Crises of Sanity

Chapter Two is now online. Like a llama!

The Finesseful X: Glad you liked it. I read your review at lunch break, and I had a warm, fuzzy feeling all the way through double geometry.

Y-ko: Glad you flamed it. When the flamers start pointing out your intentional mistakes, I always say, something must be right. Oh, and just for you, I stuck exactly the same error in this chapter. I feed on flamers' despair.

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A hideous screeching noise made Sanity throw himself out of a collapsed pile of cardboard boxes and grab a random broom. The screeching continued, from some point outside the window. Apprehensive, the new trainer smashed the small, grimy little piece of glass with the butt of his broomstick, and then, carefully, peered out of the broken window, ready to run screaming down the corridor at the drop of a hat.

There, in the now-smoking front lawn of the Pokemon Centre and looking very proud with itself, was sitting an odd-looking creature. It stood on four legs, a longish neck gave it a regal sort of air, and a gold sort of ring-like growth encircled its midriff. The creature put Sanity in mind of something completely bizarre... It looked a llama!

"What the hell is a llama doing outside the Centre?"

"My name is Arceus," said the llama, not sounded affronted or slighted in the least.

"I said, 'what the hell is a llama doing outside the Centre'. Not, 'what is your name'."

The llama seemed surprised for a second, and his head twisted back and forth. "There's a llama here? Gosh, I've always wanted to see one of those!" he said, causing Sanity to wonder why he seemed to be the only one on the planet with even a shred of intelligence.

"It left," said Sanity, choosing the easy way out over the arduous, painful way.

"Drat. Well, I just wanted to say something to you... lemme think back..."

A thought, or memory, or realisation, struck the trainer. "Say... aren't you meant to be some Crystal Dragon Jesus thing or the other?"

"Well," said the llama, "There's tonnes of evidence that I'm not God. Just try asking a Nurse Joy how her Pokemon Centre could possibly keep on running even though its services are completely free. But, to the point, I've been told by Puff the Ghostly Dragon to tell you to tell me what you want to know about your future. And then I have to tell you what you told me to tell you."

Sanity asked the llama to repeat what he had just said, and took out a piece of paper and a pen. "So... You've been told to tell me to tell you what I want to know about my future, and then you have to tell me what I told you to tell me?" asked Sanity, reading from his sheet of paper.

"Um... yeah."

"Okay, then," he grinned, but on the inside he wondered who this 'Puff' really was. "How about..." He briefly considered not asking the llama if he would ever become the greatest Pokemon Champion in universe, but then figured that there was no point. "Will I become the very best, that no-one ever was?"

"At what?"

"At Pokemon training," said Sanity in a patronising tone, which, he figured, was how this 'Puff' spoke to the llama all the time.

"Oh, that's an easy one! Yes, yes you will."

"Can I ask you something else?"

"Fire away," said the llama, not suspecting a thing.

"Will I cook a billion poffins in one day?"

"Oh, that's an easy one! Yes, yes you will," answered the llama, somehow managing to act like he hadn't just said the exact same thing twice.

Sanity thought the next one over. "Will the world end tomorrow?"

"Oh, that's an easy one! Yes, yes you will," said the llama, not batting an eyelid.

"Uh-huh... I think I'll just go back to sleep."

The llama nodded stupidly, not realising his own mistake. "Well, tell me if you see any llamas!"

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Now, Sanity had figured out pretty early on in his life that other people weren't as smart as him. But the llama had surpassed even his usual expectations upon meeting a stranger. As a result, he was far too amazed to fall asleep again, and, obeying a timely rumble from his stomach, went down into the kitchen, ready for a slap-up meal. What he found was a burned breakfast bagel and a glass of metallic-tasting milk. Choosing a seat near to the Nurse's desk, Sanity found himself wondering about the llama's 'evidence' that God didn't exist.

"Say, Nurse, how does your Pokemon Centre-"

"- keep itself running without any revenue from all the healing it does?"

"Er... yeah."

The Nurse seemed to have an internal debate with herself, before giving a sigh and choosing let the Meowth out of the bag. "Well, we often need to cut costs for our drugs and food..."

"Like?" asked Sanity, taking a swig of his milk and pretending it tasted good.

"Oh, we usually substitute Miltank's milk with Rattata's."

Horrified, Sanity spat out all of his milk with a retching sound, leaving a viscous white streak on the table in front of him. Not amused, the nurse continued, distastefully eyeing the table. "And we reserve the right to press charges against anyone who dirties the interior of our spotless Centre."

"Wha' a-ou' thuh ekthte'iah?" asked Sanity, using his bagel to scrape his tongue clean of Rattata milk.

"Anyone who graffitis our walls is liable to be shot," replied Nurse Joy, idly scrubbing up the mess Sanity had made with a dirty rag. "And so is anyone who vandalises our property." The trainer froze, as if trapped in time.

After half a minute, he relaxed. "You know, for a nurse, you have no fu-"

"Oh, and we also have a swear box," the nurse added with nonchalance.

"- forget I said anything."

Joy nodded evilly. "That's the spirit, kid."

An abrupt, explosive noise shook the entire building, causing Sanity to drop his half-eaten breakfast bagel. Or at least providing him with a good excuse not to eat it.

"What was that?" said a person that would never show up again beyond this chapter. Looking through the parlour window, Sanity was thoroughly unsurprised to see a squad of angry-looking Voltorb plonked somewhat uncomfortably in the wreckage of a Pokemart. He was more surprised to see Blue man behind the exploding balls, an expression of pure hatred on his face.

"Come on out and meet your fate, murderer!"

"Um... why would I do that?"

It evidently hadn't occurred to Blue man that Sanity might not want to leave the safety of a Pokemon Centre, disregarding any number of psychotic nurses. So he stood there, a fire burning merrily on the hem of his now-tattered cape, at a complete loss as to what to say.

"Well... because... the... something... I don't know, just come out!"

"I don't think I will," retorted Sanity politely.

"I'll blow up the whole city! I'll kill you all!"

A police officer, who had been interrupted from eating a burned breakfast bagel that he had found lying around on the floor, when the boy next to him had started arguing with the guy with the pack of Voltorb, heard exactly what Blue man had just said. "Guys," he whispered into his radio, "we may have a little problem at the Centre."

A woman at the other end gave a derisive snort. "That's what you said when that serial killer was found in a tree. Dead."

"Well, there was another serial-"

"Guys, guys," said the third officer. "We're deviating from the plot here."

"There's a crazy guy with a pack of Voltorb in the smoking remains of our Pokemart," concluded the first officer calmly.

There was a stunned silence on the other side. "Chad, remember our little bet?" said the second voice finally.

"Okay, okay, I owe you fifty bucks. Arceus, what I wouldn't give for a normal day!"

"Oh, and he's just threatened to wipe out the entire city in a supermassive Voltorb detonation," added the first officer. "He's crying now... something about bacon?"

"We're on our way," said Chad. "We have orders to arrest anyone who is prone to randomly switch from threatening people with explosions to talking about luncheon meats."

"Well, usually bacon isn't eaten inside a-"

"Shut up and get the civilians out of the area!"

Meanwhile, Blue man was ranting about his poor deceased Staryu, and Sanity wondered if he could grab a bacon sandwich while the guy threw another tantrum. He also wondered, albeit more vaguely, if the Voltorb could shoot stars too. And then he decided that, if nothing else, he would shut this moron up, if only to prove that the star thing just didn't work.

"I challenge you to a two-on-two Pokemon battle!" he shouted, halting Blue man in the middle of a keening wail full of grief.

Wiping his nose with a tissue swiped from the shop, the slightly unhinged man said, "Fine! Fine, be that way! Return, Bolt, Starshine, Crackle, Zap and Sunny!"

"You... you named all of them?"

"What's wrong with that?" whined Blue man, putting his Pokeballs back into his cape.

What is it with this guy and Pokemon that have indeterminate genders? thought Sanity. "Can you even tell the difference between them?"

Struggling to hold back another onslaught of tears, Blue man stuttered incomprehensibly.

"Come again?" asked the younger trainer.

"Let's just have our battle!"

"I choose you, Tsunami!" yelled Sanity by way of agreement. "Use Something!"

"Ha!" gloated Blue man. "Voltorb, as electric-types, have a natural advantage against water-type... techniques..." The Pokeball-like creature rolled feebly towards its trainer, and exploded in his face. "Go! Sunny! Use Sw-" Again, the Voltorb exploded in his face.

"Come on, man," said Sanity, "now you're not even trying."

"No! No fair! How come you have the strong Pokemon and- and I don't! It's not fair!" screamed Blue man, rolling in the debris and soot-blackened chunks of concrete. In his mental turmoil, he slammed himself into a slab of lightweight plastic that was holding up an unstable pile of building material. Because he was an idiot, and a terribly unlucky idiot at that, the plastic was knocked right out from underneath the pile, and it collapsed on top of him. The last they saw of him was a single, dulled, golden star that had peeled off from his sleeves at some point in his ranting. And because Sanity was an apathetic jerk, he let out Theodore and told him to use Ember on the star, incinerating it and removing all traces of the sucker's existence.

"You are under arrest, in the name of the law," said a guy wearing a police uniform and holding a megaphone to his mouth. "Stand down and do not try to resist."

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In the jail complex twenty minutes later, a badly bruised policeman read out the official list of charges. "Two counts of second-degree murder, one count of intentional arson, and three counts of jaywalking."

"Who did I kill?" asked Sanity, one eyebrow raised.

"The two Voltorb exploded from stress after your Totodile was done with them."

"But isn't that one of their attacks?"

The policeman had to nod in grudging agreement. "But usually they form a magnetic field around themselves to blunt the force of the blowback," he said with a pained grimace as he massaged a particularly purple bruise.

"And I don't remember crossing any roads..."

"When you were running away from us," explained the cop, examining his broken middle finger. It was on his right hand, too...

"You can leave now," said Sanity, already testing out the firmness of the bars he was trapped with. When he took his hand away from them, sawdust fell through his fingers. "This place is made of wood?"

A kid in the cell opposite looked over in his general direction, gnawing on a Spearow bone. "Yeah. Problem is, it's genuine cherry tree wood, and a Tropius makes sure that the wood is unbreakable."

"But... if I theoretically had a fire-type Pokemon on me that no-one had bothered to confiscate, would the wood still catch fire?"

"Well, duh. But I don't see how-"

"Theodore, go!" cried Sanity, and the mousy creature gave a world-shattering yawn before noticing that he had an audience. With the air of straightening a suit, he stood sharply to attention. "Use Ember on the wooden bars!" His back crackling with flames, Theodore released a plume of fire at the confining bars. The dry wood was consuming by the blazing heat in a matter of seconds, and the fire speedily worked its way up the wall and onto the ceiling. Smoke poured from the burning fuel, filling the air with putrid fumes and muffled curses as the inmates clamped their hands over their mouths in order to breath. But now the wooden bars were beginning to shrivel and burn in the stifling heat, and the assorted criminals let out a whoop of victory. The prison warden, on fire and screaming in pain, ran past them, trailing thick curls of smoke and an odour of burning flesh. After a brief moment of shock, another whoop of victory issued from the escaping miscreants. As the last of the smouldering cinders fell to the floor and left a black mark on the ground, the criminals (among them serial killers and sexual predators) charged madly into the middle of a shopping centre, followed closely by a convoy of news helicopters.

"I have a strange feeling that we are going to regret this in the near future," commented Sanity to the boy who'd been gnawing on a Spearow bone. "Say, where'd you get that bone?"

"Back of the Pokemon Centre," he grunted.

"Cool. Remind me never to come here again."

"Will do."

"What's your name, anyway?"

The boy ceased to chew on his bone. "How'd you know my name?"

"I don't. That's why I'm asking you."

"Asking me what?"

"What your name is!"

"What."

Sanity shook his head. Kids nowadays. "What. Is. Your. Name?"

"What."

"I said, 'what is your name'."

"There aren't any llamas around here," said the boy, nonplussed.

"I said, 'what is your name', not 'what is a llama doing here'," amended Sanity, wondering if the universe somehow hated him and wanted to fill his life with painfully inserted irony.

"It's What," said the boy.

"What's what?"

"My name."

"Say what?" asked Sanity.

"My name," said the boy, seeming a little annoyed now.

"What is your name?"

"WHAT!" he all but screamed.

"Have you considered getting a hearing aid?"

"... You know, I'm considering gutting you with my bare hands," said the boy, What.

A few hours later, What finally managed to get his point across by saying, "My... name... is... What."

"Your name is seriously What?"

"It's What."

"Wait, what?"

"My... name... is... What."

Sanity considered this. "What about just changing your name? To, say, something like Howard? Howard's a better name than What."

"What?"

"You know what?"

"That's me! Of course I know myself!"

Sanity stood still for five or six seconds. "Forget it."

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You like it? I liked writing it... but maybe that's because I was listening to 21 Guns on iTunes. The next chapter will feature a Gym Battle! And the reappearance of Lyn Eeyear.

Cookies if you know who Puff the Ghostly Dragon is.