Four people. Children really, ran into the building. The building itself was covered from the vicious onslaught of rain the four had escaped by a bright red roof, dulled by the utter darkness of the sky as it's tears pelted down on everything. Not that he cared or anything, rain didn't really make a difference to him, but the arrival of people did.
He watched carefully as the raven-haired teen checked on a small yellow mouse Pokemon perched on his shoulder, a young blond girl was talking to her bag, but there was a presence of a Pokemon in it, so he didn't assume she was crazy just yet. a blond girl was ringing out her long hair, her soaked hat sitting on a bench the group had stopped next to. the other boy in the group, an odd one, he thought, was cleaning off his glasses, oblivious to the water that was dripping off his hair. he and the young girl shared a similar presence, they must be siblings. not that he cared or anything.
He sat on a couch, hidden behind a potted plant and a barrier wall, not that a wall that was three feet tall helped anything, but it gave him a measure of security. He was in a corner close to the front door, but if he left now, the children might get curious and talk to him, Nurse Joy had been hard enough, asking if he wanted a room, or just general things a person traveling would normally tell anyone who asked, anyone but him.
He should just leave, make himself invisible, and leave. Or just bolt, he didn't want to use that yet. not right now, he was drained as it was, he didn't need that as well. from the deep recesses of his mind, the word flung itself into his conscious thought, stay. Very well.
His attention focused on the group of children as they approached the counter, and rang a bell for assistance, it wasn't surprising that Nurse Joy wasn't there, this Pokemon center was out of the way, in a small town, a settlement really, in the middle of nowhere. she was probably in the back, cleaning or something.
it also wasn't surprising when almost immediately after the bell was rung, the Nurse appeared, and the five people he wanted nothing to do with exchanged a few words. after what seemed like a long time, but couldn't have been more than a minute or two, the Nurse began to lead them towards the hallway that led to the sleeping accommodations for travelers. one problem, and a big one at that, the group was heading his way. at first the man sunk lower into the couch, alarm bells going off in his mind, then full panic.
Drained or not, he held out his hands. the children walked by, but they didn't notice the man, well almost. he was invisible, but the raven haired boy stopped as he walked by and shuttered. The man froze. it was the blond boy that spoke up, as the raven haired kid just stared at the couch, seemingly right through him,
"Hey, Ash, 'you okay?" the boy, Ash, looked away from the couch where he was hiding, he scratched the back of his head, "What? oh, yea,I'm fine." he gave a small laugh, a chuckle really, and the group continued walking into the back of the Pokemon center, leaving the man to his own devices. That was when he dropped his hands, becoming visible once more, he then dashed out of the Pokemon center, and bolted out into the pelting rain, it was only a few seconds before the man was soaked to the skin, not that he cared, as he continued to run.
Had that kid sensed his presence? or had his shield faltered for a second? probably the latter, but if it was the first, then he had a new target on his hands, and by the looks of it, a tricky one, but hey it was all just a game wasn't it? As far as he knew, only one or two Aura guardians still existed, while many, many people did have the ability to learn, almost no one ever got the chance. That kid had the ability. That kid must be eliminated.
oOo
The room was well lit, light from the ceiling cast small shadows on the sides of the bunk beds on each side of the room. on each of the beds, sat a backpack, on the left bottom bunk, next to his trainer's backpack, sat the yellow mouse Pokemon. on the floor, sat the yellow haired girl, and her tiny orange muskrat-like Pokemon. it was clear that the yellow mouse was watching the two play. when the blond eight year old started to chase the muskrat-chipmunk pokemon, the mouse pokemon jumped off the bed to join in.
In the process however, the pokemon knocked over his trainer's unzipped backpack; when it hit the ground, a small box fell partially out, peeking halfway out of the bag, the blue box with a small pictures on the top and sides seemed fairly out of place, not that the girl noticed it at first. "Pikachu!" the girl yelled, and the yellow pokemon, Pikachu, sweat-dropped, and scratched the back of its head as it sheepishly let out a series of sounds, "pika, pikachu..." The girl when to pick up the backpack, only for the box to fall entirely out of the backpack.
The girl dropped the bag back onto the bed, and picked up the box. So many pictures, so many different people, she could tell some of the ones had Ash in it, albeit a younger version of the fifteen year old she had come to know. Another one, a bit older than Ash appeared in a lot of the pictures as well, a red head made an appearance in a few, along with a brown-haired-tomboyish-girl, and a blue haired girl in a pink and black dress.
A purple haired girl and green haired boy could be seen smiling at the camera in front of a huge towering mountain that looked like the hilt of a sword, and a spiky haired boy and an older man in a white lab coat stood next to Ash and two other children, they all looked about ten in that picture. another showed Ash and a young woman, maybe in her late twenties, they had the same facial build, and similar eyes, but other than that, not much similarity to the two, the woman looked young enough to be his sister, yet old enough to be his mom, the girl didn't know which, after all, she was only eight.
The door opened, and the blond looked up to see Ash walking in, he wore a pair of jeans and a plain black and gray T-shirt, his hat had probably been thrown into the wash with the rest of the clothes, towels, and fabrics (Nurse Joy was cleaning the lobby because of how slow travel was at this time of year, and everyone had offered to help) that existed in the pokemon center, and his hair, being wet, was in a rare state of non-bed-headed-ness, that the girl had to admit, looked a lot better than the bed-headed-ness state it was usually in.
"Hey Bonnie," Ash said as pikachu jumped onto his shoulder, "whatcha got there?" he motioned to the fact that the blond, Bonnie, had hidden her hands behind her back the moment he walked through the door. Sheepishly, Bonnie took the box from behind her back, "It fell out of your backpack, pikachu knocked it over." Ash took the box from her, and she continued, "Who are all the people on that box?" Ash laughed and as Bonnie threw herself back down onto the rug in the middle of the room, Ash looked at the box. after a few seconds, he joined her on the rug in the middle of the room, together, they looked at the small blue box with pictures on it.
"last time I went home, my friend Misty," as he said the red-head's name, he pointed to her picture, "made this for me," Bonnie looked down at the picture of a ten year old Ash, the girl named Misty, and the older boy, "Who's that?" she pointed to said older boy, "Oh that's Brock, in that picture he was fifteen, and Misty and I were ten, it was right before the Indigo League in Kanto."
"Oh." Ash continued, turning the box sideways, "and that's Dawn, and me and Brock again," he pointed to the blue haired girl standing next to him and Brock, in front of a stadium-like building, "what is that building for?" Ash looked at the picture again, "oh that? its for contests, kinda like poke-tri-atholans, but nothing like them at the same time." Bonnie gave him a dumbfound look, as did Dedenne, Pikachu just sighed in exasperation.
in an effort to get off the subject, Ash turned the box to the other side, showing a different picture, him, Misty and Brock, but with them was a girl, slightly younger than Ash, and a boy who looked about Bonnie's age in the picture, "these two are May and Max," I think Max should be a trainer by now, and May is somewhere in Sinnoh with Dawn last I heard from her. "When was that?" Bonnie asked,
"About a month or two. Max has been completely off the charts, even May doesn't know where he is. and Misty and Brock are both at their families' gyms in Kanto. "
"what about these two?" Bonnie pointed to another side of the box, where the purple-haired girl and green-haired boy stood smiling in front the the sword-hilt-mountain-castle-thing, "Iris, and Cilan, that was in Unova, they're both in Johto now."
"and these people?" Bonnie pointed to the last two pictures, both slightly overlapping, "me and my mom in front of our house," he pointed to the first, taken portrait style, then the second, "you know that's professor Oak, but that's Gary, his grandson, me, Yellow, and Green, they're cousins."
"Colors?"
"It's a family thing, I think..." after that, Ash opened the box to show Bonnie all the little trinkets inside. Immediately, a small, shiny, broken object caught Bonnie's eye, it was split completely in half, and the remaining letters on this half read, "-mon" on the top, and "-est" on the bottom, it looked kind of like the decorative tops of the keys Serena competed for in poke-triathlons.
"its a contest Ribbon, when May was completing in the last contest in Kanto before she headed to Johto, she got me to participate, we tied in the final, and cut the ribbon in half, she has the other half."
"it's so pretty!" Ash smiled at the young girl's outburst, even as she quickly lost interest in it and, setting down the half-ribbon by her side, looked back into the small box, by that time, Pikachu had curled up on Ash's bed, and was sleeping peacefully, Dedenne doing the same, only inside Bonnie's bag on the top bunk on the other side of the room.
over the course of around fifteen minutes, Bonnie found out more about Ash then she ever thought she would, about May, Max and their gym leader father, and May's Blazenkin of which looked a lot like her father's, in the girl's opinion, she squealed at how "CUTE" Buneary's crush on Pikachu was, and Brock's shenanigans, and how he would be brought down by Misty, Max, and even his Croagunk later on,
"And the funniest part was, Dawn and I could never figure how he recovered from the poisoning so fast, even trying to do it again in less than fifteen minutes sometimes! The randomness of his pickup lines was amazing, he never said the same thing twice and I've known him since my first journey in Kanto!"
why…" Bonny muttered looking at a snapshot of Brock being poison jabbed by his Croagunk, she laughed a little at the nurse's complete and utter confusion, and the looks of amusement and embarrassment on Ash and Dawns faces, the Piplup and Pikachu sweat dropped. "and that happened every day?" she asked looking at the picture in confusion.
"you do something similar Bonnie," Ash laughed,
"Well for me it's different, my brother is going to need someone to help him besides me!"
"Maybe..." he was humoring her, after all, she would probably be embarrassed by her actions when she was older, but in Ash's life, experience was the best teacher. he was about to show Bonnie a glass sculpture of Pikachu when Serena came in, her dress being washed as well, she was in torn jeans and a magenta-like pink shirt, and her hat-less hair was tied messily into a high ponytail.
"Hey Bonnie, are you using my hair brush on Dedenne again?" She stopped when she saw the small box in Ash's hands, turned on just the right angle to show a smiling ten year old with the Picture with her younger brother and a younger version of Ash, "Hey, what's that?" Her question was almost absentmindedly asked, as her eyes were glued to the picture.
"As a friend of mine put it, a treasure box?" it was obvious he wasn't sure about what to call the box filled with memories of his friends, luckily for him, Bonnie yelled over him with a, "It's a souvenir box!" and his unsure response was drowned out by the eight year old's much more clever one,
"Who's that?" Was her next question, and she pointed to the girl, May, in the picture,
"that's May, she lives in Hoenn, but she's in Johto right now..." Serena sat down, "yea, but didn't she live in Johto at first?" Ash shrugged, he had never asked about his friends younger selves unless they started the conversation, if they shared, they shared, after all, he had a few things he didn't want people to know anyway.
"Yea, I think she was in my class one year, or it could've been a daycare, probably a daycare."
"You lived in Johto?"
"Yea, then when my parents divorced, my mom and I moved here."
Ash nodded in understanding, although he had never actually moved, his dad had left at an early age, although, he was starting to get a few suspicions on the circumstances, after all, there were no pictures of him in the house, they all disappeared when he was around four.
When the two turned their attention back to Bonnie, of whom Ash had handed the box so she could look while he talked to Serena, only to find the box neatly closed, and Bonnie nowhere to be seen.
"She probably went to go find Clement, I'm going to go ask if I can make some cookies, want to come? I can teach you a few things." Ash put his hands up in surrender, "No thanks, trust me Serena, you don't want me anywhere near a kitchen. I'm a disaster!" Serena shrugged, "Okay.."
oOo
The rain still pounded outside as the man ran through it, but something was off about the figure, he was enveloped in a blue glow, rain seemed to bouncing off him as he ran, though the ground was flooded and his feet made splashes in the puddles. his boots were completely dry, his coat never seemed wet in the first place, his entirety seemed aglow, as though he was from another world, it was almost impossible to believe he was human, anyone who saw him could swear that he wasn't. but no one saw him, he was alone in the forlorn woods.
He stopped in front of an ancient sequoia, and looked around him to make sure no one was lurking, slowly he raised his hand, still aglow like the rest of his body and clothing, he wore brown finger-less gloves, each with a small stone set into the top of them, a sphere of blue materialized on his palm.
Growing larger the longer he held it out, at the same time a door in the tree seemed to be opening up, slowly and steadily. the sphere grew, the door grew. A crash sounded somewhere close by, the man froze, the sphere disappearing from his palm, the door disappearing a few moments later, the glowing man darted off into the night, unaware that it had just been the wind.
A/N: So yea, I rewrote the chapter, after all, it's been three years, so before finishing it, I think I'll rewrite the story, fix up inconsistencies, clean up the plot line, and stuff, but I do have a lot of school work, I always hate it when people joke that Homeschoolers only do Homework, sometimes I'll be doing school work from 6:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and i don't go to school, I DO school... Its a fun world I live in. Kind of...