Multi-chaptered series of vignettes from a Pokespecial universe story I don't have the time nor the effort to make. Basically, Lance was injured in the controntation of the final Yellow chapter, escapes, and ends up in Cerulean. He gets taken in by Misty, they fight, they get used to each other, Lance leaves because he scares himself, comes back post GSC, leaves, keeps an eye on Misty, HGSS happens, comes back, and basically has a nice long redemption road while also figuring out how to coexist with humanity and falling in love.
So yeah. Eventually Kingdrashipping. Try not to be so surprised.
~•• Yellow ••~
Defeat was not a familiar companion for him. He had always excelled as a trainer, and the addition of his powers had only always guaranteed him victory. Some part of him had stayed wary that his plan of eradicating the human race might go awry, thus he had been careful and meticulous with his planning. Every detail had been examined and considered, including the presence of Oak's special trio kids, the flippancy of Giovanni and his attendance tendencies, and even Yellow's presence in the whole matter. And somehow, all of his hard work and meticulous planning had been shattered and forcibly thrown down the drain by whatever power Yellow had managed to unleash with a Pikachu she didn't even legally own, thanks to some kind of overpowering desperation and something else he could not figure out for the life of him.
Literally for his life, because he was currently bleeding out of his chest from the stab wound courtesy of Giovanni's Beedrill.
-o00o-
It was hours, possibly the entirety of daylight when Dragonite was eventually forced to land, too burdened by his own exhaustion of battle to continue flying with his trainer in his arms. Lance was pressed to agree, able to sense his companion's exhaustion even through the haze of his mind from all the blood loss. The smooth, soft cries of two concerned Dragonairs whispered into his mind, informing him vaguely of the city Dragonite had landed in. When he had sent his numerous Dragonairs to the various cities of Kanto to occupy all the gym leaders so as to prevent their meddling, he remembered sending two of them to Cerulean City.
The Cerulean Dragonairs had reported to him as being fond of the city. It had near immediate access to water, and was very open and the air was clean and fresh for them to inhabit in. To his occasional frustration, the two had also reported being seen by the city's gym leader, and being offered treats and various forms of kindness often. This made them fond of the gym leader, and while they didn't disobey their master when the day came to enter the final phase of his plan, the two Dragonairs occupying Cerulean made sure to not outright hurt anyone or the gym leader, which had unfortunately prompted Agatha to step up and send her Ghastlys and Haunters to, ahem, make up for their "softness".
So when the Dragonairs still in Cerulean had answered Dragonite's roar for aid, he shouldn't have been surprised when they directed Dragonite right to the doorstep of the Cerulean Gym Leader's home.
In reality, he was actually very surprised, as surprised as he could be with all the blood loss making him dizzy and lightheaded anyway.
-o00o-
He fell unconscious right about as she opened the door and screamed.
-o00o-
Lance was equal parts confused and surprised when he awoke in a room that, based on the dresses and skirts falling out of the western wall's closet, belonged to a girl. For one, he was awake therefor alive. Two, he wasn't in a prison cell so he had been accepted into someone's-The Cerulean Gym Leader's he assumed- house. Three, he was still alive. It deserved some repeating.
The door to his far left suddenly opened and in walked a girl carrying fresh bandages and a bottle of pain pills.
She almost dropped the pills and bandages when she screamed again, right as he blacked out, again.
-o00o-
He awoke again, this time in the middle of the gym leader replacing the bandages that were wrapped firmly around his chest. She tied the final knot with a tight tug that ensured it wouldn't come undone by any other means other than her own handiwork. He also noticed that his head was swimming and sore and when he placed his hand to the spots, there were two painful swollen knots.
"I promised your Dragonite I wouldn't any more, but I swear, if the next words out of your mouth are going to be a another bout of threats against me and my friends, I'm going to whip out my mallet again and knock you out a third time, got it?" She snarled at him.
Lance was going to have to question his Dragonairs and their judgement skills.
-o00o-
When his body had regenerated enough blood that he was no longer collapsing every thirty minutes, he finally got to have an actual conversation with his host.
It had ended in a screaming match, where she only got him to concede defeat by threateningly whipping out her trusty mallet. After the third scream-fight, he had concluded that Misty, the Cerulean Gym Leader, was the most irate, temperamental, irrational being he had ever met, and that was saying something coming from the boy who had spent a considerable amount of time with Agatha, due to having to collaborate with his cohorts for the plan.
-o00o-
He was still unable to move from her bed, and that disgusted him about as much as the fact that he was still going to be dependent on a human and especially one such as her, because even after a week of resting in it, the damn covers and sheets smelled like her.
He had never hated the scent of honey and lemon with saltwater more.
-o00o-
Lance had thought he had hated the human race before, but somehow his hatred was amplified and focused all entirely on Misty. She grated his every nerve, the feeling evidently mutual, and she tightened his bandages too tight, and somehow she was stronger than him, enough that every time he tried to get out of the bed she was able to shove him right back down as if she was dealing with a powerless toddler. Everyday she didn't stop to remind him that she hated him too, how he had tried to hurt her friends, and done so much damage to other people, their homes, their pokemon.
He rebuked back that sacrifices had to be made to ensure his plan had worked, to create a world for pokemon free of the ugliness of humanity.
That one had earned him a disbelieving glare, enraged snarls of a girl who loved her pokemon too much to let them go like that and someone too confused and open to understand how he could possibly think that way, and angry, hurt tears.
He was mostly satisfied and smug that he had managed to win that conversation, if there had been any real competition.
Mostly...
-o00o-
"You are just-the worst, you jerk! You could at least shut up, for once, and just let me help you better so you can leave and be on your stupid, genocidal way!" one day she yelled at him, because, as usual, he couldn't not keep his mouth shut when they were so many buttons to press. To be further fair, once the incident that had changed him from an innocent child to a boy who absolutely had to permanently clean up the tarnish of humanity had occurred, he had sworn off unnecessary human contact, meaning he was never raised to leave a person be, to not egg her on and or intentionally start a screaming match with the Gym Leader of Cerulean City. Mew above, it probably would have saved him from a lot of hoarse throats if he did know better.
"Why do you even care that I heal!? Why do you care that I live at all? Ugly human that you are, you should have let me die, or have killed me by now!" he snapped back, but to his surprise she doesn't fire off with another comeback. Instead she froze, staring at him with the most incredulous, horrified and hurt look that made his skin crawl and his stomach churn into painful twists.
"...you really think... that I would want you dead? That I would want to kill you?" she asked him in a voice pumped full of shock and horrified awe and a little bit of disbelief. It was then that her green eyes changed into something he had never seen before, not from her, and not from any other human being in his life... except Yellow.
"What happened?" she asked tentatively of him.
"What are you talking about?" he snapped irately, not liking the turn of events that had suddenly flipped into his lap. Where had the irrational harpy that he was used to gone? Where was the rage, the hate? He could understand those, having lived with rage and hate in his heart for so long. He could handle that but this-this concern, or pity, or compassion, he couldn't possibly begin to wrap his mind around it.
"What happened to you, to make you think-no, believe, so little of me?" Of humanity? Of goodness and kindness, or mercy? Were the underlying questions that he swore she was leaving unspoken but definitely felt.
-o00o-
He was finally able to get up, but the effort to stay up tired him very easily.
To his further embarrassment and hatred, Misty was kind enough-to remind him of his powerlessness, he was sure-to help him around and keep him steady as they maneuvered around the house to wherever she needed him to be.
"Why are you doing this?" he demanded. Her right hand was tight on his waist while her arm stuck solidly to his back. The left hand rested on his left shoulder, helping front support as they walked him to the living room.
She shrugged noncommittally.
-o00o-
He hadn't been counting, nor had he been paying attention, but at some point during the second and third of the four weeks he had been staying in the house of the Cerulean Gym Leader, Lance and Misty had stopped yelling like they were trying to kill each other through their vocal chords. That wasn't to say they stopped arguing, because for the life of him Lance couldn't not press her buttons and Misty couldn't not immediately react to that.
"Why are you doing this?" he snapped again.
She made a sort of grunt that he supposed could be taken to mean her usual answer; she didn't know.
-o00o-
He fell, again, for the third time that week when she began to allow him to walk without her arms holding him up. As always she was immediately by his side, offering a hand to help lift him back to his feet, and he asked once more as he took it, "Why are you doing this?"
"I dunno," she answered him honestly, pulling him up to his feet, yet his inner rage continued to convince him there was an ulterior motive somewhere, there had to be.
-o00o-
The tea cup was already at her lips and she was mid sip when he asked, again, for what must have been the one-hundredth time after two weeks, "Why are you doing this?"
There was a bowl of creamy potato and leek soup on the table below his jaw, still steaming and almost deceivingly untouched were it not for the spoon stuck in its contents. He had taken one tedious spoonful and taken his time to let all its flavors sink into his tongue before allowing it to pass his throat. After finishing that first bite, he had pressed her for that one question he wanted an answer to.
She stopped, swallowed, and set the cup down next to her own bowl of soup, and he prepared for the usual shrug or "I don't know." Instead she considered him for a moment, pondering him and herself he assumed.
Then, finally she answered while picking up her cup again, "It felt right." then she sipped.
It did not satisfy any of his other inner questions. If anything, he was finding himself more confused, with more questions.
-o00o-
'It felt right.' What on earth did that even mean?
-o00o-
He lifted his arm up for the tenth time, trying to elevate it enough to let the sleeves of his jacket fall naturally down his arm enough so he could pull it through and fix it right.
Instead, the wound on his chest, though no longer bleeding, burned with a sudden pain each time he tried to lift it above his shoulder, making him snarl and seethe though his teeth like a hissing Persian.
She heard him, and with a roll of her eyes when he tried to tell her he had it handled, Misty grabbed the sleeve of the jacket, and pulled it over his arm, without making him have to lift his arm and bother his wound.
"Thank you."
She blinked, then answered, "No problem."
-o00o-
After the fourth week, he stopped being light-headed. He could walk, albeit slowly. He still couldn't lift anything heavier than a small pillow. The soft cries and rumbles of his dragons assured him they were nearby, that they were safe and well taken cared of. The housekeeping staff for Misty's mansion were a kind but quiet folk, at least to him. They didn't say much to him, but after the third day he figured it wasn't out of rudeness; they were simply busy.
It was their nonchalant acceptance of his presence, and Misty no longer chaperoning him about that he got to explore the mansion on his own. Along many of the halls and walls were small landscape paintings and luscious scenes of the ocean, the Cerulean Cape, forestry of Viridian and such.
He finally stumbled upon portraits in the second story, medium sized paintings in dark, polished wood that were scattered around every other corner. There were portraits of many old or middle aged men and women, all weary and wrinkled in their bodies but smiling kind and brightly to the viewer.
"Dad had them done." came Misty's voice next to him. He almost jumped, and she came to stand beside him. "This hall is filled with former staff members. He wanted them to be commemorated for being there and helping our family from day one, from poor to rich to poor and back."
"Are they all dead?"
"Nah. The lady right there," she pointed to a wrinkled old woman with a wild curly perm, "she's a school teacher in Lavendar. She broke her hip one too many times working the roofs so Dad let her go. He paid for her trip and a few months of boarding until she was able for herself. That man right over here," next Misty pointed to a heavily tanned man with leathery like skin and crow's feet, "He dreamed of being a botanist for Celadon's gardens, and around his thirty-fourth year Mom recommended him to the big gardening centers there."
He also noticed that many of them had a pokemon with them. The curly permed woman had a sharp-eyed Pidgey on her shoulder. The gardener had an Oddish in his arms.
"Some of their pokemon helped them in their duties, so Mom and Dad though it pertinent to include them in the credit when credit's due, you know?"
-o00o-
He found family portraits on the third and final floor, more people with pokemon beside them. Some had the same carrot orange head of hair as Misty, some had her eyes, or her nose, or her chin.
"Ah, yes, I remember when that one was finished." spoke one of the house staff. Lance jumped, and found the source to be a graying bent-back old man carrying dusters, accompanied by a Bellsprout. It had vines extended from its roots, coiled around dusters that reached the ceiling above and the tops of the paintings that the old man could not.
"Hmm?" Lance replied, pretending not to know which picture the old man thought he had been looking at.
It featured a long line of men and women, some that he had seen in the staff paintings on the lower floors. Close to the center was a middle-aged man in a dark suit with dark hair and oceanic eyes, grinning at the painter while he dominated the left portion of the center. Next to the man in the center and right side of the painting was a young girl in a pale pink dress with carrot orange hair and familiar teal eyes, with a fat Spheal cuddled in her arms. Above her was a woman with the same color hair as the toddler, but dark green eyes instead, wearing a fine red dress with open shoulders, and a rose-themed sash around the waist. Both of the older woman's arms were draped on the man and the toddler. They were framed by the numerous staff members and their pokemon who had assisted in their work at the time of the painting's finish.
"It took a long time for the painter to get the young Miss to stand still long enough for the drafts. But what can you expect for a five year old? All she wanted to do that day was play and show her father the newest trick she and Spheal had discovered. Her mother kept having to change her dress because she kept getting it dirty; they had to postpone the drafting and painting sessions many times for that. But, finally her father was able to convince her to keep clean, and her mother was able to get her to sit still." said the man. "But when they finished it, our matriarch called it the Lady Daisy's finest piece of their family and friends."
Lance decided to assume that the "Daisy" persona was the painter. However, he noted something odd. The Spheal only showed up in two other paintings prior, where the little girl was visibly much younger. But this was the last painting that included it, and all the other paintings that further featured the parents stopped aging while the girl grew up in one or two more paintings into the spitfire gym leader he was currently familiar with.
"It is a shame they had to perish..." the old man sighed.
He stopped talking after that, and Lance left him to continue his work while he pondered the fate that had become of the small Spheal and Misty's parents.
He later pondered as to why he cared in the first place.
-o00o-
On the fifth week he accidentally caught her dancing while he was wandering the mansion. It was nothing scandalous, granted. She had been doing some sort of awkward fusion between a fast shuffle and a waltz, a fusion that neither she nor her partner Golduck were prepared for, nor knew how to manage. Still, as the music playing from the radio filled the air with some fast-paced swing song, the gym leader and her Golduck enjoyed their childish attempt at a dance. Her Staryu was happy to release small balls of starlight into the study where Misty and Golduck took up their dancing space in, while a few of the staff members he noticed followed along either with each other or their own pokemon being their dance partners.
Lance did not like the strange feeling the music tried to give him, and he most definitely did not approve of the feelings that were stirring in his belly as he listened to Misty laugh and smile so brightly and freely for the first time during the duration of his stay so far.
It was to his horror that Golduck tried to throw its trainer into a twirl as it used too much force and sent Misty actually stumbling and spinning right towards the slide doors to the enormous study room; coincidentally, where Lance had stationed himself at.
They didn't fall or tumble, though the impact sent a dull ache through his chest. On instinctive reaction he was able to catch the offending girl who had been thrown at him and keep from falling, but upon the realization of being caught watching, and being caught as the one to save her from a fall, he did the only thing his mind could think to do.
He froze.
"O-oh! Sorry Lance!" Misty apologized, prompting him to realize her from his hands and she pushed herself away from him, "Golduck just got carried away with the beat!"
He didn't reply, too stunned to so much as open his mouth. She had a blush that flushed across her cheeks, her skin glowed from the dancing, and her hair was loose from its usual side-ponytail and framed around her face and curled under around her neck. Despite having been saved from a nasty tumble by her worst enemy, her pupils were still blown wide open from her enjoyment of the dancing and the music, and she was still smiling too.
He definitely one hundred-percent did not like what was warming his insides.
"So... you wanna dance? I'm sure we can find you a partner-"
"I-I don't dance." he stuttered, and in a sudden state of panic he hurriedly excused himself so that he could run far far away from her.
-o00o-
It was the following day that he discovered a most disturbing side effect he hadn't known he even had, that he had no explanation to, and nothing to put the blame on.
A tiny Rattata owned by one of the staff's kids who frequented the grounds had climbed too high on a ledge and gotten scared. He had been passing the same hallway when he saw the Rattata lose its balance and fall. The boy tried to catch it, but Rattata was too heavy and ended up throwing the both of them to the ground in a loud scuffle that nearly knocked over a bookcase. The child had skinned elbows and a knot on the back of his head, but the Rattata retained a lightly sprained forepaw.
"I-is Scout gonna be okay?" the boy asked, as Lance pushed him aside to kneel down by the small purple rat. Lance ignored him in favor of putting his open-palm over the Rattata's paw to focus his gifts and send a pulse of serenity and calm to the chittering, nervous rat and then to send a healing pulse toward the injury.
Rattata calmed, but nothing happened. Lance focused harder, and when nothing happened to heal the sprain in Scout's paw he focused harder until he was actually giving himself a headache. So, he focused even harder on the power dormant inside him gifted upon him from the Viridian Forest, so much that it became hard to breathe and he was beginning to sweat. Instead, his headache became a migraine and still the Rattata remained injured.
"Y-you're scaring me and Scout!" the boy snapped, grabbing up the shy rat pokemon into his arms. He continued, "I'll take him to the Miss, maybe she has a potion!" he told Lance and ran off down the halls, leaving the Dragon Master alone with his thoughts and his migraine.
-o00o-
Dragonite was quick to reply to his panic with his own concerned spike of emotion that immediately helped calm Lance. The Dragonairs and their own voice of concern as well as the emotional spikes from his other pokemon filled his mind and heart, and he could relax.
He could still feel the motions of the pokemon around him when he opened himself up to it, and he could definitely feel the line of influence he had over his dragons. His gift of their hearts was still his, and that was his first worry.
But, he ran through every frame of the moment that passed with the Rattata and his attempt to heal it.
Lance grabbed the nearest object in his path, a small glass cup half-filled with water, and he proceeded to throw it violently against the wall as he realized with a growing horror that something was blocking his power to heal.
-o00o-
To his dismay, Misty noticed his newest change in behavior.
"So what was with you and Joey's Rattata? He said you were being weirder than you usually are." she asked him out of the blue as she placed fresh rolls of bandages near the bedside table for him to take.
"Nothing." he told her blankly, trying to mask his inner despair and panic. Did she know about his powers? Did she know about the loss?
"Liar." she snapped at him.
"Fine!" he snapped back at her, irately, "I was being weird in exactly the way you like to tell me that I am! His Rattata was hurt, I tried to help it, and I failed!" She visibly jumped back, caught surprised by the force and vehemence in his voice.
"Jeez, I'm not asking you to pour your deepest darkest secrets!" she snapped back once she had recovered, "I just asked what happened! You've been acting... I don't know... uppity lately, like something's freaking you out. I want to know why."
He chuffed at her, "So you can lord it over me? No thanks."
"So that I can help, you bonehead." she growled at him and threw one of the bandage rolls at his head, rolling her eyes with exasperation and walking towards the bedroom door, "Not everyone in this freaking region is out to hurt you, and I'd have hoped the last five weeks would have told you that. But nope, back to square one with you!" she snarled on the way out of the room, slamming the door closed and soon her footsteps faded down the hallway. He could still hear her fuming through the walls though.
She wanted to help him? Hardly likely, but he still found himself doubting, as usual, which only served to further the discord inside him. Nobody could help him, not with this. He was sure of that.
...Maybe.
-o00o-
Lance woke up screaming, feeling the ghostly and dizzying overflow of blood down his chest and arms as well as the warm hand that had settled over his collar bone and another on his wrist. There was a worried voice in his ears, telling him over and over again that he was okay, he was safe, nothing was hurting him, he was going to be okay, and he was safe.
It took him several seconds to realize that the hand on his wrist was stopping him from further clawing at the bandaged scabs on his chest, where angry red welts were swelling and little droplets of blood around and inside the bandages were forming in tiny needle-thin spots. The dream, or nightmare more accurately, had become as fleeting as it had suddenly appeared in his sleep, and he could remember none of the details.
He was slowly becoming aware that the room was pitch black except for the glow of a night lamp beside him, and more so aware that the one keeping his own hand from betraying him and trying to calm him down from his nightmare was Misty, adorned in a long nightgown, loose pajama pants, and a thin robe. Before he could think or react though, to push her away and snarl at her to leave him alone and stop touching him and stop making him feel things, exhaustion set in as quickly as he had snapped back into the real world. He was unaware of the tears that came loose from his eyes, but he was vaguely aware of Misty's hushed voice whispering to him as he was laid back down.
He was lulled back to sleep with Misty's whispers and her hands drying up the sweat all over his skin with a washcloth, with the belief that either this was just another part of the nightmare, or that this was real but that he would forget it in the morning.
-o00o-
He remembered with a sharp kind of clarity that both dazzled and frightened him, how he could have sworn he had been bleeding rivers out of his chest in his nightmares and awoken to Misty's hands and kind whispers that easily quelled the storm inside him and lulled him back to a dreamless sleep. For hours he stayed in the bed that morning, sitting up with his feet hanging off the bed's edge while his hands cradled his head, thinking back to every moment since waking up that first day and he wondered, angrily, terrified, confused, When had it changed? When had he changed?
-o00o-
Some indignant, stubborn part of him sparked his inner rage and confusion into an inferno that truly consumed him. By the time it was the dead of night his blood was boiling and rushing in his veins like a river that never stopped that washed everything away. All he thought that night was that it was her fault. It was her fault, that things were changing, that he was changing! It was her fault for showing mercy, her fault for daring to give him her pity, that witch! Her fault, that he couldn't heal anymore! Her fault that this damnable ache in his chest that had surpassed superficial wounds had festered inside him suddenly!
That was all that was going through his mind, over and over like a mantra that was equal parts rage and despair as he snuck into the kitchens of the mansion and then made his way into the upstairs bedrooms. It was so easy because the staff had gotten used to him, and she had gotten complacent with his presence that he was able to shadow into the massive bedroom with its own large personal bathroom, closet space, and a balcony. Once more, his mind whispered, her own fault.
He shoved away the voice in his head that whispered against the hot violence running through his mind as he approached the queen's bed and looked upon the sleeping girl nestled in her covers. Her breathing was steady and rhythmic, her back turned to him and her orange hair spilling behind her shoulders. If his bloodlust and rage had dimmed at all in the course of his ascent through the mansion, it had reinvigorated itself until all he could hear was blood rush in his ears.
Then she mumbled and turned in her sleep and he froze, petrified on the spot. His hands clenched at the carving knife in his grip, the river of rage turning into a monsoon as he stood frozen, that even now she was bewitching him, damn her!
Misty snuggled her hands closer to her face and tried to bury herself deeper into her covers, and he caught the the indescribable, undeniable mumble of his name pass her lips, more unimportant mumblings of ships and carrots.
He fell to his knees with the distinct mind-numbing feeling of defeat that fell into a melting pot of despair and turmoil as his bloodlust, hate, and rage evaporated in an instant. He turned so that his back pressed against the frame and mattresses of her bed, the knife falling from his hands then he angrily kicked it away, finding its presence suddenly and incredibly offensive. It disappeared under a dresser, not that he noticed, as immediately his hands came up to stop the wall of water that threatened to spill over his eyes.
It did not work as streams trickled down his cheeks. He felt a warm hand caress the strands of his hair atop his head, nails just barely touching his scalp as behind him he could hear Misty murmur behind him, "Down boy, good boy...don't eat the mailman."
He should have been offended that she was petting him like he was the dog in her dream.
Instead the tears fell faster and he fought harder to quiet the hiccups in his voice so as not to wake her.
-o00o-
"Lance, what the actual hell!?" she yelled after him.
"I can't stay here any longer, Misty." he tells her simply as he flies out of the outside gardens and into the courtyards, and it wouldn't occur to either trainer until later that he hadn't said her name during his entire stay until that moment. At the center of the courtyard was Dragonite, who looked relatively healthy and healed from their defeat six and a half weeks ago. With a single mental command, the rest of his pokemon who had assembled around Dragonite disappeared into the new set of pokeballs on his belt that he had retrieved from the mansion's supplies an hour ago along with the rest of his things. The only pokemon he was leaving behind, he realized, were the two Dragonairs who had led him there in the first place. The weight of his dragon tamer cape was back on his shoulders, a shadow that reminded him of everything he had done and seen in his life up until that fateful battle atop Mt. Cerise. The black shirt underneath his jacket bearing the Cerulean Gym logo, however, was new and courtesy of Misty's hospitality, thanks to the gaping hole in his old one from Giovanni's Beedrill.
"What do you mean!? Why?! You haven't even fulled healed yet! Where are you even going to go? Where can you go?!" she yells at him, firing off questions that he wasn't sure he could answer, or would want to.
He was feet away from Dragonite, who looked nervous amidst the rampant emotion being broadcast by Misty and Lance himself. He turned to face Misty and found that he looked upon her with a sort of urgency, a need for her to understand so that he wouldn't have to say anything, or have to verbalize the storm that had enraptured his soul. Once he might have looked at her with hate and disgust, but after all that had transpired in the last month and a half there was none.
"I just..." he found, just as he suspected, that he had no idea what to say or how to say what he wanted her to know or understand, as he continued to stumble, "I just can't, Misty. I just... I need to... I need to find..." he grimaced at himself, at his inability to get anything comprehensible out from the mess in his brain.
Misty frowned at him thoughtfully, almost worriedly, and then he watched her anger deflate in a heavy sigh, "Okay... just promise you won't go off on another genocidal escapade?"
To his credit he didn't find the empty taunt insulting, but he nodded.
He turned away and mounted Dragonite's back, relishing in the familiarity and warmth of his brother in arms. Dragonite sent a pulse of warm emotions to him, which helped ease his nerves.
"If you ever decide to come back to Cerulean, you better be back in one piece, you hear me?" she told him.
He only offered her an upward and quick quirk of his lips that fell as quickly as it appeared when he answered back, "We'll see." Then Dragonite took off into the air with a powerful burst of its wings, and Lance became one with the sky once again.
-o00o-
And that's the Yellow portion I wanted to get out. Next up will be Gold. No, not the character.
Review and let me know how you liked it, what interested you, or if you have questions or comments.
-KO13