I originally began writing this story for my sister and finished because it had started to turn out rather interesting. Each part was first posted on my sister's deviantART account, nyraalba.
One not-so-typical night, I was having a sleepover with my sister Maddie and her friend Caitlyn Nash, whom everyone called Tiger. Well, not really a sleepover, since the whole point of the thing was to finish this big school project that was due the next day. It wasn't very exciting—some thing about how plants grew with earthworms as opposed to without them—but it counted for fifty percent of our biology grade, and I was in a group with two of the most scatterbrained people on planet Earth. So the sleepover had actually been my idea. Unless you kept them in a closed room free of shiny distractions, there was no way to keep Maddie or Tiger on task.
"Man, I'm so glad we don't have to work with real earthworms," said Maddie. We were laying on the floor in the middle of my room, with all our project papers spread out so we could easily find them.
"I thought it would be fun to use real worms," I said. "What's the point of a worm project with no worms?"
"Geez," said Tiger. "Be quiet so I can finish this. I'm almost done with the results section. I wanna hurry up and finish so I can play Pokémon Battle Revolution."
"I'm playing you first!" said Maddie.
"No, I want to play her first," I cut in. "You got to last time. Besides... Azelf rules!"
"Nuh-uh, Mesprit does," Maddie said, and then we were off, the three of us arguing as usual about which of the three Spirit Pokémon had the coolest power.
Maddie was always for Mesprit, the "Being of Emotion" who taught humans the nobility of suffering and joy. "What's the point of a world without feelings?" she said. "If there weren't emotions, the world would be so booooring."
Tiger stuck up for Uxie, the "Being of Knowledge" who always had its eyes closed as if asleep, but it was actually deep in thought. "Emotions are useless without knowledge. We'd still be knuckle-dragging Neanderthals if it weren't for knowledge."
My favorite Spirit was Azelf, the "Being of Willpower" whose will was so strong, it could manipulate people into either attempting something repeatedly or losing interest in it altogether. "Emotion and knowledge are fine," I said. "But without the will to use them, what good are they? Plus, Azelf's blue."
"What does that have to do with—" Maddie began.
"No, no, she has a point," said Tiger. "Blue is a very cool color."
"Well, we might as well finish this stupid project," I said. "We're not getting very far by arguing about Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf."
They agreed, and we finished the last of the results pages and the conclusion.
Just as I finished writing down the last sentence of our conclusion, my mom opened the door and walked in the room. No one bothers knocking at our house.
"Are you kids almost done? It's nearly midnight," she said. "Go to bed."
"Midnight!" I said. "Man, we're going to be tired tomorrow."
I heard Maddie say, "Wimp," under her breath. Then out loud she protested, "But we didn't get to play Battle Revolution."
"You can play video games tomorrow—after you've turned in your project," said Mom. "But for now, get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a crazy day."
At the time, I did not realize how true those words would turn out to be.