My name is Paul. I live in America and have since I was born. I've been to several places in the country before my parents finally stopped moving around and decided to settle in Washington.
For about a month, as everywhere we moved, I was socially awkward. I didn't know when we'd be moving again, so I didn't attempt to make any friends. I just hung in the back of the class and tried to pay attention to whatever was happening at the front of the room.
One day, a new group of students joined the class. It was about mid February in my 7th grade year. I ignored them though and just sat at the back of the class playing Pokemon Saphire on my Gameboy SP, waiting for them to take their seets. Most of them immediately started chatting away with people in the front. Most of them. Two of the new guys, though, came to the back and asked if they could sit in the empty desks next to mine. To be polite, I said, "Sure," and they took their seats on either side of mine. When the one on my left noticed that I was playing Pokemon, he tapped on my shoulder and started talking to me.
"You still play Pokemon?" he asked me. 'Oh great. One of these guys,' I thought to myself. That is, until he pulled out a Gameboy and Pokemon Ruby. He opened it up, started up his game, and showed me his team.
Long story short, we became instant friends.
But not before the guy on my right noticed what we were doing. In seconds, he had out his Gameboy and a copy of Pokemon Emerald. We began to talk a lot about the games and the guy on my left even started bringing a link cable to school. Before long, we'd spend our class time playing the trading card game and our lunch battling and trading. The guy to my left was named Ryan and the guy to my right was named Michael.
As we finished out highschool, we bought the new Pokemon games and systems to go with us and continued our love of the games. When we all were deciding to go off to college, we miraculously chose and got accepted to the same one. It was great luck, but nothing compared to what we would encounter in the first year.
It was around Christmas and we were all thinking about getting the new Pokemon games for eachother (though none of us knew it at the time) when the fire in our dorm blew out. We'd thought for a while that maybe there was a problem with the fireplace, but we had ignored it until now. Some of the other guys in the dorm complained about the fire before Ryan, Michael and I got it started again. Then we sat down in front of the fire and popped in our old Pokemon Saphire, Ruby, and Emerald games. We used the link cable to battle eachother for a while, then decided to go to bed. We had earlier classes than most of the other students, so we usually went to bed early (the operative word there being 'usually'). Thankfully, we didn't have any the following day.
In the middle of the night, I was woken up by the sound of some sort of high pitched moan. I just assumed that one of the other guys had brought home a girl when I heard it again, this time coming from outside my window. Confused, I carefully got up out of bed and walked slowly to the window. Ryan, Michael and I shared a room, so I didn't want to wake them up.
When I looked outside, I couldn't see much of anything. It was snowing pretty hard, so there wasn't much visibility to begin with. When I squinted my eyes, I could make out a depression in the snow like something had dragged itself around the house.
Now, it's important to note that, as a kid, I didn't like stop motion or live-action snow men very much. They always creeped me out. So, when I recognized what I thought was the round path of one of those hellspawn of christmas specials, I started silently freaking out.
I still didn't want to wake up my friends, so I slipped on some shoes, grabbed a tennis racket out of our closet, and made my way to the front door. I picked up a flash light in the main room with the fireplace and made my way over to the front window of the dorm. Strangely, this was one of five buildings that were seperate from the rest of the student dorms. Pure luck was on our side during the housing registration.
When I looked outside of the hazy window expecting to see a killer Frosty the Snowman, I instead saw something moving into a patch of trees and shrubbery near the house. It was dragging itself on the ground, and it didn't look too round, so I dropped my killer snowman theory. Its outline looked strangely familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place it, so I went back to bed and tried my best to fall back asleep.
No matter how many different positions I tried, I couldn't manage to find anything comfortable. Instead, I got back up and moved to the corner of our room which housed an Xbox 360. I popped in Call of Duty Black Ops and put on my headphones. I didn't want to make any noise, but the game needs sound to be played well.
As I fought through hordes of the undead in the Zombies mode, my mind kept drifting back to that thing that had been going around our house. Surely it couldn't have gone far. It didn't seem healthy, but at the same time, it could've been a rabid badger (though I doubted a badger of any sort would be prowling around our dorm, seemingly looking for a way in).
I was overun by zombies and died, so I turned off the game system and put everything away. Then, just for kicks, I thought I'd take a look outside and get a closer look at what that thing was. I armed myself with my racket and flashlight again and stepped out into the snow. I shut the door lightly so as not to wake up anyone and made my way over to the small group of trees.
As I got closer and closer, I began to hear the same sort of moaning, quieter this time and much, much weaker. Whatever this thing was, it was in horrible shape. As I finally got close to where I thought the creature was in the bushes, I clicked on my flashlight and began to slowly shine it across the bushes.
So far so good. Some snow, a few small frost bitten flowers, a small patch of grass, a big red and white thing, the roots of a tr- Wait a second. Big red and white thing? I moved my flashlight back over the spot where I saw the anomally and stared in wonder at what was half burried in the snow.
Lying before me, shivering yet almost completely motionless and letting out a faint, high pitched moan, was a Latias. There was no mistaking it. I'd seen Pokemon Heroes and played Pokemon Saphire for too long not to recognize it. I slowly started backing away from it. I still couldn't believe my eyes. I backed up until I tripped on a rather large mound of snow, causing me to fall backwards and hit my head on the ground. I dropped my flashlight in the process and the thing went out. I could barely see the outline of the house through the snow now as I clutched my head momentarily in pain.
I ignored my loss of sight and focussed only on my sense of hearing and touch. I felt my way through the snow until my hand touched something slightly warm. When I focussed hard with my eyes on what was in front of me, I found that I was looking into the large amber eyes of the Latias. I also found that my hand was on its forehead.
The Latias lowered its head and shut its eyes, managing to let out a small purr. I kept my hand on its head, unsure of what would happen if I removed it. Getting ahold of myself, I started to talk to it. I don't know where it came from, but my mouth started moving and words started coming out.
"Are you okay?" I asked, genuinely curious. Though, like I said, I didn't realize I was speaking at all until I heard my own voice. The Latias looked up at me again and it slowly turned its head left and right, "No." I was amazed that it could understand English and I started to control what I was saying more.
"Do you want to come inside?" I asked. My god. I couldn't believe that I just asked a fictional creature from a video game if it wanted to come inside. What was I thinking?! Any of my dorm mates, even Ryan and Michael, would freak out if I showed them this thing, much less tried to bring it in. Either way though, I couldn't stand the thought of leaving it out there to get worse or, in the worse case scenerio, die.
It perked up slightly before drooping its head again. Without waiting for another response I moved my hand down its neck and used my racket hand to grab hold of its lower back. Then, I moved around it and lifted, picking it up and holding it in my arms. Its head was dangling over my left arm and it looked like it was falling unconscious.
"Crap," I said to myself. I needed to get her inside and fast. I looked around for the dorm and managed to find it in the darkness. I started stumbling toward it and made my way for our bedroom window. We always kept it unlocked for air if we needed it, so I nudged it open with my shoulder (it was one of those that swings in like a door) and carefully set the Latias down on the floor. I followed her in, making sure not to step on her, and then I made my way over to Ryan and Michael's bunk bed. I'd have to tell them at some point, so I thought to myself 'sooner rather than later'.
I tried to wake up Ryan first. "Hey Ryan, wake up," I whispered. He managed to pick up on that and he began to stir before sitting up.
"Dude, why'd you wake me up?" he groaned groggily as he rubbed his eyes.
"There's something you and Michael need to see. Wake him up for me, will ya?" I said back.
"Sure thing," he said before fumbling around in the darkness for the ladder that led up to the top bunk. "Hey Michael, wake up," he said as he smacked the side of Michael's head. That woke him up and he sat up fast, a panicked look on his face as if he thought we were being robbed.
""What's going on?" he said, frightened a little. "You can have my money, but you're not taking my Xbox!"
"Whoa, easy Michael," I whispered. "Don't wake up the whole dorm." He looked where he thought I was and flipped me the bird. "Well good morning to you too," I said. Michael then flipped around and got off of the top bunk onto the ground.
"So why'd you wake us up?" asked Ryan.
"Yeah man," said Michael. "I was just about to score." Ryan and I both eyeballed Michael for a second. "What? Don't tell me you've never been to a bar before in your dreams."
I shook my head and got to the point. "I'm going to show you both something, but you've got to promise not to scream. Or yell. Or do anything that could wake up the other guys. Okay?" I asked.
I could tell that Ryan and Michael were starting to get curious. "Whatever you say," said Ryan uneasily.
"Alright," I said. "Here we go." With that, I walked over to the light switch on the wall and flicked it on. When I turned around, Ryan and Michael's faces were frozen in shock. I walked over to the window and knelt down. "Ryan, Michael, this is Latias," I said as I reached down to pet its forehead.
Neither of them moved for a few seconds. Finally, Ryan spoke up. "Is that what I think it is?" he said slowly, his mouth agape.
"I think so," I said back.
"So then you've just brought in..." began Michael.
"A fictional character from a japanese video game that we've spent our whole lives playing? Yes. I think I have," I said, looking back down at the Latias. It was still shivering and it had moved closer to me.
"Paul, I think you've left the window open," said Michael dryly. I stood up and shut it carefully so as not to make any noise.
"Paul, did you wish really, really hard?" asked Ryan.
"What? No!" I said back. There was a slight pause and then...
"Well," began Ryan, "I think we should all get some rest." He clapped his hands together lightly and then crawled back into bed.
"Yeah, right behind you," mumbled Michael slowly, still staring at the Latias as he climbed the ladder up to the second bunk.
They were both back asleep in seconds, probably just thinking that they had fallen into a strange dream. Of course, they couldn't have been more wrong if that was the case.
Gently, I picked up the Latias again and carried it over to my bed. I pulled back the covers and set it down, then replaced them for the Pokemon. It turned to look at me before closing its eyes in exhaustion and falling asleep. I smiled at it before climbing the ladder to my own bed's top bunk which was normally used in case of an emergency. I then pulled over the covers and fell asleep with the strange feeling that something was watching me.
I woke up the next morning to something laying on top of me. For a minute, I thought that I'd gotten drunk and that I'd brought some bar fly home. But when I opened my eyes, I found that I was staring into the eyes of the Latias. "Waa!" I shouted as I backed up to the wall.
The Latias hovered above my bed in the little room that was there between the roof and me before coming closer to my face again. As my back touched the wall, I knew there was no escape. Scared out of my wits, I expected it to attack me. Instead, the Latias flopped down on my left and nestled into the bed sheets by the wall.
I sat there puzzled for a minute before whispering loudly, "Ryan. Ryan!" He woke up with a start and fumbled for his alarm clock. When he picked it up, it read 8:30 AM. He groaned and then turned over in an attempt to fall back asleep. "RYAN!" I whispered again, this time with more volume. He immediately sat up and looked up at me.
His jaw dropped as he saw where the Latias was. "Am I still dreaming?" he said to himself.
"No you idiot," I said back. "What should I do?" I mouthed to him.
"I don't know," he mouthed back. He got up and walked over to the ladder of my bunk bed and pulled himself up.
"Just help me off the bed," I continued. Ryan then got off of the ladder and dug through one of his drawers for a screw driver. "What are you going to do with that?" I asked.
"I'm gonna take off the railing so you can roll off onto the floor," he said.
"Are you crazy?" I asked, still whispering. "I'm gonna break my arm or something!"
"Then just act like a cat and land on your feet," he whispered back.
I sighed a little before saying, "Okay, but just hurry up. This is weird." After about a minute, he had the screws out of the railing that was holding it on. He lifted it off and carefully set it down on the floor.
"Okay, now just roll off," he said.
"Alright. Here I go." I slowly started to inch away from the Latias and I was soon on the edge of the bed. I rolled off and-
~*THUD*~
I landed on my left arm and winced a little bit before getting up. "Oh, jeez," I said through gritted teeth. I could suddenly hear footsteps coming down the hall to our room. "Crap. It's the other guys," I said. "How are we gonna hide her?" I noticed that I had just refered to the Latias as her instead of it.
"Um, throw the covers over her," said Ryan. "But don't wake her up."
I climbed the ladder again and carefully threw the sheets over Latias. No sooner had I climbed down the ladder then a knock came on the door. "Come in," I said without thinking. Ryan shot a quick glance at me as if to say, 'What the hell are you thinking?' I responded with a light shrug.
One of the other guys came in. He noticed the lump on my bed and said to me, "Who's that up there?"
"Um, no one," I said back plainly. "Absolutely no one."
"Oh really?" he said with a smirk. He jogged over to the bed and started climbing the ladder.
"Actually, I wouldn't go near that if I were-" Too late. He had already thrown the sheet off of the bed. I kept expecting him to fall off in shock or yell or something. But he never did. Instead, he seemed confused.
"What the..." he said as he looked at the empty bed. "Is this some kind of joke?" he said as he turned back to me.
"Um, yeah. I'm practicing a magic routine," I said as I looked at the bed. I was about to slap myself before I thought to myself, 'Roll with it.' Latias was nowhere in sight. I had to stop my jaw from dropping in shock.
"That's a pretty damn good trick," said the guy as he climbed down from the top bunk. "Keep up the good work," he said as he shot me a smile and left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Ryan and I both breathed a sigh of relief. Then, our minds turned to another question. "Where is she?" I asked Ryan.
"I don't know. Um... let's think," he said. "The Pokedex! Remember, it says that Latias can turn invisible. Maybe she's still here."
"Good idea," I said back. "Latias, are you in here?" I whispered. Nothing. Not a single sound came from the room. Then, I heard the bed springs on my bed (the lower one) contract as weight fell upon them. Latias suddenly appeared out of thin air, laying on the bed and looking at us.
"Thank God," I said. I walked over to her and sat on the bed next to her. She looked at me with the cutest face I have ever seen. Not even a puppy could compare. I began to ask her a few questions, mainly because I was curious. "What are you doing here?"
She turned away from me, shut her eyes, and dipped her head. "Don't want to talk about it, huh?" I asked. She nodded her head yes. "Um... are you hungry? Can I get you anything to eat?" Latias lifted her head and let out a loud 'Whoo!' sound. She was smiling and seemed happy to hear that there was food somewhere.
"Well, that answers that question," said Ryan. "I'll go see what I can find in the kitchen." With that, Ryan left the room, assumedly to go to the kitchen. Meanwhile, Michael was beginning to wake up.
"Oh man..." he said, rubbing his head as he sat up. "I had the coolest and possibly strangest dream last night." I watched as he put on some sunglasses that he had with him. "You and Ryan were there and you brought home - get this - a Latias from the old Pokemon games. Can you believe...it?"
His last words trailed off as he finally noticed Latias laying on my bed and he stared for a few seconds. "So then, I wasn't dreaming?" he asked me. I simply shook my head and mouthed 'No'. "Hmph. So then, what do we do?" he continued as he got off of the top bunk. It almost sounded like he didn't think anything was out of the ordinary.
"I'm not sure," I answered. "Ryan went to go find some breakfast for her. The other guys should be out by now, so it's probably okay to let her out into the main room."
"I'm just gonna go check and make sure that everyone is really gone," he said to me. Michael left the room, leaving me alone with Latias.
For a few minutes, we simply sat alone on my bed. Neither of us moved or said anything. Then, without warning, Latias slammed into me, knocking me over onto the bed. She was now lying on top of me, which, quite honestly, was a little bit weird, when she suddenly started to cry. She buried her face into my shoulder and cried her eyes out.
Now, let me get this straight. I'm not used to having a girl crying on my shoulder. I only ever dated a girl once, and she left me for another girl. Yes, you heard me. Another girl. So after that, I never spent time with any other women. I was totally lost in what to do, so I just did what I saw on all of those reality shows and movies. I hugged her and stroked her head and told her everything would be okay. I didn't really know what else to do, so I continued until she stopped crying.
When she was finally done, she looked up into my eyes with a longing stare that I fell into immediately. I didn't know what was wrong, but I wanted to help her any way that I could. "Can't you tell me what's wrong?" I asked her.
After some hesitiation, she nodded and then started moving her head closer to mine. I wasn't sure what she was doing, but if it could tell me what was wrong, then I was willing to do it. When her face was about an inch away from mine, she lowered her head and pushed her forehead against mine.
Suddenly, time seemed to stop. Everything went grayscale and I couldn't move. Nothing else was moving around me, not even Latias. After a few seconds of this, I got a massive headache. Not quite a migraine, but a very bad headache none the less. Images suddenly began flashing through my mind almost like a clip of old movie. I could see these men chasing Latias. They were all wearing white labcoats and carrying what looked like tranqualizer guns. My view suddenly shifted from following Latias to seeing through her eyes as she flew down a hallway in an attempt to escape them. Pain suddenly lanced up my back and my vision reddened a little as Latias gradually began to slow down. The view went all black for a few seconds before switching to Latias strapped to some kind of table. There were more scientists around her and armed guards at a door in the corner of the room. I was still seeing what Latias was seeing, so I wasn't sure what to expect. As she looked around the room, I got some more information about her surroundings. There was another door with more armored guards and a one-way-window like the ones on all of those police tv shows. More pain struck my right arm and my vision reddened more. When Latias looked over to her right arm, one of the scientists had stuck her with a needle. He was injecting some kind of anesthetic into it as near as I could tell. He and three others then moved to either side of Latias and prepared more needles, though these were empty. They then stuck Latias in the wings and began to draw out blood. The anesthetic wasn't working because I could feel incredible pain around my shoulder blades, no doubt representing the pain that she felt in her wings. They proceeded to check around her, examining her body and looking it over. Another stab of pain hit my neck and I could feel Latias lose control of her body. Everything suddenly went dark again and I waited for my sight to return. When it did, I saw through Latias's eyes that she was lying in a snow-filled ditch. They had just abandoned her on the side of the road.
The headache stopped and time began to flow again as Latias pulled away from me and the images disappeared. I sat staring at her for a moment as she hung her head, tear droplets beginning to form in the corners of her eyes.
Without giving it a second thought, I reached for her and hugged her tightly. I didn't know what else to do, especially for someone in such a condition. She immediately began to cry again, this time hanging her head over my shoulder causing her tears to stain my back.
"What's wrong with her?" asked Ryan as he stood in the doorway.
Without moving, I simply said, "Both of you, get in here now. We need to talk."