Chapter 6: Assistance

One thing I learned about what we refer to as Legendary 'Pokémon' over the course of my story is that due to rarely appearing on our earth, they're often much more inept when they adopt earthly forms. This little piece of information started with this anecdote ∞ told me of the events that occurred after I ran away.

"You're not going to follow him?" ∞ asked. Tony didn't answer; he was apparently trying to will himself forward, judging by the way he kept thrusting his neck.

"This isn't working!" he cried. Turning to ∞, he pleaded, "Help me!"

"You're going to drag Luci to hell!" replied ∞, crossing his wings. "I find him to be a pretty swell guy so… No! I don't think I'll help you!"

"Help me or I-'ll, uh, attack you or something!" Tony shot back. ∞ snickered. He could tell that Tony was panicking like a Rattata cornered by a Persian.

"Mr. Immobile? I don't think that's going to happen!" ∞ jeered, sticking his tongue out at the death clerk. I have to say, if Tony wasn't the kind of weakspined pushover that he was at the time, ∞ would probably have been on his way back through the lines of Purgatory. When he first relayed this story to me, it put me at odds with his 'never tell lies' mantra until I remembered that after the numerous times he had gone through death and rebirth probably left him jaded and impervious to the fear of death. Of course I would later be mistaken but now is not the time for my rambling. The insult sunk into Tony, whose face contorted in a mixture of pain and anger for a brief second before he broke down sobbing.

"Why!?" cried Tony. "Why is this happening to me!?" ∞ chocked to stop laughing once the waterworks began running again. "I-I…I d-don't wanna give Luci to Mortis! I don't want him to… to…" another chocking noise came from him before he continued. "Mortis has a terrible temper and I know what he's gonna do and I can't stand it! I can't stand my terribly duty! I can't stand being the subordinate! I can't stand having a common Pokémon laugh at me!" He tried once again to move, but only ended up toppling himself over; he seemed to be having troubles balancing himself on the ground as well.

"And I can't even stand…" he finished. For being in Altered Form for the first time, ∞ did say to me that he actually did a pretty good job of standing up on his six legs until this point.

"Look…" ∞ began softly. "I'm sorry about making fun of you. That was rude of me, especially after everything that you've gone through. I've been reborn many times in many different bodies. I can help you figure out how to do this fun thing called walking!"

"Walking?" Tony whispered.

"Yeah, because this isn't your realm, you can't move around by thrusting yourself through the air! Here, ya gotta use those legs to push yourself up and forward! Of course, in exchange for my little lesson, you're gonna have to promise not to give Luci up to your supervisor!" He winked, his way of saying "Trust me, it'll be OK."

Tony went a bit teary eyed again. "B-But I can't do that! It would only guarantee him coming here personally!" His voice was a sponge absolutely soaked in fear.

"Well my friend, looks like you're going to have to come up with some kind of plan!" ∞ said with the teasing edge back in his voice. "Because otherwise the only thing you'll be doing is warping back to your dimension empty-handed!"

A long silence followed as Tony's eyes shifted back and forth in thought. He then broke this silence with this sentence: "I could see if I could influence Mortis's decision."

"That's whatcha should've thought in the first place! Don't let that curmudgeon push you around!"

"But… I'd need something to base my argument on… could you help me with that?"

"Buddy, if we're on the same side then I will stick through with you 'till the absolute end!"

The two of them shared a smile. After a moment, ∞'s smile somehow managed to grow larger than what Tony thought physically possible.

"Say, go back and buy us some time!" ∞ told Tony. "Go up to your boss and tell him that you need more time than you, no, anyone anticipated and that you want to be completely undisturbed so you can uh, prepare Luci's soul to be submitted to him! Yeah, um, you're gonna have to fill in the blanks with the parts of your office I'm not familiar with…"

"I think I can try and do that." Tony said with a new sensation of confidence. "I'll be back!" Tony then concentrated and warped back to his office. ∞, leaning against a tree, began to think of various ways he could make my soul look good when I'd eventually have to face Mortis. He had gone through the bureau lots of times, so he knew which things a good soul had on its resumé and what things would grant the soul to damnation. He also used the time to compile the events that just occurred for him to tell me later.

Tony returned just as ∞ finished up conjuring the adjectives he would use to describe himself and Tony in his retelling.

"Okay, I got us 90 minutes!" Tony exclaimed. "Of course, converting that according to this terraform's Solar-day based time system, that's about 180 of your days, 6 months! That oughta do it, right?"

"Sure!" ∞ said, plastering another large smile on his face. ∞ was sure that we'd need more time than that, but he could bug Tony to go for another extension later. For now, he was pleased with the relative ease in which it seemed Tony was granted the 6 month one.

"But how will it help us?" Tony said, his smile disappearing. "Mortis is unlikely to change the decision I'm sure he's already made."

∞ was quick to answer that. "Wow, all that work you do in the office has really made Tony a dull boy…" he chuckled. "From all the times I've been in your office plus all the reborns I've talked to equals…" He ran up to Tony, who had fallen over again, and put his shoulder up against his while wearing the world's cheesiest smile (Hey, I'm merely repeating ∞'s story here. I've gotta say, you've got to admire a person who is willing to say they've got a 'cheesy' smile).

"…one guy who knows what the soul that eludes the third worst option looks like!" ∞ finished. He knew that Tony was kind of passive to anyone and anything, but ∞ was really making himself out to be the world's greatest genius in the way he presented himself. This was ∞'s way of making sure that Tony would trust in him completely. ∞, wherever you are now, I really appreciate that you what you did for me there!

"Great!" chirped Tony. All he and ∞ had to do was find a situation for me that they could use to help save my soul and make me jump on it. After celebrating to himself for a bit, he narrowed his eyes, staring at ∞.

"Now about those walking lessons…" he whispered.

"Okay, now one thing you can starting doing is mentally labeling your limbs, going from left to right, number them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Done that? Okay, good! Now try to get a sense of…"

I'm cutting off here. No offense to ∞, but from here it's a droning story on how he got Tony to learn walking and I'm afraid that while it's kind of interesting, it doesn't really have relevance to the story I need to relate to you here.

In the time frame in which that was taking place, Teri, the reborn Turtwig, was telling me about what she knew about me and my connection to a person I would meet again soon.

"Luci, do you remember that fact that you sat to the immediate left of Charlie Marrone in our Math class?" she asked.

"Kind of…" I stammered. "But all I remember is that he was named Charlie, and that is because he'd always get a higher grade than me!" I ought to elaborate on this. I never really had a passion for math as a subject. In fact, although I did adequate enough to receive an A as my final grade, I found my abilities inadequate due to the 2 or 3 people who were better gifted than I. Charlie who sat to my right was one of them. I'd get a 92, he'd get a 98. But like I said, I didn't have a passion for math, so it wasn't like it bothered me or anything.

"Yeah, he's so smart…" she said semi-vacantly. Turning her attention back towards me, she explained, "Charlie was my boyfriend. We fell in love during Second Semester."

I did notice that Charlie's test scores (I'd lean over to see what he got when tests were passed back, but again, it's not like I cared.) did, on average, start to slightly slip during the last semester of math class. Never thought that it was due to spending more time with another person, but I didn't at the time know anything about Charlie other than his grades. Pondering this to myself, I waved my paw around, indicating for her to continue.

"And then, after 13 weeks of that, we were separated when I died. I know you saw it, but I don't think you paid enough attention to remember it very well, so…"

While she was talking about how her last day as a human began, I remembered that near the end of the semester, just before summer started, Charlie's scores were getting dangerously close to mine. Then another memory came back in which a student council member came in and read something to the class that I didn't bother to pay attention to. Now I felt horrible upon realizing that it was a memorial to the death of a classmate, someone who my neighbor Charlie was very closely connected to. My feelings of horribleness increased once I realized I wasn't paying attention to Teri telling her story.

"…and I guess the crowd was getting too big for some people to handle, and well, in the panic, I tried to get back down to the ground, and then that's when someone rushing through the crowd pushed me and I fell down the stairs."

Sunyshore City has a series of solar panel roads that rise above the ground. You know how like in a mall there will be an upper level and a lower level? The upper pathway towers over the houses and stores to make access to more houses and stores. That development saved on Sunyshore City's electricity bill, and nearly doubled the amount of commercial space available in our small corner of Sinnoh.

"It was so horrifying!" she gasped. "And then just like that, it was all over…" She seemed to be paralyzed by revisiting the moment of her death again.

"I see…" I said, trying to convey my sympathy towards her plight. "I gotta know why the solar roads were so crowded. What the heck were…?"

Now's the part where I got slapped across the face by an angry Turtwig. "You weren't playing attention!?" she screamed. "How dare you just decide to ignore a story you seemed so damn eager to hear!"

"I'm sorry!" I quickly responded. "But, I only zoned out in the middle, I still get the general idea of…"

I didn't get to finish that sentence either when another blow was inflicted on my soft Pachirisu face.

"Just go!" she sobbed. "Now I see why I've never seen you have any friends! Charlie was right when he said you were a weird cold creep!"

Sure was nice to know what the guy who sat next to me thought of me.

"At least your death wasn't your fault at all…" I said. This seemed to get her to look in my direction again. "I slipped because I was too stupid to not get a bag for those stupid cheap batteries! My brother just wanted to try an old game Boy he found and I was so indifferent to his happiness…" I then turned away as I angsted even more. "The only thing I cared about was shutting him up. I just went for the cheapest batteries, some old duds recharged by a sleazy market clerk! I accept that I deserve the death that I caused."

She took a step closer to me as I finished. "At least you deserved to be reborn, Teri. I just reached over the desk and didn't face my true judgment." Well, it's kind of embarrassing to share with you how angsty I'd get sometimes, but that was a deeply-ingrained part of me at the time and I can't just ignore it because if I cut it out then parts of the story don't make sense, such as here when Teri reacts.

"I wouldn't say that, I'd say you just decided to, well, take charge for once!" There was now less than an inch of space between us. "You've got to be fucking kidding me if you're calling your death a suicide. Things happen sometimes and it seems that you've already grown a bit from the indifferent guy in my math class." As I looked up again, she added, "Just a bit though, you still zoned out when I was talking."

"Look, I said I'm sorry!"

"I know." She then stepped back away from and circled as she said, "Yeah I know, so no sense dwelling on that anymore. Besides, we've gotta get back to Charlie! He's my trainer in this current life!"

"We've!?" I questioned. "Are you saying that the guy took up Pokémon training and you want me to join you?"

"Well, yeah!" she chirped. "Charlie's doing the Sinnoh Gym circuit as part of his therapy! You see, his psychiatrist suggested it as a way to get over my death, and well, let's just say that my rebirth was the first of many shining moments for the both of us. Thing have been improving! We even got the Beacon Badge shortly after we started this summer!"

This gave me a good reference of the times. To make it simple, Charlie and Teri started dating in the Winter and through Spring. Come late Spring, Teri dies and Charlie's math performance suffers. Early summer, Charlie apparently took up Pokémon training with a reborn Teri as his starter (There's no way that could've been a coincidence; I wondered why her second life was in such close proximity to a person from her first.) Middle Summer, I die. Fall, I am reborn, and then finally in the start of the new Winter, I meet ∞, Teri, and am soon to meet Charlie. This turn of events was turning out much differently than I expected (What I was expecting was the salvage life of a wild Pokémon before this point, in case you'd care to know)

"Trust me, Luci!" Teri continued. "I think that if you come on this journey with us, it will help heal you like it has been me and Charlie." That did sound great, but there was the little problem slowly clawing its way out from the back of my mind, the fact that a death clerk was after me to send my soul to hell and whatnot.

"I'd love to, but…"

And as if on some grand cosmic cue, Tony came barreling into the scene, ∞ flying close behind.

"OH NO!" I shouted as I started to run away again.

"No wait!" cried ∞. "Don't run! We figured everything out! Everything's going to be okay! *pant* *pant* *pant* Oh, and by the way, who's the Turtwig?"

Yeah, sorry about all the angst, that will kinda pop up from time to time. (Though the fact that he grew up as a boy named Luci probably doesn't help matters much)