Hello, all!
I figured it was about time to finally give this story a serious re-write, seeing as it's one of the oldest things I've ever written. I've considered just killing it off, but quite honestly I think I like it too much to do that. XD
I'm going to take this in a whole new direction this time around, so I hope you guys enjoy the new style! There's a bit of language in this first Prologue, but Robyn's mouth isn't always this foul so bear with me, please X'D
DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING BUT MY IDEAS. Pokemon and anything I may reference belong to their respective owners and I take no credit for them.
Prologue: Comet?!
Guardian Peak. Any self-respecting Aura Guardian or Aura Guardian Trainee, such as myself, with any sense knows that name. It's one of the most sacred locations known to our entire society, and I can personally verify that the powerful energies I sense here are way stronger than the legends give credit for. I just wish I didn't have to climb this thing...
"Hey, big bro, are we almost to the rendezvous point? My knees can't take much more of this hiking shit..." I called up to my older brother Riley. He was walking several feet ahead of me, and I didn't really have the energy to attempt to catch up with him at the moment.
"Jeez Robyn," he taunted back at me with a smirk, "has summer vacation made you soft? Maybe I should start doubling up your daily drills." Riley has been my teacher ever since I found out about my power to control the aura, so I knew for a fact that he wasn't entirely joking about the extra drills. I shuddered a bit at the thought of having extra "special lessons", as Riley dubbed them. A "special lesson" had me try to fight Riley in a one-on-one sparring match, which admittedly wasn't very hard normally; however, I wasn't allowed to use my aura skills to aid me. In short, these lessons generally ended with Riley easily kicking my ass.
"May I remind you that I was in the middle of helping Rhett's mother make house repairs before the Council called us up here?" I retorted, trying to ignore the ever-present burn in my thighs. "You know how hopelessly incapable of using tools Rhett is. He's not even allowed to use a common screwdriver anymore after what he did when he was trying to replace the batteries in his little sister's toy. Poor Ari, she told me that his thumb was practically bleeding out."
"Poor Ari? What about Rhett's thumb?!" Riley snorted in response, although I knew he really wasn't all that surprised by my comment. "Rhett is your childhood friend, sister of mine, and we both know that Ari isn't really the type of kid to get all freaked out over some blood. Shouldn't you be even the slightest bit concerned over your friend's wounded thumb?"
"That was well over three weeks ago, Ri." I countered in a, "no duh", sort of tone. The conversation I was having with my brother and mentor was slowly helping me forget about my sore legs and my labored breathing. I myself may be extremely strong and well-conditioned athletically for a girl my age, but the nine-and-a-half hour trek it took to climb Guardian Mountain wasn't exactly a cakewalk when preceded by two hours of hard physical labor. I was about to continue my statement, but Riley suddenly stopped in his tracks. Seeing as he was my guide and I would have run into him if I hadn't, I also stopped.
"There they are. Looks like we made pretty good time." Riley commented with a small tinge of relief in his voice. I looked ahead and, sure enough, there stood the small yet extremely important collection of people Riley and I had dragged our butts all the way up this large mountain to meet.A
"Aha, Riley and Robyn. So good of you two to join us." One of the oldest and most important-looking men in the group grinned with some enthusiasm. I recognized him vaguely from when I was small; his name was Darrius and presided over the council as the Chief-in-Command Elder. The rest of the people were complete strangers to me, not that I cared. "I'm sorry I had to call the two of you all the way up here on such short notice, but a strange, lit-up object was spotted crashing into this, the holy mountain, earlier, and we need help with the investigating of this strange anomaly." Darrius continued in his slightly obnoxious style of speaking. The way he talked was really starting to irk me, but I couldn't just punch this guy for being a windbag like I may have wanted to. So, I just stood in silence and concentrated on suppressing the urge to shut the old man up.
"May I ask why it is that you called my sister and I? I know I've been selected as a candidate for the council, so it makes sense that you might call on me. But Robyn is still learning; so, why call her to the mountain?" Riley questioned Darrius, glancing over the old man's shoulder at the handful of people gathered over yonder. I could tell just by looking at him that he thought something was off. I reached up and adjusted my hat a bit out of anticipation.
"As you can see, many of the council members could not make it due to other equally-as-demanding engagements, so we needed a few extra hands. Your sister proven herself to be very talented in handling the Aura over the course of her studentship under you, and experiencing Guardian Mountain could be beneficial to her." was Darrius's long-winded response. This actually was my first real visit to Guardian Mountain; although, it was odd that I had even been let up here. Aura Guardians such as myself typically weren't supposed to come up her until we were eighteen, while I'm only fifteen. So... why was I even up here? While I thought about this, Darrius started to continue talking about some business which concerned a comet crashing in a nearby area on the mountain. Or whatever. I really wasn't paying attention anymore.
Pretty soon, I noticed that all the people present we're starting to break off into little groups and making their way towards different places on the mountain. I was confused by what was going on and started to look for my brother so he could bail my ass out and tell me what was going on, but when I found him he told me something I wasn't exactly expecting to hear. He told me that I was going to break off and search for the strange... "thing" that had crashed into the Mountain almost a day ago. I glanced up an the darkening sky, and then back at my brother. "Uh, you do know it's dark, and..." I started to comment, but was unable to finish because of how burnt-up I was getting inside.
"...You don't have your own Pokemon." Riley finished for me with a quick nod. "I'm aware of that, but I still want you try, regardless of that. You're combat skills are getting even better than mine were at your age; I'm positive you can defend yourself." he assured me, but he really didn't need to. There aren't very many things in this world that can make me nervous. "I think Darrius wants to test you, to see how much of a grip you really have on the aura, so try to really focus on your surrounding." he then muttered, barely above a whisper. Thank you for the obvious hint, big bro.
After our little conversation ended, Riley ended up taking off with Darrius and I was left to fend for myself as planned. I decided to take advantage of the silence I now possessed and got more acquainted with the mountain's oddly powerful aura by closing my eyes, clearing my head of everything, and letting my aura explore that of the mountain.
The moment my aura made contact with the mountain's, I got a very bitter taste of how much power it was really holding. That aura was so damn strong that it made me sick the first time I connected with it! My own aura got smacked around a lot, as if I had just haphazardly thrown it into white water rapids, before finally being shoved right back into my body; giving me a sharp stabbing pain in my side and a really nasty head rush. I had let myself recover before I even thought about attempting to connect again.
This time around, I was a lot more cautious when trying to link my aura to the mountain's. I got on my hands and knees and pressed my forehead to the ground, which gave me more entry points to channel my aura to. I cleared my head again and began to slowly feed into the violently powerful waves, trying a slower method to ease myself in instead of jumping haphazardly in.
After a while, I got used to the raw power of the mountain's aura and began to search through it. I looked for any suspicious discrepancies in the aura's flow, or any foreign auras nearby that might be worth checking. After a half an hour of searching and not a clue to speak of, I began to get fed up with what I was doing and just about pulled away, when all of a sudden some foreign shockwave of energy even MORE powerful than the mountain's just plowed into me from behind unexpectedly. This odd shockwave was so powerful that it physically knocked me on to my face. "DAMMIT ALL, WHAT IN ARCEUS' HOLY NAME..." I cried out in frustration and, mainly, surprise. I jumped up of the ground and spun around just in time to see a whitish-yellow shockwave coming right towards me through the ground. I didn't feel anything like pain as it inevitably passed under my feet, but the moment it did I heard a peculiar voice, quiet and gentle like a whisper, calling out in my head.
"...Mama..."
I blinked. Had a shockwave of energy seriously just called me "Mama"?
"What in the Distortion World..." I muttered in disbelief as I took a few steps towards the edge of the cliff; the place where the shockwave appeared to have originated from. As I did, another similar wave passed under my feet again, only this one conveyed a different message.
"...Come get me..."
"Who are you? Where are you?" I spoke out curiously as I peered cautiously over the cliff. The cliff face looked as though something had smashed into it fairly recently. It had many cracks of varying sizes in it and a large portion dipped into a huge crater; in the middle of which a small cave seemed to have opened up thanks to the force of whatever had dented the wall. I continued to look at it for a second, then grinned.
Bingo was his name-o.
"RIIIIIIIIIILEEEEEEYYYYY!" I screamed with excitement. I had found it, whatever "it" was, and now I wanted to assess my discovery further. I only called for my brother as a courtesy; there was no way I was waiting who-knows-how-long for help to show up. I was just beginning to climb down what little, cracked cliff-face there was left, when all of a sudden another one of the light shockwaves came out of the mouth of the cave and climbed up the crater wall towards me, and once again I heard the voice. It sounded more urgent this time, as if it was trying to warn me of something.
"...Hurry...The Darkness is near..."
I haulted for a moment after hearing this. I can't explain why, but as soon as th odd voice spoke to me that time, I felt a cold wind very much unlike the gusts of mountain that were so common at this altitude. I began to feel a large amount of anxiety and, for possibly one oft the first times since before I left my hime with my brother to become an Aura Guardian, fear. That dark and foreboding wind passed right through my body and left me feeling particularly empty and ill inside, like there was a presence here who wanted me out of the picture.
Or, perhaps I WASN'T the one that this "Darkness" wanted gone. What if... if it was the person in the cave they were after?
I can't exactly explain the actions that I took following that thought, because after that I let go of the wall on an instinct and tumbled straight down the upper wall of the crater without even considering the consequences. All I remember was thinking, "I have to get to the person in the cave first." over and over in my mind. After that, everything went black.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying face-down in front of the little cave. I heard frantic voices quarreling above me; one of which I recognized as being my older brother's. My forehead was throbbing profusely and I had a dull headache. When I lifted myself up off the ground, I immediately noticed the puddle of blood on the ground where I had been laying and reached up to gingerly touch the throbbing spot on my forehead. I concluded that I must have hit my head during my tumble. It didn't seem like too serious of an injury, so I shook it off. I looked up at the sky and saw that it was still quite dark, meaning that I hadn't passed out for much longer than five or so minutes. As I stood all the way up, I began to hear my brother screaming things like, "Stay where you are! I'm coming to get you!" but once again I wasn't really listening. I lurched forward towards with unsteady steps; determined to find and help the person in the cave.
When I made it to the very back of the cave, I was met with a soft, pale light that was practically the same color as the shockwaves from earlier. I approached the source of the gentle glow and made my blurred vision focus as well as I could get it to on the source of the light, but I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
The crater-like impression on the wall behind the rounded glowing object made it clear that I had found the Meteorite thatcause caused such a big fuss among the council. But, in all reality, the meteorite wasn't a meteorite at all. I slowely picked up the rounded object to confirm my suspicion, then took a seat in the crater and cradled it against my chest as I waited for help to arrive, slowly slipping into unconsciousness once more as I did.
The glowing, rounded item was, in fact, a Pokemon egg, yet I still had many questions about the strange egg. Where exactly did it come from? Who was its parent? How had it survived cdashing through rock?
And, why had it fallen from the sky?
~~END PROLOGUE~~
Author's Note
Thank you for reading! I really hope it turned out better this time around :D
I know most of the reviews I've received thus far won't make very much sense anymore now that I've started completely rewriting everything (X'D), but I'd like to thank those people who submitted them for taking the time to read and critique my work. It means so much to see when people enjoy my work or when I get some helpful constructive criticism!
Adios for now, or at least until I finish Chapter 1! 8D
-TheRisingStarAlchemist