"Interview with a Vampire"
A/N: Based on an older, recycled plot of mine. As canon to the "Pkmn2k10" universe as canon can be, and author-approved, of course.
You check your microphone again, see if it actually works, and get a fine dose of feedback in the process. You cringe as your ears ring, and then you freeze, hands still clapped over your pained sensory organs. You thought you still had time to prepare yourself, but she's there before you can get out your note cards, and you gulp. You didn't even notice her walking in, and suppose that's what's called Teleportation. You take another breath and shiver as you take a look at your notes, feeling as if your head has just emptied itself into your stomach, and your brain became a nonexistent mash of bowels.
You start to pose a question, but before the words can leave your mouth, she has already opened hers, and smirked in a way only she could.
"So you want to know about my origin? Fine. If that's your death wish, I'll grant it."
~*~Scene change ~*~
Next to the playground, just behind the small, almost invisible creek, was an apple plantation. That's what they called it, because they were children and their world's scale was of a different size. They frequently strolled through the high grass and pretended that they were out there in the wild jungle, despite being surrounded by hordes of skyscrapers. They pretended they didn't hear the sounds of the busy, never sleeping city, despite the fact that they could still count the cars frequently passing by the small downtown street when they were kneeling on their favourite foundling, an oddity in the middle of Saffron. Not fitting in and still accepted as part of the savaged park that may or may not have been used by urban gardening rebels as the abandoned founding place for an apple plantation.
Frequently, they ran through the knee-high grass, careful not to rip their freshly washed, white Sunday dresses in the brushwood and mostly succeeding.
"Wait for me!" A tiny, high voice called from behind the creek, seeking out to reach the ears of pirate queen Amber, who was already on her way up the foundling, scraping her knees and palms as she made her way to the top, where she turned around and prospected for her friend.
She sighed. "You're such a Slowpoke, Rina!" She queried, putting her hands to her hips in a childish impression of her mother.
Across the creek, the younger girl huffed, and leaned forward, as she tried to gather enough momentum to make it over the creek in a single jump. Several times she tried, and several times she hesitated last second, once barely catching herself from falling face-first into the small natural indentation.
"Are you coming now or what?" Amber asked, while sitting down and poking the scabs of her knee with a blade of grass.
Sabrina looked up, red eyes darting around searchingly, as she took a deep breath and levitated herself over the creek, running as soon as she felt the earth beneath her feet again. She smacked away Amber's hand as the older girl tried to help her up their favourite look-out.
"Showoff..." Amber muttered with a giggle, displaying a non-serious disdain for her friend's display of her extraordinary powers.
Rather than being discouraged at her friend's harsh words, Sabrina puffed out her chest a bit, almost smiling as she was proud with herself as she had managed the difficult technique of levitation on her very first try.
Not that she would tell Amber, though.
Amber turned to her. "If you're so good, then tell me…" She took the blade of grass into the corner of her mouth and pointed out towards the busy street, where the morning commuters were trying to reach their inner-city destination.
"Tell me the color of the next car!" She declared loudly, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"That's so easy!" Sabrina complained, but still compliantly turned around, so that she was unable to see the street anymore, while her friend positioned herself the way that she could keep an eye on the vehicles.
"Okay, go!"
Sabrina sighed, almost, almost rolling her eyes. "Blue, grey, red…." She said in monotone, not bothering to wait for her friend's conformation of the rightness of her answers. She didn't need to.
"Right, right aaand...right!" Amber exclaimed, voice rising with each word. "Man, how do you do that?" She asked, pouting.
"I just can. I can. Not everyone can, but I do." She closed her eyes in admiration of her own powers, basking in the slight jealousy that oozed from Amber, as the older girl started to climb down the boulder, and walked over to the apple trees, which were ripe with deeply red, juicy and sweet fruits now.
Of course, the apples hang high in the trees, but that didn't pose any problem for the two girls.
"Get them!" Amber called, pointing upwards towards the two best looking apples. Sabrina didn't even climb down from the boulder, instead choosing to utilize her powers from her resting place, and watching with silent glee as Amber caught one of the apples, but was nearly hit in the head by the second one. Quickly, the girl with the turquoise hair returned the devilish prize to her crow's nest, almost running up the hill vertically.
"Here, for you", she said, as she already broke her own apple in half.
"And does everything you say turn out to be right?" Amber asked, still fiddling with her stubborn apple, just as Sabrina was already taking a satisfied bite.
"Not what I say. Just what I see." She stared at the apple within her hand, and made it hover just above her palm. "Sometimes I see what will happen, sometimes not."
Amber laid back. "That must be cool…hey!" She shot up again, almost dropping her apple in the process. "Do you see something about me?"
Sabrina blinked, hen squinted. "No", she declared, before taking a long and silent bite.
"Maaan…" Amber sighed, before moving to get her self-acquired lunch.
"Eeeek!" And promptly shrieking when a tiny little worm peeked out of the unsprayed apple. It got catapulted into the creek by a shocked Amber, who looked after the apple piece with a sad, longing look.
"Here."
Amber paused and turned to her side. "You can have the rest of mine…"
"Thanks."
Both girls smiled. They did not know how they had met before, or how they had formed this playground friendship, but both of them were sure that it would last a lifetime long, or at least till next summer which was, in their eyes, almost as long as a lifetime, of not even longer!
~*~ Scene change ~*~
"I was nothing more than a seedling back then, my roots not yet planted into the depths of reality. But I was already there, as were…my comrades." She makes a dismissive gesture with her hand, and you watch the long, spider-like fingers caress her pale cheek.
"Strength was already sitting lazily in her throne back then, but she was much different than she's nowadays. A show-off, as Amber correctly put it. She had no need for evolving, or for moving past her comfort zone much at all." Another dismissive sigh. "After all, there was no need for her. She was near invulnerable."
She flicked her tongue. "That was, until Amber changed."
~*~ Scene change ~*~
Winter met them with new challenges. For once, it was much harder to smuggle yourself out of the house without getting caught by your mother and being wrapped into five different layers of clothing. For another, their favourite look-out was slippery and much harder to climb. And uncomfortable to sit upon for an extended period of time.
Not that any of this hindered the girls from strolling around, anyway.
Sabrina had been waiting for some time, and was getting impatient. She knew that her friend was getting late, but she didn't like to wait. She reminded herself that the next time she knew that Amber was late, there was no need for her to arrive at the arranged time.
"Sorry…" She looked up, as Amber looked left and right before she crossed the busy street. She didn't live far way, in fact, her houses drive led right into the street, and that was where she had been stomping from. Her brown snow boots left a thick trail in the freshly powder, and she beamed with joy as she approached Sabrina, and the two girls immediately began to climb up to their personal playground jungle gym.
"My dad wanted to check my arms again. Said the vaccinations could make my skin itch, or something." She rubbed her arm, and pulled up her sleeve to show several small black-reddish dots on her left upper arm. Sabrina frowned and shuddered. She remembered how hot and swollen her arm had become after she had gotten her last vaccination, and felt a bit of sympathy for her older friend.
Something was different about her friend today. Sabrina knew it, but couldn't pinpoint the exact difference. It was something that put her on the edge, and gave her a queasy feeling, but she was fascinated by it nonetheless.
Amber wasn't one to keep quiet about it for long, anyway.
With closed eyes, and a very smug expression, she stretched her arms and exclaimed. "I'm psychic as well!" Her pronunciation of the word left something to be desired for, but the message got across sharply, as Sabrina took in a sudden breath and almost rose to her feet.
She stared at her older friend, unsure of what to make out of this. "Nice", she said, in the end, fiddling with her cape's zipper.
"That's cool, isn't it?" Amber smiled, trying to catch snowflakes with her tongue. "I didn't know I could be one! No one in my family is psychic, you see? My dad works with them, but he has no powers. He's just a normal guy, just like mom, and me, I thought. But apparently, I got some from somewhere. My mom thinks it's from her side, but I say, I don't care!" She nodded to herself. Unconsciously, she rubbed the scars of her vaccinations. "Isn't it awesome? Now I can learn to do the same things you do!" She smiled. "Maybe you can teach me, Rina! Wouldn't that be cool?"
Sabrina nodded slowly, before forming a snowball behind her back with the help of her powers.
"Yes, that would be cool!" She called, and hurled the ball straight into Amber's face. Seconds later, a full blown snow ball fight broke out between the two girls, with Sabrina using her powers straight to her advantage.
~*~ Scene change ~*~
For a moment, you think she looks disappointed, almost sad. But that feeling is as fleeting as the moment it passed you by, and you see the more familiar smirk on her face.
"You could say that this was the precise moment my life really started. Suddenly, it all had a meaning. Suddenly, there was work for me to do."
She leans back, and you hear the leather seat jar.
"There was no way we two could stay friends. Not anymore. The sides had shifted, and so had our intentions. Suddenly, it wasn't as innocent anymore to showcase your amazing abilities. Not when your friend wasn't impressed by them anymore. Sad now, isn't it? But in the end, not for me. I knew what to do. Especially after she became stronger and stronger…Strength, of course, didn't know what to do, with being shuffled into the back all of the sudden. Happens to the best of us, my dear, hah." She almost laughs, but you know it's not a real laugh, as much as a parody of itself.
"Yet, I was still not as much in control as I wished I had been. So instead of acting right away, I had to watch in the background, watching helplessly as our world was significantly damaged by the realization that we weren't as all powerful as we had believed to be."
~*~ Scene change ~*~
Spring brought with it new joys to the two girls. They played freely in the apple plantation, dancing beneath the falling blooms like elf princesses. Amber, who was being taught to control her powers both by her fathers and more secretively, passively by Sabrina, used them to form a blooming ring around her. She became almost invisible beneath the white ring, and squealed with joy. She jumped into the air, and stayed there, surrounded by a transparent aura of blue.
Her friend had stopped her prancing and stared at Amber with wide, questioning eyes. Beneath the human layer of an innocent girl, she saw event after event of powerful realization. She saw the way Amber would change history, saw her encircled by faceless friends, their forms strangely inhuman, and saw, no, felt the as-of-yet non-existing aura of a powerful being already encasing her.
She almost bit her lip as she turned away, wondering why her friend had been chosen for such an unusual adventure when she had only just now discovered her powers, and was using them in a most unproductive way.
"My dad told me a new bedtime story yesterday."
Sabrina looked up. Amber was still floating in the air, barely a foot above ground level, but for the kids, it might as well have been miles above the clouds.
"He told me that Pokemon can cry. And their tears can bring back the dead. Isn't that awesome? I've never seen a Pokemon try. Do they cry when they're hurt, too?"
Sabrina stayed quiet, not paying attention to her friend fully, and thus, not noticing that Amber approached her with a cheeky grin.
"Catch me!"
She yelped as her friend's hand touched her neck, and swiveled around, only in time to see Amber teleport away. Tensing, she looked around, looking for the familiar Aura, and following her suit with the help of teleportation as soon as she had found her.
"Got ya!"
"Oof…" Amber fell as Sabrina jumped rather from above, and the two girls landed unceremoniously in the grass, both not reacting fast enough to catch their fall.
Amber started to giggle as to their amusing actions, and soon, Sabrina joined her.
~*~ Scene Change ~*~
"It is not well known, but up to a certain age, children can not differentiate between dreams and reality. Dreams are just as real, as substantial, as reality to them. They usually grow out of this phase, but, when you are used to having visions from the moment on you reach consciousness…" She ran her finger over her black painted lips. "Then it gets complicated. What is dream, what is reality, what is a vision? And what is a byproduct of your faithful subconscious telling you that you are, in fact, jealous?" She stares at you, daring you to answer, but you have nothing to say, which might have been influenced by the fact that your throat feels as if it has been tied up with ropes made out of netting wire.
"I knew it wouldn't do me any good if this friendship stayed the way it was. Maybe it wasn't my intention to end it this way, but…I cannot say that I didn't succeed in the end, now, can I?"
~*~ Scene change ~*~
Sabrina's mother had seen her daughter go through some excruciating nightmares. It came with having prodigious psychic powers, her husband, a strong psychic himself, said. He had it easy, he was never the one who comforted her when she was crying, whispering under tears about the visions she had, and how they scared her. She rarely could form coherent sentences of what she had seen, but her mother suspected that this was not because of her panic alone. Sometimes, she had the feeling that her daughter was withholding details from her with purpose, but she never enquired too much, hence she might have scared the poor child even more.
She sat at her side as she sniffed into the bedsheet, and rubbed her reddened eyes.
"It's okay, sweety. It's over." She rubbed her backside. "It's not real…"
Sabrina held back a sniff, but didn't correct her mother.
She knew what she had seen, and it scared her so deeply that she almost refused to get up the next morning. It was a bright, warm summer day, perfect for little girls like her to go outside and play, but her mood was gloomy.
Nevertheless, she let herself be shoved outside by her mother, and went to their usual meeting place. Amber was not there yet, but Sabrina knew that she would arrive soon. She sat down on the foundling, her feet kicking the air as she wordlessly played around the events of her vision in her mind. She had seen her friend's funeral so clear in front of her mind's eye that there was no doubt in her that Amber was as good as dead, and if not, then on her way straight into heaven. For someone as Amber could not go anywhere but heaven, Sabrina was sure. Her friend was an angel in disguise, and that phrase made her giggle.
She was so nice, so nice it hurt, almost. And now that she was a psychic as well…Sabrina began kicking the stone beneath her soles harder, so hard that small splinters fell down and rained upon the grass. It wasn't as if she didn't mind other psychics, but…it was her best friend whose life had now changed, and it felt as if this changed their friendship as well. Now the times where she could impress Amber with a little petty trick were over. Now Amber would see her future just as clear as Sabrina had seen Ambers. That is, if Amber had any future of her own, which Sabrina was sure of was not the case.
She jumped down from the foundling and ran into the apple plantation, prancing around the falling apple blooms. Some of them landed on her hair and made her giggle. A sound which soon stuck in her throat, as she was reminded of the mental imagine of her friends lifeless body, garnered by bloody gashes, glass shards and metal splinters. Her bones smashed and twisted, and her beautiful, beautiful face ripped apart, exposing pure white bleached cheek bones and teeth. Sabrina found herself holding back the tears. She didn't want to cry, didn't want to bemoan something that had likely already happened and wouldn't hear out to her sorrow, but she didn't anyway. She was angry at herself for not getting the vision sooner, and she was angry at Amber for not receiving a similar vision which might have prevented her from getting herself killed. She knew she was angry with her friend for something she could not change, but the feeling arose nevertheless.
"Hi!" So engulfed in her inward scorn Sabrina was, that she almost overheard the call from behind the foundling.
"Hey, look!"
Finally she turned around, blinking. She was sure what she saw had to be an illusion, for she had been sure that Amber was already dead, but then, some visions were not time-specific. They didn't come with unremoveable timestamp, even if it seemed that the clock was counting down the minutes.
Amber smiled brightly, seemingly fully unaffected by the fate looming over her form. "Hey, look! My daddy's gonna go with me to get some ice cream after training today, so I asked mom if I could wear my Sunday dress, and she said yes!" An outstanding negotiation by Amber, seeing as how ice cream stains would damage the delicate material of her dress for sure.
Sabrina just stared at her friend for a moment, lips trembling, before she blurted out what had been near her heart all the time. "Don't!" She insisted, wafting between silent panic and screaming terror with her words.
"I saw something about you. Don't go. I saw you die…" She ended in a whisper, choosing to direct her gaze towards the ground, hence her uncontrollable mind would not mix up the images of living and dead Amber.
Amber tilted her head. "Are you sure? What did you see?" She tilted her head to the other side, now looking as if she was imitating a metronome.
Sabrina didn't want to repeat any of what she had seen, but the words were said before she had any time to hold them back. "A truck. A really big, huge truck. He would come and crush your car. Right there…" And she nodded over to the drive.
Amber laughed. "Oh Rina, that's silly! Trucks cannot drive here! The street's way too small! Even my dad's car's too big for it, and it's small!" She nodded. Her dad himself had said that the car was too small, so surely no bigger car could ever enter the small side drive, right?
"That's not silly! That's what I saw!" Sabrina countered, angrily clenching her fists.
Amber tutted. "That's what you said. I think you lie! You're jut jealous that I'm going to get ice cream, and you're not!" One couldn't berate Amber for not being onto something with her declaration, even if her suspected cause of action was woefully wrong. "I'm going!" And she strolled right back over the creek, knowing that her father was already waiting for her.
"Heh, wait!" Sabrina called after her friend, but didn't choose to run after her, hesitating at the last moment, which, in her eyes, sealed Amber's fate and her own failure at preventing an unlawful event.
She scowled at a lone boulder that lay to her feet, and kicked it up, almost hurting her feet in the process. Even angrier, she used her powers to lift the rock, and blindly, pushed it psychically away.
Just less than a hundred meters away, Amber's father was just about to leave for a nice Sunday afternoon trip to the ice cream café with his daughter. He was backing up his car out of the drive just when a truck driver on the street was startled by a stone hitting his window shield swerved sharply as he lost control over his vehicle in his panic.
Moments later, the ear splitting sound of crashing metal could be heard all around the terrace, as the truck crashed into the car, and the car was pushed against a wall. The car's motor hollered, and the next second, the car's front was smashed against the wall on the other side of the driveway, and the motor's sound died off.
All the time, Sabrina had been paralyzed by panic, fear, and the realization, as she recognized the car that had been just reduced to scrap metal.
Slowly, almost like in a trance, she walked over, avoiding the debris without even having to look at the ground.
Wordlessly, her mind frozen, she stared at the wreckage, and at the nervous bundle that was Amber's father as the frantically tried to revive his daughter, whose neck had been swiftly broken by the car's severed aluminum mantle. She saw the light fade from her friend's eyes as her body laid there, broken and twisted like a discarded doll, garnished by bloody speckles and protruding bones. Later, it would be speculated that Amber's excitement had been at least partly responsible for her untimely death, as she had seen her friend strolling into their playground and had loosened her seating belt and tried to clamber over to the front seat in order to get a better look at the younger psychic and wave goodbye, which had caused Amber's body to be affected worse by the sudden impacts of both the truck and wall.
Still paralyzed by fear and shaken by devastation and sadness that was so intensive it was physically excruciating, Sabrina walked back home, knowing that it had been unavoidable, knowing that there was nothing she could have done to prevent it, knowing that it had been fate, a cruel fate, but fate nevertheless, but all the time not able to shake off feeling like a driving force behind everything. It felt as if her childhood had ended on a single sunny summer afternoon, and whatever was coming next was going to be a lot less innocent than the playful tricks she used to perform.
~*~ Scene Change ~*~
That afternoon, she cried, she cried for hours, and although her parents tried to comfort her, and the tears left her eyes like pouring rain, she never felt the heaviness lift from her constricted chest.
She asked herself, if the tears of a Pokemon could bring back the dead, why wasn't the same true for a human's tears? Or were hers simple not worth, not pure enough to seal the deal?
~*~ Scene Change~*~
You are silent, waiting for her to continue, but she declines, instead choosing to observe you.
"That's it?" You ask. While there's no doubt in you that the woman in front of you is a killer, you still cannot believe that she started this early. You try to imagine her as a first grader, in a pretty, frilly pink dress, standing over the bleeding, lifeless body of her best friend, and your mind almost shuts down due to the outrage it is.
She takes a breath, and shifts on her seat. "That's it." She repeats. "Though, to be truthful, it was not only the beginning of mine…I'm fairly sure this was Scorn's hour of birth as well. You can only imagine someone dying once you've started to abhor them, indeed. And then there's the barrier of admitting to yourself that you wished death upon someone else. That, in itself, really takes some fucked up mind to process."
There is a pause as you watch her stand up, and walk over to you. You gulp again, feeling the air being pressed out of your lungs.
"And now, my dear, I'm afraid I will have to do away with you, as you've heard too much for my liking." She leans forward to kiss you on the forehead, and the last thing you see before blackness surrounds you is a black, spider-like hand gripping your paralyzed face, forever frozen in silent terror.