"Through this door is the world which was provided for Our Lord N. I don't feel anything when I go in there, but maybe you will…"
Touko reached for the knob, afraid of what she might find. Would it be like all of the other rooms in the castle, a carbon copy of a medieval bedroom? Or would it be a typical teenager's room, with posters of cars and swimsuit models glaring down at her?
It was worse.
Stepping inside, Touko was transported to a parallel universe. One in which an innocent boy spent his days playing, all alone. The train set was missing a few pieces of track, but the electric motor faithfully buzzed along what little road there was, back and forth, constantly. A second train car had somehow come to rest in the basketball hoop, having perhaps been thrown across the room by a frustrated child. The basketball, sitting in the middle of the half-court, bore a name: Harmonia, a permanent reminder of a surname that the ball's owner never seemed to use.
Taking up an enormous amount of space in the already small room was a skate ramp, also littered with toys. Beyond that, she found the skateboard, half-buried in a box of brightly colored blocks. A dart board, with a few darts stuck to the white circle near the edge, and a framed landscape which dangled by one hook, a dart piercing a watercolor tree. It hung limply, a beast vanquished by a child's plaything.
The wallpaper and carpet were mismatched, as if the interior decorator couldn't care less what the room looked like, so long as its inhabitant stayed put. The walls were a purple check pattern, while the floor was carpeted with a clouds. Even when playing, the young N had been raised to feel as if he were above even the clouds.
This room could have belonged to any child on earth. But it belonged to him, the boy who was even now preparing to become supreme king of Unova. Touko had been blind, but now she saw. She saw how N had been raised - no, trained - from birth to take on the role of "hero." He thought that he was acting of his own free will, that the things he knew were the only truths, but his truths were lies. He was a dog, trained to follow his master obediently. Here was his kennel to prove it. She had thought him to be Team Plasma's spearhead, but she now realized that he was nothing but a figurehead. A clueless, innocent boy, brainwashed into thinking that this was the life he'd chosen.
She straightened up, resolve coursing through her veins and shining in her eyes. N had called her neutral. She had been, until this very moment. Her friends had discovered their goals, and now, finally, she had found hers. She would march up that spiral staircase, grab N by the ear, and set him straight. He needed to think for himself, and she was going to help him see that if she had to bang his head against a brick wall. Turning on her heel, she glided across the room to leave. Her hand was on the knob, but she didn't turn it. Instead, she turned back around, picked up the basketball and tossed it into the hoop, knocking the train to the floor. The ball bounced into a corner as if to hide itself and avoid being thrown again. She spun around to go for real this time, thinking to herself:
For luck.
I wrote this over a year ago and just now discovered it in my fanfiction folder. I was mildly impressed with my past self, and decided to post it on an 8 AM whim. Critique is greatly appreciated and flames welcomed.