Aspects
By Crukix
-.-.-.-
"My boy, I could tell you all the information you ever wanted about how wrong your school's systems are. The world fell to shit long before the Reckoning, but no one wants to admit that these days. All people are interested in now is that those Kalosian terrorists blew the world to shit with that weapon of their and ended up fucking things over more than we could ever have imagined."
"Grandpa," I sighed as I rubbed my eyes to stay awake. "You've told me this story a hundred times. Whatever weapon they used forced a grand-scale evolution event on the entirety of the human race – almost exactly like the metamorphosis evolution that pokémon go through. All the world powers united when they realised what had happened and now we're still trying to figure out just what's happened to all of us."
I leant back, nearly burning myself on the fire crackling in the fireplace. The living room was almost entirely taken up by the white-marble structure that rose from floor to ceiling. Though the flames bathed the room in a warming, orange glow, it only seemed to make the mottled green wallpaper even more depressing.
A framed photo of Grandpa and Grandma on their wedding day hung on the wall opposite me, above Grandpa's black leather armchair. Apparently they were only a few years older than I am now when they got married. With Grandpa sat directly in front of it, I could stand there and see the effects time has on a person.
Time is a cruel mistress, just as they say.
"Heh," he grunted, leaning back in his chair. Most of my friends had grandparents that fit the stereotype of how old people should look – wrinkled, grey-haired, weak and visibly likely to die from exhaustion at any moment. Grandpa, however, looked far too spritely for anyone at the age of eighty-three. It probably had something to do with entering body-building competitions and being built like a brick shit house.
Considering he never had a pokémon either, his strength came from his own hard work.
"Kids these days," running a hand through his jet black hair. He had to dye it - even if it was possible to have black hair at his age, he had a mop of orange hair in his wedding photo. "I swear, when we were all separated, we were much more willing to listen to our elders. Merging with the Unovans didn't just bastardise our language - it made our children twice as stupid and three times as ugly!"
"Grandpa," I sighed, "Grandma was Unovan."
"And have you seen what she looked like on our wedding day?" He laughed again as he looked up at the photo on the wall. With her golden hair in curls, a slim white wedding dress and bright blue eyes, she looked like she could have been a pin-up in any magazine. Of course, Grandpa said the complete opposite.
"A nose the Wicked Witch would be jealous of and ears Dumbo could use to fly!" He grinned at me. "You don't know who either of them are, do you?" He sighed. "Felix… what are we going to do with you?"
I just smiled back at him. "You'll have to let me borrow your holos again. I won't learn otherwise."
"Blasted holos," he muttered, rising from his chair. "Holograms and virtual reality and programmes beamed directly into your eye. Back in my day it was all Blue Rays and illegal downloads on the internet. Virtual Reality was just a dream!"
I couldn't help but smile as his muttering continued, even as he wandered up the stairs. An entire wall of his living room was devoted to his electronic nostalgia - shelves upon shelves of ancient video games and movies that people had long stopped developing machines to play on. An old-style 2D television took pride of place in the middle of all his shelves - at only fifty-two inches, it was surprising anyone would take pride in a television so small. The black leather armchairs were even video game chairs designed when he was growing up, hooked up to his consoles with wires, with speakers built into the arms and able to vibrate in time with the controller.
"Felix!" he shouted from upstairs. I heard a distinct thud as he dropped another box of holos on the floor. "Don't bother coming back until you've seen every episode of Family Guy I give you! If you can't recite them word for word when I see you again, I'm disowning you!"
"Sure Grandpa," I shouted back up. "Can I get a ride back with all of them? Dad'll have a fit if I walk back after dark again!"
With the sounds he made coming down the stairs, you would have been forgiven for thinking there was an earthquake.
"Pah," he said, walking into the living room, "your dad's a wuss. Used to jump at his own shadow when he was growing up. Now your mother? There's a woman! Smarts and kick-ass! Why if I were just ten years younger-"
"Ew," I groaned, taking the box of holos from him. It was lighter than I thought - he must have thrown them on the floor to make them echo so much before. "Grandpa, please," I begged as I began placing the holos in my rucksack. "What would Grandma say?"
"She'd ask if she can join."
I felt the red rush through my cheeks and ears before I could stop it. Grandpa took one look and laughed. "Don't look so glum Felix," he said, slapping my shoulder. "You'll appreciate the fact I talk to you like a man when I'm dead and gone and you've got your parents babying you at all times. Heavens know your grandma used to do it all the time too." Just for a moment his smile vanished. In its place was a lonely old widow; a stranger wearing my grandpa's face. "Tell your sister to stop by some time. I'll teach her how to ride a motorbike so she can impress that boy she likes."
"What one?" I muttered. "She changes her mind every week."
"And why not? You're only young once - why not make the most of it?"
I don't even want to think of what my parents would say if they heard him say that. There would be shouting and screaming and probably a whole lot of things said that were regretted straight afterwards.
"On a serious note, if there is anything you ever need to tell me, you realise I'm always here. I don't care what hour of the day it is or how big or how little whatever you want to tell me is; I'll always be here to listen."
He knows.
I nodded, plastering a smile on my face. "I know, Grandpa," I said, slinging my now full rucksack on my shoulders. "But there isn't anything you should worry about."
"Feh," he grunted, waving a hand. "You've gotten yourself a pokémon – I have plenty of reason to worry." His words made me reach for the red and white ball suspended on the necklace I wore. "What is it, a month you've had it now?"
"Yeah," I said, nodding. "They give them out at school when you start the final year."
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, sitting in his chair again. "I remember helping your dad go through all the forms and the bullshit when he was in school. 'Your child will be tested for a compatible pokémon. Although the Aspect they take on is unknown, our teaching staff is fully qualified to help in every way possible.' You know what he got given? A sunkern. Fuck me sideways, that was embarrassing."
"But he still got his Aspect," I pointed out.
"Oh yes. The ability to whistle a tune that puts everyone that hears it to sleep." He groaned and shook his head. "Believe you me, soon as I found that out I really thought I'd spend the rest of my life having to rescue him from prison. Anyway, let me know when yours starts to come through. Fourteen still seems far too young to be inflicting such things on you. At least your eyes haven't changed colour yet, so that's something. I've seen that happen before – it's never pretty."
"Yeah but you can develop an Aspect at any age, can't you? So long as you're around a compatible pokémon."
"I suppose you're right," he said, chewing on his lip as if he was staring right through me. He had the same grey eyes as Dad, though the nose he claimed Grandma had was actually his - apparently broken by the stock of a rifle to the face.
"Just remember," he said, moving to let me out. "Do you still want that lift?"
"I'll be fine," I said, looking outside. The night sky was almost impossibly black – apparently the pollution from the Reckoning stopped the stars from shining down on us now. The sunlight still got through during the day, but night left us with nothing but artificial light to go by.
"I'll walk," I said, stepping out into the fresh air. It was cold on my skin, carrying with it the faintest smell of eggs – as the air always did.
"Let me know if you change your mind. If not, I'll see you next Friday."
"Sure Grandpa," I said, waving. "Love you."
"Man up," he sneered, slamming the door shut. I laughed. Same old Grandpa.
-.-.-.-
It began to rain halfway through my walk home. Predictable. Whilst it was only a five block trip home - eight if I decided to avoid the rough part of town, like I was doing - with the way the rain hammered down like something out of the Bible, I was drenched in the blink of an eye.
Thunder clapped overhead. My sigh was lost to the sound of the storm as I continued to walk. Logic dictated that I should have waited in a bus shelter, hiding from the rain and enjoying the paltry amount of light it cast. I would have done so, if the rain was anything other than this near-horizontal bitch of a storm. Growling and gritting my teeth, I continued on.
Behind the rain, I was certain I heard someone's voice whispering.
A shudder ran down my spine. Cold, I hugged myself, hoping Grandpa's holos weren't damaged. I hurried along my way, but every footstep seemed to take twice as long. I could see the path I normally took to school - a single flickering street lamp fought against an omnipresent darkness. It was almost like something out of a horror film, promising me certain death if I decided to venture towards school.
Yeah, like I didn't know that already.
I toyed with the poké ball on my necklace. A flash of light and I would have my companion with me. Something stopped me from calling him. A horrible, despairing feeling, telling me that if I called him, everything would get worse somehow.
I blew water off my nose and groaned. Page after page of paperwork I'd had to read through before getting my pokémon blurred in my mind. Warnings about spending too much time with the pokémon. Getting too close prompted more physical aspects to develop. Reminders that humanity lacked the required secondary Aspects to breathe fire or the like.
I swallowed and started walking just a bit faster. No one was in the street - who would be? Only crazy people ventured out in these storms.
More whispers ghosted around me.
I spun, gasping, heart racing. Nothing but darkness greeted me. I pressed a hand over my heart, frowned and tried my best to breath evenly. The rainwater felt like it was sticking to me, refusing to budge. I had to squint to be able to see against the onslaught. A single drop of water hung from my nose for an impossible amount of time, like a suicidal person on the ledge of a tall building. Finally it took the leap.
The voices hissed around me again.
I turned and ran. I could hear everything they were saying and yet I couldn't understand a word at the same time. The sound of my blood pulsing drummed in my ears. My feet splashed loudly against puddles. Rainwater soaked through my clothes, clinging to my skin.
The whispers promised me my salvation, they foretold my doom.
Two blocks.
I continued running.
The whispers grew quicker, more demonic in sound. I could understand less, even though I heard no words. They tried to lure me in with lies but chased me away with truths.
I saw a bus shelter standing alone, defiant against the storms. Trees around it buckled in the wind. Its light shone brightly, a beacon in the middle of an otherwise empty street. I didn't know why, but I leapt into it like it was holy salvation.
The whispers receded.
I let out a breath, coughed and tasted blood. A spat a wad of phlegm on the floor and stared at it, like it could answer all my questions.
The shadows moved.
I gasped and fell against the bus shelter, panicked. Nothing emerged from the inky-black darkness. I felt like I had fallen into a void, left to drown in the murky depths of the ocean. The bus shelter light tried to flicker, but decided against it. The light remained strong in the face of a pitch-black fog that grew around me.
My heart was hammering against my chest. I was certain people could hear it three blocks over. My house was a block away, yet I was too terrified to move from the little safe haven I had found. Logic wanted to tell me that I was safe - my paranoia was playing tricks on me. It was all just a fantasy concocted from too many late night holos and Grandpa's stories.
My instincts screamed that I would never be safe again.
I took quick, shallow breaths as I stared out into the darkness, psyching myself up. I couldn't stay here, alone in the middle of nowhere. I felt like a victim in Silent HIll, waiting for the darkness to recede. Pinching myself did nothing - then again, it never did, even when I was dreaming.
The shadows formed shapes, almost like bodies.
Half my height, with a head as big as my waist. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I saw the long clawed arms reach towards the light of the bus shelter. Soulless black eyes stared out at me. Sharp rows of razor-sharp teeth glistened in the night.
The sheer mind-numbing terror nearly made me piss myself then and there.
The light, some part of me managed to say. Whatever they were, they didn't like light. I wasn't about to comment on it being a cliché or like something out of a bad sci-fi film. I backed up, standing on the bench and stood as close to the light as I possible could.
A car sounded in the distance. The shadows hissed and broke apart as the car's headlights tore through them. The car hurtled away, as if chased by invisible cops.
The shadows reformed, as if nothing had ever happened.
"S-stay back!" I shouted at them, voice breaking. I got the distinct feeling that they would have laughed, had they known how to.
I whispered a silent prayer that something would give me the power to stop these creatures from killing me.
Instead, the light began to flicker.
I clenched my fists, felt tears in my eyes. I could call on my pokémon but that would only make things worse. He wasn't well trained enough, not yet. Stupid school, giving us eggs and making us raise them from infancy. The best he would be was a distraction – a last-second meat shield before the things tore into me.
My hands were sweating. Rainwater ran off me. A wind picked up, chilling me. The voices echoed all around me.
I'm going to die.
The thought wasn't at all sobering, like they show on the movies. It was near shit-myself paralyzing.
The sound of an engine stirred my muscles into action. Screaming, I ran through the shadows, self-preservation forgotten. They hissed. Tiny little fangs bit into my skin. I felt needle-sharp claws tear away strips of my back, my chest, my face. I screamed in pain but carried on running, further and further from them, towards the light, away from -
The motorbike barely stopped in time.
I could hear the driver swear, even underneath his helmet. He barely managed to keep the motorbike's back wheels on the road, even as he nearly went over the handlebars himself. He was broad enough that I didn't noticed the passenger behind him until they hopped off the bike.
She was clearly a woman, tall and svelte. She raced towards me, screaming something like my name. Her hands shook my shoulders, but I could only see the shadows, circling, waiting.
"Felix!"
I looked at the woman. She pulled the motorcycle helmet off, letting her long black hair, dip-dyed red, spill free.
"Felix!" said my sister.
"Cam!" I threw myself at her, shaking. I didn't care how I looked as I wrapped my arms around her, trembling. "The shadows," I babbled, sounding crazy. "They're attacking! They came after me and they kept biting and scratching and-"
The slap was a shock to the system.
"Felix," Cam said, her lip trembling, even as I reached up to touch where she'd slapped me. "What are you talking about? There aren't any scratches on you."
I looked down. My skin was perfect, fresh. I pressed my hands to my face and found it free of injury. Even though the rain continued to hammer down on us, I felt dry.
My sister was the very image of concern. She brushed my hair from my face, watching me like I was likely to breakdown at any moment.
"Camille!" the biker shouted, breaking silence. "Get your stupid little shit of a brother out of my way! Little creep nearly wrecked my bike!"
I could picture the rainwater evaporating off of her; such was the anger that clouded her face. I took a step backwards, watching. The fact that the shadows had disappeared played at the edges of my mind, like a forgotten idea that I couldn't remember.
"Here's an idea Colin," Cam said, shoving the bike helmet into his chest. He grunted just before she punched him in the jaw, knocking him and his bike to the floor.
"Don't ever say shit about my brother," she growled, pointing at him. "Oh?" She looked at his bike. "Did your baby get a scratch?" A flash of light and she punched the front tyre. I heard the air whoosh out, louder than Colin's cry. Cam flicked the pocket knife at him, pointing it at his face. "Your poor baby had an accident.
"Come on Felix," she said, looking to me. "I'll get you home." She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. A flick of her thumb activated the torch, basking the street in a hot-white glow. I pressed myself to her side, fearful of any more shadows leaping out of the dark. Cam wrapped her arm around my shoulders, keeping her other hand free to hold the torch.
"Oh and by the way," she said over her shoulder. "In case you hadn't guessed, you're dumped."
-.-.-.-
The lights were on in the living room when we got home. Cam had stayed silent the whole time, holding me, guiding me and just letting me know that she was there. I couldn't love her more than I did at that moment when we reached our house. If she had asked me for details, I would have broken down and never been able to recover again.
Cam switched off her phone's torch, slid her keys into the door and let me leap in first before coming in behind me. Where once I had felt dry and free of the rain, we were instead both soaked, dripping on Mom's new wood floors.
As she came out of the living room and saw us, her eyes nearly doubled in size. "Cam?"
"Fuck off," my sister growled, stomping up the stairs.
I winced and looked away. Six months ago, my sister had been a normal, happy eighteen year old. Then she went away for a week with her boyfriend and they got into an accident. I don't know how bad it was - only that he had died and Cam had been hurt so badly that I wasn't allowed in to her room to see her for the first week, until Mom had decided it wouldn't damage me too much to see her.
Apparently my brain was doomed one way or another.
"Felix," Mom said, looking at me. She and Cam looked almost the same, barring the obvious difference in age. Light brown skin, long black hair, bright brown eyes and a small nose. Where Mom had only a small amount of make-up, Cam painted her face in the typical goth style. Cam favoured leather, blacks and purples, whereas Mom could make herself the typical suburban housewife, if such a thing existed anymore.
I however, took after my dad. Dusty brown hair, bright blue eyes, though my skin was a light shade of olive, instead of Dad's glow of the moon. Fortunately I inherited Mom's smaller nose and ears, rather than Dad's Wicked Witch and Dumbo combo.
I was the complete opposite of my sister, in so many ways. She was the smart one, the one who everyone loved, the one who could walk into the room and steal the attention of every guy in there. Meanwhile I was the one who scraped by as an 'average' on all counts. Smart enough to get by, dumb enough to never excel. I could walk in and out of a room without anyone ever noticing I was there.
"Are you okay?" Mom asked, touching my cheeks.
I was certain she had to have found the traces of tears that had undoubtedly escaped. I sighed and shook my head.
"It's nothing," I said.
Mom bit her lip, but said no more on the subject. I loved her for that. She knew the boundaries and respected them, only pushing when she knew that something truly horrible had happened. Without any evidence to prove otherwise, she wouldn't press this issue.
"Your father's working late," she said, sighing.
"Okay."
"Another Trainer got involved," she explained. "Your father's with the coroner now, attempting to piece together what's left of the poor bastard."
I nodded. "I'm gonna go upstairs," I said, looking at her shoes. Even indoors, she insisted on wearing her work heels, as if someone important might drop by at any moment. She was taller than me and my sister, so I doubted it was to make herself try to combat short-person syndrome.
"Grandpa gave me a load of holos," I said. "I might watch one or two."
Mom raised an eyebrow. "And what holos did he give you this time?"
"The Simpsons," I said reflexively. "I said I didn't want to take anything that would make him get into trouble."
Mom nodded, giving me permission to leave. I crept up the stairs, already able to hear Cam's music blasting through the house. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The fact that we had a house made us one of the richer families in the neighbourhood.
It still meant that Cam and I effectively shared a room. A curtain rail had been placed across the middle, separating it. We had barely enough space for a single bed on each side, a wardrobe and a weird leather footstool thing that I had never bothered learning the name of that held clothes inside.
I'd barely managed to shut the door behind me and sit on my bed when Cam pulled back the curtains separating our 'rooms'. Despite what people thought of her, Cam kept her 'room' immaculate. True there were posters over the walls, a guitar propped against her wardrobe and a collection of hunting knives on the bed - that neither of our parents knew about - but she had a pride towards everything that was hers.
"What happened?" Cam asked. I knew she wasn't talking about my conversation with Mom or Grandpa.
"I don't know," I admitted. I ran a hand through my hair, shaking most of the water free and tried to put my thoughts into order. "I thought there was something following me in the darkness. I could have sworn it looked like someone or something was making shapes out of the shadows. You don't think-"
"I don't," Cam interrupted.
"But-"
"Shh," she said, hugging my head and pressing it to her shoulder. "It's not Myst."
"How do you know?" I whispered, clutching her.
"Because he wouldn't have escaped Orre so easily."
I let out a small breath. Myst, once a man who gained a koffing as his pokémon. Fast forward four years and one evolution later, his Aspect revealed that he was able to generate poisonous gasses – at first. From there he refined them into an acidic fog that dissolved anyone unfortunate enough to breathe it in. Over time he learnt how to do more - how to make blackout mists, smokescreens… apparently he managed to create a radioactive cloud that had rivalled Chernobyl.
He had been captured and dumped in Orre six months ago. Supposedly the country had always been rough and wild. Now it was surrounded by impenetrable walls and psychic barriers, filled to the brim with Aspect criminals who were all left to their own devices.
"The Elites wouldn't have let that happen," Cam said, still hugging me. "You know they take their whole deal of defending Earth as seriously as anyone can."
"But still," I whimpered.
"But nothing," Cam said. "Come on." She took off my rucksack, stripped me of my soaking jacket and made me change into dry clothes. The fact that she could change from violently protective older sister to almost maternal wasn't something most people saw. When she was happy that I had dried and changed, she pulled me close again, stroking my hair, humming the song Mom sung to us when we were kids.
"I'll make sure you're safe," she said. I closed my eyes, listened to her humming and felt safe.
"I'll protect you," she said as I fell asleep. "From anyone, anywhere, anytime. I promise."