpler to just remember the repressed memories floating around in my head.
That was all something for later though. Right now we had to deal with coming clean to our family, which was a rather fucking daunting proposition. I was terrified, of what they'd say and what they'd do. Still, the die had been cast, and we'd asked everyone to gather in the dining room. How the fuck was I going to explain things? Maybe we could grab some of father's whisky? Get us some good ol' fashioned liquid courage.
To talk to our mothers and my father about my issues with drug abuse. Yeah, okay, probably not the best of ideas, given that we were fairly certain they would notice we were drunk if we tried. Not to mention it would paint things in a pretty bad light when the video of us illegally acquiring a bottle of wine finally came up. Right. No liquid courage or any other kind of chemical chill enhancers for this conversation. No need to make them think we also had a drinking problem.
The living room was tense, walking to the love seat facing our family felt like walking to an execution. We sat before them, fidgeting while we tried to come up with the words to start things out.
"Things have happened that I should probably have informed you about."
46
"You know some of them already." Our baby girls' new voice was hard to hear even after a week of doing her best to speak as often as possible. Samuel couldn't even bear to look Azula in the eye, made all the worse by the fact that she didn't seem to remember what had happened, though Luna insisted it was only a matter of time before she did. She was also very insistent that she would need our support when she did.
He remembered very little about the devices he'd made, but he insisted that there was simply no way for them to have malfunctioned the way they had. The destruction of his memories had been thorough, but he was adamant about that. We believed him, mostly because we all knew he would sooner cut off his arms than directly endanger his only daughter in any way. We'd been very clear that inventing devices that negated our daughter's best weapon with which to protect herself was very much indirectly endangering her. He'd already agreed to lock away all data relating to the technology when everything had gone to hell and Luna had done something hasty. I'd known she hated the things, but seeing how much… It was frightening.
"I guess it all started when I got these." She said, gesturing to the red scars on her left arm. She'd stopped wearing her jacket around the house as often. I got the feeling she was proud of them and that she'd hidden them purely for our benefit. She traced them when she was thinking or training her pokemon, fingers dancing over the raised skin. She was doing it right now. "They did so much damage… I felt them bite off chunks of my soul, and the Licks are the second worst thing we've ever felt. Maybe the first. It's hard to judge degrees with things that terrible."
"We've thought about it a little, and honestly, it's no surprise people don't survive being Licked by pokemon of the Gengar line. I almost didn't, and we don't think I could have survived if our psychic abilities were less than what they are, on a few different levels. It's one of the reasons we didn't bother explaining how we did it. It wouldn't help other victims."
She closed her eyes and shuddered, fear and pain spreading over her face. I could see Luna hugging her, comforting her. She hadn't dealt with what had happened to her yet, at least not fully.
"It eats away at the tether between your body and your soul until it dies and then there's nothing connecting the two. Even with this knowledge and power comparable to ours, chances are few would have a soul weird enough to allow them to reconnect it, or a way to force the tie to the physical world, like sis did for me. Though I suppose if they were fast enough they could try revitalizing the connecting point, I didn't get a chance to try that."
"It doesn't really matter. It hurt my powers, that's what matters. I could barely do anything without getting horrible migraines and well, the closest thing I could say would be soul pain. It's hard to explain. I overdid it with them at the Route 11-12 Gate, and I… I took some painkillers from the infirmary there. I didn't bother checking what they were. I just wanted the pain to stop. It hurts so much. It didn't stop the pain, not really, but they helped, made things better, bearable…"
Oh baby girl. It was hard to hear her talk about her own death so matter of factly, to hear that she'd suffered so much. She was hugging Luna now, drawing as much comfort from her as she could. She was trembling, and when she spoke again her voice was angry, angrier than I'd ever seen her.
"By the time I realized what the painkillers had done, I couldn't just stop taking them. We couldn't be sure how long it'd take to stop, what would happen. We couldn't let that stop us from being at the Conference. Our plan was to take more time with it, but then the Suicune we captured tried to kill us, and the pain was so bad. We ran out faster than planned because of that"
She rubbed her throat, likely sore from talking so much. I couldn't think. So much had happened to her in the few months she'd been out in the world, she'd accomplished so much, had nearly died far too many times, and to top it all off she'd done it all while struggling with a drug problem. What do you say to that? What do you do when your daughter tells you that she'd faced off against so many things before she was even a teen? For the first time in her life, I thanked the life and times of the woman she'd been before this one. I had a feeling that it was only the experience and perspective provided by that past life that had let them overcome the hurdles she'd faced as well as she had.
"Sis tells me the pain was too much to contain while also keeping my powers from wrecking the island we picked to detox, her, and my own body. We had a choice to make, and I chose to come to you for help. You know most of the rest, sis knows more, though she's not telling for now."
"What was it that you were taking baby?" Ashley's said from beside me, a pained tone
in her voice. Azula's face twisted into a grimace.
"Morphine."
Oh.
"I need… I need some air. I'll let you guys talk for now."
The room was silent for a few minutes after Azula left. Frankly, after the bombs she'd dropped on us and how hard she'd taken it, she probably really did need it.
"That was not something I was expecting when she asked us here."
"I had my suspicions, but I hoped there was nothing to them. Then again, someone knew." Ashely said, looking at Daisy.
"I… I stand by what I said. This was probably the best way things could have turned out. I made sure she'd check in with me regularly, and I sent Lucky-tchii with her so she could look after her."
"You should have told us as soon as you found out! We could have helped stop using sooner! How long did you know?" Ashely was furious. She'd seen how bad things could get at her old job. Seen the depths of people could sink to when under the influence of drugs like what our baby had been taking. We'd helped her deal when it got to be too much, but I don't think there was a way to help someone deal with "Your ten year old daughter is an addict." Certainly I didn't know how to deal with it.
"I found her out the day before she left to challenge Cinnabar."
"That's… not that long." Ashely slumped into me. "We failed, didn't we? We're terrible parents."
"I don't think there's much that we could have done to keep this from happening. You taught her well, and it's probably the only reason she's alive. She knows how to survive, how to fight. It's almost ridiculous. When I found out about the Haunter swarm… I tried to keep her from leaving again, to stop her from going back out. She wouldn't have any of it. She said things, but it made me realize there's nothing we could have done to keep her safe, not while she has access to her abilities. We couldn't have stopped her from going out even if we tried. She doesn't want to be safe, doesn't care about being safe. She wants to fight, to conquer, she wants power, and there's not a good Arceus damned thing anyone could do to stop her from trying. Not without doing more harm than good." Samuel said, speaking up for the first time since we'd gathered to hear our daughter's story.
"That why you made the suppressor devices." I said, and watched him age years in a second.
"I'd been toying with the idea for some time before, in case her mental state degraded even more. It didn't, she even improved, but after what she said that night… She apologized for the necessity, in her eyes at least, but only that. I don't remember how I made them anymore, but I can only imagine I finished them as a result of that conversation."
Irritation.
What's done is done, what will we do now?
Trust Garde to skip to the point.
"Luna assures us that she has no intention of letting her fall back into it, and that Azula is terrified and hates it as much as it's possible for a person to feel something. The only thing we can really do is support her. Punishing her won't really help anything." Ashely said.
"We'll support her, that's what. Make sure she has no temptation to slide back, keep an eye on her in case she does. We'll call her often if she's away from home."
"We can ask her to stay home for a little bit. She'll probably accept. You saw how much she missed us, and I checked, she's already registered to compete at the Conference. She can train here almost as well as anywhere else, at least until her Torchic and Bagon evolve."
"And we need to get them to trust us more with their issues. A lot of this could have been avoided if she'd just talked to us. It all seems to come back to the bundle of neuroses that came with her past life, which are probably the only thing that gave her the perspective she needed to know she had to stop." Hopefully we could get her to open up to us more.
47
We trained nonstop until our next doctor's appointment, where they poked and prodded me until they decided that my lungs were in good enough condition to allow for light exercise. I even got some sort of spray for just in case my lungs refused to work properly from too much exertion. Unfortunately, they had also upped the dosage of the pills they'd given me to prevent further damage to them. Guess I was going to take them for the rest of my life or until they invented something better. Hopefully the latter. Or we found a pokemon capable of healing me.
Our mothers had been clingy since we'd come clean to them about things, and if we were being honest, we were really enjoying spending time with them. Sigh. We were huge fucking mamas' girls. They'd been pretty frosty towards Daisy though, despite us coming to her defense. We were doing our best to mend their relationship, and we were pretty sure we'd managed a breakthrough when the story of Daisy's friend and how he'd died came to light. Hopefully things would get better from there. My relationship with father was similarly strained, but things seemed to be getting better between us.
We woke early the day after our doctor's appointment. It was time to fight Zeus. We let out the rest of our team to fight among themselves, and assigning Mai to train Sozin apart from the rest. It wouldn't do to neglect our mini dragon or it would never stop being mini. For now though, I faced off against my fighting rooster while Luna observed from her spot sitting on our usual rock. She counted down, and when she hit zero, Zeus blurred forward, kicking at the spot where my head had been an instant before.
I swung in a vertical spinning kick from the arch I'd bent my back to dodge Zeus' opener. He blocked with his left arm, and I pushed off it in an acrobatic jump assisted by a jet of fire blasting from the sole of my foot. I kept the stream of fire going, throwing my body into a spin and taking the energy from my body's movement to throw fast fireballs at him. He dodged them adroitly, moving only enough to let them pass him by, and then blurring forward to try to kick me as I landed.
I barely managed to time it correctly, but I twisted just enough to springboard off his leg and explode a fireball in his face. I wasn't as fast as him, not even close, so I was limited to throwing more fire at him while he was in the air. He landed and was in front of me again, this time trying to punch my head off. I dodged, and what followed was something straight out of my namesake's world. Dodges, blocks, punches, kicks, all looking like they'd come out of a martial arts demonstration or movie.
It was exhilarating, right up until my arms refused to move fast enough to block a kick and Zeus ragdolled me through the air. Sis caught me before I could hit the floor with so much force, but still, that had fucking hurt and I couldn't breathe. Black started to ring around my vision, and then sis was there, triggering the inhaler I'd been given into my mouth.
Damn. I hadn't even noticed when my lungs had stopped cooperating. I hugged sis to me. That sucked, but at least we now knew I could keep up with a fairly acceptable fighting pokemon for a short period of time. It was going to be fun to bounce around any Rockets stupid enough to try to have a go at me. We sent Zeus to train with Sozin and Mai, while we let my body rest up. Not being able to breathe sucked a lot, and was frankly a little terrifying to feel.
We'd been laying there for half an hour when Mama laid down beside us and hugged us to her side.
"Shouldn't you be paying attention to your pokemon while they train?"
"We are. We don't actually need our eyes to see, you know."
"Oh. Well, okay then. How are you feeling, everything fine?"
"I've been thinking it's time to try remembering what happened that night. Sis agrees."
"Are you sure pumpkin?"
I nodded into her side. There was no point in procrastinating on this. We were pretty sure it was only a matter of time before something triggered the memory on its own, and it would be better if it were to happen under our terms. I dove into my mind, finding the repressed memory easily. I dove into it, and felt the world fall away, then...
Everything was so cold.
The pain was gone, but so was everything else. I couldn't see, could barely feel anything on my skin. I was numb. What'd happened? I tried to expand my senses but there was nothing there. My power wasn't there. My power wasn't there. No. No, no, no. I strained as hard as I could, trying to find it, trying to find Little Big Sis, I found her, barely there, faint, fading slowly away. No. I had to find my power, I couldn't let Luna die. I reached, burning through as much power as I needed to find it.
It was slow going, but when I did find my power it was distant, and completely dormant. There was a wall between my power and I. I was starting to recognize what it was that I was feeling. It was like the Haunter licks, but slower, less immediately lethal. With how much energy I'd used to find my power in the time it'd taken, I'd have been dead already. I pushed at the wall keeping us apart, and I felt something besides the numb cold that had been my world since I woke up, if indeed I was awake. Whenever I pushed at the wall, spots on my temples would warm, as would a band around my neck. I couldn't break it, it was strong and I had barely anything left. I would run out of energy and die trying before whatever the fuck this thing was gave out.
I couldn't die, I wasn't ready, it wasn't time. There was still so much to do, so much of life to live, I couldn't die yet. I had to save my sister, and I couldn't leave my mothers without their daughters. I was fading. I was crying. I wanted to live. I tried to scream, but I could barely breathe. I was desperate. I threw more energy at the wall holding my power, it needed to go down, but all that happened was the spots of heat flared back up. Were they perhaps the source of the wall? I ran my fingers over my neck, I could barely feel anything, but the heat generated when trying to reach my powers made it easier. A choker, and little squares attached to the sides of my head.
I tried pulling them off, but they were stuck to my skin. I couldn't even get my fingers under the choker. These things had to be the problem. Could I short circuit them? No, too much of a risk. Lightning was hard. Easy to mess up and easy to lose control over it. Something that close to me, stuck to my skin? I'd end up electrocuting myself if I tried. I could burn them off… They weren't over major blood vessels, well, part of the choker was, but the front end wasn't. Hopefully I wouldn't fry my brain in doing so. Best if I stacked the deck on that front. A very intense but short and concentrated burst of fire. Right, I was going to have to do a finger lightsaber impression. Great. Not like I was dying, nearly insensate, low on juice, and terrified.
Everything was so faint. I could barely think. Was I breathing? I had to live. I couldn't die.
Energy gathered at the tip of my index fingers, what little I had left, and then the strongest flames I'd ever made burned the devices blocking my power. It hurt, even through the cold and numbness, a terrible burning agony, but I felt as much of my power broke free, and Life flowed into my body. I felt my sister not too far from me, still a little faint, but alive and healthy, felt Life come from her and burn away the cold. One left. Fire and agony bloomed again, and I was free. Luna Teleported to me, my sister was safe, with me. All would be right with the world now. Our bond was made whole again, and information passed between us. Everything hurt so much. Breathing hurt, crying hurt, but Luna held my hand, and everything would be okay.
"Please be okay baby girl. Please wake up. I need you to be okay."
I felt someone shaking me, pulling me away from the strength of the memory, away from the cold, from the pain, and the terror. I wasn't numb. My powers weren't gone. I wasn't going to die. Sis wasn't gone. Things would be okay. Things were already okay. I was lightheaded, felt tears sliding down my cheeks.
"You need to breathe slower pumpkin. Come on, it's okay, we got you."
Mama.
"Ralts!"
Sis.
I was safe with them. Things would be okay. I could trust them. I let myself sink into darkness. They'd make sure everything was okay.
48
We hid our presence perfectly. It was trick we would have never thought of if not for the memory of what it felt like to be so completely and utterly separated from my power while also being so close to dying. Our future sight had finally given us the all clear to approach Saffron City without causing a massive fucking headache and we planned to profit immensely from our visit. Problem was, of course, that Sabrina lived there and she was possibly strong enough a psychic to be an equal to one of us. We didn't care for anyone knowing our business, so we were going to do this ninja style and then after we were done we'd visit the city officially.
We waited until it was late night to sneak into the city, disguised in dark clothing, a mask, and a hood. We'd even painted over sis' natural coloration, though we weren't planning on letting her be seen at all. If all went according to plan, she would have no need to come out from the backpack we were carrying. Mai and Ty Lee had scouted the Silph Co. building and confirmed the presence of an extremely heavy Team Rocket presence, far in excess of what my vague memories said should have been there. Seems our attack on the Game Corner base had caused them reinforce this operation. Not like it'd make a difference.
That was fine, it simply meant this one would be a target rich environment. We'd taken the time to label every single person in the building, ranging from "Necessary Collateral Damage" to "Important Skill Acquisition Target". Honestly, most of the people working for the company were off limits, but a couple of the top scientist were Rocket loyalists, and the Rockets had brought in a few of their own R&D staff. We were fairly certain they would be enough to let us skip a decade or two of higher education in our bid to design ourselves a smart device worth the name, especially since we had access to a Porygon to really make it smart. Maybe we could even design an upgrade package for our AI to get it to evolve ahead of the release of the official Porygon Up-Grade.
Grabbing them all would be difficult without throwing the whole building into a frenzy, but one of their software engineers was very conveniently all by himself in the 9th floor, and it occurred to us that he likely had all sorts of access to the company network. There were no security cameras in the room he was in. It was simply a matter of having Luna project a psionic suppression field like the one Gardemom had used so long ago to keep us from finding out who my father was ahead of time. We positioned Mai in place to act as a homing beacon, and we Teleported behind the man, telekinetically sending a needle coated in the soporific Misao Kirk had tried to use on us into his neck. Then we Teleported out to our island with him along for the ride.
Pulling all of the knowledge from his mind was surprisingly easy, even when taking care not to let any of his being sneak into us. How had the ninja bitch managed to parasitize our souls? Maybe being drunk had made it a lot easier? An hour later and the entirety of Edward Slate's higher education was gone. He was even alive and mostly unharmed! Sure, there were big chunks of his soul missing, but they'd heal. Probably. Huh. We hadn't counted on that. The man was horrible, and had done a fair number nasty things throughout his life. Extortion, blackmail, rape, and more. We didn't want to let him live, so we drew our knife, and slit his throat.
We Teleported back to Silph Co. and uploaded our Porygon into their network, armed with our latest victim's credentials. They had their own Porygons defending the network, but they had no reason to act against mine. After all, it had all of the right passwords to guarantee access, it was practically one of theirs. It looped security monitors, turned off all cameras, and disabled all sensors. Then we grabbed the last four targets and spent the next four hours ripping their knowledge out of their heads. None survived. It seemed Edward Slate's soul had been made of sterner stuff than the average.
We burned the bodies and dropped them deep in the Viridian Forest. Now it was time to finish dealing with the Rocket infestation in the Silph Co. building. We walked in through the front door this time, and let Ty Lee and Mai loose. Suffer not a fucking dumb idiot Team Rocket member to live. Halfway through the third floor our ghosts returned to us with chunks of souls for us to eat. Which was decidedly weird, since we hadn't asked them to, but it felt wrong not to accept their gift. We gave a third of it to Ozai, since we couldn't let him out to feast. He was too recognizable and there would be a lot of survivors who could blab about our pet eldritch abomination participating in a massacre.
It wasn't until the tenth floor that they encountered real resistance. Someone had released pokemon strong enough to challenge our ghosts. That was unexpected. We Teleported into the room in time to see a fairly average looking Nidoking and a Nidoqueen taller than our Gengars bash Ty Lee into a puddle of gas. Behind them stood a tall man dressed in a dark suit. His hair was cut short, and he had a look of rage upon his face that turned even nastier when he saw us. When the fuck had this guy gotten here?
"You… You must be the one who razed my operation in Celadon." An ugly smile spread across his lips. "I'm going to enjoy making you pay for that. You two, kill them."
I reached for Starmie, fucking damnit, still needed a name, and started a game of don't get killed by huge poison monsters intent on doing me harm while our pokemon tried kill them back. Mai played defense, intercepting their attempts on my life while Starmie bombarded them with Hydro Pumps and Psychics. When Starmie managed to knock the Nidoking through the walls of the building and out into the air above the street, it gave us a chance to flip over the Nidoqueen and put our knife into Giovanni Vittore's side.
His reaction was instantaneous, a hand grabbing our neck with crushing strength and the other stopping our left arm on its way to stab him again. We struggled in his grip, but he was apparently a very fit middle aged man and my body was that of a very physically unimpressive ten year old. A slightly to mildly crippled ten year old even. It felt like my throat would give out under his hand any second now, and my lungs burned and spasmed, trying and failing to get me the air I needed.
"Stupid child. Die."
No. I couldn't die. I wouldn't die. It wasn't the time. No no no no no. We slammed a Psychic into his elbow, and the force had him throw us to the side when he lost his grip. He screamed in pain, cursing at us, before taking a running leap out of the hole his Nidoking had made. The flash of a pokemon being released came from outside, and then the Nidoqueen was recalled. Our pokemon tried to give chase, but by the time they made it out, Giovanni was halfway to the city limits in the back of a Pidgeot. Fuck. That hadn't gone as planned. Next time the Rocket Boss was dead.
We extracted Porygon from the Silph Co. network, coughing non stop all the while. My lungs and throat were in agony. We Teleported out to our island, taking a hit from my inhaler once we were safely home. We needed rest, and we crashed into the bed in our little cabin, we barely managed to muster the energy to open the backpack sis was in so she could crawl out. We were going to have to visit my doctor tomorrow. Coughing blood meant Giovanni had managed to do actual damage, or that the subsequent violent coughing had. Thankfully the bleeding had stopped before long, so it wasn't an emergency, and our future sight seemed to agree.
Sleep came quickly, comforted by the knowledge that our ghosts were looking after us.
49
Fire and blood. We knew that line from somewhere, we couldn't remember from where, but it was practically the tagline of our lives since we left for our journey. Well, less fire and more destruction, but the point stood. Fucking seriously, it was one shit heap after another. Rockets, Haunters, dying a couple times, drug addiction, another Rocket, even more Rockets, an assassination attempt by a legendary pokemon, horribly horrible detox, another near death experience, a light case of permanent laryngeal and lung damage, and then horrible psychological trauma. Fucking what could be next? At least my usual doctor in Viridian had said there should be no lasting damage from getting manhandled by the throat when we botched the last part of the Silph Co. operation.
We needed to integrate our different capabilities into a cohesive and all encompassion combat style. Giovanni should have never escaped alive or with his free will. We could have killed him a dozen different ways without having to even get close him, much less the many other ways we should have considered when we were up close. We couldn't let ourselves fall into a single box at any time when dealing with problems. We were psychics, ninjas, thieves, blood knights, killers, saboteurs, and much more, always all of them, not just one or two at a time. We'd fallen too far into acting like a ninja and when presented with a problem had reacted just like one, even though exploding Giovanni's head with a Psychic would have been easier than trying to stab him. We'd work on it.
Our current accommodations were far from the luxury we'd grown up accustomed to, but at least phenomenal cosmic powers helped blunt the edges of essentially living in a hastily built shack with nearly no modern amenities. I wasn't ready to go back to the compound yet, no matter how much we missed Daisy and our mothers, or how much they wanted us back. Father was there. We were even putting off building our next, next, next generation smart device because we didn't really have access to his labs if I wasn't willing to be anywhere near him. Intellectually we knew I was being irrational, but what he'd done, even if he'd done so unknowingly… I needed time.
Sis hugged me, trying to stop another downward spiral before it had a chance to really get going. I could feel her in my head, which was probably unhealthy, but given that I was literally incapable of surviving without her, we figured what was one more minor issue that we would never realistically be capable of having to deal with. Hell, sis could literally not ever go into a pokeball again without risking me dropping dead the instant her psychic powers stopped existing in a coherent state. We'd already disabled her pokeball's recall, release, and storage mechanisms in such a way it was impossible to tell without tinkering with it, or repair them. Wouldn't want some good samaritan to recall her in the interest of public safety if she ever had another little fit like when she'd attacked father.
We still weren't sure how the fuck we'd managed what we had though, and running experiments wasn't exactly possible. You know, since psychics were rare, strong psychics were rarer still, and we weren't sure we were quite ready to go full Mengele on this bitch. We were reprehensible soul eating abominations with an impressive body count, but even we had limits. At least we could observe our own souls and those of our other pokemon, and hypothesize. Which we did, a lot.
Apparently a normal looking soul is as ours had been before all the shit we'd put them through: A beautiful structure of lights stretching down into the material world from some weird as fuck place that wasn't reality. Well, minus the chunks missing from mine when I first saw it. Still, the point stood. Our souls now looked odd, still beautiful, but weird. They reminded us a little of Ozai to be honest, all eldritch abomination-y and stuff. The points where mine tethered to hers and hers to my body were especially fascinating. It was like crossing from one space that wasn't reality to a completely different place that was also not reality. We were pretty sure we could learn to give Hoopa an inferiority complex if we studied that phenomenon enough.
We also couldn't forget the rough edges from where Haunters had bitten chunks out of mine, and the ones from where I'd cut out the parasite that was Misao Kirk. It led us to the unhelpful but amusing conclusion that souls were bullshit, especially when you considered that the bitch's parasitic soul had been divided between ours and yet was still a singular entity. We'd come to the conclusion the clumsiness we'd acquired after the Haunter attack was because of the delay caused by the relay between my soul and my body through Tiny Big Sis.
We were also fairly certain we'd identified the reason why I was always so fucking cold. The dead connector point was still there in my soul, leaking freezing cold, and was now fully encased by points of light that led to the new connector points. We'd tried removing it, but the increased size and "weight" of my soul from eating other souls had done to me what it had done to Ozai and entrenched the dead bit inside living bits. In other words, I was screwed on that front too, but at least all we needed to do to mitigate it was to be near other living beings.
Ah well, at least I wasn't about to have a breakdown anymore. Maybe we should follow it up with a good old rousing spot of fighting our fire rooster, just to be sure, then a call to Marina, and finish it up with calling our mothers and Daisy. Maybe if we exhausted my body enough, if we distracted ourselves enough, I'd stop remembering the worst of my near death experiences in my nightmares. We were going to postpone visiting Saffron again though. It occurred to us that visisting a possibly still slightly unstable psychic, who may or may not take offense to our consumption of souls, while in a vulnerable mental state, might be a terrible idea. Paranoid? Us? Preposterous.
It took two weeks in our shack, spent digesting the knowledge we'd stolen from Team Rocket, suffering nightmares, and generally missing our family before we gave in and decided to confront my new fear of father. We weren't quite sure I had it in me to actually be in the same room as him yet, but we could try for the same roof. It almost seemed like I was collecting phobias. Arachnophobia, thanatophobia… was there a name for a phobia of your own father? Patriphobia? Ugh. Maybe we should dig into our big jar o' weed and see if it was enough to chill me the fuck out. We gathered our things and Teleported to our room. May as well get things over with.
Our senses spread over the compound in an instant, and we felt mom in the primary security office, father in his main lab, and Daisy in the dining room. Wonder where our other mothers were? We headed for one of father's empty labs for now. We didn't feel like talking to anyone in person yet. Not after the breakdown I'd had after waking up from remembering my self-mutilation. Or the one after sis filled me in on the rest of the story. Or the one when I woke up to father leaning over me trying to wake me from a nightmare. Point was, it hadn't been good times for anyone.
Right then, time to start manufacturing of the prototype we'd been designing in our head for the last couple weeks. An unholy fusion of an iPhone and an Android phone. I could already feel the hate coming from millions upon millions of fanboys of both brands coming from the world where my first life had lived. The design and user interface of one, with the adaptability and customizability of the other. Coupled with the bullshit technology we had at our disposal and our creation would be the height of technological perfection.
And no, there was no maniacal cackling, no matter what anyone who might have seen or heard us might have had to say on the matter. We levitated various tools and materials in front of us and got to work. Fucking perfection, honestly, this was fun. A few hours later had a completed motherboard and touch screen attached. We connected the combined phone, pokedex, and computer to the lab's mainframe, and uploaded Porygon into it. We'd get our little AI that could to use the ridiculous processing power of the supercomputer to cheat its way through making the OS. After all, it was going to be its new home, we had to make sure it was comfortable and optimized for AI bullshit. A little direction here and there to achieve the desired traits, and we'd have something amazing in no time. Well, several hours if what Porygon said was right, but the point stood.
We stood and stretched, that had been surprisingly entertaining. We were going to have to tinker more later. We turned and jumped when we saw Mom sitting on one of the work tables watching us with a smile on her face. Said smile turned into a grin at our reaction. Mean. We still hugged her though.
"So, baby, you've got quite the laugh there. You'd make for a perfect mad scientist."
What?
"How…?"
"Security cameras."
"Oh." We were not blushing.
"Come on baby girls, let's go get something to eat. Oak's going to be holed up in his lab for a few hours and we can have the kitchen all to ourselves. We'll make something good."
The mention of my father caused a slight twitch that our mom did not miss, and we tried very hard to ignore the look of sympathy she gave me. We'd get over it, eventually, even if we had to use classical conditioning to make it stick. Worst case scenario we'd go for heavy duty psychic surgery and make me get over it, but we were pretty sure we'd manage without resorting to such extreme options. Yes, we were being more open with our mothers, and talking with them helped a lot on those first days after remembering, but there was only so much they could do. At least we could hug them now.
50
Testing a new device is both fun and annoying. Fun because we now finally had a media player and so much more, and annoying because bugs kept cropping up. Some that were quickly resolved on the fly by Porygon, and others that had me opening up the casing we'd made and messing around with the internals. Once we'd even messed around with the internals without removing the casing.
Of course, one of the first things we did once we were satisfied with the… What would we call it? We'd have to think on it for now. We'd commandeered a couple of father's unused servers and set up the infrastructure for a video streaming service. By which we meant we'd had Porygon do the coding while we directed it on what to do. We hoped to pretty much invent Youtube, and I could already see the thousands of cat pokemon videos, all monetized. It would be glorious. Maybe the quality of the average trainer would rise when trainer Youtubers started appearing and giving tips on how to fail less at trying to be a pokemon master or something. We'd hopefully have a bit more of a challenge that way.
It occurred to us we should probably train the rest of our pokemon too. We'd lost perspective again. Too focused on training the one team of pokemon and ignoring the rest of the overpowered murder monsters we had at our disposal. For all that Tyranitar was terribly vulnerable to Fighting types, it was still a fuck huge indestructible engine of destruction, especially if we got our hands on a compatible Mega Stone. Same for a Dragonite. Kinglers were cool too, even if they weren't on the same level as the others. Also, one could never have enough shadow Gengars.
We had an idea for at least one of those too. Why kill Giovanni's body when we could experiment with possession? We definitely needed to see if we could have a Gengar eat him from the inside out and leave us in control of the leader of Team Rocket. We'd start with a few grunts as proof of concept, and then we would control the head of the organization. We'd repurpose them to fit our goals. If the movies and anime were anything to go by, they had access to frankly stupid amounts of manpower, money, and technology, which we could use to further the greater glory of Azula Luna Sato.
We visited Cerulean Cave regularly, to get Zeus used to fighting strong pokemon while we continued to train Sozin, now a Shellgon, in hopes it'd make Salamence as soon as possible. We left our weaker pokemon at the compound with one of the pokemon from our main team supervising their training, and checked in every couple hours through our psychic bond. It was really quite efficient. No need to hamstring the high level training of the main team to bring the low level backups up to speed. After all, why be in two places at the same time when you can be in three or more!
By the time the Conference rolled around, we'd be utterly ready to fucking stomp anyone in the way to our victory. Our main team was absolutely lethal to the toughest types, and extremely dangerous to everything else. We were also tricky as fuck and we doubted many trainers would have the ability to overcome our natural advantages, much less all the strategies we'd designed around them. Coupled with the fact that recalling a pokemon would forfeit it from the match, and we would always have the initiative in some way or another.
The sheer overwhelming power of Ozai and sis alone could likely carry us to the finals without trouble. The monstrous stamina of Nameless the Starmie could let us open with it and exhaust anything our opponents sent out. Yue could run circles around her opponents without moving from the spot she was released. Really, the core four of our team were deadly opponents, and Zeus was shaping up to be a prodigious close combat fighter. I couldn't keep up with him anymore, not since before he turned Blaziken, and certainly not after. He had to handicap himself to keep from beating me too easily. Still, that put me firmly in the same level as the average pokemon in terms of hand to hand combat, which was nothing to sneeze at.
After a few weeks of intense training we were prevented from going to Cerulean Cave on account of a mild case of pneumonia, which had resulted in our mothers panicking and taking us to see our doctor in Viridian. We'd initially thought it to be an overreaction, but to be fair, we had also forgotten that fucked up lungs like mine turned pneumonia into a much more dangerous affair than it was for most people. So after the doctor had me pumped with more medicine, we had grabbed our mothers and taken up Blaine on his offer to visit him. Technically he ran a resort, so we'd be taking it easy, kinda. Okay, so we totally wanted a good fight to make up for losing out on a day of training, likely more than a day given it would take weeks for me to get better.
It was a terrible mistake.
A horrible, terrible mistake.
For you see, Blaine and our mothers had joined forces and ganged up on us and embarrassed us greatly. Our mothers had many years of awkward childhood stories to talk about, and Blaine was old and experienced in matters embarrassing children. Truly, a fearsome combination. In return for the stories, Blaine regaled my mothers with a video recording of our match, with Mama, Gardemom, and the old man excitedly dissecting the match. Apparently, while we had no problems with self-aggrandizement, we did not handle compliments from others well. At least if we judged by the blush that wouldn't go away from our faces throughout most of our visit. They must never meet near my vicinity again.
At least Marina would never hear about this, because we would never tell her.
We fought that day, nothing to the extent of our first battle, and for the next week. Eventually our mothers trusted Blaine enough to let us visit him while they returned to their regular day to day jobs. Which we'd learned that for Mama and Gardemom meant looking into rumors and sightings of dangerous pokemon and hunting them down in the interest of public safety. It worried us quite a bit, since we knew first hand how dangerous that could be and she didn't have our future sight to save her. At least Kanto in general was lacking in wild Poison, Dark and Ghost types, with the latter mostly confined to Lavender.
Today, our fire rooster would be fighting one of his Magmar. We sat on the inn's steps with cups of tea and cookies, our pokemon facing each other in the courtyard. Nameless floated around, ready to douse any fires our monsters started. We were really quite pleased with its new name. Something about it really appealed to us. Zeus started the fight with a blindingly fast spin Blaze Kick, scoring first blood and sending the Magmar flying. She righted herself midair and landed on her feet in time to land a Mega Punch into his chest and drive him into a Barrier Nameless raised in front Blaine's inn. Then the fight started for real.
We felt two familiar presences enter the edge of our senses while watching our pokemon deliver a top tier battle and we couldn't help smiling. Yes, this would be quite nice. Ty Lee rose from my shadow and shot out towards the docks. She'd make for an excellent greeting committee. She appeared in front of one of them, the perfect image of a murder ghost, right up until she started giggling and playing with Gary's hair, who while not too surprised by her sudden appearance, seemed to be very much uncomfortable being that close to her. He must have sensed the change in temperature and correctly assumed that a dangerous Gengar would not be allowed to exist anywhere near a famous vacation resort.
He became a lot more uncomfortable when she didn't let him leave. We could feel him getting ready to reach for one of his pokemon when Ty Lee turned invisible and surprised Ash. Really surprised him, if the high pitched scream from him, Misty, and Brock were anything to go by. Then she grabbed my weird family members and pulled them towards the inn. A lovely family reunion if ever there were to be one, and we'd get to meet Misty for the first time, as well as see what Brock thought of us after we tyrannosaurus reckt him.
Hm.
"You're going to… have visitors soon." Pneumonia sucked something fierce. Everything but our phenomenal cosmic powers was fucking hard. "Two more challengers… for you, old man."
"Oh? Sent your ghost to play guide, did you?" I nodded, and he laughed, that wolfish grin of his that got the bloodthirsty warriors in us going making an appearance. Oh my. We might have just consigned my nephew and step-brother in all but name to a huge fucking dicking. "How good are they, Little Red?"
"We don't... know." And we really didn't. Gary was significantly better than he would have been without my existence, and for all that we left Ash alone, he had changed, and he was likely also a much stronger trainer as well. "We think they'll make… at least quarterfinals in the… conference."
"Hm. I see. Not up to a real battle yet then, but maybe... I think I have an idea. My poor Champions haven't had a chance to get a good workout since you put them through their paces, and you're not in any condition for a match that serious right now, so I think I'll have to make do."
Poor, poor boys. This would be a lot of fun to watch. We started hearing snippets of conversation drifting on the wind, as the soon to be punching bags got near the inn.
"So Azula really has three Gengars?!" Ash shouted loud enough to be heard clearly all the way. The answer was indistinct, barely a murmur to our ears. "More?!"
"Probably." This time we heard Gary clearly, who was the only one who could have answered his question. "Gramps said she rotates her stronger pokemon as trainers for her spares while she focuses on her main team."
"Wow, she's so amazing!"
"Ugh, yes, you have a crush on my aunt, we get it. Please stop gushing about her, she's not that good, she's just lucky." Are we now? Now we wanted to kick his ass for that comment, maybe Blaine…? We glanced at him and were disappointed to feel that there was no way he would let us take the match from him.
"No way, girl. I promised your mothers I would make sure you didn't overexert yourself. Besides, I'm sure you can make a comment about how you had no trouble beating both of my Champions after they lose with their whole teams to them."
Pout.
"So, Gary, what's this Azula like? Ash goes on and on about her all the time, but we figure he's far from impartial." Ah, Leader Brock, you're going to be ever so surprised.
"She's… good. Shut up Ash. She's very quiet, kinda shy when she and her sister aren't busy being pests." What?! We were not shy! We definitely were pests though, we took pleasure in being as obnoxious as possible. "She pretty much trains nonstop. I've yet to see anyone as obsessed as she is. I suppose she has good reason. She's psychic and sees the future, and the last time I saw her she was pretty hurt. I figure she trains so hard because she's seen that she's going to need it. She can't help pissing off people."
Damnit Gary, don't tell people we're not perfect, we have an image to maintain and you blabbing won't help make it easier.
"Azula got hurt?! Why didn't you say anything?!"
"She asked me not to. Speaking of, never tell her I told you."
Too late.
They walked into view of the battle just in time to see Magmar eat a High Jump Kick in exchange for smashing a Psychic into Zeus' face, ending with him taking a dirt nap. Magmar looked woozy on her feet, but she was the clear winner. Fucking magic. Our fire rooster likely learned a lot from this fight. Recall lights lit up both pokemon and then the impromptu party of four had a clear view of Blaine and us. Ty Lee flew into our shadow and then we were smiling serenely at our nephew. Judging by how pale he got, he knew what he'd done. Good.
"Fuck." Aw, he was still using our favorite word.
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