Care
"No. 5508, front and center!"
I step forward, following the sergeant's orders.
He bends down to look me in the eye. His face is close to mine.
"What is your name?"
"I do not have one." I respond honestly.
"What do you feel?"
"Nothing." I honestly reply.
"Who do you serve?"
"The king of Johto, His Magesty Lord Derrick Abonyu." is my honest answer.
"And what do you care about?"
I answer honestly.
"Nothing."
The Granbull's eyes narrow, and he forces a puff of air out through his nose. He seems disappointed, as if he had gotten his hopes up, but they were let down suddenly.
"Wrong." he states. "You care about your country! You care about your king! You care about protecting the royal bloodline! You care about expanding His Majesty's rule to other lands! You care about doing whatever it takes to achieve this goal! You care about these things and nothing else!"
I shake my head. "No."
He seems slightly taken aback. He must not be used to being deified. "What?"
"No." I repeat. "I do not care about that. I honestly do not."
He growls and grips my wrist tightly. He thrusts me into the middle of the circle. I feel all the eyes of the other Prodigies on me.
"You see this!?" he yells. "This is what a failure looks like! This is what you should avoid becoming! This is the embodiment of inferiority!"
I don't understand. They trained me to answer their questions honestly. They trained me to feel nothing, care about nothing, not about 'friends', or 'family', or anything that is 'precious' to me. I did what they asked of me. So why am I wrong?
They're all staring at me, and I find myself feeling...strange. What is this feeling?
...feeling? No, I shouldn't 'feel' anything. I can't feel anything. They said I couldn't. They said it was impossible...
"No. 5502, are you better than this trash!?" the Granbull screams at a young Treecko.
"Yes." he answers in a monotone voice.
"Then prove it! Prove that you're superior!"
He shoves me to the floor and steps away. The Treecko stands above me. He's staring at me with cold eyes.
Sharp pain. I feel it surge through my right arm. Then more pain, this time through my leg. There's pain everywhere now. Why do I feel it?
Stop. Please. Please stop this pain.
"Do you understand, now!?" the Granbull roars. "Do you understand!? You care about your country! You care about your king, Lord Derrick Abonyu! You care about...!"
His words are drowned out by the pain, by the sound of Razor Leaves slicing skin.
Please. Stop. Just stop...
"You...ntry! You ca...errick A...re...bout..."
I can hear his words, but the pain is too much. It's drowning it out.
"Please stop...!"
Was that my voice? I can't hear it. I can't hear over the pain.
Why do I feel it? Why can I feel the pain when I'm not supposed to? Why don't I care about what they tell me to care about? Why do I hate the number they assigned to me?
...hate? Do I...hate? Why do I hate? Prodigies aren't supposed to hate.
"...errick...A..."
Then I realize.
I'm not a failure. I'm not a Prodigy. I can feel emotion. I can feel pain. I can have free will.
But most of all, I can hate.
7Z7Z7Z7
It's over within a matter of seconds. The bodies are flung into the air, and red spatters the room.
I toss a few limbs around, testing to see if I care or not. I don't.
I also don't care about the fact that they're all dead. I do care about the lack of pain they felt, however. I also care about the odd, yet pleasing feeling that I felt when the Granbull screamed. But I don't care about the mess I've made.
I pause. There seem to be different ways of caring about things, different reasons for caring about things.
I shake my head. It's too complicated right now and I don't understand. There's 'I care', and 'I don't care'. That's all I need to know right now.
I stand there for a while, listing things into two categories in my mind: things I care about, and things I don't care about. I care about how tired I feel. I care about how my psychic powers were powerful enough to do this. I don't care about the consequences of my actions. I don't care about killing them all.
And I don't care about my country. I don't care about the king of Johto, Lord Derrick Abonyu. I don't care about protecting the royal bloodline. I don't care about expanding Johto's borders. I don't care about helping to achieve that goal.
I glance at the tag on my chest. 5508.
I care about that. I care about changing that.
A name. I need a name.
I glance around, but all I see is red and limbs and separated body parts. Nothing to give me a name.
My eyes pass over the Granbull's corpse.
'You...ntry...You ca...errick A...re...bout...'
His final words, though faint and incomplete, echo in my mind. I focus on a particular phrase.
'errick...A..."
"Erika." I say aloud.
I think I've heard a name like that before. Have I? I don't know. I don't care.
All I care about now is my new name, the fact that I'm no longer a number, but an individual.
I exit the room, another emotion that I'm not familiar with yet putting a spring in my step.
"Erika, Erika, Erika..." I repeat again and again.
I smile. What else can I find to care about?
So, is this any good? Yeah, the title kind of sucks, but I thought the overall fic was decent enough. Plus it ties in with my other story, Snowflakes, which is set in the same world. I was thinking about making a bigger story involving these characters and such, so if you liked this at all, or would like to see such a story, please leave a review! Thank you!