Author's Note:
Okay, so this is my attempt at doing a Black and White adventure fic novelization that isn't FerriswheelShipping, and is instead…ChessShipping! Which I love. :) Not that I have a problem with FerriswheelShipping; I actually quite like the ship. It's just that a lot of the time, authors don't keep the characters in character, especially N, which really bugs me…and also, as a friend on here once stated, N's goal in the game and by the end of it is not to find romance but to find himself, so it seems a little odd that he would be falling head over heels for Touko/White or anyone… But then again, if done right, Ferriswheel can be awesome.
Anyway, I digress. I wanted to try something different with this fic, chapter-fic-wise. I think it's harder to write about Black/White with ChessShipping, and I hope that it's somewhat original, too. I've actually been wanting to write a Pokemon Black/White adventure fic for a while when this idea popped into my head. I know that not writing a Ferriswheel fic might lose me a few readers, but I hope that it might gain me some, too. :)
Other shippings include DualrivalShipping, or Cheren/Bianca.
By the way, if any of you have read my other fic, Bets and Decisions, this is in the same universe as that one, so it can be seen as a sort of sequel (though that one is just a short one-shot, as of now). So, just know that these are the same characters as in that one, with the same personalities and histories.
So…I hope you enjoy!
Chapter One: Sleight of Hand and Twist of Fate
The day Touko White and her best friends received their first Pokemon was, strangely enough, a day that when of the gravest, and most bizarre, mistakes that would determine the future of Unova had been made.
Not that any of them knew this at the time, of course, and not that any of them would know it for a while. In fact, even those who had made the mistake didn't know it yet. No one would, until the threat on Unova had risen to such a level that proper intervention was needed, whether from the hands of fate or from any heroes who were willing to take the stand. But that would all come in its own time. For now, it was still a beautiful spring morning in Nuvema Town, the Pidove chirping and fluttering through the air, the sun sprinkling its golden hopes and promises over the grass and the roofs of the slowly awakening houses—and a surprise was waiting inside the hearth of one of them.
Ever the punctual one, Cheren was the first to arrive at Touko's house, clad in his usual neat ensemble of skinny black pants and a striped shirt, his glasses just the slightest bit askew on his nose. It was nine in the morning, and Touko had woken up less than half an hour ago to the sound of her mother shouting at her from downstairs that she was heading out to Castelia City and wishing her a good day, and, after rubbing her eyes and lying underneath the covers for fifteen more minutes, she had climbed out of bed to the sight of the gift box sitting innocuously on her desk, blue and square and tied up in a bright green ribbon.
Of course, only after calling her friends and setting her Xtransceiver on the table had she noticed the card that lay underneath the bow and let out a loud yelp that echoed throughout her empty house, felt slightly insane, and then jumped up, shoving the feeling aside, and danced a victory lap around the perimeter of her room.
Not that Cheren needed to know that, of course.
"Hey, Cheren!" she called out, waving all too energetically at her friend before he had even ascended the steps. "Come in! Come on, hurry up!"
Cheren's eyebrows didn't even twitch from his usual expression as he stepped into her room, clearly annoyed at how perky his friend was so early in the morning.
"Now what's the rush that you called me here so—oh." He blinked, his eyes alighting on the box, and came to a halt. The hint of irritability disappeared from his voice, and mild curiosity took its place. "Oh. What is that?"
Touko waved the card in his face. She had read it so many times that she had practically memorized the words scrawled in Professor Juniper's neat, curly handwriting on the page, and she grinned, now, excitement bursting in her chest.
"You won't believe this, Cheren!" she exclaimed, and flung the card at him in a one-armed victory pose. "Read it! Read it!"
"Okay, okay, calm down, Touko. I will." Barely holding back an exasperated sigh, her friend bent down to pluck the card off the ground and squinted suspiciously at it.
Touko watched, grinning, as his eyes widened behind his glasses into two round, navy blue orbs. He dropped his hand to his side and looked up to stare incredulously at her.
"What is this, Touko?"
"Pokemon!" she exclaimed.
If Cheren hadn't been Cheren, she knew that he would have flung his hands up in the air and done a frenzied Torchic dance around the room. But since he was Cheren, he only squeezed his hands together into a fist, rubbing his palms together.
"Do you know why, or how—"
"I think my mom was involved," Touko answered, grinning. "I mean, she is mysteriously MIA right now."
A rare smile tugged at the corners of Cheren's mouth, lighting up his entire face, and Touko couldn't help but smile back at him. Which was, after all, pretty much the same for him as throwing his hands in the air and whooping.
"Well, if it was her, tell her I said thanks."
A note of determination crept into his voice. Touko could see the gears turning in his head—studying strategy, training hard, leveling up, becoming Champion. After all, Cheren had wanted to be a trainer pretty much all his life; she knew that. This was the perfect opportunity for him.
She, on the other hand, was still coming to terms with believing what she saw before her eyes. How had her mom and the professor planned this so well?
"Shall we open it now?" Touko asked, reaching forward, but Cheren stopped her with a firm hand on her wrist.
"Let's wait for Touya and Bianca. You said you called them, right?"
"Of course I did!"
The two of them exchanged a mutual, good-natured grimace at the thought of waiting for Bianca, who was almost never on time, and then Cheren started pacing back and forth around the room as Touko continued to dance on the tips of her toes. They had barely started to guess the species of Pokemon that were inside the box (Minccino? Cheren speculated; he knew Professor Juniper was fond of them. Or maybe a Lillipup, since they were a good species to study. Touko was torn between something completely drab and anticlimactic like a Pidove and something brilliantly rare like an Emolga, coincidentally her favorite species. Why bother to even give them Pokemon, after all, if they weren't anything special?) when a knock sounded from the door below.
Sure enough, Touya arrived next, stumbling up the stairs with loud footsteps and a flourish of his long arms, and at the sight of him, brown hair tousled underneath his cap like he had just woken up, jacket thrown haphazardly over his shoulders, Touko's heart suddenly shot into overdrive.
"I heard you have some presents for us?" he asked, grinning wickedly and looking back and forth between his friends' faces.
It took a moment for Touko to calm her pulse down enough to answer him. "Even better," she said finally, grinning back. Her heart was beating so fast that she could feel the blood surging through her veins. Really, this was ridiculous. The two of them were best friends, she reminded herself. Best friends. They had known each other since they were toddlers, for Mew's sake. This—this crush she had on Touya, or whatever it was, and had had for a few months now—was getting out of hand. "We have Pokemon!"
Touya almost hit the ceiling.
"What!" he shouted. "You have what? You're kidding me!"
"She's not," Cheren chimed in matter-of-factly, appearing over Touko's shoulder. "Professor Juniper sent a box of Poke Balls to her house. And apparently we each get one."
"What?" Touya exclaimed, his eyes bulging. "How did this happen? Where did you get these Pokemon?"
"I stole them," Touko deadpanned. "No, Professor Juniper gave them to us. Though I think my mom had a hand in this…"
Touya let out a low whistle. "Damn, Touko, your mom is awesome." He smiled at her, momentarily worsening the Butterfree in her stomach, and then his gaze darted toward the box and seized it with a fixated eagerness. "Can we open them now?"
"Hold up, we have to wait for Bianca," Touko said, placing a hand on his shoulder. The spot where her skin connected with his tingled, and she pulled her hand away quickly.
Luckily, Touya didn't seem to notice. His shoulders slumped in mock dejection, and as he stumbled over to sit on her bed, he nearly tripped over a heap of clothes that Touko had forgotten to throw into the hamper the night before. She winced at the sight of them now, hoping there weren't any embarrassing T-shirts buried in the pile, like the baggy one that loudly blared "I heart Casteliacones" in a horrible shade of magenta, a souvenir Bianca's dad had brought back for her one year from Castelia City that she wore to bed, or the Four Leaf Snover shirt she had bought weeks before that band went out of style. Even though Touya probably had already seen her wearing them hundreds of times. What was she even thinking?
"What's keeping Bianca?" Cheren asked irritably, dragging her out of her mutinous thoughts. "I mean, seriously…of all the days to be late…"
The others murmured their agreement, and after a good ten minutes of celebration and impatient pacing and the inability to talk about anything else but the four Pokemon that were currently sitting in the box and that must be waiting for their trainers as impatiently as their trainers were waiting for them, Bianca burst into the room. Her green beret was half-falling off her head, and the bag she carried around everywhere with her was unzipped and spilling half of its contents—friendship bracelets, notebooks, gel pens, little bags of Smarties—on the floor.
"Oh my gosh, guys, am I a little late? I'm so sorry!" she panted, completely abandoning the bag with a loud thud and flinging her hands up to adjust her hat.
"A little?" Cheren's eyes were practically rolling out of his head as he glared at her, arms crossed. "Bianca…for Mew's sake…I've known for ten years that you have no sense of time, but did you really have to pick today of all days to be so late?"
Bianca spun around. "Why, what's today?"
"Today's the day we can get a Pokemon from Professor Juniper!" Touya blurted from Touko's bed, and Bianca's eyes widened into big green saucers.
"Oh my gosh!" she shrieked, practically jumping on Cheren. Cheren leaped back, grimacing and throwing a hand over the delicate rims of his glasses in a vain attempt to protect them from being crushed. "Pokemon? Where did that come from?"
"Touko's mom," Cheren sighed, stepping away from Bianca and pushing his (slightly bent) glasses up the bridge of his nose.
"Oh my gosh! Touko, I love your mom!" Bianca's sweet, flowery scent swallowed Touko as she wrapped her arms around her neck. Giggling, Touko hugged their back. "I hope they're cute ones! Oh my gosh! Okay, what are you guys waiting for? Let's open the box!"
"That's what we've been trying to do for hours…" Cheren shook his head, giving up on his hopeless friend.
Touya stood up from Touko's bed and shuffled over to the desk, and the three of them bent eagerly over the box.
"So…shall we do this, guys?" he whistled, sucking in his breath.
Cheren gestured toward the box. "You do the honors, Touko."
This would be a moment she would want to remember, Touko reminded herself, glancing over her shoulder at each of her friends, possibly forever. For a moment, she thought of the days when the four of them used to gather up in this very room with crayons and coloring books full of Pokemon, flipping through the pages until they were bent and dog-eared and worn at the edges, they had each grown. Since then, Cheren had grown tall and skinny, stretched out like a wire, a clump of hair on his head sticking up as if it was pulling him up in some sort of reverse gravity. Bianca, who had always verged on the chubby side as a child, had lengthened and somehow transformed her baby fat into soft curves that made her look way more feminine than Touko did. And Touya…Touya had always been a hyperactive kid, full of pranks and long limbs and loud whoops of laughter, but now that he had settled down, Touko found him often materializing in her mind at the most inconveninent of times, springing up like a Spoink and making her stumble over her own thoughts. Which he was doing right now, since he was standing about an inch away from her, so close she could feel the warmth radiating from his body…
Ugh. Anyway. Not like that was the point at all. The point was, they had come a long way, hadn't they?
The others crowded around as Touko stepped forward, the room suddenly, ceremoniously silent. She reached forward for the green satin of the ribbon. It was soft under her fingers, and tied much more messily than she had expected, unraveling and falling away easily in her hands. She pulled apart the buckle of the box and then, with a click, lifted the lid to reveal the prize waiting within.
The four of them gaped at the Poke Balls sitting inside the box, light dancing off their red and white surfaces.
Touko squinted at them, something stirring inside her in the silence that followed. What was it? She couldn't put her finger on it, but somehow she knew, she felt in the chill of the room, that there was something terribly wrong with them.
"Really?" Cheren was the first to splutter in disgust as he squinted at the open box, its insides blanketed with red velvet, the ribbon torn away and flung haphazardly across Touko's desk. Professor Juniper's note, full of cheery well-meaning and obliviousness, fluttered to the floor and lay forgotten next to the pile of old laundry. None of them noticed it.
Cheren took a step forward and shoved his nose into the box for a few long moments before straightening and staring back at his friends with eyes full of disbelief.
"Really? Look at this. Are you kidding me?"
The others followed the direction of his gaze and the pale, slender finger he jabbed accusationally toward the gift box.
For a moment, Touko couldn't figure out what was wrong. What was it that had gotten Cheren so riled up? Not that it didn't happen a lot, especially when someone important got some important fact wrong; she knew him well enough to know that. But none of them had said anything, and he had been so excited a moment ago. All had seemed well. She stood on her tiptoes, craning her neck to peer past Touya's shoulders, and counted the gleaming Poke Balls inside the box.
One, two, three. Three. Three.
Shit.
Touko landed back on her heels and slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand.
Cheren sprang into action, pushing his glasses up and folding his arms over his skinny chest. He leaned forward and picked up the box, gently swirling it around and peering intently inside as if looking for hidden Poke Balls. Touko heard the muffled sounds of the Poke Balls thumping against the side of the box, and as the three of them watched with fascination, Cheren reached his hand into the box and fingered the velvet that covered its insides, patting down every side. After a few moments, he finally plunked the box back on the table and spun around with a scowl of defeat.
"Okay, yes, it's confirmed: there are only three Pokemon. And four of us. Somehow, Professor Juniper gave us one less Pokemon than we need. Ideas, thoughts, anyone?"
Cheren faced them and set his jaw, studying them with piercing eyes. The others knew him well enough to know that this was an opening statement, some sort of thesis that set the stage for debate.
But of course, none of them were Cheren, so they only stared in silent dismay at the open box.
"Oh—oh no," gasped Bianca. "What'll we do now?"
Touko, too, was at a loss, frantically running a list of possibilities through her mind as she stared at the suddenly too-round, too-smooth, too-perfect Poke Balls. How could the professor have made such a glaring mistake? Would it be too rude to ask her for a fourth Pokemon? Well, obviously, that was a no-brainer. It wasn't as if the professor just handed out Pokemon to random people on a daily basis; it must have been a long-standing agreement between her mom and the professor to surprise the four of them. And they had done a good job. But then how could Professor Juniper have not known…?
They heard a soft ahem and turned toward Touya.
"Really, guys, it's not so bad," he interjected cheerfully, ever the optimist. "At least we get Pokemon."
"Yes, I suppose we should all be grateful for that," Cheren answered, half-serious, the other half dripping with thick globules of sarcasm. Touko could see the two sides struggling within him: polite, studious Cheren, and determined Cheren who wanted to effing be the Champion, already, and not have to deal with any of these stupid obstacles that weren't his fault in the first place. Only that of incompetent people. One of which he was certainly not. "But with all due respect, does the professor even realize—"
"Nah," Touya interrupted in a smooth drawl. "Obviously she's never seen the four of us together or anything when she comes over to have dinner with Touko's mom. Which isn't practically every weekend or anything. Geez, now that I think of it…the two of them are tight, aren't they?" He smiled at Touko, and the sight of it sent her heart fluttering into a frenzy again. She opened her mouth to tell him that she had been thinking the same thing, but he went on before she could choke out a semi-coherent reply.
"Obviously it's…" He narrowed his eyes, peering at them out of wry brown slits. "…a conspiracy from our parents. A final test of our faith. Duhn duhn duhn!"
Cheren raised an eyebrow at him, and Touko and Bianca both giggled.
"Obviously. What would she even be testing us on?" Cheren asked matter-of-factly, flicking his wrist in dismissal. He turned back to the box with a perplexed stare, his mouth twisted in thought. "Touko. Do you think you could ask your mom if she has any idea what we could do?"
"She's out, remember?" Touko reminded him. "Probably so this could be an even bigger surprise for us."
Cheren cursed under his breath, and Touya let out a low, teasing whistle at the sound. Cheren hardly got worked up enough to swear.
"Really, guys, it's not so bad," he repeated, grinning. "Now we get to have a contest! Competition time! Survival of the fittest! You hear what I'm saying?"
But we don't compete, Touko thought as the four of them glanced around at each other with nervous smiles. She bit her lip. To be honest, she wasn't really sure about what Touya was saying, and she was sure that Cheren and Bianca felt the same way, too. For the most part, the four of them were used to working together to overcome challenges and helping each other get things they wanted, not competing and fighting each other for them—with the exception Cheren, maybe, who was lightyears ahead in his knowledge and liked to show it. Something like this was new and strange.
"Well…anyway…I think Touko should get one." Her heart pounding, Touko spun around to stare at Touya, who had broken the silence. He shrugged and smiled at her. "They were sent to her house, after all, and it's all thanks to her mom that we get them at all."
"Yeah!" Bianca agreed eagerly without even hesitating, her green eyes round with anticipation. "Touko deserves one!"
"I agree," Cheren said, nodding firmly.
Warmth swelled up inside Touko's stomach, and she turned away from the box to face all of them.
"Thanks, guys. You're the best!"
"No, you are, Touko, for getting us these Pokemon in the first place!" Bianca exclaimed, giving her friend a quick hug. Then she pulled away and clapped her hands, hurriedly blurting, "And—and I think Cheren should get one, too! Guys, we all know how much he's, like, always wanted to be Champion!"
Touko saw Cheren turn a faint shade of pink at her remark. "Thanks, Bianca."
"She's right," Touya said, smiling and clapping Cheren on the shoulder. "You deserve this, Cherry."
Cheren shot him a venomous glare. "Okay, call me that again and I'll turn my Pokemon loose on you the moment it comes out of its Poke Ball."
The others laughed halfheartedly, the thought of the Pokemon who would be doing that burning all too real in their minds. One more to go, Touko thought. Her insides clenched at the thought of either Touya or Bianca not having a Pokemon. How could something that was supposed to be a great surprise do this to them? Already, she realized, before they had even begun battling, Pokemon were pitting them against each other. No one spoke, their jaws tensed as they cradled the thought in their mind, not wanting to be the one who shattered the peace.
To everyone's surprise, it was Bianca who spoke up next, this time serious.
"Guys…maybe I…maybe I shouldn't get one," she murmured. Touko could see her bottom lip quivering, even as her friend bravely tried to push her chin forward and keep a straight face. When that didn't work, she took a deep breath and pushed on. "I mean—I want you guys to all have one. I want you to have a Pokemon, Touya! And plus…" She swallowed. Her voice was small when she continued. "Plus, my dad…I don't think he would be happy if I got a Pokemon…"
Touko could feel the tension in the room build, draping over them like a fog. Her stomach twisted at the thought, and she saw Cheren stare down at the ground, his mouth pursed in a thin, white line, and the corner of Touya's mouth fall with sympathy. Everyone in the room knew how overprotective Bianca's dad was of his sixteen-year-old daughter. It wasn't fair, Touko thought, gritting her teeth.
"Aww, no, Bee!" she exclaimed, rushing forward to wrap her arms around her friend. "No! Don't even say that! Of course you deserve one! We all do! But…"
But…but that meant…
"A'right, you know what?" They turned at the sound of Touya's voice shattering the tension. He smiled and leaned forward to give Bianca a reassuring clap on the back, trying to comfort his clearly distraught friend. "Thanks, Bee, I really appreciate it, but…I'll stay behind. I can help Professor Juniper around in the lab or something for now, and then maybe she can give me a Pokemon a bit later or something, and then I'll catch up to all of you."
The others were quiet, Bianca's mouth opened slightly in shock, Touko's heart swelling as if the Butterfree in her stomach had suddenly spread their wings and decided to take flight. Mew…and Touya had to be so kind, too, she thought, feeling slightly woozy and forgetting for a moment how she had promised herself they were only best friends and that she shouldn't feel this way about him…no, not at all…
But before she could scold herself any further, she noticed that the rest of them had stopped talking, and that Bianca was shaking her head forcefully, a troubled look in her eyes.
"No. No way, guys," she declared, an uncharacteristically steely note of determination in her voice. Her green eyes glistened as she pulled her hat dramatically up over her head to perch on top of her head. "I don't know about you, but this isn't okay with me. No way one of us shouldn't get a Pokemon! That just, like, wouldn't be fair! Friends don't let friends…um…not get Pokemon!"
Touya looked embarrassed, and he held up his hands. "No, really, Bianca, it's okay—"
"It's not!" she interrupted, shaking her head even harder. "I don't see why we should have to—to make this kind of choice, at all! It's totally not fair!"
Cheren stared at her expectantly with dark, muted eyes. "What do you suggest we do, instead, then?"
"I don't know, but I know that none of us should have to leave here without a Pokemon!" Bianca cried, so warmly that her bob of hair shook with every word. "Friends just don't do that to each other, you know?"
Touko felt a great surge of love for her friend. She leaned over and gave her a quick hug.
"Would…would it be completely out of line if we asked Professor Juniper for a fourth Pokemon or something?" she piped up tentatively, pulling away.
Cheren looked uncomfortable. "Well…that would be extremely rude, but…"
"Oh, come on, Cheren," Touya said, rolling his eyes. "Lighten up. Bianca's right. And I'm not just saying that because I volunteered not to get one," he added, staring pointedly at Cheren as the other boy opened his mouth in protest. "I just don't think the professor would purposely do this, you know? She's not a bitch or anything, and she knows the four of us are friends. It must have been a mistake."
"She even addressed her note to us," Touko pointed out, remembering the words and the kind, curly handwriting on the card.
"Come on, Cheren! Do you really want one of us to walk out of here without a Pokemon?" Bianca exclaimed, still trembling a little.
Cheren looked back and forth between them. He locked eyes with Bianca, cool navy blue against bright, quivering green, and finally, his thin, tight shoulders sank.
"Well…well…okay," he relented finally, and Touya let out a loud whoop of victory.
"Awesome! Now let's go find good ol' Junipah at the lab!"
He buckled up the box and scooped it up in his long arms with a flourish. Cheren winced at the sound of the Poke Balls rolling around inside the velvet and snapped at Touya several times to be careful not to drop them. As the four of them marched, raced, skipped, and trod down the steps, Touya whistled a tune, Touko tried not to blush everytime their shoulders brushed against each other and wondered what they were going to say to Professor Juniper, Bianca gazed ahead with wide, excited, disbelieving eyes, and Cheren cast worried, skeptical glances at the box every few seconds, thinking. They swung open Touko's front door and stepped outside into the sunlight, which bathed their faces in its all-loving warmth and painted shadows on their illuminated skin, and began heading toward the Nuvema Town Pokemon lab.
As they walked and talked, none of them saw a boy, with long, tea-green hair that swayed and billowed in the wind as if it were a part of the grass around it, tiptoe into the field behind the lab. His pale fingers were curled tightly around something he held in his hand. None of them saw the tears that streamed down his cheeks, glistening in the morning sunlight. None of them noticed the peculiar way in which he walked: slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, his free hand fiddling with the baseball cap perched on his head, a stark contrast of black and white. But his steps were short and uneven, as if he hadn't yet quite mastered the art of walking.
When he was a safe distance from the building, the boy knelt down in the grass and dropped a single Poke Ball on the ground. A flash of barely visible light erupted from the crack, and then something dark and furry slinked out from inside it, a tail drawing invisible question marks in the air.
As the Pokemon emerged, the boy curled his arms around his knees, and then he buried his face in the fabric of his pants and cried freely, his shoulders shaking with every sob. Tendrils of green hair cascaded over his head and brushed the Pokemon's face, and, unsure of what to do, it leaned back on its haunches and stared up at him with wide, concerned eyes.
"They're gone," the boy whispered, lifting his head to reveal a pair of wide, glittering blue eyes. "They're gone. I made them go away. You don't have to stay in there anymore. You…you can be free now."
A tear landed on the Pokemon's fur, and it jumped on its paws, tail coiling in alarm.
"Go ahead," the boy urged, pointing into the distance, the morning sun kissing the tips of the grass with gold, the Patrat and Lillupup scampering around in the underbrush. "Go. You can run away if you want."
The Pokemon twitched its tail back and forth, but it didn't move. Seconds passed, and still, it stayed put on the carpet of grass, its eyes fixed on the man's as if drawn by a magnetic pull.
"Or…or you can stay with me, too, if you want. But I won't make you." A curious light flickered in the boy's eyes, and he slowly reached out his finger toward the Pokemon. "And we can be…friends."
The Pokemon stared at the ivory skin of his finger, the thin red line that trailed across it as if it had been sketched there by a delicate, meticulous pencil, and slowly, tentatively, it reached its paw forward to touch his hand, a mutual handshake. The boy's eyes widened, and a small smile spread across his face, shining through his tears.
Some things didn't need to be spoken, he knew.
"I only wish I could have saved your friends, too," he murmured, and then he bent down and picked up the Pokemon, which let out a surprised yowl as it leaned into his shoulder and then sank down, fur soft against the white fabric of his shirt. Cradling it in his arms, the boy—the man, really—stood up and begin walking along the route, his ponytail swishing behind him with every step, dust swirling around his shoes. And as the four teenagers walked inside the doors of the lab, none them saw him disappear into the distance, a faded green silhouette against the Castelia skyline, a mistake, one that might as well never have been there to begin with.
Author's Note:
I hope you liked it! :) Please review and let me know what you think.