Title: The Flame That Burns Last, Burns Longest
A play on the proverb he who laughs last, laughs longest – if someone does something to you and gets pleasure from it, you will get more pleasure from revenge on that person.
Summary: Essentially, he hands her her own death warrant, so she signs her name in purple eyeliner and dots the i with a heart just to be spiteful. It's like love, but it only meets halfway and sort of fizzles out in the middle. Onesided Ferriswheelshipping – White & N
Her nail polish is chipped, but it doesn't bother her because she isn't the six year old pretty princess-wannabe that drank pretend tea out of old mismatched plastic cups with Belle anymore.
Still, as the sea of Plasma grunts close in, White can't help but regret never returning Belle's well-meaning calls about getting manicures together.
Despite the forty or so grunts in front of her, White's eyes are on the mane of green hair in the back.
N's face is completely devoid of emotion, and it pisses White off.
His face is a sparkling pool of water, and she wants proof her existence made a splash in his life, created rippling tides of complex thoughts and emotions. It's the least he could do – it's his fault she's stuck in this position.
The grunts nearest to her release their Pokemon, but White will not be rushed. She is the center of attention, and this last battle will begin at her leisure.
White lovingly caresses the Pokeballs in her bag, then slowly drags out three. They rest in her cupped hands like water, fittingly so, as they are her blood and water.
She holds them up above her head to the sky, to the crowd, to him, and she doesn't even care she's being dramatic; she will drag this out as long as possible to hurt him.
She tosses them all at once as if they've suddenly turned to fire. Her Samurott, Excadrill, and Darmanitan stand between her and the masses, ready to lay down their lives for their master.
Suddenly, there are Liepards, Magnemites, and Scolipedes everywhere, attacking her Pokemon. White is in several places simultaneously, belting out commands like war cries.
Samurott is the first of her Pokemon to fall as several Liepards pounce on it all at once. White grits her teeth before recalling him. She kisses the Pokeball and whispers sweet nothings before calling out her Galvantula.
N shifts slightly at Samurott's defeat and White remembers when Samurott was just an Oshawott…
[Nimbasa City, Months Earlier]
White cautiously teeters onto the Ferris wheel cart and sets Oshawott onto her lap. The cart dips slightly when N enters. The door closes and the cart begins its slow ascent upwards.
White presses her face against the glass window, inspecting the ground below for plasma grunts. Normally she never would have agreed to anything that could be even remotely interpreted as date-ish, but the urgency in his voice made her halt her rejections.
"I would've expected you to pick Tepig as your starter." N's voice is low and thoughtful, but it's enough to attract White's attention. "You're one of those fiery types of people."
White shrugs, half uninterested, half wondering if he has realized she has her Oshawott out to defend herself from him if necessary. "You wanted to tell me something."
It's a fact, as steady and as emotionless as White herself. She knows other girls would kill to be brushing up against N on a Ferris wheel ride, but White's goal is to become Champion. Her Pokemon are her first and only love, and no delicate boy with whispery lips and shy smiles is going to change that.
"There are two things I have to tell you."
He just lets the words hang in the air, until they become oversaturated and burst at the seams like overripe fruit. White squirms uncomfortably, accidentally pushing her side against his in the small cart. He smiles widely as if electrified by her touch; she stiffens in contempt.
"Well?" She demands. He's trying to drag the moment out so it expands beyond her control, but she refuses to let him get away with it.
N stretches – his arm looks like it's going to flutter down on her shoulders for a second, but it doesn't – before answering.
"It's hard to articulate…I guess there's good news and bad news, you could say." He begins carefully, studying the back of her head under his eyelashes for any change in posture.
"Bad news first." White will take control of the conversation, steer it, harness its power against him. But N is the one with the answers, so he takes his time before answering. White refuses to unglue her face from the window.
"I am the king of Team Plasma." After dropping the bombshell, N looks directly at her, his shoulders tense in anticipation of her reaction. White doesn't move, still staring out the window.
She knows he expects some kind of response, so she gets a kick out of disappointing him. He seems to think he's trapped her in his little games, but she isn't the kind of person to become trapped so easily.
N shifts, pulling back slightly. He doesn't seem to know what to do, so he meekly repeats himself. The feeble announcement drifts about until White turns towards N and smothers it with an icy blue stare.
"When I run into Team Plasma, I will crush them. I will do everything I can to see that Team Plasma is destroyed." Her voice remains calm, but her eyes are two luminous suns that spell out his doom. "You said yourself that I was a fiery type of person…Fire burns and consumes everything in its path."
The heat of her stare hurts. N looks down into his folded hands in resignation. Satisfied, White turns back to the window.
N knows he should probably quit while he's ahead – or in this case, miserably far behind and crushed – but once he has bared part of his soul, the rest of it comes flooding out in an unstoppable waterfall.
"There's something else…" White doesn't react to his statement, still staring out the window. She is clearly done humoring him for the day. N blinks in hesitation, but true to his nature, the words come spilling out.
"I'd like to see you again." He leans closer to White, eyes bright. She turns her head to stare back at him wide eyed, partially because he is an idiot for declaring such intentions after she promised to wipe him out and partially due to the implications.
His interest in her is deadly. She knows Team Plasma will eventually be destroyed and he will fall. But, she also knows that until then, he will use his vast resources to target her and try to make her his.
Essentially, he hands her her own death warrant, so she signs her name in purple eyeliner and dots the i with a heart just to be spiteful.
White shrugs again in an 'I'm-sure-you-do' sort of way before turning back to the window.
N's eyes widen, and he pulls back as if burned. Unfortunately, they're still stuck together in the same miserable little cart, going around and around.
It's like love, but it only meets halfway and sort of fizzles out in the middle.
As White bitterly switches out her unconscious Excadrill for her Liligant, she glances at the crowd of grunts. More seem to be pouring into the room every few minutes. Dread momentarily disarms her, but the battlefield is where she has lived her life and where she belongs. To cover herself, White spreads a hand across the field towards her opponents.
"Liligant, Petal Dance!"
White breathes out the panic until it becomes petals, pieces of the flower she used to be. They mix with the Petal Dance petals, and the stage of her defeat is suddenly beautiful, sweet slivers of flowers dancing in the breeze, blinding her enemies.
Her arms stretch to the bright sky and beyond, grabbing at the petals, allowing them to kiss her chipped nail polish. White marvels at the simplistic beauty her Liligant has always possessed before a particularly nasty Poison Tail attack takes it down and Darmanitan succumbs to a Magnemite's Thunder.
Galvantula coos in defeat, and White is left standing unguarded before the snake nest of grunts. A few advance threateningly towards her, but White is far from finished. Shakingly, she recalls her Pokemon and fishes around in her bag for the capsule containing her final Pokemon.
"Let's go, Hydreigon!"
The dragon emerges with an assertive roar, taking out wave after wave of grunt Pokemon. She has seen Hydreigon's vicious destruction of its enemies countless times, but today its brutality is unmatched. Her Pokemon sustains minimal damage from the masses of frailer Pokemon, but the damage soon adds up.
White frowns before calling Hydreigon to come to her.
Hydreigon falls back to meet its master, chest heaving. Hydreigon is tired, and White is tired, but there is no end to the assault. She knows the end is near, but it has not come yet, and she will weld it to her liking.
Not because she wants to, but to show him she still has complete control.
She climbs atop her weakened Pokemon, and it struggles to take off at first, but they are soon airborne.
"Hydreigon, Sunny Day!"
The clouds open up, revealing the sun.
White throws out her arms as they rise, and the sun tickles her cheeks and injects her hair with warm streaks. She knows she is beautiful, and she knows N knows.
Her hat falls off so she releases her hair from its ponytail, and it flies in every direction, a majestic, living crown adorned with golden drops of sunlight that breathe defeat and sorrow and vengeance…
A beautiful queen of pure sun atop a tiring throne in her last attempt at victory…
Her smirk is as wide as the moon.
He finally makes eye contact with her now, and she directs her beauty and her independence and her righteousness at him at full force. He doesn't realize it, but he is a mere flower turning his head to the gloriously indifferent, mighty sun.
The sun queen ascends higher and higher in the sky, it is the beginning of a new day, the death of the night, the death of that night where she went on a Ferris wheel ride long ago…
As new Plasma grunts flood in, White knows she will be defeated, but what hurts the most is knowing he will see her fall.
He thinks he can win, that his victory will make her his.
But she is not a Pokemon to be captured and owned and played with; she is White, and she will not stand down.
White ignores the opposing Pokemon closest to her. She jabs a finger downwards like a sword directly at N. The chipped nail polish glimmers in the sunlight, and somehow it is beautiful and glamorous and pathetic and exactly everything she is all at once.
Perhaps she can't eradicate Team Plasma as she once promised, but she can certainly take out N.
They're so high up now, they're headed towards heaven and the sun queen will conquer all the angels and declare herself the Heavenly Queen of Sun and her throne will be of white, puffy clouds mixed with twilight and sky and decorated with fields of moving stars.
"FLAMETHROWER!"
Fire pours from Hydreigon's open mouth, or maybe from White's fingertips, or maybe from both, and there's a brief second where Queen White and her throne are impervious and N is but a distant memory.
Then a Hyper Beam strikes Hydreigon, knocking it out cold, and they're falling, falling, falling…
White pushes herself off of her unconscious Pokemon and spreads out her arms and legs, tangles of hair hissing and dancing in the wind behind her like venomous snakes.
And the sun queen transforms into a falling star, headed towards hell and the sun queen will conquer all the demons and declare herself the Hell Queen of Sun and her throne will be of red, swirling flames mixed with twilight and death and decorated with the sins of sinners.
And that's fine, she thinks, because her flames were always more like hellfire anyway.
She laughs the entire way down.
AN:
As stated before, the title is a play on he who laughs last, laughs longest – if someone does something to you and gets pleasure from it, you will get more pleasure from revenge on that person.
There was a lot of sun/fire imagery there…Even things like "sort of fizzles out in the middle", "he pulls back as if burned"...I like puns, and I thought they worked here. ^^ Hopefully, there were subtle enough so as to not distract from the story.
Anyway, I've read a lot of ferriswheelshipping stories where White just sort of goes along with it and likes N after a few bumps. I wanted to show the other side – where White hates N for being the King of Team Plasma and fights him until the bitter end. I threw in a few lines here in there to imply otherwise, though. I thought the stereotypical "nice hero" personality wouldn't work as well, so I had fun playing around with a darker White.
I first came up with the "essentially, he hands her her own death warrant, so she signs her name in purple eyeliner and dots the i with a heart just to be spiteful" line and just couldn't get it out of my head. I was originally going to do something about manga!Sabrina, but I couldn't picture her with purple eyeliner. White just seems more badass than the other female protagonists, so I figured she'd be most likely to wear purple eyeliner and N just got thrown into the picture because why not. That's probably an odd thought process, but I'm happy with the story's ending. ^^
What did you think?