Book 1 of the Fallen Girl Series
For those rereading this story, as of August 2015, the Girl and the Giratina has been officially REWRITTEN. Most of the chapters themselves have not been changed, nor has most of the formatted plot. But some details of the story has been tweaked in hopes of avoiding mary-sues and writer's block. This was my first story, and I only want to make it better for you guys and myself. I hope you will still enjoy the chapters.
(DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN POKEMON! Nintendo owns all rights! No copyright infringement!)
Chapter 1: The Real World: Reality is Overrated
The world is riddled in mystery. Science has constantly sought out all its secrets, but mankind is still left in the dark about the many wonders of life. New discoveries are being made every day. Advancements on technology, new galaxies are discovered. Even time travel is slowly starting to become a possibility, but no one could begin to imagine the possibility a young girl's fantasy of living in a world that does not exist to be true... but the possibilities are endless.
Two pokemon trainers, who had fought countless times, were down to their final pokemon. The air was thick with anticipation, almost boiling to the point of becoming unbearable as a young woman with long, chestnut hair and dark brown eyes called out her final pokemon, a large blue and orange mud skipper like creature with two blue fins protruding out of his head. Her competitor, a girl with dirty blonde hair and green eyes, sent out their opponent, a reddish orange bipedal bird with long tan feathers and piercing blue eyes.
"Blaziken, use Sunny Day!" commanded the blonde, her pokemon crying out to the sky with his wrists ablaze in hot fire. The sun began to seer with intensity as hot sunbeams lit the surrounding area. Despite the heat, the brunette felt an anxious shiver of fear build towards her impending downfall.
"Quick, Swampert, rap this up with Hydro Pump!" the other girl ordered quickly, a feeling an unnerving sense of foreboding. A vortex of jet-stream water shot from Swampert's maw and blasted his opponent with enough force to pluck off the feathers of a chicken, but the attack had done less than half the damage she had wanted, thanks to Sunny Day being in effect, and with the Blaziken being faster than her Swampert, it was only a matter of seconds before his trainer executed the finishing move.
"Blaziken, use Solarbeam," the girl smirked as an icy feeling of panic spread over the brunette as her opponent quickly gathered light and fired a powerful green blast into her Swampert. Anticipating for the numbers to quickly fall to zero, she had thought it was the end until she saw that her pokemon was still barely hanging on, his HP miraculously stopped at 23 and deep in the red. Down but not out. She smiled to herself, grateful that her pokemon had amazing special defense against his one weakness, and gave the final order.
"Awwww yeah! Way to take the hit, Swampert! Use Earthquake!" she cheered as the ground began to shiver and crack like fractured broken glass before it quickly trapped and crushed the Blaziken, his HP dropping instantly until it trickled down to zero. Digital text began scrolling over both the Gameboy SPs, displaying the victory icon of Trainer Diana's win against Trainer Laura. Both girls sighed, finally able to put down their consoles, though it was for different reasons.
"Ah ha, YES! VICTORY!" Diana fist pumped the air, revelling in the proud feeling of beating her friend once again.
"That was BULL! No way he should have lived after that shot. It was four times the damage!" Laura cried out holding her silver Gameboy as Diana confidently posed in front of her gaudy pokemon posters plastered on her bedroom walls
"Swampert can just sense my love!" Laura gave her a deadpanned look.
"Now THAT is full of crap. What did you do to it? Use a Game-shark and supe him up with rare candies?"
"Don't even joke about that, man. You know me better than that. I don't want to cheat. It sucks all the fun out of it," Diana frowned. "I admit, your Sunny Day had me worried, especially when you used Solarbeam, but nothing can beat my Swampert's stats," she smirked before whooping and hollering as she did her victory march around the room, loudly singing "We Are the Champions" off-key.
"Okay, loser, stop being such a sore winner. I didn't even want to battle you anyway. You begged me to," Laura growled teasingly at her friend.
"Well, that's because there's no one else to battle with," she shrugged in a-matter-of-fact way. "Plus, you know you love me."
"And you make me question that fact every day," Laura rolled her eyes sarcastically. "You do realize that this is just a game, right?"
"I'm crazy, not stupid."
"Could have fooled me. Forget the fact that you're a dorky, immature show-off, you're FIFTEEN. Now that you're in high school, you shouldn't even be playing these kind of games," she held up her Gameboy in emphasis before setting it back down on the bed.
"So? You're sixteen, and you play these games," Diana pointed out.
"Yeah, but only because you bugged the crap out of me to buy the game," sighed Laura as she sat up in a lotus position. "Pokemon is for little kids. I've seen five year olds play this game."
"That's a bit harsh..." Diana mumbled, even if it was kind of true. Most of the people her age didn't play pokémon, but her rule of thumb was that no one was too old for pokemon, and she was going to stick to it.
"-besides, Digimon is much cooler than Pokémon," Laura finished curtly, leaving Diana in a wide-eyed stupor.
"Blasphemy! I would never DARE compare Pokemon to Digimon!" she exclaimed in mock offence at the audacity of the phrase just uttered, going into the deep history of her love of Pokemon franchise stretching across time all the way towards her inspiration to play the flute. She enjoyed the plot, the art, the music, even the intense fear of the fighting against the Elite Four, even when you had a million Revives. That feeling practically made her console controller shake in her hands. It was... exhilarating, and it made her feel good about herself. Unfortunately, she had talked way too long and bored her friend.
"Yeah, yeah, Pokemon 2000, flute. I still think it's a fluke. Look, can we just disconnect already?" Laura sighed irritably.
"Fine..." Diana replied dejectedly as she exited her avatar from the battle room, saved, and shut down her Gameboy. She had just won her fifth wireless battle, but after the high wore off, she was left with an empty feeling as her thoughts returned to how little time she had left. Rolling off the bed and stretching her arms out, Diana tried to shake off any notion of sadness. "Been playing for a while... what time is it?"
"Uhhhh..." Laura replied, looking down at her wrist watch. "It's five o'clock. Why?"
Five o'clock!? Pokemon: Galactic Battles is on! Ignoring her friend, Diana jumped up with catlike agility and dashed out of her bedroom towards the living room. After fumbling for the remote, she quickly clicked on the TV onto Cartoon Network, displaying the screen of Ash and company relaying their past adventure from last episode.
The network had gone pretty far downhill on cartoons recently, and because of the unfortunate time slots they had for Pokemon, one of the few good shows, she had missed most of their episodes, but through some stroke of luck, she had manged to watch all the important gym battles up until now. Today, Ash was going to finally challenge Candace as the beginning clip of the episode transitioned into the opening song, "Battle Cry." Diana prepared to sing into her invisible microphone as the first couple of synthesized notes played.
"Sometimes it's hard to know (da-da),
Which way you're supposed to goooOOOO,
But deep inside, you know you're strong,
If you follow your heart, you can't be wrong..."
"YOU ARE SUCH A DORK!" yelled Laura from the other room. Diana smiled and took that as a compliment as she sang louder and more confidently as the song began to end.
"...And if we come, together as one,
Complete the quests that we've begun,
We will win the battle, Galactic Battles POKEMON!"
She squealed and rolled on the couch, hugging her legs to her chest as the episode started. God, she loved that song so much! It always seemed to fill her with a rush of nostalgia and adrenaline. Guess that's why the song was called "Battle Cry."
"You have to be the most tone deaf flautist I've ever known," Laura declared but reluctantly joined her on the couch anyway. In her excitement, Diana had rudely left Laura in the other room with an uncomfortable feeling of abandonment, but she was too wrapped up in her TV show to notice. But she would soon forgive her friend of this. She was, after all, Diana's best friend. She knew her friend hadn't meant to leave her behind because she knew, better than anyone else, how much this franchise meant to her.
As the gym battle began on TV, Dawn spouted out her usual 'No need to worries,' which gave Diana an intense need to jump off something tall. She found the character to be so obnoxious and a poor replacement for the female protagonist role, that the only good aspect of her was her diverse team of pokemon. Even Laura joined in mocking her by doing annoying imitations of her voice. They didn't have anything against Dawn personally. The coordinator just needed better writers.
After the episode ended, Laura was alerted by her phone to leave for a babysitting job and the fun was abruptly put to an end. The two girls looked at each other in the doorway, unsure of what to say to the other.
"You've got Petrie, right?" Diana asked gesturing to Laura's flute. Her stand partner nodded. "We should jam together again sometime."
"Yeah... I feel like I should give you my Ruby game, since... you know," Laura said, holding out her Gameboy cartridge before Diana pushed it back.
"No... You trained them all, and I wouldn't feel right taking them from you," Diana shook her head before displaying a small, confident grin. "Besides, you need to get stronger so that we can have another rematch, that is, if you think you'll be able to beat me."
"Dream on," Laura rolled her eyes. They stood there for a moment before they quickly pulled each other in a tight hug. "See you later..."
"So glad you didn't say goodbye," Diana chuckled mirthlessly.
"Never."
"...See you later, then," Diana smiled as she let her friend go to her red Sedan. She didn't move from the doorway until Laura pulled out of the driveway. As the feeling of loneliness began to creep in, Diana went back into her room and tore open her new Pokemon Platinum game, feeling the inspiration and excitement of a brand new game to play pull her in.
She hadn't bought Diamond or Pearl because she had no money to buy the system for it. But finally, during her sleepover with Laura, she was surprised with a Nintendo DS lite and a Pokemon Platinum game to go with it. Diana had wanted to play it ever since she had received the game earlier that day, but she didn't want to ignore Laura the whole time, although it was literally killing her inside not to rip open the box like lion tearing open its prey.
Right as she was about to pick her starter, she was interrupted by her mom yelling to come down to dinner. Although Diana was frustrated at stopping so early in the game, the rumble in her stomach called her to the meaty smell of spaghetti and meatballs downstairs. Not even bothering to save the game, she huffed and turned off the DS and sat down to one of her favorite dishes.
YUM! I love Mom's home cooking! she thought, inhaling the intoxicating smell of brown sugar meat sauce and fresh, steamy pasta.
"Diane? You have everything packed for the trip tomorrow, right?" her mother said using her daughter's proper name, diluting her daughter's mood by bringing up a sore subject. It felt too formal, too cold, and tasted weird in her mouth. It made her sound like she was supposed to be regal and fair, things that Diana felt did not describe her at all.
"Yes," Diana grunted as she quickly began twirling balls of spaghetti anxiously on her fork. The food suddenly began to turn bitter in her mouth and became hard to swallow, but she kept her focus on her plate.
"You can't be late. Your audition at Berklee is on Monday, and the Greyhound won't wait on you if you slack off on getting up for it." Diana fought back the word vomit as the food went from bitter to acidic as she violently began to take it out on her spaghetti and shovel it into her mouth, turning the loving home-cooked meal into a bloody battlefield.
"That means I don't want you to be playing that game all hours of the night," her mother continued. "I only bought you that junk because I thought you would need something to do on the bus ride over to Massachusetts. Your birthday isn't for another five months, so I would be grateful that you're getting anything at all right now. And I don't want to hear that you've been playing it instead of practicing or doing your homework, you hear me? You're lucky that school let you take a day off to audition without affecting your perfect attendance record."
"Yes, mother," she sighed irritably, staring hard at her food.
"What's with the tone? Don't you dare take that tone with me, young lady." Finally, Diana had had enough. Her utensils clattered onto the plate as waves of hostility flooded over her.
"Well, how am I supposed to feel, mom? Tell me! How is the problem child supposed to feel? You're the psychiatrist now. Am I supposed to be grateful that you let Laura come over, even though you hate her mom, and gave me a video game to buy me off just so you can quietly ship me away 1400 miles away from home like I'm a freaking FedEx package? Am I supposed to feel proud that you're profiting from Dad's disappearance?"
"I already told you, I just want to be ready in case the military decides we don't need the support anymore. We won't have these benefits forever, and don't have that attitude with me, young lady!" Her mother shouted, but Diana kept going as she felt the anger rise and bubble over, getting into one final row with her mother before she left for the next three years.
"And that was just the perfect excuse to go back to school, wasn't it? Until he's reported dead, you can use his benefits all you like. It was perfect timing, because having me kept you from getting your dream job, right? That's me! Problem child and destroyer of dreams! Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't make the choice of getting pregnant in high school!" At that point, she had known she had gone too far, because the furious look in her mother's eyes could melt solid steel.
"You shut your mouth, right now," her mother hissed lowly, her venom like ice in Diana's veins. "You say one more word, and I will take away your game, and you can go on that bus with nothing, you hear me?" Diana could do nothing but mutely nod, her mother's words as cold and intimidating as a hard slap to the face.
"You don't understand anything about what your father and I have had to sacrifice to get to where we are now. I am trying to make a better life for us, so you're going to go to Massachusetts tomorrow and you're going to nail that audition, and if I hear you bombed it because you didn't want to go to a prestigious music school because it was far away, then don't bother coming home."
After her furious declaration, her mother had stood up from her chair and put her dish in the sink before returning to her study. Dinner was over.
It didn't used to always be like this. Unlike most parents, her dad was actually pretty cool. By day, he was a military officer, but by night, he was a pro gamer. He could master any video-game you gave him, even level three of Battle Toads. He would play video-games with Diana all the time, even though her mom didn't like how little her daughter would spend outside. Then, one day, that all changed. Her mother became more irritable and spent more time at work, leaving Diana with nothing but her video-games, empty reminders of what was long past. Virtual tombstones.
She wasn't a bad kid. She didn't do things like go to crazy parties, drink beer, or get high, but she did get into a lot of fights, being short tempered at the worst of times. She was still angry. Angry at her mother, at herself, at the whole world for the unfairness of her situation.
As she finished her dinner and put her dish in the sink, Diana wanted to push all of her feelings away. Drown her sorrows into something mind-numbing. She thought of grabbing her DS, but it didn't seem enough. She already had two broken controllers from venting her frustration into Super Smash Brothers, and she didn't want to add her new game to the collection. She needed to channel her anger into something else, something more physical and less fragile. Her therapist Debbie had been trying new exercises in channeling her anger. Breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose, squeezing a squishy ball, even listening to relaxing music. Breathing was okay, but the squishy ball just alerted other people that she was getting angry, and she couldn't listen to music all the time.
Her counselor thought about getting her to tryout for competitive sports, but she wasn't very athletic, her body weight being a puny ninety five pounds at most, so she found marching band. She discovered that playing the flute taught her patience and self-discipline. It took a lot of effort and concentration to play the flute, not to mention it was the reason she had gotten the scholarship; ten years of practice had finally paid off. Granted, the army was already more than willing to cover all of her education costs, but with her track record of school incidents and her father's five year MIA slowly dwindling their hopes to KIA, she was essentially walking on a tight rope. No one wanted to invest in a hopeless cause.
Her grades were average at best, that is, if she ever did the homework, but her music she practiced almost as diligently as she played her video games. Right now, she felt the urge to play the flute was stronger than her new video game. After moving around a large amount of suitcases in a corner of her room, Diana lifted a small black case out from under a sleeping bag and snuck out the backdoor. Dusk was quickly setting in, and she wanted to vent with her music without her mother complaining about the noise. Small crumpled bits of notes and sheet music stuck out of her case as she assembled her flute.
At sunset, the pond behind her house sparkled like a million diamonds on its platinum waters as the skies above hewed in a pearl-like pink. Sitting in the cool grass, the smell of freshly mowed lawns filled the air as she lifted the flute to her lips and began to he tune and play a series of scales. After she finished her warm up exercises, she regressed into playing "Lugia's Song," always enjoying starting off her serious music with a light-hearted cover. Pokemon 2000 was what had gotten Diana into music all those years ago. It was, ironically, also indirectly the reason she was moving away. This thought made her unconsciously transcend to her audition piece, Adagio in G Minor by Albinoni, the gloomy notes echoing around the lakefront. Originally, she was going to perform her Vocalise, but she herself wasn't satisfied with the piece.
As practice went on, dusk turned to twilight as the sun disappeared behind the thicket of trees as thoughts of her expressions translated into her Vocalise, finally receiving the sound she longed for. Her long hours of practicing Rachmaninov had finally paid off as she hit the notes perfectly, hearing them dance around the lake bank's acoustics, the cattails almost swaying and dancing to the lovely mournful piece. She could almost hear the operatic voice that usually accompanied the opus, the song in and of itself dedicated to an opera singer. If only it were that easy when it came to talking to people, like her mother. As she came to the final bar of music, Diana finished playing the song with one long decrescendo note before disassembling her flute and placing it back inside its case.
While the music had calmed her down, it did not quell her aversion to the dark, the evening shadows causing an anxious need to rush home before she heard a jump in the water. It was normal for the fish to be feeding at this time of day, but it still scared the living daylights out of her. Her anxiety and overall jittery-ness made a cold shiver go down her spine, feeling the uneasy paranoia of someone was watching her.
"Come on, girl, don't be such a chicken. You're afraid of nothing but your own shadow," she joked aloud, trying to shake it off. She warily stared down at the reflecting waters, thinking how dark and deep the waters looked, and how pollution could ruin such clarity of water. You couldn't see anything ... except, she did see something, although she thought she had imagined it. Down in the reflection, she saw two red glows resembling something like eyes. At first, she thought they were airplane pilot lights reflected in the sky overhead, but there wasn't a jet to be found.
Help me...
She jumped at the faint voice, a foreign sound within her own mind. She must be really getting paranoid. She wasn't hearing voices, and she didn't see anything in the water... except she did. The eyes were gone and instead there was a dark shadow, swirling around in the water like a centipede, grow closer and larger with size.
LET...ME...OUT!
Without warning, a huge geyser shot up out of the lake like a waterspout, the tornado opening a hole in the lake.
"HOLY SHIT!" Diana exclaimed, reeling back in fear from the jump scare and landing hard on her butt. What the hell was going on?! The thought of a portal to hell came to mind as a ghostly black tentacle shot out and clawed at the ground around her before it wrapped around her waist and pulled her towards the water as she screamed bloody murder. The last thing she remembered was her screams being silenced by a deafening roar. Then the world went black.